Latest / WGKM / Podnews Weekly Review - Libraries, networks and Kickstarters: podcasters growing audiences and revenue

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Podnews Weekly Review - Libraries, networks and Kickstarters: podcasters growing audiences and revenue · WGKM

• 0:00
  James Cridland: Coming up, podcasters collaborating with other podcasters and the podcast that earned more than a quarter of a million dollars on Kickstarter.
• 0:08
  Announcer: With James Cridland and Sam Suthe.
• 0:12
  Announcer: This is the Podnews Weekly Review with Buzz with Buzzsprout.
• 0:17
  Announcer: Start podcasting, keep podcasting.
• 0:20
  Sam Sethi: James, so let's kick off the show.
• 0:22
  Sam Sethi: We've been talking about a concept called Liquid Content, or Stephen Goldstein's been talking about a concept called Liquid Content.
• 0:28
  Sam Sethi: He was on the show a couple of weeks ago, episode 43, if you want to go back and listen to the interview.
• 0:34
  Sam Sethi: Now it seems that that concept of liquid content's catching on.
• 0:38
  Sam Sethi: A new study into audio consumption in France by Audion is saying that uh the French are now using the concept of liquid content.
• 0:48
  Sam Sethi: Tell me more.
• 0:50
  James Cridland: I think your uh your French teacher, Mr.
• 0:52
  James Cridland: Campbell, will be very happy with that.
• 0:55
  Sam Sethi: Turning in his grave right now.
• 0:58
  James Cridland: Yes, exactly.
• 0:59
  James Cridland: Yes, so this was a new study uh done by Audion and UGov, and yes, digital audio is now a mass market medium, which presumably means that more than 50% of the of people use it.
• 1:10
  James Cridland: But the point really around this around liquid content is that 58% of people in the country say that they've started content on one platform and finished it on another.
• 1:21
  James Cridland: That's the whole point of liquid content, after all.
• 1:24
  James Cridland: So you can really see that that sort of thing is happening in France.
• 1:27
  James Cridland: It's also happening in Australia as well, with Podpol 26 releasing this week that 72% of Aussies move between the two, between audio and video.
• 1:39
  James Cridland: Interestingly, they say that both men and women prefer to listen in podcasts.
• 1:43
  James Cridland: I think they're the only research company that have actually bothered to ask which you prefer rather than which you have done.
• 1:50
  James Cridland: And I quite like that as a question.
• 1:52
  James Cridland: So hurrah for them.
• 1:53
  James Cridland: But yes, there is definitely something going on in terms of liquid content, or certainly in terms of making sure that your content is multi-platform and appears on a number of different platforms all over all over the place.
• 2:04
  James Cridland: So hurrah for them.
• 2:06
  Sam Sethi: Now, one of the other topics we covered from Stephen Goldstein was a poster he wrote called The Death of the Follower, due to he said, algorithmic discovery of podcasts and content.
• 2:18
  Sam Sethi: And Adam Curry's been talking about agentic AI discovery as well.
• 2:22
  Sam Sethi: Now, I don't really want to go into too much detail because you again we talked uh we talked to death about this last week.
• 2:30
  Sam Sethi: But every major platform, according to Adam Massiri, has had to lean into recommendations.
• 2:36
  Sam Sethi: He says post from accounts you don't happen to follow to stay relevant.
• 2:41
  Sam Sethi: Going back to following only feeds would quickly mean a smaller Instagram.
• 2:46
  Sam Sethi: He's saying basically that the death of the follower is now coming to Instagram, James.
• 2:51
  James Cridland: Well, I think what he's trying to say is he's looking at Australia, as many people do, why I really don't know, for online safety, because Australia has pledged a new law which will force social media companies to at least offer a version of their products without algorithms in them.
• 3:13
  James Cridland: Because our politicians know nothing about how the internet works.
• 3:17
  James Cridland: But Rupert Murdoch clearly wants to harm Instagram, and so that's what he's asking for.
• 3:22
  James Cridland: And all of the spineless politicians here are going, yes, Mr.
• 3:24
  James Cridland: Murdoch, whatever you like.
• 3:27
  James Cridland: He's still alive.
• 3:28
  James Cridland: I I suspect he is still alive, yes.
• 3:30
  James Cridland: Just about him and Mitch McConnell.
• 3:33
  James Cridland: They're both still alive, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise.
• 3:36
  James Cridland: So Adam Maseri, of course, is the CEO of Instagram, in case you wondered who who he was.
• 3:41
  James Cridland: So uh yes, he will be there going, we don't want a smaller Instagram.
• 3:46
  James Cridland: We don't therefore want the Australian government to be telling us that we shouldn't be doing algorithms.
• 3:51
  James Cridland: So I suspect that that's sort of part of it.
• 3:53
  James Cridland: I'm not so sure, I'm not so sure that there is the death of the follower.
• 3:57
  James Cridland: I think that, you know, when I go onto LinkedIn, I'm looking on LinkedIn at lots of very useful bits of information about the podcast industry, and LinkedIn is showing me that because I'm following a fair amount of people in the podcast industry, but not following all of them.
• 4:14
  James Cridland: But LinkedIn knows what sort of industry I'm interested in and gives me more news on that.
• 4:19
  James Cridland: So I think from that point of view, I think algorithms can be quite useful.
• 4:23
  James Cridland: And yeah, you know, I think it's probably a good thing.
• 4:27
  Sam Sethi: Now, sticking with Instagram, then one of the things that Adam said was Adam Shiri, not Adam Curry, was that they would not be paying for exclusives for full content podcasts on their platform.
• 4:40
  Sam Sethi: And lo and behold, this week, they are paying for full content.
• 4:44
  Sam Sethi: So Instagram isn't just chasing YouTube's TV watch time and ad revenue, it's chasing its talent too.
• 4:50
  Sam Sethi: The Metarone platform has offered to pay some YouTubers up to$500,000 to post videos.
• 4:56
  Sam Sethi: Did you get the offer, James?
• 4:57
  Sam Sethi: Because I'm quite happy to take it.
• 4:59
  James Cridland: Yeah, I mean, I would be very happy to take that.
• 5:02
  James Cridland: I mean, it would mean an end to our sponsorship with BuzzSprout.
• 5:05
  James Cridland: Well, they might counter.
• 5:06
  James Cridland: They might counter.
• 5:07
  James Cridland: They might counter with, I mean, you know, 600,000 would be fine, BuzzSprout.
• 5:12
  James Cridland: I mean, let's call it 750.
• 5:15
  James Cridland: But yeah, no, weirdly that has not actually happened.
• 5:19
  James Cridland: But Meta have agreed that they are going to be doing this.
• 5:22
  James Cridland: I mean, uh but there again, it's Meta.
• 5:24
  James Cridland: And what we've seen from Meta is we've seen Facebook, of course, if you remember, they got very excited about podcasting.
• 5:30
  James Cridland: They did lots of exciting things about podcasting.
• 5:32
  James Cridland: They then reverse ferreted about six months after they started.
• 5:36
  James Cridland: Uh, it was only launched in the uh US, and so therefore it was all a bit of a waste of time.
• 5:41
  James Cridland: And and I suspect that this may well happen again, who knows, in terms of Instagram.
• 5:47
  James Cridland: I mean, even Muse, apparently, we learned this week, is launching its own automated AI-driven podcasts, according to John Spurlock, friend of the show, and also a power supporter.
• 5:58
  James Cridland: And yes, that you can get the education across the states show, which is AI generated by a Muse bot, by a Muse robot, and the audio and the thumbnail image is hosted on Muse.ai slash podcast, which is interesting.
• 6:17
  James Cridland: Muse haven't said anything about that.
• 6:20
  James Cridland: So yeah, I I find I find what Meta are doing quite fascinating, but I'm not sure necessarily that it's a keeper.
• 6:28
  Sam Sethi: So talking of things where AI doesn't need a human, it seems that Triton is now building AI to deliver what it calls the first AI to AI audio ad buy.
• 6:40
  Sam Sethi: What's this one, James?
• 6:42
  James Cridland: Yeah, this was this was very interesting.
• 6:44
  James Cridland: So this was something in Inside Audio Marketing, which is owned by iHeart.
• 6:49
  James Cridland: It was a story about Triton Digital, which is owned by iHeart.
• 6:53
  James Cridland: And apparently Triton has completed its first fully automated advertising buy using artificial agents to handle everything from identifying available inventory and negotiating terms to booking the campaign in an ad server, which means that the next audio advertising deal may be negotiated and booked without a human ever touching the transaction.
• 7:18
  James Cridland: Which is interesting, is it not?
• 7:22
  James Cridland: I would imagine that we're going to see a fair amount of this.
• 7:24
  James Cridland: I mean, Muse's whole advertising at the moment, which I keep on seeing, is we will we will buy stuff for you, we will find the cheapest price for you, we will cancel the subscriptions or renegotiate the subscriptions that you're no longer using.
• 7:38
  James Cridland: All of this kind of stuff is part of what Muse is doing.
• 7:42
  James Cridland: And so I I guess, of course, that moves into the into the B2B space as well.
• 7:48
  Sam Sethi: Look, I think one of the things they said was it took minutes rather than days to be required to coordinate an advertising by.
• 7:55
  Sam Sethi: This is where agentic to agentic AI is actually very useful.
• 7:59
  Sam Sethi: I think.
• 8:00
  Sam Sethi: You know, I I've got my little thing about X402, which is the the payment element designed specifically for agentic AI payments.
• 8:09
  Sam Sethi: And so I think you are gonna see more of this.
• 8:12
  Sam Sethi: This is where productivity gains could be made by AI.
• 8:15
  Sam Sethi: I think this is where it is a useful tool, but I don't think it's useful when you have it as a host of a podcast.
• 8:24
  Sam Sethi: Listen up muse.
• 8:25
  Sam Sethi: But but this is where I do think it is useful.
• 8:29
  Sam Sethi: And you know, I'm sure others are looking at it, I'm sure ACAS will look at it, I'm sure AdSwiz will look at it and think, ooh, okay, yeah, this could be interesting.
• 8:37
  James Cridland: Yeah, I mean this should really be Amazon, you know, Amazon ads looking at it, putting an MP MPC MCP server, not an MPC server, that's uh that's something completely different.
• 8:49
  James Cridland: Putting one of those in and and yeah, and opening the floodgates.
• 8:53
  James Cridland: The one thing that I would say is I hope that the AI tools are good enough to manage yield and to make sure that podcast ads are begin to be more expensive, not less expensive, because of this.
• 9:07
  James Cridland: You know, if we're managing to cut costs, cut staffing costs down like this, then actually what we should be doing is pushing the price up of podcasts to make it more more expensive to buy.
• 9:20
  James Cridland: Why do I say that?
• 9:21
  James Cridland: Because otherwise we'll just be flooded with even more podcasts ads in our shows.
• 9:26
  James Cridland: And I don't think that anybody really wants that.
• 9:29
  James Cridland: So hopefully that that should mean that we can charge a little bit more for all of these because presumably the AI tools are going to do a more thorough job in terms of finding shows few to record in, few to advertise in, and and so on and so forth.
• 9:43
  James Cridland: So hopefully that is a good thing.
• 9:46
  James Cridland: I mean, and it and it's interesting, I I was there is a lot on on Mastodon, there is a lot of people who are very anti-AI coding.
• 9:57
  James Cridland: And I was thinking about this the other day, and I was thinking, I think there's a big difference between generative AI replacing the work of human beings in terms of a creative endeavour.
• 10:08
  James Cridland: So hosting a podcast, for example, by all means AI could host a three-minute long show with what's happening in Cookum Dean, where you live, Sam, because it'll just be, you know, oh Chris Evans has bought a new car.
• 10:21
  James Cridland: Oh, you know, now we have the traitors living in the village now.
• 10:25
  James Cridland: And Sam, well, there you go.
• 10:26
  James Cridland: So, you know, it'll be it'll be it'll be full of that, but it'll be a very short, a very short show.
• 10:32
  James Cridland: I think that's probably fine, but anything more than that, anything which is which is replacing a a proper human being is a bad thing.
• 10:40
  James Cridland: But in terms of AI coding, I'm quite relaxed about AI coding.
• 10:44
  James Cridland: I don't know how much AI coding you're using in TrueFans.
• 10:48
  James Cridland: Uh tons.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah, tons.
• 10:50
  Sam Sethi: We our productivity goes up much faster.
• 10:52
  Sam Sethi: I mean, Mo was very anti it to begin with.
• 10:55
  Sam Sethi: He was like, what are you saying about my coding?
• 10:58
  Sam Sethi: What are you saying?
• 10:59
  Sam Sethi: And now you very much, I mean, you listen to the guys at Pod Home, you listen to the guys at Pod2, you listen to even Kevin over at Buzzsprout.
• 11:10
  Sam Sethi: I mean, everyone's using, you know, Claude code and it's it's it's basically helping.
• 11:17
  Sam Sethi: I mean, we we did a a thing the other day, we we had uh a page that was loading slowly, and I just simply went, okay, Claude, go and analyze this page and tell me what's causing the load.
• 11:26
  Sam Sethi: Told me it was something to do with Cloudflare.
• 11:28
  Sam Sethi: We made a quick change, boom, worked.
• 11:30
  Sam Sethi: And those are the reasons why we use it.
• 11:32
  Sam Sethi: It works really well.
• 11:34
  James Cridland: Yeah, it's it's it's something that I mean I'm using it more and more for just things like this SQL query.
• 11:41
  James Cridland: Can you make it also do this?
• 11:43
  James Cridland: And you know, because I'm comfortable about doing that, I still understand what the SQL query is.
• 11:48
  James Cridland: I'm just not confident enough with SQL to basically go, oh, you know, I actually uh all I needed was another union here.
• 11:57
  James Cridland: That that's where it gets a little bit too complicated for me.
• 12:00
  James Cridland: So all of that stuff I'm I'm quite I'm quite comfortable with.
• 12:04
  James Cridland: And and I think that there is a big difference between that and you know a creative piece of work.
• 12:11
  James Cridland: And I'm afraid for all of the programmers out there, coding isn't a creative piece of work.
• 12:17
  James Cridland: The UX around it, yes, absolutely is, by the way.
• 12:20
  James Cridland: And the UX is a really is a really important thing.
• 12:24
  James Cridland: And I d don't really like AI producing the UX on websites, and I find them all very, very cookie-cutter.
• 12:33
  James Cridland: But the code underneath, the code that runs the APIs and stuff, knock yourself out, as far as I'm concerned.
• 12:38
  James Cridland: But yeah, I mean I mean my brother is a computer coder by trade, and he is using AI all the time now.
• 12:45
  James Cridland: And he's not using it because his bosses have told him to, he's using it because he's told himself to.
• 12:54
  James Cridland: So yeah, no, I think it's really interesting.
• 12:56
  Sam Sethi: But a couple of interesting stories related to that.
• 12:58
  Sam Sethi: Microsoft have removed all other AI from use only copilot now, removed because of the cost.
• 13:05
  Sam Sethi: JP Morgan have removed it, and several banks have removed it because of reduced productivity and increased costs.
• 13:12
  Sam Sethi: And again, Revolute have actually decided to remove all use of Claude and third-party open AI.
• 13:19
  Sam Sethi: They've built their own NVIDIA servers and built their own LLMs.
• 13:24
  Sam Sethi: And again, it's really interesting to see people I think are realizing the cost of tokens is going up and up and up, and they can't afford it.
• 13:32
  Sam Sethi: And we know that the inshitification of AI is coming.
• 13:38
  Sam Sethi: So this is the cheapest AI will be because they want to give us crack cocaine marketing, get us in, hook us on it, and then when we're all hooked and totally reliant, boom, then comes the profit margins, and then it's a hundred pounds, not 20 pounds, and then it's X tokens will cost you so much more.
• 13:55
  Sam Sethi: So we've got to be weary.
• 13:58
  James Cridland: Or yes, or we all do what Adam does and Adam Curry does, and run a uh run a massive LLM in his house.
• 14:05
  James Cridland: I'm not quite sure so sure that's the right thing.
• 14:06
  James Cridland: So what Revolute are doing fundamentally, yeah.
• 14:08
  James Cridland: Yeah, well, yeah, exactly, exactly.
• 14:10
  James Cridland: And and you can well uh see that.
• 14:12
  James Cridland: By the way, uh I did get a press release which I forwarded on to Adam, but you may find it interesting here as well.
• 14:19
  James Cridland: There is a new AI chat bot which is faith-based.
• 14:26
  James Cridland: The only information that it has in it is the word of God.
• 14:31
  James Cridland: So it's just been trained on the King James version of the Bible, and so therefore anything anything that it comes out from, I don't know which revision it doesn't say, but anything that that it comes out with will be biblical.
• 14:47
  James Cridland: So it's a full ecosystem that full being the word, yeah.
• 14:53
  James Cridland: In their that bridges that bridges the invisible gap between the pews and the pulpit in real time.
• 15:03
  James Cridland: Anyway, it's the sort of thing that I thought that uh Adam might find might find interesting, but probably not right for the Podnews newsletter.
• 15:11
  Sam Sethi: Talking of agent to agent, just one of the companies that have been featured here on Podnews is SpotsNow.
• 15:19
  Sam Sethi: They've created something called SuperAgent.
• 15:22
  Sam Sethi: What's this one?
• 15:22
  James Cridland: SuperAgent.
• 15:23
  James Cridland: Is it a bird?
• 15:24
  James Cridland: Is it a plane?
• 15:25
  James Cridland: No, it's super agent.
• 15:27
  James Cridland: It is a new free AI agent which they have launched.
• 15:31
  James Cridland: It is basically, I would imagine, either their own LLM or something quite similar.
• 15:37
  James Cridland: Uh, they launched uh MCP server a couple of a couple of months ago, but they now have their own agent on there as well.
• 15:44
  James Cridland: So basically you can go on there and you can say, give me the top 100 shows for people who are interested in buying a car, and it will come back and give you that kind of information.
• 15:56
  James Cridland: Or it can even build a full service campaign plan on its own as well.
• 16:00
  James Cridland: It works for sellers and buyers, it's quite neat.
• 16:03
  James Cridland: So yeah, I I expect that we will see much more of this AI stuff in the future.
• 16:08
  James Cridland: So yeah, all seems sensible to me.
• 16:12
  Sam Sethi: Let's move on, James, then.
• 16:14
  Sam Sethi: Uh we've been talking about well, nobody's been talking about actually, if I'm honest, publisher feeds apart from me.
• 16:20
  Sam Sethi: Uh I was gonna say, we've been talking about publisher feeds, but then I went, no, no one else.
• 16:27
  Sam Sethi: Yeah, and I think they're great, but anyway, one day people are catch on, one day.
• 16:32
  Sam Sethi: They are basically like pod roles, but for publishers, they allow your publisher to aggregate all of the shows they have in one feed and add it to your RSS feed.
• 16:42
  Sam Sethi: Anyway, network feeds are another idea, which are the basic aggregation and collaboration of podcasters together, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.
• 16:53
  Sam Sethi: And the idea is that the network, like a publisher feed, is an aggregate within the RSS, and so you might have a podcast go out, and inside is the network feed, apps like TreeFans and others can then create pages of those network feeds, and people can then aggregate their listen times plays and fan base and try to get better deals.
• 17:17
  Sam Sethi: So that's where networks and publisher feeds fit in, and people are starting.
• 17:21
  Sam Sethi: Well, I say people are starting to do network feeds.
• 17:23
  Sam Sethi: Network feeds have been around for ages.
• 17:25
  Sam Sethi: There's been some good ones around, but I think this is the codification of it.
• 17:29
  Sam Sethi: But other people are now have realized that collaborating together is a good idea, and one of those is one of our power supporters, Dan Kendall.
• 17:38
  Sam Sethi: What's he been telling you, James?
• 17:39
  James Cridland: Yes, so I caught up with Dan earlier on in the week.
• 17:42
  James Cridland: He used to be called the Health Podcast Network, but now he's called the Health Podcast Library, and it turns out he's changed rather more than the name.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_00: We actually changed a lot more than just the name.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_00: We changed our whole approach to what it is that we're doing at this intersection of healthcare and podcasting.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: Podcast networks are really around a lot of things around IP monetization and production services.
• 18:06
  SPEAKER_00: And what we found working in the healthcare space is there are a lot of people who are already working on those areas over front and they don't want them.
• 18:11
  SPEAKER_00: They're not looking to monetize their Johns Hopkins podcast or their Mayo Clinic or University of Pennsylvania.
• 18:16
  SPEAKER_00: So and they've already got their own internal services for production services.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: And there are a lot of people who do a great job at that already for those organizations.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And after we did the Health Podcast Summit last year, which you were a part of, which I'm grateful for that, is still up and available at Health PodcastSummit.com.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_00: We realized there was a lot more that people needed just for discovery tools.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And we decided to reframe our entire approach to our software.
• 18:40
  SPEAKER_00: And really we we chose the name Health Podcast Library because libraries for centuries have been the houses where science and knowledge has been shared with the public.
• 18:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we thought that's precisely what we're trying to do through podcasts.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: We're trying to create a curated collection of information that can be accessed by people who are searching for science and medical and health knowledge.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: And we're putting that all in one place under the health podcast library umbrella.
• 19:06
  James Cridland: Yeah, and of course, a library is a curated experience, as you so rightly say.
• 19:10
  James Cridland: If if you're there looking looking for health podcasts in general, you've you've discovered a health podcast on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify, is is there an obvious way to know what's real and what's, you know, random, you know, quackery for for clicks?
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_00: That's one of the big challenges right now, just broadly across all of society.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it doesn't matter what sector you're looking at, but really knowing whether somebody credible is behind what you're listening to, whether that's being generated by AI, whether it's being elevated to you by an algorithm, or let's face it, I'm kind of embarrassed to say that one of the chief exports from America right now is an anti-science agenda.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing it all over the globe.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of it is happening right here at home as we see just a pullback on international participation in a variety of clinical and scientific communities.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing pullback on grants and scientific funding in the US.
• 20:05
  SPEAKER_00: We're seeing the US, which used to be a destination for a lot of the best minds around the world to come and do their research and develop their products.
• 20:13
  SPEAKER_00: And unfortunately, that isn't happening right now.
• 20:15
  SPEAKER_00: So we've got AI algorithms and an anti-science agenda working against us, and particularly in healthcare, where again in the US, we're seeing a lot of cutbacks on rural health, we're seeing a lot of closures of hospitals, consolidation, rising costs.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's really creating an opportunity to try to fill that information void and to say, how are we going to get this information out to the soft tissue between people's ears so that they can actually understand how to take care of themselves, how to take care of the people in their communities or take care of uh the people in their families.
• 20:46
  James Cridland: Have you seen any any impacts from AI, you know, generative AI making, AI voiced uh podcasts, and that sort of thing?
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_00: We have, and you and I have talked about this before with that company that almost I don't even want to mention because number one, they they don't exist anymore.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, but I don't even want to elevate their their sort of approach to how they were making content.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: But that's just one example.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: That was that company in particular was just one example of a rising confusion by people who are looking for information and what is actually driven by a human and what's driven by some machine.
• 21:22
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, when I talk to various healthcare organizations that are making podcasts, they say, well, we don't really need anything else because we've already, you know, we've already got our podcasts on Apple and Spotify and YouTube, and they've got huge reach.
• 21:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I did an example with one particular hospital, one of the top hospitals in the world, and we did a search across those platforms, and we had their their podcasts on Health Podcast Library as well.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: And they did not feature in any of those three platforms when we put in the search terms that they wanted to be found for.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: And then we went to Health Podcast Library, they were there.
• 21:53
  SPEAKER_00: And I I pointed out two things on a call, which was very similar to this on video.
• 21:57
  SPEAKER_00: I shared my screen.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_00: I said, number one, you're not being Featured here.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: You think that Apple is helping you find and reach your audience?
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's not.
• 22:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I've just demonstrated that to you.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And Apple, Spotify, YouTube, the same thing.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, number two, the reason you're creating content is because you want people to hear that before this particular hospital wanted people to hear it before they come in to seek treatment.
• 22:18
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, so tell me, of the 50 shows that Apple just presented to me, which one of these do you want me to listen to before I come in and see your healthcare professionals?
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, they couldn't give me an answer because we don't know what's there.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: We just know Apple has decided to put something up in the top left corner and work down through some algorithm after that.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: And we're not trying to keep people away from putting their podcasts on those platforms.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: We want people to be discovered there, but we're saying, look, let's create a separate environment where we can have a smaller set of shelves, as Stephen Goldstein sort of described on your podcast audience weekly last week, and a smaller set of shelves where we can curate the books that are there and make it easier for people to find the information that they're looking for.
• 22:58
  James Cridland: Yeah, that's a that's a fascinating way of putting it.
• 23:02
  James Cridland: And I guess so you can obviously find the Health Podcast Library at healthpodcastlibrary.com.
• 23:07
  James Cridland: Any plans for an app or any of those sorts of things?
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: That's a great question.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_00: We get asked that a lot.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'll ask you do you see a need for an app?
• 23:16
  SPEAKER_00: We have designed a really powerful platform that has a wonderful mobile experience that continues playing after you close and lock the screen.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: And we uh my I go back and forth about whether we actually need to invest in that.
• 23:30
  SPEAKER_00: I've developed apps in the medical field before.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_00: I know Google has gone through three or four iterations as they've tried to find ways to engage people.
• 23:38
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know that we necessarily need an Apple or Android native experience because again, we're not trying to keep people in a walled garden.
• 23:46
  SPEAKER_00: We want them to get in their car and open the app that they normally open and then find that there's something new from one of the creators that follow around diabetes or hypertension and trying to get them to a new destination that frankly is going to have single-digit uptake, you know, in terms of usage across the whole audience.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not sure that's the best uh allocation of our resources.
• 24:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'd really focus on creating a robust community, really focusing on doing that outreach to the patients and the professionals that we want to have come and find find content here and really put our effort there.
• 24:17
  James Cridland: I think that makes uh a bunch of sense.
• 24:19
  James Cridland: You you would you would assume that there was some way of taking the website that you've got and making an app version of that.
• 24:26
  James Cridland: But as you so rightly say, you want you want people to use the podcast app that they are comfortable with at the end of the day.
• 24:33
  James Cridland: You just need to help people find shows in a different way.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and and I think that I'm not against it entirely.
• 24:42
  SPEAKER_00: I just don't know that it's something that we need to do right this minute, because right now we're at 270 shows, which is almost triple of what we ever got to when we were doing the Health Podcast Network.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_00: And frankly, we've got another hundred or so that are ready to join.
• 24:56
  SPEAKER_00: And I keep finding podcasts every week that are interested in reaching the audience that we're working to curate here through the library.
• 25:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I really want to put my effort there on resourcing that community so they can be the best podcasters, the best content creators, and understanding this has been part of my message to the whole healthcare community, of which I've been a part for 30 years, is to say, look, podcasts are a part of an omni-channel strategy.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: I know we're using the word liquid content now, but we've been using the word omni-channel in healthcare for a long time, whether it's billboards on Times Square or leaflets that get passed through your door or delivered in your mailbox, or posters that are available inside your doctor's office, or TV advertising as it's often here in the US.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: There are a variety of ways that people are working to get the attention of their target audience.
• 25:44
  SPEAKER_00: And we're just saying, look, podcasts need to be a part of this story.
• 25:49
  James Cridland: So what's the business model behind it?
• 25:52
  James Cridland: Are podcasts paying to go into the library, or how does it work from that point of view?
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: Great.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_00: And it goes back to my earlier question or my earlier answer, which where I said that you know, we changed our whole model as we moved away from Health Podcast Network.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_00: Health Podcast Network, we were charging people.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that was an obstacle to try to overcome that whole explanation about why it was worth supporting something like what we were doing with Health Podcast Network.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: And what I realized when I wanted to focus on health podcast libraries, I had to do two things.
• 26:21
  SPEAKER_00: Number one, at the center of everything we do is the person we're trying to reach.
• 26:25
  SPEAKER_00: That can be patients, that can be a healthcare provider, that can be someone like me that was working in the healthcare industry that was trying to create products and services and solutions to empower hospitals and caregivers and patients in better ways.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: So if I want to keep the person at the center of that focus, I need to make it free for them, carte blanche.
• 26:44
  SPEAKER_00: It absolutely has to be free.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: I cannot put a paywall in front of that listener, that perspective listener of accessing their information.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: And similarly, if I'm really focused on serving their interests, I can't then turn to a creator and say, I'm gonna give you access to this audience, but only if you pay me, because that undermines the first principle, which is I want to make sure that the people who are searching for information have free and open, unfettered access to the best information that will help them reach the best health that they're possible of attaining.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: So it's free for listeners, free for creators.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: So how are we actually monetizing?
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: We're not placing ads.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_00: We are working with sponsors.
• 27:22
  SPEAKER_00: We do have some paid plans.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: So the free version of Health Podcast Library does the same as Apple and Spotify, but more.
• 27:30
  SPEAKER_00: It gives them the same sort of visibility.
• 27:32
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have to change their hosting.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: They can pull it.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_00: We pull in the RSS feed just like another destination, gives them visibility and their episodes and their artwork.
• 27:41
  SPEAKER_00: But then on the paid plans, so that's the free plan.
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_00: We want to make sure everybody has access to that.
• 27:45
  SPEAKER_00: And the other nice thing about what we've done is that whenever someone follows a show on Health Podcast Library, whenever that show publishes a new episode, we send them an email.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_00: And in the health community, people are not habitual podcast listeners like you and I are.
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: So we want to make sure that we have an opportunity of after we've engaged their interest and they've said they're interesting and interested in this, we want to make sure that we're not relying on push notifications on Apple or Spotify to actually reach their attention a second time when that second episode around whatever condition or professional interest they have.
• 28:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we we set up this email service.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: So all that's available for free.
• 28:22
  SPEAKER_00: And then for the paid levels, we're developing new solutions that frankly are way overdue, I believe.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we in a lot of these apps, people are trying to say, well, find us wherever you find podcasts.
• 28:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, it's hard to find some of these things.
• 28:34
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of them are by the same name, or you just put in a word and you end up with 50 results, and you're not sure which one was the actual one that your friend told you about or that you heard before.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_00: So we're creating more tools where people can put in custom buttons, embed their own YouTube playlists, uh, create their own bios because this is really important.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: Who are the people behind this?
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_00: So Apple and Spotify don't really make it very easy for somebody to put in their host bio or their team bio.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_00: Who else is behind this doing research or production?
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and all that's visible again on a paid plan.
• 29:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then we're creating something I'm really excited about, which is playlists.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: This whole thing where we post on LinkedIn or Instagram and we say, here's all the places where you can find it.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_00: Go to your chosen place.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's not really very helpful when you have to post three different links.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: And people send me links and they'll send me a Spotify link, and I listen on Apple.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: So that does, I have to go then to Apple to search for it.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: So what we're doing on the Health Podcast Library is we're including links to whatever platforms the creators want to make available to their audience.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then on that page, it's almost like a link tree where they can go and use that.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: People can find it and then find the links to their favorite platforms, or they can listen right there.
• 29:46
  SPEAKER_00: And we're we're also creating the ability for people to have playlists.
• 29:49
  SPEAKER_00: So there's one particular creator that I'm a big fan of that I discovered when my oldest daughter was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: At the time she had less than 200 episodes, now she has over 800.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, like my family was nine years ago, and like people in the diabetes community are happening, it's happening right now today.
• 30:09
  SPEAKER_00: It's hard to go through 800 episodes and find the content that's relevant for me at my stage in the journey.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: So we're creating a a platform called playlists, where she's then able to take her 800 episodes and curate them into playlists to say, well, this is what you need to do if your diagnosis uh diagnosis happens as a toddler.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: This is what happens for uh questions around pumps or insulin or or CGMs, continuous glucose monitors.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: So being able to curate that content in a meaningful way and surface that back up so that when people do discover her in the library, they don't have to filter through 800 shows.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: They can say, well, this is where I am and I want to listen to this.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: And importantly, this is where the network effects come in.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: People can then take that playlist and share that out and say, hey, this is something that I think you should listen to.
• 30:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we're having a lot of interest from healthcare professionals around that very thing as their time with patients continues to get restricted from eight to 15 minutes and seeing patients one after another.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: We need to give them tools to be able to say, this is how you can engage outside of the clinic setting.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: And this is where you can listen to this on the way home.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_00: You don't have to read anything, you don't have to watch a video and put your attention on a screen.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: You can literally scan this QR code on my screen and walk out and start listening to this on the drive home or the commute back and begin to get that information that's going to make you more empowered as a professional.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: But also, as I mentioned, it giving that information out there for patients and caregivers as well.
• 31:35
  SPEAKER_00: There is there's a principle in healthcare that's taught around the rights.
• 31:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's around things like the right treatment for the right patient at the right time.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_00: And both the patients need to be educated about that so they can have what's called informed consent, so they can participate in that treatment.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: But also, healthcare professionals, there's just a deluge of information as more science is advanced and more products come to market, but they're trying to keep up with this information or around what's available for the patients.
• 32:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I talk to a lot of healthcare professionals who absolutely hate being confronted with new information and having them that be the first time that they're hearing about it.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: So, what we're really really focused on is how do we deliver the right podcast to the right person at the right time?
• 32:18
  SPEAKER_00: So, how do we find the information that a healthcare professional needs to do their job and make it easy for them to consume it and share it with their staff, share it with their thousands of colleagues within their hospital system or within the with the person down the hall, working down the hall with them, and then also make it easy for patients to find that so they can be more informed to say the doctor mentioned this or I want to go and ask about this.
• 32:39
  SPEAKER_00: You know, how do I prepare for that eight to 15 minute consultation with a doctor and be prepared with the information that's going to allow me to get out of that limited resource of that time with that professional?
• 32:49
  James Cridland: Very cool.
• 32:49
  James Cridland: It's it's fascinating hearing all of these, you know, verticals for specific parts of podcasting.
• 32:56
  James Cridland: Of course, you know, Adam Curry working on Godcaster.
• 32:59
  James Cridland: We're seeing lots of other individual, individual, you know, verticals of this of this of this type.
• 33:05
  James Cridland: And I think you you know what you're doing for health podcasting is absolutely fascinating.
• 33:10
  James Cridland: Dan, thank you so much.
• 33:12
  James Cridland: You can find the Health Podcast Library at healthpodcastlibrary.com.
• 33:16
  James Cridland: And thank you for being a power supporter and for your support for Podnews as well.
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: I love what you're doing, James.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: I've been a big fan for years, and I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you here.
• 33:25
  James Cridland: The very excellent Dan Kendall, one of our power supporters, of course.
• 33:28
  James Cridland: And if you would like to become a power supporter, then please do.
• 33:31
  James Cridland: Weekly.podnews.net is where you can do that.
• 33:34
  James Cridland: Just hit the support button.
• 33:37
  James Cridland: We should have another power supporter next week, Sam, which is very exciting.
• 33:41
  James Cridland: Somebody who was asking questions about where they can sign up.
• 33:44
  James Cridland: Weekly.podnews.net slash support is where to go and that website, all run by our sponsor, Buzzsprout.
• 33:52
  James Cridland: So I was talking to Dan about his library, lots and lots of shows in there.
• 34:00
  James Cridland: But also I thought it would be interesting to chat to somebody that has been running a proper podcast network for some time now.
• 34:09
  SPEAKER_02: They he is called Mike Hurley.
• 34:11
  SPEAKER_02: I'm Mike Hurley.
• 34:12
  SPEAKER_02: I am an independent podcaster.
• 34:14
  SPEAKER_02: I co-founded a company called uh used to be called Relay FM, we're now just relay, back in 2014.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_02: And I've been I've been podcasting since 2010, but it was a hobby.
• 34:24
  SPEAKER_02: And then in 2014 it became my full-time job.
• 34:27
  James Cridland: Yes, and you also run a an online store where I can buy a Bayro for a hundred dollars, but I'm not gonna be doing this.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yep, yep.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't call it a Bayro, I would call it premium sterote covered aluminium rollable pen.
• 34:41
  SPEAKER_02: Uh correct.
• 34:42
  SPEAKER_02: I do I have uh also have a paper and pen product business.
• 34:46
  James Cridland: Indeed.
• 34:46
  James Cridland: So tell us about relay.
• 34:48
  James Cridland: What what's what's relay, first of all?
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, by and large, relay well, I'll say relay is a very old school podcast network.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like we're technology, that is world, you know, like podcasting begun mostly serving technology podcasts.
• 35:02
  SPEAKER_02: That's kind of where the medium started because it was a very nerdy thing to have to get set up, and so the shows tended to be very nerdy, and we we very much remain in that world.
• 35:14
  SPEAKER_02: We're not exclusively technology, but all of our shows have a technology flair to them.
• 35:19
  SPEAKER_02: You know, some are more creativity, some are more focused on productivity and and like and expression, but technology is kind of a thread line that goes through all of them.
• 35:28
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, and this comes down to a lot of the ways that we do things.
• 35:30
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, Relay is very much a proponent of the OpenRSS standard.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_02: We are an absolutely an audio-first podcast network.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_02: We are dabbling in video, but we are doing it in a way that remains audio-first.
• 35:43
  SPEAKER_02: We maintain our own publishing system.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_02: We built our own publishing system and maintain it to this day.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_02: We do all of our ads in-house.
• 35:51
  SPEAKER_02: And, you know, the a lot of this comes with challenges, but I think the fact that we're still going after 12 years and we're still thriving is in part because of our fierce independence.
• 36:03
  James Cridland: Yeah, and I think, you know, as a as somebody that self-hosts my own show as well, there are real benefits in doing that, and real benefits, of course, in playing around with new tech and being able to go, okay, well, is is this funding tag any good, for example?
• 36:16
  James Cridland: Uh and uh and all that kind of uh stuff.
• 36:18
  James Cridland: So you you kicked off a Kickstarter in early June, along with Jason Snell, to fund a new podcast about Apple's history called Designed in California.
• 36:30
  James Cridland: Tell me about what that show is, first of all.
• 36:32
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so Design in California is an Apple history podcast.
• 36:35
  SPEAKER_02: You know, Apple turned 50 this year, which is why we started the project, and I can talk more about kind of its beginnings in a moment.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_02: But essentially, we are picking stories from Apple history and telling them with huge amounts of research.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_02: They are kind of written but not scripted shows, you know, like that a lot of work has gone into them, and we're we're telling moments throughout their history in great detail.
• 37:00
  SPEAKER_02: We're not doing the sh the story of Apple chronologically, we're we're kind of jumping around telling stories that are either relevant for the time or just very interesting to us.
• 37:09
  SPEAKER_02: Like we're hitting just out of luck, really, for the the show's creation.
• 37:15
  SPEAKER_02: We're currently publishing a series about the origins of the iPod.
• 37:19
  SPEAKER_02: The iPod is 25 this week since its announcement.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_02: And then at the beginning of next year, we have 20 years of the iPhone, and so we're gonna be doing a big story about that.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_02: So, yeah, we're we're kind of going through and picking stories, we're telling parts of them, we're gonna come back to some of them later because some of the I mean, a company like Apple has had huge successes, huge failures, nearly went out of business.
• 37:41
  SPEAKER_02: It's now the big, you know, biggest company in the world.
• 37:43
  SPEAKER_02: There's a there is a a wealth, like a depth of stories and like a real world for us to to look at and picking things to talk about.
• 37:51
  James Cridland: I enjoyed you talking about the origin of the iPod.
• 37:54
  James Cridland: Thank you for the Suzanne Vega earworm.
• 37:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yes, I have had that in my head for a month now.
• 38:00
  James Cridland: Yes, I was I was working in online audio in 2010, and yes, Suzanne Vega was the track that we had to listen to to work out whether or not it actually sounded halfway good.
• 38:10
  James Cridland: So thanks for that.
• 38:11
  James Cridland: Uh that's that's very kind.
• 38:13
  James Cridland: Um so in order for you to do this show, yeah, you chose Kickstarter, and you were looking for 40,000 US dollars to get the show up and running.
• 38:24
  James Cridland: Firstly, why did you choose Kickstarter?
• 38:26
  James Cridland: And secondly, why forty thousand dollars?
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, okay, so Jason Snell, he has been writing and recovering Apple for half of the company's existence.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, he was the editor-in-chief of MacWorld magazine, he's been an independent writer for nearly as long as Relay has founded, and Jason and I have have hosted a podcast together called Upgrade every week for over 10 years, and we talk about Apple News now.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like that is what we cover, that's our beat, and it's always been Jason's beat.
• 38:57
  SPEAKER_02: So he has a lot of thoughts and a lot of knowledge and and a lot of experience with the company.
• 39:03
  SPEAKER_02: And he had had an idea for doing kind of like a special series looking at a time when Apple's macOS was uh essentially failing, and then they brought in next.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_02: And he was thinking about doing this as like a as like a one one-off series thing, but was struggling to kind of kind of get it started.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_02: And then when Apple was turning 50 this year in April, we wanted to do something special to kind of mark the occasion.
• 39:28
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, Jason and I, our favorite podcast is the rest is history, we adore the rest's history.
• 39:33
  SPEAKER_02: If we're ever together, that is mostly what we're talking about.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_02: And we thought it would be fun to do a kind of rest is history style show or episode on how Apple was founded, and we would publish that.
• 39:47
  SPEAKER_02: As we were working on it, we both fell in love with this format.
• 39:53
  SPEAKER_02: And as we recorded the first episode, so as we recorded the episode that was going to be published on upgrade, as soon as we were done, we were like, How on earth can we do more of this?
• 40:05
  SPEAKER_02: Like, we we really, really wanted to do more of it.
• 40:08
  James Cridland: Yeah.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_02: Now, what we and we started to think about how would we make that a reality?
• 40:12
  SPEAKER_02: Now, it doesn't fit to make this part of the upgrade podcast.
• 40:16
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like I imagine a lot of people would take the idea of great, we'll publish a second episode every week, we have an inbuilt audience, easy, easy, easy, we can just go for it.
• 40:25
  SPEAKER_02: But for us, that didn't feel right because upgrade is about what is happening now and the future, and to have now episodes, a second episode of the week with Tenosaurus from the past, it it didn't make sense to us.
• 40:36
  SPEAKER_02: What I have learned in the last 10 years is it's very hard to launch a new show and it's becoming harder and harder all the time for a myriad of reasons, and honestly, for reasons I don't understand, because if I did I would solve them, and no one really knows why, but it's just gotten harder and harder.
• 40:52
  SPEAKER_02: There's just too many podcasts now, and breaking through is really difficult.
• 40:56
  SPEAKER_02: And so we knew that if we were to launch this show as a separate endeavor, it would be very hard to build an audience, and therefore very hard to build advertising and very hard to build membership because we are a as a company, we are essentially split 50-50 now between our advertising and our membership, as kind of like the way that we make money from our shows and through our business.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_02: So I thought, well, I think that this show would be very attractive to members.
• 41:26
  SPEAKER_02: Again, we looked at our favorite podcast, The Rest is History, as kind of a business model.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_02: They produce an entire series at once and release it all at once to members, and in the free feed, you go weekly.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_02: And I know that is super effective for me for signing up for the show, and I'm sure for many signing up for the show, and they have you know a great membership model.
• 41:44
  SPEAKER_02: So I was like, Well, how we could do that, that would be good.
• 41:48
  SPEAKER_02: But then how can we encourage membership?
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_02: And so I thought, well, what if we were to sell memberships in advance?
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_02: Like in that that we could fund the show that way by selling them in advance, and then I thought, well, the best mechanism for doing that is crowdfunding, which led us to Kickstarter.
• 42:03
  SPEAKER_02: The$40,000 number was essentially if we're gonna do a show like this, you've got to commit to it.
• 42:10
  SPEAKER_02: And that was another reason why we wanted to make sure that the bit that the show would work before we started.
• 42:15
  SPEAKER_02: Either Jason or I want to launch a project and then kill it after a month because it doesn't work.
• 42:19
  SPEAKER_02: So if we're in it, we're in it.
• 42:21
  SPEAKER_02: And so we started thinking about how much would it cost to pay for a year of our time to produce this show.
• 42:30
  SPEAKER_02: You know, we both kind of felt it was gonna be about a day a week at least of our time to produce a show.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_02: But that's because we've been successful and we're putting more into it.
• 42:40
  SPEAKER_02: Um, but we felt like to do a good job, it would be at least one day of work a week.
• 42:46
  SPEAKER_02: We landed on a number that was more than 40,000 to cover for both of us.
• 42:50
  SPEAKER_02: Like we had like our secret goal of like if we got to 60, we would be absolutely set.
• 42:55
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, we worked with a friend of ours who his name's Glenn Fleischmann he's a consultant for Kickstarters, mostly in books, and he said, You can't set your Kickstarter as the goal for what you actually need.
• 43:05
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you gotta hope you'll hit more.
• 43:07
  SPEAKER_02: He said, like, what is the absolute minimum that you could make?
• 43:12
  SPEAKER_02: And if you did it, you could do it, and we landed on a 40,000.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_02: That that's how we got to that number.
• 43:17
  James Cridland: I was interested that you worked with Glenn.
• 43:19
  James Cridland: Why why was he useful?
• 43:21
  James Cridland: He presumably comes with a lot of experience on how these Kickstarter campaigns work, right?
• 43:27
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, Glenn is a friend, so that was helpful.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_02: So we already knew we knew someone, and Kickstarter is incredibly complicated.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_02: Like, and it it has only the campaign has only become more complicated the more we've done with it.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_02: And there's just there is a lot in Kickstarter from a marketing perspective.
• 43:44
  SPEAKER_02: It is its own inbuilt marketing engine.
• 43:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so we wanted to work with someone who could help us understand what are the ways in which you should present the campaign, how should you make an effective video?
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_02: Because we hoped, and I think this did happen.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_02: That we would actually reach people outside of our audience as well who may be interested in this project.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_02: And so we didn't want to just create something that was like, hey, you know us, you know.
• 44:10
  SPEAKER_02: And so we we wanted to work with someone who could help us understand, who could encourage us, like, oh, you should do this kind of reward, that kind of reward.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_02: And there were things that he was recommending to us that to me I wasn't sure would work, but they did.
• 44:24
  SPEAKER_02: Like offering discounts for our existing podcast members and all these kinds of things.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_02: Like, is that really going to make a big difference?
• 44:31
  SPEAKER_02: It made a huge difference.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_02: And so it was just about, you know, we knew someone who had a lot of experience with this, and it would have been silly for us not to consult with them.
• 44:40
  SPEAKER_02: Super useful.
• 44:40
  James Cridland: Super useful.
• 44:41
  James Cridland: You said on Kickstarter that you were nervous about bringing it to Kickstarter.
• 44:45
  James Cridland: And I was just curious why the nervousness?
• 44:48
  SPEAKER_02: Public failure.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_02: If the show didn't work, like if the Kickstarter campaign didn't work, you know, we would have put a lot, a lot of effort into this.
• 44:55
  SPEAKER_02: And we had a real big kind of marketing plan that we were rolling out across the various shows that me and Jason do as a way to kind of get this project to work.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_02: And if you know if we only got$20,000 pledged, like that would hurt, you know, and that was the risk.
• 45:12
  James Cridland: And that money goes back, doesn't it?
• 45:14
  James Cridland: You you don't actually even take 20,000.
• 45:16
  James Cridland: Yeah.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_02: There are different crowdfunding systems.
• 45:18
  SPEAKER_02: Like we could have, and yeah, we thought about this.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_02: Let's just put up a page on our website and do it.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_02: I knew that that would not be as effective as Kickstarter.
• 45:25
  SPEAKER_02: There is like a crowd effect.
• 45:27
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, it was it was all an all-or-nothing, is how they call it.
• 45:31
  James Cridland: So you kicked off on June the second.
• 45:34
  James Cridland: Yeah.
• 45:35
  James Cridland: You were really secretly hoping for$60,000, but you got the$40,000 that day.
• 45:41
  James Cridland: Yeah.
• 45:42
  James Cridland: And in a month, you got$311,000 from more than$3,400 backers.
• 45:51
  James Cridland: Why do you think it was so successful?
• 45:53
  James Cridland: Why do you think, firstly, people gave so much, but also secondly, that you had so many people there?
• 45:57
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so we funded in an hour, and then we were at$100,000 within a day, and then it kind of went over that time.
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_02: We didn't expect that.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_02: Like obviously, we did not expect that.
• 46:10
  SPEAKER_02: There was a conversation Jason and I had where we were secretly whispering, what if we got to a hundred thousand?
• 46:16
  SPEAKER_02: And then agreed we'd never talk about it ever again, right?
• 46:19
  SPEAKER_05: Yeah.
• 46:22
  SPEAKER_02: Jason and I have been have been producing shows that are of high quality to a really engaged audience for over a decade.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_02: That is essentially why it happened.
• 46:34
  SPEAKER_02: But there were there are a lot of things that led into why I think it got to that number, you know.
• 46:39
  SPEAKER_02: Like I think there was we launched it at the exact right time.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_02: June is a very busy time in Apple's world.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_02: It's when they have their developer conference.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_02: And so it's one of the two times a year where we have the most attention, which is why we decided to do it then, even though because we are so busy, terrible time to do it, kind of like from a how we could handle it and how busy we were at that time.
• 47:00
  SPEAKER_02: Similarly, we launched the show in September, which is the second busiest time of the year, but we knew that it was right for the to for getting the most kind of ears on the project.
• 47:12
  SPEAKER_02: So people who have listened to Myanmar Jason's work, they knew there was no risk in us producing the show.
• 47:19
  SPEAKER_02: Like we were going to deliver.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_02: And we also we released our first series in alongside the upgrade podcast for the first month.
• 47:28
  SPEAKER_02: We wanted to show people like this is what it is.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_02: Apple has a a community around it, an enthusiast community that has lasted for 20 years, you know, and I'm still kind of a part of that community.
• 47:43
  SPEAKER_02: I am a part of that community and have been for that for basically that entire time.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_02: That wider community, even people that don't listen to mine and Jason's show, they're aware of us, and and this was of interest to them.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_02: It was, you know, during Apple's 58th year, there was a lot of focus on it.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_02: 3,000 backers is the thing that is the most incredible to me, more than the number.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_02: Um, it is a huge amount of members to a paid podcast.
• 48:10
  SPEAKER_02: It is, you know, it's up there, uh it jostles time to time, but like we've you know, we've been running memberships since uh 2020 in earnest.
• 48:18
  SPEAKER_02: And design in California is like towards the top of our list now of members for for a brand new show.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, similarly, the the member to to free audience number is way out of whack for what we're used to.
• 48:31
  SPEAKER_02: You know, you usually get a single digit percentage, but this is a big double digit percentage at this point.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_02: And we'll see how that goes over time.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_02: But it was, yeah, it was a huge surprise to us, and we were we were absolutely I still kind of can't believe it that we that we raised the amount of money that we did, but it has it's been a big validation for us that the show should exist and has absolutely helped us make it even better than we could have imagined because we have more resources available to us.
• 49:00
  James Cridland: Yeah, yeah.
• 49:02
  James Cridland: W will you uh be building Kickstarter in for any new shows?
• 49:07
  James Cridland: I mean, I'm guessing that you don't launch new shows that often, do you?
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_02: No, we we actually had stopped launching new shows a number of years ago.
• 49:15
  SPEAKER_02: It it stopped making sense for our business and and it was adding more complexity into our company than it was bringing return.
• 49:22
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like when relay started, every time we added a new show, we increased our revenue by 10 or 20 percent.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_02: Like because that it was for whatever reason.
• 49:31
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, I guess you know, so yeah, for context, like relay launched a month before serial.
• 49:36
  SPEAKER_02: Like that's kind of like putting us in the timeline, you know, of like where podcasting was and is.
• 49:41
  SPEAKER_02: And so we had kind of felt like it it was becoming too difficult to do.
• 49:45
  SPEAKER_02: And what we should do, and we had been doing, is hyper focusing on making our existing shows the best they could be, serving our audience, and you know, and I think that that has as we were starting to move more towards a membership model for our shows, has proved to really be of benefit to us and has really helped our business rather than focusing on like let's get more shows, more shows, more shows.
• 50:07
  SPEAKER_02: I that there was a time when that was our mode and we'd stopped doing that.
• 50:12
  SPEAKER_02: We now have a new model that we didn't know could exist for us before, which is to to pre-sell memberships to crowdfund a show.
• 50:20
  SPEAKER_02: I wouldn't say we will never do it again, I wouldn't say we would do it again.
• 50:24
  SPEAKER_02: I think that there were a lot of reasons why it worked for design in California that wouldn't work for a show that has two hosts that haven't worked together before, you know?
• 50:34
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 50:35
  SPEAKER_02: That there there is maybe something to say that if if we have another show that the existing hosts want to do, we can look at it, but we don't in anything in our business, we do not assume it will work always.
• 50:46
  SPEAKER_02: Like when when when as we have added more shows of a membership component, we have looked at each one individually and we've made decisions that some shows would and some shows wouldn't work to having membership.
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_02: It's we don't kind of consider everything alike.
• 51:02
  James Cridland: Yeah, and and you know, I mean, certainly you can you can see the you know the network effect of the fact that you were both very well known, the fact that people trusted that you would produce a good high-quality product, and the fact that you clearly know what you're talking about, you know, as well.
• 51:19
  James Cridland: And I think it's interesting, the same month, another show called The Lovecraft Investigations, which used to be on the BBC, was dropped from there, but started as an as an indie show that got more than$500,000 in June as well from another Kickstarter, which I thought was really interesting.
• 51:38
  James Cridland: So, you know, the there is certainly something for a known quantity, which is then which is then available in this way.
• 51:46
  James Cridland: Um I'm I mean, I guess as some people would say you you you've got$311,000, you've got more than a quarter of a million dollars to make a show, but the show still has advertising in it.
• 51:57
  James Cridland: And some people would say that that's a bit greedy.
• 52:00
  James Cridland: Do you need advertising anymore?
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_02: Well, one of the ever well the advertising in the show right now is people who back the Kickstarter.
• 52:07
  SPEAKER_02: We had an advertising tier.
• 52:09
  SPEAKER_02: We're gonna continue making it an avid an advertising focused show because that's part of our business.
• 52:14
  SPEAKER_02: Like the the economics of this is is interesting, you know, and you see it's like ah they made 150 grand each.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_02: We absolutely did not.
• 52:22
  SPEAKER_02: We have we have fees to pay to Kickstarter, right?
• 52:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah we have we have consultancy fees, we have to pay for all the physical products that we have produced as part of the Kickstarter campaign.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_02: And then we have people to pay.
• 52:34
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like we we work with video editor, we work with an audio editor, and because of the show's success, we're working, we're licensing imagery for the thumbnails because we're publishing the show on YouTube, and it's it's actually going pretty well for us.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_02: Like for us, we we've not had a lot of success on YouTube, but this show is finding an audience, and it's finding a new audience, which is why we wanted to do it.
• 52:55
  SPEAKER_02: But we can tell these people are not as familiar with Jason and I, but they're enjoying the show, which has been great.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_02: But we're you know, we're paying for script and fact-checking, like we're we've added in a lot more expense to this show than we would have otherwise because we have the resources to do it.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_02: And as me and Jason have said to each other many times, if we're not going to try these things out, when are we gonna do that?
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_02: And so we we have a lot of expense in the show, and that money will run out.
• 53:23
  SPEAKER_02: Like, our plan is not just to do design in California for a year now, like we plan to do design in California for as long as we possibly can because we love it so much.
• 53:33
  James Cridland: As long as you can think of story arcs.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_02: We have maybe five years worth of content for this show.
• 53:42
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, but so like yeah, there's a question.
• 53:45
  James Cridland: Just one for one one for 2032, the massive failure that was the Apple home view.
• 53:49
  James Cridland: There they there you go.
• 53:50
  James Cridland: That's it.
• 53:51
  James Cridland: I don't think it's gonna be, James.
• 53:52
  SPEAKER_02: I think that things are.
• 53:53
  SPEAKER_02: But yes, the thing, the the great thing is history continues to be written about this company, it's not a thing that is done.
• 54:01
  SPEAKER_02: You know, like there are there are stories that have happened a couple of years ago that in five years' time, if we're still doing the show, will feel like history, you know, like and like the the the the original failure of Apple Intelligence will be an interesting story to tell in in 2032.
• 54:17
  SPEAKER_02: But yeah, there is we are able to invest in the show's production and we're doing that, but we're also trying to set the show up for the future, and so you know, we continue to sell memberships and we're getting new members every day, and we will make it part of advertising because relay as a company does not benefit from this money in the way that Jason, you know, the majority of the kind of what's left that goes to me and Jason to fund our time.
• 54:44
  SPEAKER_02: But there is also Relay as a business has people that it needs to pay, and so that has to be continued as an ongoing kind of kind of thing.
• 54:53
  James Cridland: So the show is called Designed in California.
• 54:55
  James Cridland: Have you learned new stuff about Apple from this podcast, from the work that you've been doing already?
• 55:02
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, actually, and we were we were wondering about this, uh, and when we were kind of looking at it, we were thinking, right, we're we're not gonna focus on original reporting so much in the show because there is so much existing stuff out there.
• 55:15
  SPEAKER_02: You know, Jason has decades of magazines, like he has the magazines that he was a part of, but there's also there's lots of books, and we have books that are in print, out of print.
• 55:25
  SPEAKER_02: We refer to all of this when looking at the research.
• 55:29
  SPEAKER_02: But we're the the show existing is actually now bringing information to us that we didn't think would happen.
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_02: So we have been very lucky that the Computer History Museum is very excited about this project and they have been engaging with us.
• 55:47
  SPEAKER_02: They the the historian at the Computer History Museum, Hansen Sue, is reviewing our scripts for us.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_02: It's very exciting, and we're shouting them out in every episode.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_02: That's something they're really excited about.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_02: But also we we we send our scripts out to people who may have been around at the time, may have been at Apple or or were reporting on Apple.
• 56:07
  SPEAKER_02: It's like d does the story make sense from your information.
• 56:11
  SPEAKER_02: But the iPod series, somebody was able to get the script to members of the original team, and we had a major we had a large amount of comments from people who were there who worked on the iPod.
• 56:26
  SPEAKER_02: And so in our uh origin of iPod series, there is information that has been confirmed or didn't really be known at the time.
• 56:36
  SPEAKER_02: Not huge stuff, but there's just little bits.
• 56:38
  SPEAKER_02: And we have a we have a series coming next, which is about Apple getting rid of Steve Jobs.
• 56:45
  SPEAKER_02: So kind of when they they ousted him from the company.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_02: There was some information that we were trying to understand, just trying to to get a detail correct.
• 56:55
  SPEAKER_02: It was a funny detail, but we wanted to see if we could get it correct.
• 56:58
  SPEAKER_02: We reached out to one of the people who was involved and they gave us the information.
• 57:02
  SPEAKER_02: So there is a we we we don't plan to try and do a lot of investigation with this show, but just kind of the nature of it existing is meaning we're finding out new little pieces of information, and I think that's going to keep scaling over time, and and I hope that it will.
• 57:17
  James Cridland: And it's a really important, it's a really important thing, you know, as well, in terms of just looking at where history as where hist you know history goes.
• 57:26
  James Cridland: What one of the things that I've spent time doing is the history of podcasts, and particularly the history of podcasts in the UK, which has been very interesting, but also, you know, little things like talking to one of the launch engineers for the original Google podcast app, which was called Google Lytton, which was a long, long time ago, only available on the very first, you know, Android phones, and understanding what their plans were for that before in typical Google style they they decided to move on.
• 57:59
  James Cridland: But but I do think that you know just look uh going into the history while there are still people around to talk to is a really important thing.
• 58:08
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and we hope we hope that that will be available to us.
• 58:11
  SPEAKER_02: Apple, very secretive company, so sometimes it can be difficult to try and tell their history.
• 58:17
  SPEAKER_02: But we hope that as we continue through this project, and and we have had conversations with Apple.
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_02: They are excited that this show exists, right?
• 58:26
  SPEAKER_02: Like that, you know, we've been speaking to people at Apple Podcasts and other people there in the PR teams, which we have a relationship with.
• 58:32
  SPEAKER_02: They're encouraging, like they are very encouraging to us.
• 58:34
  SPEAKER_02: And we hope we hope we can have a dialogue with them, but we also hope that we can have a dialogue with some people who were instrumental on certain projects and products that have since left the company.
• 58:45
  SPEAKER_02: I have my eyes set on a few individuals that hopefully we'll be able to try and nail down one day, but has seems to have been hard to do so far, but but you never know.
• 58:54
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, indeed.
• 58:55
  James Cridland: Mike, it's been uh a real pleasure talking to you.
• 58:58
  James Cridland: You can find your website and indeed many others wherever you find your podcasts.
• 59:03
  James Cridland: Thank you so much.
• 59:04
  James Cridland: Thanks, James.
• 59:05
  Announcer: The Podnews Weekly Review with Buzz with Buzzsprout.
• 59:09
  Announcer: Start podcasting, keep podcasting.
• 59:13
  Sam Sethi: Mike Hurley and Danley.
• 59:15
  Sam Sethi: That was good.
• 59:15
  Sam Sethi: Um, I also recommend if you get time to listen to Captivates Elsie Escobar.
• 59:21
  Sam Sethi: She's got a really good post with Ariel Nissenblatt, Seth Resler, Steve Stewart.
• 59:27
  Sam Sethi: It's called How Can You Turn Podcast Listeners Into a Community?
• 59:31
  Sam Sethi: Again, I think it's a really good listen if you're watching.
• 59:33
  James Cridland: And she should know.
• 59:34
  James Cridland: She's director of community.
• 59:36
  James Cridland: That that that's her job.
• 59:37
  James Cridland: So uh no, it's a good read.
• 59:39
  James Cridland: So uh well worth a read.
• 59:40
  James Cridland: You'll find out in the Podnews newsletter earlier on in the week.
• 59:43
  James Cridland: Just do a search for LC Escobar.
• 59:46
  Sam Sethi: Now, companies getting into podcasting.
• 59:49
  Sam Sethi: Earlier the year we heard about Netflix getting into podcasting, and that was a surprise just as much as when we heard YouTube was getting into podcasting.
• 59:57
  Sam Sethi: So let's not scoff because you never know where it could end.
• 1:00:00
  Sam Sethi: But it seems that Netflix's next push into mobile could help for discovery.
• 1:00:07
  Sam Sethi: Again, we talked about algorithmic discovery, but in this case they have plans to introduce more personalized short form videos into the feed and making it easier for content to be discovered on smartphones.
• 1:00:18
  Sam Sethi: Now, I think of Netflix as a lean back, you know, chillax thing that they do, uh big screen.
• 1:00:25
  Sam Sethi: They're making a really big push into mobile, James.
• 1:00:29
  Sam Sethi: Why is that?
• 1:00:31
  Sam Sethi: I think because they're desperate.
• 1:00:33
  James Cridland: I think that uh no, genu genuinely.
• 1:00:35
  James Cridland: I mean, I think they are they are being eaten alive by YouTube.
• 1:00:40
  James Cridland: Uh what what's very clear is that the people who are running Netflix are running it as if it was a legacy television network from ten years ago.
• 1:00:49
  James Cridland: They don't really understand what it is that they're doing, frankly.
• 1:00:54
  James Cridland: And I think that they are now flailing around and going, oh, let's add podcasts.
• 1:00:58
  James Cridland: Oh, that hasn't had that hasn't had a big effect.
• 1:01:01
  James Cridland: Let's add shorts, and but we'll call them clips.
• 1:01:05
  James Cridland: Uh and that appears to be what they're doing.
• 1:01:07
  James Cridland: I think that Netflix has utterly lost the plot.
• 1:01:10
  James Cridland: They've not had a big hit this year, which is kind of the number one thing for any uh any streamer to do.
• 1:01:17
  James Cridland: You know, they've not had a big hit.
• 1:01:19
  James Cridland: Their last big hit, big, big hit, was Stranger Things, of course, which was right at the end of last year.
• 1:01:24
  James Cridland: So they don't appear to have had now you you you can have fallow years, of course, but you know, so I think there's a problem there.
• 1:01:30
  James Cridland: But I think genuinely they are in a death flail of going, oh my god, we need something else, and they're now announcing clips is my own personal opinion.
• 1:01:41
  James Cridland: I don't use Netflix that much because nothing on it makes me particularly interested.
• 1:01:46
  James Cridland: But what do you think, Sam?
• 1:01:48
  James Cridland: I mean, obviously they're doing new features for the iPhone Duo, so you'll be happy.
• 1:01:52
  James Cridland: Come the iPhone Duo 2 when you buy that.
• 1:01:56
  James Cridland: Yeah, the one without the cracking screen.
• 1:01:58
  Sam Sethi: Yeah, because I won't be able to see the film if it's gonna crack right through the middle of it.
• 1:02:02
  Sam Sethi: Um it's not very helpful, Apple.
• 1:02:05
  Sam Sethi: Um you think they would have tested it a bit better.
• 1:02:08
  Sam Sethi: They would, wouldn't they?
• 1:02:11
  Sam Sethi: But having said that, you know, I think you're right.
• 1:02:14
  Sam Sethi: I I watch less and less Netflix, but I also think they've got more and more competition coming now from other streaming platforms.
• 1:02:22
  Sam Sethi: They had the, you know, the whole part to themselves at one point.
• 1:02:26
  Sam Sethi: I think they've got the innovators' dilemma as well, because they did have such a high profit margin and they had everyone.
• 1:02:33
  Sam Sethi: I think now they're struggling how to keep the existing business going.
• 1:02:37
  Sam Sethi: We've seen that in the share price, we've seen it in the layoffs, we've seen it in other things.
• 1:02:41
  Sam Sethi: And these exclusive podcasts, I think, are going to be, like Spotify's exclusive podcast, I think gonna be a failure just as much as I think Instagram's full long format and exclusive will be a failure, although not called exclusives for half a million.
• 1:02:55
  Sam Sethi: Yeah, no, I I I I agree with you.
• 1:02:57
  Sam Sethi: I think Netflix is all over the place.
• 1:02:59
  Sam Sethi: Spotflix, here we come.
• 1:03:01
  Sam Sethi: Anyway.
• 1:03:03
  James Cridland: Many you'd have kept hold of that of that domain.
• 1:03:06
  Sam Sethi: Yeah.
• 1:03:07
  James Cridland: Oh well, there we go.
• 1:03:08
  James Cridland: Uh no, talking about talking about power supporters, our our our fourth favourite podcast hosting company, Flightcast, has done something, has done something very good, haven't they?
• 1:03:20
  Sam Sethi: Yeah.
• 1:03:21
  Sam Sethi: Upload once, publish everywhere.
• 1:03:23
  Sam Sethi: That's the motto.
• 1:03:24
  Sam Sethi: And yeah, it rocks over at Flightcast has produced a tool.
• 1:03:28
  Sam Sethi: And I think it's quite an interesting one, actually, because up until now it's been upload and published to Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and the cracks between them often are that people have to directly upload to YouTube.
• 1:03:43
  Sam Sethi: And they've got a catalogue, a back catalogue.
• 1:03:46
  Sam Sethi: Now, what Rox has done is said, well, hang on a minute, why don't you, with Flightcast, upload all of your YouTube catalogue to Spotify and then use Spotify's monetization to get some money from your back catalogue.
• 1:04:00
  Sam Sethi: And so that's what they've done.
• 1:04:01
  Sam Sethi: Very clever.
• 1:04:02
  James Cridland: Yeah, I think it's a really clever plan.
• 1:04:04
  James Cridland: So if you remember a couple of years ago, uh Blueberry added vid to pod, which was a way of going into YouTube and saying you can turn this YouTube video into an audio podcast, and they would do all of that automatically for you.
• 1:04:18
  James Cridland: And this is Flightcast doing the so obvious thing it it almost hurts your head that nobody else had launched this, which is Well, no, they can't because we aren't Stephen Barclay with secret access to the Spotify API.
• 1:04:31
  James Cridland: No, they won't work all although although our sponsor has access to Spotify video, so I would imagine that uh they they could have thought about this had they only thought about this.
• 1:04:43
  James Cridland: But yes, so I think it's a very clever idea.
• 1:04:46
  James Cridland: So, and as you so rightly say, if they are big enough and they will need to be big enough on the Spotify platform as well to be eligible, but they can earn money out of the Spotify platform as well, which is probably worthwhile because it'll cost you$100 a month to turn this product on.
• 1:05:04
  James Cridland: It is not a cheap product, but it's a product that I think uh should work quite nicely.
• 1:05:10
  Sam Sethi: I was talking to a couple of customers this week for TrueFans, and one of the things they both asked these two customers, could we integrate with Riverside and with DScript?
• 1:05:20
  Sam Sethi: And I was like, okay, that's you know something we can look at.
• 1:05:23
  Sam Sethi: And it was the customer said to me, because what's nice when they edit in DScript, they do the video and then one click publish to YouTube.
• 1:05:32
  Sam Sethi: And he said, I don't have to download and upload.
• 1:05:34
  Sam Sethi: He says it goes from DScript servers to YouTube servers.
• 1:05:37
  Sam Sethi: He says, it's brilliant, saves me a lot of time.
• 1:05:39
  Sam Sethi: And I thought, yeah, this is how we're all seeing workflows now.
• 1:05:44
  Sam Sethi: You know, save me time, have me have an option to click it and send it.
• 1:05:48
  Sam Sethi: I think we talked about Flightcast um probably three, four months ago having a super fast upload capability.
• 1:05:55
  Sam Sethi: And I was like, How are they doing that?
• 1:05:57
  Sam Sethi: And you said, Well, it's Google Drive to Google Drive, basically.
• 1:06:00
  Sam Sethi: So you know.
• 1:06:01
  James Cridland: Yeah, so it never needs to it never needs to be downloaded to your incredibly slow British telecom link.
• 1:06:08
  James Cridland: Uh exactly.
• 1:06:12
  James Cridland: So I think that's probably that's probably probably a good thing.
• 1:06:15
  James Cridland: I mean, you know, so there'll be there'll be excitement at the Stephen Bartlett Corporation because of this.
• 1:06:22
  James Cridland: And also excitement because the diary of a CEO, it's official, it has become the most subscribed podcast on YouTube.
• 1:06:30
  James Cridland: It's overtaken Joe Rogan just to become the number one subscribes podcast on that platform.
• 1:06:38
  James Cridland: But what I found more interesting about that, Sam, was that actually, yes, more than one billion YouTube views so far this year.
• 1:06:46
  James Cridland: But a quarter of a million of those, sorry, a quarter of a billion of those were used using audio tracks other than English.
• 1:06:54
  James Cridland: So they produce different audio tracks.
• 1:06:57
  James Cridland: I'm not sure whether that's uh Stephen Bartlett's lot or whether that's YouTube who are producing those, but they they produce additional audio tracks which allow them, therefore, to actually be understood by people who only speak Hindi or people who only speak Arabic and so on and so forth.
• 1:07:12
  James Cridland: And that's a quarter of their plays, which is pretty big, I thought.
• 1:07:15
  Sam Sethi: So yeah, really interesting.
• 1:07:17
  Sam Sethi: Yeah, we saw this with Mr.
• 1:07:18
  Sam Sethi: Beast actually.
• 1:07:19
  Sam Sethi: He he grew his platform, and one of the things he said in an interview was because of the international language options that they produced.
• 1:07:28
  Sam Sethi: And I think people like Joe Rogan are myopic and they will only talk to the American audience and don't think about a worldwide audience.
• 1:07:36
  Sam Sethi: You know, we often joke about how US companies launch in the US only or US first and they don't think about the rest of the world, or they use Australia as a test bed because they think they sound like Americans.
• 1:07:48
  Sam Sethi: And other than that, the the fundamentalist, yeah, congratulations.
• 1:07:54
  Sam Sethi: They've worked out that there is a global audience and and global audience has reach.
• 1:07:58
  Sam Sethi: I keep saying to friends there that a third or no half of the world is somewhere between India and China, right?
• 1:08:07
  Sam Sethi: And the middle class of those two countries is getting very affluent.
• 1:08:16
  Sam Sethi: And I think you know, people have these visions of both those countries from 60 or 70 years ago.
• 1:08:23
  Sam Sethi: No, they they're driving BMWs, they won't be able to.
• 1:08:26
  James Cridland: Well frankly, from 30 years ago.
• 1:08:27
  James Cridland: But yes, it's it's it's all changed.
• 1:08:29
  James Cridland: It absolutely has all changed.
• 1:08:31
  James Cridland: Um I mean particularly China, but India as well.
• 1:08:35
  James Cridland: You know, uh the the amount of change going on there is is phenomenal as well.
• 1:08:39
  James Cridland: So yeah, no, you're absolutely right.
• 1:08:41
  James Cridland: And and I think people just ignore that, particularly, you know, a lot of the a lot of the American podcast folk ignore that or just simply don't even think about it.
• 1:08:53
  James Cridland: Right, let's talk about awards and events.
• 1:08:56
  James Cridland: It's the final week to enter the Ambiz.
• 1:08:58
  James Cridland: Submissions close on Friday.
• 1:08:59
  James Cridland: You were at the Independent Podcast Awards in London Town earlier on this week.
• 1:09:07
  James Cridland: How was that then, Sam?
• 1:09:08
  Sam Sethi: It was great, and congratulations to all the organisers.
• 1:09:12
  Sam Sethi: It was a really well done event.
• 1:09:14
  Sam Sethi: It was the fourth year, it was at King's Place.
• 1:09:17
  Sam Sethi: We had a drag artist as the compare who she was brilliant, I have to say, absolutely brilliant, kept the whole thing going, especially when you've got to Award 29.
• 1:09:29
  Sam Sethi: And it's like, oh my god, how can we keep the energy in the room?
• 1:09:32
  Sam Sethi: So well done.
• 1:09:33
  Sam Sethi: The highlight of the night was where Claire Wake Brown and I were there handing out awards, but the highlight for me was a 97-year-old podcaster with her podcast called War Hall, a theatre of the mind.
• 1:09:45
  Sam Sethi: It was all about what it was like in dance halls and stuff during the war, and it was brilliant.
• 1:09:50
  Sam Sethi: And congratulations, she got on stage and she got a standing ovation.
• 1:09:55
  Sam Sethi: That was good.
• 1:09:56
  Sam Sethi: There was an award that I handed out on your behalf, James, for the sports section.
• 1:10:02
  Sam Sethi: Obviously, well understood.
• 1:10:06
  Sam Sethi: I was thinking, so aligned.
• 1:10:08
  Sam Sethi: Yes.
• 1:10:11
  Sam Sethi: And the award went to a grand prix, and yes, so that was quite interesting.
• 1:10:17
  Sam Sethi: But the winner of the whole thing, um, very exciting for her, Maria Passingham.
• 1:10:21
  Sam Sethi: It was great days out on the bus from Buxton, which brilliant, brilliant, and she was so thrilled.
• 1:10:28
  Sam Sethi: Yeah, and she is now going to have uh a night at a hotel in London as part of the prize, and in Leicester Square, they will be putting up on the billboard her podcast cover art.
• 1:10:40
  Sam Sethi: And what made me laugh was the headline sponsor was YouTube, right?
• 1:10:46
  Sam Sethi: And when they were reading out, and the winner is, and she will be on the Spotify Billboard.
• 1:10:52
  Sam Sethi: And I'm like going.
• 1:10:54
  Sam Sethi: Did anyone not think to invite Spotify to do it instead, right?
• 1:10:59
  James Cridland: So I guess.
• 1:11:00
  James Cridland: Maybe Spotify said no.
• 1:11:02
  James Cridland: But that's that's excellent news, and I remember covering that particular show when that was launched.
• 1:11:08
  James Cridland: So hurrah for that, and I'm glad that you had a a good a good day.
• 1:11:12
  James Cridland: Yes.
• 1:11:14
  James Cridland: Sound as if that was jolly good.
• 1:11:15
  James Cridland: Uh, the next big event, of course, happening in uh London is uh the podcast show London 2027, which tickets have just gone on sale.
• 1:11:24
  James Cridland: You can use the code PodNews10 to save on eligible passes.
• 1:11:29
  James Cridland: Uh, you'll probably save enough for a pint of beer, in which case you should give that pint of beer to us.
• 1:11:34
  James Cridland: That would be very good.
• 1:11:35
  James Cridland: Or for Sam a um a fruit-based drink.
• 1:11:37
  James Cridland: It's in London, uh, May 19th and 20th.
• 1:11:40
  James Cridland: A few new things going on.
• 1:11:42
  James Cridland: Uh, there's a larger expo space, so they've actually found some more space in that building, which I always knew existed, but nobody actually ever shows me where that uh where that space was.
• 1:11:53
  James Cridland: But there's gonna be more space in that building for uh more companies to be there, which is great, because that's actually a real part of why people go to these sorts of events in the first place, is just to wander around and go, okay, what do you do?
• 1:12:07
  James Cridland: Why should I be interested in your particular company?
• 1:12:09
  James Cridland: So I'm glad that there's gonna be more on that.
• 1:12:11
  James Cridland: There's gonna be more on networking, uh, there's gonna be more throughout the whole week, which is nice.
• 1:12:16
  James Cridland: So they're gonna be more involved with that sort of thing.
• 1:12:19
  James Cridland: And there's gonna be a stage focused on video, because of course there is, and uh a new creator economy zone, uh, which will help the industry meet the creators driving this space.
• 1:12:31
  James Cridland: Uh, it's its sixth year, and I'm very much looking forward to taking part.
• 1:12:36
  James Cridland: I believe if I play my cards right that I will be the opening speaker again, although the opening speaker doesn't mean much, it just means that um just means that I'm crowbarred before everybody else.
• 1:12:45
  James Cridland: So uh please do come along.
• 1:12:47
  James Cridland: And as I say, if you want to save on those passes, Podnews 10 is the uh code for that.
• 1:12:51
  James Cridland: You'll be there, Sam, won't you?
• 1:12:53
  James Cridland: Well, we'll have our drinks again as usual the night before.
• 1:12:56
  Sam Sethi: So yeah, it's all good.
• 1:12:57
  Sam Sethi: Yeah, no, I'm very much on the show.
• 1:12:59
  Sam Sethi: We'll be doing a live show, I hope, as well.
• 1:13:02
  James Cridland: Yes, that's that's written into the contract too, I'm afraid.
• 1:13:04
  James Cridland: So, yes, so you and I uh we we will be we will be there on the last session of the uh of the event as well, doing this exact show and pressing buttons that make jingles happen like this.
• 1:13:16
  Announcer: The tech stuff on the Podnews Weekly Review.
• 1:13:20
  James Cridland: Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Podnews newsletter.
• 1:13:23
  James Cridland: Here's where Sam talks technology.
• 1:13:26
  Sam Sethi: Yeah, a couple of things, and I think this is quite nice.
• 1:13:28
  Sam Sethi: Our sponsors, Buzzsprout, have launched a new podcast starter kit.
• 1:13:32
  Sam Sethi: It turns a few answers about your idea into name, suggestions, a description, cover art, and categories.
• 1:13:38
  Sam Sethi: So, yeah, it was on BuzzCast, uh, Jordan and Albin announced it, and I should I should have a listen to that for stories.
• 1:13:48
  Sam Sethi: Yes, exactly.
• 1:13:48
  Sam Sethi: I seem to find one every week.
• 1:13:50
  Sam Sethi: Um maybe they should send you a press release.
• 1:13:53
  James Cridland: That would help.
• 1:13:54
  James Cridland: Well, you know, there you go.
• 1:13:56
  James Cridland: I mean, I mean, if only I knew their head of marketing.
• 1:13:59
  James Cridland: Um RS.com.
• 1:14:02
  James Cridland: Um I'm an I'm an advisor.
• 1:14:03
  James Cridland: They've launched a learning center.
• 1:14:05
  Sam Sethi: So you don't know anything about this story either, then?
• 1:14:07
  James Cridland: Uh I actually don't, no.
• 1:14:09
  James Cridland: Uh, this is this is quite neat.
• 1:14:11
  James Cridland: They've launched a learning center.
• 1:14:13
  James Cridland: It's got a set of courses to cover podcasters of every stage, talking about liquid content.
• 1:14:17
  James Cridland: This is essentially content that they have taken from other stuff that they have done on the RSS website, but put it all together, done a good job of actually making it findable and all of that.
• 1:14:28
  James Cridland: It's a static website in case you're interested.
• 1:14:32
  James Cridland: But it's all free wherever you're hosted.
• 1:14:34
  James Cridland: Um, you can go and take a uh peek at that.
• 1:14:36
  James Cridland: But uh a set of courses, you even get a little a certificate uh showing that you have actually covered the courses.
• 1:14:44
  James Cridland: It's at learn.rs.com if you want to take a peek at that.
• 1:14:48
  James Cridland: And uh related, rss.com has added voicemail for their users.
• 1:14:52
  James Cridland: Oh, I wonder whether they got that idea.
• 1:14:54
  James Cridland: Uh no idea.
• 1:14:56
  James Cridland: It allows listeners to leave voicemail as feedback and sends you an email when they do.
• 1:15:02
  James Cridland: Ah, sounds a little bit like our sponsors, Buzzsprout.
• 1:15:05
  James Cridland: I host a show on RSS.com, which is all which is all about radio.
• 1:15:08
  James Cridland: It's deeply dull.
• 1:15:10
  James Cridland: And I got my first voicemail for that last week.
• 1:15:12
  James Cridland: Is that the name of the show?
• 1:15:13
  James Cridland: Deeply dull.
• 1:15:15
  James Cridland: I mean it should be, frankly.
• 1:15:17
  James Cridland: Deeply dull stuff about radio.
• 1:15:19
  James Cridland: Radioland, if you want to go and find that.
• 1:15:22
  James Cridland: Yes.
• 1:15:23
  James Cridland: And uh Parasocial.
• 1:15:24
  Sam Sethi: What's Parasocial, Sam?
• 1:15:26
  Sam Sethi: It's a new podcast app playing on the word about parasocial relationships.
• 1:15:30
  Sam Sethi: But the good news is they've added support for video.
• 1:15:32
  Sam Sethi: Well done, chaps.
• 1:15:33
  Sam Sethi: And the app supports inline, full screen, and picture-in-picture mode.
• 1:15:37
  Sam Sethi: Well, yes, what don't we all?
• 1:15:39
  Sam Sethi: And iPhone, iPad, iPhone Duo, and macOS.
• 1:15:42
  Sam Sethi: No, but that's very good.
• 1:15:43
  Sam Sethi: So they've they've clearly gone and built native apps.
• 1:15:46
  Sam Sethi: So I need to go and play with that.
• 1:15:48
  Sam Sethi: Sounds very cool.
• 1:15:50
  Sam Sethi: Yes, very nice too.
• 1:15:51
  James Cridland: Talking about Apple stuff, uh, the latest version of the Safari browser, which is built in, of course, to Apple's iPhone and Apple's Mac, uh, now blocks something called resolution infrastructure.
• 1:16:01
  James Cridland: Why should you care about that?
• 1:16:02
  James Cridland: Well, resolution infrastructure are the people in the middle of tons of uh websites that collate all of your information so that they can then go back and say, ah, this IP address uh clearly has a woman and a man who live in it because of the websites that they're looking at, and clearly also has a young child who lives in there as well.
• 1:16:24
  James Cridland: So if you're going to put any advertising in this podcast feed or in this ad banner, uh then you might want to consider that.
• 1:16:30
  James Cridland: That's all of this resolution infrastructure stuff, and the and Safari is basically blocking it, and the IEB is most upset, and the IEB suggests that the protections go beyond applicable legal requirements.
• 1:16:44
  James Cridland: Good.
• 1:16:45
  James Cridland: That's what they should be doing.
• 1:16:47
  James Cridland: Good.
• 1:16:48
  James Cridland: And it means that the websites and services that have first-party data on their users, so people like Spotify, obviously, but also Apple Podcasts to an extent, uh are likely to benefit because obviously they will know more about their users than others do.
• 1:17:03
  Sam Sethi: I'm I'm still a Chrome user by by default, but I am finding the new Safari much faster than the Chrome version I'm using.
• 1:17:12
  James Cridland: Yeah.
• 1:17:12
  James Cridland: No, I think Safari is a pretty good browser now.
• 1:17:15
  James Cridland: I I I kind of want to keep on using a Chrome service because that's how most people see the website that I author, and so therefore I should probably keep on using Chrome.
• 1:17:26
  James Cridland: And I also can't quite work out how to write, I have to write a security extension for the Podnews website so that I can see a version of the Podnews website that nobody else can.
• 1:17:38
  James Cridland: The way I do that is by writing an extension, and I have yet to work out how to write an extension for Safari.
• 1:17:45
  James Cridland: It's much, much more complicated.
• 1:17:47
  James Cridland: Well, I mean it might well be, yes.
• 1:17:50
  James Cridland: Or frankly, Apple Artificial Intelligence.
• 1:17:53
  James Cridland: Or should or should we call it superintelligence?
• 1:17:55
  James Cridland: Oh no, we shouldn't.
• 1:17:57
  James Cridland: So that that I think I think would be good.
• 1:18:00
  James Cridland: I would recommend, by the way, the Helium browser, which I think you'll find at helium.computer, I think is their website address.
• 1:18:06
  James Cridland: But anyway, it's basically Google Chrome with all of the Google stuff taken out, even the password manager taken out, because your browser shouldn't have a password manager in it.
• 1:18:15
  James Cridland: That's what your operating system ought to be doing.
• 1:18:17
  James Cridland: So that's one that I would um probably r recommend.
• 1:18:20
  James Cridland: But I'm using Safari now on my on my phone, so there you go.
• 1:18:25
  Sam Sethi: Now, uh a story that you've been sort of covering for the last few weeks on Podnews Daily is about Spreca and the problem of let's say 1700 shows being copied.
• 1:18:36
  Sam Sethi: What's the update, James?
• 1:18:39
  James Cridland: So there's a few things to say on this.
• 1:18:42
  James Cridland: Spreca are aware of my uh coverage and they are certainly looking into what they can do.
• 1:18:49
  James Cridland: I've given them an idea of a quick and easy way that they can essentially fix this to make it easier for uh f for everybody, you know, in terms of this.
• 1:19:01
  James Cridland: But anyway, uh where where we uh uh currently are, so so you know, Spreco is certainly working on this.
• 1:19:07
  James Cridland: I think they're more aware now of the issue than they were, and they're more aware now of why it's an issue as well.
• 1:19:14
  James Cridland: It's not just a money issue, it's also an issue in terms of charts and in church in terms of user confusion and in terms of all of that stuff.
• 1:19:22
  James Cridland: So I think that they now understand that, which is really helpful, and I've had some good conversations with them.
• 1:19:28
  James Cridland: But where we are in terms of this is that firstly, Spreaker aren't alone.
• 1:19:33
  James Cridland: There are other podcast companies where there are copies of shows.
• 1:19:38
  James Cridland: One of them is our sponsor, Buzzsprout, and one of them is RSS.com, who I'm an advisor for.
• 1:19:43
  James Cridland: So, you know, it's happening to everybody.
• 1:19:45
  James Cridland: The interesting thing that I have seen is something that Podcast Index have done.
• 1:19:50
  James Cridland: And they've produced a set of data which highlights look-alike feeds throughout its catalogue.
• 1:19:55
  James Cridland: There are CSV files that you can uh have a look at every single day, which is great.
• 1:19:59
  James Cridland: And there's also a quick overview of the overview of the top 500, more than 290 of them are in Spreaker.
• 1:20:07
  James Cridland: So, you know, take from that what you will.
• 1:20:10
  James Cridland: But Dave Jones has obviously been very busy producing something which will be very helpful for the industry if the industry takes it up, and I hope that the industry does, and I hope also that the industry takes a look at at a pr pretty simple code of practice that might actually help fix all of this.
• 1:20:28
  James Cridland: The problem, I guess, is who would be in charge of a code of practice?
• 1:20:34
  James Cridland: Because it's kind of it's not really the IB because it's not really anything to do with them.
• 1:20:41
  James Cridland: Is it the podcast standards project?
• 1:20:44
  James Cridland: Well, it is.
• 1:20:45
  Sam Sethi: I mean, look, I think Justin's brilliant, and but I mean he's probably got work to do with Transistor, he's got other things to do.
• 1:20:55
  James Cridland: Yes, exactly.
• 1:20:55
  Sam Sethi: Exactly.
• 1:20:56
  Sam Sethi: The ski season started, he's gonna be really busy boarding.
• 1:21:01
  Sam Sethi: Yes.
• 1:21:02
  Sam Sethi: I mean, come on.
• 1:21:03
  Sam Sethi: I mean, you know, don't pile on the poor boy.
• 1:21:05
  Sam Sethi: No, I don't know.
• 1:21:06
  Sam Sethi: I don't know the answer.
• 1:21:07
  Sam Sethi: The answer to the question is I don't know.
• 1:21:09
  Sam Sethi: And I think we talked about the lock tag, you know, actually people honouring the lock tag and not just pretending it oh well.
• 1:21:18
  James Cridland: And to be fair, Spreaker honour the lock tag.
• 1:21:21
  James Cridland: And if your lock tag is on, you won't be able to import into Spreaker.
• 1:21:25
  James Cridland: Now Spreaker doesn't support the lock tag if you're on Spreaker, which is possibly a mistake.
• 1:21:31
  James Cridland: But I think, you know, again, yes, you know, the lock tag certainly helps.
• 1:21:35
  James Cridland: Obviously, it doesn't stop somebody from downloading the audio files and from copying the RSS feed.
• 1:21:41
  James Cridland: Uh of course it doesn't.
• 1:21:43
  James Cridland: But it does at least put that hurdle in place which stops somebody who doesn't understand much about podcasting just going on to a service like this and saying, please copy this show.
• 1:21:56
  James Cridland: And uh you know, it can stop stop that.
• 1:21:58
  James Cridland: So I think it's useful if it's um put into place there, yeah.
• 1:22:03
  Sam Sethi: There's also a service that started called PodProtect, I noticed that was a new goal supporter on the Podnews Daily.
• 1:22:12
  James Cridland: Yes, which is nice.
• 1:22:13
  James Cridland: It's at PodProtect.net.
• 1:22:15
  James Cridland: It's from Lisa Lacey, and uh she has put together an entire product which is essentially monitoring your show for unauthorized copies and impersonation.
• 1:22:25
  James Cridland: There's a sign-up that you can do for a network as well as one individual show.
• 1:22:30
  James Cridland: I think it always says something when there is a company you know built to fix a problem.
• 1:22:38
  James Cridland: And so uh yeah, if you want to take a peek at that, if you're concerned about somebody stealing your work, then podprotect.net is certainly a place to go and take a peek at.
• 1:22:47
  Announcer: Fan mail mail and voicemail our favorite time of the week, it's the Podnews Weekly Review inbox.
• 1:22:56
  James Cridland: Yes, so many different ways to get in touch with us.
• 1:22:58
  James Cridland: Voicemail by using the link in our show notes or email as well.
• 1:23:01
  James Cridland: We've got some exciting fan mail, if not some voicemail.
• 1:23:05
  James Cridland: Neil I uh Neil Vellio, who I should now call Neil.
• 1:23:11
  James Cridland: Oh, yes, I meant to send a voicemail, Velio.
• 1:23:14
  James Cridland: He has said, firstly, massively appreciate the plug from Podmastery.
• 1:23:18
  James Cridland: Thank you.
• 1:23:19
  James Cridland: Yes, indeed.
• 1:23:20
  James Cridland: And great point about the Spreaker pri piracy issue.
• 1:23:26
  James Cridland: This is this is where I wish that I could read at the at the size of the of the text that's in front of me.
• 1:23:34
  James Cridland: I've made it bigger now.
• 1:23:36
  James Cridland: He says, Great point about the Spreaker piracy issue being another point against RSS.
• 1:23:42
  James Cridland: It sucks.
• 1:23:43
  James Cridland: The issue I imagine he's talking about rather than the rather than open RSS.
• 1:23:48
  James Cridland: But thank you, Neil.
• 1:23:49
  James Cridland: What's uh Seth Goldstein said to us?
• 1:23:52
  Sam Sethi: How is Spreaker still not getting sued?
• 1:23:54
  Sam Sethi: That's a good question.
• 1:23:56
  Sam Sethi: And I don't think RSS is dead, I think it's changing, and I agree with you, Seth.
• 1:24:00
  Sam Sethi: I think we are creating what I term super feeds.
• 1:24:04
  Sam Sethi: I think audio, video, we go back to liquid content.
• 1:24:08
  Sam Sethi: I think we're gonna see much more content in the feed and ownership of that feed as well.
• 1:24:13
  Sam Sethi: So yeah, it is changing.
• 1:24:16
  James Cridland: Yeah, no, indeed.
• 1:24:17
  James Cridland: Well, I'm grateful to you, to you two.
• 1:24:20
  James Cridland: You're both power supporters.
• 1:24:22
  James Cridland: We've got 25 of those.
• 1:24:23
  James Cridland: They're all excellent people, uh, including Ralph E.
• 1:24:26
  James Cridland: Owens, Silas Vogt, John Spurlock, uh, mentioned him earlier, and Ralph Estepp Jr., who I saw earlier on this week, as well, along with Dave Jackson, uh, who is also a power supporter, in the Podcast Professionals Association webinar, which was good fun to end up doing from this very room, but uh early in the morning with a coffee on my desk rather than whatever it is I've got here.
• 1:24:51
  James Cridland: And yes, so excellent.
• 1:24:53
  James Cridland: If you would like to join them, please do.
• 1:24:55
  James Cridland: We share uh any money that we make through that.
• 1:24:57
  James Cridland: Some of that goes to beer and wine at uh events, and some of that just goes into our pockets because that's kind of what it's supposed to be used for.
• 1:25:06
  James Cridland: But anyway, weekly.podnews.net is the website address.
• 1:25:10
  James Cridland: That was a sell, wasn't it?
• 1:25:11
  James Cridland: Weekly.podnews.net.
• 1:25:13
  James Cridland: And you can uh start for just uh a couple of uh a couple of dollars a month, and that would be a lovely thing.
• 1:25:19
  Sam Sethi: So we're going to lose one as well though.
• 1:25:21
  Sam Sethi: Cy Jobling is leaving the podcast industry, and uh you ping me to say it's not about us, it's uh it's about him.
• 1:25:29
  James Cridland: And why leave the podcast industry?
• 1:25:32
  James Cridland: How dare he?
• 1:25:33
  James Cridland: I I know exactly why he would.
• 1:25:35
  James Cridland: So Cy, thank you very much.
• 1:25:37
  James Cridland: Much appreciated.
• 1:25:38
  James Cridland: So uh yes, no, that's a that's uh always a thing.
• 1:25:41
  James Cridland: So we need another another number 25 in that case, weekly.podnews.net.
• 1:25:46
  James Cridland: You, yes, you might wish to go and uh do that.
• 1:25:49
  James Cridland: So what's happened for you this week, uh Sam?
• 1:25:51
  James Cridland: You obviously the there was the Independent Podcast Awards, which you uh have mentioned.
• 1:25:56
  James Cridland: What else have you what else have you been doing?
• 1:25:58
  James Cridland: Have you been upsetting anybody on online recently?
• 1:26:01
  Sam Sethi: No, I didn't think I was upsetting anybody, but um I handed out the award to, you know, the independent podcast award to Grand Prix, and then on LinkedIn I found a total Grom Prix.
• 1:26:12
  Sam Sethi: He uh wrote a post about TrueFans which was totally wrong from start to finish, had no idea what we were doing, and got it wrong all over the place.
• 1:26:24
  Sam Sethi: But he posted it.
• 1:26:26
  Sam Sethi: So of course I got alerted and I went and had a look at it, and then he wrote me a war and peace email, mostly AI generated, I suspect.
• 1:26:34
  Sam Sethi: So I took the time, I thought, no, I'm gonna take the time, calm down, answer the question, try and correct his assumptions, and which in the most part I think I did, and he then posted my response, which again I was like, just why don't you just understand it?
• 1:26:51
  Sam Sethi: You're a host.
• 1:26:53
  Sam Sethi: So David in France, who is the president of Vodio, he decided that the fact that we have podcasts from the companies that he hosts on our app we shouldn't have because how are we getting them?
• 1:27:10
  Sam Sethi: And I tried to explain how RSS worked.
• 1:27:13
  James Cridland: Has he heard of RSS?
• 1:27:15
  Sam Sethi: Well, he says he has, but clearly he doesn't understand it.
• 1:27:17
  Sam Sethi: He says, No, RSS is my ownership, and we did not give you permission to put it on your app.
• 1:27:23
  Sam Sethi: And I went, Well, you published it to the podcast index, and then somebody searched for it on our app, and guess what?
• 1:27:29
  Sam Sethi: We then added it to our local index just to save time.
• 1:27:33
  Sam Sethi: And he said, Oh, you're making money off them and you're distributing them and you're copying.
• 1:27:37
  Sam Sethi: I said, No, we don't do any of that.
• 1:27:39
  Sam Sethi: Uh he says, You charge money, and I said, No, we don't do that either.
• 1:27:42
  Sam Sethi: It's free on TreeFans.
• 1:27:44
  Sam Sethi: You can claim your podcast, you can change your RSS, we don't change anything.
• 1:27:48
  Sam Sethi: The only time we change it is when we host and the user or creator has made a change, and that's the only time.
• 1:27:55
  Sam Sethi: And he said, Ah, you're taking money.
• 1:27:57
  Sam Sethi: I said, No, we have an option.
• 1:27:59
  Sam Sethi: It it Ask permission or ask forgiveness, which is the if I want to pay a micropayment to a creator that's not claimed their podcast, we hold that for them.
• 1:28:08
  Sam Sethi: We alert the creator and we say, You have got money available here.
• 1:28:12
  Sam Sethi: There's no cash, just claim your podcast and we'll give you the money.
• 1:28:15
  Sam Sethi: But if there's no email in it, we return the money and say no, I'm sorry.
• 1:28:20
  Sam Sethi: And after 30 days, if the person hasn't claimed it, we return the money.
• 1:28:23
  Sam Sethi: We know all the people who made the payments because they're all on TrueFans.
• 1:28:26
  Sam Sethi: So it's not that hard.
• 1:28:28
  Sam Sethi: He couldn't get his little head around it, bless him.
• 1:28:31
  Sam Sethi: And so he then said, I want all of my podcasts removed from your platform.
• 1:28:35
  Sam Sethi: And at one o'clock last night, I just went, you know what, screw you.
• 1:28:38
  Sam Sethi: And I took all 126 down.
• 1:28:40
  Sam Sethi: And then I went to Mo this morning blockvodio.fr.
• 1:28:46
  Sam Sethi: And now, James, I am getting emails from the podcasters who are hosted on Vodeo asking why their podcast is not on TrueFans.
• 1:28:56
  Sam Sethi: There you go.
• 1:28:56
  Sam Sethi: And I now got to go after this show and explain to them what's happened and waste my time even more.
• 1:29:03
  Sam Sethi: And the bottom of every one of those emails, I would use OSHA.fr if I was you.
• 1:29:10
  unknown: Yes.
• 1:29:10
  James Cridland: Yes.
• 1:29:11
  James Cridland: Link to OSHA, which is uh definitely a thing.
• 1:29:14
  James Cridland: Odile Beniflar from OSHA, by the way, who I I I think she's just spent her fifth year at the company, and they give you little sort of Lego spacemen that look a bit like you, and they put additional bricks on to show how many years you've worked for the company.
• 1:29:31
  James Cridland: Very strange, the French.
• 1:29:33
  James Cridland: They're trying to tax the internet at the moment.
• 1:29:36
  James Cridland: Oh yes, they are, aren't they?
• 1:29:37
  James Cridland: Yes, it's all it's all it's all a bit bad.
• 1:29:39
  James Cridland: They're banking.
• 1:29:40
  James Cridland: Well, apart from apart from uh apart from upsetting the French, which is a very English thing to do, um what what else have you been up to?
• 1:29:50
  Sam Sethi: I think one of the things I've always wanted to do is have a live HLS server capability for TrueFan.
• 1:29:57
  Sam Sethi: So we do audio and video, and I've always wanted that.
• 1:30:00
  Sam Sethi: And we've talked about how the lit tag isn't really properly supported by hosts, and uh RSS did a half decent job but didn't go 100% the way.
• 1:30:10
  Sam Sethi: So we're trying to get that working right now, and we're adding a new live radio page.
• 1:30:15
  Sam Sethi: We've got all of the HLS server points, so we're gonna just create a nice little radio page, and uh it's just a fun thing for us to do.
• 1:30:22
  Sam Sethi: I think it's more to do with my days back at River Radio, but we'll we'll launch it up this week, so that's fun.
• 1:30:28
  Sam Sethi: And then I completed another leg of the Cotswolds Way, it's so beautiful over there.
• 1:30:33
  Sam Sethi: So we did 20 miles last weekend walking in the Cotswolds with all of the autumnal trees.
• 1:30:40
  Sam Sethi: It was a little bit foggy in the beginning of the day, we couldn't see a thing, but by the end it was very pretty.
• 1:30:46
  James Cridland: Well, it's a very nice uh couple of pictures, and what's nice is that one of them has no people in there at all, and the other one has has has people looking away from the camera.
• 1:30:56
  James Cridland: So I I guess if you're watching this on the video version, you might see those beautiful pictures here.
• 1:31:03
  James Cridland: Rather than the other ones, which I wasn't going to uh I wasn't gonna show all of your family, but I think I can show these two, can't I?
• 1:31:09
  Sam Sethi: Yeah, that's me, the wife and the dog.
• 1:31:10
  James Cridland: Yeah.
• 1:31:11
  James Cridland: There you go.
• 1:31:11
  James Cridland: You you, the wife and the dog from the back.
• 1:31:18
  James Cridland: Gosh, there's a thing.
• 1:31:20
  Sam Sethi: Anyway, James, what's happened for you, my friend?
• 1:31:23
  James Cridland: Well, well, well, I have been yes, d dealing with all kinds of all kinds of entertaining things.
• 1:31:28
  James Cridland: I got an email today from AWS, the world's friendliest compute system.
• 1:31:35
  James Cridland: So AWS has told me uh that one of my cloud front distributions, but it's not gonna tell me which, because I have 15, yeah, one of those has got up to 85% of the usage limit uh for for the the number of of requests.
• 1:31:55
  James Cridland: And so, you know, one of them we're we're not gonna tell you which one, but one of them has.
• 1:31:59
  James Cridland: So the usage uh you you might be interested in in knowing where where I've got up to.
• 1:32:04
  James Cridland: So the email says that I'm currently on 9097585 requests.
• 1:32:12
  James Cridland: So what's that, nine million requests or something?
• 1:32:15
  James Cridland: Anyway, and the usage limit is 1.0 E7.
• 1:32:19
  James Cridland: Uh biggest biggest company in the world.
• 1:32:22
  James Cridland: I mean, I mean, however shit you think you are at your job, uh you will not outshit Amazon Web Services.
• 1:32:30
  James Cridland: Just what is going on?
• 1:32:33
  James Cridland: So anyway, yes, so who knows what what it is that they're actually doing there.
• 1:32:37
  James Cridland: So I've got to deal with that later.
• 1:32:39
  James Cridland: I also managed to I put my one of my websites, not the Podnews one, but I put one of my websites onto a very expensive monthly tariff because that could theoretically at least mean that I could go on to that expensive tariff for a month, and then and then by that point I could go down to a really cheap one.
• 1:33:00
  James Cridland: So it was it was a quick go.
• 1:33:02
  James Cridland: Anyway, it turns out that no, they're counting something else, and I'll never be able to go down to the cheap one.
• 1:33:07
  James Cridland: So now I'm busy working out how I can close that website down.
• 1:33:11
  James Cridland: Uh, because that's probably gonna make rather more sense.
• 1:33:13
  James Cridland: AWS, the world's most complicated thing.
• 1:33:16
  James Cridland: But on a brighter note, I bought myself a new e-ink book reader.
• 1:33:21
  James Cridland: Right.
• 1:33:21
  James Cridland: Which I'm very excited by.
• 1:33:23
  James Cridland: It's a thing called by Books, and it's called a Pico, and it's a nice small thing that you can fit into your pocket and walk around with, and it's much the same as the cheap one that I've got.
• 1:33:33
  James Cridland: I was wondering if it was on my desk, but it isn't, from XTE Inc., which I've been using for a couple of months, and that's great, that's perfect, except it doesn't have a backlight.
• 1:33:43
  James Cridland: And I would like to read stuff in bed.
• 1:33:46
  James Cridland: So this one will be uh absolutely perfect.
• 1:33:48
  James Cridland: And literally the day after I put the order in, it's only a hundred dollars, but the day after I put that audio, that uh order in, I had an email address from somebody in China who makes e-ink readers.
• 1:34:01
  James Cridland: They'd noticed that I've written about them on my blog, and they said, Would you like one of our e-ink readers to to review?
• 1:34:08
  James Cridland: And uh so rather annoyingly, I'm going to move from having no small e-ink readers with a backlight to having two of the things.
• 1:34:16
  James Cridland: So I'm I'm I'm looking forward to learning a little bit more about both of those.
• 1:34:20
  James Cridland: That should be uh that should be fun.
• 1:34:22
  James Cridland: But uh yes, it never rains but it pours.
• 1:34:24
  James Cridland: It's very strange.
• 1:34:25
  James Cridland: I'm more worried that the Chinese are tracking your blog, but don't you worry about it.
• 1:34:30
  James Cridland: Well, I I used to be, so I used to write a lot about beer on my on my blog, and that was brilliant because I then got invited by Guinness into their headquarters in London, which is in a boring nondescript office block, but you go in there and you uh go past a couple of doors and then you open a door and you're in a pub because they've got a pub in their building, because of course they do.
• 1:34:56
  James Cridland: Wow, and the point of it was to go in and learn how to pull a perfect pint of Guinness.
• 1:35:02
  James Cridland: So I have been trained, trained by a Guinness bartender to pull the perfect pint of Guinness.
• 1:35:09
  James Cridland: It's all marketing, to pull a perfect pint of Guinness, and so yes, that that was uh that was an excellent evening with a lot of other beer bloggers, and I managed to get in because I blogged about beer quite a lot.
• 1:35:20
  Sam Sethi: So can I combine e-inc with beer for you?
• 1:35:24
  Sam Sethi: If you go to the Guinness factory in Dublin, they will take a photo of your face and then they will put that in the cream on the top of your Guinness.
• 1:35:34
  James Cridland: They will indeed.
• 1:35:34
  James Cridland: They will indeed, and I have done that.
• 1:35:37
  James Cridland: Uh and that's very good.
• 1:35:38
  James Cridland: And not only that, but they are now doing that in Guinness branded pubs worldwide.
• 1:35:42
  James Cridland: So you can actually go into there was one that I found in Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur when I was there, which was quite uh weird, because you know, Guinness is most certainly not not halal.
• 1:35:55
  James Cridland: Um but nevertheless uh ended up going in there and the and yes, they had one of those that those m machines as well.
• 1:36:03
  James Cridland: Fully proper, you know, branded Guinness place.
• 1:36:06
  James Cridland: But what was interesting is you could go the pub was through the shop.
• 1:36:11
  James Cridland: So they had a shop where you could buy Guinness merchandise and stuff like that, which you which you end up going going through when you leave the pub at the end of the evening.
• 1:36:20
  James Cridland: So if you want to buy yourself a little a little reminder, then you can buy yourself a Guinness t-shirt or something.
• 1:36:26
  James Cridland: Very strange.
• 1:36:27
  Sam Sethi: I'm gonna look up now is Guinness Zero Halal.
• 1:36:30
  Sam Sethi: Not that I'm a Muslim, but who cares?
• 1:36:32
  James Cridland: Anyway.
• 1:36:33
  James Cridland: Well, uh, and I can uh and I can boringly answer that for you because when I was in when I was in Saudi Arabia, I went there for a conference.
• 1:36:42
  James Cridland: I don't normally talk about it, but heck, you know, there we are.
• 1:36:45
  James Cridland: And so I went to Saudi Arabia for a conference, and the hotel was right next to a shopping centre, which included a carfour, a big, big supermarket.
• 1:36:54
  James Cridland: And of course it didn't sell beer, but it sold things that looked and tasted a bit like beer, which is more than you could get from the hotel bar at the time.
• 1:37:03
  James Cridland: So I thought, great, well, I will sample all of these not beers.
• 1:37:07
  James Cridland: And there was a Guinness in there.
• 1:37:09
  James Cridland: Yeah, there was a Guinness.
• 1:37:10
  James Cridland: No, it's it wasn't a Guinness 0%, because I don't there are some of these alcohol-free beers that aren't alcohol free.
• 1:37:18
  James Cridland: They've got like 0.25% or something.
• 1:37:20
  James Cridland: They're really, really, really low, but they don't count as alcohol free.
• 1:37:24
  James Cridland: I think Guinness 0% is alcohol free, I think.
• 1:37:27
  James Cridland: Yeah.
• 1:37:28
  James Cridland: And so but there was an alternative.
• 1:37:30
  Sam Sethi: At least that's what I told the officer.
• 1:37:33
  James Cridland: But there was a there was a different Guinness in there, which was which was a little bit different.
• 1:37:38
  James Cridland: So maybe Guinness Zero hasn't made it to Saudi Arabia.
• 1:37:43
  James Cridland: I think there was a Budweiser as well from memory, which they were selling as well.
• 1:37:47
  James Cridland: So yeah.
• 1:37:49
  James Cridland: And they tasted fine.
• 1:37:52
  James Cridland: You know, I wouldn't I wouldn't go out of my way, but there's alcohol-free wine as well, isn't there?
• 1:37:56
  Sam Sethi: Uh don't get me started on that.
• 1:37:58
  Sam Sethi: That is just ribena.
• 1:37:59
  Sam Sethi: It is rubbish.
• 1:38:01
  Sam Sethi: Friend of mine, Lucy, she she has that.
• 1:38:05
  James Cridland: Surely you should be you should be selling it.
• 1:38:06
  James Cridland: It's the it's the it's the it's the growing it's the growing thing, alcohol-free drinks.
• 1:38:13
  Sam Sethi: Yeah, it is.
• 1:38:14
  Sam Sethi: The younger generation.
• 1:38:15
  James Cridland: You could be rich, you could you could fund fund TrueFans with your wine business.
• 1:38:20
  Sam Sethi: No cross fertilization.
• 1:38:22
  Sam Sethi: No, not allowed.
• 1:38:25
  Sam Sethi: Oh, okay.
• 1:38:26
  Sam Sethi: No, orange wine is currently in vogue.
• 1:38:29
  Sam Sethi: I'm sorry, what?
• 1:38:30
  James Cridland: Orange wine.
• 1:38:31
  Sam Sethi: Orange wine, yes.
• 1:38:32
  Sam Sethi: So they um the fermentation process, they don't quite go and leave it red or go all the way to rose or white, they go to an orange colour now, and that suddenly became trendy because all these Michelin-style restaurants started storing or selling orange wine, yes.
• 1:38:50
  James Cridland: It became trendy until November the third, and then after that, of course, nobody's interested.
• 1:38:54
  James Cridland: But uh, you know, blueberry wine, I'm sure, will be uh the thing now.
• 1:38:59
  James Cridland: I'm sure that the Finns are already making that, aren't they?
• 1:39:02
  James Cridland: Blueberry wine.
• 1:39:03
  James Cridland: I'm sure.
• 1:39:04
  James Cridland: Yes.
• 1:39:04
  James Cridland: Yes, I'm sure they are.
• 1:39:05
  James Cridland: Uh anyway, uh all after that bombshell, uh that's it for this week.
• 1:39:10
  James Cridland: All of our podcast stories, of course, taken from the Podnews Daily Newsletter.
• 1:39:13
  James Cridland: Please subscribe to that.
• 1:39:13
  James Cridland: You'll find it at Podnews.net.
• 1:39:16
  Sam Sethi: You can give us feedback like Seth and Neil, or you can give us voicemail now with the BuzzSprout voicemail link in our show notes.
• 1:39:22
  Sam Sethi: Should we say RSS can do it as well?
• 1:39:24
  Sam Sethi: I don't know.
• 1:39:25
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• 1:39:31
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