The IAB's new numbers, and our first week using fanmail

Send James & Sam some fanmail, via Buzzsprout

Our first week with Buzzsprout's new fanmail product was surprisingly good. We look into that, as well as the latest news - including the IAB numbers out of the US.

We've chapters in all standards-supporting podcast players.


Here are the chapters for Anton who listens in Spotify and needs a better podcast player

00:00:00 PWRMay10
00:00:52 IAB post smaller than expected numbers
00:06:46 Acast results are out
00:11:35 Buzzsprout fanmail one week on
00:22:11 The platform of the future?
00:34:39 Mamamia's Sam
00:40:08 IAB v2.2
00:42:28 Round the world
00:48:26 Events
01:09:06 Sam and James's week

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Friday, the 10th of May 2024.

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

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Yes, I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News
, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO ofTrue Fans.
In the chapters today.
Iab have released some newnumbers from the US.
What do they say?
Acast have released some newnumbers all over the US.
What do they say?
Acast have released some newnumbers all over the world.
What do they say?
Iab version 2.2 is released,but does anybody care?
And Buzzsprout releases Fanmailwhat did you think of it?

(00:37):
This podcast is sponsored byBuzzsprout.
Podcast hosting made easy witheasy and powerful tools, free
learning materials, remarkablecustomer support and now fan
mail.

Speaker 2 (00:47):
From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly
Review.

Speaker 4 (00:52):
James, let's kick off the show then.
The IAB US numbers have justcome out.
Podcasting is still, it lookslike, not a $2 billion industry
in the US.
The IAB figures show thatpodcast revenue has slowed.
Tell me more.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yes, they have, and it's I don't know.
It came as a bit of a surpriseto me because we've been seeing
things like you know, podcastrevenue up 20% year on year from
all of the big companies.
But it turns out that while thebig companies have been seeing
that, the mid-tier companieshave not been seeing that and
that means that podcast revenuegrowth slowed in 2023.

(01:31):
And we haven't actually hit $2billion yet.
We only saw a modest it saysrevenue increase of 5% to $1.9
billion.
That's according to the IAB'srelease which came out early
yesterday and, yeah, so it wasquite a surprise really.
I think we were expecting more,but it basically says a few of

(01:53):
the largest podcast companiesmaintained double digit growth,
but mid-tier companies hit aspeed bump, but revenue is
already bounding back.
They say Did that come as asurprise to you?
1.9 billion.

Speaker 4 (02:07):
No, because I don't follow these.
I really don't follow these.
I look at them.
I mean we're going to betalking about other stats later
from PodTrack and various othersand I look at these and I will
ask you later how do they comeup with all of these things?
I mean, it's a sample survey.
Is it some real figures fromeverybody reporting?

(02:29):
How is it done?

Speaker 1 (02:30):
even it's actually pretty good.
It's a survey which is sent toleading podcast industry
professionals.
It's something which thesesorts of things exist all over
the world.
There's a thing called SMI,which is in most markets, and
particularly here in Australia,where every single company
basically reports their numbersin, because they get to see

(02:53):
everybody else's numbers, andthat's actually really helpful,
you know, really helpful interms of that.
And so the Standard Media Indexis what SMI is called.
I believe it's not actuallycalled that now.
I think it's got a new name,but that's what I know it as.
And so this is actually done forthe IAB by Pricewaterhouse
Coopers, and they put thesenumbers together.

(03:15):
It's the eighth time thatthey've put these numbers
together Now.
Every single time they come upwith a prediction of what it's
going to be next year, come upwith a prediction of what it's
going to be next year, and we'reactually recording this before
these numbers are released.
But obviously we've got theembargoed numbers.
I'm busy trying to work outwhether today, or rather

(03:38):
yesterday, in the newsletter,Thursday's newsletter, whether
or not I actually say well,according to the IAB last year
they would be 2.2 billion, andaccording to the IAB a year
before they would be 2.4 billion, but they're only 1.9 billion.
I think that might be a bitcheeky, so maybe I won't do that
.

Speaker 4 (03:56):
They say it's on track to reach 2.6 billion by
2026.
So you know, the estimates aregoing up, if nothing else is
going up.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
Yes.
Well, yes, they would.
They would say that, wouldn'tthey?
You know, I always look at allthese numbers and I'm there
thinking it's just somebodyguessing and that's fine, but I
don't think any of their guesseshave been actually correct so
far.
So still, there we go.

Speaker 4 (04:21):
Well, it's a bit like the weather report, isn't it?
You know it's raining outside,but they always say and next
week it's going to be sunny.
Because if they said nextweek's going to be miserable and
rainy, everyone would go oh,forget it, I'm staying home for
the rest of the week.
Then, yeah, yeah, yeah, noexactly.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
I mean you know there is a certain amount of the IAB,
you know talking the industryup.
I mean I can understand whythey do that, but that's also
not necessarily particularlyhelpful if you just want the
numbers.
One thing that they do say isthat comedy and sports are both
the genres doing the best.

(04:56):
Sports, the second most popularcontent genre, comedy, the most
popular Overtaking news now,which it never used to.
News always used to be the mostpopular overtaking news now,
which it never used to.
News always used to be the mostpopular.
But I wonder whether that's theDonald Trump effect, in that
Trump used to drive an awful lotof the news categories and

(05:20):
perhaps when he's back aspresident which seems
depressingly likely later on inthe year or early next year then
perhaps that will actuallychange the fortunes of the news
shows.

Speaker 4 (05:34):
But you know who knows, and you're trying to
depress me this morning so far.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
I know I'm sorry.
I'm sorry, I mean yes, betweenthe IAB figures and Donald Trump
.

Speaker 4 (05:45):
I think I might as well just go and slit my wrists.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
I mean to be honest, if Sleepy Joe wins, then it's
Sleepy Joe, and you know, I'd besurprised if he's still alive
by that point.
So I think it's the choice ofit's two pretty awful choices,
isn't it?

Speaker 4 (06:05):
I think everyone should look at the running mates
.
That's who's going to berunning the country eventually.

Speaker 1 (06:10):
Ah, yes, okay, yes, exactly.
And so we've got Kamala Harris,and then we've got whoever is
going to be stupid enough to runwith Donald.

Speaker 4 (06:19):
Trump, marjorie Taylor Greene Go on, do it.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
It's not going to be Pence, is it?
So he's fallen out of favour.
So, yes, anyway, welcome topolitics.
On the US politics.

Speaker 4 (06:31):
Oh, what's that comedy?
We don't know.
Oh, what's that comedy?
Yes, move the category Rightlook.
Yes.

Speaker 1 (06:39):
Anyway, those were negative figures, but let's see
some nice positive numbers now.

Speaker 4 (06:45):
Yes, ACAST results came out for Q1 podcast hosting.
Basically, the company wasnumber one for global podcast
publishing according to PodTrack.
We will find out if they'restill number one later on, but
the good news is they grew 25%sales year on year, mainly
driven by North America, whichthey're very good at growing at

(07:08):
the moment, where sales grew 48%.
So yeah, james, it looks likeAcast are doing the right things
, moving forward quite nicely.

Speaker 1 (07:18):
It does.
Yes, lots of positive storiesabout Acast.
I have to have a bit of achuckle about the PodTrack thing
.
You just mentioned that ACASTwas number one global podcast
publisher in March, according toPodTrack, and ACAST were
thrilled, of course, with that.
If you look at any emails fromACAST then you can see that at
the bottom of the email it saysnumber one, or at least it used

(07:41):
to until yesterday, becausePodTrack released its rankers
for April and iHeart, it seems,have woken up and gone.
Can we be in the global list aswell?
Oh, dear Please, dad, can we bein the global list as well?
And so now, weirdly enough,iheart is now listed in the
global ranker and it's over 50%bigger than Acast.

(08:01):
So, sadly, iheart is now numberone for podcasts once more.
Globally, acast has slipped tonumber two.
Other things coming out of thatpod track numbers, by the way
Libsyn debuting as number threepublisher in the US, that is
Libsyn Ads, of course, notLibsyn.

(08:21):
The podcast host, the Daily, isnumber one again, beating NPR's
News Now as well.
So you know plenty of stuffcoming out of that.
But yes, so you know.
But even and I thought that itwas funny that those PodTrack
numbers came out the day afterACAST's financial results, so it
allowed ACAST to claim thatthey were number one globally,

(08:45):
which they were for 24 hours.
And then, of course, iheartcomes to reign on that parade.
But I think, yeah, it's reallyinteresting.
Average revenue per thousandlistens and I wish every single
podcast company would releasethat figure, because that's a
great figure Average revenue perthousand listens increased to

(09:07):
$34.30.
Last year it was more than $10lower.
So Acast have done a very goodamount of increased revenue
there and that has been helpfulfor them because that has helped
in terms of the number oflistens.
That has dropped year on yearbecause of iOS number of listens
that has dropped year on yearbecause of iOS 17.
It's dropped 12% year on year,but Acast is still doing very,

(09:31):
very well in terms of therevenue.
So, yeah, I thought that was agood thing.

Speaker 4 (09:37):
Yeah, some of the other standout numbers $350
million paid to creators andover 1.1 billion listens.
So you know well done.
We had ross on for the 10 yearanniversary a couple of weeks
ago and so you know it alwayssounded like the figures were
going to be good.
Anyway, he sounded verypositive and upbeat about what

(09:57):
was going on within a cast.
So the figures result in whathe was thinking, I think.
Think.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yes, no, I think so.
I don't know if you saw thevideo that Emily and Ross Emily,
the financial director, andRoss recorded.
That was posted on LinkedIn,but it was very clearly done.
I thought they were in twoentirely separate rooms, but it

(10:25):
was very clearly done with justone camera, and so a little bit
of forced.
Well, Emily, I think you've gotsome more numbers for me,
haven't you?
And we're going to share withyou our Q1 2024 results and what
a great one it was Em.
And then an edit, and thenEmily appears, but she didn't
manage to get the wordsmorgasbord into the release

(10:47):
this year, which she did lastyear, which I thought was
brilliant.

Speaker 4 (10:50):
We used to play a game like that when I was in
Microsoft.
I used to be one of theirpresenters, and one of the sales
team would sneak a word in justbefore you presented and if you
could get that word into thepresentation you'd win a tenner
or something like that.
I reckon smorgasbord was theword that Ross gave her.
Go on, if you can get that intothe financial results, I'll

(11:12):
give you a tenner.

Speaker 1 (11:13):
Yes, I'm sure, absolutely.
I have worked for places whereI think there was an attempt to
get I can't remember who, butyou know Taylor Swift song
titles into a presentation for acompany meeting and you're
there thinking, oh, really Okay.
But yeah, so good for ACAST,some good numbers coming up

(11:34):
there.

Speaker 4 (11:35):
Now, last week we had Kevin Finn from Buzzsprout on
to talk about a new feature theylaunched called Funmail.
Funmail is now live for allpaid accounts on Buzzsprout.
What is Funmail?
Remind everyone.

Speaker 1 (11:49):
James.
Well, so it's a link, and thereis a little link in our show
notes, if you want to click onthat, and what that will do is
that will send us a message.
And the way it sends us amessage, which is quite
interesting, is it sends us atext message, or rather, it
sends Buzzsprout a text messagethrough your text messaging app,
because 95% of all podcasts arelistened to on a mobile device,

(12:13):
so, of course, that makesperfect sense.
And then that text messageautomatically gets sent through
and routed through to us and itthen pops up on our phones as
alerts, which, I have to say, Iwas there thinking, you know, I
mean it's a nice idea, but Idon't suppose it'll go anywhere.

(12:33):
But you know, ok, we'll talkabout it.
And then, waking up the nextmorning to see so many messages
on my phone, so many messages, Ithought, wow, it's quite a
success, isn't it?

Speaker 4 (12:48):
Yeah, I'm going to get the word curmudgeon in for
you there.
Oh, curmudgeon, yes, you canlook it up, anyone if you don't
know what it is.
But I think you were being abit of a curmudgeon there, james
.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
I mean, you know, I was being very supportive of our
sponsor, very supportive of it,but I was there thinking, is
this the best that we can do?
But actually the proof is inthe pudding, as they say.
Just the amount of messagesthat we got is quite something.
We'll go through those in justa second.
Yeah, it's built on Twilio andit costs about 79 cents for each

(13:29):
message.
So you know, it's not.
No, it doesn't.
It costs 0.79 cents eachmessage.
It doesn't cost 79 cents forBuzzsprout.
Can you imagine?

Speaker 4 (13:34):
Shall we read some of the thumbnail that we got then,
james, yes, let's read some ofthat.

Speaker 1 (13:40):
What I love is it says where the text has come
from.
It says the last four digits ofthe mobile phone number, which
we're not going to read out.
And yes, so here's one from theUK.
I suspect that this is fromMark.
Asquith, friend of the show.
And it says Sam, I am suspiciousof James's dismissive attitude

(14:02):
to the force Might be Sith, Keepmonitoring.
And attitude to the Force Mightbe Sith, keep monitoring.
And return to Rebel Base.
Yes, if you remember, this wasright at the beginning of last
week's show where I was very youknow, there you were with your
may the fourth be with you.

Speaker 4 (14:16):
Nonsense, and I was very dismissive of it and I'm
Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans.
And to all Star Wars fans, maythe fourth be with you tomorrow,
gosh.
Rather sniffy old chap.

Speaker 1 (14:28):
Rather sniffy.
I think, commotionally, is thephrase you were looking for
there.

Speaker 4 (14:35):
Yes, Can I just say podcasting 2.0 is the rebel
alliance.
I wonder if that makes Adam theYoda.
And then I looked up a few Yodaquotes.
When you look at the dark side,careful you must be, for the
dark side looks back James.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yes, yes, Tipping.
You must not use the wordTipping, no.

Speaker 4 (15:01):
What else?

Speaker 1 (15:01):
have we had Phoenix, arizona.
Hola, james, I hope you get alot of messages today.
Thank you, evo Terra, I'm surethat's him.
Denver, colorado.
Hey, james and Sam.
Pod News Weekly Review is myfavourite industry show.
Education and entertainment aremy favourite combination in
podcasts.
With the Pod News Weekly Review, I always have an inquisitive
no-shit moment and a couple oflaughs.
Thank you from.
Oh, it's from Rocky Thomas,she's a rock star at Soundstack.

(15:24):
You from oh, he's from rockythomas.
Uh, she's a rock star, uh, atsoundstack.
Uh, ps, this feature is prettycool.
Kudos to buzzsprout.
Well, excellent.
Thank you very much, rocky.

Speaker 4 (15:30):
That's very kind of you, excellent uh, somebody in
australia said love your work.
Thank you, keep it up and gopodcasting go podcasting idaho.

Speaker 1 (15:38):
May the fourth be with you, sam from jordan.
I think that's jordan from, yes, uh, buzzsprout.
I'm guessing.
Either either the think that'sJordan from Buzzsprout, I'm
guessing, either the Jordan Iknow from Buzzsprout or the
Jordan I know from Spotify.
One of the two, no, she wouldhave been using the Q&A that we
studiously ignore.
Yes, one from Jacksonville inFlorida.

(16:02):
May the fourth be with you.
That's from somebody else fromthe Buzzsprout team.
Maybe this is just allBuzzsprout people.

Speaker 4 (16:09):
I don't know Tennessee.
I started listening to yourshow.
I'm a Buzzcast listener and Ifind it so valuable to get the
UK and European perspective as aUS resident.
Keep up the great work.

Speaker 1 (16:19):
Thank you very much.
Thank you very much.
One from Albin Brooke fromJacksonville, florida.
I couldn't stop laughing atJames's hatred of Star Wars.
Yeah well, there you go, anton,from the UK, the United Kingdom
, great Britain and NorthernIreland.
Memo to Buzzsprout.
You can just shorten that.
You know Love the show andnewsletter chaps Massively

(16:42):
helpful for me as a publisher.
Chapters or timestamps would bea great addition.
Have you not looked?
There are chapters andtimestamps in there.
That's why we say at thebeginning in the chapters today
Would be a great issue.
It would be a great addition, soit's easier to choose stories
and segments.
Why does Anton not think thatwe have chapters?
Is he listening on Spotify?
Well, if you use an oldpodcasting 1.0 app, I suppose

(17:11):
you wouldn't see chapters.

Speaker 4 (17:11):
Yes, do you not?
Do you not see the chapters inapple podcasts?
Yeah, you do.
Yeah, they're still there.
I know, okay, I can't, I can'tcall them that anyway, anton.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
Um, yes, they are there in all supporting podcast
apps.
Hello, it's jones.
From the edit here it turns outanton was using spotify.
Spotify doesn't supportchapters normally.
Oh well, there we go.
Another one from australia,david clark, aka the late
bloomer actor podcast.
Hey, team pod news are hopingI'm the first to say hello, guys

(17:38):
, buzz brown's new text system.
You weren't, but thank you,david, that's very kind of you.

Speaker 4 (17:42):
Kevin Finn sends us one great episode this week.
Uh, thanks for having me on.
Hope you're enjoying Farm Mail.
We are, kevin, and the only bitI've got as a bit of feedback
is please don't tell me you werereading yours by the swimming
pool in the warmth, when it'sraining and miserable here in
the UK, because that was justthat was just like me going.
Oh great, another reason tomove.

(18:03):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (18:06):
Well up in the snow in Vernon in British Columbia.
I'm sure it's still snowingthere, isn't it?
May Justin from Transistor doemojis work?
He says with an emoji of aCanadian flag yes, justin, they
do York from Ottawa in Canada.
Thanks for the insider info ofhow Canadian flag.
Yes, justin, they do York fromOttawa in Canada.
Thanks for the insider info ofhow to make my show Welcome to

(18:28):
Earth Stories sound better.
You two are the best.
Ps.
I love your British sense ofhumour.

Speaker 4 (18:35):
Yeah, he must be mean .
Now, james, can't be you,you're a Nazi.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
And the United Kingdom of Great Britain and
Northern Ireland again, I'mgoing to keep on reading the
United Kingdom of Great Britainand Northern Ireland.
Again, I'm going to keep onreading the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and NorthernIreland.

Speaker 4 (18:47):
Every single time I see this.
Can we have a Wyoming-y a trois?

Speaker 1 (18:51):
point.
Whoever this person is sayswould be cool if this was
two-way.

Speaker 4 (19:01):
Now, I did ask Kevin that and Kevin made a great
point about why it shouldn't betwo-way.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
He did.
If we find that two-waycommunication is really
important, it's something thatpeople want.
Of course we could explore that, but for right now, we're
really excited about letting theaudience connect with the
podcaster and the podcaster.
They already have their way ofconnecting with their audience
and that's doing your show.
Yes.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
And I do notice a lot of miserable people in the
Buzzsprout Facebook group at themoment going.
But it's only one way.
I want to reply and you'rethere thinking really, but yeah,
no, I think it's great, I thinkit's really cool.
Yes, making it two-way might beinteresting and there may be a

(19:45):
way of.
I don't know how premium textswork in the US, but there may be
a way of you know paying somemoney that way as well.
I don't really know.
When I worked for a radiostation, Sam, about 10 or so
years ago in the UK, one of thethings that we did is we put a
charge of 25 pence on a text.
So if you wanted to text us,then absolutely fine, but we

(20:08):
would automatically send you atext back that said thank you so
much for texting the radiostation and this text would cost
you 25p.
And I wonder whether there'soptions there to.
I wonder whether texts workthat way in the US.
I'm sure that they probablydon't.
But you know, premium textsmight be a good way of you know

(20:30):
helping a show and almostturning these messages that
we've just been reading out intokind of booster grams, because
you could kind of get some moneyout of there into kind of
booster grams because you couldkind of get some money out of
there.

Speaker 4 (20:46):
No, I actually think we were talking about it just
off air.
You know why?
Why did we get so many when youknow we get a good handful of
boost grams and that's great andwe, we still want those.
But why do we get so many?
Was it because it was just new?
We'll see next week, but Ithink it's also frictionless, I
you know people can just go.
Oh yeah, it's a text quick andit works in everything.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
Yeah, yeah, yeah and it works in everything.
Now, I thought that was reallyinteresting and interesting.
Uh, you know, almostinteresting that you, you know,
anybody, could put an emailaddress in your show notes and
that would obviously open theemail, but for some reason, uh,
the messages app is easier thansending an email, so yeah, I

(21:26):
think kevin said it as well inthe interview.

Speaker 4 (21:27):
He said you know, if it was an email, maybe you feel
like you've got to write alittle bit more.
It feels like you've got morespace to fill, so maybe you feel
a little bit more.

Speaker 1 (21:35):
Uh, you know, oh no, maybe I won't send an email then
yeah, maybe it's that we alsoworked out 25 pence in terms of
an incoming SMS message.
We worked out that that's about500 sats.
So yeah, so no.
All interesting stuff, so yes,but fan mail very successful, so

(21:58):
hurrah, and it'll befascinating to see how many we
get this week.
If you do want to send us a fanmail, then you'll find that
message is in our show notes.
Just click on the link and awayyou go.

Speaker 4 (22:11):
Now, I was having a scam round, as I do, and I found
this report from Chris Peterson.
He's a founder and CEO ofDownload Media and he asked a
really simple question to 50CEOs in the studio and ad
networks.
He said which podcast platformwill be the most important in

(22:31):
five years?
What do you think?
The answer was James.

Speaker 1 (22:35):
Don't know.
You would assume that Spotifyis in there.
Don't tell me.
They were all saying YouTube,were they?

Speaker 4 (22:41):
Well, they said.
The consensus among theindustry leaders was clear the
future of podcast platforms isin the hands of Spotify and
YouTube, which was theoverwhelming endorsement Apple
underperformed he saysunderperformed but when you look
at the numbers, it wasbasically Spotify would be 50%
of the respondents, youtube was48% of the respondents and Apple

(23:03):
just 2%.

Speaker 1 (23:04):
2% said Apple Gosh wow, wow, that's really
interesting.
Which podcast platform will bethe most important?
And only 2% said Apple.
So one of the things I'm doingat the podcast show in London I
am the first speaker there I getto speak for 20 minutes or so,

(23:28):
and part of that is going to behaving a look back at the
previous year which won't comeas any surprise if you're
listening to this show and theother half is actually going to
be having a look at a day'sworth of downloads to OP3,
because it turns out that OP3 isnow quite big, has over 600,000
downloads in one day, and I'vegot a chunk of data there which

(23:55):
I'm busy sort of having a playwith and learning all kinds of
things from that data.
And so one of the sets of slidesthat you can expect is talking
about different app platforms indifferent countries.
So here's a sneak previewSpotify and Apple are relatively
neck and neck in most countries, as you would kind of expect.

(24:17):
So you know, relatively neckand neck in terms of total
downloads.
In Mexico, 90% of downloads goto Spotify, 90%.
So it's just massive, real,real big difference.
And what I was curious about is,even if you look into somewhere

(24:40):
like Mexico, actually iPhonedownloads are still being done
by Spotify.
You know it's not a case ofSpotify is the only one that
works on Android.
It's a case of people arepreferring Spotify to Apple
podcasts, even on their iPhone,which, again, I found
fascinating.

(25:00):
So more of this, more of thisdata at the podcast show in
London in the next couple ofweeks, which is great because it
also means that I can presetthat for that day's newsletter,
so that I've actually gotsomething there and ready and
waiting, because by heck I'mgoing to be tired there and

(25:21):
ready and waiting, because, byheck I'm going to be tired.

Speaker 4 (25:22):
That's why I'm doing that.
One of the things they said isthey are mirroring what you've
been saying for the last threeyears, that, um, it's probably
to do with the unavailability ofapple on android.
And again, they're sayingexactly what you've said.
They don't understand why,because their distribution
strategy, when it's an apple tv,is available on android as, but
apple podcast isn't, um, youknow, and they don't see any

(25:45):
reason why apple wouldn't do it.
So again.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
Um well, I'm sure, I'm sure they're working on it.

Speaker 4 (25:51):
They're not stupid, yeah well, you say that, james.
You know you've been tellingapple for what three years now
to do it on Android.
You know Apple's monopoly ofFlash 2.0 apps.
Basically, if we can break themup, flash 2, I'm going to keep
calling it now.
But what I do think is it's anoverall picture for Apple.
Actually, we've seen, I thinkannounced recently iPhone sales

(26:14):
are falling.
I don't think anyone's going tobe buying an iPhone 16 in a
flash.
Um, basically, they've got 1%battery improvement or camera
improvement.
I mean, would you upgrade?
You know, if you had to pay,james?

Speaker 1 (26:28):
No, well, I I think the secret with Apple and I hope
that they won't do this because, um, they strike me as being a
decent-ish company Um, but Ithink that the secret with Apple
is to do what Google do andonly give updates to iPhone for
three years and then that's it.

(26:50):
That's all you get.
We'll do security updates, butyou won't get the latest version
of iOS, and so, therefore, youhave to upgrade with some new
hardware.
That's how Pixel phones work,much to my irritation, and so,
essentially, that meant thatevery three years, or every four
years, you had to buy a newAndroid phone because, all of a

(27:11):
sudden, some of the apps thatyou were using wouldn't work on
the old version of Android thatyou had, which was quite a
frustration version of Androidthat you had, which was quite a
frustration.
And if Apple really wanted toboost their iPhone sales, then
that's the first thing that theywould end up doing, but I hope
that they don't.

Speaker 4 (27:28):
I actually hope that they get off the fence and
really embrace podcasting 2.0.
I mean, you know they gave usor threw us a bone with
transcripts but, as everyoneknows, even Kevin was talking
about it last week to me.
You know, the Buzzsprouttranscripts aren't being used in
Apple, they're just beingrejected.
They're not good enough,according to Apple.

(27:49):
So you know, and Kevin said hewas hand coding one just to make
sure that it met anyrequirements and it still didn't
pass.

Speaker 1 (27:57):
So you know requirements and it still didn't
pass.
So you know, yeah, I am seeingthat as well and I'm seeing that
some of mine go through, someof mine don't.
There are a few things that Ihave discovered about some of
the transcripts that areproduced by some of the software
that we have actually aren'tcorrect, you know, in terms of

(28:19):
the spec.
It turns out that the ampersandsign, for example, which is a
thing, doesn't work in a VTTfile and you have to encode it
in a different way.
So but, yes, I agree, it's notvery clear when a transcript has
been accepted and when atranscript, and why a transcript
has been, you know, denied.

(28:40):
So, yes, I can well see that.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
Yeah, I mean, I'm trying to work out in the last
few years and this is a genuinequestion to you, james what has
Apple actually done withpodcasting?
I mean delegated delivery fail,channels fail, subscriptions
fail, spatial audio fail andtranscripts are a proprietary
technology because they're notreally using anything.

(29:03):
What has Apple actually done tomove the needle in podcasting?

Speaker 1 (29:07):
What has Apple done for?

Speaker 4 (29:08):
us Well yeah.

Speaker 5 (29:09):
I mean what have they done really Apart from the
sanitation, the medicine,education, wine, public order,
irrigation, roads, a fresh watersystem and public health.

Speaker 1 (29:19):
What have the Romans?
ever done for us.
I think that Apple do a goodjob in terms of you know.
I mean, it's still the numberone or the number two podcast
app in most countries, so it'sstill very important in terms of
that.
I think the transcript thinghas been genuinely a good thing.

(29:39):
The fact that they do supportRSS transcripts in the issues
with them not accepting some ofthem is going to be a quality
control thing, and I think, youknow, it'd be helpful if they
were a little bit moretransparent in what they were
blocking and what they weren't.
But I think that that's been,you know, very useful.

(29:59):
They weren't, but I think thatthat's been, you know, very
useful.
But I also get the feeling thatit's a small team They've had to
get rid of very clearly,they've had to get rid of the PR
person that they had, so theynow have a PR person who is very
much shared with the rest ofthe PR, you know, at Apple,
rather than a bespoke PR personspecifically for the podcasting

(30:22):
division, and I think thatthat's harmed Apple over the
last five or six months.
But I think that the otherthing that's really harmed Apple
over the last five or sixmonths, apart from not
supporting Android has been thebig mistake that they made with
auto downloads and took theentire industry by surprise, and

(30:44):
that isn't really the sort ofthing that you expect a partner
to do, so I think that they'velost a lot of goodwill by doing
that.

Speaker 4 (30:54):
Well, I think last week we reported Buzzsprout's
figures that you know, Spotifywere above Apple for the first
time.
Reported Buzzsprout's figuresthat Spotify were above Apple
for the first time, and it lookslike Libsyn's also now
reporting that Apple podcastshave dipped below 50% for the
first time.

Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah.
So Libsyn, very much a heritagepodcast host, similar to
Blueberry, so therefore they seean awful lot more downloads on
Apple podcasts.
But even Libsyn, seeing thatApple podcasts has dipped below
50% for the first time, spotifyalso having the highest figures
that they have ever had on there.

(31:27):
And some data from PodTrackabout YouTube which I thought
was interesting.
So PodTrack's global rankerthat we mentioned earlier, that
Acast was number one in for amonth.
That global ranker alsoincludes YouTube views and I
thought that that wasinteresting.
Iheart sees 16% of itsconsumption from YouTube, libsyn

(31:50):
Ads sees 11%, sonoro just 3%,but Daily Wire sees a quarter of
its consumption there andYouTube is responsible for 61%
of Paramount's consumption,which is really high.
And the way that PodTrack iscounting those apparently, is
that a YouTube playlist mustcorrespond to podcast content

(32:12):
that is distributed via RSS.
So it's very clear in terms ofyou know it is a podcast in
inverted commas an RSS deliveredpodcast, which they are also
counting YouTube numbers for.
And I think I mean even foriHeart, 16% of its consumption
is coming from YouTube alreadyin comparison to, one would

(32:34):
assume, somewhere like 30% forApple, 40% for Spotify and of
course you know the iHeart appwill be doing very well for them
.
So you know again trouble aheadfor Apple.

Speaker 4 (32:46):
One would one would assume.
Yeah, and don't talk about theApple iPad app advertising the
crushing of life out ofcreativity.
I don't know if you saw the.

Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yes, I thought.
And so so somebody.
I mean yes, I thought, sosomebody.
I mean such a tone deaf ad ofbasically taking beautiful
creative things pianos andmusical instruments and kids
toys and crushing them.
Such a tone deaf ad.
And then someone else.
The point, if you haven't seenit, is that the iPad, the brand

(33:18):
new iPad, is very thin.
No one cares, but apparentlythat's the point.
Someone on Twitter has donesomething which I thought was
very clever.
They just ran the ad backwards.
And when you run the adbackwards, it's a lovely ad.
It makes exactly the point andit's a lovely ad and it's really

(33:39):
nice.
And you see all of thesebeautiful things that are inside
your iPad turn into a beautifulpiano and a beautiful you know,
and you know minions and kidstoys and all that kind of stuff,
and it's a really nice ad.
But I think such a tone deaf adfrom Apple, I would be
surprised if it lasts theweekend.

(34:01):
I think that whoever it is atApple who said yes to that I
mean, apple is the creator'sbrand, right?
If you're a creator, you willuse Apple equipment more than
anybody else.
So I think from that point ofview, it's tremendously, you
know, tremendously high.

Speaker 4 (34:22):
Yeah, I'll look in the jobs later to see if the
marketing director's role isavailable.
It should be.

Speaker 1 (34:28):
I mean frankly, frankly, I'm massively surprised
, yeah, that they actually gotaway with, yeah, that they
actually ended up doing that.
But there we are.
What else has been going on?

Speaker 4 (34:40):
Well, I'm very pleased to announce that I've
launched a new product calledSam.
No, not me.
Okay, mamma Mia have launched aproduct called Sam.
What's Sam James?

Speaker 1 (34:48):
Yeah, I thought this was a really, really clever idea
.
So basically they sent me arelease and they basically say
they have made a voice it's acloned voice for their
advertisers.
So basically, if an advertiserwants to come along and say you
know, we've got, you know, we'vegot a sale on this weekend, can

(35:11):
you put some ads across theMamma Mia podcast network, Then
up until now they would have hadto have booked a voiceover and
set a voiceover in a studio andrecorded something and blah,
blah, blah.
Now it's literally just typingin some words into a cloned
voice.
And they've used all of theirfemale announcers.
It's a female led podcastnetwork.

(35:33):
They've used all of theirfemale announcers, blended them
all together into this clonedvoice called Sam, and I thought
that's really interesting and soI sent them a quick email Sam
and you, sam.
This gets confusing, I know.
And I said how was Sam puttogether?
And if it's as real time as yousay, is there any chance that

(35:58):
you can get Sam to say hi to us?
And within 10 minutes they hadsent me back an email and the
email said Hello Pod News Samhere.

Speaker 5 (36:08):
I'm made up of many of the brilliant voices across
the Mamma Mia podcast network,the voices that millions of
women trust and see as friends.
Brands can use me to talk tothe millions of listeners on
Mamma Mia's podcast network in away that cuts through and gives
more engagement andeffectiveness than a traditional
radio ad or genericprogrammatic ad.
To find out more, reach out tothe Mamma Mia team.

Speaker 1 (36:30):
And Mamma Mia are supporters of the Pod News
newsletter.
So I was thinking that sounds abit like an ad and then I
thought, well, they aresupporters, they could probably
get away with it.
But what do you think of that?
It's pretty good.

Speaker 4 (36:43):
Yeah, I mean for a tone deaf bloke over here in the
UK that sounded like a normalAustralian woman, so yeah, I
mean and to me as well.
Yeah, I mean, you and I haveboth been in radio you longer
than me but I mean I rememberthe idea of having to create an
ad would take forever and a day,as you said, getting a
voiceover artist, getting scriptwritten, blah, blah, blah, and

(37:03):
then getting it recorded.
I mean, I've seen tools outthere now that you know um are
promoting oh, just, oh, justpick an AI artist, pick a voice,
write a script, chuck it in andwe'll do a video for you, you
know, or an audio advert.
I mean, would you, you know?
I remember six, 12 months agoyou probably poo-pooed it.

(37:27):
You go, that'll never work.
What do you think now?
Then?

Speaker 1 (37:30):
Yeah, I mean, I think there are some really smart
tools out there I don't know ifyou've, you know and tools that
will do a really good job.
There's a, so I'm currentlydoing a talk which you'll be
able to see at the podcast show,which is tools.
You know, tools from podcastingthat you can use and it's

(37:51):
really meant for radio companies, but I'll be doing it there as
well.
And there's one tool thatEleven Labs has put together and
the way that their tool works.
They do an awful lot of clonevoices and things like that.
So the way that their toolworks is you go onto their
website.
The problem with clone voices,of course, is that you know

(38:13):
you've got the whole timingthing, that you would like
something to be timed exactlyright.
So and Clone Voices are verydifficult to teach you know how
to how to time somethingcorrectly.
So if I go onto their websiteand I'm on their website right
now I can click the record audiobutton and I'm going to ask it

(38:35):
to say the following.
He says, pressing the recordbutton.
Now, this is what I would liketo be said, but I would like it
to be said in a female voice.
Yes, that would be great.
So I've done that, and so youpress the button and it will
then take my voice, the voicethat I have just recorded in

(38:56):
there, and it will end up makingthat into a little clip of
audio in exactly the same waythat I just read it.
So here's that audio.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
This is what I would like to be said, but I would
like it to be said in a femalevoice.
Yes, that would be great.
I mean, that's incredible isn't.
It Isn't that amazing, isn'tthat?

Speaker 1 (39:21):
amazing.
And again, you wouldn't knowthat that was a clone voice.
I mean, that just sounds asnormal as any other voice sounds
.

Speaker 4 (39:30):
It's getting clever.
What's the expression?
It's as bad as AI will ever betoday.

Speaker 1 (39:36):
Yes, exactly, exactly .
You know, these tools are theworst that they will ever be
today.
They will only get better, andthat voice is indistinguishable
from, you know, from a humanvoice.

Speaker 4 (39:52):
I think so yeah really really clever, really
cool.
Better find another job then,because you've got Sam now and I
better go under the name ofSeth.

Speaker 1 (40:00):
Again, again.

Speaker 4 (40:04):
Right moving on before.
I lose my job Right.
Iab 2.2 released their podcastmeasurement guidelines.
I'm going to go make a cup oftea while you tell everyone
about it.
James, go for it.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
Well, so there's the IAB podcast guidelines.
Version 2.1 has been out for acouple of years for three years
in fact and they've justreleased version 2.2.
Frankly, there's not very muchchange to it.
There's a bit of tightening upof some of the words and
everything else, and so reallythere's not an awful lot of
change that anybody needs toworry about.

(40:38):
But all of the newcertifications will be done
under version 2.2.
You might remember earlier onthat Spotify left the IAB, so we
reported on that a couple ofweeks ago.
So we reported on that a coupleof weeks ago.

(41:06):
One of the big additions thatthey slid in just before they
made version 2.2 final is thatthey slid in a little thing
about compliance, becauseSpotify, because the IAB podcast
measurement guidelines arereally clear in saying, and I
quote to claim compliance withthese guidelines, an
organisation must go through theIAB Tech Lab certification
process and get listed on theIAB Tech Lab website.
So if they say that they areIAB compliant, they are now not

(41:30):
and someone and hopefully theIAB can come after them and say
you're not compliant, they arenow not and someone and
hopefully the IAB can come afterthem and say you're not
compliant.
Look, this is what compliancemeans, so I thought that that
was a very clever plan of theirs.
I now list in the pod newsdirectory podnewsnet slash
directory.
I now list the version of IABpodcast measurement guidelines

(41:52):
that each podcast host iscertified to and when that
certification was done.
There are a couple of people,including our sponsor, who are a
little bit late.
I think Buzzsprout lastcertified in 2020, but they are
recertifying and as soon as theyrecertify then that will come
through on there.
But yeah, I thought some brightmoves there from the IAB just

(42:14):
tightening up what people canactually claim Well, I think you
mentioned that they should dosomething, so at least they're
listening.

Speaker 4 (42:23):
Hello, nice to hear you Indeed, indeed.
Let's zip around the world abit, james, quickly.

Speaker 1 (42:30):
Yes, let's do that.
In the Philippines, lots ofpeople are listening to podcasts
every week.
Well, 20% of people arelistening to podcasts every week
, and that's 20% ofinternet-connected Filipinos,
which is still 17 million people.
Comedy is the number one.
You'll find lots more detail inthe Pod News newsletter.

Speaker 4 (42:52):
And I'm guessing no, well, I am guessing because I
haven't been to the Philippinesthat Android would be the
preferred mobile phone as well.
James Hint, Apple hint.

Speaker 1 (43:02):
In the Philippines.
You reckon yeah.

Speaker 4 (43:06):
I'll give you a 50p and a Tim Tam.
Bet that it's an Android.

Speaker 1 (43:10):
You'll give me a what A 50p and a Tim Tam.
Bet that it's an Android.

Speaker 4 (43:12):
You'll give me a what A 50p and a Tim Tam bet yeah,
yeah, I'll buy you a Tim Tam,you know, because you're short,
and I'll give you 50p, you know,before you get over it.

Speaker 1 (43:19):
Well, it'll be country code, country underscore
code, and the Philippines is PH, I believe.
I think that that's probablyabout right, isn't it?
And the figures are Spotifyabsolutely in the lead, apple
Podcasts at number two, chromeat number three, castbox at

(43:41):
number four and Fountain atnumber five, which is always
interesting to end up seeing.
Now, you didn't ask for that,did you?
You didn't ask for agent name,you asked for the device, didn't
you?
I did.
Yes, device name, and I need tocount device name.

(44:01):
Isn't it brilliant having thisdata?
You can just go blink, there wego.
Apple is number two and Androidis number one.
Android has more than threetimes the amount of downloads
than Apple in the Philippines,so I look forward to eating my

(44:22):
Tim Tam.
There you go, there you go.
Well, I'll have to bring a TimTam now, won't I?
So, yes, so they're very high.
Windows computer is at numberthree, as you would kind of
expect, and actually Applecomputer is like way, way, way
down.
But yeah, there you go.
Isn't it brilliant having allthis data and you can just go?

(44:44):
Yes, well, I wonder.
Oh well, look, there we are,let's find out.
Anyway, there we are.
What else?
What else?
What else?
Well, we've got Edison Researchrevealing some new numbers on
May 16, called the PodcastConsumer.
That's data on who listens topodcasts.
More data, actually from theInfinite Dial there's a free

(45:06):
webinar if you want to take partin that Some really interesting
data from YouGov, whichreleased data showing the number
of regular podcast listeners incountries from around the world
.
Now, these are people wholisten to podcasts for more than
one hour a week, and there'ssome really nice numbers that
came out of this, so rather funto take a look at.

(45:29):
What surprised me is that SouthAfrica is really high, as well
as Saudi Arabia and Egypt placeswhere you wouldn't necessarily
expect podcasts to be massiveand Indonesia.
By the way, some of this datais only conducted among internet
users, so not everybody, butjust among people who use the
internet, and that's important,I think, particularly for South

(45:52):
Africa.
But the numbers are verysimilar to the numbers that came
out of Reuters a couple ofyears ago, which again I thought
was interesting in thatactually the numbers aren't
telling us random you know,random things.
The numbers seem to be the sameas what we've seen a couple of
years ago, just with morecountries in them.

(46:13):
So good piece of research fromyou, kampf.
There there is one relativelyamusing thing, particularly for
a British person.
Would you like to know thatrelatively amusing thing?

Speaker 4 (46:24):
Go for it.

Speaker 1 (46:24):
When you take a look into Europe, then there are lots
of countries in Europe,including the UK, which is in
the European listing here, aswell as other countries like
Germany, bulgaria, like Turkeyand Argentina.
Apparently, argentina is inEurope, according to you, garth.

Speaker 4 (46:45):
Hey, hang on a minute .
We had Eurovision Song Contestwith Australia in it the other
day, so come on, anything'spossible.

Speaker 1 (46:54):
Yes, yes, you know how to bring a man down, don't
you?
You know that we didn't getinto the final Shh.
I didn't know.
So, yes, so there we are.
And also talking about SaudiArabia, the biggest podcast ever
on YouTube is an Arabiclanguage podcast from Saudi

(47:14):
Arabia.
Did you know that?
I didn't, until you wrote it?
No months.
It's an interview podcast witha relationship and communication
skills trainer, whose name I'mnot going to try and pronounce,

(47:35):
which is why I haven't writtenit down here, and I think the
previous record was Joe Roganand Elon Musk.
You know, smoking a doobie,smoking a doobie, which had 69
million views, and that was fiveyears ago.

(47:56):
So, yeah, so that kind of youknow came as a bit of a surprise
.
Thmania, the podcast hostingcompany, very keen to point this
out to me, of course.
But, yeah, who would havethought that both Arabic
language content and that sortof thing would do so well on
YouTube?

Speaker 4 (48:12):
But it clearly is A hundred million people, every
woman's going.
I told you, just talk to me.
Just talk to me.
Relationship and communicationskills, that's all you need.

Speaker 2 (48:22):
Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.

Speaker 1 (48:26):
Events.
Well, I won't be in Auckland onSaturday, may the 11th, which
is tomorrow.
I won't be there because I'mnot going, and I was there last
year.
The New Zealand PodcastingSummit is happening there.
It's a very good thing.
I gather that Lewis Tennant,who runs the thing, will
hopefully be in the US, inWashington, for the big podcast

(48:48):
movement later on in the year,so it'll be good to see him over
there.
Where I will be, though, andwhere you will be too, is the
podcast show in London, may the22nd and 23rd.
You can save yourself somemoney on selected passes by
using the code podnews10 if youwish to do that.
You will be speaking, will younot?

Speaker 4 (49:12):
I think after my rant last week they rang me and went
do you want a slot?
Then I went oh, go on then if Ihave to.

Speaker 1 (49:19):
Yeah, go on then, if I have to.

Speaker 4 (49:24):
Well, you know, rent a gob.
No, I'm looking forward to it.
Actually, I'm going to betalking about some of the work
of the PSP and podcasting 2.0,and I'm probably going to have a
couple of people on stage withme as well.
So, um, yeah, looking forwardto doing that.
So I'll.
I'll tell you next week whatthe exact time is, um, and then
I can borrow some slides fromyou, because you won't be

(49:44):
presenting at the same time.
So that'll be done, that'll beeasy.
You can send me some slidesover, couldn't you?
Uh, james.

Speaker 1 (49:50):
Yeah, if I've got any .
So yes, very happy to do that.
I'm doing an opening keynoteright at the beginning.
I'm also speaking about toolsand things like that.
Right at the end, we are doinga Pod News Weekly Review, which
will be live on a stagesomewhere, so that will be good.
If you come along to that show,then, thanks to our friends at

(50:12):
ACAST, sam reckons he's going togive you a free beer.
Well, I'm not.
I think first come, firstserved in terms of that,
literally, and we're saying thatI have yet to actually check

(50:33):
this with the organisers becauseI know that licensing laws may
mean that we have to dosomething else there, but that
will be fun.
You're talking about Podcasting2.0 t-shirts as well.

Speaker 4 (50:45):
Well, if you come to my seminar and presentation,
you'll get nothing to do with it.
Look, you can talk about thefuture, but I'm giving away
merch.
So yeah, come to mine, you'llfind your merch T-shirts.
You know, no Tim Tams from me.
No, we go full out properT-shirts.

Speaker 1 (51:03):
There we are and thank you to Captivate, our
friends at Captivate who arepaying for the beers in a super
secret Pod News drinks.
If you think that you should begoing then please do tell us
weekly at.
Podnewsnet is our email address.

(51:23):
But thank you to Captivate.
Thank you to Mark and the teamfor helping with the bar bill
for that, and that's a goodthing too.
Indeed.

Speaker 4 (51:32):
Invites are on the way, as they say, now there is
also an event up in Sheffield,that's the north of England.
For those who don't know, it'srun by Dino Sophos and Jamie
O'Hare.
I will be going to that one.
It's on May the 31st.
Yeah, so it's called CrossWise.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
So I'm looking forward to that.
Yes, I'm also in Toronto inCanada for the podcast Power Up
Summit on June the 2nd, as wellas Radio Day's North America on
June the 3rd and 4th.
I'm in Orlando in Florida,slightly at the middle of the
previous week, so lookingforward to doing that.
I'm in New York on Monday, the27th of May, and I was busy

(52:14):
trying to work out why I haven'thad very many people who've
said oh, you're in New York,let's meet up, and the reason
why is it's Memorial Day, sonobody will be in New York apart
from us tourists.
So that was a mistake.
But still, there we are.
If you are in New York and youknow of a good place that sells
coffee or beer, then that willbe a lovely thing.

(52:34):
James at Cridland is mypersonal email address.
That would be a good thing.
And yes, and a few other thingsgoing on, including webinars
from the Podcast Academy aboutPodcast Standards Project and
Podcasting 2.0, the BerlinPodcast Week, september the 10th
to the 15th, and the GlobalPodcasting 2.0 Festival, which

(53:01):
is happening in September.
More details on a website, sam,yet or is that website still?

Speaker 4 (53:09):
Yes, no, no, it's not quite finished, so, yes, um, I
don't want to give that outquite yet.
Yes, I've got a fewconversations with sponsors to
have first right.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
It's probably a good idea.

Speaker 4 (53:21):
Oh, it's a good idea but can I just point out,
listeners, do you know somethingabout these events?
James's travel budget and mytravel budget are very different
.
Well, yes, I get to the northof England, you get to the north
of America.

Speaker 1 (53:35):
Yes, all I can say there is it's not my travel
budget, it's a travel budget ofmany other people, in fact, what
I have literally just done thisweek is in October I'm going to
Oslo, stockholm and Copenhagenand the Independent Podcast
Awards, which I'm very muchlooking forward to being there

(53:58):
as well in London, and I'vemanaged to book all of those
flights and everything else.
It's been really easy trying toget three sets of people to pay
their little bit for thoseflights so I can come and speak
at their conferences.
But still, there you go, but,yes, doing a lot of travel, as

(54:18):
ever.
Anyway, there are more events,both paid for and free, at
podnewsnet slash events.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

Speaker 1 (54:30):
Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the
Pod News newsletter.
Here's where we talk.
Here's where Sam talkstechnology.
What have we got here, Sam?

Speaker 4 (54:39):
Well, every week I do the show notes, chapters, sorry
.
And when I go and find imageryto support that for the chapter
art, I invariably come across aWebP file.
I think, yeah, no, I never lookat the extension.
I thinkably come across a webpfile.
I think, yeah, no, I never lookat the extension.
I think, great, I'll add thatone.
And then in bus route it didn'twork.
And every week for years andyears it didn't work.

(54:59):
So I pinged um, tom Rossi andKevin, and I said, hey guys, any
chance you can support webp inchapters.
And hey presto, you can nowsupport WebP files in chapters.

Speaker 1 (55:11):
Well, there's a thing , so that's good.
Does that mean that thoseimages get pulled into the
Buzzsprout system and thenchanged into JPEGs, or are they
still WebPs?

Speaker 4 (55:26):
Don't know that would be interesting.
I have no idea.
Don't look at me.
I was going to ask you thefollow-up question, so WebP came
from Google.
File works a little bit better.

Speaker 1 (55:36):
It's supported pretty well everywhere now.
It's taken a long time to besupported everywhere, I should

(55:59):
say, but all of the images, forexample, that you see on the Pod
News website, are WebP if yourbrowser copes with it.
So yeah, so it makes sense toend up dealing with all of that.

Speaker 4 (56:24):
So hurrah for Buzzsprout adding support there
this data that I guess you'regoing to be talking about at the
London podcast show, James.
But the one thing thatsurprised me was the number of
podcasts that have the mediumequals video enabled as well.

Speaker 1 (56:40):
Yes, yeah, that's interesting, isn't it?
Yeah, I think John does a verygood job of taking a look at all
of these new tags and workingout which work and which you
know all of these new tags, andworking out which work and which
you know working out how fastthey're getting put in there.
So, yeah, no, I thought thatthat was interesting to have a

(57:00):
look at.

Speaker 4 (57:01):
Yeah, 12,500 podcasts with the medium equals video
that's taken.
These figures, by the way, aretaken from the podcast index
database, so that's still prettygood.
Indeed, one of the things thatcame up, peertube, which is the
decentralized video platformalternative to YouTube, which is

(57:23):
also federated as an activitypub client, launched 6.1 this
week.
One of the things last week waswe talked about Captivate,
supporting the alternativeenclosure to allow YouTube
videos to be linked to withinapps.
So, for example, truefans doesthat, I'm glad to say.
Now we will, as TrueFans, allowyou to put PeerTube videos into

(57:46):
TrueFans and link to them aswell, so we can now do that one
as well.
So I'm very pleased.

Speaker 1 (57:51):
Very nice.
Yeah, that's a nice thing.
Other things going on Fountainhas added support for Coinbase.
Coinbase is interesting in thatit is now supporting Lightning
payments, if you're interestedin that sort of thing, which
reminded me to go and have alook at my Coinbase account to
realise that I closed it lastyear.
So there you go last year.

(58:16):
So there you go, um, which isalways nice, yes, um, there's a
new uh tag which has beenformalized into the podcast
namespace, called the podcastpublisher tag.
What's this, sam well?

Speaker 4 (58:22):
the publisher tag is.
The idea came from oscar atfountain and davidas at rss blue
.
The idea was for music artiststo be able to put a discography
together and then if any newtracks were added to that, you
would be alerted or informed soyou could group together all of
your music albums, everything.

(58:43):
Because what was happening wasan artist might start off on
Wavelength, then have anothertrack on RSS Blue, then have
another track on LNBs and thenhave another track somewhere
else, and people are like, well,how do I find all your stuff?
Now I think the thing that'sinteresting we as a group came
out with pod roles beforepublisher feeds came out, and so

(59:06):
pod roles was an initial waythat actually music artists
could group all their contenttogether in one single place,
even though they were onmultiple different hosts.
But then the publisher tag cameout as well, and so there is a
massive overlap between the two,right, but I think there is a
distinction as well.

(59:27):
I think a pod role allows youto not only show your own other
podcasts, but you can showthird-party ones.
So, for example, we show theBuzzcast feed within our pod
role, so we recommend Buzzcastto all of our listeners as well.
But a publisher tag forsomebody like you, james, would

(59:49):
just be all of the pod news,daily pod news, weekly pod news,
extra and any other podcasts.
So it's very clearly to do withyou as a publisher as opposed
to you as a podcast creatorsaying here are the things I
recommend you listen to in a podrole.

Speaker 1 (01:00:06):
Yes, and the benefits of a pod role is that you can
link to other people's stuff andother people can link to us as
well.
So you've got people like theLate Bloomer Actor, podcast
Creativity Found, buzzcastitself, the Audacity to podcast.
Hello Daniel, podcast Strategyspelled incorrectly because it's

(01:00:29):
in Dutch.
So you know a bunch of theseadditional shows who are linking
to us in their pod role as well.
So thank you to you for doingthat, and I think it's just very
useful to be able to have alist of all of the shows from
this particular publisher.

(01:00:51):
It's new and helpful data thatwill help us all.

Speaker 4 (01:00:54):
I think, yeah, what's interesting is, you know, again
, we've implemented it asTrueFans and, if you want to, so
, for example, we've done it notjust for music artists, we've
done it for podcasters and audiobooks.
So, for example, if you want to, just for music arts, we've
done it for podcasters andaudiobooks.
So, for example, if you want tofollow wandering or you want to
follow um global, as an example, if they add a new podcast to

(01:01:17):
their publisher feed, you as afan will then get a notification
.
So it's not just about thepublisher being able to group
things together.
There is actually value in youas a listener or a fan of a
single publication, being ableto get to know about what's
coming down the road.
Yeah, it works really well nowhelipad has been updated.

Speaker 1 (01:01:39):
It's now got a lot of new um things in there,
including a new settings pageand a new true fans logo, which,
which is very exciting.
What does the new True Fanslogo look like, sam I?

Speaker 4 (01:01:48):
don't know.
I was very excited.
Thank you, Eric PP.
We didn't have one in thereclearly before, so I didn't even
know about it.

Speaker 1 (01:01:57):
But there you go.
So yes, so it's always nice tosee an update to that as we
speak.
I've just run the update, sothat should be nice, and there
is.
There's a new, beautiful,beautiful True Fans logo in
there, which is your pink personrather than anything else.

(01:02:20):
So that's a nice thing, sohurrah.

Speaker 4 (01:02:25):
But the biggest update, and the one I'm most
excited about, is the auto-verb.
Now, one of the things that wehave with micropayments are
something called a TLV record,which is just a receipt in
effect of payments.
So if somebody boosts orsomebody streams, you as the
creator will get a record ofthat who did it, how long they

(01:02:48):
did it, how much they paid you,all those things.
One of the verbs that was inthat TLV record was called auto,
and most people don't use it,but we at True Fans do.
So I do not like the way thatthe industry has subscriptions
and I don't like the way theindustry has paywalls.
So what we did was we createdsomething called True Fan

(01:03:10):
Support.
So I do that for the Pod NewsDaily, I do that for Podcasting
2.0 and many other podcasts thatI listen to.
What it means is I can say turna button on in True Fan and I
can then say when you produce anew episode, I will instantly
pay you the full value of thatepisode.

(01:03:31):
Now the value is basicallywhatever I believe my sats per
minute is.
That's fine, that's my choiceTimes, the time of the episode,
and I pay you that in advance ofeven listening to it.
It automatically gets paid toyou, and what's nice now is that
you, adam and anyone else who'snow got the update to Helipad
can see that payment.

(01:03:51):
Then, yeah, it comes through asa TrueFund support payment.
So, yeah, thank you very much,eric.

Speaker 1 (01:03:56):
Pp Nice, yes, and it's great to see a lot of work
being put into that app.
It's a really useful app, whichis nice.

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
Boostergram.
Boostergram Corner app which isnice.

Speaker 1 (01:04:11):
Yes, it's our favourite time of the week.
It's Boostergram Corner, where,hopefully, you press that boost
button in your modern podcastapp and it comes back with lots
more information.
We've got a ton of boosts thisweek, haven't we?

Speaker 4 (01:04:25):
We have Gene Bean talking about the OpenGraph, as
we just were.
That OpenGraph audio tip is agreat one.
I'm likely going to have tolook at that too.
Thanks, and that's a row ofDux2222 from Gene Bean.

Speaker 1 (01:04:39):
Indeed.
One of the things that Helipadnow does is it has little icons
next to boosts showing youexactly all of the numerology
behind all of these numbers.
By the way, so in case you'veever been confused at some of
the numbers of SATs which aresent through, we have all of the

(01:05:00):
names, which is very fancy.
Dwev has sent through 2,000SATs.
Great interview with Kevin Samasking the same questions I did
when I heard about fan mail.
There you go.
There's a thing.
Thank you very much.
1,000 sats from Cy saying youtalk a lot about Apple opening
up their data, building podcastapps for non-Apple devices and

(01:05:22):
capitalising their market shareagainst Spotify.
But what is their incentive?
They can't monetise through adrevenue, whereas Spotify have a
reliable paywall thatcommercialises podcast content.
How much do Apple even makethrough their podcast
subscription model?
Great idea on the virtual eventin September.
See you there and at PodcastShow London next week.

(01:05:42):
Apple does make a substantialamount.
I mean they make 30% on all oftheir paid podcast subscriptions
.
So you've got that sort of sideof it.
Apple do sell advertising insome ways, and you could see
that Apple could make a littlebit more of that if they were in
Android as well, but yes, I dotake your point that it is

(01:06:04):
easier to see a return forsomebody like Spotify, who sell
advertising within the app, thanit would be for Apple.
I think if you're asking me whyApple hasn't launched in
Android yet, I think I wouldanswer that by saying look,
apple don't want to give Google30% of all of the money from a

(01:06:26):
podcast subscription.
That puts Apple into a verydifficult place.
So that's what I think actuallyis going to be the case.

Speaker 4 (01:06:35):
But anyway, si, thank you for that.
Well, I was going to say, Imean, one of the things I've
banged on about, and no one elsecares, is that Apple should put
podcasts behind theirsubscription, just like Spotify
has.
And what I mean by that is, youknow, if you pay your Apple
Music and you pay yoursubscription for Apple Music,
you get podcasts.

(01:06:56):
Rather than podcasts beingtotally free, apple skews the
market, spotify they're totallyfree as well.
No, but they can add supportedright.
Apple don't have ads.
I mean another Apple failure.
I failure, I ads, if anyoneremembers them.
Um, look, apple skewed themarket because anyone can get a
podcast for free through apple.
Everyone else has no chancereally.

(01:07:18):
Or charging, I mean value, forvalue is there because people
out of their, you know,generosity will pay you, as a
creator, some money, but thereality is, if they don't want
to, they just go to Apple.
Oh, I'll just go and listen toit on Apple for free then.
And that Pavlovian behaviourthat Apple's created in the
market is what skews podcasting,If they didn't make everything

(01:07:40):
free like that and it's the onlything they do make free.
So I'm totally weird as to whythey do that.
They make no money out ofpodcasting and they make
everything free.
I mean Mark Asquith did say itthe first party data that's
available through Apple.
If you're not making any money,Apple, then at least give it
back to the hosts.
You know anyone who doesdelegated delivery, who supports

(01:08:02):
Apple.
Give them back that first partydata.
At least do something with itrather than leave it, you know,
in a server that no one looks at.

Speaker 1 (01:08:09):
Yes, no, I would.
I would certainly agree withthat.
I think that Apple should bemuch more open with the data
that they have.
I think that would be a veryhelpful thing.
Matt Cundall 5,150 sats.
He just says thank you.
That's sent to the Pod NewsDaily because we mentioned one
of his shows earlier on thisweek, the Sound Up show, which
has Dave Jackson on there thisweek, which is a good thing, and

(01:08:33):
Alan C Paul also sending moneyto the Pod News Daily.
He has sent an angel donationof 7777 sats, your pirate voice
opening.
Ah, yes, this was earlier on inthe week for the Pod News
podcast.
It was a great effort, lol.
And thank you for including myMorning Devotions' 1,000th show

(01:08:56):
in the newsletter.
So glad we could share theperseverance that one podcaster
showed in staying consistent foralmost four years.
Yes, that's quite the story.
So congratulations to them.
So what's happened for you thisweek, sam?

Speaker 4 (01:09:08):
Not a lot really.
I mean, we released publisherfeeds.
We've done quite a few things.

Speaker 1 (01:09:13):
Are you angry at anything that Google has done
this week?

Speaker 4 (01:09:16):
No, because I couldn't give a damn about
Google anymore.
They just really are a basketcase.
Now I mean, you know, when theychange their CEO, it won't be
soon enough.
They've just closed down GoogleFit APIs, so now, in 2025,
they're going to break all thefitness devices scales, trackers
.
You just can't build anythingon Google, you can't rely on

(01:09:37):
them for anything.
I mean yeah, wow.
I mean you know, can they stickwith anything for more than
five minutes?

Speaker 1 (01:09:44):
They are.
It's a company just run bypeople who are excited about
flashing lights and have no, uh,you know, I mean, that's one of
the things that I've noticedabout about apple having a,
having an iphone now is that, um, everything that apple does is
basically there forever, and Ithink that's one of the problems
that they've got, frankly, withtheir podcasts app it's there

(01:10:06):
forever.
They can't really make very,very fast changes with it
because it's there forever andthey don't want to get rid of
things, whereas Google gets ridof stuff all the time and it's
just super frustrating.
So, yeah, so Google Fit gettingrid of all of its APIs in 2025,
which will break all kinds ofthings of all of its APIs in

(01:10:31):
2025, which will break all kindsof things.
So slow hand clap for Google onthat again.
You haven't been buyinganything stupid on the internet,
have you?

Speaker 4 (01:10:37):
Oh yeah, fun time.
So I've just ordered my newmeta.
I never thought I'd do thatRay-Ban sunglasses.
They come with AI built in.
Now, the reason why I'm doingthat is because I love tech and
secondly, I saw a couple ofreally cool demos.
So, first, they look coolbecause they are Ray-Bans,

(01:10:58):
they're not Google glasses orsome rubbish.
And secondly, a friend of mine,mike, went around Mexico with
his Ray-Ban sunglasses.
He got an early prototype andhe literally could take a photo
of a building and then the AIwould then tell him what that
building was and the wholehistory and everything about it.
Or he could take a, you know,he could look at some food, he

(01:11:21):
could look at menus.
It was just.
It was what I thought AR couldbe augmented reality and I
didn't think it would come inthis way, but it looks like it
might be a way of the cameraelement from the sunglasses,
which is a 30 frames per secondvideo and a 12 megabit camera,
can send stuff up.

(01:11:42):
Meta then basically, with theirAI, can analyze it and give you
what it is, and it looks prettycool.
So I'm going to try it.
It's not expensive but it'sworth it.
The only downside was I orderedit in the hope that I would
have it at the podcast show, andit only comes out on the 28th
of May.

Speaker 1 (01:11:59):
Oh, that's annoying.
I know Well you'll have to comeover to Podcast Movement again
and do that.

Speaker 4 (01:12:06):
That'll go with the family to greece?
No, you know, yes, that'sprobably it.
So, james, what's happening foryou this week, mate?

Speaker 1 (01:12:14):
well.
So I've been doing a few littleuh things.
I've just added a new umpodcast app to the pod news
podcast pages, which is calledpod engine.
I also noticed that curiocaster has a brand new logo,
which is much nicer.
They've changed the sort of theweird sort of smoky sea into a
little dragon, which is veryfancy.

(01:12:35):
It looks much the same, butit's about a 10th of the size in
terms of an SVG, so I'mdelighted about that.
So that's all nice andavailable on the PodNews website
.
Along with I have just beendoing an awful lot of
presentations to folks in publicbroadcasting and everything

(01:12:57):
else, all about AI tools andstuff that they should be aware
of.
I even wrote a forward for abook which is coming out soon
called Prompts for Podcastingand Audio, and it's basically a
big book showing you how to useprompts into chat, GPT and that
sort of thing to get informationout that will help you make a

(01:13:23):
show basically.
So, yeah, it's quite a smartlittle book.

Speaker 4 (01:13:29):
Have you got the prompt that says how to make
your dog shut up?

Speaker 1 (01:13:32):
I mean that would be nice, wouldn't it?
That would be really good.
The prompt Either that or theprompt for why has nobody else
in the family taken the dog init's dark outside and there
might be some cane toads thatshe can lick and then die.
So, yes, bloody dog.
Anyway, that's it for this week.

(01:13:53):
I'm just off to strangle it.

Speaker 4 (01:13:55):
No, I'm not, obviously I'm not, no no, don't
do what the American woman didand shoot the dog.

Speaker 1 (01:14:01):
Do you see that?
Yes, yes, yes gosh had no value,so I shot the dog, yes, and so
she writes that she's apolitician, and she writes that
in a book and she's a politician, and no one has said to her.
You know, that might not be avery good idea.
If you're trying to get elected, it might not be a very good
idea.
In fact, isn't she one of thepeople who's going for Donald

(01:14:24):
Trump's running mate?
Yes, exactly, and you're therethinking but I mean, I suppose
you could do anything in the USnow and still get elected.
So who knows, who knows how anyof these things work.
Anyway, that's it for this week.
You can also listen to the PodNews Daily.
You can find that wherever yougot this podcast and subscribe

(01:14:44):
to the Pod News newsletter.

Speaker 4 (01:14:45):
For more of these stories and much more,
podnewsnet is where to go youcan support the show by sending
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Still, we like all of them, anddon't be a Luddite.
Instead, grab a new podcasting2.0 app from podcasting2.org.
Forward slash apps.

Speaker 1 (01:15:06):
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Speaker 2 (01:15:16):
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Speaker 2 (01:15:27):
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