Latest / WGKM / Podnews Weekly Review - Podcast ad revenue is increasing

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Podnews Weekly Review - Podcast ad revenue is increasing · WGKM

• 0:00
  James Cridland: Coming up, podcast ad spending is up.
• 0:03
  James Cridland: And do we know where the ads are?
• 0:06
  Announcer: With James Cridland and Sam Sethi.
• 0:09
  Announcer: This is the Podnews Weekly Review with Buzz with Buzz Sprout.
• 0:14
  Announcer: Stunt podcasting, heat podcasting.
• 0:18
  Sam Sethi: James, now welcome back to Australia from your mad trip to Europe.
• 0:23
  Sam Sethi: And we'll talk about that later.
• 0:25
  Sam Sethi: Thank you.
• 0:25
  Sam Sethi: Now, not a story I normally start off with, which is about podcast ad spending.
• 0:31
  Sam Sethi: You know me and advertising.
• 0:33
  Sam Sethi: We're not bed friends.
• 0:34
  Sam Sethi: But it seems there's good news with podcast advertising.
• 0:38
  Sam Sethi: Tell me more.
• 0:39
  James Cridland: Yes, good news from a couple of people.
• 0:41
  James Cridland: Firstly, Podscribe, who are showing that money is up in terms of podcast advertising, up 20% from August, $41 million.
• 0:50
  James Cridland: That's in the US.
• 0:52
  James Cridland: So some good numbers from there.
• 0:55
  James Cridland: Also some good numbers from WARC Media.
• 0:59
  James Cridland: They are talking about global advertising increasing by 11%.
• 1:05
  James Cridland: So that's global ad spend across everything.
• 1:08
  James Cridland: And that includes online audio, which is growing 9.9% this year to $16.6 billion globally, which is quite a nice number.
• 1:18
  James Cridland: It'll still grow next year up 7.5% according to this.
• 1:21
  James Cridland: I tell you what, the one thing that really shocks me about the WARC figures is that if you look at Amazon, Alphabet, and Meta, those three companies combined take 60% of all ad revenue.
• 1:35
  James Cridland: 60% of all ad revenue.
• 1:38
  James Cridland: That's quite a thing.
• 1:40
  Sam Sethi: Yeah, they're probably working out how to get the other 40% right now.
• 1:43
  Sam Sethi: So yes, quite right.
• 1:46
  Sam Sethi: Did anyone say monopoly?
• 1:48
  Sam Sethi: Now, so all's good in the world of advertising, and and I keep seeing stories about Amazon ads here and Bauer Media joining in.
• 1:57
  Sam Sethi: So everyone seems to be very happy with advertising.
• 2:01
  Sam Sethi: But then you put up a strange post that I can't understand.
• 2:05
  Sam Sethi: This is from our friends at Libsin.
• 2:07
  Sam Sethi: They've created a brand new namespace extension that publishes the advertising slots within the RSS feed.
• 2:17
  Sam Sethi: Why have they done this, James?
• 2:20
  James Cridland: Well, I'm not sure quite why they're doing this.
• 2:23
  James Cridland: So it's very strange.
• 2:24
  James Cridland: If you take a look at the RSS feed, in a typical Libsin show, you can now see exactly where the ads are and how many can be sold.
• 2:34
  James Cridland: Now, that's where the ads are in the raw file.
• 2:37
  James Cridland: So as soon as Libsin start adding ads, then the timings all go uh all go awry anyway.
• 2:44
  James Cridland: Uh so you can't actually use this data for skipping ads.
• 2:47
  James Cridland: It'd be nice if you could, I guess, but you can't actually use this data for skipping ads at all.
• 2:52
  James Cridland: But why would you want to advertise, you know, exactly how many ads might be running in your a pre-roll slot and uh mid-roll slot number one and mid-roll slot number two?
• 3:05
  James Cridland: Well, what's the sort of thinking behind that?
• 3:07
  James Cridland: I don't really know.
• 3:08
  James Cridland: So it's a very strange one, but I mean it's lovely to see that li libsin have understood the benefits of an RSS namespace extension.
• 3:17
  James Cridland: Um it's just it's a bit weird that it's theirs.
• 3:20
  Sam Sethi: Could okay, I'm gonna play devil's advocate because trying to look at it from a positive rather than negative.
• 3:26
  Sam Sethi: Well, you've got to try, haven't you?
• 3:28
  Sam Sethi: Could it be that by using the namespace that they've created and presenting in the RSS feed the slots, apps like TrueFans Fountain and others could then say, here's where the ad is, but instead of just saying here's where the ad is, we could add contextual information, we could add links out, we could add affiliate links.
• 3:49
  Sam Sethi: I don't know.
• 3:50
  Sam Sethi: Is it them trying to say to the apps, look, here's where they are going to appear?
• 3:55
  Sam Sethi: Why didn't you build something in your app that enhances the ad with contextual information around it rather than just having an audio segment that just plays out?
• 4:06
  James Cridland: Well, it sounds exciting, doesn't it?
• 4:08
  James Cridland: If that would work.
• 4:09
  James Cridland: But of course, I suppose that there are two things here.
• 4:12
  James Cridland: Firstly, all this is showing, as far as I can work out, is the availability.
• 4:18
  James Cridland: So in the, you know, in the version that I posted in the RSS feed that I posted, you can see that it says that there are two pre-roll ads, and there are two mid-roll ads in the first mid-roll break.
• 4:32
  James Cridland: And and the first mid-roll break starts 620 seconds in.
• 4:37
  James Cridland: Right, so it tells you that, but it doesn't actually tell you more than that.
• 4:41
  James Cridland: It doesn't tell you how many that they actually sold.
• 4:44
  James Cridland: And also, this is in the RSS feed, not in the audio file.
• 4:48
  James Cridland: So actually, if they only sold one out of the two, then you're not going to know as uh true fans.
• 4:56
  James Cridland: So I'm not sure that it's particularly helpful to do it that way.
• 5:02
  James Cridland: I think potentially it could be there for somebody like Soundstack or another third-party ad company to know where they can insert the ads at their end.
• 5:15
  James Cridland: And that would kind of make sense, I think.
• 5:18
  James Cridland: But I don't think you can use it for skipping ads.
• 5:20
  James Cridland: I don't think you can use it for enhancing ads because you because you don't know what the ads are, and frankly, you won't you won't actually realistically know where they are.
• 5:28
  James Cridland: So yeah, I'm just curious as to why that's in there anyway.
• 5:33
  James Cridland: And I can't think of a single reason why you would want to put that in an RSS feed unless you're signalling to a third party.
• 5:42
  James Cridland: Well, here's where the ads are, and here's where you can where you can insert.
• 5:46
  James Cridland: And perhaps it's just that.
• 5:47
  James Cridland: Perhaps that that's what they're using it for.
• 5:50
  Sam Sethi: That's what I was gonna say.
• 5:52
  Sam Sethi: Have they created their own app?
• 5:53
  Sam Sethi: But when you said third-party apps, it makes sense that you know there's information that they can extract from the feed, but why do it via feed?
• 6:01
  Sam Sethi: I don't get why a feed then.
• 6:03
  James Cridland: No, but anyway.
• 6:03
  James Cridland: No, I don't I don't guess why you why you do that in the open.
• 6:06
  James Cridland: Yeah.
• 6:07
  James Cridland: But yes, yes, strange things going on there, and I'm not quite sure of the reason why.
• 6:13
  James Cridland: And also, interestingly, the feed, the official LibSin podcast, posted a new episode uh last week.
• 6:20
  James Cridland: They backdated the timing to March for some reason, but it it actually only published last week, and it was a piece of rock music that went on for three minutes and then went away again.
• 6:34
  James Cridland: They haven't actually told listeners to that feed that Robin Elsie have moved on and that Rob and Elsie are now on in and around podcasting these days.
• 6:42
  James Cridland: So I'm not quite sure of the thinking there, but yeah, I mean maybe somebody at Libsyn thought it might be fun to put a three-minute rock track into that feed.
• 6:53
  James Cridland: I don't really know.
• 6:55
  James Cridland: Maybe they were just sort of uh checking how many people are still getting that particular podcast, you know, nine months after it stopped.
• 7:03
  James Cridland: I don't know.
• 7:04
  James Cridland: It's very strange.
• 7:04
  James Cridland: I've got the answer.
• 7:05
  James Cridland: Very strange.
• 7:06
  James Cridland: Answers on a postcode.
• 7:07
  Sam Sethi: I've got the answer.
• 7:08
  Sam Sethi: They've been hijacked.
• 7:10
  Sam Sethi: Somebody has taken over Libsyn secretly, putting out namespaces that they don't know and rock music that they don't know about.
• 7:17
  Sam Sethi: CEO of LibSin, if you're in trouble, blink twice.
• 7:21
  Sam Sethi: That's all you have to do.
• 7:22
  Sam Sethi: We'll come and rescue you.
• 7:25
  James Cridland: Well, at least it's not going to be what ASOS, a uh fashion retailer, has uh done where they they've been hacked by someone and the hackers have sent a little a little note through the through the push notifications to everybody that has access to the ASOS app, basically saying we've uh we've we've we we've hacked everything.
• 7:47
  James Cridland: So maybe it's that.
• 7:49
  James Cridland: Who knows?
• 7:49
  James Cridland: I'm sure it's always okay.
• 7:52
  Sam Sethi: Moving on, James, then look, Goalhanger, one of the big production companies globally based here in the UK, have been doing gangbusters recently.
• 8:01
  Sam Sethi: They're winning awards, they're launching new shows, they're running big live events and making tons of money.
• 8:07
  Sam Sethi: In fact, Goal Hang has attracted more than 1.8 billion views and streams across all audio, video, and social content.
• 8:14
  Sam Sethi: It has over 250,000 people who are paying to be members of its club.
• 8:20
  Sam Sethi: It's just launched a newsletter, though, James.
• 8:23
  Sam Sethi: Why go back to newsletters?
• 8:26
  James Cridland: Yeah, I don't think it's necessarily just launched a newsletter, but I think it has a new newsletter focus.
• 8:32
  James Cridland: There's somebody there called Kent Smith, who sounds as if they might be a secret name for Superman or something.
• 8:39
  James Cridland: But anyway, he is the he's a very important person at Goldhanger and is looking after the way that those newsletters work.
• 8:47
  James Cridland: Apparently, those newsletters have open rates consistently double the industry average, and which is nice.
• 8:55
  James Cridland: I mean, you know, ours are also consistently double the industry average because the industry average is pitifully low.
• 9:02
  James Cridland: Um, and also I tell you what, if if we think we have a problem measuring podcasts, well, my goodness, you haven't taken a look at at email recently, because that's a a whole different ball game in terms of measurement.
• 9:15
  James Cridland: But Kent Smith is is, you know, in an in an interview very keen on the opportunities that that they have speaking directly to their audience there as well.
• 9:27
  James Cridland: I mean, you know, I mean, it's interesting that, you know, Professor Mary Beard, for example, wrote this week's The Rest Is History newsletter.
• 9:36
  James Cridland: I mean, she's not a person that is on The Rest is History, but she's a person that is writing the newsletter, which is quite interesting.
• 9:44
  James Cridland: So, yeah, it's it sounds as if they are doing what most podcast people should be, which is trying to expand in whatever way possible.
• 9:53
  James Cridland: And, you know, look at a show which is not just a piece of audio, but now has video, now has events, now has a newsletter as well.
• 10:03
  Sam Sethi: Emily is actually Kent Smith, it's mi it's Emily Kent Smith, and she is the former Sunday Times.
• 10:09
  James Cridland: Emily Kent Smith.
• 10:10
  Sam Sethi: Yes, and she's formerly the editor, no, formerly a journalist on the Sunday Times and Daily Mail.
• 10:16
  Sam Sethi: I I think why I found this interesting, and you mentioned Mary Beard there, is they're not putting out as just a bullet pointed, this is what's in the show, this is what's coming up in the podcast, but they're actually turning, I think, more into a magazine, a secondary form of content, which I think is a really interesting strategy by getting actual journalists and interesting content, as you say, not on the podcast but related to the podcast.
• 10:43
  Sam Sethi: I think this will do really well.
• 10:45
  Sam Sethi: I mean, yes, open rates will be high, but I wonder whether they'll then switch this into another revenue stream because you know if you get to a certain point where subscriber numbers are high, open rates are high, you might think, oh, and for a pro version, you can get extra bits as well.
• 11:03
  James Cridland: Yes, I mean I I I should look a little bit more closely into their newsletters.
• 11:09
  James Cridland: My understanding is that their newsletters are part of the pro thing that they've got, the membership that they already have.
• 11:16
  James Cridland: I think that that's how it works.
• 11:18
  James Cridland: So actually, the newsletter is something that you get as a special because you have signed up and you're paying a little bit of money, which is probably why they're earning so much from the membership schemes that they already have, because that sounds like quite a nice thing, you know, to get as added value.
• 11:34
  James Cridland: So perhaps it's that, I don't know.
• 11:36
  Sam Sethi: The other thing they mentioned was about having deeper relationships with the users.
• 11:41
  Sam Sethi: They don't have that information, it's scattered across the four winds, is what they were talking about, in terms of you might be on Spotify or Netflix listening to the rest is football, or you might be on YouTube.
• 11:52
  Sam Sethi: And so the newsletter is one way that they can aggregate fan information around what they're doing.
• 12:00
  Sam Sethi: So, again, another smart way of using the newsletter, I think.
• 12:04
  James Cridland: Yes, indeed.
• 12:05
  James Cridland: No, I think they are a fascinating company to take a look at.
• 12:09
  James Cridland: I gather more news next week.
• 12:11
  James Cridland: So I'm looking forward to more news because that company never does things by halves anymore.
• 12:16
  James Cridland: So it should be interesting to see what they have planned there.
• 12:20
  Sam Sethi: Yeah, and my last comment on it this is what I call creator portals, right?
• 12:23
  Sam Sethi: Audio, video, live newsletters.
• 12:26
  Sam Sethi: And they've got merch as well, so it's aggregating everything around a brand, not or a creator, not just being a single function app.
• 12:35
  Sam Sethi: Right, moving on.
• 12:36
  Sam Sethi: Your favourite quoted line, James, you love it.
• 12:39
  Sam Sethi: You must have buggles coming out of your well, I won't say where.
• 12:44
  Sam Sethi: Smart TV kill the smart speaker star.
• 12:48
  Sam Sethi: This is Tom Webster.
• 12:50
  Sam Sethi: What's Tom talking about, apart from apologising to you in the first paragraph?
• 12:55
  James Cridland: What is Tom talking about?
• 12:56
  James Cridland: So he loves the whole video killed the radio star thing, and why not?
• 13:01
  James Cridland: That makes perfect sense.
• 13:02
  James Cridland: But he is really do uh uh saying a couple of things here.
• 13:06
  James Cridland: Firstly, he is saying that, of course, the smart speaker really has not been a very interesting or exciting way to find new podcasts because voice is just the worst interface ever devised, he says.
• 13:22
  James Cridland: And I would certainly agree with that.
• 13:24
  James Cridland: I mean, it simply doesn't work for many podcasts.
• 13:27
  James Cridland: There isn't the word pod news, for example, in a dictionary.
• 13:30
  James Cridland: So, therefore, what I got most of all was people asking to listen to pod news and getting a podcast which was called Pop News, which was nothing to do with us.
• 13:41
  James Cridland: So, so I think that that's you know obviously a thing.
• 13:44
  James Cridland: But Tom's also talking about smart TV, and actually the real technology, which is moving audiences, so he says, is the smart TV.
• 13:55
  James Cridland: It's moved from 8% in terms of your most used podcast device up to 12%, which is quite an increase.
• 14:03
  James Cridland: But of course, people are using smart TVs alongside all kinds of other things as well.
• 14:08
  James Cridland: So, yeah, so much less around the smart speaker, and much more, unfortunately, or fortunately, around video and that sort of thing.
• 14:18
  Sam Sethi: Yeah.
• 14:18
  Sam Sethi: So should podcast apps be on smart TVs then?
• 14:21
  Sam Sethi: I mean, we we've talked about Pocketcast going on to Apple TV, but that's just one surface.
• 14:27
  Sam Sethi: Should we all be now focusing our attention on creating apps for the big TV?
• 14:36
  James Cridland: Well, I mean, I think that that's clearly a place where podcasting is growing, both from this, but also, of course, from things like Netflix, YouTube, and that sort of thing.
• 14:44
  James Cridland: We know that YouTube is very big in terms of TV usage.
• 14:48
  James Cridland: You would guess that Netflix is probably big there as well.
• 14:51
  James Cridland: So, you know, I think you can certainly see that there's an awful lot of consumption going on there.
• 14:57
  James Cridland: And, you know, of course, any podcast app really needs to have a TV version that works and that works well.
• 15:04
  James Cridland: Hence why, you know, I mean, there's there is rumors again of a new Apple TV box, but you can certainly see that Apple Podcasts has finally got video into the Apple TV platform, you know, as well.
• 15:17
  James Cridland: And you know, and you would you would guess that the that there's going to be more of that uh to come.
• 15:23
  Sam Sethi: Is there a way that smart let's say the Alexa's the home pods could make podcasting easier and smarter?
• 15:33
  Sam Sethi: I mean it seems the logical thing to use your voice to say play pod news weekly review, doesn't it?
• 15:41
  James Cridland: Yes, it does, but I think that most people are using those smart speakers for things like live radio, which is massive on smart smart speakers still, and and things that actually just work.
• 15:57
  James Cridland: And I think the difficulty is unless you're using the same platform, unless you're using, for example, Apple Podcasts as your platform to listen to this show, but also to listen to this show on your smart speaker, then it knows where you've got up to in a particular show.
• 16:14
  James Cridland: It knows which episodes you've listened to and which episodes you haven't, and so on and so forth.
• 16:20
  James Cridland: If you're using something different, so if you're using Overcast on your phone, then of course your smart speaker won't know w where where that particular show is and where that, you know, how far away you are through that show.
• 16:33
  James Cridland: So I guess from that point of view, it's it's you know, uh it it's it's great if you want to be locked into Apple Podcasts, but only 9% of people are saying that Apple Podcasts is their number one app these days.
• 16:47
  James Cridland: It's it's nowhere near as large as it as it used to be.
• 16:50
  James Cridland: So yeah, I don't think it's gonna work very well, is the quick answer.
• 16:55
  Sam Sethi: So in car, that's the other place that we always say is a very popular place to listen to podcasts, but it's not very high according to Signal Hill in Canada for some reason.
• 17:07
  James Cridland: No, and I am not sure that I've seen any of this data actually for other countries.
• 17:13
  James Cridland: So maybe this is a first, and it's certainly showing that podcasts are very, very low listened to.
• 17:19
  James Cridland: Only 2% of time listening to audio in a car is to podcasts, according to this uh new Canadian research from Signal Hill Insights.
• 17:28
  James Cridland: Now, in Canada, you know, it's very different to in the US.
• 17:32
  James Cridland: In the US, more than 50% of all radio listening, for example, happens in a car.
• 17:38
  James Cridland: Only one in four minutes is done in a car in Canada.
• 17:43
  James Cridland: So it's a considerably different, you know, culture anyway.
• 17:47
  James Cridland: But I think, yeah, it's it's podcasting, I think, just doesn't, it's not quite as easy to use in a car as it potentially could be, even with something like Apple CarPlay or anything else.
• 18:00
  James Cridland: I mean, it works, you know.
• 18:01
  James Cridland: I've I've got it to work fine, but quite often you do have to pull over and sort of fiddle around and find the podcast that you want to have a listen to.
• 18:10
  James Cridland: Again, it's that it's that voice interface stuff, I suppose.
• 18:15
  Sam Sethi: They also don't like AI-generated content, it seems, in Canada.
• 18:19
  Sam Sethi: Well, very sensibly.
• 18:21
  Sam Sethi: But Anderson Research says that 66% of weekly podcast listeners also reacted negatively to the idea of AI hosts.
• 18:32
  James Cridland: Yes, yes, uh two different sets of data basically saying the same sort of thing.
• 18:38
  James Cridland: AI is not a thing in North America, but I think as we heard from Guan Jun Yo at uh Radio Days Asia a month or so ago, uh actually it's very different in in Asia where they're much more comfortable with the whole with the whole AI stuff.
• 18:55
  James Cridland: So perhaps we're seeing you know some real obvious cultural differences there.
• 19:00
  James Cridland: I don't know.
• 19:02
  Sam Sethi: Sticking on the AI theme, then just to make you feel much happier, James.
• 19:06
  Sam Sethi: Again, will AI agents kill the advertising star?
• 19:10
  Sam Sethi: Now, last week on podcasting 2.0, Adam Curry and Dave Jones had a quite an amazing show, I think.
• 19:17
  Sam Sethi: They talked about AI agents being used in a way for Adam.
• 19:24
  Sam Sethi: We've we've sort of ribbed him a little bit on this show, where he's got his AI robot that goes off and does things like checking that his name's being talked about in shows, and therefore he listens to that clip section.
• 19:36
  Sam Sethi: But what Adam demoed, and I don't know if you heard it yourself, was quite interesting where he was asking the AI robot that he's created to go off and find certain clips that are related to what he was talking about.
• 19:50
  Sam Sethi: It stripped out all the advertising, found the clip section, so not the whole episode, and then he was able to send that via text as a link to Dave Jones.
• 20:01
  Sam Sethi: He intimated that this could be, or Dave Jones certainly felt could be the end of advertising within podcasting, and this may be the way that we go forward.
• 20:11
  Sam Sethi: What were your thoughts when you heard it?
• 20:15
  James Cridland: So I haven't heard it, but because unfortunately I've been doing an awful lot of travel over the last week week or so, but I think anything anytime that we hear, well, you know, the end of advertising is nigh because people can do X, Y, and Z, what actually really happens is that there's no real change.
• 20:34
  James Cridland: There's no real change in consumer in consumer behavior.
• 20:38
  James Cridland: And, you know, I mean, there are still a lot of people listening to music radio, for example.
• 20:43
  James Cridland: There's a lot of people listening to, you know, to podcasts without skipping through the ads.
• 20:48
  James Cridland: I know that you can, but there are a lot of people who don't because you you can see people rebooking their their advertising because their advertising is working for them.
• 20:57
  James Cridland: So I think at the end of the day, yeah, absolutely, there's yet another reason why AI might might take over the world.
• 21:04
  James Cridland: I'm I'm not so sure it's going to happen as quickly as anybody would would uh think.
• 21:10
  James Cridland: And I mean, you know, I have just had an email from a student in the UK asking me what radio will be like in 2070.
• 21:19
  James Cridland: And I've said I have not the face to be able to do it.
• 21:21
  Sam Sethi: Silent because I'm dead and under the ground.
• 21:24
  James Cridland: Absolutely no idea.
• 21:26
  James Cridland: But but yeah, so you know, I mean, who knows what'll happen out there, but I think certainly for the next couple of years, yeah.
• 21:34
  James Cridland: I I don't think that there's going to be anything, anything particularly there.
• 21:38
  James Cridland: I could well be wrong, but I'm I'm not sure that there will be.
• 21:41
  Sam Sethi: Well, two things.
• 21:42
  Sam Sethi: First of all, Adam Curry will be on this show next week to talk about what's going on, so it'll be interesting to hear his perspective again.
• 21:50
  Sam Sethi: I mean, I've talked on this show about having AI agents for my own platform, TrueFans, which I would call Kevin and Kelly.
• 21:57
  Sam Sethi: And I see value in Them being assistant agents.
• 22:01
  Sam Sethi: I don't see them as hosts.
• 22:02
  Sam Sethi: I see them as there for me having users ask them questions about ham, what's going on, how many new episodes, etc.
• 22:10
  Sam Sethi: etc.
• 22:11
  Sam Sethi: And also just sitting in the background, a bit like a Google keyword search that just finds transcripts with my name in it and stuff.
• 22:17
  Sam Sethi: So the one thing that you did ask though of Adam and Dave a couple of weeks back as well was could they create an MCP server?
• 22:26
  Sam Sethi: Now that's something that originally Adam was like, no, we're never gonna do that, blah, blah, blah, and certainly not gonna charge for it.
• 22:33
  Sam Sethi: Hmm, I think you should listen to the episode, James.
• 22:36
  Sam Sethi: They've changed their mind completely.
• 22:38
  Sam Sethi: There's lots of apologies, and thank you to you.
• 22:41
  Sam Sethi: They have created an MCP server.
• 22:43
  Sam Sethi: So fundamentally, podcastindexrobot.com.
• 22:48
  Sam Sethi: You can go and find basically this podcast index robot that goes against all the four million podcasts out there.
• 22:55
  Sam Sethi: You can ask it questions like what's new in my shows, find the part where they talk about X, what's made in Austin, and again, what they've done very cleverly is listed all of the MCPs for all the AI agents out there, which is really neat.
• 23:11
  Sam Sethi: Now, I think the the problem we've got here, if I can just extend it a little further, is that this is AI agents being able to scrape RSS feeds.
• 23:23
  Sam Sethi: We talked about it last week where Reddit's just closing down the RSS feeds and then they're closing down the API access just for registered developers only.
• 23:32
  Sam Sethi: And we've also talked in the past about how X402, this protocol for payments, which is being led by Cloudfair, Coinbase, and also Stripe, is gaining some momentum, along with a consortium called OpenUSD, and we've talked about that as well.
• 23:50
  Sam Sethi: I feel there's a jigsaw piece in front of me.
• 23:53
  Sam Sethi: I can't quite put all the pieces together to see the full picture, but I see MCP servers, AI agents, X402, micropayments in there somewhere, which we've said is still a valid thing.
• 24:06
  Sam Sethi: It just isn't the way that it's been done.
• 24:08
  Sam Sethi: And I see that maybe in the future AI agents will be able to go to podcasts, but instead of just scraping it for free, the X402 element will allow us to charge the agent for access to our content and take a small micropayment.
• 24:24
  Sam Sethi: And I think that's where it's going, but I think we're a long way off that yet.
• 24:29
  James Cridland: Yeah, yeah.
• 24:30
  James Cridland: No, I mean it may well happen, but it may well happen, I think, you know, in in in a while.
• 24:36
  James Cridland: Um, you know, again.
• 24:38
  James Cridland: But you know, fascinating to see people playing around with AI agents and seeing what they can do.
• 24:44
  James Cridland: I have to say, I am being deluged at the moment with systems that pretend, for example, that it can do a you know, a clipping service or something like that, and you know, and it can get the best bits from your podcast.
• 24:58
  James Cridland: And I must get one or two of these a day now, of people that have just worked out an easy way to vibe code their way into that.
• 25:06
  James Cridland: And and I'm just getting a little bit bored of all of these AI tools that are doing much the same thing as everybody else.
• 25:12
  James Cridland: So it'll be nice to see if we can manage something a little bit more exciting.
• 25:17
  Sam Sethi: Now, in terms of Reddit last week blocking access to AI agents doing this sort of data scraping, it's interesting to see that Amazon has blocked Meta's Muse from shopping on its platform, and also Apple has announced plans for tighter controls over access to data.
• 25:34
  Sam Sethi: I think we're beginning to see these platforms going, no, I'm not letting your AI agent come to me, compare the price here, compare the price there, and then give you an alternative.
• 25:44
  Sam Sethi: No, I'm gonna lock you out.
• 25:46
  Sam Sethi: So, I mean, on my own platform, TrueFans, we have now started blocking AI agents.
• 25:52
  Sam Sethi: I'm just I said last week we saw a doubling in the cost of our MongoDB bill, and that was a lot of that was coming from AI agents just scraping data and using our platform.
• 26:04
  James Cridland: Yeah, but how are you bl how are you blocking those?
• 26:08
  Sam Sethi: So we're using something called a WAF, and so look, we're not gonna be perfect, but we are yeah, I I understand what a firewall is, but how are you blocking them?
• 26:16
  James Cridland: How do you know what a yeah, we don't.
• 26:20
  James Cridland: We we we we're using the user agent.
• 26:24
  Sam Sethi: We are trying, but of course they're spoofing it.
• 26:27
  Sam Sethi: So the ones where we do know, I mean, okay, we we we aren't gonna be able to catch them all, right?
• 26:33
  Sam Sethi: But then the Opal Glist that you and John have put together for bots is where we start with, and I mean it means we can stop Facebook bots and Google bots if we want, and we can do certain things in there.
• 26:46
  Sam Sethi: I mean, why do I want X scraping it from Grok?
• 26:50
  Sam Sethi: I don't need that, right?
• 26:52
  Sam Sethi: If somebody wants to turn it back on, we have the option for the individual to do that.
• 26:56
  Sam Sethi: But at a system level, we're gonna try.
• 26:58
  Sam Sethi: Now we might make mistakes, we might block the wrong bots and user agents, but you know what?
• 27:03
  Sam Sethi: At the moment, it's costing me a lot of money to have them scrape my data, and I just don't want it.
• 27:08
  James Cridland: So no, indeed.
• 27:09
  James Cridland: Indeed.
• 27:10
  James Cridland: Yeah, and it's unfortunately it's the ones that pretend that they are, you know, Safari or Chrome.
• 27:17
  James Cridland: And we can't block those are the ones that are that are badly behaved, yes, and so unfortunately, you know, you end up with a a world where it's very difficult to block these sorts of things.
• 27:28
  James Cridland: I mean, we are seeing a lot more integration with other things.
• 27:31
  James Cridland: Spotify appears to be what c connecting to oh connecting to your uh calendar and stuff like that.
• 27:42
  James Cridland: Who knows?
• 27:42
  Sam Sethi: Well, it's it's an AI agent wants to now provide you with a daily summary of what's going on and link that to some sort of music as well, so you get a daily briefing.
• 27:52
  Sam Sethi: Now we saw a company two, three years ago when we're at Podcast Movement, James, out in New York, try and do this, and they were scraping TechCrunch and they were scraping The Verge and all these other sites.
• 28:03
  Sam Sethi: We asked them, yeah, you know, have you got a license to do this?
• 28:06
  Sam Sethi: Yes, yes, yes, it's sort of there, yes.
• 28:08
  Sam Sethi: Yes, and strangely they went out of business soon after.
• 28:11
  Sam Sethi: Yeah, I'm not quite sure where you know Spotify will get access to all of this content apart from my calendar, which I don't want to give them access to.
• 28:19
  Sam Sethi: But Dave Weiner, you had a conversation with Dave Winer this week about him trying to block stuff as well.
• 28:25
  Sam Sethi: What was that all about?
• 28:27
  James Cridland: Yes, I'm not sure I had a conversation.
• 28:29
  James Cridland: I think I I posted because he uh he asked and he doesn't chat much, does he?
• 28:34
  James Cridland: No, but he was trying, I mean, he is most upset.
• 28:38
  James Cridland: This has got nothing to do with that with uh scrapers, actually.
• 28:40
  James Cridland: He is most upset with Google, who if you try and access his website, scripting.com, through Google Chrome, it says, Oh, this website isn't secure.
• 28:51
  James Cridland: Are you sure you want to have a look at it?
• 28:53
  James Cridland: And it's because Dave won't turn on HG HTTPS.
• 28:57
  James Cridland: Okay.
• 28:58
  James Cridland: Because because he's got some belief against that.
• 29:04
  James Cridland: And so he was asking, how can I block Google Chrome from seeing my website?
• 29:10
  James Cridland: And so, you know, I took a look at how his website was actually built, it's on Amazon S3, and I gave him the way that he could do it, and then and then gave him maybe a way that was a little bit less user hostile.
• 29:25
  James Cridland: Um, but uh yeah, so he's busy looking at all of that sort of stuff, but again, you know, it all of this is down to what the user agent ends up saying, so you know, we'll we'll find out what's uh going on there.
• 29:40
  James Cridland: I mean, a couple of other things around AI.
• 29:42
  James Cridland: The BBC I player is apparently going to have an AI agent.
• 29:45
  James Cridland: Well, that's exciting.
• 29:46
  James Cridland: Iggy and uh there is Iggy.
• 29:49
  James Cridland: Why Iggy?
• 29:51
  James Cridland: Stardust, I have no doubt.
• 29:53
  James Cridland: But wasn't it Ziggy Stardust?
• 29:55
  James Cridland: No, that was Ziggy Stardust.
• 29:57
  James Cridland: You're thinking of Iggy Pop.
• 29:59
  James Cridland: Oh, okay.
• 30:00
  James Cridland: Um, I've got no idea why it's called that.
• 30:03
  James Cridland: But you know, Matt Britton, former former local uh branch manager for Google in the in Europe, now boss of the BBC, seems to think that that's a nice idea.
• 30:16
  James Cridland: And alongside that, apparently some more top-level domains are coming for podcast websites and for other things.agent, dot agi, and dot ASI.
• 30:26
  James Cridland: I think we looked into dot podcast a while back, didn't we?
• 30:29
  James Cridland: And then we realized that it was probably not going to pay its way.
• 30:32
  James Cridland: Yes.
• 30:32
  James Cridland: Um, and so everybody stopped.
• 30:34
  James Cridland: But yes, I think it's interesting that.agent got up to 13 competing applications.
• 30:40
  James Cridland: So I'm not quite sure what what the benefit of another TLD is, but still, if you if you want that, I suppose that that's all fine, I suppose.
• 30:50
  Sam Sethi: Well, I can imagine.
• 30:51
  Sam Sethi: Well, no, I'm just gonna say if I've got my own agent, Sam.agent, uh, I don't know, and and that's becomes a standalone entity.
• 30:59
  Sam Sethi: I don't know.
• 31:00
  Sam Sethi: I don't know.
• 31:01
  James Cridland: Well, I'm I'm th thinking about playing with Omarkey, which is the new version of Linux that has all kinds of AI stuff built into it, just to sort of have a play with it.
• 31:14
  James Cridland: I mean, I know it's infiltrated by Nazis, but you know, one should at least have a look at these things before you uh you know you you um you you understand what they are.
• 31:24
  James Cridland: So I might I might have a play with that and see whether or not I can actually get an agent to be something exciting, but I certainly don't want to run that on my own computer, thank you very much.
• 31:34
  Sam Sethi: And they call you just a journalist, yeah.
• 31:36
  Sam Sethi: Blimey.
• 31:37
  Sam Sethi: Yeah, well geekies journalist I know.
• 31:40
  James Cridland: Well, yeah, sorry about that.
• 31:41
  James Cridland: Yes, let's talk about books, shall we, very quickly?
• 31:44
  Sam Sethi: Yes, Spotify has got into audiobooks.
• 31:48
  Sam Sethi: We know that.
• 31:48
  Sam Sethi: They've been pushing that boat out for a while, another revenue stream.
• 31:52
  Sam Sethi: Seems like doing quite well with it though, James.
• 31:54
  Sam Sethi: What have they announced?
• 31:56
  James Cridland: Yeah, well, it seems as though at least they are doing something additional with books and things like that.
• 32:02
  James Cridland: They have just announced, now, interestingly, they didn't bother telling me this, which leads me to think that maybe I may not be on Spotify's big list anymore, because I don't think I've seen anything from Spotify for a while.
• 32:15
  James Cridland: Ever since I was talking about that skip ahead button that they were very mentioning.
• 32:20
  James Cridland: Skip James Cridlin now.
• 32:22
  James Cridland: Well, yes, I mean maybe, but anyway, so Spotify Audiobooks is now in basically in every country in the world or will be by the end of this year, more than 180 markets.
• 32:33
  James Cridland: Well, there are 182 countries, I think, in the world, so that's pretty well all of them.
• 32:38
  James Cridland: Mostly you'll be able to get a amount of audiobooks free with your premium subscription.
• 32:46
  James Cridland: But if you live in Africa or Asia, which are quite big markets, you will require to buy a paid add-on instead.
• 32:55
  James Cridland: Users will find books next to their music and podcasts, apparently, which is exciting.
• 33:01
  James Cridland: Now, of course, uh, for podcasting, that does mean that that's um more competition in the Spotify app for your ears because your ears can only listen to one thing at a time.
• 33:10
  James Cridland: And so it'll be interesting to see what happens, if anything happens, with the amount of consumption of podcasts within the Spotify app.
• 33:18
  James Cridland: Obviously, the overall consumption will go up, but consumption of podcasts may go down, who knows?
• 33:26
  James Cridland: But yeah, so interesting that Spotify is moving books further around the world.
• 33:32
  James Cridland: And then, of course, there's a few interesting things going on in the UK which I don't fully understand, uh, Sam.
• 33:38
  Sam Sethi: Books by people.
• 33:40
  Sam Sethi: Yeah, it's a it's a small startup, and and I just saw the story and I thought, interesting, what they're doing is the intellectual property office here in the UK is giving them the ability to distribute thumbnail-style organic certifications for books that are proven to be human written.
• 33:56
  Sam Sethi: And I think really this is where we're heading.
• 34:00
  Sam Sethi: We're gonna have to get to a point where, again, certification, we've talked about it in podcasting.
• 34:06
  Sam Sethi: You know, how can we add an AI tag to make sure that we're telling people that this is not an AI host?
• 34:11
  Sam Sethi: Because very, very soon the line between us detecting what is a human and an AI host is gonna become smaller and smaller to the point of indifference.
• 34:21
  Sam Sethi: And I think we need that certification, we need it on images, we need it on all sorts of things, and I think again, I just saw this story and thought at least someone's trying to give people a visual form that says this book is written by a human and not been AI generated.
• 34:42
  Sam Sethi: Anyway, I just thought that was quite nice.
• 34:45
  James Cridland: Yes, no, interesting.
• 34:47
  James Cridland: Alongside that, a man called Mike Smith, not that Mike Smith, from 2017 to 2024, Mike Smith used thousands of bots to stream his own music on places like Spotify as well as AI-generated songs, and basically got lots of money from the music companies, uh, like millions of dollars from the music companies.
• 35:14
  James Cridland: And he's just been thrown into prison for 18 months for wire fraud, which is interesting.
• 35:21
  James Cridland: But uh, yes, that the there's been a big press release where the US uh authorities have basically said, you know, that that that they have to ensure the integrity of all markets and to protect the public from those who use super intelligence for fraud.
• 35:40
  James Cridland: So that must be the first time I think that I've ever seen somebody being thrown into prison for use of AI, but there you go.
• 35:49
  Sam Sethi: Well, I think he he'd set up an AI bot farm to take money out of Spotify mainly.
• 35:55
  Sam Sethi: But I only again put this in as a precursor to is this something that might happen to us in the future regarding podcasting?
• 36:04
  Sam Sethi: Will AI go in?
• 36:06
  Sam Sethi: Will advertisers be paying out continually to people because they're just putting up fake AI-generated bot accounts, right?
• 36:15
  Sam Sethi: And then increasing the listening numbers, which is basically what Michael Smith was doing, right?
• 36:20
  Sam Sethi: He was just basically saying there's more and more people listening to this AI track that I've just created to pay me money.
• 36:26
  Sam Sethi: And if we end up in a model where people get paid out for listening to podcasts in some way, or advertisers pay out to creators of false podcasts, then suddenly, you know, we might be in a similar scam operation.
• 36:43
  James Cridland: Yeah, no, that I mean there may well be some of that, and you know, particularly I suppose if you you know if the industry moves forward with giving that one dollar cost per thousand for every podcast app, well, some podcast apps might wish to try and sneak their way around that.
• 37:00
  James Cridland: But yes, no, really interesting in terms of you know, in terms of how this particular case went.
• 37:07
  James Cridland: So yeah, it seems that he wasn't necessarily doing it particularly cleverly, but he did earn more than eight million dollars from his bot accounts.
• 37:16
  James Cridland: So yeah, there's a there's a thing.
• 37:20
  Sam Sethi: Moving on then, James, people in jobs.
• 37:22
  Sam Sethi: Anyone moving and grooving this week?
• 37:25
  James Cridland: Anyone moving and grooving this week?
• 37:27
  James Cridland: Well, Bob Kane.
• 37:28
  James Cridland: Bob Kane is an excellent man, Canadian.
• 37:31
  James Cridland: He's worked in podcasting since it was invented, basically.
• 37:35
  James Cridland: And he has just joined ACAST as senior account executive.
• 37:40
  James Cridland: So hurrah for him.
• 37:42
  James Cridland: Very pleased to see him working with ACast.
• 37:45
  James Cridland: He had uh worked at Libsyn and prior to that worked at the CBC and various other places.
• 37:50
  James Cridland: He's very bright.
• 37:51
  James Cridland: Uh, and also John Goforth has been doing so well at the Gamut Podcast Network that he has been made president.
• 37:59
  James Cridland: It's a president we can all believe in.
• 38:01
  James Cridland: That unit's revenue has grown 47% over the past two years.
• 38:04
  James Cridland: So congratulations to him.
• 38:08
  Sam Sethi: Awards and events, James.
• 38:10
  Sam Sethi: What's coming up for everybody?
• 38:11
  Sam Sethi: Tell us.
• 38:13
  James Cridland: What is coming up?
• 38:14
  James Cridland: Well, you've got the the Golden Globes, which are very exciting, I suppose.
• 38:21
  James Cridland: They are coming up um in uh January next year.
• 38:28
  Sam Sethi: If you must.
• 38:30
  James Cridland: So this year, last year there were 25 shows that were eligible.
• 38:34
  James Cridland: This year there are 30.
• 38:36
  James Cridland: You become eligible.
• 38:37
  James Cridland: I mean, basically, because the the the the the the awards like you.
• 38:42
  James Cridland: Uh that there's a list of criteria, but their list of criteria is very woolly.
• 38:47
  James Cridland: Social and cultural impact.
• 38:49
  James Cridland: How can you put a number on that?
• 38:50
  James Cridland: I really don't know.
• 38:51
  James Cridland: Chart rankings, yes.
• 38:53
  James Cridland: Okay, I can kind of understand that.
• 38:54
  James Cridland: The number of curated editorial placements, does that mean that if I put a podcast in the Podnews newsletter, that it gets a little bit closer to be eligible for a Golden Globe?
• 39:05
  James Cridland: I don't know.
• 39:06
  James Cridland: Audience reach and engagement, all of that kind of stuff.
• 39:09
  James Cridland: Anyway, there are 30 uh shows.
• 39:11
  James Cridland: They have been announced as being eligible.
• 39:14
  James Cridland: Next, the shows spend $500 to submit themselves, and then they spend lots and lots and lots of money trying to promote themselves to all of the judges.
• 39:24
  James Cridland: The nominations will be announced on December the 7th, and then on January the 10th next year, that's when the Golden Globes are, and that's when we find out that Conan O'Brien has won.
• 39:34
  James Cridland: Hang on a minute.
• 39:35
  James Cridland: Yeah, exactly.
• 39:37
  Sam Sethi: But it's got to be a good one.
• 39:40
  James Cridland: No, it's Joe Rogan's not not in that in that list.
• 39:43
  James Cridland: So my suspicion is, you know, I mean, it's the Golden Globes there for friends of Hollywood.
• 39:50
  James Cridland: Conan O'Brien is a friend of Hollywood more than anybody else on that list.
• 39:55
  James Cridland: So I mean, who did it go to last year?
• 39:57
  James Cridland: Amy Polar.
• 39:58
  James Cridland: Well, you know, actress, you know, comedian, friend of Hollywood.
• 40:03
  James Cridland: I think it's going to go to Conan O'Brien.
• 40:05
  James Cridland: Personally, anybody else would bother.
• 40:08
  Sam Sethi: It's the same scam though, isn't it?
• 40:10
  Sam Sethi: Because post that they'll just put a poster out that says Golden Globe winner.
• 40:15
  Sam Sethi: Doesn't matter what category, no one will asks that, no one will find out.
• 40:19
  Sam Sethi: It'll just be a statue with their name, Golden Globe Winner.
• 40:23
  Sam Sethi: Same as I've won an Oscar.
• 40:25
  Sam Sethi: Yes.
• 40:25
  Sam Sethi: Yes.
• 40:26
  James Cridland: Well, it won't be an Oscar, it'll be a Golden Globe.
• 40:28
  James Cridland: Um and same concept.
• 40:30
  James Cridland: And that and that won't be a scam, I should just point out that would be perfectly acceptable for them to do.
• 40:37
  James Cridland: But yeah, but anyway, so congratulations in advance to Conan O'Brien on winning the 84th Golden Globes in January of next year.
• 40:47
  James Cridland: It couldn't have happened to a nicer ginger person.
• 40:51
  Sam Sethi: Uh, just a quick one.
• 40:52
  Sam Sethi: I'll be at the Independent Podcast Awards on the 4th of November at King's Place in London.
• 40:57
  Sam Sethi: Looking forward to that.
• 40:58
  Sam Sethi: Yes, so lots and lots of UK podcasters will be there.
• 41:02
  Sam Sethi: So happy days.
• 41:04
  James Cridland: Excellent.
• 41:05
  James Cridland: Yes, yes.
• 41:06
  James Cridland: So have fun with that in King's Place.
• 41:09
  James Cridland: Other events going on.
• 41:10
  James Cridland: Pod Summit is uh happening next week in Calgary.
• 41:14
  James Cridland: It's a very good conference stroke uh festival, stroke event in quite a nice old-fashioned but also brand new theatre.
• 41:21
  James Cridland: It's very good.
• 41:22
  James Cridland: And Podfest has announced Pat Flynn as its first keynote speaker.
• 41:27
  James Cridland: You don't say the event is in mid-January in Orlando, in Florida.
• 41:32
  Announcer: The tech stuff.
• 41:33
  Announcer: On the Podnews Weekly Review.
• 41:36
  James Cridland: Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Podnews newsletter.
• 41:39
  James Cridland: Here's where Sam talks technology.
• 41:41
  James Cridland: What have you got for us, Sam?
• 41:43
  Sam Sethi: Just a couple of updates on some of the apps within the community.
• 41:46
  Sam Sethi: So Castos now supports transcripts, so congratulations.
• 41:50
  Sam Sethi: Remind me which one is Castos again, James.
• 41:52
  Sam Sethi: Who's behind that?
• 41:54
  James Cridland: It's a it's a podcast hosting company.
• 41:57
  James Cridland: Okay.
• 41:59
  Sam Sethi: Uh and Castomatic.
• 42:01
  Sam Sethi: I only say it because I get Castos and Customatic always confused.
• 42:04
  Sam Sethi: So Customatic has added support for micropayments.
• 42:08
  Sam Sethi: They've been added to the Albi Wall of Fame.
• 42:11
  Sam Sethi: So congratulations to them.
• 42:13
  Sam Sethi: And yes, well done to them.
• 42:15
  James Cridland: I guess and I have to say, just before you go on to uh OSHA, I I'm very surprised.
• 42:21
  James Cridland: Castos has always seemed to me to be quite quite forward-looking as a podcast host.
• 42:26
  James Cridland: And I'm very surprised how long it's taken them to support transcripts.
• 42:30
  James Cridland: That seems a real misstep from them.
• 42:32
  James Cridland: So I don't really understand what's going on.
• 42:34
  James Cridland: OSHA, though, they they have moved on with video, haven't they?
• 42:39
  Sam Sethi: Yeah, they've been added to the Apple podcast list, and they've also added the ability for their customers to take audio and auto-generate that to YouTube, a bit like Headliner does as well.
• 42:50
  Sam Sethi: So one of the interesting things about it is that they do say due to the costs associated with video, it also will be a feature for its boost hosting plan, which I assume is its premium plan.
• 43:03
  Sam Sethi: So it's not for everybody, but again, good forward step.
• 43:07
  Sam Sethi: Another one joins the club.
• 43:09
  James Cridland: Yes, no Spotify video I notice there.
• 43:13
  Sam Sethi: You you have an exciting thing here about you can't get Spotify to give you an API access to Muppets.
• 43:19
  Sam Sethi: Everyone's asking for it, and they just go, Meh, how many podcasts will you bring us?
• 43:24
  Sam Sethi: And you go, Well, I can't be bothered to answer that question and bugger off.
• 43:29
  Sam Sethi: Sorry, did I did I say that publicly?
• 43:32
  James Cridland: Why don't you why don't you sit there on the fence there, uh Sad?
• 43:35
  James Cridland: No, my name's not a good one.
• 43:37
  Sam Sethi: It's not any wonder that they don't send me any press releases anymore.
• 43:40
  Sam Sethi: Yes, yeah, and I won't sit on a fence like Ed Sheeran, so you're okay.
• 43:43
  Sam Sethi: Now no.
• 43:46
  Sam Sethi: One of the interesting things on the GitHub is that we sometimes can have conversations there about what's coming up next.
• 43:55
  Sam Sethi: And one of the things that's being proposed is the idea of the person tag.
• 43:59
  Sam Sethi: Having multicapabilities.
• 44:02
  Sam Sethi: It's something that with my own platform, TrueFans have had for about a year and a half, but it seems that now people are asking for multi-capabilities.
• 44:10
  Sam Sethi: So, for example, James is the host of this podcast, but he's also the editor of this podcast.
• 44:16
  Sam Sethi: In theory, I'm the host of this podcast and also the producer of this podcast.
• 44:20
  Sam Sethi: So we have multiple roles that we could present in the person tag.
• 44:25
  Sam Sethi: And there is another podcast app who will announce officially next week that they've added support for it, and they're now pushing for this to be part of the next phase, the update to the person tag, which is interesting.
• 44:38
  Sam Sethi: But you also saw, I think you're a part of the conversation, I'm pretty sure.
• 44:43
  Sam Sethi: One of the other roles was where somebody could be Craig.
• 44:47
  Sam Sethi: What's the James Bond character?
• 44:49
  Sam Sethi: Craig.
• 44:50
  Sam Sethi: Yes, Daniel Craig.
• 44:51
  Sam Sethi: Daniel Craig.
• 44:52
  Sam Sethi: Yes.
• 44:53
  Sam Sethi: And easily forgotten, just forgotten.
• 44:56
  Sam Sethi: He's dead.
• 44:57
  Sam Sethi: Where's the next one?
• 44:58
  Sam Sethi: Well, James Bond is Daniel Craig's gone.
• 45:02
  Sam Sethi: We're waiting for the new one, you know.
• 45:04
  Sam Sethi: Anyway, now there was another option in there which I thought was quite interesting, which was an as attribute, because Daniel Craig as James Bond.
• 45:14
  Sam Sethi: Tell me more about that.
• 45:16
  James Cridland: So for actors, so for audio fiction, where you have an actor producing somebody, you probably want to be able to find all of the podcasts that have, you know, Daniel Craig acting in them.
• 45:29
  James Cridland: And you should be able to do that.
• 45:31
  James Cridland: I think it's role equals actor.
• 45:33
  James Cridland: And then there's a new sort of as thing.
• 45:36
  James Cridland: So you can say as James Bond, the name is Daniel Craig, which I think would make quite a lot of sense, particularly for those people who are making audio fiction, which hasn't necessarily always been thought of with some of these tags.
• 45:50
  James Cridland: So that looks to me like a good plan.
• 45:52
  James Cridland: So hurrah for whoever it is who put that one forward.
• 45:56
  Sam Sethi: One problem we currently have, and I flagged this up, I think, two years ago actually, but now it's just come back into problems.
• 46:03
  Sam Sethi: The the podcast taxonomy was put forward by Pod Chaser and a whole bunch of other companies.
• 46:09
  Sam Sethi: They created a website, they uh created a list of roles for the person tag.
• 46:15
  Sam Sethi: Well, that website's gone away now, and uh fundamentally it doesn't exist anymore.
• 46:20
  Sam Sethi: And that list that I've been saying that we use for the person tag needs to be updated, it's out of date, it no longer exists anyway.
• 46:30
  Sam Sethi: There is still a GitHub.
• 46:31
  Sam Sethi: The question I had two years ago, and it's a question I pose now: who should take ownership of this?
• 46:37
  Sam Sethi: The PSP, the podcast index, a another person.
• 46:40
  Sam Sethi: What are we gonna do with it?
• 46:42
  Sam Sethi: Because A, it needs to be updated and B, it needs to be live and available somewhere.
• 46:46
  Sam Sethi: Yeah.
• 46:48
  James Cridland: Yeah, I would agree.
• 46:49
  James Cridland: It it probably does need to be run by somebody.
• 46:53
  James Cridland: So if the original people who don't want to run that anymore, I mean I I guess that the most sensible place for it would be within the podcast index, given that, you know, given that that that's where quite a lot of other things are these days.
• 47:08
  James Cridland: So yes, we should probably do a little bit of digging and find out what the plan is there.
• 47:13
  James Cridland: I wonder who owns the podcast taxonomy website URL.
• 47:18
  Sam Sethi: It's not, it's it's open domain again.
• 47:20
  Sam Sethi: It's gone, it's gone back to GoDaddy or somebody like that now.
• 47:22
  Sam Sethi: So it's gone.
• 47:23
  Sam Sethi: When you click on the link, it goes back to nobody's running that, so it's gone.
• 47:31
  James Cridland: Yeah, yeah.
• 47:31
  James Cridland: It's not not not that's not particularly good, is it?
• 47:34
  James Cridland: By the way, GoDaddy.
• 47:36
  James Cridland: Just for a second.
• 47:38
  James Cridland: Why have we why have we uh accepted this as a brand?
• 47:41
  James Cridland: As a brand name?
• 47:42
  James Cridland: GoDaddy?
• 47:44
  James Cridland: How weird is that for a brand name?
• 47:47
  Sam Sethi: Well, just as bad as call her daddy.
• 47:51
  James Cridland: It's just what a ridiculous brand name to have.
• 47:54
  James Cridland: Anyway, yes, I uh I just I just say that just for yes, it's just weird, isn't it?
• 48:01
  James Cridland: Go daddy.
• 48:02
  Sam Sethi: Go daddy, what well I have to say the person behind GoDaddy, the CEO, has got a uh very interesting backstory.
• 48:08
  Sam Sethi: I'll let you Google it.
• 48:10
  James Cridland: Oh, here we go.
• 48:10
  Sam Sethi: This is this is uh you're you can go Google it yourself.
• 48:13
  Sam Sethi: No, go and Google it yourself.
• 48:16
  Sam Sethi: Not a nice man.
• 48:18
  Sam Sethi: Great product, not a nice man.
• 48:20
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• 48:24
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• 48:27
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• 48:28
  James Cridland: Yes, so many different ways to get in touch with us.
• 48:30
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• 48:32
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• 48:36
  James Cridland: And we've had a nice boost from Seth Goldstein last week.
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• 48:49
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• 48:57
  Sam Sethi: Yes, but if you were people could have asked him questions at the same time.
• 49:01
  James Cridland: Anyway, moving on.
• 49:02
  James Cridland: And he says, and he says, Inception, rock on.
• 49:06
  James Cridland: Rock on, Seth.
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  James Cridland: Thank you so much for that.
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• 49:45
  James Cridland: What's happened for you this week, then, Sam?
• 49:48
  Sam Sethi: I start the Cotswell Way, which is another walk.
• 49:50
  Sam Sethi: So it's another hundred-mile walk that I'm beginning on Sunday.
• 49:54
  Sam Sethi: Looking forward to that.
• 49:56
  Sam Sethi: And it's my wife's birthday on Sunday, so we'll probably end up in a nice little pub somewhere along the way.
• 50:01
  Sam Sethi: Very nice, and why not?
• 50:02
  Sam Sethi: Yes.
• 50:03
  Sam Sethi: Been invited by the cheerful IFL team to a little VIP party, so that's very nice.
• 50:09
  Sam Sethi: I'll be going along to that.
• 50:10
  Sam Sethi: Thank you very much to Giles.
• 50:12
  Sam Sethi: Very good.
• 50:12
  Sam Sethi: And we are sending out our first newsletter this week.
• 50:16
  Sam Sethi: So by the time this podcast drops, our first newsletter will be out.
• 50:19
  Sam Sethi: It's to around a thousand people, just under, which I think is a good little start.
• 50:24
  Sam Sethi: So, yes, we think as well.
• 50:26
  Sam Sethi: Same as goal hangar, newsletters are a great way to send and connect with fans.
• 50:33
  James Cridland: Yes, indeed.
• 50:34
  James Cridland: Just make sure that you get the the complicated unsubscribe stuff right and the DKIM stuff right and everything else.
• 50:40
  James Cridland: It's a bit of a it's a bit of a nightmare, is doing newsletters, but I might come back and ask somebody who knows about them.
• 50:47
  Sam Sethi: Namely you.
• 50:49
  James Cridland: Yeah when it all goes wrong.
• 50:50
  James Cridland: Folks at Beehive, I'm sure, are very are going to be very helpful there.
• 50:54
  Sam Sethi: Yeah.
• 50:54
  Sam Sethi: On things that we're looking to do, we we want to extend that newsletter function to true fans creators as well.
• 51:02
  Sam Sethi: So that will be something we'll be looking at.
• 51:04
  Sam Sethi: Something that also is interesting to us, we've started coding it, but we've not pushed it live, is the contact tag, which is a new tag proposed in the podcasting 2.0 community by Daniel J.
• 51:15
  Sam Sethi: Lewis and Alex San Filippo.
• 51:17
  Sam Sethi: So again, hopefully something we can talk about in the coming weeks.
• 51:21
  Sam Sethi: A bit like Overcast, we've added support for the iPhone Geo.
• 51:25
  Sam Sethi: Of course, it's not been accepted into the App Store yet, but we are working on that.
• 51:30
  Sam Sethi: And we also want to put our little own MCP server again.
• 51:34
  Sam Sethi: We will see what Adam has to say next week on the show about what he's been doing.
• 51:39
  Sam Sethi: I'm fascinated because I think you will go off and play with the robot itself.
• 51:43
  Sam Sethi: I'm sure you will, being you.
• 51:46
  Sam Sethi: And I'd love to get your opinion next week, James, on what you thought about connecting it, because I'm sure you can.
• 51:53
  James Cridland: Uh uh, yes.
• 51:54
  James Cridland: I I'm not sure.
• 51:56
  James Cridland: I'm uh I'm a user of any AI tool that lets me connect to an MCP service.
• 52:00
  James Cridland: You're not on Clawed.
• 52:01
  Sam Sethi: I thought you'd be on Claude.
• 52:02
  James Cridland: No, no, not yet.
• 52:04
  James Cridland: But um no, but it's uh it's on the list.
• 52:06
  James Cridland: Okay.
• 52:07
  James Cridland: So we'll certainly take a peek at that.
• 52:09
  James Cridland: So yeah.
• 52:10
  Sam Sethi: James, so what happened for you?
• 52:11
  Sam Sethi: You've been on the road, you've been in Bowers' secret offices in London, you've been in Berlin.
• 52:16
  Sam Sethi: What have you been up to?
• 52:18
  James Cridland: Yes, I've been all over the place.
• 52:19
  James Cridland: So it was the audio festival uh in London on uh Thursday, uh, which was great going there.
• 52:27
  James Cridland: When I used to go to that event many years ago, everybody was old who went to that event apart from me.
• 52:33
  James Cridland: Now, when I go to that event, uh everybody's young apart from me.
• 52:37
  James Cridland: So that was a that was a scary thing, but uh enjoyed speaking there, enjoyed speaking at the community media festival as well on the Saturday in the bowels of Bower Media, which is a big broadcaster in the UK.
• 52:49
  James Cridland: Very interestingly, they've taken over the basement of this building that they're in.
• 52:54
  James Cridland: And uh, because they've just bought an out-of-home company, they now have lots of the out-of-home posters in this in this area.
• 53:02
  James Cridland: They call it the playground, so that they can show clients what their posters look like.
• 53:06
  James Cridland: And it's a very cool place, so it was interesting to end up seeing uh all of that stuff.
• 53:11
  James Cridland: And then I was it in Berlin, rather in Potsdam, which is a 30-minute uh train ride away from Berlin to work with a client on Monday, which was good fun, talking to a large German broadcaster about where the future might be.
• 53:27
  James Cridland: So that was good fun.
• 53:28
  James Cridland: So, yes, I've had a good long week.
• 53:31
  James Cridland: Only just arrived live.
• 53:33
  James Cridland: Was that did you tell him it was live?
• 53:36
  Sam Sethi: Live radio.
• 53:36
  Sam Sethi: That's where the future is.
• 53:39
  James Cridland: Well, for radio, yes.
• 53:41
  James Cridland: Podcasting, it's not podcasting.
• 53:43
  James Cridland: And yes, so I only got back this this uh morning, hence why I am sounding slightly less coherent than I normally would, because I've been up a long time.
• 53:54
  James Cridland: So there we are.
• 53:55
  James Cridland: But it's been it's been fun to fun to do.
• 53:57
  James Cridland: That's my last big trip uh now.
• 54:00
  James Cridland: And the only other trip that I've got is to go and give some sonar awards to some lucky people in a couple of weeks' time, maybe even next week, actually.
• 54:10
  James Cridland: So looking forward to doing that in uh Sydney.
• 54:13
  James Cridland: But apart from that, that's all of my travel for this year.
• 54:15
  James Cridland: Hooray! So that's definitely a good thing.
• 54:18
  James Cridland: And that's it for this week.
• 54:20
  James Cridland: All of our podcast stories taken from our daily newsletter, podnews.net.
• 54:24
  Sam Sethi: Uh, you can give us feedback using the Buzz Sprout voicemail link in our show notes, or become a monthly power supporter like the 25 Power supporters at weekly.podnews.net.
• 54:35
  James Cridland: Yes, our music's from TM Studios.
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