Episode 221: Two Guys One Mic

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Podcasting 2.0 for May 16, 2025.
Episode 221.
Two guys, one mic.
Oh, yeah.
It is sunny in Philadelphia.
And kind of nice in Texas, too.
I wonder what it's like in Alabama.
Hello, everybody.
Welcome to Podcasting 2.0. This is the
official board meeting of the future of podcasting.

(00:21):
And we can tell you exactly what podcasting
is, trust me, and what it isn't.
Yes, this is the only boardroom that doesn't
need a free jet from Qatar to travel
at warp speed.
We got it all self-propelled.
I'm Adam Curry, here in the heart of
the Texas Hill country and Alabama.
The man who instantly recognizes a download bot
when he sees one.
If you say hello to my friend on

(00:42):
the other end, the one, the only, Mr.
Pox himself, Dave Jones.
It's been rainy here.
Oh, no.
Really?
Very rainy.
Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.
We're in a pattern.
We're stuck in a pattern.
Oh, that's golf stuff coming up that you
guys get, right?

(01:02):
Yeah.
Yeah.
We had a shoot.
We went from Monday.
Let me see.
Monday, it was in the morning.
It was about 55.
And then now it's 102, 105.
Like what just happened here?
That's crazy.
That's crazy.
It hit us not as hard as it,

(01:23):
you know, never, it's never as bad here
as it is in Texas, but it was
like, yeah, it was so nice and beautiful
last weekend.
And then like today it's like 90.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it's going to dry.
It's going to cool off though.
We're going to have a nice little, I
don't know if y'all are going to
get any of it, but we're going to
have a nice little shot of cool air
coming in.
I don't know.
I don't know what's going to happen.
I've been inside, man.

(01:43):
I've been inside.
I've been, I've been vibe coding and I'm
doing a good job.
I'm happy.
I'm a happy man.
You you're the, the pep in your, in
your step is back.
Is audible.
Yes.
Yes.
Yes.
Well, do you mind if I just.
Last week you were just depressed.
No, I was, I was beyond depressed.
I was, I was hurting.
I was crying.
I wasn't, I was not feeling good.

(02:04):
I was physically just hunched over.
Tina looks at me, she says with a
hump, with a hump, she says, are you
grumpy today?
It's so weird to hear you grumpy because
you never hear it.
I know.
No, you, you just hide it so well.
No, but that's not even hiding.
I'm, I'm normally just super chipper, super happy

(02:27):
chipper kind of guy.
That, that is literally what I am now.
I would like to give a brief update
on this week and vibe coding.
Just everybody knows where we're at.
I'm sorry.
I know that everyone's really impressed with it.
And, uh, and I need to thank a
number of people, yourself, uh, Oscar, Mary included
many other developers who emailed me and said,
yo, what you're going through is what it's

(02:50):
about.
It doesn't matter how you're doing it.
It doesn't matter how you're doing it.
What you're going through is what it about,
what it is, what it's about.
And once I took that on and once
I realized that this stuff that I'm using
is really just a plow, it's no more
than a plow.

(03:11):
I've got to look behind me, make sure
that the tracks are straight.
It's not wobbly, that the blades are sharp
because the intelligence is me.
And once I took on that role and
I kind of, you know, I, I looked
at what had happened and I stepped back
and I saw all the problems.
Cause what you get into at a certain
point is error, copy, paste, go error, copy,

(03:34):
paste, go, just get in this loop.
And then you're not even paying attention to
what the, what the, what the box is
telling you.
And you're not, you know, you, you stop
even looking at logs.
I go, whatever.
I just did it.
He throw an error.
I didn't throw an error.
I threw an error.
I do it again.
I got it working.
And it is, it is dynamic.
I'm really, really loving it.

(03:55):
And I came up with a whole new
method to, to fix everything.
It turns out just as an aside.
And this was me going through the documents,
no help to grok.
Liquid soap has liquid soap.
Yeah.
You, you piped into the, to the signal
and you were like talking about liquid soap.
I was like, Whoa, what you you've gone
back to that.

(04:16):
Well, that worked out.
Yeah.
I mean, liquid soap has a lot of
issues.
It's very difficult to program it's scripting language,
but it does a couple of things very
well.
And it just streams, it streams metadata and
it has all this tricky stuff that it
can do.
But I just ignored all that because no
AI can figure out liquid soap.
However, it has a telnet interface that will

(04:38):
accept connections from local hosts of the machine
that is running on liquid soap has a
telnet.
Yes.
Yes.
And is the, one of the weirder things
I've heard in a while.
Well, it certainly works better than trying to
figure out the API calls to this thing.
Cause that's just broken.
It returns parse errors when there's no parse
error, you know, like line number one, which

(05:01):
is the, is the shebang part line number
one, character 36.
There's no character 36.
The amount of times I ran the dust
to Unix command, come on, give me a
break.
It's just giving me a false error.
Clearly it's just throwing something out there.
And so that didn't help.
But then once I discovered the telnet interface,
I actually wound up programming a function inside

(05:24):
of liquid soap that I call through the
telnet interface.
And now all my logic, everything I want
to do, I just do with an external
script, including updating metadata, reloading playlists.
It's beautiful with a reliable, like Python, I
get Python.
It's reliable.
I can just use this.
It's easy to change.
If it throws an error, it tells you

(05:45):
the truth, the truth.
I tell you the truth, the truth.
It tells you the truth.
I can't get past this telnet thing.
Why?
To me, that's like, I'm back in the
old days of the internet, man.
I'm telnetting into, into servers.
This is before SSH.
Did you set echo to on?

(06:07):
You mean in the script commands as you
type them, you know, that was, Oh no,
you know, it has that built in.
That's right.
I remember that when you'd be typing, you
couldn't see where you're typing.
You couldn't see what you're typing.
Echo on.
This takes me back.
I even did a, you know, a, um,
uh, what was that command where you, um,
you looked at someone's dot plan file finger,

(06:29):
finger.
Yes.
I think I fingered the liquid soap.
Oh, very soapy.
Very soapy.
Yeah.
Do you need control?
Uh, it's like control, right?
Square bracket to exit.
That's literally there when you log in control,
right?
Square bracket to exit.
It still says that this.

(06:51):
So you are, you are lit.
You are telnetting to localhost.
Yes.
No, no, Oh, Oh no, sir.
Don't you dare try and telnet to localhost.
You had to be telnetting to one, two,
seven.zero.zero.one port one, two, three,
four.
Because if you do, if you do localhost,
you're going to get, Oh no, man.

(07:11):
IPV six.
No, I don't know where I'm going.
And telnet's like, what are colons?
I don't understand.
What are you trying to reach?
I'm not here.
I'm not answering.
So I'm, I'm super happy.
I really am.
It's running now.
And you know, I'm, I'm, the thing is
when you do this with a, I call
it the feed to stream feed number two

(07:32):
stream.
Um, you know, the thing is, there's a
lot of, there's a lot of there's by
the way, people put stuff in.
It's, it's as bad as RSS feeds when
it comes to ID three tags.
I'll just say the Sean Ryan show puts
800 affiliate links and Amazon links in the

(07:53):
comment and description fields of the ID three
tags.
We've got one megabyte images going in there.
It's a mess.
Try it.
Try it.
Creating this.
What, what, Oh, I don't know.
Is this at the hosting company level that's
creating this, that's no, that's creating this Frankenstein
monster.
That's at the, at the, uh, making the

(08:15):
MP three level.
Cause you would think that the host would
clean some of that hosting company would clean
some of that out.
Like, yeah, you'd think, well, I learned reject
say, Hey, take this big old image out
of there.
So I just want to, you already know
part of the story.
I want to relate this because it relates
to podcasting and the podcast industrial complex.
So here's what I thought happened.

(08:36):
Then I'll tell you what happened.
So, um, I, this is a couple of
days ago.
And, uh, and so I have all these
scripts working like, okay, now I want to
easily deploy a new feed to stream instance.
So just, it's running on the same box
by saying, here's this feed URL, set up
the directory, set up the parsing script, set

(08:56):
up everything, set up the Mount point on
ice cast, do all that.
And as I'm testing that, and by the
way, I have a cache set so that,
you know, if, if you, if I'm hitting
the same feed and I already have the
MP three file, it's not going to download
it again, even cross feed.
So I have a beautiful little caching mechanism
set up.
So I didn't want to be downloading over

(09:18):
and over again.
Um, but of course, uh, you know, you
get a feed with 47 episodes and it's
all, these are Godcaster feeds.
So it's all, um, episodes from different podcasts.
Right.
And so I, I set it up and
as I'm testing this thing, part of the,
uh, the template that creates a new instance

(09:39):
for a new feed to stream sets a
cron job.
And so I'm testing, I'm testing, I'm with
the same feed over and over again.
And then, you know, okay, okay, whatever I'm
done for the day.
I'm going to bed or dinner or whatever.
It turns out that my script of course
had created, you know, like 80 cron jobs
of exactly the same feed.

(10:00):
And, and it was programmed to not run
everything at the same time.
So it basically was running the same feed
parsing on a cron job every 30 seconds,
just nonstop.
So it's not re don't downloading all of
the files, although, you know, with a, with
a big feed like this, there's going to
be something new pretty often.

(10:21):
Certainly if it has Fox news hourly report.
So the next, so the next day I
come in, I'm like, holy crap, I'm blocked
from every single service in the universe, including
pod track megaphone.
I mean, every, everything is blocking me.
Every single thing.
I'm like, what is going on?
I said, oh, so I see the cron
jobs like, oh man, I, I created some

(10:41):
kind of download bot, not really downloading everything,
but certainly doing requests, doing head requests, et
cetera.
You, you, you thought you had sort of
like inadvertently DDoS the hosting company.
Yes.
And, and now I'm like, oh crap, what
am I going to do?
And so I'm like, all right, I'm, I'm
going to try a different IP address and
I'm really sorry about this.
So the, I would try a different IP

(11:03):
address and same thing blocked.
I set up a, a VPN on a,
on a nanode, you know, one gigabyte nanode
in London just to make sure it's not
the same IP block.
I'm getting blocked again.
I'm like, what is going on?
This is crazy.
So I start diving in, turns out that
in some iteration of my parser script, magically

(11:26):
Grok decided to change my user agent from
Godcaster app 1.0 to Python lib.
Yeah.
Yeah.
URL lib.
Yeah.
Python URL lib.
I'm like, oh, okay.
So I change it, obviously.

(11:47):
And, you know, and I say, Grok, did,
did you change it?
It changes.
It just says, no, you did.
Oh yeah.
It just fell short of blaming me for
that.
So it had changed that.
It's okay.
And then immediately everything starts working again.
I clear out the entire cast just to
make sure downloads everything.

(12:08):
Now, besides Buzzsprout, which we discussed on the
previous show, which explicitly blocks anything from Linode,
there's not a single service that I could
find.
And this includes some big hosting companies that
don't just happily accept a download bot as
long as it has a user agent in

(12:30):
it.
Right.
And to me, this just means that I
know I'm sure that your, your server logs
and the IAB spec and that everybody can
filter that out.
But can you really, you know, if I'm
just jumping around at different IP addresses, I'm
pretty sure not going to do it, but
I'm pretty sure with some effort, I could

(12:52):
create a download bot that masks itself as
something else and increase downloads for anybody.
I'm not pointing the finger at anybody, but
come on.
You should, I mean, you should be blocking
this stuff.
Please don't block me.
But I told, I told Tom, I was

(13:14):
like, I was like, Adam's going to put,
Adam's going to put a, an HTTP header
and it says, this is Adam.
Please don't block me.
It's fun.
The first 12 minutes of pod news weekly
review.
Oh, I haven't heard it yet.
Is it James complaining about Google still downloading

(13:36):
his stuff over and over again?
No, no, no.
The first 12 minutes of, of, of, of
pod news weekly review, which is, which according
to them is the only thing that anybody
ever listens to is roughly the first 12
minutes.
Well, they start off, they start off by
saying, this has chapters jump around as much
as you like.

(13:56):
Okay.
And there's a reason for that.
So like, they, they talk about the, they
talk about a couple of things, but they
get into play counts.
But the first thing I talked about was
audience drop off, which I thought was pretty
interesting.
You know, I mean, you can very clearly
see.
So this show, for example, this show may
be slightly too long, Sam.
30, 30, 34% are still listening by

(14:19):
the end of the first quarter, 17%
still listening by the end of the second
quarter, 10% listening by the end of
the third quarter and only 14% actually
complete.
And what, what numbers is this based on?
What, what data?
Uh, this is the spot.
I think this is the Spotify dashboard.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
What, what is, that's interesting.

(14:41):
I just thought that was interesting because if
you down, so if you are listening to
a very niche industry podcasts, like pod news
weekly review, and we say very targeted subject
matter as, as is our show.
Yes.
It's if you're, if you decide to start

(15:03):
listening to that, like, why would there be
such a high drop off?
I mean, you're, you really have to know
where you're going to get to a show
like that to begin with.
And then you're only going to listen to
like the first 12 minutes.
I don't understand.

(15:24):
I really don't understand this.
It's like, it's like going and subscribing to
a podcast about, um, different types of, uh,
HVAC refrigerants and then only listening to the
first five minutes of each episode.
Like there's a really weird dynamic going on
there that I just do not understand.

(15:45):
I mean, I'll, I'll, so I just look
at the no agenda numbers and we got
around 800,000 uniques a month.
And I'm, and this of course is only,
uh, streaming payments data.
So take it for what it's worth.
It's a small percentage of people listening, but
I think it's a representative sample.
And so no agenda by, um, within 30

(16:09):
minutes, we've lost about 12%, which is understandable.
Yeah.
The big drop off comes at, um, the
first donation segment about an hour and a
half in, and then we're down to 38%.
So now you're, you're down, you're not down
38%.
You're down to 38% remaining down to

(16:31):
38%.
And then that's, that stays pretty consistent until
the second donation segment.
Funny enough, that then drops down to, so
now you're three over three hours in, it's
a long show.
And then we're down to, uh, 28%.
And then it goes up a little bit
at the end for the end for the
tip of the day and the end of

(16:51):
show mixes.
Now, if I look at, um, curry and
the keeper and no agenda also has chapters.
Yes, it does.
It does have chapters.
I don't know.
I don't know if people, I mean, I
have no idea how people use chapters.
Um, but what's interesting about no agenda and
the chapters is since Dreb Scott does the
chapters, they're not immediately available upon publishing.

(17:13):
So there's, there's some lag there.
Um, and I think a lot of people
are, are listened to no agenda.
They're going to listen to it very quickly.
Yeah.
So I'm looking at curry and the keeper
that is like, it's like solid.
Up until donations.
And then it just drops down to 67%,
but that's it.

(17:35):
It's solid.
So yeah, I mean, it all depends.
Um, now of course, if they had an
ad, if they were running ads, which they're
not, if they had an ad, um, three
quarters of the way through the show, they
really shouldn't get compensated based upon number of
downloads.
I think that's the point we're making here.
And the, they go, they go on to

(17:56):
talk about, uh, about the play counts, which
is really, it's so, you know, there was
this huge, like, uh, you know, like earthquake
that went through the podcast world a couple
of years ago with apples.
I was 17, baby.

(18:19):
Yes.
Yeah.
And we sort of think that, Oh, well
now apple fixed it.
Yeah.
But this, you know, they're, they're them talking
about the play counts as, as it relates
to podcast, but he's weekly review shows that
really, there's still a lot of question marks.

(18:40):
Um, the other thing though, um, is that
we don't actually know how plays are calculated.
We know that plays of trailers and clips
aren't included, which I think is the right
way of doing things.
Um, Spotify have given a little bit more
information this week in terms of how they're
worked out and they're worked out the true
fans way, which I find amusing.

(19:00):
Uh, so a play is only counted once
per user, per session, per episode.
So if you pause, um, if you play
an episode and then you pause it and
then you start playing it again, that's one
play.
Now, interestingly, that's two plays on apple.
And so I did a little bit of
work on this show and I thought, okay,
what is this show?
Um, you know, what, how many plays has

(19:22):
this show got, um, on apple podcasts and
on Spotify.
And interestingly, over the last 60 days, we've
had a total audience size, quite a small
audience size because of these two platforms aren't
really used by our audience of 185 people
on both Spotify and on apple podcast.
So that's nice.
So we've, so we've got some really nice

(19:43):
equal numbers here.
So the play count on Spotify is 715
and the play counts on apple 2,800
almost four times as many plays from the
same audience size because apple measures a play
differently to Spotify.
Yeah.
I've been following this conversation because they've been
talking about it for a couple of weeks

(20:04):
and it's like, no one will actually say
how they calculate plays.
And I'm like, well, that's, uh, let me
coin the phrase dodgy to say the best.
Let's say the least.
I mean, we have a play count on
Godcaster.
Dave, why don't you explain, lay it all
out there.
Give us, give us our magic sauce, our
secret play count.

(20:25):
Okay.
Secret sauce secret is there's a, there's a
few different things happening.
So we have, we measure a play and
a resume as different things.
Yeah.
So when you play it, that's a play.
When you hit, when you first start listening,
that's a play.
When you resume listening, that's a resume.
It's a different thing.

(20:45):
So if you, if you stopped and then
you picked it up two hours later and
it does pick up where you left off,
that's just a resume.
It's not a play.
Right.
Right.
And then the other thing is if you,
and, and we also use the UL ID
identifier, which is stored, which is cached in
local storage in the browser.
So we're always sending the UL ID along

(21:06):
with the play so that we can de
-duplicate those plays and say, okay, well this
is not, and so this is, you know,
we got two plays within the same hour
for the same episode.
Let's say that somebody skips all the way
to the end and then it repicks and
then starts that episode over.

(21:26):
So that's going to count as a play
again, but the UL ID tag allows us
to de-duplicate that and say, no, that
wasn't a play.
That was a, that was actually just the
same guy, the same.
It was, that's just, it still only counts
as one play.
So, I mean, like we really try to
not double count anything if, if at all
possible.
And here's, here's what's interesting.

(21:49):
So we've, and this is important because, so
first from my own perspective, I haven't really
looked at download numbers for any of my
shows for 15 years at least.
I really don't care.
All I know is, hey, how many people
donated?
Not the amount necessarily.
So like yesterday on No Agenda, the people
above, it was like 29 people who donated

(22:10):
above the line.
That is one of the lowest of all
time.
And I'm not, and I'm not, I'm not
complaining about the total dollar amount.
I'm complaining about the number of people who
are donating.
It's like, you know, we have 800,000
people.
No one feels like giving anything back.
And when we've been talking to some of
our clients, some radio stations and people who

(22:32):
produce very large programs that are on a
thousand radio stations.
And so we give them this beautiful dashboard
as a program producer, you can log in,
you can see all of the different plays
and interactions, everything that's happening in all these
different radio stations and churches that use the
Godcaster.
And there's, and the data is beautiful.
I mean, there's lots of information there.

(22:53):
The one number they care about, where did
the donation come from?
Because we track that through the funding tag.
So you can say, hey, I got a
donation here, 50 bucks.
It came from KHCB in Houston.
I love those guys.
That's all, that's all the attribution part.
That's all they care about.
Have you looked at any of the other
numbers?
No, not really.

(23:14):
Not really.
I don't, I don't really care.
And that's why value for value is such
a beautiful system.
And it also makes you feel better.
This show probably gets more people donating smaller
amounts than No Agenda did yesterday.
And I feel so much happier just that
it's, it's not about the total.
Ultimately, of course, I want to be able
to pay the rent, but it's really about,

(23:35):
that's the engagement factor.
It's like, just send me a dollar.
Lots of, we have lots of people send
us a couple bucks.
I love that.
Or a couple of sats, you know, two,
two, two.
What is that?
How many pennies is that?
That's not the point.
It's like, that's the interaction.
That's the feedback loop.
That's the thing that makes me as a
podcaster, a happy person.
Then hearing this, I think that, you know,

(23:58):
they're looking at their play count.
Wow, that's great play count.
But then they look at the actual numbers
like, well, we don't really have that many
people listening.
And now they feel depressed.
So it's not, it's not good.
It's not a, it's not a good metric.
Well, the Apple, the, the download numbers show
like in the, they talked about Apple specifically
in the download numbers.
And that shows pretty much kind of the,

(24:19):
pretty much the same thing.
But Spotify is tiny for us.
It's 6% of our plays.
Apple podcasts, interestingly, way bigger, 32% of
our plays.
So what does that tell you?
That tells you that Apple podcast has four
times the amount of downloads, but seemingly in

(24:39):
terms of audience has the same amount of
audience as Spotify's numbers.
Of course, neither of these platforms actually use
the IAB anyway.
So it makes the IAB look a little
bit ridiculous.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Oh man.
Yeah.
Four, four times the amount of downloads for
the same number of people listening.
So that, that tells you that the Apple

(25:00):
download apocalypse is, it's ongoing.
I think, I mean, it could be, I
mean, it could be all kinds of stuff.
I, I just don't understand why YouTube doesn't
explain their views either.
But if you dig deep enough, what is
it like 20 seconds of someone clicking play
and viewing that's a view.
Yeah.
And the thing that strikes me too, is
we just do not, we really don't know.

(25:22):
I don't think anybody knows or really cares
that much.
If these Apple user agents are actually Apple
podcasts.
Oh, I mean, just because you're claiming that
you are Apple podcasts app doesn't mean that
you actually are.
No, you could be a down, you could

(25:43):
be an Adam Curry download script.
No, no, that's Lib, that's Python, Lib, URL,
Lib, get, fetch.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So these numbers, it's just, it's, it's so
suspicious that no one wants to explain how
they do these numbers.
It's just nuts.
And by the way, huge opportunity for the

(26:04):
modern podcast apps, huge opportunity if we wanted
to share that data and stuff like that,
which I know some people are working on.
So I'm excited about that.
And I mean, I think follower counts make
a lot of sense to if somebody, those,
how do you actually measure a follower count?
What is the technical measurement?

(26:24):
Well, you know, so like a Overcast reports
this and in the user from the app
itself from the app.
Right.
Yes.
Yes.
I mean, those are helpful because then you
can say, okay, well, I mean, uh, you
know, uh, Podverse knows how many people are
subscribed to such and such show.
They can, they, uh, Mitch could stick that

(26:47):
into the header.
Right.
Now, now Frank, now Franco doesn't, I mean,
that's, that's, that's a, a pure distributed app,
but there's no way that he's not aggregating
that information.
That's all on device, but something like a
Podverse or Fountain or those kinds of guys,
they, they would know those numbers and they
could report them back.

(27:08):
And so, and it's essentially what's happening.
It's a private reporting that happens.
Right.
And I think this is what John Spurlock
is trying to formalize.
Yeah, exactly.
To put that into, you know, into the
header.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And we need to talk about that.
Um, um, uh, it's on my notes.
We just haven't been able to get to
it, but I want to talk about that
because I think it's a great idea.
It's very helpful.
It's, it ends up being a private report

(27:29):
where you can say, you know, on my
app, your show has 300 followers.
Yes.
And you kind of, you stop thinking about,
to a degree, you stop thinking about how
many downloads or listens you get.
And you're like, well, you know, I've got,
I've got a, this is my, my audience

(27:51):
is the people who follow me.
And I know that my every, every episode
I put out, it's going to be in
front of their eyes in some way and
they have the option to listen to it.
Right.
So, I mean, and that's, I think that's
kind of almost more important than.
It's a great, it's a great number to
have.
And you're right, it's private reporting and it's
not exposing what users are doing.

(28:11):
I think it's a great, a great way
to report.
I think it's absolutely a very valid thing.
Oh, the harp.
Sam Sethi with a mini, mini harp boost.
777.
What happened to Sam, man?
He used to be the big baller.
He says.
High roller.
Yes.

(28:32):
The only three metrics that matter for creators.
I don't like that word.
Listen time, percent completed and value paid.
These are what true fans focus on.
We show play counts, but the podcast can
turn those off and hide them in the
creator settings.
Hashtag choice.
Yeah.
But I'd put value paid first and I

(28:53):
guess listen time.
I mean, I know the listen time by
what people email me about, you know, like,
Hey, I heard this thing at the end.
Yeah, I guess that's important.
I guess so.
Anyway, to be discussed, put that on the
notes for a future board meeting.
Uh, by the way, I'm not sure I
can do the board meeting next week.

(29:13):
I can't do it.
We're both out of town.
That's right.
I'm on the way to Nashville.
You're right.
And you're, you're where, where are you?
Where are you?
I'll be in, I'll be in the forest.
Foraging.
Yeah.
Me and my son are doing some backpacking
next week.
Oh, nice.
That's beautiful.
I will be, I will be in the,
in the, in the wilderness.
So we spoke last week in the meeting

(29:33):
about some new things coming from fountain.
You and I have received, I actually got
a full on demo the other day because,
uh, uh, Korean, the keeper will be a
pilot podcast for this.
And the, and the keeper has agreed.
I just threw it out there.
I did.
I got the boss gave me permission.
Um, and to detail what they're doing, because

(29:55):
it's something that's very valuable for all podcasts,
app developers.
And I think there's some valuable information for
hosting companies.
Please welcome to the boardroom, uh, Oscar Mary,
uh, and Dovey Doss.
Hello guys.
Hey Adam.
How's it going?
Hi.
It's good.
Hi.
It's Dovey Doss.

(30:16):
Hi.
Yes.
Yes.
It's going well, guys.
Good to speak to you again.
Yeah.
It's good to be back.
I was trying to remember when the last
time we spoke was maybe like towards the
end of last year when all of the
LN address conversation was the thing of the
moment.

(30:37):
It's not like that thing of the moment
has really gone away.
It's, it's still a thing, but I will
say I, I, I continue to get, uh,
all kinds of, uh, boosts and streams from
all kinds of apps.
And it, uh, it also comes in, uh,
my 1% comes into my strike wallet.
So things are working one way or the
other.
It's, uh, it's still humming along.

(30:59):
So, uh, maybe not with this.
Sorry.
And with cash app launching lightning addresses as
well.
I think it, it really shows that, um,
lightning addresses is the standard that's going to
be adopted by every, you know, payments company.
Yeah.
Well, this is, I think something we discussed,
maybe even predicted in the board meeting.

(31:19):
It's like all just like strike all these
different apps.
Now they're not going to do KeySend, but
they're all going to do LN addresses.
I'm sure Venmo is close behind.
Everyone will be doing this.
And with the so-called genius bill failing
to pass by, uh, you know, enough margin,
like, I don't know if they're going to
be able to bring that thing back out

(31:41):
of, uh, out of the depths of the
dead.
Uh, it was kind of coincidental that the,
you know, so that whole stable coin thing
failed, boom, all of a sudden we have
lightning on cash app with LN, LN addresses.
I just thought that was interesting timing.
Anyone else think that was interesting timing or

(32:03):
am I just floating in the wind here?
Yeah, I'm not sure about the timing, but
I think it's, it's massive for, um, helping,
you know, podcasters and their audience understand what
lightning is when you can point to cash
app and say, Hey, you know, that thing
that was a cash, uh, cash tag or

(32:23):
whatever they called it.
That's now a lightning address.
It works in the same way, but it's
interoperable.
It just, you know, some of the complexity
of lightning kind of melts away.
Yeah.
But it's also just good for humanity.
I mean, the ability to, I don't know
if they charge any fees other than network
fees.
Uh, I haven't looked into it actually, but

(32:45):
for humanity itself, just to have a payment
rails that is outside of the existing system,
I think is fantastic.
And even for those people who are already
on Bitcoin, uh, and have wallets, I would
say half of the requests, customer requests, and
the emails I get from ours as blue

(33:06):
customers have been, Hey, why can't I use
this wallet?
Why are there only two choices of wallets
that I can currently use?
Right.
So I think that's a very important issue
practically for podcasting right now.
So, um, when we spoke to you guys,
the first thing I thought is, Oh my
Lord, they're sleeping together because they're all in

(33:26):
the same room.
This is very concerning.
I'm not quite sure what's, uh, what's going
on.
Uh, do you guys want someone to tell
us, uh, what's happening, what you're doing, and
then we can get into some details.
Yeah.
Why is Dovidas in the room with you?
Yeah.
Why is he there?
Yeah.
And where are you even sharing a microphone?
Yeah.
We're in the same room.
We're sharing a mic.

(33:48):
This is wrong.
This is too cozy.
Put your pants on, put your pants on
Dovidas.
No.
Yeah.
I'll give like a high level, like overview
and Dovidas can share his thoughts as well.
But just to take a step back, obviously
we've been working, um, on Fountain for a
few years now trying to push forward, um,

(34:12):
podcasting 2.0 value for value open payments
using the lightning network.
And I think we've had amazing success over
the last couple of years.
Um, we've seen, you know, through the, um,
the wallet shim that you guys enabled, we've
seen thousands of podcasters claim their show on

(34:33):
Fountain to enable payments.
Um, and I think there's a lot of
success there in terms of helping podcasters get
paid, but also, you know, encouraging that feedback
loop and providing discovery as well, which is
what we've done in the Fountain app.
I think over the past like year, we've

(34:53):
kind of been reflecting on the challenges specifically
around onboarding.
So onboarding podcasters to this new world and
also onboarding listeners.
And, you know, we've worked really closely with
Dovidas over the years, you know, uh, we're
both in London.
Um, and we've had many, you know, late

(35:15):
nights doing the, the American live streams at
4.00 AM.
So, and, and also, um, with RSS Blue
as well, um, you know, the majority of
the RSS Blue hosting customers would actually use
Fountain as their primary wallet.
So for a podcaster onboarding to RSS Blue,

(35:39):
it would almost be this kind of double
onboarding step where you have to go to
two places to sign up.
You have to create two accounts.
You have, uh, your kind of set up
and analytics in two different places.
And that really, uh, we felt in many
discussions that we had this past year was

(36:02):
really hurting the onboarding.
The other thing to kind of just frame
all of this is that for us as
an app, we have felt at times that
there's things that we wanted to do.
There's things that we wanted to try or
test out and the kind of like waiting
game for hosts to adopt some of these

(36:24):
podcasting 2.0 tags and features was a
bit frustrating because we couldn't really, we didn't
feel like we could push things forward.
So yeah, that's kind of a bit of
the background, but long story short, um, a
few months ago we had a conversation, um,
me, Nick and Dovidas and essentially decided to
join forces and, um, build and work on

(36:47):
a new podcast hosting product that kind of
brings the best parts of the fountain service
around payments, onboarding wallets, uh, the social activity
that we have in the app, or then
also bringing Dovidas' expertise on the hosting side
with the RSS feed generation and some of

(37:08):
the really cool stats that he's done there.
So yeah, that's what we're working on.
And then just one more thing I'll say,
and before I let Dovidas give his view
on everything is that, um, although we are
now kind of like getting into the hosting
side of things as well, the way that
this has been built within our systems is

(37:29):
that it's totally separate.
So everything that the fountain app does around
payments, and we've got a bunch of new
stuff that we've been working on, which we
showed, uh, you guys in, in the call
earlier in the week.
Um, this works in the fountain app, but
it's all pulled from the RSS feed.
So there's no kind of like platform connection

(37:53):
between our hosting products and the app.
Everything goes through the RSS feed.
Um, we're, we hope that when we share
more about these new payment flows that other
app developers can also, um, you know, check
them out and experiment.
This is actually, um, quite interesting, you know,
for, I think quite a while people have,
there's always been these, um, these ideas of,

(38:16):
well, hosting companies should pay apps or hosting
companies should have their own app.
And, you know, I don't think that's really
what hosting companies do.
And so you've done in a way, kind
of, uh, something that was very difficult, I
think, to do for established companies.
You've come together and said, we're going to
do this as a team.
We're both going to benefit.
But from everything I saw, that is the

(38:36):
nice thing is that every single podcast app,
every single one can benefit because it's all
in the feed.
There's no API calls.
There's no sneaky business.
There's no, as you said, no platform.
That's pretty impressive.
Yeah, exactly.
And, and, and what, that's what we wanted
to do.
You know, we wanted to, um, showcase new
things and, and actually have some feeds that

(38:58):
we could use to test out with rather
than pestering people to make changes to their
feeds or asking you to do it, Adam.
But yeah, I don't know if you want
to give your kind of side of things
and.
Yeah.
Um, you know, I named the company RSS
Blue, which, you know, one, it means I'm
really bad at marketing, but secondly, it means

(39:19):
I really believe in RSS feeds and joining
with Fountain.
I always want to ensure that that remains
the core of the idea of how we
distribute the podcasts.
We've seen so many challenges over the last
couple of years, what Oscar mentioned regarding onboarding,

(39:41):
but also things like analytics and just really
just explaining things to people.
There are just so many concepts that you
need to go through to onboard people, to
podcasting 2.0, to explain what value for
value is, then people need to understand what
nodes Bitcoin, Lightning, Keeson are.
And some people will do that, but the

(40:04):
majority won't.
And I think we have to make it
much, much easier, uh, just like any successful
technology has done over, uh, over time.
And at the same time, we must ensure
that all of this remains open, that RSS
feed is the source of truth and that

(40:25):
any app that wants to participate in any
new ideas we invent, uh, they can easily
do that by simply parsing the RSS feed,
the media files and so on.
Amen.
What I, uh, having seen, uh, the, the
dashboard and the backend system was really quite

(40:46):
nice.
You're doing a lot of things that people
I think will enjoy just, you know, top
line, everything's integrated.
So you see, you know, I guess you'll
tell us about the, uh, about the value
for value options that you have, but I
just like the right off the bat.
Oh yeah, we're doing a alternate enclosure.
You can do video, so you can upload

(41:06):
audio and a video.
You can choose what you want in the
app.
I mean, that's, that's just, I gotta say
badass for two reasons.
One, just the fact that you're taking that
step to host video is a big deal.
And I, I don't know if you, I
mean, cause you know, people are kind of
idiots when it comes to uploading stuff.
You know, so I don't know if you're
going to see 10, 10 gigabyte files, someone

(41:27):
saying, Hey, here's my raw file, go fix
it.
Maybe you thought about it, didn't actually ask
you.
Um, but also I think you have social
interact and you just want to tell us
some of those main features that are, that
we're going to see in the feeds coming
from the hosting side.
Yeah, definitely.
I think you, what you said at the
beginning there, Adam is, um, so important.

(41:49):
We want to just provide a unified view
for podcasters where they can see and manage
everything.
So the new dashboard that we've built combines
all of the, I guess, traditional podcast hosting
analytics around downloads that we've just, you know,
talked through about all the problems that exist
with that.

(42:09):
We combine that with payment analytics, um, so
that you can see, you know, how much
support you're getting from your audience.
And also you can see what your audience
is saying, the social data, the social profiles.
So it's, it's kind of one destination to
see all of the important data for your
show.
And then in terms of the new RSS

(42:31):
tags that we're using to, to, to do
this, maybe actually, if I just talk about
the, the, the new like payment flow that
we've designed.
So I think a few of the people
in the boardroom already saw this because we
had one of the shows go live with
it this week.
But one of the things we've launched is

(42:51):
a subscription product.
The reason for this is that, well, there's
two reasons.
Number one, I think the user interface mechanic
of a boost is incredibly powerful because you
get to send money, you get to send
a message, and there's that feedback loop that
everyone listening to this probably knows about, but

(43:12):
it's so amazing.
But, you know, sometimes you don't want to
boost or you forget to boost.
And we definitely seen that, um, speaking to
podcasters and speaking to users of the fountain
app.
So we wanted to launch a subscription product
for podcasters, um, but do it in a
way where it wouldn't just work in the

(43:34):
fountain app, but any podcasting 2.0 app
could access the subscription, pay for the subscription,
and also unlock the subscription benefits.
Um, if you look at what Patreon do,
they have obviously been incredibly successful in helping
podcasters get paid and, you know, generate, um,

(43:57):
income from their audience.
And the main part of that is subscription.
So I think they've proved that subscriptions work.
We just want to take that and put
it into, uh, RSS so that any app
can consume the subscription.
And then you're using a L402 for that.
Is that right?
Yeah.
So it, the subscription works by our combination

(44:21):
of the alternate enclosure and the L402, um,
spec.
And one thing on the L402 is that
the original L402 spec, which was released by
lightning labs, um, there's now a new version
of the L402 spec, which is about six
months old.

(44:41):
And, um, that, yeah, everyone can go and
look into it.
I think it's L402.org, uh, which is
the documentation site.
Uh, but this new version of L402 is
way simpler than the old version.
It's way more flexible.
It supports multiple currencies, multiple payment methods.

(45:03):
Um, and so we using this new version
of L402 to essentially, uh, gate some of
the content, uh, in the RSS feed.
So it's a combination of alternate enclosure and
L402, and then the subscription can actually be
purchased via the funding tag.
So, you know, I think the way that

(45:25):
podcasters will set up these subscript subscriptions, some
of them will just do a pure kind
of value for value subscription where you're just
paying for the subscription because you love the
content.
You're not getting anything in return, but then
other podcasters will essentially do what they're already

(45:46):
doing on Patreon, but in a more integrated
way that works in any podcast app where
they do things like ad free versions or
early access or bonus episodes.
Um, and what we've done is using alternate
enclosure plus L402 essentially removed the need for

(46:06):
a private RSS feed.
Um, so any app that wants to read
the feed and read the L402 response can
just figure out how to surface the payment
to the user and then give them access
to, uh, whatever that bonus content might be.
I know there's a lot there.
So I thought, yeah, well, I mean, so

(46:27):
if the L402 is, uh, based on the
new spec on a newer spec, do you
think that it will work?
Because I know true fans, uh, supports L402.
Do you think it would work out of
the box or do you think there would
be some updates that Sam would need to
make to have that happen?
I think there'd probably need to be a

(46:48):
few updates for the new version of the
spec, but if you have managed to implement
the old spec, you'll be able to implement
the new spec in about 10 minutes because
the difference is night and day.
Yeah.
With Grok, I'm sure 10 minutes really.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So if, you know, we talked about this

(47:09):
briefly earlier in the week, this, this is,
I think true fans sort of set the
direction here of not needing a third, um,
sort of a third party in the mix.
So it has always felt to date what

(47:32):
has always felt like on just, you know,
on the non Bitcoin side, let's just take
that off.
You know, that has been well integrated, but
on the non Bitcoin side, it has always
felt like you've had the, uh, you have
the podcaster, the listener, the app, the hosting
company, and then this weird sort of third

(47:54):
party that just sits in the fifth party
that sits in the middle there, like Patreon,
where they're going to just, they just sort
of insert themselves into the mix and take
a payment.
And, and you, and you have this, you
have the hosting company and you have the
app.
And it feels like that could just be

(48:16):
done right there.
But, but for some reason they just, well,
I know what the reason is, is because
of the app store rules and all that.
For those reasons, there was always this third
party where you had to go around the
world in order to get back to square
one.
And, you know, with, with what true fans
was saying is no, you will just, we'll

(48:37):
just make our own Patreon.
You know, we'll just let, we'll just let
the, let the Patreon exist right here within
the app or right here within the hosting
company as a bus sprout did with their
funding tag support where, you know, with the
direct payments where you can open up a
web view.
I just feel like this, I feel like

(48:57):
when it comes to podcasting, I just don't
think there's a reason anymore to have a
thing like Patreon.
I just don't think it's necessary with all
the funding tag stuff.
And, and now, especially with the app store
rules getting loosened, it just feels like you
can have the, what that, that role that
Patreon played can, can be served by the

(49:19):
hosting company and the app just working together
with an open standard.
Yeah, exactly.
I think that the, the cool thing about
this is that any hosting company can set
up their own payment system.
And also as a podcaster, if you're self

(49:40):
hosting, you could also just do that yourself
using a combination of the funding tag, the
value block.
And if you wanted to do premium content,
you could use the L4O2 alternate enclosure.
I think the most important thing is that
there's choice for podcasters and that there's interoperability

(50:04):
as well.
So that if somebody wants to subscribe to
your show, they don't have to go and
listen on a specific app to do that.
They can do so on web, they can
do so from one app, they can do
so from another app.
And I think, you know, it's really, everything's
kind of come together in the last year
with the funding tag, with the alternate enclosure

(50:25):
and with this L4O2 spec to actually allow
that to happen.
So can you, I'm wondering, you know, I
don't, I know you've probably got more stuff
you want to talk about, but I'm thinking
just how far the integration goes.
So like, I mean, Eric PP said in

(50:46):
the boardroom that it makes, that this makes
a lot of sense for you guys, because
people already think that Fountain was a podcast
host already, you know, anyway, because you allow
them to sign up and claim their feed
and that kind of thing.
So there's kind of this, people's minds are
already kind of there at that point.
So it makes sense.
But how far is the integration going to

(51:07):
go?
Like, is it possible that you can pay
your hosting, your Fountain hosting bill using your
earnings from boosts?
Not at the moment, but that's something we
can potentially look at in the future.
I think the type of podcasters that we

(51:27):
think we can help with this new product
are not necessarily podcasters that are familiar with
Bitcoin.
We want to make it really easy for
them to get paid via any payment method.
That's why the subscriptions and also very soon
the boosts will be payable with a bank

(51:49):
card and via Stripe.
But then the Bitcoin is there as the
kind of micropayments layer.
So and obviously the fees are much less
on with Bitcoin as well.
And I think it's important to point out
that subscriptions are by definition these recurrent payments
and they don't necessarily even have to have

(52:13):
so-called premium content.
Some people might just want to support the
podcasters every month and not forget that.
So that's one thing.
Now, the other issue that I've seen people
discuss is this idea of value that you
should be able to pay the amount you
want in terms of what value you think

(52:35):
you receive.
And I think that's definitely our goal.
And one of the things we do think
about this and plan to do this is
to allow people to have these recurrent payments
where people can choose how much they pay
every cycle.
Yeah.
Stephen B was asking, Bill in the boardroom

(52:57):
is asking, will this essentially, will this redefine
what podcasting is and steer it towards a
paywall model?
I don't, I mean, I don't think so
any more than what Patreon, the effect that
Patreon and Simplecast and these private feed generators
already have.
I mean, there's always, there's been this for
a long time where you're going to have

(53:18):
some of your content paywalled and that kind
of thing.
I mean, I just think that this is,
it doesn't feel like it's pushing any more
in that direction to me.
It just feels like it's making it in
the app and rather than having to use
a third party.
Yeah.
And, and we discussed specifically for Curry and
the Keeper, and this is something that, you
know, we'll do is like, we'll use their

(53:38):
mechanism for, you know, the so-called private
feed, but it'll just be the exact same
podcast, except you get a badge.
You get a badge that you're a, you're
a supporter and you'll be able to do
just a one-time, a one-time payment.
So it's not necessary in our case, we're
using the mechanism to unlock, but you're not

(54:00):
unlocking anything.
You're getting the same, the same program.
You're just sending a one-time payment.
Am I, am I saying that correct?
Yeah, exactly.
The subscription product is just a way to
support the show on a monthly basis without
having to remember to boost.
It's no different from the Boost CLI script.

(54:23):
You know, it just sends a payment once
a month.
And then if podcasters want to, they can
use the bonus content feature as well.
And that is more aimed at people who
are already doing that via Patreon or Memberful
or some of these other private feed generators,

(54:44):
except that it allows us to maintain the
main feed.
I think like another thing that's been so
great about the Podcasting 2.0 spec is
the GUID because it allows us, and one
thing I'd love to talk about as well
is the metadata around LN address.
Cause I know that's still kind of an

(55:05):
unresolved thing, but whatever the solution for metadata
around comments or boosts ends up being, the
thing that will tie everything together is the
GUID.
Without the GUID, it would never be possible
to do in an open way.
And obviously if you have like a private
feed where everything's off in a completely different

(55:27):
place, it kind of breaks a lot of
that.
So yeah, the subscription serves two purposes.
One, it's just a way to do recurring
support.
And the other is, it's a way to
try and avoid the terrible UX of private
feeds.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Private feed.
I think everybody hates them, but there never

(55:49):
was a better way around it.
And then the alternate enclosure wanted to solve
that problem, but then it needed L402.
And so that's been a slow roll.
I mean, it's, I think this is, I
know Sam will be happy about this cause
it means somebody could create an audio book

(56:11):
on, you know, an audio book with L402
on Fountain Hosting and then sell it on
TruFans.
And I think that's, I mean, that just
makes a lot of sense.
Is this, this is a full rewrite from,
you said from the ground up for the
RSS Blue code.

(56:32):
You, you, you started over from scratch, Dobi
Das?
That's correct.
Yeah.
RSS Blue was built on a bunch of
different random programming languages ranging from Go to
Rust and JavaScript, of course, and even Python.
But yes, all and everything is now in

(56:52):
TypeScript, my new favorite programming language.
I forgive you, by the way, I forgive
you.
I'm assuming you had a chance as usually
the way these things go.
I'm assuming you, you had a chance to
sort of like fix some of the sins
of the past with, with RSS Blue and,

(57:13):
and make things better.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
When you design things the second time, yeah,
they're much fewer places where you just shoot
yourself in the foot.
But yes, it was, a lot of it
was rethinking the same ideas, but it was

(57:34):
also developing new things that RSS Blue didn't
have.
One of the most fundamental things RSS Blue
didn't have was download analytics, which, you know,
was a huge job to build.
But yes, that's what we've been doing the
past few months, developing, essentially, analytics for audience,

(58:01):
for downloads for monetization, tying all of this
together and making sure it works across the
other apps.
And again, it is being actively built and
developed, you know, even today.
Yes.
Analytics and metrics are the, and stats are
the, they're the, the bane of every podcast

(58:22):
host.
You have to have them, but you just
despise them because they, you know, you end
up with, yeah, you end up with terabytes
of information that just, you know, you have
to keep around and the databases become gigantic.
It's just, it's always such a mess.
Yeah.
The analytics part and the things you discussed

(58:43):
earlier today.
Yeah, that seems very relevant.
And I think what Fountain wants to achieve
is having money as a much better signal
than downloads, listens, follows, or subscribers.
All of these are a signal, but at
the end of the day, at the end

(59:04):
of the day, like if you can buy
something with the things you earn, that's, that's
value.
So are you publishing any documentation about this
to make it easy for app developers to
play along or potential hosting companies who want

(59:29):
to see what you're doing and also try
and catch up to speed?
Yeah, definitely.
It's been a bit of a mad week
because we've just, you know, gone live with
a couple of the first feeds.
But yeah, definitely.
I'm going to write up a full kind
of blog post about how we're doing everything

(59:50):
in terms of the alternate enclosure, the funding
tag and the L4O2 response.
I think that for anyone that's interested, I
think going to the L4O2.org site and
having a look at the documentation there is
a great place to start.

(01:00:11):
The alternate enclosure stuff that we're doing is
no different really from the current alternate enclosure.
One thing I did want to talk about,
though, is an idea that we've had around
the funding tag, which kind of comes into

(01:00:32):
the discussion around metadata for boosts and comments.
Obviously, one issue that has been raised with
airline address is that there's not an agreed
upon way to share or publish metadata around
the boost, like the various stuff that was
in the TLV.

(01:00:53):
I think three of the most important things
in the TLV are the name of the
person supporting the message and then also the
sender ID.
The reason the sender ID is really important
is because that allows you, just like you

(01:01:14):
were talking about earlier, Dave, with the UL
ID, that allows you to maintain the uniqueness
of that supporter and not have duplicate boosts
show up on the boost board or duplicate
profiles.
One idea that we had is to extend

(01:01:34):
the funding tag to try and put some
of this data, or not actually put it
in the funding tag, but signal to apps
that the funding tag would accept this additional
data in the funding tag URL as query
parameters.
As an example, let's say you are reading

(01:01:59):
a random RSS feed.
It doesn't have to be from Fountain.
Maybe it's a self-hosted RSS feed.
There's a funding tag in that feed.
There's a URL in that feed, which is
somedomain.com donate.
If that URL, if that funding tag could
signal to the app to say, hey, if

(01:02:22):
you pass these query parameters, name, maybe ULID,
maybe message, if you include these in the
query parameters, I will pass on that data
to the podcaster.
If we could define the set of parameters
that could be signalled from the feed to

(01:02:45):
the app, then I think we solve part
of the problem around metadata, which is at
least what are the most critical things that
we do need to pass on.
I've seen a lot of this talk in
the boardroom is leave it up to the
podcaster to decide where the metadata goes.
Well, if they can signal that via the
funding tag, then it is up to them.

(01:03:11):
So you're talking about something that's kind of
like, what do they call it?
What are they, the UTM, like Urchin, like
the Urchin.
Yeah.
UTM parameters that you can add on that
just everybody understands what these things are.
Is that kind of what you're talking about?

(01:03:31):
Exactly.
Yeah.
And we actually, in the, I think John
Spurlock was complaining earlier because we had a
bug in one of our feeds, but actually
that feed, I'm just trying to find it
now and I'll put it in the boardroom.
But that feed, it's like a, it's our
fountain radio feed.
And if you look at the fountain radio

(01:03:52):
feed, let me just stick this in the
boardroom quickly.
But I'll put it in podcast index dot
social.
But if you look at that feed and
you look at the funding tag, we've actually
put in these things as a, as like
a test.
And the ones that we've put in there
are the ULID because I think looking back
at what you wrote up around that Dave,

(01:04:16):
it just solves so many issues around analytics.
Obviously we're big on NOS though.
We don't need to cover that again.
So we put the end pub in there
because that's a great way to distinguish unique
profiles.
And then we put the name and the
message in there.
So these are like, if you, you know,
if you go to that URL, and by
the way, that URL is not currently active.

(01:04:38):
So this isn't fully working, but we wanted
to put in here alongside the idea.
If you, if an app includes those parameters
with values, then that will be passed through
to the podcaster as metadata.
What this also would allow apps to do
is build the donation UI natively without having

(01:05:00):
to defer to whatever the funding tag URL
is.
So for example, if you had a show
hosted on fountain with a funding tag, you
had a self-hosted show with a funding
tag, and you had a show hosted on
Buzzsprout with a funding tag.
If you're using an app, the way that
you, you know, choose your amount and write

(01:05:25):
your message and press support would be exactly
the same.
It would be native within the app.
And then you just pass that through to
the funding tag URL.
So the kind of like funding service can
pick that up and put it into the
metadata.
Let me break down what you said real
quick, just to make sure that I understand.
And I think I do.
And that, and that is clear to people.

(01:05:46):
I think what you're saying is if you,
by that last statement is that if you
have, if you, if you lay the funding
tag out, if we add these parent, these
extra parameter option to the funding tag, that
that would allow you to make it more
than simply a web, sort of a web

(01:06:07):
UI view that you open like a web
sheet.
And it would allow you to actually bring
it more into the app as a native,
as a native donation button, because the behind
the scenes URL and the parameter list would,
but the app could just assemble that themselves

(01:06:27):
and do it directly rather than having to
open up a website.
Yeah, exactly.
Okay.
It's yeah.
You can basically imagine that the apps could
simply redirect to the URL without any of
the query parameters and the hosting company like
fountain could handle the interface.
But if we see those parameters, all we

(01:06:50):
basically need to do is confirm that, you
know, you want to pay this amount of
this message with this name.
And, you know, any payment methods that you
prefer.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's, that's really interesting.
Are you going to put that, are you
going to write something up for that and
submit it?

(01:07:10):
Oscar, do you want somebody else to do
that?
Yeah, I can definitely write this up.
And I mean, the first thing is to
get it working.
It's almost working.
We were rushing to try and get it
done before the show today, but we didn't
quite get it there.
But yeah, this is going to be working
in this test feed later today or tomorrow.
And so you'll actually be able to hopefully

(01:07:32):
what you'll be able to do is send
a boost to this show with a bank
card, but also you'll be able to pre
-fill any of this information so that and
also this will flow through obviously on the
fountain show pages and episodes.
We have the boosts that show up.

(01:07:53):
This will also flow through into the booth.
So if you, if you open this funding
tag URL in a web browser, you fill
out the information on the fountain website, and
then you pay with your bank card, a
boost activity item will be created on the
page.
But if you were to, you know, auto

(01:08:14):
fill that via the query parameters, a boost
would also be created.
And the profiles around those boosts would be
tied to the ULIDs as well, or the
end pubs if you want to use Nostra,
but we put the ULID in there to,
um, yeah, like give app developers that didn't
want to use Nostra a different way to

(01:08:34):
identify supporters.
This is, I think, I think all the
hosting companies that support the funding tag, which
is quite a few now.
I think they would all appreciate that.
I don't, I don't think, I think that
would be a welcome addition to the spec.
I'm happy to hear that.

(01:08:55):
Especially if we have like, you know, an
example feed to point to, to just kind
of so that the app developers can work
out exactly what to do with it and
that kind of thing that that's excellent, Oscar.
Cool.
Well, yeah, hopefully the demo should be available
very soon.
And, um, yeah, again, like this is, this
is just an idea.
Um, but I do think that this metadata

(01:09:17):
problem around boosts, um, we do need to
come up with a solution to it because,
um, yeah, I do think LN address is
still the right way to go with, you
know, cash app and it just removes, it
removes so much confusion and we do need
a metadata solution.

(01:09:38):
So yeah, the starting point for the metadata
solution is what are the, what is the
important data that we need to pass around
here?
Numbers and text.
That's it.
It's really it.
I mean, you just want the, you want
the intended amount, uh, reporting fees anywhere, but

(01:10:02):
you want, cause you know, numerology is important
and the message.
And I don't really don't care.
I mean, I would expect all of that
to show up in my hosting dashboard, quite
honestly.
I mean, I think that's the obvious way
for it to go.
And I think that's what you guys are
trying to do.
Yeah, definitely.
It's that, but it's also really fun if
you can actually group the payments over time

(01:10:25):
and attribute them to certain individuals.
So, you know, if someone boosts you 10
times, it's cool to see those 10 payments
come in, but you also want to see
the totals.
And I think the, uh, the issue of
ideas or identities is very relevant here.
And how do we solve that?

(01:10:48):
Well, yeah, that, that could be challenging.
Um, people switch wallets, all kinds of stuff,
but in general, I mean, you're right.
It, uh, the process for me is, you
know, I, I export the, uh, the CSV
file from helipad and figure it out.
Well, you know, you could, um, uh, Spurlock

(01:11:09):
posted something earlier, uh, to, to it was
yesterday, I think it was yesterday passing through
a blog post from CloudFlare about, uh, HTTP
signing, um, and how that's going to be
a strategy they're going to use for, uh,
fighting bot bot traffic.
And I want to talk a lot about
that next time we have a board meeting,

(01:11:29):
because I think it's, I think it's a
kind of a huge deal that we can
adopt in podcasting so that, that might have
something to do with it too.
We might want to, the apps may start
wanting, uh, may, may be able to sign
these, uh, requests.
Are you being swatted, Dave?
Is someone swatting you in the background?
No, I think Dovi Das and, uh, and
Oscar, I think they're doing this from the,

(01:11:51):
uh, hospital.
I think they're, yeah.
Oh, okay.
I was wondering what the, let me go
on mute.
You're being swatted, man.
What's happening?
No, it's, um, I keep waiting for the
PA to come in.
You know, Oscar, Oscar, you're in the grocery
store.
Um, but no, I think, you know, that
could also be a, it'd be a solution

(01:12:11):
to the sort of, um, identity verification piece
is that, you know, the app, the, the
podcast apps could, could sign those HTTP requests
with the donation link and that kind of
thing.
I mean, I think that's why this has
been hard.
It was very easy to just jam a
bunch of stuff in a TLV record and
be done with it, but there was never
any verification.

(01:12:32):
There was never any way to be sure
this person actually sent you anything.
So, I mean, they could, they could send
you five sats and claim they sent you
5 million and you had, you just, there
was no way to verify.
So, you know, I think other than just
looking at the balance and saying, oh, well,
that doesn't make any sense.
Right.

(01:12:52):
And so I think the verification piece is
probably, is, is the thing that makes it
difficult.
So when you do, it's funny enough, when
you do something the right way, it actually
takes longer, you know, configure more intricate.
Yeah.
But, um, so how far, I mean, how
far does the integration go when I, are

(01:13:13):
you going to go like all the way
down to where somebody can launch a podcast
from within the Fountain app?
Um, I don't, not in the short term,
definitely.
I think, you know, there's, there's enough to
take on in terms of just taking what
we have already with lightning boost, streaming stats,

(01:13:38):
value for value, the social activity around Nosta
and just, and just merging that with, you
know, what you'd expect from a podcast hosting
platform.
So that's the main focus.
Okay.
Yeah.
I just think about like anchor, um, you

(01:13:59):
know, when you think about an, when you
think about an app and a podcast host,
both, you think about that, that, that sort
of like spin up a, spin up a
podcast from an app and that, that sort
of experience.
And, you know, while it seems like this

(01:14:20):
sort of like natural thing, oh yeah, yeah,
that, that makes a lot of sense.
But you see what happened to them, you
know, before, you know, you just get, you
just get like, you know, millions of, of,
of garbage.
Test one, two, test one, two, check, check
two.
I'm a podcaster.

(01:14:42):
I would say, I would say tread, tread
lightly if you ever decide to go that
route.
Kidding.
Um, yeah, I think I'd also, I don't
know.
I don't know if any podcaster would actually
want to manage their show from a mobile
app.

(01:15:02):
Um, I feel like the workflow is better
suited to, you know, sitting down at your,
at your computer and doing it that way.
Except for live wall switching.
You must have that on your mobile.
Are you, um, are you going to make
any changes?

(01:15:23):
Just, uh, a thought here.
Are you going, are you making any changes
or have anything planned based on Apple's, uh,
app store relaxing of, of the rules in
the U S as fountain going to change
anything there?
I mean, we want to be careful, um,
with any risks that we take on that

(01:15:45):
side of things, but I think that it's
great for, you know, open payments within native
apps, the ruling.
And I think it's definitely encouraged us to,
you know, be bold, push a little bit
more.
Um, I think the most important thing with,
with Apple and their regulations is that this

(01:16:05):
cannot be a system that only works within
one app within the fountain app.
It needs to be an open payment system.
And that's actually when we first launched the
app, you know, whenever it was initially, they
rejected the app and they said, what are
you doing?
You know, payments, you're sending payments to content

(01:16:26):
creators.
You need to use the in-app purchase
system.
And we said to them, um, no, this
is actually, you know, many podcasters have their
own wallets.
It's encoded in the RSS feed.
If you have a podcast, it's no different
from having a website and you're allowed to
go to a website in Safari and make

(01:16:47):
a payment.
You're allowed to go to websites in apps.
So I think.
I never knew that story, Oscar.
I didn't know that.
I never heard that story that you initially
got blocked with the early, the early stuff.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, it wasn't really like a, it
wasn't really a block.
It was more like, can we have some
clarifying information on what you're doing here with,

(01:17:08):
with Bitcoin?
I think you emailed me about that when
it first happened.
I don't remember that.
That's interesting.
Cause I, I think we talked about that
maybe privately over email and we're trying to,
you know, uh, that sounds familiar.
It's been so long.
Yeah.
It's been too many years.

(01:17:28):
Uh, I think y'all were in beta
at the time.
I'm going to, uh, I'm going to wrap
this up, uh, Dave, to get you back
to the day job on time.
Any other final questions you have for the
boys now that we have them?
Uh, no, I'm no good.
It's, uh, I think I'm out.
I've got my list satisfied.
Your list is satisfied.
Oscar and David, thank you so much.

(01:17:49):
Not just for being here in the board
meeting today, but also for doing this, for
moving that forward.
I think it's genius.
Uh, it seems like a very obvious thing
to do, but doing it as a whole
nother thing for, you know, coming together and
crossing that chasm.
I congratulate you.
I think it's a, it's a really, it's
a bold move.
And I think it's, it's really good for,
uh, podcasting 2.0 and whatever we call

(01:18:10):
it for podcasting.
It's just good for podcasting.
Well, thanks Adam.
I really appreciate you saying that.
And you know, you guys and everyone else
involved in broadcasting 2.0, you know, we've
both learned so much from all of you.
And, um, yeah, this is definitely, you know,
we're all in this together to try and

(01:18:30):
push this thing forward.
And I guess I would just say to
everyone who is listening, like all the other
developers out there, like let's try and work
on this together.
Like we're not 100% precious on what
the solution is, but what I really believe
is that we need a solution for open
payments and we need a solution for the

(01:18:51):
metadata, because if we can crack those two
things, make it simple for podcasters and make
it interoperable, then it's just unstoppable.
I agree.
We're just going to create something so amazing.
People can use whatever app they want, you
know, we'll get overcast to integrate it one

(01:19:11):
day.
We'll be successful.
So, so yeah, let's, I know it's hard.
Hell says I have not frozen over yet.
But yeah, let's, let's, let's do this.
Let's, let's figure out a solution to these
things.
Excellent.
Um, thank you guys so much.
You're welcome to hang around.

(01:19:32):
We have a couple of, of people to
thank because this is value for value.
The entire podcast index project is value for
value.
Uh, what are you drinking Dave?
I just heard something go.
I heard you pop.
No, that was, that was me.
De-stapling my paper, a paper de-staple.
Oh, beautiful.
A couple of boosts that came in while
we were talking to the boys.
Uh, Hey citizen, 22, 22 row ducks go

(01:19:54):
podcasting seven, seven, seven, seven from Dreb Scott.
And Dreb says, I don't have time to
listen live today.
And why?
Because he's, uh, he's, he's working out weight
loss.
He's running.
Yes.
10 pounds down in the last five weeks,
40 more to go.
Thanks for your patience with delayed chapters.
Hashtag go podcasting.
We love you, Dreb.
It's all good.

(01:20:15):
Sam Sethi comes in again.
He said, Oh, there he is.
He heard my, he heard my complaint.
77, 77 for the angel boost.
Uh, welcome to secure RSS, AKA L dot
four Oh two trans true fans uses this
for music, audio books, and other prepaid for
content.
Uh, thank you, Oscar and Dovid us because
everyone has ignored the solution.
Everyone all caps, which we need in order

(01:20:37):
to replace Patrion, et cetera.
True fans has had a monthly support option
with both Fiat or sats.
Good job, Oscar.
Salty crayon.
One, two, one, two, one, two, one, two.
Dovid us has helped me out many times,
many emails, foam finger.
Number one for Dovid Oh, podcasting Lyceum with
seven, seven, seven.
I'm trying the small harp too.

(01:20:58):
Well, yes, we heard it.
It worked.
Uh, salty crayon, 48 Oh five.
Howdy Dave and Adam.
What?
No value.
Here's $5 worth of sats because I forgot
my PayPal login in the pipe.
It's thank you.
Uh, let's see.
Um, we got one 45 from Seth S
three T H yeah.

(01:21:20):
Uh, from true fans.
This is like the old blogger sphere where
you guys have convos amongst shows.
I guess so.
Inter show convo inter show convo.
Yes.
And then I have, uh, uh, something from
Lyceum, but that came in, uh, when did
that come in?
I'll, I'll read those just in case you
didn't pick it up.
A row of ducks.

(01:21:41):
I'm resending my booster of two, two, two,
two, two Satoshi's.
I see it coming in twice.
Actually for my post on podcast index dot
social quote, my default setting for super comment,
22, 22 Satoshi's.
It got deducted from my wallet.
I tried another time and now I get
a network error comment.
I am voting with my wallet.
You have the ducks in a row.
I'm in it for the long run.

(01:22:01):
2030 and podcasting 2.0 will be so
-called mainstream go podcasting true fans.
Upcoming iOS and Android app could be the
positive simple deal breaker for the listener.
Anything is possible for sure.
I hit the delimiter here.
So Dave, uh, head up, hit us up
with your list.
We got a, we got an anonymous, a
one-off PayPal.

(01:22:22):
Uh, it's not anonymous, but I'm going to
treat it as such because I don't, I
don't know if they want to be known
a hundred dollars.
Nice.
And a note.
Yeah.
The note is thanks for all that you
do for devs.
We're working on a new podcast app.
Oh, well that must be those guys who
are peeling off from Apple.
Uh-huh.
I got it.

(01:22:42):
Okay.
Wait, peeling off from Apple.
What is it?
You have secret news?
No, I'm just making it up.
You're the one with the seat with the
anonymous donor.
I'm just making stuff up, man.
Yeah.
Um, thank you for that.
A hundred bucks.
Appreciate that.
We've got a, some boost.
We got sea loss on Linux, uh, two,
three, four, five through fountain get hub is
a mess.
Yes, but almost because, but almost because it

(01:23:04):
had to be, it's a complex tool for
developers, not an end consumer product thing.
It's true.
Yes.
When the vet doing developers make things for
other developers, it's always a mess.
Yeah, that's true.
I E telnet.
Hey, telnet rocks, baby.
Uh, please tell me that your telnet is

(01:23:25):
not bound to all IP addresses on your
box.
No, it's a one, two, seven, Oh, Oh,
Oh, one.
Oh, yes.
Nice.
Uh, sea loss on Linux.
Again, 5,000 sets through fountain says we
only needed someone to call all this a
failure to again, realize what we've been doing
and that is actually cool.
Nice.

(01:23:45):
Um, yep.
Set a C Seth S three T H
from true fans.
29, 25.
Love the intros from Adam.
So much fun.
Okay.
Thank you.
I work real hard on them.
Three minutes before air time.
Uh, let's see.
I think you've got these.
Yes, you did.
Those are a Lyceum and uh, the delimiter

(01:24:07):
comments for a blogger 14 for 30.
Uh, thank you.
Yeah.
CSB appreciate that amount brother found through fountain.
He says, how do you Dave and Adam,
please tell your audience to subscribe to keeper
podcast of Adam, www.curryandthekeeper.com.
It's in dire need of Bitcoin donations.

(01:24:28):
It is in here in pod cut in
here in podcasting 2.0 community.
Several folks have Bitcoin.
So what are they waiting for?
Really?
Podcast name, colon Curry and the keeper.
They alcoholize and socialize.
Donate there now.
Yo, CSB.
Thank you.
CSB.
He's the most interesting booster.

(01:24:49):
I have every single show.
He's promoting someone else's show.
It's just an everybody's show.
I love that.
It's really, it's very, very cool.
You know, he has a, he's a giver.
He's he's a giver.
You're so right.
Comic strip bloggers, a giver monthly.
I like the term alcoholized alcohol.
Yes.
He's against it.
He doesn't think Tina should drink.

(01:25:10):
She barely drinks anymore.
I'm the drinker.
I'm drinking twice as much.
Uh, Terry Keller, $5 a month.
Silicon florist, $10.
Chris Cowen, $5.
Uh, Paul Saltzman, $22.22. Thank you, Paul.
Derek J.
Viscar, the best name in podcasting, $21.
Damon Kastrijak, $15.

(01:25:31):
Jeremy Gerds, $5.
Thank you, Jeremy.
Uh, new media productions.
That's Todd.
Yes.
$30.
Thank you, Todd.
Um, Michael Hall, $5 and 50 cents.
Uh, Gene Liverman.
Hey, Gene, $5 and Timothy voice, $10.
We appreciate all that you do to keep
the show running.
And when I say the show, it's really
podcastingnext.org and a lot of, a lot

(01:25:54):
of stuff depends on it.
So, uh, it doesn't cost a lot, but
every single penny is appreciated.
Thank you so much.
Go to podcastingnext.org down at the bottom
of that page is a red donate button.
If you want to hit us up with,
uh, with some PayPal and in most of
the podcast apps, uh, you know, if you,
uh, if you boosted that you're helping the
podcast index as well with the percent, uh,
or you can always just send us your

(01:26:15):
on-chain Bitcoin, just send us a couple
of Bitcoin and be happy with that.
Just a couple of Bitcoin.
That's all.
I want to leave us today with the
answer to an age old question.
The question, what is a podcast?
Okay.
Do you, I mean, this has been discussed
in the podcast industrial complex for, I mean,

(01:26:36):
over what more than a year now, is
it video?
Is it audio?
Does it have to have an RSS feed?
What is your definition of a podcast?
Dave Jones?
Uh, my definition of a podcast is any,
my personal definition.

(01:26:57):
It's your personal definition that you will not
be held to account.
If my podcast app, and I'm talking about,
I'm not talking about YouTube.
I'm not talking about the proprietary apps I'm
talking about.
If my podcast app that reads RSS feeds,
if it can show it to me and
let me play it, it's a podcast.

(01:27:17):
I think that's a very good definition, but
we have an answer from someone who knows
all the inimitable Bill O'Reilly.
Okay.
If I had to build a short list,
if I had to build a long list
of people that I would, that I would
get my definition of what a podcast is

(01:27:39):
from Bill O'Reilly would not be on
this.
Bill O'Reilly, he used to be on
Fox news, um, was, uh, dismissed in some
cloud of disgrace over sexual harassment.
And yeah, that guy.
And then, um, for all I know, started
a podcast, but he disagrees.

(01:28:00):
It is not what he does is not
a podcast.
No, no.
He will give us the definition of a
podcast.
I drives me crazy.
People go, Oh, I watch your pod.
Not a podcast.
Look, if you guy has tattoos and dirty
sneakers, it's a podcast.
He's dressed as dapper as I dress.

(01:28:20):
It's a broadcast.
It's a broadcast.
Oh, finally we have an answer from the,
from the, these ever so smart Bill O
'Reilly.
There you go.
I agree with Bill.
What he does is not a podcast.
It's right.
Uh, Dovey Doss, Oscar, thank you both so
much for being here.
We really appreciate you guys.
Keep it going.
And we'll be here when you have something
else to, uh, to talk about.

(01:28:41):
And of course that goes for all the
app developers.
If you've got something that you want to
talk about, we're here for you.
So thank you again, guys.
Thank you so much.
Okay.
Thanks guys.
Good to be back on.
And thank you very much.
Uh, boardroom, uh, no show next week, but
that means it'll be double as tasty the
week after.
Join us then for podcasting 2.0. You

(01:29:19):
have been listening to podcasting 2.0 visit
podcast index.org for more information.
You should be blocking this stuff.

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