Acast Intelligence, and video in open RSS

So it must have been some kind of you know , I don't know sample rate problem or something , but that probably means that everything that happened in that room hasn't recorded properly . So , oops , anyway , there we are , but we might talk about that later . So , what's going on ? What's going down ? What's going down ? You're so with're so with . The kids aren't ?

The idea is they've been using uh transcriptions and conversational transcriptions and they've got third-party data and they've got lots of other signals and they're taking all of that data and they're giving it to their ad planners to say look , I want to put in a prompt such as find me , for example , women in Canada interested in investing , which is a very obscure

prompt , but that will go away and find all the podcasts that might be relevant to that prompt and then they can then start to build a targeted campaign against it . So that sounds very exciting it does .

What we're doing here , what we've developed with smart recommendations , is essentially a way for you to use natural language so you can come into the platform , you can describe the audience you're looking for , you can describe the product that you're wishing to promote and with that natural language , we're taking that prompt .

So I could type out I'm looking for my perfect audience is females in London interested in running and we take that and using LLMs , we can extract all of the nuances around that prompt .

So , looking for females interested in running okay , running , what's kind of around in that space it might that you're interested in certain running brands , certain apps that are related to running , all of those kind of interests that runners may have and we kind of extract all of that nuance and that's using the LLM aspect .

But then we take it further than that and we across all of the kind of proprietary data that we have , both first-party from creators themselves and from third-party data that we have and also all of the kind of predictive demographic and audience data that we've built throughout our data sets .

We understand a lot about our creators and we can kind of map all of those different signals to really find what is the perfect shows that you can promote against and that you can buy and support those creators . And then finally , after that , the most important thing is the why . Why is this show the best fit for me ?

And again , that's where we're using the LLMs with all of the kind of data points that we've extracted and that reasoning , to kind of narrate that reason as the why , that justification , and that really helps the advertiser feel confident that they are approaching the right shores for their audience .

So that's the basis of your data set right , which is what you're working against . Now you're applying an AI layer to that data set and other data points that you have as well . Now , if you're doing that , how are you seeing the results ? What is happening ? Are you getting you know ? 10% better , 20% better ?

What's the return on this type of AI layer that you've applied ?

There's 140,000 podcasts on Aircast and finding that right one can be really difficult if you're just relying on titles and descriptions and things like that . But when we're going deeper and we're really looking into the show and what is being talked about , that's where we can really find those perfect matches which might not be so easy to find .

And to your point about the kind of stats that we're seeing , we've been running this internally now for around six to eight weeks . It's been used on over 200 campaign briefs during the internal test period and anecdotally from our planners we see that we've gone from in the range of an hour to put together the recommendations to less than five minutes .

So 92% time-saving , which is huge right . That allows those planners to really go and work on higher value campaigns . It allows them to do more creative endeavors that they may not have had the time for in the past . We're really seeing it as a second brand , if you like , for the planners and the advertisers to really allow them to optimize their time .

The ad's irrelevant . We've seen it all you know . Casper mattress in the middle of a tech podcast is really irrelevant and it's not even targeted at me and it's not even timely . So none of those context elements . So the natural thing is I'll skip past it .

So are you finding , by using the AI and targeting the podcast to find better matching , that you're also getting better listener retention of the ad ?

So the example that you use there with , let's say , a Casper mattress , or it could be any advertiser there has always been that inherent bias .

Let's say , where you've built your relationship with that show , you have a really good relationship with them and you tend to go back to them , or you would typically approach to work with the big name shows that everyone knows about their top of the charts , and that's how it kind of manifests .

We get all of these brands that are going for these top shows because they have a very large audience . But again , what that actually results in sometimes is that it may not be the most efficient and it may not be the most relevant , and what we're doing here is it's around surfacing the most relevant creators for your brief here .

It's around surfacing the most relevant creators for your brief .

So what we hope here is that that relevance increases and therefore the retention and the skip rates and subsequent metrics will decrease over time as a result of the improved relevance and that data-driven matchmaking that we're generating here with smart recommendations , and we already do start to see that . So we already start to see that we are surfacing .

Let's say that those shows that may not have made it onto a media plan in the past We've seen that from shows that have less than 50,000 listens in a week , we've seen 35% increase in visit rates to those pages as a result of smart recommendations and a 14% increase in purchasing of those shows that may not have appeared on a plan had it been through a

manual discovery process . So we are seeing really big moves in relevance and to your point over time . The hope would be , and the plan would be , that those retention metrics improve .

We're really excited to be launching this week and over time we're going to be reviewing how it's being used , the types of prompts that people are putting in there , how long are they , how descriptive are they , how maybe you know very broad they are and finding that right model that most suits the need .

But , as I say , we're using a very efficient model for the use case at the moment and we'll see over time if we need to make any changes on that to improve the results .

We'll give you two or three different kind of starting suggestions . So my audience is , or I'm looking for podcasts about , for example , or find podcasts similar to a certain show or a certain brand , and so on and so forth .

So we're kind of guiding the user in these early stages and also on the back of that , we also provide you with all the past recommendations that you've run as well . So you have that full history of what you've done .

You can run some side-by-side comparisons by changing the prompt and I think over time , as we build out what we're calling here Acast Intelligence Suite , over time we want to make that more proactive as well , kind of less reliant on the user to kind of engineer those prompts but be more proactive , making proactive recommendations for the user based on their past

recommendations that they've had where they've purchased certain shows , where they've worked with certain creators in the past and how we can help them really more proactively build those prompts that's going to find those perfect shows for them .

Uh , who you met up with at uh the podcast show in london , um , uh , talking about , um acast's new thing , but that wasn't the only thing that happened , uh , at the podcast show , of course well , some of us got an invite and some of us didn't , so you went to the swanky apple party whatever whatever it may be where they painted the town purple .

But down in Battersea , in South London , in it south of the river , they may or may not have had a little shindig as well , which I was invited to , but in the end I didn't go to because my voice was going .

In the end , I didn't go to because my voice was going and also I wanted to make sure that you didn't spend all of the PodNews money on the drinks which I failed on that one , but anyway , yeah , you failed on that one desperately .

I wish you'd turned up about 20 hours earlier , but anyway , there is a beautiful picture in Pod News from last week showing Battersea Power Station , which is , of course , where Apple's UK operations are based , turning Apple Podcasts purple because they managed to convince the landlords to end up doing that .

All I can tell you is that their offices are very nice , as you would expect , but Apple ended up speaking . Jake Shapiro and Susie Warhurst from Apple Podcasts ended up speaking at the podcast show . It was the first time that Apple have officially spoken at a podcasting event , so quite a coup for the London podcast show to have got .

Susie Warhurst , of course , is in charge of Apple in the UK , ireland and other places . Jake Shapiro , ex of Radio Public , has been involved in podcasting since the year Dot and works out of Boston , but they ended up sharing a ton of information , including data from one of Girl Hangers shows .

The Rest Is History , which has 45,000 paying subscribers using Apple Podcasts , most of them 57% of them paying the annual plan , which is 60 quid , 99 Australian dollars . I don't know how many US dollars that is , but it's quite a lot of money and that's quite nice . They say helpful for retention .

Absolutely it is , but you can very clearly see that that is some nice income coming in , for the rest is history . So at least . Well , what's that ? At least 2.7 million . Would that be right ? That can't be right . 45,000 paying subscribers times 60 . Yes , I suppose it is , isn't it ? 2.7 million , yeah , minus apple's 30 , of course .

Now I am unaware that Apple have ever mentioned Creators we Love from any other country other than the United States of America Shire . So interesting to see Apple Podcasts all of a sudden jumping in and going . You know what . We're actually going to support some creators from other countries as well now , so that's certainly a very good thing .

Does that mean that the podcast of the year this year is going to be from the UK ? Probably not , but certainly nice to see them ending up doing that . But yeah , I thought it was a really good thing for Apple to have .

I know that it was an awful lot of hard work for the team to get it agreed and accepted and everything else , but really good to see them speaking at the podcast show in London , connecting with the podcast community in that way , and I think that was a pretty good thing .

They had connected with the podcast standards group , which we'll talk about later , about what they want from the industry and there's a list going back to Apple about what the industry wants from them and I think one of the big ones is will they support HLS , their own technology that they invented themselves in 2009 ?

And you know they do support video , but they don't tell anyone about it . And , weirdly , I think you wrote about somebody called John Murdoch who reminded us that back in 2017 , apple actually had an audio chart and a video chart .

But yes , I mean I think you know , as I've been going on and on and on about video , just raw video files in OpenRSS does not work , and there are lots of reasons why it doesn't work . Just do a search for video podcast RSS , james Cridland in your favourite podcast in your favourite internet search engine to find out all of the reasons .

So HLS would be a perfect use of that and using open video , and there's probably no reason why someone like Apple , if they shared the stats , couldn't cash some of that as well , couldn't cash some of that as well .

So I think there's quite a lot of interesting things that Apple could do with video podcasts , but just bunging a massive two gigabyte file in an RSS feed is not going to be the way that you end up doing that .

I think , particularly when you start having a look at things like Podroll the recommendations from podcast creators that's something that could very easily be put into the Apple Podcasts app as well , to the Apple Podcasts app as well , and that would certainly answer some of the criticism that Apple have in that .

You know , many people say they only support the big shows . They don't only support the big shows . There's plenty of places in the Apple Podcasts app where smaller shows are given quite a lot of push . But even so , I think recommendations from creators is a really good and easy way to actually approve that as well , do you ?

We don't use this podcast GUID , whatever that is , and we would rather not do an RSS lookup . Can we have our own ID in there ? And I'm sure that most people would jump on that , because we all know the Apple IDs anyway . So you know , so why not ?

On the second , you know , basically the second thing that they announced was working together with Canva to produce the very Apple-centric extra graphics that Apple require for their app . I mean , if I were Apple , I would be turning around and saying you know what that should be open as well .

You know , you can't say that you have been doing all of this wonderful stuff for OpenRSS and then in the next breath say , oh , and , by the way , our proprietary graphics that we'd like podcasters to make , we're making it slightly easier for you to send those proprietary graphics instantly to us .

Hmm , it's not necessarily the answer , so we will see quite what happens there .

I mean , the main headline story was that the data gives a new high in the UK for monthly listening for podcasts at 51% . It's 53% , if you remember , in the US . So and I think this has been the story of the infinite dial the last one was done , I think , in 2022 , I'd like to say so a few years ago , maybe even 2021 .

But the story has always been that the UK is a couple of years behind where the US is in terms of consumption and this is certainly showing that . I think part of that is the BBC , the BBC's radio player or iPlayer or whatever it's called . Bbc sounds these days , isn't it , and I think that that rather makes things a little bit more complicated .

But anyway , really useful data . It's also coming out here in Australia relatively soon and coming out in New Zealand later on in the year , so we'll have four countries to be able to , you know , check and look at , and it'd be great to see more countries taking part in that as well .

Also released in London the top 25 podcasts in the UK for quarter one 25 from Edison podcast metrics . They measure pretty well every podcast which is available out there by asking people what podcasts they've been listening to . And no change in the top three Joe Rogan at number one , the rest is politics at two . Diary of a CEO at three .

Goldhanger has four shows in the top 10 , which is fairly impressive .

But even so , it was a pretty impressive sight walking up Islington High Street you know , seeing all of these ads for those big Goldhanger shows . So well done them . I think that that was a very clever thing to do .

With the podcast survey , you're on your own , and so , thank heavens for veteran radio analyst Adam Bowie I'm sure he likes being called that . Anyway , he's crunched the numbers to find out more from the data . Now , three things that I thought was really interesting from there .

Firstly , the average number of podcasts Brits listen to is five , which is always interesting . Seeing that number , men are more likely to listen regularly to podcasts than women .

Probably something to do with the subject matter , maybe something to do with the tech , who knows and the biggest reason people give for stopping listening to podcasts is that they can't find any podcasts that interest them , and again , I'm just going to say pod roll , because that could certainly fix quite a lot of that . So just something to bear in mind .

There were some other things , in fact , one of the things that I noticed for the radio newsletter that I write , which is called Radioland , which I stole your idea for a name there . One of the things that I did spot from that is that it gives quite a lot of information about radio , obviously , and radio listening and all of that .

Music radio 62% listen each week . Speech radio 36% listen each week , which I thought was interesting , although that doesn't necessarily say that listeners want music rather than speech .

But the one thing that it did say , which I have underlined and written in big coloured writing three in five smart speaker users say their devices played the wrong thing when asked to play a particular radio station . Three in five , not surprised , that's a data point to be worried about .

I'm not surprised either , but isn't it brilliant that Ofcom are actually asking that question ? So yeah , really good . And total radio listening in cars higher in 2024 than it has ever been in history . So lots of people talking about Apple CarPlay , lots of people talking about Android Auto as adding podcasts into cars , and nobody's listening to the radio anymore .

No , total radio listening in cars higher last year than ever , which I thought was very , very . I'd love to see how that's measured . Very , very interesting . There you go , you see , it's always the Very , very interesting . There you go , you see , it's always the way , isn't it ? As soon as you see some data which says what you don't believe .

I'd love to see how that was measured .

Basically , arn will sell ads into Global's shows and ARN's shows will be available within the Global player in the UK , which , to me , does not read that Global is going to sell any of the ads inside ARN's shows , which I thought was interesting , but nevertheless . Good news , I'm sure , for Global , because they'll get a little bit more money .

Bad news for me because I listened to a number of shows from Global which have been blissfully ad-free , which will no longer be ad-free , and I listened to the best of the Chris Morales Breakfast Show on Radio X , which , my goodness , I downloaded an episode of that in the UK while I was over there and I've been having a listen to it over the last couple of

days . It's chock full of ads . Every 10 minutes there's another ad break , so I'm going to have to get used to that fairly quickly . But good news for ARN anyway .

Spanish language podcast platform iVoox , or iVoox , has published a monetization guide , so they are doing private RSS feeds , but also paid RSS feeds within their own app , and they say that they have so far shared over 4 million euro in income for creators . That's about US$4.2 million , so they seem to be doing quite nicely in terms of that .

There's a company that you might want to have a chat with about L402 , something that we will cover next week . And in Germany , some figures from MA Podcast , which is one of these podcast rankers Total downloads down 5% from March .

The true crime show Mordlust made it to number one 6.8 million downloads for that as well , so always good to see other rankers and other data showing us what's listened to in other countries People .

So best of luck , hugh . Looking forward to seeing a bit more stuff coming out of that broadcaster because it does produce some very good things . Rte Radio 1 is the big sort of full service radio station , a bit like Radio 4 or kind of NPR in Ireland , and has some very good shows .

So it should lend itself very nicely to podcasts , one would have thought , and a couple of other people . Podimo has appointed a chief content officer called Georgia Brown .

Now what was interesting in that report wasn't necessarily that they've got a chief content officer , but that she's English and there is in that press release talk of an expansion into English language content . Now you might remember that Podimo is one of these companies that charges for access to its shows .

Again , l402 , sam , just write that one down on your list .

So clearly some money to be made there , you would have thought .

But congratulations to Jason Carter and to Ferger and the whole team there . How many people went through the doors eventually , James ?

Now , even if you were to suggest that they've double counted , if I went in the doors on the Wednesday and then again on the Thursday , I might have been counted twice . But even if I was counted twice , that is still significantly bigger than podcast movements . So congratulations to them .

But that wasn't everything , because of course the podcast show also had the podcast festival that was around it , with live shows that you could go and pay to go and watch , and so overall , the event had over 10,000 people who ended up taking part in it . So it's a pretty good thing .

Now , interestingly , jason Carter said that the aim of the London event isn't to grow , at least in that venue . They may do some more venue stuff elsewhere in North London , but the plan there is to continue to improve and engage with the visitors there rather than cram more people into the venue , which I think makes for a bunch of sense as well .

Clearly , lots of people have been talking to them about launching in other countries as well .

The interesting thing , though , I think for me is if they were going to launch the podcast show New York , for example , which sounds like a very sensible idea off the top of it , it would essentially , from my point of view , kill the UK show Because actually quite a lot of the people coming to that UK show were coming from the US .

So I'm kind of looking at that and going , yes , I can see the excitement of you know , let's launch an event in New York , but actually that would probably kill the UK one . So perhaps there are opportunities for a little bit further afield or in other parts of the world , but I'm not so sure that a US move .

You know you'd have to be , you'd have to do that quite carefully , wouldn't you ?

What's lovely about the whole show is that you felt everyone was there pretty much yeah , I know there was a few people missing , but generally everybody was there and you . What I love about it ?

Compared to the ones I've gone to in the us , it is very tight , so it feels very buzzy and you can look left , you can look right and there's always somebody you know and you can talk to , whereas when I've been to vegas or I've been to la , I'm generally walking a bazillion miles to go to a , to a seminar , and they're not seeing anyone there because

they're a bazillion miles the other way , in another room , and you don't get that sense in America that anyone's actually at the event , even though they are , whereas you do get that sense in London that everybody is there .

There was quite a lot of people at that event in Chicago , but yes , I thought that that was interesting to end up seeing is that if you look on the Podcast Movement website right now , there is no mention of Podcast Movement Evolutions anymore . Absolutely no mention .

There's something to have a look back at this year , but in terms of where it is next year , no mention whatsoever . Not quite sure what that tells you . Well , maybe I am sure what that tells me Looks as if it's not happening anymore , which is interesting to have a look at .

It would be fun to find out more information on that when I'm in Dallas in the next couple of months . But yeah , that I thought was , yeah , interesting . Just to just to say .

Now , one of the things I wanted to do this year was a pod camp and for multiple reasons that did not happen mainly cost and venue location , which really was annoying for me but annoying for other people as well . So Jason's very keen to get a technical thread going through next year . That's one of the conversation pieces .

But Jason's got a very strong track record in music and that's comes from his days in the bbc and he's he wasn't aware until we talked about it but music could be delivered through podcasting . He's not technical . He doesn't really understand podcasting , if I , if I was honest um , or the mechanism of podcasting . Let's be honest and say it that way .

So when I explained how independent music artists are now using rss , he was like , oh , that's really interesting and I think it may be a light touch to begin with . Maybe a panel about music and podcasting next year , nothing more , um , and maybe some technical threads that we can , we can introduce , but he is very open to that .

And again , your point about having multiple venues , so not trying to squeeze it into the same venue , which I think is now sort of yeah , bursting at the seams , um , maybe that's the way forward with those type of um , extra , uh sessions that we'd like to introduce I did notice , by the way , that there are , you know , copious meeting rooms in the hilton next

door which I don't think were being used , but I did notice that .

Anyway , it's a podcast for listeners who find themselves in search of a good laugh and their next strange story to tell at parties Organised by Quill and co-host , and I noticed that there were only three winners who host with co-hosts , so it's a proper awards , not just patting themselves on the back . So well done to them .

Talking about Canada , because many of Quill's folks are in Canada , here's another thing going on in Canada . Pod Summit YYC , which is in Calgary in Alberta , is happening in September . You can now buy tickets for that . You can see Jesse Lipscomb I will be there as well doing a keynote .

There are live podcast shows from the CBC's Crime Story and also from Sick Boy and plenty of other things as well . Super , looking forward to that . That should be fun . I've not been to calgary um before , apart from the airport which I've been to , which is very boring , uh .

You'd have to go out and have a hot , steaming coffee , either at Tim Hortons oh no , thank you or at the curiously named Second Cup , which is something that you are very unlikely to ever have , having had a First Cup , but which is something that you are very unlikely to ever have , having had a first cup . But yes , so no , I'm looking forward to it .

It should be great fun . One of the things that they have done very well I should say the organisers is that they have done a very good deal with both Air Canada , who I'm not flying , but a hotel which is very close to the venue . It's a very good deal . It's a very cheap place to stay in comparison to what you would normally pay for that hotel .

So I've no idea how they've done that , but that's a very good thing . So , yeah , looking forward to that which is in September . A couple of other things just to tell you about are the Podcast Day Asia , which is at the beginning of September , that is , in Jakarta , in Indonesia .

This year no , she went to Verona Court and I'm looking forward to being there .

They're running their Confest conference and there's a very big podcaster there , mark Fennell , who interestingly hosted a show , a podcast called Stuff , the British Stole , which is a great show . You would enjoy it , sam , I do Particularly .

There you go , but it's then been turned into a TV show as well , and the TV show is brilliant and he did that very , very well . If you are , you know perhaps you're doing a podcast and you wonder , well , how can I make great video out of that ? Well , that's one of the ways , I think .

So , taking a look at that , it's just $50 if you're not working for an ABU member , if you can get to KL . So that is a lovely thing which is all going on .

So a couple of the other events that grabbed my attention were the Web Summit Rio on June the 8th in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil , and also the Web Summit Rio on June the 8th in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil , and also the Web Summit in Qatar . I think that's how you say it . You just have to sort of sound like a camel . I don't know that .

Everyone I've heard recently Racist .

Yeah , it used to be in Ireland , it's now moved over to Portugal , yeah , yeah , and so that is a pretty big event . They are leaning into podcasting , so I've been told , with a bunch of different shows that are being recorded on stage . Let's hope that their recording works and we'll find out .

You know what's going on there , but , yes , so worth taking a look at . I think there's one that is literally taking place at this moment . It might be the Lisbon one , actually , but yes , the Web Summit in Rio is on June , the 8th . The February one is Qatar , doha , in Qatar . So if you can get to those , then that's a good thing in Qatar .

So if you can get to those , then that's a good thing . And , in fact , I think that the Web Summit in Qatar this year was the one where iHeart announced that they were launching a podcast studio in the Middle East , so I think that that's where it was actually announced . So you can see that there's definitely some podcasting stuff going on there .

I know that you have a section in pod news daily that covers some of the links out to them , but there's things that sort of grabbed my attention during the week and I thought where do we stick those ? They're not really stories , they're not really big enough to be tech or main stories , but things that grabbed my attention .

So the first one that I saw in Pod News Daily was Netflix is publishing the Big Pitch with Jimmy Carr , a podcast and YouTube series which stands up , which the stand-up star gets comedians to suggest movie ideas , which was done with BBC Studios , and it suddenly the bit that jumped out was Netflix , and again they were at the London podcast show .

So can we officially say now that Netflix is a podcasting production company and they're going to get bigger ?

So surely , if you've signed up , jimmy Carr , to make a show and , by the way , I mean the entire show is a very naked promotion of Netflix , it's basically , you know , looking at some of the really weird genres that Netflix has made Surely you would , yes , stick it on YouTube so that everybody can watch it for free , but stick it on Netflix as well .

Surely you would have thought but anyway , yeah .

So you know , so we'll find out , you know quite what the deal is there . But I mean , so , you know , so we'll find out , you know quite what the deal is there . But I mean , surely you would expect that to be on the Netflix site itself as well . You'd have thought .

Interestingly , even Netflix have sent me the BBC press release , so not quite sure what that says , but anyway . So yeah , so not quite sure who's in charge at the moment . I do know that the big boss of Netflix recently has been sounding increasingly rattled about YouTube . Netflix have basically turned around and said we are rattled about YouTube , um .

Netflix have basically turned around and said we are not going to . You know , we've stopped fighting people like Disney plus and HBO max and all of these people because we're so much bigger . So it's kind of not really a fair fight .

But the fight that they want now is YouTube Um and so , um , they'd be making some very clear noises about how Netflix is a significantly better experience than YouTube . Youtube have clearly been making some changes , although YouTube has , of course , a very different business model .

But yes , it'll be fascinating to see what happens there and , of course , you would expect that Netflix would quite like to grab as much cheap TV programming as they possibly could , and part of that is visualised podcasts , whatever they are .

They talk about the Everything app , they talk about how they're using Grok and they talk about bringing back video and payments , and so , again , if you want to see from who their CMO thinks is what they're going to do next , that's a really good listen as well .

He says if you look at the top podcasts in the US , almost all of them are on YouTube . Yet if you have a look at data from PodTrack , only half of them are on YouTube . They can't both be right . So not quite sure what's going on there , tim Katz , but let's find Bill Gates . He's had some really big guests and I was like , well , why is ?

I'll go and find the RSS feed , but make sure we've got it there . We'll link the YouTube channel to it , cause we can boom and I thought that'd be brilliant . Can't find an RSS feed for it anywhere . It doesn't exist not in the podcast index , not in Apple Podcasts , not in Spotify , nowhere . And yet this is called a podcast .

And that really riled me , because this is YouTube now taking the word podcast and literally saying screw you the industry . We don't need to support anything outside of our walled garden . We're going to use the word podcast , and I was just a little bit annoyed with that one .

But yes , well , I mean , you know , it is interesting actually looking at the P word , the podcast word , looking at the P word , the podcast word , because both Jack from Goalhanger and also Max Cutler from Pave Studios I mean you heard him in the video here last week saying that he uses the word show and not podcast and he , you know Max basically thinks that

the term podcasting has out-served its purpose , which is , you know , always interesting to end up seeing .

But things that stood out for me he said podcasting is not just about creators anymore , it's about building multi-platform content machines , podcast , yes , but newsletters , videos , books , social influence , even live events . We've moved well past podcasting's quaint beginnings . So even Stephen's beginning to say is the word podcasting very limiting .

He also went on to say that the lines between media formats is converging and blurring fast , and I think that's true . Is a video a podcast ? Is a podcast , just audio ? Youtube recently introduced a podcast chart . We talked about that in the past , but goal hanger revealed that 25% of their 63 million monthly downloads comes from YouTube .

And that's a significant signal , says Steven , and flight studio , which is Stevenven bartlett , have started to talk about knocking down podcasting's artificial walls and going after the 400 billion dollar opportunity . And again they're talking about video , audio , social newsletters , books , and this is the thing I've been sort of trying to bang on about that .

I think one of the biggest platforms now to look at is Patreon , substack all of these that are multifunctional platforms . I think single podcast platforms are going to seem quaint in a year's time .

And Georgie said I don't think it's very helpful to have a conversation about what a podcast is anymore . And I was there thinking well , how can we show how big podcasting is as an industry ? Do we really want to be a bit player in the whole YouTube ecosystem ? Because that's all that we'll be .

If we're not podcasting , if we're not self-identifying as podcasting and podcasters , then you know , our entire industry is just another YouTube content creation tool . Well , that's exciting , isn't it ? You know , I'll pack up and go home if we start doing that .

Now that's content that people can either use for SEO , for reading , for looking at a different version of the transcript . Fundamentally , again , we talk about podcasting , have live events monetization strategies .

So I can see that the narrow focus on podcasting as an audio medium is moving beyond what the creator economy wants and therefore wide max uh , cutler at Pave calls them shows . Why people like um , you know Spotify call them shows .

We're just a small bit of the YouTube machine where we're making crappy television shows and that's our future . I just don't get it . I don't get why we would take our entire industry and go you know what ? Yeah , we're actually nothing to do with audio anymore . We're just another set of people making crap television shows and sticking them onto YouTube .

What's the long-term future in that ?

I think the question is being posed , but the worry I have is it's being posed by many people in the industry , which seems to suggest that we either need to use podcasting as the umbrella term for all of this .

So YouTube calling it a podcast , although it's not RSS , but it is a conversational item , that's video generated in this case , and we say everything's a podcast and then we just claim it , which is what I think Anand Lopez was saying . I think that's what Stephen B is saying that narrow , focusing it just on audio , but podcasting is all of it .

It's audio books . Is an independent music artist who puts art through RSS ? Is that called a podcast or a music ?

The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review .

Value for value , mainly financially . Everything else is whatever it and actively support with it . Value for value mainly financially . Everything else is whatever you want to do with it . Yeah , so you know . Congratulations to adam and dave .

What's the thinking behind this particular post , sam ?

He's got his other project , which is , you know , godcaster um , which does use the podcast index as well . I don't know . I mean it'll be a good question to adam . I hope he's going to . I think he says he's going to go on the jason calacanis show to promote podcasting 2.0 .

Um , I do actually feel , weirdly , that all the stuff we've been talking about for the last three or four years is coming to fruition . I don't know how you feel , but I feel all the micropainting stuff is becoming much more mainstream as a conversation video . I don't know .

So yeah , but yeah , no , I was just sort of curious as to why Adam would post this sort of rather final sounding post yeah exactly , you know .

But I mean saying mission accomplished , which is , you know , I love Adam to bits , but whenever you see mission accomplished , you see that you think of George W Bush with that big banner saying mission accomplished when it palpably wasn't . So I'm there thinking I don't really understand what he's trying to do and he's three months early .

Understand what he's trying to do and he's three months early . But congratulations the podcast index , because it is a very useful , very useful tool .

Talking about Adam's new thing , Godcaster , I found it interesting to note that Transistor has just added a new theme specifically based for their podcast web pages and websites , called Beacon , which is specifically built for churches and faith-based organisations , which I thought was interesting .

You can give it a play , if you want , for your very own podcast at freepodcastwebsitescom and fiddle around with that .

But yeah , I thought that that was interesting , that Justin feels that there is a good reason to be involved in not just that part of the industry but to actually , you know , focus on that from a point of view of churches and faith-based groups and things like that .

So the Podcast Standards Project saying in a post in LinkedIn that it's been talking about a better solution for supporting video in RSS and it pretty well overcomes all of the issues that I wrote about last year Could even allow dynamically inserted video advertising too , which might be interesting , because you can do all of that sort of thing in HLS if you like .

And , of course , since it's a stream rather than a download or at least it can be a stream rather than a download it means that you could even get really good consumption data and information around that .

Plus , it's cheaper to serve as well , because you're not having to deliver the entire massive file to somebody that might never watch it or that might only watch half of it .

So I think that quite a lot of that is very good news , and there was certainly in that post from the Podcast Standards Project , some really good sounding information about support already existing from Pocket Casts and support to come from some other large organisations as well , particularly if they're having conversations with Apple .

So , yeah , all of that looked pretty good in terms of making sure that OpenRSS is capable of offering a really good solution for video as well as for audio . Yeah , yeah .

And then I piped up and said , well , all the podcasting 2.0 apps actually support it , because we did that for ANC Costello when RSS Blue used HLS for broadcasting that live . So all the apps went through the exercise of getting that to work . So we know we all support it . So there is a momentum there .

And then , you know , one of the things I you may recall was pushing very hard for was the use of the alternative enclosure for this .

So the primary enclosure could stay MP3 , mp4 , but the secondary enclosure , the alternative enclosure , would contain HLS as an example to try and move this forward , again , not breaking the feed for Apple because they don't support it yet , but still allowing newer apps and things like Pocket Casts to use HLS as a fallback and get people to understand the difference .

Now Todd Cochran and I spoke quite a lot last year . Todd Cochran at Blueberry does support it as a host . Hubhopper supports it , pod2 now supports it , so there are hosts out there that do it . I think Podhome does as well . I know RSS Blue does for certain , so it's not isolated . So we could as an industry move forward quite quickly with this .

He also supports YouTube video and I remember from our interview it'd be worthwhile talking to him again about his experience of HLS and why they dropped it and also what's been happening with the latest updates on YouTube video . Now , last time time we spoke , we were talking about Hubhopper enabling YouTube video , so hosting and distributing to YouTube .

How's that going ?

And then they're also asking us for added tools within the product which can further support their foraying into YouTube , which is clips , video editing , et cetera .

Now I don't know what the timeline is for us to be able to provide them all of these additional tools , but the very fact that we start getting a barrage of requests from folks asking for more stuff , I think those are good indicators that market is receiving it but want more and I think one of the things you also mentioned was so there was a downside which

was you're getting less audio podcasts but more video podcasts if you look at pure play data , it's not that we're getting more video podcasts and audio podcasts .

I would say the growth rate of the video podcasts have been higher than the growth rate of the audio podcasts , but in terms of absolute numbers we're still getting more audio podcasts and video podcasts by a very large amount . So one clarification if I sort of misspoken earlier , maybe this will clarify that .

If I sort of misspoken earlier , maybe this will clarify that . The second I would say point is that on the consumption side , it's not that we're seeing massive dips in consumption on audio . I just feel that there's a large amount of chatter with video podcasts . So top of funnel , awareness about video podcasts is at an all time high .

People are excited about it , People feel that they need to do it to make their podcast cycle complete . But it's not as though consumption on audio has taken a massive hit and I think that that also is in line with what's happening with the rest of the world .

But the growth rate of people uploading video podcasts is at a higher rate than the growth rate of people uploading audio podcasts . I hope that sort of clarifies my statement .

I mean , it was a good thing , but it was also a little bit of a burden for us . So we wanted to come up with a solution that basically worked for both parties , because they were also making requests , like abnormal number of requests to us , you know , at a system level , not just at a user level .

So what we basically did was we started to search for solutions around this and we happened upon HLS at that time and we took this to them and at that time it was basically a cost saving strategy from our perspective at that time . It was basically a cost-saving strategy from our perspective with this one specific partner .

What we did was , when people were uploading a podcast onto hub hopper in , you know , let's just say , mp3 we were taking the mp3 and we were converting it to m3u8 into small chunks , ts chunks and this was basically allowing us to continue to let them make the large number of requests that they were making , but except they were making those requests in small

chunks at that period in time .

And now for us , this was great , because an automatic benefit that happened was , of course , there was a cost benefit to us , but then the secondary benefit to us was we suddenly started seeing patterns of consumption in terms of how long people are consuming for , and this felt like a goldmine , not just in terms of retention metric , but also in terms of what it

could mean for the advertising space . Hls was also moved a lot forward in the last three years . Now there's low latency HLS and a few other technologies , but this basically begs the question of why did we abandon it if everything seemed to be going right ?

Yeah , so we basically had a problem statement , which is that these platforms , which are very large in their own right and have a large number of users in their own right , they still want to follow the blueprint of the western or global leader in the space .

So they will take the global leader , whether , in this circumstances , an Apple or a Spotify , and whatever the blueprint is that is being followed by them . They would basically want to ape that blueprint , whether it makes feasible sense for them from a latency of content perspective or not . They just believe that , okay , the research has been done there .

We don't necessarily want to go through the Rnd , and I understand their perspective as well . So there was a lot of internal pressure on the dev team in this specific organization saying that what you guys have done is working phenomenally well , but we should just follow what is right .

And that unfortunately caused a little bit of a pushback on us trying to be innovative in the dissemination of content and we had to revert back to the old ways and the old guard . But it was a good experiment Nonetheless . We enjoyed it , we went through the ringer with it and , yeah , we saw the utilities of it .

Like I said three years ago , it's just that this is a tendency of something that does happen in eastern markets . In eastern markets , there is the general notion that what has been built in the West is the right way of having to build it .

Let's not question it , because they've been doing this for 20 years , so rightfully so they do know exactly how this needs to be done , so let's not cross question it . And so you comply and you basically build according to those protocols , and that's exactly what happened .

So it wasn't us that abandoned it , it was market forces that made us put it on the back burner . That's basically a better example .

I'll give you a good example In Africa they bypassed fixed-line broadband and had micropayments , called M-PASA , way , way before the West mobile-to-mobile communication payments , because necessity required it and I think , where you are , in India , I think bandwidth costs and data delivery and the ability for HLS to do now , with low latency HLS , one second chunking , so

the immediacy for the user experience to have streaming audio or video without having to do the full download , and the cost model of course associated to having to do the full download , even if the of course associated having to do the full download , even if the user then only listens to 10 .

I think you'll find from the meeting in london at the podcast standards group that there is a strong leaning back now into hls and there's a heavy push that we want as an industry group to put on Apple , who invented HLS , to say look , adopt it now .

Come on , apple , get your one developer that you have for your one year annual feature , make that one feature , please . Support for HLS and hopefully Apple will comply . But you know let's not hold our breath on this one . But again , for you to re-enable .

The alternative for us is very hard , we've done it , we've even succeeded at it but trying to go to the platforms that a hub hopper distributes to that is basically only get their podcast from us and then trying to go to them and tell them that all the biggest folks in the industry are doing it this way .

But let's do it this way because this is the right way to do it or maybe not the right way , but it can benefit you . In abc I don't want to speak in black and white terms or like binary terms .

Maybe add it to the alternative enclosure to begin with , which means your feed doesn't get broken when you serve it to Apple or Spotify , who don't support it , but in the alternative enclosure , which , again , all these apps support , the user could then switch to that feed and to that distribution , which would then again start to see the market in knowledge and

learning and capability . Oh look , if I switch to this HLS version , it loads faster or it's quicker or you can promote it better . So I think it's a two-step focus . One is can we as an industry get hosts to support HLS ? Can we get apps to support HLS ?

Can we get apps and hosts to put it in the alternative enclosure and then can we apply pressure to Apple and Spotify and others to then actually support it at the mainstream as well ?

Something as small as HLS could help in creating a foundation that is a good breeding ground for innovation , but it does constantly beg the question of the fact we do need one of the biggies to support it , and a staggered approach , like you mentioned , is one way to do it for sure , and yeah , I think that causes a ripple effect , and that domino is what

we're all sort of hoping for .

You were talking when we were doing our live version of this show last week , which , of course , didn't make it to this feed , but you were talking about true fans becoming a podcast host last week , um , which is exciting , which might bear repeating because I'm guessing that you are also going to be doing hls for video as well , will you ?

Um , we're going to be taking the most popular shows to begin with and putting those into hls . Um , but we will be supporting audio video and live um , and I'll be coming out very , very shortly with a timeline of when we'll deliver that as well as the pricing . But we already support video upload into TrueFans . We do audio upload .

We have done that for a while . We've just added private feeds , so we needed that CDNn . We didn't have that delivery if we were going to do the hosting part ourselves . So , yeah , and why did I do it ?

Because I've been battering my head against a brick wall to try and get hosts to provide live services , to provide video capability and , apart from this show , it felt like I was talking to a brick wall and so I thought you know , if you can't beat them , join them , you know , and become a host . I think I'm not the only one .

I think you know the room around the show is that RSS , blue and Fountain are going to combine forces . So , again , I think you know hosts have all of this within their realm . Um , it doesn't mean that they can't do it themselves as well , but yes , we are . And , um , yeah , watch this space .

You can just make sure that you're running the latest version of Pocket Casts and it appears in there , which is a nice thing and looks very pretty . Of course , podroll is supported by our sponsor , buzzsprout , as well as by Transistor , rsscom and plenty of other podcast apps .

I think this really helps with discovery of new shows and I think it makes perfect sense for any podcast app to implement um uh , particularly podcast apps that get told off , because you only support the big ones , don't you ? Uh ?

Well , no , you can support uh as many different um as many different uh shows that creators want to promote as uh as possible in this way . So I think it's a good thing .

They're like uh , pod roles , but from publishers to show all the shows that they create . So , if I liked the rest is politics I can click on Goalhanger , see the publisher feed and then see all the other shows from that , and it just makes sense . It's a great discovery tool , but so far not a lot of adoption .

But yeah , you know , certainly it's always a good thing to add more data in there to make it easier to recommend other shows to people . Two podcast apps doing some interesting things with AI . Firstly , podsqueeze . It's a tool which has just been launched which uses AI to automatically find great clips from your podcast to share on social media .

If this sounds familiar , it's because Headliner does a similar job and many others as well , but it's nice to see that appearing . Also , the podcast app Metacast has added AI generated podcast summaries , which is quite cool . So they're little short . You know one paragraph summaries of what is talked about in a particular show .

But what I thought was quite nice is that those summaries are also used in search , are also used in search .

So , and we linked to one of these in Thursday's Pod News newsletter where you can very clearly see , you know , for this show it's delved into all of the things that we have talked about , and that means that even if we haven't put anything in our you know show description or whatever , it will still appear in search in that particular app , which I thought was

quite nice , so worth a peek . That app also plans support for private RSS feeds in future L4 . And are you going to talk to me about Bitcoin ?

At the Bitcoin show in Vegas next um , they're going to allow merchants to use the lightning network to make payments and so they've added it to the um square I don't know device or platform so that you can do real-time bitcoin payments from your wallet to buy t-shirts , hoodies and hats , and they're going to have a , a pop-up store where you can do that .

And I think again , all this is , you know they call it everyday money , they also call it Bitcoin as an internet's native currency , and I think you know we've been trying to push this rock up a hill quite a lot . You know micro payments , bitcoin sats , and they're like at the end of the tunnel . I mean Square doing this is great .

I think you know , for example , as much as I dislike X . They are talking about providing a micropayment service . We are seeing gamers now beginning to provide micropayments within games .

They're trying to bring it to the masses . I think that there is an alternative way of paying .

If Visa and MasterCard said , if you're spending less than 50 cents , then we're not going to charge you any payment fees whatsoever , then that would be interesting , wouldn't it ? Any payment fees whatsoever ?

I think what you're seeing here is somebody trying to show that the Lightning Network isn't just for micropayments , but it can be used for coffee and T-shirts and whatever . But and is this the way forward ?

Maybe it is , but you know , I agree with you , it could be all killed very quickly if Visa and MasterCard or Apple suddenly remove that fee structure and everyone will then go well , yeah , do I really want to jump through these micropayment hoops with Bitcoin and SaaS ? Not really , I'll stick to pound-to-pence .

But if you were to say that for every 50 cent payment it will cost you one cent or half a cent or something , rather than the 25 cents or whatever it is that it currently is , then they've pretty well fixed the . You know the issue here . I suppose you know the issue here .

I suppose you know the only thing that they need to be careful of is the amount of additional stress that that will put on the Visa and MasterCard payment systems . But you know , with that , you know there's no technical reason why they have to charge the money that they're actually charging . I suppose .

I think there's a whole flux going on around digital currencies and you know , we even haven't talked about where does stablecoin fit in this and where does the so-called sterling digital coin and the eagle American digital coin fit in ?

small money currency things going on . You know what I mean ?

They don't have a good network rail network , and they don't have a good tube network , so let's have Uber everywhere . I mean , when I was in LA , it was like I said to my cousin I'll take , I'll take the I don't know what they call the tube there . Um , he went no , you won't go there . There's just druggies and murderers on there , right ?

And it was like so everyone jumps in a car . But the system to fix it was then create Uber , whereas we fixed it by creating a better rail network . So you know , there's different ways of doing it .

So , yes , thank you , bruce , it was fun to do . And also another row of ducks from you . I enjoy podcasts and podcasting because it's like talking with your group at work . You know the ones that enjoy the same things . I really like you two and the podcast . Great episode . Thanks , 73s . Well , thank you , bruce . That's very good of you .

Silas on Linux Now , he was in our audience last week and we got him to read out some of his grumpy . We didn't because he wouldn't . Well , yes , he didn't and he wouldn't in the end of it . But yes , and he then said thanks to the audio gods for destroying the tape . Now no one is going to hear how much of a failure I was .

You know you come to a recording of a podcast . What do you expect ? So many people on LinkedIn have said oh , yeah , and we really enjoyed going to the live recording of the Bond News Weekly Review which was quite a thing , it was quite fun . Yeah , it's a shame .

It's a shame that the audio didn't work and Matt Cundall sent us a boost actually at the event , watching us , watching you live now in London . Great job , there you go 5,150 sats . Thank you , matt . Had we noticed , we would have given you a shout out from the stage , but I hadn't actually noticed . But , matt , thank you . Yes , it was a great .

It was a great , great fun to do all of that . Also great to meet Elias Strand , who is our newest supporter , one of the noteworthy 19 , with loads of other people on there , including who else was there as we were recording . Matt Medeiros wasn't Dave . Jackson wasn't Dave . You should come over to the Great British Podcast Show .

Rocky Thomas was there , wasn't she ? So that was fun to see .

Pop quiz or pub quiz here you go . And we ended up drinking and you'll be glad it wasn't wine , james , it was a dark stout in a 13th century pub in Cullum . It's called the Barley Moe .

It's a bit of a lie , because the flagpole isn't actually quite where the three countries coexist , but that would be in the middle of the river that you're next to , so that will be quite hard , but um yeah it's a fun thing to do . Now you did . You did say that you have an app coming out for true fans . Yes , How's that ? How's that ?

So I don't know where we sit between whether we'll get it approved before that or after . I don't know what's going on so that's what ? apple , yes , apple that's the apple solarium , their new ui design um , and they've changed the name . There was no ios 20 , james , do you know this ?

So , yeah , that's where we are , but we just need to get that going really .

Well , the EU has just fined them again , or has given them notice that they will fine them again in the next 30 days unless they comply in the next 30 days , unless they comply . So they're under a time limit to actually open up in the same way now the App Store with external links to a website for payments .

If you want to go diving deep into all of this tech which should be good , and , I should say , if you want to co-host this show next week , then you've got until Sunday to email us weeklypodnewsnet .

I was woken up by one of the flight attendants coming to me with a flat white , which is the coffee that I order from the business section . Because you don't get flat white if you're an economy . You just get whatever it is that comes out of that urn .

So they came to me with a flat white and a Qantas key ring and a little card saying I hope you've enjoyed your flight with likes is flat white . That's a pretty impressive thing . So it just goes to show just those little things you know are quite smart .

Prior to going all the way back home , I actually went up to Wellin in Hertfordshire to see a friend of mine , which was very good fun .

It was all very , very country . So it was all , it was all nice . So , yes , that was a nice ending to a week in London and a week running around and doing and doing things . So , yes , that was a very enjoyable thing . And for the last three or four days I've been waking up at three o'clock in the morning , brilliant .

I'm looking forward to everything going back to normal . My next flight apart from a holiday in Darwin , my next flight is um August to podcast movement in Dallas . So , um , we'll see if , uh , we'll see what happens uh , closer to that point .

All of our podcast stories , of course , taken from the Pod News daily newsletter at podnewsnet .