Spotify's payments to creators, and Acast in profit

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
James Cridland (00:00):
It's Friday, the 14th of February 2025.

Speaker 2 (00:04):
The last word in podcasting news.
This is the Pod News WeeklyReview with James Cridland and
Sam Sethi.

Yes, I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod.

Sam Sethi (00:14):
News, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans.
Happy Valentine's Day, james.

Oh, I thought you'd never mention it.
We successfully have deliveredon our profitability target for
positive EBITDA in 2024.
Acast posts their year-endfinancials Also in the chapters.
Today, murdoch buys apodcasting company, is Netflix.
Next Transistor integrates withBlue Sky and Spotify hands out

(00:41):
the money.
This podcast is sponsored byBuzzsprout with the tools,
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Start podcasting, keeppodcasting with buzzsproutcom.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly.

Sam Sethi (00:54):
Review James, we have to start off with Spotify this
week.
Oh my God, we were trying tokeep.
Wait there, sam.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
We're sorry, but now it's time for more news about
Spotify on the Pod News WeeklyReview oh, good.

Sam Sethi (01:10):
Thank you very much.
Yes, apologies to everyone whodoesn't like having Spotify news
early Remember we have chapters.
But the good news, I suppose,is Spotify is now sending out
checks.
I mean, I don't believe they.
Clearly they're sending out themoney.
What are they doing't believethey?
Clearly they're sending out themoney.
What are they doing, james?

Correct.
Yes, they are sending out themoney.
Yes, so it's one month and abit since the Spotify Partner
Programme started, and yesterdayafternoon they published some
of the numbers, which isbrilliant.
We've actually been saying thatthere's no chance that Spotify
will ever publish the earningnumbers for some of the shows,

(01:49):
but surprise, surprise, theyactually have been, and there
are some really nice numbers.
Hundreds of podcast creatorssurpassed $10,000 in monthly
revenue, they say, with the topearners crossing well into six
figures in the first month alone.
That's pretty impressive, isn'tit?

(02:10):
We've even got some numbers forindividual shows as well.
Shall we dive into those?
Go on then, give me some detail, right?
Well, so firstly, there's apodcast called Modern Wisdom, a
top video podcast, apparentlyhosted by Chris Williamson, but
all it says here is asubstantial first payout from
the Spotify partner programme,so that's not particularly

(02:32):
helpful.
Is?

Sam Sethi (02:33):
it.
What's substantial?
Again, detail, detail.
That's what we're looking for.

Well, ok.
Well, here's some detail,detail.
There's a mental health podcastcalled we're All Insane and
that says that the show earnedmore than $17,000 during the
first month of the SpotifyPartner Program.
Now, $17,000 is not to besniffed at.

(02:57):
That's quite nice.
I thought what would beinteresting with these
announcements is to actually goand find out what sort of
numbers they're doing.
So I've used one of the popularadvertising planning systems
that give you an estimate permonth for particular shows and

(03:19):
the numbers that I have thesearen't estimates, these are
actual numbers from what I cansee because of the tool that
I've used.
So we're all insane.
$17,000.
That does 579,000 downloads permonth.
So we can kind of work outthere a rough guess of how many

(03:43):
downloads they're doing incomparison to how much money
that they're making.
So $17,000 for 579,000downloads per month is an
interesting number.
We've also got a couple ofothers here the Kinda Funny
Gamecast never heard of it thatadded video to Spotify in the
last two months and they haveearned over $10,000 in Spotify

(04:08):
revenue.
They are doing apparently124,000 downloads, which is
quite small 124,000 downloadsbut still $10,000 in Spotify
revenue.
So yeah, so interesting to seethat number and also interesting
to see your Mum's House withChristina P and Tom Segura, and

(04:28):
Two Bears, one Cave with TomSegura and Bert Kreischner.
They're both podcasts from YMHStudios, so in total those are
doing what's 2.7 plus 3.8.
That is, 6.5 million downloadsper month, is a nice figure.
In terms of spotify revenue,they're earning 105 000, which

(04:51):
is um quite impressive, isn't it?
Um not bad for a month it ispersonally.

Sam Sethi (04:57):
I'm just still flabbergasted that two bears,
one cave gets 3.8 milliondownloads, but I'm still in
shock for that one.

I I can't tell you any of these shows because
I've never heard of any of them.
But I mean, you know, there'stwo things, I think.
Firstly, they're there sayingthey've seen an average increase
in consumption hours on Spotify.
Well, that has nothing to do, Idon't think, with the Spotify
premium partners programme.
It's probably these companiespushing people towards Spotify

(05:29):
rather than anything elsebecause they know that they will
make some money out of that.
But then, secondly, actuallyseeing some of these numbers, I
mean that's much higher than Iwas expecting Spotify to be.
But I don't know.
What did you think?

Sam Sethi (05:43):
The thing that gets me is I still can't work out
what the two metrics that I'mmost interested in is.
What's the amount that you getpaid out on a video ad and how
long do you have to watch the ad?
Those two bits of detail aremissing.
That's why I want detail.

Yeah, and of course it's a mix between the
ads and the share of the premiumusers as well, because the
premium user money also goesinto this as well.
Have you watched any of theseshows on Spotify themselves?

Sam Sethi (06:15):
Yeah, well, I thought I'd quickly look at the.
We're All Insane.
I thought, you know, before theshow I'd have a quick nose and
what was weird.
I am a premium user on Spotifyand yet I still saw three ads
that I couldn't skip before thevideo played, so I was locked in
to before the show could start.
Now I thought what it says hereis while giving premium
listeners a better viewingexperience, uninterrupted by

(06:37):
dynamic ads in select markets.
Well, either the UK is not aselect market or they're serving
ads before the video which, asa premium user, I can't get past
.

Ah, uninterrupted by.
That's clever.
That's the phrase that they'veused uninterrupted by.
So there's no mid-rolls, youwon't all of a sudden stop the
show halfway through and playsome ads.
That's clever.
So uninterrupted by ads meansyou'll still get pre-rolls,
you'll still get post-rolls,because those aren't

(07:11):
interrupting the show.
Ah, that's a piece of wordingthat I had missed.

Sam Sethi (07:20):
As they say.
That sentence is leaningheavily on the word
uninterrupted.

Yes, isn't it just Wowzers, wowzers.
But yeah, so yes, interestingnumbers.
And you know, I mean I'mslightly nervous that this means
that people will pull theirshows off OpenRSS and shove them
into Spotify as de factoexclusives, because they can

(07:44):
clearly see the money comingfrom Spotify.
So maybe that's going to happen, I don't know.
But you know, I mean that'ssome nice earnings from them.

Sam Sethi (07:54):
As CEO of True Fans, modern Wisdom did ping us to say
can we remove our show fromTrue Fans?

Oh did they.

Sam Sethi (08:00):
I won't say in what tone I was asked, which wasn't
very positive, Um, but yeah, itwas like uh, we pointed out to
them that they had a mistake intheir RSS feed and I just got a
uh, an abusive email back.
Basically, I never asked forthis.
Get my show off your platform.
Blah, blah, blah, blah.
Wow.
Yes, Wowzers.

(08:21):
Okay, You're welcome, ChrisGone.

Gosh, so I don't know whether he's doing that to
others and so therefore it is ade facto exclusive to Spotify
or not.
But maybe that's part of theplan.
But still interesting seeingnumbers anyway.
So good on Spotify for sharingthem.

Sam Sethi (08:40):
But in the in the round, when I read all of it
it's like here's a few shows,here's some few big numbers that
were thrown out.
No real detail, but it's alllooking positive.
So keep it going, guys.
And I'm like it's a little bitof a fake it until you make it
for me.
I need to see more of this overa longer period of time before

(09:01):
I think that there is a realmove.
I think big shows we all saidbig shows will go to video.
That's because I've got therevenue to do it and to pay for
a team of people to implement it.
But we know that in the longtail that's never going to work.
A in the long tail, you'renever going to qualify.
And B you won't have the timeor money or energy to keep it

(09:26):
going anyway.

Well, there we go.
Sam has spoken.
I know that John McDermott hassaid that most people who are
trying video now will stop byJuly, which is an interesting
thing, so let's see if that'strue as well.

Sam Sethi (09:42):
But yeah, so let's see if that's true as well, but
yeah, right, moving on ACAST,are they profitable?
Yet, james, not EBITDAprofitable, but proper, proper,
proper, proper, properprofitable.

I can't even say it this morning, it's posted
its first year in profit.
According to the company'sfinancial year end report 90%
net sales growth for 2024, whichis nice and an EBITDA profit of
2.2 million.
Now, of course, what does thatmean in total profit?
Don't know, but certainly anEBITDA profit is nice to end up

(10:17):
seeing, even though some of thenumbers are not going the right
way for them, are they?

Sam Sethi (10:22):
No, I mean they're still pointing towards the Apple
changes and iOS 17.
The UK itself has been called achallenging market by Ross
Adams, which generally meansit's going slightly down, not up
.
But I think the American market, which is what we've spoken to
Ross about in the past, is wherethey are putting their big bet

(10:42):
and clearly the growth there ispulling the whole company
through into profitability.
But why would the UK be goingdown?
Why would any of this happen?
Because we've seen I thinkwe've talked about certain
podcasts moving off ACAS lastweek onto other platforms.
Now Some of the big ones inAustralia certainly moved off it

(11:04):
.
So you know, overall, is itcase of america is where their
market is and everything else issort of slightly falling away,
or is it a case of, um, you know, there's just a market re re
change, ie, you know people aremoving, moving horses.
Oh, I've got a better deal overhere, so I'm gonna move.

Yeah, I don't know, I'm I'm sure there's a
bunch of that going on and I'msure also you know quite a lot
of Acast's deals are three orfour years ago and only coming
up for renewal now and perhapsthe renewal people are looking
around and going I bet Megaphonecould make us more money, or

(11:42):
whoever it might be, orAdelicious or whoever that might
be.
So perhaps actually Acast'sfirst mover advantage is coming
back to bite them a little bitin the UK.
But certainly you can see Imean 33% growth in North America
.
There was growth as well inEurope as well.
So they said, and then theyhave used the euphemism of the

(12:07):
UK being a challenging market.
So you know exactly what goeson there.
By the way, I should also say,although I've sort of been sort
of sniffily talking about EBITDAprofit and stuff, the numbers
that they actually have on theirrelease have also a profit line
right at the bottom, profitstroke loss for the period, and

(12:30):
that is in profit mostdefinitely.
So it's not just an EBITDAprofit, it's a proper profit.
So that's nice.
And.
I'm pleased to have cleared thatup.

Sam Sethi (12:42):
I think also interesting will be based on
what we said about Spotify a fewminutes ago.
It'll be interesting to seebecause they opened up their
studio in London to do videowhen they start to produce video
and will they see increasedprofitability from video based
podcast?

Yeah, indeed, and, um, they keep on talking
about a lot of omni-channelcampaigns, talking about video
as well as audio in there aswell.
So I would imagine that that'sgoing to have a nice impact.
Also, what's going to have anice impact is their acquisition
of Wonder Media Network, whichwent through early January, and

(13:20):
that will mean that, firstly,they've actually got some
content, some original content,in there, but also, secondly,
that will, you know, clearlymove things, move things forward
for them.
So, yeah, I think it's, youknow it's a good move.
A few things just to watch outfor is that number of listens in
the last quarter was down by 8%.

(13:40):
Number of listens in the lastquarter was down by 8%.
That's mostly due to the lossof the BBC, who moved away from
the ACAS platform.
But they only moved away fromthe ACAS platform in late
November.
So you can expect that therewill be another drop of about 8%
in quarter one of this year,because obviously that's what

(14:04):
the figures will work out asbeing.
So that's just sort ofsomething just to bear in mind.
So, you know, ACAR's not out ofthe woods yet, but, you know,
making a healthy profit andcertainly, looking at the last,
looking at well, looking at 2024, they made 78,000, I think this

(14:27):
is SEC that I'm looking at.
Yes, 78,000 SEC in terms ofprofit, which is $7 million
worth of profit if I've workedthat out correctly.
So $7 million worth of profitis nice.
They actually madesubstantially more than that in

(14:47):
their final quarter.
So very clearly, the profit hasbeen made in that final quarter
more than the rest of the year.
But even so, that's excellentfor them and I see a very
self-congratulatory post and whynot?
From LP on LinkedIn saying youknow how much hard work it's

(15:10):
been.
It's been 10 years for them tomake a profit.
So you know, there is alwaysthat.

Sam Sethi (15:15):
Yes, yes, as they say .
How come you were successfulovernight?
Yes, that's what they often seewhen people are on stage and
they don't see all the kickinglegs under the water like a swan
.
Now moving on Netflix.
Now, this was a surprising one.
It looks like Netflix isexploring licensing video
podcasts.
Here we go again for the nextphase of their growth.

(15:38):
What's this one about, james?

Well, I mean, this did not come as a surprise
to me.
Netflix are interested inlicensing video podcasts.
Or, if you put it another way,netflix are interested in
licensing cheap TV shows thatthey can buy from people who
make cheap TV shows, whichhappens to be podcasters right
now.
So, yeah, you know, apparentlythey've been chatting around

(16:01):
with a number of differentpeople.
Apparently they've beenchatting around with a number of
different people.
They tried to hire AlexCooper's Call Her Daddy, because
they thought that that was, youknow, a decent idea.
And, yeah, I mean, why wouldthey not buy some cheap TV to
add to their catalogue if theyknow that it's going to get a

(16:24):
fair amount of usage and theycan stick it in there?
So, yeah, I mean, I was justlike looking at this story and
going duh, but quite a lot ofpeople got very, very excited.
But I think you know, this isthe whole thing around video
podcasts, is it?
What's a video podcast?
It's a cheap TV show.
Netflix are interested in cheapTV shows.
Who'd have thought it?
So, yeah, that's basically me.

Sam Sethi (16:48):
Well, I mean Jessica Cordova-Kramer, friend of the
show from Limonada Media, said Icould see a world in which
audio only and vodcasts arestreamed on Netflix.
I think this is more aboutmaintaining your attention with
a platform, right, I think thewhole concept.
Now you talked aboutOmnichannel and ACAST talking

(17:10):
about Omnichannel, and I thinkthat's going to be one of the
buzzwords of 2025, where peopleare talking about audio video
constantly and Spotify want youto lean in to video, lean out to
audio, listen to music, staywith audio books, go onto
courses.
They don't want you to leavethe platform.
Attention is the metric thatwe're all trying to get from us

(17:31):
now and I think Netflix aregoing well.
Okay, watch the film.
We don't have music.
What else can we do?
Here's a podcast for you orhere's a videocast, whatever you
want to call it.

Well, here's a cheap TV show.
I mean, you know there's nodifference for some of the shows
that they have.
They've been making sort offaux late night shows and trying
those out for a while.
Those haven't necessarilyalways worked, but they've been
trying that sort of thing.
If they can get some content in, I think the difference is it's

(18:04):
less likely to be ad funded inthis particular case because
Netflix doesn't really do that.
So if they're able to get somecheap TV content in that will
keep people using their app,then I think that makes a ton of
sense.
I'm not sure I agree with Jessaround audio also being of

(18:25):
interest to Netflix.
I don't see that at all.
I think Netflix is a TVleanback experience and they're
not going to be interested inaudio.
But are they going to beinterested in buying some cheap
TV shows?
Yeah, absolutely, Of coursethey are.
But I think Netflix expandingits catalogue, and particularly
expanding its catalogue in termsof original material that they

(18:50):
have access to that nobody elsedoes, is super valuable to them.
So why not?

Sam Sethi (18:55):
YouTube said people watched 400 million hours of
podcasts.
I don't know if they definethat correctly because they're
very loose with the way thatthey describe podcasts, but they
say 400 million hours ofpodcasts on televisions in 2024.
Find that correctly, becausethey're very loose with the way
that they describe podcasts, butthey say 400 million hours of
podcasts on televisions in 2024.
So that lean back loungeexperience again is very
interesting.
I have never watched I have tobe honest a podcast on my TV.

(19:18):
I don't know if you have, butI've not.

No, I mean, I certainly wouldn't find watching
a podcast on my TV particularlyinteresting, Although I've
watched the occasional podcastclip on YouTube.
But you know, I mean I'm a bigfan of, for example, the Rest Is
Entertainment, which I know isavailable as a podcast on
YouTube as well, in video.

(19:41):
I wouldn't dream of listeningto it there, so you know.
But there again, I'm stuck inmy ways and maybe it doesn't
necessarily work that way, yeah,but I have noticed a lot, lot
more of the podcasts that Ilisten to.

Sam Sethi (19:56):
The politics ones, for certain, are moving to the
video format, but live videoformat and they I mean the rest
of politics are now, uh,advertising quite heavily.
Oh, here's our next live q ashow.
Here's our next show.
The news agent's doing the samething as well, and I've seen a
few other shows doing that.

(20:16):
Um, and it's that liveinteractivity with chat and
super chats that they're lookingfor and they want that because,
again, when they do a live show, the Q&A part is very important
for them.
I agree.
You also predicted in our 2025predictions that there would be
production companies going videoonly or video first.

(20:37):
Max Cutler's Pave Studios, Ithink you said, was going to be
one of them, and we've talkedabout Flight Studio Again.
Do you feel more confidentabout that prediction now?

Yeah, I think so .
I mean, especially if Netflixis jumping into the game, then
you can very well see someorganisations that are currently
making podcasts in audio and alittle bit of video turning
around and going you know what.
We'll just focus on the videostuff because we know that we
can make easy money out of it.

(21:08):
We don't necessarily have torely on the ad market.
I think that's the thing.
I think you know.
If you can get companies likeNetflix to pay up front for a
series, which is the standardNetflix way, then that takes all
of the uncertainty out of it.
As it stands, when you launch anew show, you are pretty

(21:30):
uncertain as to whether or notthe ad revenue will actually
cover you.
So if you can make it easierand simpler that way, then why
not One of my predictions wasthere would be more super apps.

Sam Sethi (21:42):
I'm calling them super apps.
Spotify is a super app.
It's a non-singular app, so youcan do multiple activities.
Youtube now is the same Lookslike Netflix is.
I mean even Substack's nowoffering blogging and podcasting
.
It's not just a single platform.
Now.
I think this is the way it'sgoing to go.
I think single-function apps, inmy opinion, will die in 2025 or

(22:05):
become less important.
Um, I said earlier, the battleis for a user's attention.
Uh, we've talked about livesports on Netflix and Amazon now
, and I think we've we've talkedand predicted that Spotify will
get into live as well.
So I think again, um, all ofthis leads to one thing I think
the price elasticity of theseplatforms are.

(22:26):
Again, I think Spotify has aceiling at which people will
start to abandon theirsubscriptions, so they can't go
to £35 or £25.
I don't know what that numberwill be, but there will be a
ceiling at which they can't andI think the way they'll get over
that is by having non-singularpayments.
So you'll have, oh, you've gotyour standard music and podcast

(22:48):
payment, and then there'll be aoh, do you want a one-off
payment for this live event?
And they will increase theirrevenue per user, I think,
through that mechanism, ratherthan increasing the overall
price.

Yes, no, completely, completely.
Get that Elsewhere in the TVworld.
Well, that's really what FoxCorporation does these days.
Rupert Murdoch's Fox runs TVand runs a little bit of film.
Does Fox still own the Fox 21stCentury Fox?

Sam Sethi (23:18):
21st Century yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:22):
Maybe I don't know.

Sam Sethi (23:24):
Let me be honest, I don't follow Fox Corporation
very closely.

No, which is probably a good thing.
But anyway, tubi Media Group,which is part of Fox Corporation
, has acquired Red Seat Ventures.
This is what happens when youbecome a Pod News supporter is
you get acquired by a largecompany.
But anyway, red Seat Ventures,if you don't know, they make
shows with people like TuckerCarlson, megyn Kelly and Piers

(23:49):
Morgan, oh good.
And they are now back in theRupert Murdoch fold, which must
be delighted.
So that's interesting.
Interesting to see that Murdochis getting involved in
podcasting.
Of course, whenever Murdochgets involved in anything, that
normally means the entire deathof the industry.
If you remember Murdoch buyingMySpace and he bought Bebo, I

(24:14):
think as well, didn't he?
He certainly bought a fewthings that's been far too late
or far, or just a reallyembarrassing purchase.
So I'm hoping that that's notthe case here.
But who knows?

Sam Sethi (24:30):
Yeah, the current chief executive, Lachlan Murdoch
, has said that they're on thehunt for acquisitions.
They're going to use basicallytheir assets to leverage
acquisitions.

Well, they've got plenty of money from selling
quite a lot of stuff to DisneyI think so from that point of
view and they sold all of the TVcompanies that they owned to
them.
So they've probably got quite alot of cash hidden away.
And, by the way, it's Lachlan,because he's Aussie mate.
One of the problems with him ishe lives in Sydney but he's

(25:09):
supposed to be in charge of FoxNews and supposed to be in
charge of a few other of the bigFox companies in the US, but
most of the time he's in Sydney,so completely the opposite time
zone, which makes it verydifficult if you are in charge
of a company in New York.
Well, I mean, you know, newYork is significantly the wrong

(25:31):
end of the day for you if you'rein this part of the world, so
that's very difficult.

Sam Sethi (25:36):
Maybe he's a bat and sleeps that day and goes out at
night.
I don't know.
But overall, james, I mean whatI'm going to say overall in the
stories we've covered so far.
Spotify is paying out topodcasters.
Acast is profitable.
We're seeing Netflix and Foxgetting into podcasting.
I think, if you want to justtake a good feel story element

(25:58):
to all of this, I think it'sgood news for podcasting overall
.

Yes, I think all of that is good news for
podcasting overall.
Of course, it hasn't stoppedsome good people being made
redundant or fired this week andof course yesterday, Thursday,
we covered that Amazon's Wonderyhas closed its operations in
Mexico and in Brazil.
So a quick staff meetingearlier on in the week and those

(26:25):
entire people are now without ajob, particularly when that was
the week, or this has been theweek, when Wondery have been
nominated for yet more awards.
So that's a great shame.
But yes, for many parts of thepodcast industry, it's good news

(26:46):
and that's a nice thing,although we could be earning
more money.
An interesting story in theMedia Leader this week talking
about podcasting only getting0.2% of all ad spend.
Tom Webster from SoundsProfitable also pointing out the
disparity between the reach ofpodcasts 53% of US adults and

(27:09):
the significantly smallerrevenue share in terms of ad
spend, because it's far easierto buy ads in Facebook and on
YouTube and everything else.
So that's clearly somethingthat we need to be working on.
But yeah, and talking aboutYouTube, Neil Mowen, the CEO of
YouTube, published an annualletter to the YouTube community.

(27:31):
It was full of fluff andexcitement and blah, blah, blah,
but there was one phrase thatthey ended up.
There was one thing that theyended up mentioning, and I think
this was just particularlyaround podcasting.

(An AI voice) (27:50):
He said this We've long invested in the
podcast experience, and creatorshave found that video makes
this format even more compelling.
This year, we'll roll out moretools to support podcasters,
improve monetization forcreators and make it even easier
to discover podcasts.
I was made with Wondercraft.
He was.

Sam Sethi (28:07):
I was going to say when you first played that I was
going really, is that what hesounds like?

Wow, I never thought that it's a voice made
with Wondercraft, but anyway, Ithought it was interesting in
that quote at least it's a quotefrom his letter where he's
talking about, firstly,improving monetisation for
creators.
Is that because of the Spotifyearnings, but also rolling out
more tools to support podcasters?

(28:34):
What does that mean?
What are those tools going tobe?
Who knows?
So you know, as yet at least,nobody has.
Nobody has.
Youtube has got bored andwanted to move on to the next
thing, so most unlike Google.

Sam Sethi (28:53):
So we'll see what happens there.
Now, given time, it's earlydays, yet you know two year
window, and that's when it alldrops off.
But what do you think?
I mean, do you have anythoughts on what there might be,
what they might have missing?

Yeah, I've got.
I mean, you know if, look, if Iwas working for YouTube, one of
the first things that I wouldbe doing is all of the fake
videos that they've got comingin from podcasts.
You know RSS ingestion and thatsort of thing.
I would be creating a much moreinteresting lean forward video

(29:28):
experience for those.
So actually doing some magicwith AI.
I know that they looked at apiece of software called Adoree
a couple of years ago and youknow those sorts of tools where
you can easily add images andmore information on the screen
about what you're listening toand all of that kind of stuff.
That would be a veryinteresting move forward for

(29:51):
YouTube.
I mean, maybe even justsupporting native podcast
chapters might be a good stepforward.
They do support chapters up toa point, but it's not the proper
way that the podcasts supportit.
Could they do something withimages, you know, in chapters
and so on?
So there might be somethingthere.

(30:12):
I don't know, but, um, uh, yeah, you know it was.
It was interesting seeing thatand also interesting he.
He also shared some uh earning,uh revenue numbers as well.
50 of youtube channels, um,that earn at least ten thousand
dollars on youtube also generaterevenue from sources other than
advertising.

Sam Sethi (30:33):
Two companies we never mention when we start
talking about all this stuff isApple and Amazon.
I constantly am amazed.
I think I've said it onnumerous occasions Apple have
gone MIA.
I mean I don't know what Appledo anymore.
I have no idea.
164,000 people and nothingcomes out of them.
And Amazon, they are justmyopically siloed, you know,

(30:57):
between Wondery, audible Amazondoesn't even say Amazon Podcasts
highly fragmented.
Yet if you look at where Ithink this is going towards,
this super app, where you lookat Spotify, youtube, aggregating
everything into one UI so thatthe user is encaptured within
their platform and theirattention is monetized, I can't

(31:21):
see how Amazon's doing it.
Amazon Films with Prime yes,I've got that and TV works with
it.
I very rarely use Amazon Musicbecause there's no link from
Amazon Films to it.
I do use Audible, but there'sno link back to Amazon Prime.
None of that's connected.
And they've got live sports,but it seems so fragmented.

(31:43):
And then you look at Appleagain, totally fragmented.
Will both those companies,james?
Will both those companies knocktheir heads together and start
to redo their UI and bringeverything under one platform?
Do you think?

I mean, arguably , you could say that Apple has
everything under one platform.
It's the Apple hardware, andyou know.
And you pick up your phone andeverything is there, unless you
uninstall it.
So I suppose, arguably, youcould say that.
But yes, one of the things thatthey are particularly bad at
doing is cross-linking betweenthe different apps that they

(32:19):
have on their phones, and thatgoes for both Apple and for
Amazon as well.
You know the amount ofcross-linking between you know
Audible and Amazon Music is, asI understand it, zero.
Similarly, amazon Prime, the TVthing, is also.
You know that's its own silo,and so on and so forth.

(32:42):
So I think that's one of thethings that they can do better
is cross-linking between themedia.
That they can do better iscross-linking between the media
assets that they have.

(33:02):
If you look at Apple, forexample, with the, I was going
to call it the Apple One plan.
Is that what it's called?
I know that there's a GoogleOne plan as well, so it confuses
me, but I think there is anApple plan where you get
essentially everything for onemonthly price, and that monthly
price is way too high, so Idon't.
But you can get Apple News aswell as Apple TV Plus as well as

(33:22):
all these other things, andthat's lovely, but there's no
cross-linking in between any ofthem.
So it's you know.
I mean, wouldn't it make senseand it would be interesting to
see whether or not it actuallydoes that If you're watching
that big Apple TV Plus show,what's that show at the moment?

(33:44):
The one Severance thateverybody's talking about.
Yeah, there are Severancepodcasts as well, so one of them
being made by Apple.
So the question is whether ornot the podcast is properly
linking into the Apple TV Plusand Apple TV Plus is properly

(34:08):
linking into Apple podcasts, andI suspect that the answer is no
on both of those sides.
They just mention, um, you know, they just mention, uh, each
other, um.
So I think that there's, youknow, clearly work to be done
there, um, but uh, yeah.
And then, of course, you've gotGoogle.
Who, um, I mean who knows whatGoogle is doing as well?
But anyway, there, we are.

Sam Sethi (34:29):
Well, I look forward to Google IO starting today and
lots and lots of sexy demos thatlead to nothing but anyway.

Oh yes, Lots of sexy demos of stuff that they
will can six months down theline.
By the way, we should alsocongratulate Apple for launching
Apple TV Plus properly ontoAndroid this week, which they
have done, so that's nice.
Not quite sure where the ApplePodcasts app is, but I mean nice

(34:59):
to see that you've done it forApple TV+, so I'm assuming that
the Apple Podcasts app is onlymonths away now, no only five
years away.

Sam Sethi (35:10):
It'll be here soon, james, before you retire.
Now, not before you retire,though you are going to be doing
your annual Pod News reportcard.

Tell me more.
Yes, this is a report cardwhich everybody.
If you're listening right now,ok, stop.
Go and fill out the Pod Newsreport card.
It'll only take you a couple ofminutes and then you can carry
on.
That's absolutely fine.
I give you full permission.
Podnewsnet slash report card iswhere to go.
So we were actually asked to dothis four years ago by a large

(35:44):
company, I think because theywere trying to battle internally
for more engineering resourceor for more PR resource or for
something, but anyway, and Ithought, oh, that sounds like a
good idea.
So now we've got three yearsworth of data showing how
companies are doing Apple,spotify, amazon and a bunch of

(36:07):
others.
We can see some trendinginformation there as well, and
it's really to help thosecompanies understand where
they're missing the mark andwhere they could be moving
forward.
And it's a quick piece ofresearch for you to take part in
.
All you have to do is go topodnewsnet slash report card.
I would very much appreciate it, and even better, if you could

(36:31):
share it with your friends.
Share it with your friends whoare taking podcasting seriously.
That would be very kind of you.
So, yes, well worth doing.
And then I will be goingthrough the results at
Evolutions in early April inChicago, in the shadow of the
Trump Tower, not really, butlooking forward to doing that.

(36:54):
So that would be great.
But I can only do that if I getenough data to actually help me
there.

Sam Sethi (36:59):
Good, we will keep reminding everyone next week as
well.
Now whizzing around the world,James, what's happening in
Sweden, Sweden lots of podcastlisteners, growing by 20% year
on year.

That probably comes as no surprise to anybody.
The more surprising thing isthat one in 10 households in
Sweden one in 10 households arepaying for podcasts.
One in 10 households have asubscription to paid for
podcasts in that country, whichis a big difference.
I would suggest to maybe the UKand certainly the US, so always

(37:38):
worth keeping an eye on some ofthese other countries and what
they're doing there.
Portugal the Portuguese PodcastFestival announced the winners
of the sixth awards in thecountry.
The podcast of the year went toa show called Violeta, which
was an investigative showlooking at a trans person from

(38:00):
Romania trying to get toPortugal because they thought
that they would be safe there,and it turns out that they were
anything but so worth a listenif you speak, of course,
portuguese.
And also the Ondas GlobalAwards announced their nominees
as well.
We get to know the winners, Ithink, in the next month or so.

(38:22):
That's a Spanish languagepodcast awards.
There is a category in therefor the best non-Spanish
speaking podcast.
I'm sorry, sam, we weren'tnominated, no not again.

Sam Sethi (38:37):
So there we are.
Yeah, I.
I actually have a house inportugal and I tried to learn
portuguese once.
It is not a nice language tolearn, in my opinion, before I
get castigated.
You listen to french, youlisten to italian, and it has
sort of a song to it, right evenspanish has a feel of a song to
it.
And then you come to Portugaland it was like a screeching

(38:57):
break.
It sounded a bit like Russianto me when I first heard it.

Yeah, it does what is?

Sam Sethi (39:02):
this language?
Why isn't it not soft andMediterranean and sexy?

I agree.
I agree.
It's nothing like Italian orFrench or Spanish, is it?
No, it's a very differentlanguage, so completely agree.
So, yeah, I love the way thatyou just dropped in that you
have a second house in Portugalthere.
Is it a second house or is it athird house, mr Sethi?

Sam Sethi (39:23):
No, it's a second house, it's a villa.
Yeah, oh, there was a pausethere.
Well, no, because we've got twohouses in Portugal.

Oh, there you go .

Sam Sethi (39:33):
That was the pause, that was the pause, that was the
pause.

It's how the other half live, how the other
half live.
And I was there listening tothe Rest Is Entertainment this
week and they were talking abouthow lovely Marlowe is and I was
thinking, really Really, giveme a break, yes, anyway.
Anyway, let's move on.
Before, uh, before we learneven more about satan seth's jet

(39:57):
jet lifestyle.
Um, there's a.
There's a show in america calledearn your happy.
It's by somebody called laurieharder and she's been working uh
harder on earning money becauseshe charges guests ten thousand
dollars to appear on an episode, which is quite a thing.

(40:18):
We saw the submission form forthe podcast, but what we haven't
seen is any disclosure at allto audiences that guests are
being charged 10 grand to comeonto their show.
I mean, again, she's very happytalking up some of these guests
and how wonderful they are andyou should go out and buy their

(40:39):
books and you should go out andbuy their courses and everything
else.
No surprise, because she'scharging $10,000 to at least
some of them.
We asked Yap Media to commentand they didn't get our email.
Clearly, I'd like to think that.
But yes, the FTC has very clearrules.

(41:01):
We have asked the FTC for astatement and the FTC have said
yes, I'll definitely get you astatement, and have sent us
nothing.
So maybe the guy that I wastalking to has just been fired
by Elon.
You know who knows.
But yeah, there's a thing.

Sam Sethi (41:19):
Back into your part of the world.
What's going on over?

there.
Yes, commercial Radio and Audio, or CRA, as I believe they now
want to be called, has announceda unified digital audio ID for
advertisers.
What's fascinating is that thepress release doesn't really
explain what that means.
Quite a lot of people onLinkedIn have been very excited
about it, but again, veryclearly don't quite know what

(41:44):
that means, one of them callingit a new currency for
advertising, which it absolutelyis not.
What I believe that this unifieddigital audio ID is is it is a
way of targeting individualhumans through the different

(42:04):
apps that exist.
So if you're a listener to theiHeartRadio app, then you will
be given a ID which will also bethe same ID that you use if you
are also using the listener app, or if you are also using the
Nine Radio app or various otherthings.
So it'll basically follow youaround.

(42:26):
So it'll be better to targetagainst, but also better to make
sure that people aren't hearingthe same ads over and over and
over again.
So that's quite nice.
Imagine the privacy issues.
So I'm not quite sure how all ofthat bit works, but it's very
clear that it was a whiz-bangannouncement at their big

(42:48):
conference earlier on in theweek and not very many people
really understand what it isabout and I may have got it
wrong as well.
They say that they are workingon solutions which leverage
world-class technology to makeaudio easy to buy, but they
haven't actually said anythingabout the technology partners
that they're using.
Is this an existing technology?
Is this something brand new forAustralia?

(43:08):
No idea, absolutely no idea.
But I'm sure that they knowwhat they're doing yes.

Sam Sethi (43:13):
It says it will launch in June and podcasting
will follow.
I was going to go.
What will follow?

Yes, I think it'll launch in June, because
radio stations you have to signin to listen to on all of these
different apps.
Podcasting, of course, youdon't have to sign in to listen
to on most of the apps thatpeople consume podcasts on.
So my suspicion is it's goingto be much harder for them in

(43:42):
terms of podcasting to achievethis, which is why they've
kicked the podcasting bit intothe long grass here.
But I may have got all of thatcompletely wrong and doubtless
somebody will contact me editorat podnewsnet and tell me.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.

The top 50 over 50 podcast awards are taking
entries from now until the endof February.
The awards it's an award for us, Finally an award for us.
Now, I thought you might saythat I actually entered this
show for the top 50 over 50podcast awards no joke.
But I am also a media partnerfor the awards and the award

(44:30):
organisers have given me mymoney back because I can't be a
media partner and also enter theawards.
The one award that we qualifyfor.
I know that is exactly what Ithought the one award that we
might actually stand a chance ofwinning the top 50 over 50,
particularly if nobody knowsabout it.
How brilliant, exactly, butsadly no.

(44:52):
So there we are.
I've got my speech ready.
I've had it.
How brilliant, but sadly no.
So there we are, but you've gotmy speech ready.

Sam Sethi (44:57):
I've had it for years .
Thank you, James Gridland.

You can't have had it for that many years, Sam.
So, yeah, so there's a thing.
Other things going on.
The Wickers Podcast Pitch Award2025 is open for you if you
make documentaries.
The awards are the legacy ofbroadcaster Alan Wicker, who
used to do a lot of interestingsort of travel-based stuff and

(45:23):
all of that.
You get a glob of cash and someother stuff as well to help
make that documentary.
It's a really good award and Ithink it's the fifth year for
that, so well worth taking apeek at.
The iHeart Podcast Awards hasannounced its nominations.
That's exciting and Evolutions2025, of course, happening in

(45:45):
Chicago at the end of March.
I will be there and you, Sam,will not.

Sam Sethi (45:50):
I think I can say no, I'm not going to Gilead, I'm
not going there.
The Tech.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday
in the Pod News newsletter.
Here's where Sam talkstechnology.
What have we got?
That's exciting, Sam.

Sam Sethi (46:07):
Well, Dave Jones, Nothing move on.
No, Dave Jones has rolled outnew updates to pod pink, so
actually we are timely.
We were about to do someupdates anyway to our database
at true fans, so we'll let youknow what's in there.
And one of the things that daveposted was new podcast mediums

(46:29):
are supported.
That hopefully means not just apodcast medium equals podcast,
but audio book, music andsomething else, so I'll let you
know.
I'll let you know what's inthere next week.
Meta, you pointed out, havelaunched a demo tool called
AudioBox.
You know Zuckerberg in trueform.
If you can't beat it, copy it.

Yes, it's a bit weird.
It basically it allows you tocreate an audio story with AI
voices and sounds, but you endup essentially writing a bit of
a story and then you say I wouldlike the sound of a crackling
fire or something, and it'llmake that as well.
And I mean the.
To me, the interesting thingwas that it's basically got an

(47:08):
AI driven sound effect machineso you can type in, typing on a
computer keyboard and it givesyou that.
So that's quite cool.
I had a little play with it.
You'll find a bit of audio fromthat in Wednesday's Pod News
Daily If you really want to havea listen to it.
There's a lot of whispering,which is very strange.

(47:29):
But anyway, one thing and Idon't know whether you
understand the reason for this,sam, but one thing it says this
research demo is not availableto residents of, or those
accessing the demo from, thestates of, illinois or Texas.
What have they done wrong?

Sam Sethi (47:46):
Well, texas is because Adam Curry's there.
That's the only reason, and Ijust wonder if Dave Jones lives
in Illinois.
I just I haven't.

Don't think he does, no, no, I was just curious
.
Are there rules against AI usein those two places?

Sam Sethi (48:06):
I don't really understand that one.
I can't imagine it, because Imean, you know what is it?
Musk has moved down to Texas,hasn't he?
He's moved his company out ofCalifornia?
Yeah, no idea.
No, know what is it?
Musk has moved down to texas,hasn't he?
He's moved his company out ofcalifornia?
Yeah, no idea.
No, we should look it up oranswer on a postcard, send us
some fan mail or a boostergramand let us know if you know the
answer to why you can't use aiin the states of illinois or
texas well.

Congratulations to todd cochran.
Uh, blueberry has attainedversion 2.2 of the iob podcast
measurement technical guidelines, which is nice, joining a bunch
of other people includingBuzzsprout, our sponsor, who

(48:48):
also have version 2.2 of thestandards as well.
They were certified lastSeptember.
One thing that confuses me alittle bit is whenever I talk to
the IB Tech Lab, they alwaystell me that annual
recertification is stillrequired.
You have to recertify annually,and that's why Blueberry has,
that's why Buzzsprout has,that's why a lot of these
companies have.

(49:15):
But if you have a look at iHeart, well, iheart owns Voxnest
Spreaker, omnistudio and Triton.
They haven't recertified sinceat least 2022, if not 2021.
So I'm not quite sure how theyget away with it.
But there again, apple, spotifyand YouTube have never
certified.
So perhaps it's just worthbearing in mind that at least
iHeart have, even if their stuffis very, very out of date.
But I don't understand iHearthave, even if their stuff is
very, very out of date.

(49:35):
But I don't understand iHeart'sview here.
Are they going to recertify?
And, if so, have they basicallyjust been working on
integrating VoxNest Spreaker andOmniStudio and Triton into one
platform, which I think is howthey're working it now, and so
they've only got one platform toyou know, to actually go out
and get recertification for, andis that the reason for the

(49:56):
delay?
I don't know, but I'm justcurious about that one.

Sam Sethi (50:00):
Or, like Apple, Spotify and YouTube, they don't
see any value in it.
Well, yes, there is always thattoo.
Now here's a story you postedon Mastodon Transistor
integrates with Blue Sky.

Tell me more, yes this is really interesting
and, I think, really exciting.
So you can now automaticallypost.
If you're on the Transistorpodcast platform, you can
automatically post.
Whenever you publish a newepisode, you can automatically
post to Blue Sky, to Blue Sky.

(50:39):
So that's nice.
But any comments that you getto that message on Blue Sky gets
pulled back from Blue Sky toTransistor's websites.
So if we've got a Transistorwebsite for the show that we're
hosting on Transistor, then allof a sudden you will see
comments appear there.
It's almost as if this iscross-app comments, but using
Blue Sky as the mechanism toactually post the comments.

(51:00):
It's certainly how the socialinteract tag works.
Yes, so one of the things thatI've said to Justin is this
looks brilliant.
Firstly, you've got everythingyou need now to produce the
podcast social interact tag, soplease could you do that, and
then every single one of yourshows will have a social

(51:22):
interact tag and that'll belovely and it'll link off to
Blue Sky and everybody will behappy.
But then, secondly, you could,if you wanted to, since you're
already ingesting all of thosecomments anyway, you could
produce an RSS feed and uh, andthen link to that from the
standard comments tag in the RSSfeed.

(51:43):
So, essentially, the thing thatI uh put forward as an idea in
November of last year that noone has looked at, um uh, you
know, you, you could actuallysupport all of this.
Um uh, it would be a reallysimple lift for you because
you've done all of the hard workof the Blue Sky integration.
So all you have to do isproduce an RSS feed of comments

(52:04):
easily done and stick the socialinteract tag into your feeds
and again, easily done becauseyou've already got all of the
data.
And so Justin has said to methat he will see if he can
convince John to do the work forthat, but I think that's a
day's work.

(52:24):
I think that would be a realsimple win to actually push that
concept further.
So, both supporting the socialinteract tag, but also actually
having a ready-made here's yourRSS feed with all of your
comments in, so that podcastapps can go ahead and start
integrating that if they want to.

Sam Sethi (52:39):
Yeah no, look, I don't think it's people not
looking at what you did.
I think people just haven't gotthe bandwidth to look at what
you did.

Um, that's certainly what I'll just be
honest and say that's where weare I mean, I think you know,
the unicorn of cross appcomments is what we all want, um
, but yeah, but I think this isbrilliant the fact that this is
actually now, um, a podcast hostwho is doing this, uh, and this

(53:07):
is the first podcast host thathas actually done this sort of
integration.
So I think it's very exciting.
If we can convince John andJustin to go forward and to do
that integration and, as I say,they've done all of the hard
work, it's just purely a coupleof tiny little pieces of work on

(53:31):
top here Then that would bebrilliant.
Then, all of a sudden, we'vegot proper rss comments that any
app can ingest, but also thesocial interact tag for all of
the big shows on the transistorplatform.
I mean that that would be, thenthat would be brilliant.

Sam Sethi (53:46):
So hurrah for them yeah, I tell you you've done a
really good job.
And it's not me, um, it's uh,fountain.
Um, it's Fountain they have.
When you look at the commentssection in Fountain, they are
pulling in comments from theOlby API.
So they are pulling in otherplatform comments into their

(54:06):
comments section which weren'toriginated into Fountain.
So and probably they will beone of the first to go and do
this, I think, yeah, well,that's nice too.
Yeah, absolutely.
The question I've got is weneed to follow the way it would
work.
We need to follow the socialinteract tag, see what's in the
comments section and then pullfrom there.

(54:27):
I guess is what we would do.

Yeah, so I mean they are kind of a little bit
different.
So, yeah, I mean, the socialinteract tag would be pointing
to the blue sky, um, uh, rootpost, um, so that would be
relatively uh, they already knowthe blue sky, blue root post
because they're uh, already youknow, um, uh, polling that.
And then the comments RSS, umcould include blue sky and other

(54:54):
things as well, obviously, um,but again, they're pulling in
those comments you know directlyinto their systems anyway, so
they can easily produce the RSSout of that.
And that could be somethingeven that you leave to the
client side, so you don't evenhave to import that yourselves,
you just get the client to readthe RSS feed directly.
You know, I mean, that wouldprobably work as well.

Sam Sethi (55:17):
Nice, well, hopefully they'll finish it and we'll
have a look at it, james.
Moving on, then Boost it's ourfavourite time of the week it is
and get this.

Speaker 2 (55:28):
Boostergram, boostergram, boostergram Super
comments.
Zaps, fan mail, fan mail, superchats, super comments, zaps,
fan mail, super chats and email.
Our favourite time of the week,it's the Pod News Weekly Review
.
Inbox.

Inbox.
Yes, it's an inbox.
It's nothing to do withBoostergram Corner anymore.
We've turned the corner.
So it's our favourite time ofthe week.
It's the Pod News Weekly ReviewInbox.
So many different ways to getin touch with us Fan mail by
using the link in our show notes, or super comments on True Fans
.
Super comments have I got thatright?

Sam Sethi (56:02):
Yep, you've got that completely right.

Boosts or email.
We share any money that we maketo Sam and I, so that's a
lovely thing.
I don't think we got a piece offan mail this week.
A memory tells me that we did.
We did get one yes.
So thank you to 9625 whocommented.
Riverside really taking it toDescript.

(56:26):
That was a comment aboutKendall Brightman's comments
last week on the show.
If you want to go back and havea listen to that, you think
there's quite a lot of animositygoing on in between those two
companies.
Sam, I don't know if it'sanimosity.

Sam Sethi (56:44):
I think it's good competition.
I think the gain will be for us, the user.
I still think the integrationof Squadcast into Descript has
sort of stopped.
I haven't seen any improvementssince they first did it.
Um, yeah, and I think, as Isaid, I think the way that
riverside integratedfundamentally stream yard into

(57:06):
riverside, I think it's reallycool and I think they where they
are strong right now is on livevideo, and that part where they
may be weaker is on the editingand post-production side
compared to Descript right,which is where Descript's core
strength was.
So I think one's got its corestrength in one end and one's

(57:28):
got it in the other.
Hopefully they'll both, youknow, push each other.
That's the best one for both ofus really.

Yeah, indeed, and yeah, I mean, they're both
clearly moving at this fromdifferent sides Riverside
starting being a remoterecording tool and moving into
the editing stuff, descriptstarting being an editing tool
and moving into the remoterecording side of it as well.
So, yeah, so more success toboth of those companies.

(57:56):
So far as I am concerned, ofcourse, streamyard does continue
.
It's just incredibly expensivenow and owned by an Italian
company that don't really careabout anything, so just
worthwhile.
Bearing that in mind, 3,120sats from Miko using True Fans.
Miko says Hi, hi.
I first learned about StevePratt when he was a guest on Pod

(58:18):
News, which led me to read Earnit.
He'll be delighted to learnthat In his newsletter on
February the 10th he wrote anarticle titled Joe Rogan Isn't a
Podcast, which perfectlyclarified the thoughts I've been
struggling with about videopodcasts lately.
It was a great piece.
And Miko goes on and says anychance you could have him on as

(58:41):
a guest again to discuss thistopic please?
He will be delighted and I'msure he will jump at the chance,
so we might ask him 381 satsfrom Neil Velio.

Sam Sethi (58:55):
Uh, he says, mentioning grundig televisions
just took me back to my primaryschool era in 1983.
No, 1883, neil, come on.
Uh, remember being eternallycreeped out by the boy from
space.
What the boy from space on what?
What is the boy from space,james?
Did you watch that?

I never watched the boy from space.
I've got no idea what that is.
Neil is a brit, so I'm surethat so were you in the past.
Well, yeah, um, the boy fromspace.
I'll tell you what.
When I was in switzerland lastweek, I introduced myself as an
australian on stage and I feltvery I felt very wrong.
Um, yes, it was a.

(59:33):
It was a program.
I don't remember this at all,but yes, it was a sci-fi show
made in 1971.
You're never that old, neilVelio.
You're younger than I am, I wasborn in 1971, but it was shown

(59:54):
on the BBC.
Apparently it's on a BBC DVD.
You can go out and buy itwherever you buy DVDs, oxfam.
So yes, starring Phil Chaney,charles Collingwood, stephen
Garlick, loftus Burton.
I've never heard of any ofthese people.
I was about to say yeah.

(01:00:14):
Storyline when brother andsister, dan and Helen, build an
observatory in their shed, theysee a mysterious object falling
from the sky.
That's the full story,apparently.

Sam Sethi (01:00:25):
Right, no, in 1983, I was just finishing sixth form,
I think so.
No, it would have passed me byanyway.

James Cridland (01:00:34):
Anyway, Move on, move on, no idea.
Well, thank you Neil Velio.
He was using TrueFans as well.
Also using TrueFans, there maybe a pattern here.
Social Web Cafe 100 sats.
Thank you.
I love the Albi friends andfamily app.
Brackets plug in close brackets.
I set up my Albi hub and usethe family and friends.
For all of my podcaster,friends or other accounts who
previously didn't have a wallet,I helped them set up an Albi

(01:00:56):
wallet, added Albi Go to theirphone and connect friends and
family and we're off to theraces.
They have options and I cansupport them.
From the Albi Hub side ofthings Works brilliantly.
Thank you for sharing this.
And this is from Deborah ofStudio Fusion so excellent,
thank you for that.

Sam Sethi (01:01:18):
This is the way to use the Orbi Hub If you have a
network of podcasts.
It is super simple and it works.
Yes.

So excellent for that.
And also thank you finally toBrian Entsminger.
Using Podcast Guru, Now I see99 sats here in my helipad and
it says testing from podcastguru to see if your strike
wallet works from here.
So my strike wallet account isin the pod news daily but not in

(01:01:46):
this podcast, and so I thought,oh well, that's interesting.
Went into Strike and, yes, atexactly the same time I see a
payment of one sat, which isexactly as it's set up.
It doesn't tell me who it'sfrom, it doesn't give me any
information whatsoever, but I dosee the payment.

(01:02:06):
So that is excellent.
So at least the technology hasworked in terms of the payment,
Brian.
So thank you for your test.
I appreciate that.

Sam Sethi (01:02:17):
Moving on, then, James power supporters.

Yes, thank you to our 16 power supporters who
are supporting us every monthwith a bit of real money.
It's all real money.
I know it's all real money, butthis is real money, through
MasterCard and Visa and all thatkind of thing.
Thank you to David, john Clark,james Burt, john McDermott,

(01:02:39):
clare Waight-Brown, mazzaleneSmith, neil Velio, rocky Thomas,
jim James, david Marzell, siJobling, rachel Corbett, dave
Jackson, mike Hamilton, mattMedeiros, marshall Brown and
Cameron Moll.
All of you went toweeklypodnewsnet and have
clicked on the button to becomea supporter in there, a power
supporter.

(01:03:00):
So thank you to all of you.
I do want to call out DavidMarzell, because he has been
doing a lot of work with OP3 tomake OP3 more accessible.
So nobody will see thedifference, apart from those
people that really need to seethat difference.
So super good of you doing that, david.
I know that you've been testingwith a couple of people who

(01:03:21):
have been really requesting thataccessibility, and so that's
super excellent.
So thank you for doing all ofthat.
But thank you to the rest ofthe 16 power supporters.
Who will be our 17th supporter?
Will it be you?
If it's you, weeklypodnewsnetis where to go.
So what's been happening foryou this week, sam, you've been

(01:03:44):
doing presumably a ton morethings on True Fans.
What are your?

Sam Sethi (01:03:50):
top two.
Top two right, we've addednotes into True Fans.
It was something.
I had a eureka moment in thebath.
I was listening to ezra klein,uh, talking to um cara swisher
and I was thinking I really wantto make some notes on this
episode.
Uh, where shall I stick them?
And it was like, oh, I can putthem in a book.
I can email them?

(01:04:10):
no, what would be next to thetap?
Next to the tap, what would be?
What would be more logical isto actually stick notes into the
podcast episode so that if Iever go back to that episode I
can see my own notes.
So we just did that, so you nowhave the ability to put private
notes into any episode and thenyou can search across all your
notes.
You can do, and you'll see itin your profile as well.

So yeah, we added notes.
Very nice, that button shouldsay create private note, not
just create note.

Sam Sethi (01:04:37):
Well, you only see it , no one else will see it, so it
doesn't really matter.

Yes, but I don't know where that note is going
to go, oh, I see you want me toindicate that it's private to
you.

Sam Sethi (01:04:47):
Okay, fine.

I believe that that would be the right plan.
De facto product manager.

Sam Sethi (01:04:55):
Um, yes, and you've been doing stuff with youtube as
well, I believe yeah, we'restarting to take a page out of
pod page actually, um, the waythat things are going with video
and I've tried very hard, asyou know we we did what some
people call a hack, but I thinkit's just a feature, um, where
you can take the shared URL fromyour YouTube video and put it

(01:05:17):
into the old terms of enclosurein TrueFans and then switch
between the audio and video andthe video is then hosted, still
on YouTube, but it's played outin the same app.
So that's great, that works.
But you know, people just don'twant to do the extra work and I
understand that you've gotenough to do producing a podcast
, let alone doing 20 other steps.
So the api from youtube, whichI think is what pod page does,

(01:05:42):
allows you to take the playlisturl and then we do a matching of
the episode in youtube to theepisode in the audio and we
automatically populate thealternative enclosure field for
you.
So, yeah, claim your podcast,go into your creator dashboard,
copy over the playlist from yourYouTube playlist and then we'll

(01:06:03):
do the heavy lifting for youand we'll auto-populate all your
fields in your audio.

Very nice too.
Very nice too, I do notice.
You can, of course, embedYouTube videos onto websites.
There is no way of embeddingSpotify videos onto any websites
, which is interesting.

Sam Sethi (01:06:23):
No, and it's not even in the API so there's nothing
we can do.

That's a missed opportunity, isn't it?
Oh, yes, so there's no evenmention in the API that there
might be video for a particularshow.
No, no, you can't do it, youcan't access it.
So there's no even mention inthe API that there might be
video for a particular show.

Sam Sethi (01:06:36):
No, no, you can't do it, you can't access it.
There's no, no, we even lookedat, you know, trying to do a
similar, you know hacked, theone we did with YouTube.
First of all, can we get theencoding?
Blah, blah, blah, nothing.

Nothing.
Oh, that's interesting,Interesting, oh well there we
are Shame.

(An AI voice) (01:06:54):
And are you doing any more of these?
What's that mean for you, James?

Are you doing any more of these ridiculous
walks that you're doing, becauseyou're walking the entire
length of the Thames, but notall at once.

Sam Sethi (01:07:02):
Yeah, it'd be too tiring to do it all at once.
Yes, we're doing the one thatwe were supposed to do, so we're
now doing Richmond to Chertseythis weekend, which I'm looking
forward to, ah there we go.

Eel Pie Island.
Indeed, I'll stop there.
You're well past that.

Sam Sethi (01:07:19):
James.

So come on what's happening for you
Something that I didn't fullyget about podcasting in
Switzerland that I thought wasinteresting.
So I was in Switzerland lastweek.
Geneva, let me tell you, isjust as I remembered it.
It's this sterile environmentof, you know, very expensive

(01:07:43):
watch shops that nobody is in,very expensive shops selling
lingerie or high-end clothes.
It's a bit like a very largeairport lounge.
So I stomped around Geneva overthe weekend, last weekend
before eating more cheese than aman has.
You know that should be legal.

(01:08:06):
But one of the things that Inoticed, you know just, you can
very clearly spot the banker'swives because they're walking
around with their, you know,weirdly suntanned, with their
puffy lips and their you knowfur coats and everything else,

(01:08:26):
and they always walk around inpairs or in threes.
It's a very strange place, isGeneva, places Geneva.
But one of the things I didn'treally realise about podcasting
in Switzerland is thatSwitzerland, firstly, speaks at
least three different languages.
It's really four.
So they've got French, german,italian and Romance as well in

(01:08:50):
Switzerland.
So already that country, whichis not a big country, is split
up into four completelydifferent languages.
But also, secondly, what Ididn't appreciate is that Swiss
German is not German and SwissFrench is not French.
There are different dialects,different ways of expressing
yourself, so actually it's areally difficult place for

(01:09:12):
podcasting and it's one of thereasons why you don't see too
much news or information comingout of Switzerland about
podcasting, because it's justtoo hard.
A Swiss German podcast will beunintelligible to many people in
Germany because the phrases andeverything else is just
completely different.
So I just thought that that wasreally interesting.
I'm not quite sure what we canlearn from that different.

(01:09:33):
So I just thought that that wasreally interesting.
I'm not quite sure what we canlearn from that, but yeah, I
thought that was an interestingthing.
Is that a bit like Franglais orChinglish?
Well, yeah, I mean, maybe.
I mean maybe it's that wholething of you know.
I mean, yes, you know thePhilippines.
The language there is supposedto be English, but it's not,
because there's plenty of otherlanguages squished into that as

(01:09:56):
well.
So, yeah, but that, I think, iswhy I was asked, at the event
that I was at, I wouldn't spendtoo much time on podcasting,
because, yeah, you can veryclearly see, it's much harder
for them, much, much harder thanjust having you know English or

(01:10:17):
English and Spanish or whateveryour languages are.
So yeah, so I thought that thatwas interesting, just as a by
the by.
But no, apart from that, theonly other exciting thing I've
done this week is that I'vereplaced the daughter's phone
with a new phone.
Um, oh, what a nice dad yeah,what a lovely dad, not even

(01:10:40):
christmas and you're buying anew phone somebody somebody, um,
dropped their phone and it, um,and it went down the stairs and
managed to, uh, managed tocatch the side.
I it's got a case andeverything else, but it managed
to catch the side of the case.
Yes, managed to catch on astair as it flew down and no

(01:11:01):
case was ever going to fix that.

Sam Sethi (01:11:03):
So, yes, A mouse case .
The mouse case is the one toget.

Yeah well, I'm not quite sure A Moto G15, you
can get one of those cases forthat.
You mean you didn't buy her aniPhone 17?
No, I bought her exactly thesame model that she had last
year, except this is the modelthis is.
I think she got a G14 last yearand she's got a G15 this year

(01:11:28):
because it's $220.
So that's what £110.
And it's a decent phoneactually and she can have that.
It's got everything on thereapart from Apple Podcasts.
So there we are, and that's itfor this week.

(01:11:49):
All of our podcast storiestaken from the PodNews daily
newsletter, of course, atpodnewsnet.

Sam Sethi (01:11:54):
You can support this show by streaming sats.
You can give us feedback usingthe Buzzsprout fan mail link in
our show notes and you can sendus a boostergram or become a
power supporter.
Like this sensational 16 atweeklypodnewsnet.

Yes, we should get rid of the word boostergram
from that as well.
Our music is from StudioDragonfly, our voiceover is
Sheila D, we use clean feed forour audio with Edit with
Hindenburg, and we're hosted andsponsored by Buzzsprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.

Speaker 2 (01:12:21):
Get updated every day .
Subscribe to our newsletter atpodnewsnet.

(An AI voice) (01:12:27):
Tell your friends and grow the show and support
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