Why A Podcast Play Isn’t Enough And What To Track Instead

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Announcer (00:00):
The Pod news Weekly Review uses chapters.
The last word in podcastingnews.
This is the Pod news WeeklyReview with James Cridland and
Sam Sethi.

James Cridland (00:11):
I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod
news, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEOof Truefans.

Dan Misener (00:16):
You open up that Spotify app on the front page.
There's an awful lot ofautoplaying video.
So if you linger just for a fewmoments over one of those video
thumbnails, it'll start toplay.
And you, Sam, will count as alistener or viewer, and you will
count as a play.

It's ridiculous.
Dan Meisner gets Sam all workedup on why a play isn't enough
to measure your podcasts.
Plus, Patreon becomes thelatest to offer free podcast
hosting.
This podcast is sponsored byBuzz Sprout with a tool
supporting community to ensureyou keep podcasting.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting with BugSprout.com.

Announcer (00:55):
From your daily newsletter, the Pod news Weekly
Review.

Sam Sethi (00:59):
Let's get on.
We've got a bumper edition thisweek.
Ho ho.
So let's start off with measking you a quick question,
James.
If I asked you what does263,632 that's a palindrome,
nearly.
What does that mean to PodNewsweekly?

What does it mean to the Pod News Weekly
Review?
I mean, well, I can see it inthe in the show notes.
So I could tell you, but whydon't you put us out of our
misery?

Sam Sethi (01:25):
Well, that's the total download number that Pod
Newsweekly's had according toBoss Sprouts Analytics, which is
great.
A quarter of a million.
But what we don't have isunique play numbers.
What we don't have is our totallisten time.
What we don't have is ourretention number.
Now, do you think those areimportant metrics that we would

(01:46):
want?

Yes, I think they're pretty important because
you can see what works, whatdoesn't in a episode as well,
which I always find quiteinteresting too.
So uh yes, definitely.

Sam Sethi (01:57):
So last week we talked about Bumper announcing a
new metric that they use withtheir clients called loyalty or
retention.
And it's basically the numberof repeat listeners, not just
the number of new listeners orpeople who just come along once
and have a listen to yourpodcast and never come back
again.
And that was Dan Meisner fromBumper.

(02:17):
And I thought, you know, it'dbe lovely to get him on the show
to talk about all of thesedifferent metrics.
What have we got?
You know, what is the download?
Because he famously came upwith the download is not a play.
So I started off by asking Dan,who is Bumper?

Bumper is a podcast data and growth company, and we
focus on both of those pieces.
Using better data to makesmarter decisions about growth.
So we work with publishers, wework with networks, we work with
some independents, and we helpthem increase the reach of their
shows, impact the success oftheir shows.

Sam Sethi (02:55):
It's probably about a year and a half ago when you
came out famously and said adownload is not a play, and set
the cat amongst the pigeon inthe industry by making people
sit up and look at that metricand go, actually, yes, you're
right.
10,000 downloads is not thesame as a hundred plays.
And I think Apple then, withthe Apple Apocalypse, when they
changed the metrics andeveryone's download numbers were

(03:17):
given a massive haircut.
Since then, of course, you'vebeen developing Bumper much
further.
So what have you been doingsince that point going forward?

Yeah, you're right in that our focus has been on
numbers other than the download.
We tend to look at podcastsuccess through the lens of
people, how many actual humanbeings, real people, spent time
with your show.
So we talk about peoplenumbers, we talk about playback

(03:49):
numbers, which is a human beingwith intent hitting the play
button because they wanted tospend time with a show.
And then we look at listen timenumbers, time spent numbers.
And that is an aggregatenumber, but also you can use
that aggregate number to createaverages, average time per

(04:11):
listener, average time perlistener per episode, average
time per listener per episodeper week, you know, those kinds
of measures.
So people, playback, and timespent.
And one of the things thatwe've been really focused on
over the past couple of weekshas been a dimension of that
people and playback number,which is what we're calling

(04:33):
loyalty.
So, not just how many peopledid I reach, but how frequently
are they choosing to spend timewith me?
How frequently are they comingback for more?
So I can know how many peoplehit play on my show in the month
of November 2025, but did theyall come once and not return?

(04:56):
Or did they hit play on everysingle episode in my back
catalog, or somewhere inbetween?
So we've been really interestedin this sort of repeat listener
number, or what we're framingas kind of a loyalty or a
lifetime value number.
How many times do people chooseto spend time with us?
And that's, as we're learning,quite different show to show,

(05:19):
depending on things like releasecadence, release frequency,
volume of output.
A daily show gets way morebites at the apple to have
people return than a weeklyshow.

Sam Sethi (05:31):
And what does that tell the creator?
I mean, once they know thatdata point, what can they do
with it?
What's the value of it?

I think the main value is understanding when
you're trying to grow, do wehave a new listener challenge or
do we have a returning listenerchallenge?
Those are very differentchallenges.
If you don't have enough newpeople coming to your show to
sample it, to kick the tires, totry it out, to see if it suits

(06:03):
their taste or fits a role intheir life, well, that's one set
of interventions.
And those are largely marketinginterventions.
We need more people, more netnew listeners to try our show.
The other problem that a lot ofshows run into is not that they
have a new listener problem,they have a loyalty problem or
they have a returning listenerproblem, which is well, we had a

(06:25):
whole lot of one and donelisteners who came in, hit play,
and chose not to come back asecond or third or fifth or
tenth or twentieth time.
And so the loyalty score thatwe've built into the bumper
dashboard, along with that newlistener and returning listener

(06:45):
breakdown, is a really powerfulway to understand do I have a
new listener problem, in whichcase I might need to do some
different things or find somenew marketing tactics?
Or do I have a returninglistener problem, which is lots
of people coming in for thefirst time who don't come back

(07:06):
for a second time?
And one of the things that wereally got interested in when we
started digging into this wasthe impact of various marketing
tactics.
I'm sure you've seen inSpotify's first party app on
mobile.
If you open up that Spotify appon the front page, there's an
awful lot of video that ispresented to users, and quite a

(07:28):
lot of it is autoplaying video,right?
So if you linger just for a fewmoments over one of those video
thumbnails, it'll come to life,it'll start to play.
And you, Sam, will count as alistener or viewer, and you will
count as a player.
Simply by lingering on thatvideo preview for a short amount

(07:49):
of time.
And so we work with a number ofteams who have benefited from a
whole lot of exposure throughfeatures like Spotify's front
page.
You could also say the samething about any editorial

feature (08:02):
the front page of Apple, the front page of
Pocketcasts.
Many of these apps have sort ofdiscovery features that put
your show in front of a wholelot of net new people.
And so we started wondering howvaluable is that really?
Because of course, you get anice short-term spike in the
number of people or the totalnumber of plays or playback

(08:24):
events.
But does it last?
Do they come back for a secondtime, for a third time, for a
fifth time?
And what we've learned is thatit's very different tactic to
tactic or opportunity toopportunity.
Very often, what's good for ashort-term spike in net new

(08:44):
listeners, getting a whole bunchof people in front of your show
who have never seen or playedit before, what's good for that
net new listener number isn'talways great for the returning
listener number.
And again, the loyalty score,which is a way of understanding
how frequently people come backagain and again, or how many

(09:04):
people fail to come back, thatcan really help you assess the
value of some of thoseshort-term wins that are really
excited to, you know, when theyhappen.
It's easy to be excited whenyou get a big burst of new
downloads or new plays or newlisteners showing up in any of
these provider dashboards.

(09:25):
But does it last?
That's what we were trying toget at.

Sam Sethi (09:29):
So this is the traditional funnel model, isn't
it?
We spend a lot of money gettingin the new listener.
And what you're saying is, arethey sticking around?
Is it sticky?
Because everyone I've talked tosaid, do you want to use the
algorithms of TikTok and shortsand reels and to get new people
in, and then YouTube and Spotifyto get more algorithmic
discovery?
And then of course, everyonestays around then.

(09:52):
And what you're highlightingreally is that everyone doesn't
stay around.
So once you've got that, howcan you change the podcast?
Do you look at the histogram ofit?
Do you say, did they stayaround for the first quarter?
Did they stay around in thesecond?
Was it that first ad thatannoyed them?
Was it the intro that reallyannoyed them?
Do you have that data as wellthat goes beyond just the they

(10:14):
came, they saw, they left?

I love that you're mentioning some of these other
measures, minute by minuteretention or average time spent
per listener, per episode, thosekinds of things.
All of this, of course, workstogether.
And when Bumper works with ateam, we're often looking at
many parts of the elephant,trying to touch the whole and
understand the whole thing.

(10:38):
And yes, these are all veryobviously interrelated.
Large number of net newlisteners come in through a
promotion.
Most likely your average listentime on the topmost episode in
your feed is not going to be asstrong as a back catalog episode
that didn't have a large numberof net new listeners come to

(11:01):
it.
So, yes, there's absolutely aninterrelated nature to these
things.
But I think what I'm mostinterested in is what do we do
with this data and how do wetake action on it?
And so when we look at a showand we see that the loyalty
number is not where we wouldlike it to be, the question

(11:22):
becomes what can we do toencourage people to come back
again?
What can we do to encouragepeople to spend more occasions
with us to listen to the nextepisode or to explore the back
catalog or to use some of thefeatures that are built into
podcast apps for exploringrelated episodes?

(11:42):
And when you look at it throughthat lens, you know, what are
we actually going to change?
If we want our loyalty numberto go up, the only way you make
the loyalty number go up is getmore people to come back.
And so the question is thenwhat are the tactics that we use
to encourage people to comeback?
And if you're looking at it inthat way, you can really easily

(12:04):
spot opportunities.
So if you're on a productionschedule such that you know
what's coming up on the nextepisode, maybe mention that in
today's episode.
Give people something to lookforward to, remind people what's
coming up so that they havesomething to look forward to and
to come back and spend time.
If you've got a deep backcatalog full of episodes that

(12:29):
might still be relevant tosomebody who is brand new to
your show today, what have youdone to steer them to those
episodes?
You could put links to previousrelated episodes in your show
notes or your episode notes.
Some of the podcast apps haveplaylisting features that allow
you to put together acollection, you know, a starter

(12:51):
pack of episodes for a net newlistener that encourage them to
explore that back catalog.
I've worked on shows where theywill specifically call out
previous episodes and encouragepeople to go listen to those,
direct them to the show notes,direct them to a playlist.
And so there's a lot of reallytactical things that if you're
looking for opportunities toincrease the loyalty score,

(13:12):
you're really just asking, howcan we get people to spend more
time with us?
And through that lens, theopportunities kind of present
themselves.
And when you fail to do thosethings, you can notice, oh, wait
a minute, our loyalty score hasstayed flat and we would like
it to increase, but we nevergave people a reason to come
back next week, or we never gavepeople a reason to dig into the

(13:34):
back catalog, or we neverreminded people of a really
killer episode from five yearsago that's highly relevant to
today's guest appearance.
All those kinds of reallyclassic, almost radio style
pitching ahead tactics.

Sam Sethi (13:50):
Yeah.
In don't go away after thebreak, we'll be having a really
good show.
Yes, we remember those tactics.

There's a whole playbook from radio, and I come
from the world of radio, whereit's all about can we get people
through the news break?
Can we get people to the otherside of the ad break?
Can we get an extra quarterhour out of somebody?
Many of those techniques arevery applicable to podcasting,

(14:21):
even if what you're pitchingahead to is not the next hour,
but it's tomorrow's episode,next week's episode, or the
special series that you'relaunching for the new year.

Sam Sethi (14:30):
I think you can still do it within episode, even.
Absolutely.
Hey, later on we'll be talkingabout this, but stick around.
First of all, we're going totell you about this, this, this.
Yes.
Those tactics are still verycredible.
So who, apart from Bumper, ismeasuring this?
Because nine times out of ten,the lazy answer to any question
is how many downloads have yougot as a metric?

(14:50):
Because that's what advertiserswant, that's what every host
gives you.
It's just a simple defaultnumber.
And then when you do actuallyget a play number, most creators
don't want that because guesswhat?
That play number is muchsmaller than the download number
and it doesn't sound so good.
So, you know, are creatorsgoing, Oh, I'd I'd quite like to
actually be the blind man stilland not know what my metrics

(15:14):
are because actually, if I doknow what my metrics are, I
think I might just pack up andgo home because it's too scary.

We're really fortunate here at Bumper in that
most of the teams we work withare invested for the long term
in the health of their shows,their networks, and the
relationships that they havewith their audiences.
And so, yes, if you're lookingfor quick wins because you need

(15:42):
to boost a download numberbefore the end of the quarter in
order to hit some target thatyour sales team has made,
loyalty is probably not yourprimary KPI.
Nor is the people number theverified listener number, nor is
your retention on averagethroughout an episode.
No, you care about downloads,you care about impressions that

(16:03):
are inserted into downloads, youcare about those
revenue-related metrics.
And I'm not trying to downplaythe importance of those.
We need sales teams, lots ofteams need revenue in order to
support the people who work onthe show, support their
families.
Like I don't want to discountthat.
But I will say I'm reallyfortunate because most of the

(16:23):
teams that we're working withwant to know about the long-term
health of their relationshipswith their audiences.
And something like a loyaltynumber, whether we're looking at
it in the short term.
Hey Sam, how many times didpeople listen to Pod News Weekly
Review last month versus thelifetime number?

(16:45):
You can actually look at thosetwo different numbers, the
short-term number and thelong-term number, and you can
understand really nuanced thingsabout the trajectory of your
growth as a show and the healthof your relationships with your
audiences.
And so if your long-termloyalty, your lifetime value
score is going up, and yourshorter term last week or last

(17:08):
month number is going up,congratulations.
You've got really healthygrowth because you are sticky
among your current audience andyou are sticky among the entire
audience that's ever hit play onyour show.
That's what we want.
Conversely, if last month'snumber is down and your lifetime
number is down, I'm sorry tosay your show is in free fall.
And last month's audience, yoursort of current audience, your

(17:33):
most recent active audience, ifthey're less sticky, they're
coming back less frequently, andyour lifetime number is also
being pulled down by thosepeople.
That's bad news.
And then there are, of course,in-betweens that can measure
things like, well, we introducedour show to a lot of brand new
people, which temporarilydepressed our lifetime number,

(17:54):
but the current audience isstill as sticky as they ever
were.
Growth dilution, you could callthat.
You got to get in front of sometire kickers if you want to
reach anybody who's likely tocome back.
And then there's the otherreally, really scary one, which
is coasting on past glory.
You are propped up by thelong-term habitual listening of

(18:18):
your diehard fans, but your morerecent audience is not coming
back as regularly or not comingback.
And so it can be really easy tofool yourself into thinking
we're growing when that growthis really just the remnants of a
declining audience.
My friend Tom Webster, itsounds profitable, is very, very

(18:40):
fond of acknowledging the trapthat some podcasters find
themselves in, which is the trapof super serving a declining
audience.
If your loyalty number is goingup, if your audience as a whole
is becoming ever more loyal,that sounds like a good thing.
And it usually is.

(19:01):
Unless the audience overall isdeclining.
That is a trap that leads tosuper serving a declining
audience.
That is a trap that we know theend result of, which is a very
small group of very happypeople, a very loyal group that

(19:22):
is getting ever and eversmaller.
And for most shows, they don'twant to super serve an
ever-declining audience.
They're interested in growing,increasing the reach, increasing
the impact, increasing thesuccess of their show.
And so these loyalty numbers,both the short-term and the
longer-term loyalty numbers,when taken together, are a

(19:44):
really powerful barometer forare we growing in a healthy way?
Are we declining in anunhealthy way?
Or are we at risk of foolingourselves into thinking that our
loyal audience is an attributewhen in fact that loyal audience
is unlikely to be able to tellyou how to get new people in

(20:05):
front of your show?

Sam Sethi (20:07):
Are you going to make the way you calculate the
loyalty number a public thing,or is that going to say the
secret source within Bumper?

There is very little that is secret about it.
And if you go to a blog postthat I wrote on this subject,
specifically about loyalty, wespell out exactly how you can do
it by hand.
It's a pain in the neck tocalculate by hand.
This is a number, Sam, that isderived from the verified
listener number that we get fromApple and from Spotify.

(20:39):
And it's just a very little bitof set theory, like a small
amount of arithmetic that youneed to do to calculate this.
The pain in the neck part is ifyou want to know if your
loyalty score is moving, you'vegot to calculate it for every
single calendar day that yourshow has ever been in market,
which for some shows that havebeen around for a couple of
years is quite a lot ofarithmetic, not complicated

(21:02):
arithmetic, but the kind ofarithmetic that I like our
dashboard to do.
So if you're a singleindependent producer and you're
working on one show, this isvery calculable by yourself.
And I've written out how youcan do it.
But for most enterprisepodcasters, if you're dealing
with a network, if you'redealing with dozens or hundreds
of shows, it's not the sort ofthing I would necessarily

(21:23):
recommend spending all your timecalculating every single day
for every show that you areworking on.
So we've built it kind of as aconvenience feature, but there's
I mean, it's basic set theory,not complicated.

Sam Sethi (21:36):
So let's be clear.
The download number is a greatnumber to still have.
The unique plays is still anumber that we want.
The total listen time is anumber we want.
We want to know how many appsare actually serving your
episode.
And we want to know also howmany new users have come to that
episode recently and how manyusers are retained within that

(22:01):
episode as a loyal fan goingforward.
And then the sort of metricsthat we start to pan out.
And that's I think what yourdashboard offers, right?

We're trying to help people understand what the
audiences are telling them whenaudiences vote with their play
buttons.
I think it's so easy to pay alot of attention to the kind of
feedback that comes in throughsocial, that comes in through
comments, that comes in throughboosts.
There's lots of ways thatpeople can type words into a box
and tell a creator what theythink of the show.

(22:32):
And our very strong belief isthat many audience members never
write in, never leave acomment, never engage on social,
don't send an email, butthey're telling us things every
time they hit play or choose notto hit play.
And if we can pay attention towhat the audiences are telling

(22:53):
us when they vote with theirplay buttons, that helps us make
better decisions as podcastproducers, as podcast hosts or
talent.
And for people who run podcastbusinesses, it's worth paying
attention to the very silentmajority of people who are
engaging with a show, but notnecessarily the squeaky wheels

(23:14):
who write in every week.
I love squeaky wheels who writein every week, but they are not
the majority.

Sam Sethi (23:19):
Will you be extending it beyond getting the data from
Spotify and Apple?
Will you be looking at YouTube,any other platforms?

We would love to do that.
And it's really a question ofthe availability of the data.
So I know you've had JohnSpurlock on the show to talk
about SPC, which is his proposedway of having more podcast apps
send telemetry back to creatorsaround things like minute by
minute, second by secondretention throughout an episode

(23:49):
or total number of listeners perepisode.
What we're talking about whenwe talk about loyalty fits very
neatly into John's SPCframework.
You can use some of those samenumbers to get to where we're at
with loyalty.
So we'd love to see more ofthat.
You mentioned YouTubespecifically.
One of the challenges withYouTube is that the data
available in YouTube Studio isvery rich, but what's available

(24:14):
through YouTube's analytics APIis a pretty cut-down version of
what you can get.
And one of the missingingredients for YouTube that we
need in order to calculateloyalty is a people number.
You can get it from YouTubeStudio, sort of estimated users
or estimated viewers is the waythey refer to it.
And they don't make thatavailable through YouTube's

(24:36):
official analytics API.
So I would love more databecause I would love to be able
to extend this beyond Apple andSpotify.
But when we look at most of theshows that we're working with,
Apple and Spotify is certainlynot the totality of the
consumption audience, thelistening audience, the viewing
audience, not the totality, butdirectionally enough to be

(24:56):
useful.
And what's fascinating to me iswhen we look at the loyalty
scores between Apple andSpotify, for many shows, they
line up really neatly, week toweek, month to month.
And that to me is validatingbecause Apple system doesn't
talk to Spotify's system,Spotify system doesn't talk to

(25:16):
Apple system.
These are siloed data sets.
But when you have audiences incommon across those platforms
and the common denominator isdid we make a good show?
Did we make a good episode?
Did we give reasons to peopleto come back again and again?
The numbers kind of movetogether in many cases in

(25:36):
lockstep, which I find hugelyvalidating.
A good show is a good show, isa good show.

Sam Sethi (25:41):
So if anyone wants to find out more about bumper,
where would they go?

Wearebumper.com is our website and the dashboard
product that you've beenmentioning, we built all of
these loyalty scores into it,features listen time, features
the verified listener number,all of these sort of deeper, I
would argue, more usefulinsights that you can pull out
of some of the available podcastdata.

(26:06):
That's available to anybody whowants to sign up.
I think we have a trial.
You can just click, sign up,connect your shows.
And if you want to take a peekat some of what we've been
talking about, it's all inthere.
So wearebumper.com, and that'llget you to the bumper dashboard
where you can sign up.

Sam Sethi (26:20):
I think James said our loyalty number was looking
good.
So phew, we're okay.
But we better check.

I've got it up on my screen right now.
I think you should be proud.

Sam Sethi (26:29):
Okay, phew.
Thank you very much, loyallisteners.
Thank you very much as also toDan Meisner.
Thanks a lot.
It's always great seeing you,Dan.

All right, great to see you, Sam.

And the scores are in from our retention from
last week, uh, because I I wentto have a look at it on the BAPA
dashboard before we have that.
What was really interesting istwo little jumps in Spotify.
One jump was about 45 minutesin last week's episode, which
was a chapter called Two PodcastHosts to Avoid.

(26:59):
And I thought, oh well, theywould have been skipping to
that.
But then of course, what Inoticed is that just before then
we had Russell beinginterviewed, and Russell's
interview may not have been foreverybody.
So perhaps people were skippingRussell there.
Similarly, audio is still kingwas another sort of jump in the
Spotify retention numbers.

(27:21):
But perhaps it was peopleskipping our thoughts on
diversity, because there aresome people that don't believe
that that's particularlyinteresting or important.
So yeah, I thought I thought,you know, very interesting
looking at where people areskipping, where people are
staying through the show, alwaysworth a peek.

Sam Sethi (27:39):
Now you can, as Dan said, sign up for free to Bumper
and go and have a look at it.
I think it's a seven-day signup for free.
Dan kindly did say though,James, that our show should be
very proud of our retentionnumbers.
So I I I take that as a goodthing.

Excellent.
Well, I'm pleased to hear thatDan thinks that we're doing all
okay.

Sam Sethi (27:59):
Good.
Now, you had a little one-linearticle in Pod News Daily and it
simply said the podcast techstack, which is a substack blog,
interviewed George Legine,founder of Pod Analyst who might
fix podcast data.
I I sort of click on all theall the links and I go, I wonder
if this one's going to be aninteresting one.

(28:20):
I found the actual blog postsuper interesting.
It's about a guy who I didn'treally know, but he was one of
the people who engineered theiOS radio broadcasting app,
which was sold to radio.co overin Manchester here.
And he also did a lot of workfor Soundstacks.
Okay, he's got some goodengineering creds.

(28:41):
And then what he started to dowas look at the same challenges
that Bumper are looking at,which is where should you be
putting your time and energy interms of analytics?
And his view is not indownloads, not in vague starts,
not in generic retention, but inactual listener behaviour.
I don't know, did you followthrough the link or did you just

(29:03):
put the story up?
I don't know how far you readthe actual blog post.

It's a really good product that he has ended
up making.
It's called Podanalyst.com.
And again, lots of detail inthere, and as you would expect,
Pod News Daily and the Pod NewsWeekly Review are both plugged
into there as well.
So we've got all of our data.
George was uh excited when Isigned up, so that was a good

(29:27):
thing.
And again, lots and lots andlots of interesting data.
What I thought was particularlyinteresting in Pod Analyst,
apart from the fact that it'scurrently free if you want to
sign up while it's still inbeta.
What I thought was particularlyinteresting is that it gives us
our retention numbers for lastweek's show, but it also tells

(29:48):
us that we are not doing quiteas well as other shows on the
platform.
And that is, I think, reallyinteresting.
So you can see here that, forexample, 50%.
Through for last week'sepisode.
We retained 42% of ouraudience, which is apparently
worse than 81% of everybody.

(30:10):
I know.

Sam Sethi (30:11):
Who'd have thought it?
God, it's going to be awfulafter this bank holiday then in
America.

I know, exactly.
Exactly.
After this public holiday,because of course the banks are
always on holiday, aren't they?
But yes, so some reallyinteresting data.
So we're looking forward tospeaking to George next week.

Sam Sethi (30:27):
Indeed, yes.
He was very excited about thatas well.
So I think one of the thingsthat ended that blog post, and I
highly recommend people do readit, is he puts retention, not
downloads, is the new game,which mirrors exactly what
Bumper is saying as well.

Yeah, I mean retention and audience as well,
obviously.
Retention is fine if you'veonly got one person.
But um but uh number ofaudience is also is also very
helpful.
But yeah, no, really good.
So very much looking forward tolearning more about that, and
you can sign up to that as well.

Sam Sethi (31:00):
Now, this week, Patreon launches RSS-based
podcast hosting for its users.
Tell me more.

They do, and it's free podcast hosting if you
are on Patreon.
One of the things,interestingly, that they say is
that you can insert previews ofyour paid episodes in your
public RSS feed to help morelisteners discover and upgrade
to your paid membership, whichof course Patreon does.
I don't know quite how they dothat, but I thought it was

(31:27):
interesting, you know,interesting, for example, seeing
that the podcast, the podcastnamespace is in their feeds,
although they're not supportingany podcasting 2.0 features
quite yet.
Interesting that they're usingCloudflare as their CDN, which
is a nice thing.
Also interesting, I noticed EvoTerra has spotted that it works
well with serialized content aswell.

(31:49):
So fiction podcasters will bedoing pretty well.
What have you seen with uhPatreon's uh hosting, Sam?

Sam Sethi (31:56):
Well, the first thing I did was I took the sample
feed that you put in Pod NewsDaily and I put it straight into
TrueFans and it worked.
There was nothing unique aboutit.
What it did have was that clipsaying about getting premium
content.
So I've got a load ofquestions.
First of all, why are theydoing this, James?
Why are they getting intohosting?

(32:17):
What's the benefit to Patreon?

I guess it's the same benefit as Riverside had
of being, you know, a one-stopshop.
So it's just easier, you don'thave to download a piece of
audio and stick it somewhereelse and everything else.
It's just a one-stop shop.
This is where all of my contentlives.
And what presumably Patreonwants to avoid is for you to use

(32:41):
something like Beamly orSupporting Cast and then have a
membership over there as well.
And so anything that Patreoncan do to raise the number of
supporters, you know, that thatwill obviously please everybody.
So I'm guessing that that's thethe the reason why they're
doing it.

Sam Sethi (33:00):
Okay, so the feed that I put into TrueFans was an
open feed, it could have goneinto any app.
They also provide privatefeeds.
So the traditional Patreonmodel is I go there, I pay for
some digital content, I get aprivate feed, and I can put that
into my app.
Now, TrueFans doesn't supportthat, but s overcast and and

(33:21):
pocket casts do as an example.
So you could then use upprivate content.
My question to you, James, ishow are they going to combine
open RSS with private feeds inthe same RSS feed?

Well, they're not.
I think what they're doing isthey are promoting the fact
that, oh, look, here is here isthe audio that you could get if
you signed up to the privatefeed.
So it's pretty well the same aseverywhere else, the same as
supporting cast, the same as youknow, as as any other service
who supports this sort of thing,supercast.
You have a public feed thateverybody consumes, and then

(33:58):
each listener has a private feedthat that uh they get given.

Sam Sethi (34:03):
Now, Oscar Merry from Fountain came up with the
concept of putting a short clipin the primary enclosure and
using the alternative enclosurefor the premium RSS, which is
what we at TrueFunds are alsodoing.
And the idea is we're combiningin the same RSS feed both

(34:23):
freemium and premium content,which again is different from
what we think Patreon might bedoing now.
It's going to be interesting tosee whether hosts now start to
look at premium content in thesame way that we have been
banging the drum for, or willthey continue just to allow
private feeds from Patreon andtake all the money?

(34:45):
What was interesting readingsome of the details about this
was Patreon has now 25 millionpaying customers.
They celebrated a milestone acouple of months ago of $10
billion they've sent from fansto creators.
And what is clear is that youknow they are now trying to mop

(35:06):
up, I think, the remainder ofpeople, as you said, you know,
why why not just host of this?
And I suspect this is a lostleader in terms of you know,
they're giving it away for free.
So much like Spotify, it's uhand Riverside, it's just a case
of, yeah, it might cost us a fewpennies, but we'll get more
members, we'll get more content,we'll get more people.
So what will traditional hostsdo now?

(35:29):
What what what's your thoughtson what they should do?

Well, I mean, they they will get more money,
but uh, you know, uniquely withPatreon, they get money from
every user who is sellingcontent, and they also get money
from everybody who is buyingcontent as well.
You know, so they so they youknow grab a a percentage of both
of that.
Yeah, which is absolutely fair.
I think what most podcasthosting companies will be doing

(35:54):
is what our sponsor Buzzsproutdoes, and that's offer a premium
RSS feed as well.
So you can do exactly the samething with the Buzzsprout site.
You can upload a little clip,you can say, if you want to buy
this, then go toweekly.podnews.net and and gain
access that way.
Uh, we don't have a premium RSSfeed, so please don't go and do

(36:16):
that.
But my guess is that the largerpodcast hosting companies will
do that because they can seethere being revenue there.
The smaller podcast hostingcompanies probably won't be
doing that.
But but if you you know youtake a look at Beamley, you take
a look at, you know, otherall-in-one services like that, I
would guess that you know thatthat is probably where they're

(36:37):
going in terms of that.
And the benefit of a premiumRSS feed, and I know that you
love your L402, but the benefitof a premium RSS feed is that it
works everywhere.
It works on Apple, it works onSpotify, it works in every
single platform.
And so therefore, you know, ifif you're wanting to do
something clever with L402, Ithink that that's probably an
addition on cleverer apps, butpeople will still need really to

(37:03):
sell access to a premium RSSfeed as well.

Sam Sethi (37:06):
Yeah, no, I'm not I'm not saying that premium RSS is
gonna go away.
I I've always said that if weare to do something repeating
what's been done before andtrying to outdo the dominant
player in the market is nevergoing to be successful, right?
So we can't be Apple, we can'tbe Spotify, we can't be YouTube,
and I don't think we can bePatreon.

(37:27):
Yeah.
But we can try and do somethingthat's different to those
platforms.
That means that users come tous, and in the set in that way,
they will get different featuresand functions.
And I think what's interestingwith RSS.com offering a free
hosting now as well, it'll beinteresting to see how much more
they lean on to things likepremium content, not premium

(37:51):
RSS, but the same way as privatefeeds.
Because I don't believe RSS.comdoes private feeds at the
moment, do they, James?

Yeah, I don't know, is the quick answer.
I'm I'm I don't think that theydo.
No.
But I I know that you knowCaptivate, for example, does, I
know that Buzzsprout does.
It may just be that it's justactually quite small.
The amount of people that willbe selling this sort of thing is
quite is quite small.
And so actually, you know, it'sworthwhile for Patreon to be

(38:19):
having a look at this, but prbut may well not be worthwhile
for you know somebody who isrelatively small like Podhom or,
you know, he says, thinking ofanother one, Castos, or you
know, those sorts of people.
But yeah, it's it's you know, II find this sort of I find this
a very interesting thing.
It it's you know, as I say, itworks with most places.

(38:41):
I should correct myself, thethe Buzz Sprout Premium RSS
doesn't work with Spotify, butit does work with things like
Apple, Overcars, Pocket Cars,Podcast Addict, Castro, and
various other things.
So, and I think you know, thesecret really is trying to help
people to plug those special RSSfeeds into their RSS player,

(39:02):
and that's where you knowsomething which is more
integrated using L402 willclearly win, you know, in terms
of just it just works.
And I think it's um quitedifficult with you know trying
to get somebody, you know, toget that particular feed into
Apple Podcasts or whatever itmight be.
The the way that BuzzProut endsup doing that is that they have

(39:24):
a QR code, so it's quite youknow, it's relatively easy if
you pay your money, it'll giveyou a QR code for you to scan on
your phone and that willsubscribe you automatically to
your own secret feed.
And so maybe that's the way ofyou know of doing these things.

Sam Sethi (39:39):
Yeah, I think I mean look, I'm I'm saying that with
my CEO hat for TreeFunds, wehave to support private feeds.
We don't, and it's a feature onthe roadmap, but we also want
to do the combined freemium andpremium.
And I and again, I think we'llsee in 26 which way the market
goes.
I'm sure I'm sure it won't moverapidly, but maybe we'll see by

(40:01):
the end of the year.
Let's go on, James.
Going, going, gone.
Now, the this is a report fromAshley Carmen from Bloomberg,
where she's basically said thatpodcasts are in the zeitgeist
and companies are looking tocash in on the moment.
And based on that, it seemsAudio Boom are being touted

(40:22):
around as a potential MApurchase along with other
companies.
What are your thoughts on thisone, James?

Yeah, I, you know, I don't know whether
Ashley is, you know, Ashley hasconnected a couple of different
companies up for sale to aZeitgeist moment.
I I I don't necessarily seethat, but certainly there are
people out there who are forsale and there are willing
purchases by the looks ofthings.
I do notice that uh the podcastexchange in Canada has been

(40:54):
acquired this week by a companycalled Native Touch.
So there's been an acquisitionthat's gone on there.
Now the podcast exchange hasbeen has been under the
Bankruptcy and Insolvency Actfor a couple of months or so.
So they've been essentiallytrying to find a purchaser.
But what was interesting aboutthat bit is that they got quite

(41:16):
a number of offers.
They got three where theyactually signed the NDAs and
talked, you know, shared all ofthe financial information and uh
and everything else.
And that is a relatively smallpodcast advertising sales
company based in Canada.
So if there are a number ofpeople who are interested in
that, you can imagine that thereare a number of people who are

(41:38):
gonna be interested in in uhaudio boom, you know, and and
other companies, you know, suchas that.
So definitely something goingon there in terms of trying to
sell those individual things.

Sam Sethi (41:52):
No, I'm not gonna say a bubble, but you know, like
the AI growth, and now manypeople calling it an AI bubble.
We are in good times.
I mean, podcasting is in ahealthy place.
We are seeing more platformsadopting podcasting.
We talked about Netflix andTikTok last week.
So there is this growth ofpodcasting and awareness of

(42:13):
podcasting amongst users.
We always see that in thereports.
More people are listening topodcasts.
So is it a case of we've we'vegrown the business for three,
four, five years, we'reprofitable, time to cash out.
And I wonder as well whethertraditional media companies,
which are seeing dwindlingaudiences on radio and TV, are

(42:34):
beginning to look at on-demand.
And I know you call it cheapTV, but are they looking for
on-demand content, both audioand video, because that's where
the younger audience is.
Is this where the MA might comefrom?

Uh I mean, that may well be the case.
Uh, you you can certainly seethat it would make sense for
large companies to be focusing alittle bit more on their video
side, if only because that waythey can earn some additional
money from the video advertisingthat they sell.
But yeah, I you know, it's it'sit's always interesting, I

(43:08):
think, working out exactly whatthe deal is uh in terms of what
people are interested in buying.
I think it also makes sense tohave a look at a bit of
consolidation.
I mean, you you say we're in agood place in terms of
podcasting.
I'm not I'm not so sure.
I think that there are quite alot of conversations at the
moment going on around aroundads ad uh revenue and that kind

(43:31):
of side.
And I'm not necessarily surethat I see that, but you know,
who knows?

Sam Sethi (43:37):
Yeah, no, I I I only say that because I think we've
seen more people talking aboutpodcasting, as I said, Netflix,
TikTok recently, YouTube hasbeen over the last couple of
years, Spotify certainlygrowing, looking at their
revenue numbers, ACARS certainlydid well.
So it just feels likeeveryone's doing quite well in
the space, and maybe some peopleare saying, yeah, now's the

(43:58):
time to get out.
Take the money while while thegoing's good.

Yeah.

Sam Sethi (44:02):
Well that's I don't know.

That always makes a bunch of sense, yeah.

Sam Sethi (44:06):
Well, of course, just to remind everyone, we will be
doing various shows, which Jamesand I will be giving our
predictions, but in the nextcouple of weeks, our friends and
supporters of this podcast willbe doing their predictions and
highlights of 2025.
So that'll be on the 12th ofDecember.
James and I will be doing ourhighlights and lowlights on the

(44:27):
18th of December, and we will bedoing our prediction show on
the 9th of January.
So all of these things aboutwhat's going to happen in 26,
what will happen to hosting,what will be MA.
You'll have to wait until the9th of January, I guess.

Announcer (44:42):
Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.

Yes, awards.
So the Political Podcast Awardsin the UK has announced its
2026 shortlist.
The award winners will beannounced in January in
Westminster in a ceremony thatwill be hosted by Anthony
Scaramucci and Giles Brandrethanis jumper.
So that should be good fun togo and see.
Also.
I might do that, actually.

(45:06):
Yes.
I mean, you know, Giles willcertainly put on a good show.
It's a good awards from what Iseem to remember.
The 2026 Women PodcastersAwards are open for entry next
week, December the 1st.
And this year, if you want toenter early, then do, because
the early bird nomination ratefor entries is just $10 until

(45:28):
January 10 of your Americandollars.
The award ceremony will be inMay.
The submission portal for theiHeart Podcast Awards 2026 is
now live, and that will close onDecember the 7th.
Good luck for that.
And many congratulations to themany winners at the Arcast
Podcast Awards, which wereannounced at the second annual

(45:50):
event in Little Rock in Arkansasin the US.
And uh specific congratulationsto this podcast.

Janet (45:58):
Hey, Tiger Talk fam.
I'm Janet.
I'm the host of Tiger Talk, andI'm in fifth grade.

Hey, Janet Fam.
Tiger Talk, they won the Kidsand Family Award.
They won the Young Pod Award,and they won the rising star
categories as well.
And they're hosted with oursponsors, Buzz Brats.
Many congratulations, TigerTalk.
And it's uh a pretty goodawards list if you want to go to
the Pod News website and take apeek.

(46:24):
Yes, events and PodFest haspublished its uh schedule.
The event is January the 15thto the 18th.
It's in Orlando in Florida, inthe Renaissance Hotel in
SeaWorld.
It's going to be the 11th year.
Do you know who's going to bethere, Sam?

Sam Sethi (46:39):
Not you.

I am going to be there.
Yes, I'm going.
Really?
Yes, I've pressed the button.
I've pressed the button.
Not just that, but I will be Iwill be speaking.
But I think I'm speaking onlyto the fancy people with the pro
tickets.
So that'll be fun.

Sam Sethi (46:53):
Well, of course.
I mean, I wouldn't expectanything else.

But I'm looking forward to that.
That should be fun.
I've not been to a podfestsince 2018.
I really enjoyed my time there.
It's a very differentexperience to podcast movement,
but that is certainly happening.

Sam Sethi (47:09):
Delete your social media.
Delete your social media.

Yeah.
Yes, exactly.
I'm very good on social media.
I don't see anything other thanum, well, uh, anything
particularly.

Sam Sethi (47:18):
Um we can go through Mastodon if you want, but no,
let's not do that now.

I don't think I'm saying particularly much.
Anyway, it should be okay.
And anyway, it's Mastodon.
The Americans won't know whatthat is.
Exactly.
The podcast Hall of Fame isgoing to be looked after PodFest
in Orlando as well.
The 2026 induction ceremonywill be hosted by JLD himself,
the host of Entrepreneurs onFire, which has released more

(47:44):
than 4,000 episodes and he earnsso much money from that
podcast.
It's unreal.
So that should be uh fun.
I'm looking forward to seeingRob Greenley, who I know will be
there, and that should be agood evening.
Of course, we've lost a memberof the podcast hall of fame
recently with uh Todd Cochran,so I'm suspecting that there
will be something said on thenight as well.

(48:06):
But that should be that shouldbe really good fun as well.
And the other event, of course,is Podcast Movement Evolutions,
which is coming up in March atSouth by Southwest.
Here's a fun thing.
The podcast movement team havejust announced that they are
paying for speakers next year.
They're looking for 10-minutetalks for the event, and all of
those speakers will get a $500honorarium.

(48:28):
There's a long word, inaddition to entry to the event.
If you want to take part, youjust go to the website and find
out more you've got until theend of this year to get your
pictures in, which is exciting.

Announcer (48:40):
The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

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

Sam Sethi (48:49):
Well, let's kick off with some unhappy people.
Overcast has launched a newfeature, so they're rolling them
out as fast as they can, itseems, called Promos and Reruns.
First of all, tell me whatpromos and reruns are then,
James, and then we'll talk aboutwhy people are not happy.

What the feature does is it removes any feed
drops or trailers that it seesin your feed.
So there are quite a lot ofpeople who will either sell or
will help another podcaster byputting a trailer in their feed.
And Marco Armin, the developerof Overcast, has decided that he
doesn't like that very much.

(49:25):
And so it will automaticallynot put those feed drops or
trailers into the feed.
That's what the promos andreruns feature is all about.

Sam Sethi (49:34):
So the rest is science, which was launched this
week by Goal Hanger, would notbe allowed then because it was
put into the RestisEntertainments feed.
Is that the example?

Indeed.
So that's one example.
Another example is what Libsonis doing with a company called
Pod Roll, where they whereepisode number two is a trailer
for another show.
Yes, all of those sorts ofthings would be something that
Overcast magically gets rid of.

Sam Sethi (50:00):
I was gonna say how, but I'm not that bothered, but
the how.

I think it's based on the title of the of the
episodes and and a little bitof sort of heuristics in terms
of you know where it is.
If it's if it suddenly appearsin episode number two, then you
can probably know that that'snot necessarily, you know, a
proper, a proper episode.

Sam Sethi (50:24):
So John McDonough, friend of the show from Calaroga
Shark Media, is not happy.
Why is he not happy, James?

He's not happy because he says, guess what,
gang?
Those feed drops pay prettywell.
And he points out that Overcastitself earns its money from ads
in Overcast promoting showsthat you may also like, which is
exactly the same.
So a little bit hypocritical.
And I think it's also a littlebit hypocritical with Overcast's

(50:54):
developer, Marco Arment, who herecently posted a thing on
Reddit criticising Podcasting2.0 for, in his words, not
collaborating to get widespreadagreement on a set of proposals.
But if you ask me, you wouldn'tget widespread agreement by for
something that removes revenueopportunities for podcast

(51:17):
creators.
So I think again, a bithypocritical, he's saying that
podcasting 2.0 didn't sit in aroom and make sure that
everybody was happy withsomething.
Well, in this particular case,nobody's going to be happy with
losing some money.
So yeah, I I uh I I was all forgiving Marco the benefit of the
doubt last week.
Not so sure this week, to behonest.

Sam Sethi (51:39):
Well, you say that you know he should implement the
funding tag because it's worthyof support based on his
original idea.
Again, something that he shoulddo.
It'll be interesting to seewhether users like it.
I think John McDermott said thefeed should be the feed as the
creator intends.
And I think I agree with him onthat 100%.
And then I think if you want togive users tools that allows

(52:02):
them to change that feed becauseit's their personal experience,
equally, I think that's fine.
But I think if the appautomatically removes stuff, I
think that's a no-no.

Yeah, and I don't know whether or not you
opt in or opt out of thatparticular service or or
whatever it is, but you know,it's a slippery slope from there
to ad removal from podcasts.
And, you know, if Marco Arminwants to do that, well, best of
luck.
But I think you will be on theon the other end of quite a lot
of legal conversations going onthere.

Sam Sethi (52:33):
Yeah, and John did point out, wasn't there a
company we highlighted that washad its whole business model
around removing ads frompodcasts?

Yes, there was a company called Audia, which has
not quite gone bankrupt, butit's been bought folded into
another company, and I don'tbelieve that they're making that
product anymore.
Right.
Probably just as well.

Sam Sethi (52:53):
Now, moving on, pocket casts, they've done
something quite nice.
Well, they've done a couple ofthings really.
The first one is they've addeda new feature called playlists.
So I always thought they hadthem, but anyway, that they've
basically allowed you to createmanual playlists, or you can
automate a smart playlist basedon a set of rules.
Tell me more, James.

Well, the smart playlist based on a set of
rules, here's the secret they'vealways had that.
It's been called filters, andnow it's called smart playlists,
because the new thing is manualplaylists as well.
So you can produce a manualplaylist.
Now, Pocket Casts, as my as myunderstanding, doesn't support
the playback of episodic shows.

(53:32):
So if you want your fictionpodcast to playback in the right
direction, you know, with theearliest episode as the at the
top of the list, then this isprobably the way of doing it,
making a manual playlist rather,rather weirdly.
But you can also share thoseplaylists with uh others and so
on and so forth.
Apple has had that for a while,Spotify's had that for a while.

(53:54):
It's nice to see Pocketcastsgetting to feature parity in
terms of that.
The thing that I'm sort ofslightly more interested and
excited about is that PocketCasthas tweaked their search so
that their search works muchbetter now.
It now includes episodes aswell as podcast titles.
They've added suggestions asyou type.

(54:15):
It deals with non-Englishsearches rather better as well.
So they've done something quitesmart there.
That actually rolled out on thefirst of this month.
But uh clearly pocket casts arestill, you know, uh going on
and developing new features,which is good.

Sam Sethi (54:34):
Ellie's gonna be one of the people who is going to
give their highlights andpredictions in our show.
But also, she mentioned acouple of things.
One is on December the 8th,they do their playback 2025,
which is very similar to whatSpotify do as well.
So that she's very busy workingon that, but she has said in

(54:55):
the new year we will have her onthe show to talk about all the
things that pocket casts are upto.
So looking forward to that aswell.
Yeah, very good for them.
Now, not the only people to beplaying with playlists.
Spotify this week has added AIprompts for playlists.
So the idea is that youdescribe your perfect playlist

(55:16):
and Spotify's AI will go off andcreate it for you.

Excellent.
Well, I'm I'm delighted to seethem joining YouTube, which has
had that for the last two years.
So, but again, it's gettingfeature parity and that and that
sort of thing.
Um I think it's I think it'sinteresting though, the the the
big sort of difference here isthat you can get it to update

(55:41):
every day by six in the morning.
So you can actually build some,you know, some interesting
shows, you know, playlists basedon uh what you have been
previously listening to as well.
And of course, bring inpodcasts in there too.

Sam Sethi (55:57):
Yeah, pod news daily, every morning at six in the
morning with your coffee.

Yeah, I think it's a winner.

Sam Sethi (56:03):
Now, Spotflix, the Netflix Spotify integration
seems to be taking a little stepforward.
Spotify is a new re-lib themuse behind Stranger Things.
It's a mini promo that they'veput into the Spotify UI and it
shows clips from the Netflixseries as well as music videos
and has some sort ofover-explainers.
And then again, is this thefirst step of that integration

(56:26):
between the two platforms,James?

No, I think it's just a piece of advertising,
and it's a piece of reallyrather boring advertising that
Spotify is doing with Netflix.
Oh, we'll take the music fromthe Netflix universe and we'll
put it into a playlist.
Great.
There's nothing particularlyexciting about that, and I think
actually, what has beeninteresting this week is that uh

(56:48):
a UK radio company of allthings has jumped into bed with
uh Netflix and has produced aproper radio station for
Stranger Things.
It's called WSQK The Squawk.
It's available anywhere in theworld.
Not quite sure how they'redoing that in terms of music
licensing, but let's gloss overthat bit and it sounds amazing.

(57:11):
It's such a good, good thing.
You can find it in the GlobalPlayer, it's getting broadcast
in London on DAB if you livethere.
But also you can uh have alisten on the web as well.
Just search for Global Playerand look for WSQK in there, and
it's brilliant.
It's a proper 24-hour a dayradio station.
It play it sounds really good,sounds as if it's from the the

(57:34):
1980s.
It plays all of the songs thatyou would expect it to play.
It's got DJs on there, it's gotadverts for all of the real
DJs.
Yeah, real DJs, not AI DJs.

WSQK (57:48):
This is WSQK the squad.
Think you've got what it takesto dump the leaderboard, then
get down to the palace arcade indowntown Hawkins.
We've got a dig dug.
Yeah, look at that.
Dragons later, and the onlytemperature.
Bring your quarters, bring yourfriends, and bring your A-game.

(58:09):
This week's Top of theLeaderboard is Mad Max.
Can you unfeed our champion?
The Palace Arcade, whereHawkins plays to win.

And it really shows that, you know, lukewarm
things like, ah, we'll put aplaylist up that uh Spotify have
done, it really doesn't hitwhen you can actually have a
proper sounding, you know, aradio station talking about
what's going on in the 80s.

Sam Sethi (58:38):
I'm going into London later.
I will well have a listen onthe way in.
Another thing that Spotify isup to, it's raising its prices
in the US.
It's done this in the rest ofthe world.
And in early 2026, it seems,according to the Financial
Times, that they will be risingprices going on at Spotify.
Yeah.
Yeah.
This is what we expected, Isuppose.

Yes, indeed.
Going up by, well, who knows,actually, because nobody knows
quite yet.
But Spotify, from myunderstanding, is already more
expensive than Apple Music.
Weirdly, pays music artistsless, but is already more
expensive than Apple Music.
So that will make thatdisparity a little bit bigger.

(59:18):
The other sort of side on thatis that my understanding, again,
is that you know, YouTubemusic, well, it's kind of much
the same sort of cost, but youalso get ad-free YouTube.
So, you know, it's going to beinteresting to see what happens
with Spotify and the amount ofusers that Spotify has when they

(59:39):
start to push the numbers up.
They're clearly trying to pushsome of their other numbers up
at the moment.
They have a four month freetrial offer.
Gosh, which is quite a thing.
That's going on in the US aswell.
So, yeah, really interesting.
Now, of course, Spotify haveput their prices up all over the
world.

(59:59):
Here in Australia, but also inmuch of Europe, Latin America,
and so on.
So I wonder what'll happen now.

Sam Sethi (01:00:07):
Are we measuring apples and oranges, though, when
you talk about Apple?
Because Apple Music is astandalone item to Apple
Podcasts, to Apple audiobooks,to so they're three different
products.
You can say the same withAmazon.
And I don't know if YouTubeMusic and YouTube Normal, and I
don't think Apple um YouTube dobooks.
I don't really know that one.

(01:00:29):
Are we comparing the same?
Is what I'm trying to say.

James Cridland (01:00:32):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, we're we're never
comparing the same when you getinto that sort of detail, no.
But of course, Apple Podcastsis for free.
You always get access to ApplePodcasts.
Apple Audiobooks, of course, isa paid for thing, as is as is
Apple Music as well.
So yes, you're not gettingquite the same sort of thing.

(01:00:53):
But if you're just looking fora music service, and I'm still
fascinated at learning how manypeople who use Spotify never use
it for podcasts or never use itfor audiobooks, I would be
fascinated at seeing the numbersthere, and I'm absolutely
convinced that I will never seethe numbers there.
But yeah, so I'm I'm sure thatI'm sure that there is a

(01:01:15):
difference there in terms of thecost.

Sam Sethi (01:01:17):
I only mention it because obviously if you combine
the price of Apple Audiobookswith Apple Music, you may get
the same price as Spotify.
That's all.
Yeah, well, maybe.
Uh finally, James Usha haslaunched the PSO category
benchmark.
What is that?

Yes, uh, it's very much part of their push
into making them the number onecountry, the number one company
for podcast search optimizationor PSO.
And it's a really simple,straightforward thing.
It compares your show to othersin its category.
So how long are your show notesin comparison to the rest of

(01:01:56):
the category?
How long are your episodes?
When are you releasing?
And all of that.
So you can see, for example,that the Pod News Daily is
actually dinged in the numbersbecause we only release Monday
to Friday, we don't releaseSaturday, Sunday.
And so they say, Oh, you'reyou're releasing less uh
episodes than some of theothers.
So, you know, so that wasinteresting to see.

(01:02:18):
I'm not quite sure whether ornot that's a good or a bad
thing.
And no, I am not working overthe weekend.
But uh yeah, and the otherthing that it says, uh just just
as a hint, is that both of ourshows, the Pod News Daily and
the Pod News Weekly Review, bothhave lower numbers of reviews
in Apple Podcasts than others.

(01:02:38):
So if you wouldn't mindspending a couple of minutes
just giving us, you know, goinghard on the five stars, that
would be much, much appreciated.
That would be a nice thing.

Announcer (01:02:48):
Boostigram, booster grand, boostergram, super
comments, zaps, fan mail, fanmail, super chats, and email.
Our favorite time of the week,it's the Pod News Weekly Review
inbox.

Yes, so many different ways to get in touch
with us.
Fan mail by using the link inour show notes, super comments
on true fans, boosts everywhereelse, or email, and we share any
money that we make as well.
We did get a fan mail thisweek, Sam.
It was it was an interestingfan mail.
So it comes from Alaska, fromuh Glenn Allen in Alaska, and

(01:03:24):
I'm not sure if that's the nameof the person that sent this
through or whether that's wherethey live.
Who knows?
Anyway, it says, Wow, it'stalking about the Riverside
interview that we had last week,and it said, Wow, if that kid
from Riverside was supposed tobe their appointment on PR, they
really missed the bus when theyhired them.
They really did not make theRiverside hosting service look

(01:03:48):
good.
In fact, they made it lookpretty pathetic.
Gosh, and it goes on and on andon.
Kendall is a very good umperson.
I'm not sure that the Riversidehosting product is ready, I'll
be honest with you.
I don't think, from the answersthat I was getting from her,
that that uh service is quiteready for prime time.

(01:04:11):
And I am surprised thatRiverside have released it in
that form.
But perhaps they discoveredthat Patreon was going to
release theirs in the next week,and they thought, well, we will
jump in and release ours first.
But yeah, I think I think fairenough for you to jump in on
that and give that uh feedback.

(01:04:31):
I think that's probably fairenough indeed.
Some messages coming in throughBoosts.
Thank you for that.
You can hit the boost button inyour app.
Currently, I can read the onescoming from TrueFans and the
ones coming from Fountain.
So that is a lovely thing.
What have we got first here,Sam?
One from Martin.

Sam Sethi (01:04:48):
Yes, Ali2 is a similar tool like Riverside for
recording, editing, andpost-production, and they have a
hosting feature.
It's all good with friendlycompetition.
I really look forward to testout TrueFans hosting.
Starship Boost with 1701Satoshis.

Yes, very nice.
Thank you, Martin.
Seth Goldstein also sentthrough us talking about uh the
RSS.com free podcast hosting.
Free for niche and local isgood to get more people into
podcasting.
I do agree with Sam that itseems like a race to the bottom,
but glad to see that there's afree version that's better than
Spotify's free version.
Oh yes.
The fact that you have to put alocation in on your episodes

(01:05:28):
really makes it for localpodcasts, which I think is the
best use case for this.
I do wonder what's goingthrough Sam's head with all of
these hosting options withTrueFans hosting coming online
soon.
What's going through your head,Sam?

Sam Sethi (01:05:41):
Oh my god.
No, no one needs to know what'sgoing through my head.
Really don't need to know that.
Yikes.
There's a thing.
No, I I'm very happy and verycalm about it all.
Yes.
Excellent.
He says.
Through gritted teeth.

And one and one to Martin for the Pod News
Daily, actually.
Good to hear that Spotify'spartner program is now available
in the Nordic in the Nordicscountries.
How about starting a podcast inor about Monaco?
Yes, well, there are only38,000 people who live there, so
no is the quick answer.
And also we've received amessage from Fountain, from

(01:06:16):
Silas.
Thank you, Silas.
AWS is kind of crazy.
They managed to be number onedespite the fact that the UX is
so rubbish that most people useAWS through other interfaces
like Vercel, Savalia, Convex, orothers.
Do you know what?
I was unaware that there wereother interfaces for AWS.
Yes, not that those don't addmore functionality themselves,

(01:06:39):
but the basic idea is true.
Pod2 Cloud seems look seemslike a good idea, he says.
So excellent.
I'm pleased that you thinkthat.
Thank you for sending thatthrough, and thank you to Oscar
at Fountain FM for the slightlycryptic but usable way that I
can actually see that message.
So that's nice.
And thank you too to the powersupporters, all 22 of you very

(01:07:02):
kindly donating every singlemonth, including John Spurlock,
including James Burt, andincluding Ms.
Eileen Smith.
You can do that too if youlike.
Weekly.podnews.net is where yougo for that.

Sam Sethi (01:07:16):
So what's happened for you this week, Sam?
Well, we've taken another stepforward, so we connect our
hosting plans to Stripe and tothe TrueFans wallet.
So we tested that last night,and that all works well.
We think, depending on the workwe do this weekend, we'll be
able to open the doors nextweek.
We've got about a hundredpeople on our wait list looking

(01:07:38):
to move over to TrueFansHosting.
So we'll start testing witheach one of those.
So that's quite nice as well.
Yeah, so that's all going goodgums.
And a quick thank you to BauerMedia, who gave me some VIP
tickets to go and see CalvinHarris.
So that was very nice.
I went with my wife anddaughter.
Ah, well, very nice.

(01:07:58):
There's a thing.
Obviously, obviously, if youwere here, they would have given
it to you as well, James.

But it's a bit on the thing to come over.
It's a long way to come.
It's a long way to come, but Ihope that you enjoyed it.

Sam Sethi (01:08:09):
Yeah, and talking of Oscar from Fountain FM, I saw
Oscar and Nick along with JulieCostello and Ashley Costello in
London this week.
So that was quite good as well.

Ah, very good.
Very good.

Sam Sethi (01:08:22):
James, what's happened for you?

So very excitingly, if you use uh this
is for the two people that mightuse one of these products, but
if you use the Carji searchengine, which is the paid-for
essential search engine, whichis much better than Google, or
you use a web browser calledHelium, which I'll mention in a
minute, then now you can uhsearch Pod News directly from

(01:08:46):
those services.
Just uh start your search witha bang, and that's an
exclamation mark, and then theword PodNews, and then it will
magically be a search straightinto the Pod News website, which
is a nice thing.
Helium is this web browser thatI have found, which is
basically Google Chrome, but allof the Google stuff taken out,

(01:09:07):
and all of the stuff thatfrankly shouldn't be in a web
browser taken out.
So password managers take itout, which is what they've done.
You know, anything that is notto do with a web browser, they
have pulled out.
And it's it's really good andreally fast, works well, works
with all of the Chromeextensions and everything else.
So it's worth a peek.
I do notice that Carji, thesearch engine I use, has just

(01:09:30):
moved Orion, which is its webbrowser, into version one this
week.
I've I've been to give itanother go.
It's still not quite ready, Idon't think.
But if you want to use a WebKitbrowser instead of a Chromium
browser, then knock yourself outbecause uh Orion is a pretty
smart thing.
So that's all nice.
I'm betting you use neither ofthose things.

(01:09:51):
Yeah, you're right.

Sam Sethi (01:09:52):
Congratulations.
Well done.
Yes.

Carji is very good though, and in fact, I do
have some free some freethree-month trials for Kaji to
give out.
And yeah, it's it's just sonice using a search engine where
where you don't see adverts.
That's uh that's a very goodthing.

Sam Sethi (01:10:10):
There was a a search engine you mentioned a little
while back that you could payfor.
Is this Kaji where it yeah, itwas a paid for search?
Is this what Kaji is?

That's that's exactly it.
And so Kaji gives you yeah, andso Kaji has its own search
stuff.
It's got a podcast tab.
Yeah.
So that actually works.
So uh yes, it's got lots of uhsearches.
Quite a lot of the searchesthat it does are via Google or
via Bing or via other people,but it's not all, it's not just

(01:10:43):
a big wrapper onto Bing as DuckDuck Go is.
It's um it's it's ratherbetter.
And it's got AI if you want it,but you you have to ask every
single time if you want AIresults.
So it's uh it's pretty good.
Nice.
Anything else happened for you?
Uh we had a massive great bigstorm last week.

(01:11:04):
Massive great big storm.
So you may remember that we hada massive great big storm a
couple of weeks ago and thepower went off for days.
This time the power didn't gooff at all, but there were uh
hailstones that were 10centimetres wide.
I don't know how manycentimeters, I don't know how
big that is in inches, but it'sbig.
That's big.
Yeah.
And so I'm gonna have to calc10 cm in inches.

(01:11:27):
Just for the Americans.
Hello, Americans! Four incheswide, four inches wide.
If you can imagine hailstormslike that.
Anyway, it turns out thatputting solar panels on the roof
and 10 centimeter hailstonesdon't really work.
And yes, and so I am now, Ithink basically half of my solar

(01:11:54):
panels are now broken.
Excellent.
Ouch.
It's not what you need.
And the car, did that survive?
The car was fine.
Weirdly, I was out driving atthe time, and I thought, and I
thought, oh, this is scary.
And I went to hide in a petrolstation.
So there I was in an electriccar in a petrol station.

(01:12:14):
So that was fun.
Didn't and um managed to avoidthat being you know being
smashed up.
My wife's has got a couple ofdings in it, so that's not
particularly great.
But yeah, but it's it's youknow, got like great big, great
big holes all over the all overthe solar panels.
Now we're in this.

(01:12:35):
You just pop the picture in andI can see how they still work.
They still work, but the issuewith them is that they might
still work, but there'sabsolutely no structural
integrity whatsoever.
So they are they are hangingon.
And as soon as the wind blowsparticularly hard, it's gonna,
yeah, it's gonna fall over.

(01:12:55):
So uh yeah, they they'rethey're it's all over the place.
So, yes, so the insurance manis going to arrive at some point
and and tell me what I can dowith them.
I'm rather hoping that I get toreplace the whole lot, because
that would make sense, wouldn'tit?
You you don't want to replacehalf of them and leave the other
half.

Sam Sethi (01:13:11):
Well, um, so we'll just looking at them, it looks
like every panel's been hitanyway.

Yes.
Well, we'll see, we'll see whathappens.
If not, then I hammer out andgo up there now quickly.
I think four of them have beenhave been hit.
So yeah, it's not not a not agood thing.
Not a good thing.
But anyway, that was that was apiece of fun to discover.
Uh I mean they are also filthy,so uh there is always that too.

(01:13:36):
Yes, but still, and we hadanother storm uh this afternoon
and there was hail again, butthankfully not 10 centimetre
hail.

Sam Sethi (01:13:44):
And you're having a heat wave in Australia as well,
I think.

Yes, we are.
So yeah, so at the it yes, it'sbeen particularly hot all all
day today.
The reason why I'm sounding asif I am half asleep is that it
has been so hot.
Tomorrow's maximum is 35Celsius.
So, you know, that is that isyou know, not not good.
That's um 95 Fahrenheit.

(01:14:09):
Yes.
So uh yes, it's not not gonnabe fun to get out of here.

Sam Sethi (01:14:12):
Yeah, my friends are moving back to Australia from
the UK.
They live there for six months,they live here for six months.
They're going from minus two tothirty-five.
Great.
They they are not gonna toasttoo much, are they?

No, it's uh yeah, it's the it's the it's the
the heat, but also just thehumidity here where we are.
Right.
Particularly the humidity whenit pours it down for a day, and
then the sun comes out, and ofcourse it boils all of the water
away, and so everything istremendously humid, and then and
then it starts all over again.
Anyway, there we are.
Woe is me.

(01:14:47):
Um but still, but I'm mostexcited.
I've booked my flights toPodfest, flying with American
Airlines direct from Brisbane toDallas Fort Worth, which I've
not been able to do before.
Uh, they've only started justputting that particular flight
on.
So I'm quite quite lookingforward to that.
That should be uh a nice,interesting new way into uh into

(01:15:08):
the US.
And I even get Wi-Fi on thoseflights.
So uh yeah, that should benice.

Sam Sethi (01:15:13):
So uh what are we doing the recording from the
flight, are we?

Well, that would be fun, wouldn't it?
But no.
No, okay.
That's definitely not gonnahappen.
Okay.
And that's it for this week.
All of our podcast stories thatwere taken, of course, from the
Pod News Daily Newsletter atPodnews.net.

Sam Sethi (01:15:31):
You can support this show by streaming Sats, that
still works, and you can give usfeedback using BuzzSprout
thumbnail links, which alsowork, uh, which you can find in
our show notes.
You can send us a super commentor become a power supporter
like the 22 Power Supporters atweekly.podnews.net.

Our music is from TM Studios.
Our voiceover is Sheila D.
Our audio is recorded usingCleanFeed, and we edit with
Hindenburg.
And we're hosted and sponsoredby BuzzSprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.

Announcer (01:15:59):
Get updated every day.
Subscribe to our newsletter atpodnews.net.
Tell your friends and grow theshow.
Support us and support us.
The pod news weekly review willreturn next week.
Keep listening.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Crime Junkie

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Why A Podcast Play Isn’t Enough And What To Track Instead

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang

Crime Junkie

All Episodes

Why A Podcast Play Isn’t Enough And What To Track Instead

Stuff You Should Know