Welcome to Podland the last word in podcasting news. It's Thursday, the 7th of April, 2022. I'm James Cridland, the editor of pod news.net. And I'm
Sam, Seth at the MD of river radio ATA B radio station covering the Tim's valley.
Hi, it's Harry Duran founder, a full cast and host of podcast junkies and the vertical farming podcast stay tuned for my segment later in the show
Podland is sponsored by Buzzsprout podcast. Hosting made easy last week, 3,847. People started a podcast with Buzzsprout. You can [email protected] and if you use chapters in your podcast app, then Buzzsprout supports those. And so do we. So,
James, what are we going to talk about this week on the show? I think we should start off with a story that, Ashley, Carmen, I think broke on Bloomberg. It's a story about sub-state getting into podcasting. Why would sub stack a as guess for those who don't know, what is sub-state James and why are they now moving into podcasting?
Well, they say that they're moving into podcasting, but better. It's a company that makes a paid newsletters, so you can pay money to get, newsletters on there. And obviously you can have a look at that and go, well, why don't you make a page podcasts as well? They've actually been making podcasts available on sub-state for a while, but they've properly beefed it up and launched it, actually noticing that they've poached some podcasts from Patrion as well.
which is interesting, but, it's just another podcast host. if you want to host your podcast for free on sub-state, then you can, but obviously you can then charge for additional, episodes and charge a monthly fee.
So your a perfect example. What I saw this story of somebody who has a newsletter. And the podcast right. Of that same newsletter. Is that something that, you would ever, not you directly, I guess, in this case, because you'd never move off your platform, but would it be a natural evolution, to move into
podcasting? Yeah. I mean, you could see that for somebody likes, sounds profitable or for earbuds or any of those, newsletters, then you could see that there's an opportunity there in terms of having a decent podcast, Which is also a decent newsletter platform, and, charging for access to that. It's not the way that either of those work and all that pod news works, but I think, you can certainly see that there are opportunities there.
Brian Barnett are actually noticing that, they are offering podcast hosting without being IAB certified and, Brian foaming at the mouth about the IRB, which has had a thing about for quite some time, as well. I'm not sure it matters, particularly as long as they're following the IB, guidelines and rules now.
Would medium get into this, given the roots of the founder coming from Twitter, do you think media might start to go? Maybe we should move into that as well.
And medium have been talking about audio for awhile. Evan used to run a Odo prior to running Twitter, so he knows a thing or two about podcasting that said medium appears to be doing quite a few changes at the moment. Blog on medium and they appear to have just taken the opportunity of posting new stories away from their apps. So you can only do that online now on a web browser, which seems a little bit strange and they've changed the way that creators, paid.
so I'm not necessarily sure that a medium is going to jump into this sort of thing. Medium to me seems to be a company which, is floundering a bit and I'm not quite sure that it knows what it wants to do in terms of, payments and everything else.
I guess we will see whether sub stack actually makes any ripple in the policy fair, or it'll just be one of those add on features that nobody ever uses. Anyway, moving on.
That may well be the case
To YouTube or not to YouTube to quote Mr. Shakespeare from Hamlet. it's the podcast is dynamic. Should they be using YouTube? Now we talked about this last week and of course, Tom Webster, at the Edison research, at podcast movement evolution said that YouTube is the third, most popular podcast platform in America. And of course you broke the exclusive last week about, the UI potentially that YouTube will use, but having said all that.
Revealed in its data that it could well be worth it for English language shows to be using YouTube. James, what did you think of their data? And is this backing up what you think?
Yes. Every phonic have pulled a bunch of different pieces of data out there. quite a lot of it is, based on Google trends, which I always think. A bit of a weird way of doing research on this sort of thing, but, nevertheless, they say that, there's been a massive increase in YouTube searches for the word podcast in the last two years. Ireland, for example, is much more likely to search for podcasts on YouTube than, Italy or Spain.
for example, I'm, looking at that, I'm just sort of wondering whether people are actually searching for the word podcast or are they really searching just for content and are they finding content, in YouTube that just happens to be a podcast? I would probably suggest it's the latter. But, interesting to see the data from re phonic at least, which is useful. I listened to two, grumpy Adam Curry's, podcast last week. That was a man who needed a holiday. My goodness.
he basically thinks that YouTube podcasting is a waste of time because he comes at this from a viewpoint of, it's not about numbers, it's about engagement. And, he would rather 200 people who think who are contributing to his podcast and doing a valuable thing than, 20,000 people, of course. and he's absolutely fine to have that point of view. it's not necessarily the point of view that many podcasters have, and I think, influence comes in numbers more than anything else.
but, what'd you think we should be doing with YouTube,
Sam. Wow. surprise. I thought I'd go and create a YouTube channel. Now I'm stuck. No one wants to see us, James. No one wants to see us. Certainly not me in the morning. But on a more serious now I actually might try and experiment with using headliner. So what I've done is I've used the headliner app and I've set up the RSS feed into that and it automatically. Posts that full episode into YouTube. We'll just try it for a couple of weeks and see how
it goes, James. indeed. We'll give that a go. so you can just find us, if you do a YouTube search for pod land, I'm guessing, and we should be in there somewhere.
after a few people have liked our page and whatever, I can then actually change the URL. Indeed. Be more friendly, but I can't
do it right now. there's a bunch of other pod lands in there. so I'm sure that they will be delighted. There's a young man wearing a suit. who's called himself Patil and who has 15 subscribers? Dan Meisner from Pacific content also posted a very interesting blog, all about the different types of podcasts on YouTube. He reckons that there are four different kinds. Interestingly, the YouTube PowerPoint presentation that I saw actually said that they had six different kinds.
So he's got four of those so far, for his graph otherwise, no, it wouldn't officiate his beautiful graph, but. Dan has done quite a lot of interesting work on that, which is worthwhile, having a peak out. I think
another person has been looking at it. Jeff Fiddler from signal hill says, YouTube is the elephant in the podcasting room. I guess that's what we're all talking about. Really? Aren't we're saying that until this new URL. Dropped or all sorts of surmising, what is YouTube podcasting strategy? And we're also smizing is again, to be worthwhile at the end of the day.
Indeed. we, we have heard an awful lot of, people saying it's going to be amazing. It's going to be the best thing ever. And other people like Adam Curry saying, couldn't care less. it's not going to go anywhere. interesting to see what happens there. Google have a pretty good track record of promising the earth and doing nothing. so it'll be nice to see, that record being broken, hopefully.
but it will be good, obviously to continue growing the medium and anything that has the capability of growing the medium is a good thing. Indeed. Now, moving
on a story that you. Pod machine new company has been launched to a tool to grow an edit your podcast for you and even manage guests. It takes 48 hours to edit a show and it starts from $49 a month for four weekly shows. Uniquely the tool also includes advertising in other podcasts, and you can try the service free. We understand it can be white labeled even. So maybe third parties use it. Now, James Woods, have you tried publishing to, do you have snips?
I chatted with Ron debate long a couple of weeks ago, and, was, learning a little bit more about pod machine and what it is. But basically if the only thing holding you back in your podcast is someone to edit your audio. Then pod machine will do that for you and $49 a month for four shows is pretty good value they've done, some very clever sort of, machine learning stuff and, and everything just to, keep their workflow to a minimum, but it does look pretty good.
It's all based in the Philippines where the, wages are low and everything else, but they still do a pretty good job. so that's nice. And one of the clever things is that, when you buy a package from them, you also buy advertising in some of the other, shows that. So actually it's a very interesting way of promoting your podcast on other shows.
Not quite sure exactly how the advertising works, but I know that it does include an amount of impressions on other shows, probably in the podcast network, Asia shows, but also at other ones as well. so very clever idea, and really using the benefits that you get from being in Southeast Asia. in terms of wages and in terms of time zones and everything else to make something which, should really help some people that just need their audio edited and made it sound halfway decent.
worth a go and I think the price point is quite interesting. The reason I say that is because I caught up at podcast movement with a great guy called Harry Derrick. We have a new entry from Darren Darren. So it was Harry Duran. Not Darren. Of course it should be, as everybody knows, Duran Duran. There you go. I'll get it right. Sometimes you mispronouncing. I do put it. I do apologize. None of us are too big to apologize. Sorry about that.
So at podcast movement, I met up with a great guy called Harry Duran. no relation to the band and. Company full cast does this as well for a lot of podcasts. He's been doing it for a while and he outsources it as well to Singapore, but they do a lot more. They also do all the social media and much more. But Harry gave a talk at podcast movement. That was really great. Sadly, it was on the last day, but he started a new podcast, which is about vertical farming.
Now, most people go, oh, that's so niche. why are we even talking about it? What Harry did was he actually raised $9,000 in sponsorship even before it started his podcast. And I thought with all the people who have podcasts going, oh, I must reach a thousand downloads before I go and talk to a sponsor. Harry basically has shown us how you can actually, if you want to do the planning, do the preparation in advance and go and get a sponsor even before you start a podcast.
So I thought to catch up with him and find out what is a vertical farming podcast and how he did it. It's a pleasure
to finally meet in person at podcast moon evolutions. That was
great fun. Now, where are you based in the U S and we can pinpoint yet.
I am in the Midwest for the first time in Minneapolis, Minnesota, but I'm going way back. I was born in El Salvador. I grew up in New York, just outside and Yonkers, and then grew up in New York city.
You can hear that New York accent in the background. So let's look at what is podcast junkies. Let's kick off with.
So back in 2014, I went to a conference called new media expo. I was working on a mobile app for DJs cause that's my very first passion electronic music. I grew up deejaying on vinyl, turntables and all that. So I realized how hard it was going to be interviewed DJs and I pivoted to interviewing podcasters. I was inspired by inside the actors studio. There's a show here in the states by James Lipton, where he would interview actors for an hour at a time.
And you get to understand what they're about. And I thought, what about that? Basically tell the story of podcasters behind the mic, why they started the show, what inspired them. And also as an aside, because I was doing video at the time, back in 2014, it was my way to establish a one-to-one face-to-face connection with podcasters and then get to know the community. And so when I would go to podcast conferences afterwards, itsy Harry, that was a great conversation we had.
So that was all strategic in my mind, just to make my way and learn more about this industry and meet the folks that were making waves.
Now how long have you been podcasting and give us a bit of the timeline.
Yeah, I launched this show in April of 2014. So now I'm closing in on episode 290. So eight plus years, actually April 5th today when we're recording. So we are probably somewhere in the vicinity of my eight year anniversary,
happy podcast anniversary. Now, the reason I asked for that little side note of your background is because at podcast movement, you gave a talk on something called vertical farming, which is one of your new podcasts, not something that people would think naturally as a thing, a vertical farming seems very niche.
And secondly, to talk on a podcast about vertical farming seems even Nisha, if that's a word, but having said that everyone who went to that talk thought it was a great talk part of the reason they thought it was great talk. And the key, why I want to talk to you about it was, do you raise the significant amount of sponsorship money in advance? You're starting that podcast.
I think for any podcast to route a, who's looking to start a podcast, even if it's as niche as vertical farming can raise funding. So a lot of discussion around podcasts is, oh, I've got to start my podcast. I've got to get it to show 50. Then I've got to get to 10,000 listeners and then I can get a sponsor. You proved that wrong.
How did you do it? So I backed my way to that math because using that CPM model, the go-to rate is probably twenty-five dollars. And let's say, I magically do get to that 10,000 download number. That's 10 times 25, 200 $50. Let's say I do a weekly show. It's a thousand dollars a month, which is not consisting anything I'm trying to do or anything that's going to motivate me enough to continue. So I knew that ahead of time. And I said, but that's not the path I wanted to go down at full cast.
We are a full service agency. We handle all aspects of the audio, the editing, the production, the show notes, the marketing, the graphics. So I said, okay, we have that part nailed. As far as interviewing skills, I had been doing my show for seven years at some Jerry comfortable with long form interviews, even on a topic on not the subject matter expert in that was given a book called abundance by Peter Diamandis. It's a book about future technologies.
There's a chapter on vertical farming, which led me to a book called the vertical farming by Dixon Despommier. He's a professor in Columbia do our of that book. And I was like, this is a very niche industry. I did a little bit of research, lots of funding. I think at the time I did my research, $14 billion in funding coming in and projected by 2026, all the signs, similar to what we see in podcasting, a lot of VC money and which equals marketing dollars.
So I started putting all the pieces together and I said, can I create my own podcast client? And that was the initial thought. And so in late 29, I started grabbing all the URLs. Like an entrepreneurs is likely to do vertical farming podcast, doc. And then a little bit later, I talked about this in the talk vertical farming jobs and vertical farming weekly. Cause I was already thinking about this. What are the other platforms that can leverage again? This is one-on-one SEO, best practices.
We talk to our clients about the be too cute or overthink the name. I said, let me just call it what it is. It's the vertical farming podcast. So if you Google those three words, my podcast is the very first thing that shows up in the Google search. And so I said the only way to make it visible. And attractive to future guests is to focus specifically on founders and CEOs only. And they want to talk to the marketing folks or just PR folks about the industry, which a lot of broadcasters do.
I knew ahead of time that people were going to take me seriously. They would probably start to look at my back catalog. I was already thinking about that ahead of time. So I just started with like the early folks in the space, people who ran. New sites about vertical farming and painfully enough, they agreed to come on. But what I did to them at the time, since I was new to the space, I said, I'm learning a lot about the space. These are the names of the people that I'm looking to interview.
So I'd named dropped someone I hadn't spoken to, but I knew who's who, so they would see the names and they saw that I had a solid plan. And I said, look, I've been doing this for almost seven years. I know what I'm doing. And by the way, it's going to be high quality because we own an agency. Those few things got my foot in the door and allowed me to stair-step my way to start having these conversations.
I had my third or fourth conversation with a CEO of a company called intelligent growth solutions in Scotland. And this was just when the pandemic hit, which was, I thought it was going to derail the show. I said, do you still want to have the conversation? He said, yes, we had a fantastic conversation. I said, by the way, we're looking for sponsors for the show. He transferred me to his marketing guy in Chicago. Great conversation.
It was a moment in time, Sam, as you might imagine, if you remember back COVID that March, April window, the whole world felt connected because we were just like all going through the same experience. And I said, how much are you spending on these that you spend on these booths in these conferences that you can't go to anymore? And he said, you know, about $20,000. So in my mind, I basically cut that in half and came in a thousand under, I said, what about $9,000 to sponsor our podcast?
Which will get you an audience of folks specifically interested in vertical farming. He thought about it maybe for about a minute. And he's like, yeah, that sounds good. Let's do that. And
so did he not say how many users have you bought or listened to?
no, he just wanted to know what my plan was for the show and who I was going to speak to. And I think in his mind, He's the marketing guy. He saw that this is going to be high quality production. I knew what I was doing and he saw who I had lined up already. And I had just had an hour long conversation with his CEO. So it came in as a referral from his CEO who said, you should talk to Harry. And then I look back on it.
There's no one thing to point to, but the fact that those six, seven years of honing my interview skills allowed me to have a really engaging one-to-one connection with a CEO of a company where he felt like I really enjoyed myself by the way, subsequently I had a second conversation with him later on in the season. So we've had two interviews with that CEO who came back to me later when they went to raise their second round of funding, he said, Hey Harry, can you send me those two recordings?
The team really enjoyed it. We want to send it to our investors because we're raising another round. So that just speaks to the quality of making sure, like you don't scrimp on any of the pieces. If I had a horrible conversation or horrible interview, he would've said, this guy doesn't know what he's doing and probably wouldn't have made that intro. So in retrospect, it's a lot of little things that happen, but there's a lot of preparation that went into that happening.
You know what they say about luck it's when preparation meets opportunity. And so I felt like I was prepared for that moment. And so the onus was on me to make sure that once we locked them in, I did everything possible to highlight that sponsor in the best possible light. So if you listen to the show and this is going on now into season five, as we're about to launch the very, very first thing you hear, Sam is not a cold open snippet of a guest or the conversation.
It's me doing an ad read for that. So as soon as you hit play, the first thing I'm talking about as a sponsor, everything that we do in our socials, we tagged the sponsor, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram. And so we're making sure we give them the show notes, prominent feedback, every opportunity I get to highlight the sponsor. I'm doing that.
And that's why subsequently seasons 2, 3, 4, and now going into five and six, we've been able to continuously continue with that same sponsorship package with different sponsors.
Okay. Coming back to it, is this sponsor going to renew? When does that renewal occur or when you switch that to another sponsor and in which case, all you using anything like Dai so that you can actually just back catalog all that sponsorship,
I think because of the price point. So we got a season, two sponsor, different company at a lower price point, and then someone came in for a smaller run of five episodes. And then we got a season three spots. Our season four sponsor renewed a company called cultivated.
In which again, if you think about what I'm doing, even on this podcast, even what I did at the conference, like if I can mention intelligent growth solutions, series cultivated, these are the companies that went out of their way to sponsor my show. So I always go out of my way to do anything I can to spread the word about what they're doing, what happened with cultivated. As we were wrapping up season four, I said, you get first right of refusal.
And I shared the link and I'm happy to share the link with your audience as well. Sam of the sponsorship page, I built in a tool called note. In the tool I mentioned here are all the socials that we've created just to promote this episode. And again, going back, I grabbed all those socials probably about three to six months before I launched a show. So vertical farm pod, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn page has about 3000 followers now. So I knew I needed places to promote the show.
So they see all that. They see all the lists of past guests now, which is not four seasons, 13 episodes in each season. I think about a season as a quarter coming from corporate 13 weeks. So now that allows me to know that's a finite window, 13 episodes, and then I'm already thinking of renewal options. So cultivated came in and season four, and as I went back to them and say, Are you interested season five? He said, actually, we're just going to do a package for season five and six.
And so they paid me one price to do five and six paid ahead of time. And in his own words, Sam, he said, we're not letting this go lice, not likely to sit. And what he's said is we're hearing folks come to us and say, we heard you on the podcast and that as a podcast, or that's all you need to hear to know that you're doing something right. And just to be fully transparent, it gets about 2000 downloads per episode.
So imagine if I tried to do the CPM model on there, I'd be getting $50 an episode in exchange. I feel confident for the value in providing them. Again, coming from corporate salmon, you could probably relate to this podcasters undersell themselves and the value of their platforms. I would used to work at E-Trade and JP Morgan chase in marketing, and I'd know, the finance team would come down and say, Hey, we're getting to the end of the year. If you don't use it, you lose it.
And we're talking about budgets of a hundred thousand dollars, a hundred, $200,000. $50,000 is to offer a podcast sponsorship in the range of like 10 to $15,000. It's not a lot, especially unlike radio, unlike billboards. This is something that you can actually see the ROI because you'll know people are talking about it and you can see in all your socials, I'm tagging them every single time. We've now created the vertical farming weekly newsletter.
So every week I say our sponsors cultivated, I now created the vertical farming jobs. Board and it's a free job board, but I put their logo there. So now it's all these different ways. And by the way, all those platforms cross promote each other as well. So again, I'm going to bring kicking in. And as I think about these cross promotional opportunities that it's almost developing now, what's called the vertical farming hub.
And we're now in talks with another job board that's specifically for hydroponics and the people from cultivated. My sponsor said, Hey, you guys should talk and we should, all three of us go together and do different things. Let's build up this job board. So these alliances and these partnerships are happening organically.
And I went to my first vertical farmer conference, like last month in Las Vegas as well to just get to know some of the people that had that I had met and interviewed on the show. It's been a fascinating experience.
And I guess you'll still be dangerous in a few years' time. It's not a sell podcast is it's not something you building to say.
I think looking down the road, I obviously there's a big dependency on me as the host. And I think the, one of the selling points in one of the attractions of the show is the fact that I have a cat. Origin story conversation with these founders and CEOs. And I keep getting feedback repeatedly from listeners that say, I've heard the CEO on other shows, but I haven't heard him get into his personal story like he does with your show. And I think maybe it's because I'm not the expert in the space.
I'm not intimidated by these names at all. And I'm sure there's in this space will be like, whoa, I can't believe you spoke to that person. I'm like, just like we always say, everyone puts their pants on one leg at a time and I'm just trying to connect with them, human to human. So that's been really the feedback.
So obviously if I were to think about a way to transition now it'd be hiring or finding someone who would quite honestly, not really a subject matter in this space, but someone who's a really good interviewer because that's the key. And as I think about that model, anyone who's listening naturally as an entrepreneur, I'm always thinking about new places.
I keep watching this alternative protein cellular protein field, which I see the exact same thing happening growing just as fast, just as much my coming in. With this could be applied to so many different niche industries. If you're laser-focused on making sure that you're creating a platform that people in industry wants to come to and get in and listen to.
Great advice. Thanks Harry. Now you mentioned you're an entrepreneur. You've also got a, another company that you've been working on called the POTUS fair that you've been building. What is the, so we
have a mutual friend, James who started pod news, all the pods. This is the thing what's funny for me as was, I would listen to pod news is all these companies in this space, anything with a pod? I think anything with a pod in the domain is trying to take and by now, but it was funny to hear how many companies started and then, and closed. And I just like out of curiosity and just interest in the space, I opened up an air table and I said, how many companies are there in this.
A hundred companies, 200, 300, 400. Now we're up to 600 companies. This is interesting. And I started tracking them in what little spare time I had. And then I said, maybe if there's a way for people I remember in the past couple years ago, people say, which has better Lipson or blueberry. And inevitably they would send people to like a Facebook thread. And it's not, they're talking about it here, go check it out. And I'm like, this is not unlike the best experience.
And so in the back of my mind, I was like, I think about sites like g2.com, yell Trustpilot kept terror and all the, all these platforms where people can get trusted information on podcast tools and services. And so that was the goal. I thankfully I learned a little bit of no code tools and I launched it and tested it out. And I was accepted into OnDeck's a no-code cohort. It ran for eight weeks and I had it as my MVP project to launch.
So got it out as a prototype and thankfully found our technical co-founder Brad Nolan. And who's got experience in the radio. And so now we've been slowly building it up when we did another sort of soft launch at podcast movement evolutions. And that essentially it's a, the POTUS fear.com and it's a marketplace initially right now, as companies can claim the profile, update their information and people can come and leave ratings and reviews on the site.
next phase would be for actual pod-casters to claim their services and build what's called their podcast stack. So then it's a common question. Podcasting, what tools do you use? What services you use, you can say, oh, this is my stack on the POTUS sphere. So lots of ideas. Again, it feels adjacent to the work I'm doing in the podcast space. So it doesn't feel like anything above and beyond to stretch me out of my comfort zone and also build on the relationships I've been creating and nurturing.
This space is for the past year.
So that sounds like a really cool tool that people are going to want to be able to use. How'd you monetize
it, simple sponsorships. So right now we're thinking about placement on the site. So you'll have placement above the fold, probably from about eight to 12 companies who want to do global placement at a price point, probably looking at $500 a month for that.
And then if you are a company within your specific category, one of the things we did with the categories is map them and align them to what Brian Barletta and Miguel, and put together in terms of the high level categories for podcast services. So we made sure that we were in alignment with that. And if you want it to claim for your hosting company and you want it at a lower price point, you can claim to be featured in the hosting category.
Specifically, if you're above a sprout, if you're a ellipse.
Okay. So what is forecast? Give us a little bit of a deeper dive into what forecast
is. It's about a year into podcasts junkies, but what I did with podcast junkies, as I was just exiting my nine to five and I started the podcast, I basically did everything interviewed the guest book. The guest created the artwork, created the website, created the marketing materials posted on social edited. The episode wrote the show notes, had the communication to the guests. I feel your pain. I feel your
pain every
week as most podcasters do as well. But the beauty of that Sam was that I realized all the things that make a podcast successful. And as I was working with a business coach at the time, And I remember being in that session and saying, oh, and it was a high price. national mine, I think people were paying probably two K a month to, to be in the mastermind. I was like, these people understand opportunity costs and what an hour of their time is worth.
I want to create an offering in podcasting that says, Hey, you don't have to worry about all the things that needs to get done. We'll just do it all for you. I remember my first client came from that mastermind and I said, can you do this? I basically said yes to everything he asked, because I knew that's what he wants to get off his plate. Can you do this? Will you do this? Can you write the show notes? Can you post it to my site? Can you do the graphics?
And I was like, yes, because I was creating the offer. And I just realized he just the people who are successful to get to the point where they are, they ask not how can I do it? They ask who can do this? And that's the basis of how forecast was built. And then we've been doing that since 2015, just full service done for
you agency. So that's really interesting how it just understanding if I came to you as forecasts. And I said, look, Hey, we've got pot lab. We'll have to do all this stuff. I have to do my show notes and I have to edit it. And I do all these things, roughly ballpark, what sort of pricing am I looking at? Because again, it goes back to what you said about vertical farming. They have to balance that against what sponsorship I have and how much time I have.
So if I've got some sponsors and I haven't got sufficient time, then I off trade that with somebody like yourself. But how do you price that?
Yeah, one of the early questions I have is who's the audience, what your call to action is what you want to listen or to do as a result of having listened to the episode. How are you looking to monetize the podcast? Because it could be a hobby show, right? And maybe our services are probably going to be a bit too much for you.
But if you're looking at this as an integral part of your business and to grow your business, I would then ask what's an average lifetime value of a customer for you, because I'm thinking about these things, because I want you to think about clearly like how you're moving people and making the podcast and integral part of your marketing. You can have it as a hobby and you could be independently wealthy and just have all these nice little things you do just for the fun of it.
But most people are not like that. And they're conscious of the investment they're making in the podcast and want to see some better return for some, it could be just a marketing play or just awareness, which is fine. And some of the bigger companies with marketing dollars, they just want presence. But typically we budget three to four K U S a month. If we're going to be doing everything for you and that's everything, including all the production, the consulting is built into that.
So we have reporting built into that graphics video grams. There's now podcasts because of the availability of tools like squad. High quality video is available. So people are now asking for video edits, snippets of the videos, which we're calling video grams. So there's a lot of moving parts. And so we try to make sure we're creating something that gets you visibility. If you look at the podcast index close to 4 million podcasts, a lot of competition in the space.
So I think we want you to be able to speak to an individual audio. In a way that gets their attention and right. People are scrolling through social media. So they need media that stops them in their tracks, which is why we like the use of audio grams. Because instead of captions at the bottom, you can read them out karaoke style, and we're just trying to be doing as good of a job as possible to grab people's attention.
There's so much competition for people's attention now, and it when, especially when it comes to podcasts and so we have to work extra hard. And if you saw the Edison research report, it's the first time there, the number of deaths. So it's, I think just being conscious of how many things people have competing for their attention and where podcasts can confirm.
And had some research from Todd works. It was great. And yes, you're right. There was a slight blip. Has people went back to work, but also to the highlights that came out of them, maybe you can give some commentary too. One was essential. Use of video into YouTube as a discovery platform. And the other one was the snippets. As you mentioned, the audio grams, the rise of Tik TOK as a platform, maybe for podcasts as to promote themselves in, what are your thoughts on YouTube and Tik TOK?
It's been big fans of YouTube since early days. It's often repeated to stick. It's the number two search engine. Even with podcasts junkies, it's something I saw early on. Like we would post even it's a bit cringe-worthy for most podcasts, but the audio with a static image on YouTube would, you'd be surprised if you Google some of my past guests names and the word podcast junkies their appearance on my show.
We'll show up, even now, if you just Google the word podcast junkies, probably 6, 7, 8 out of the top 10 listings are related to my show. It'll be the listing on the show on Spotify. It'll be pod chaser. It'll be YouTube. It'll be several of the YouTube posts, because if you think about the commonality, these are all sites that are getting a lot of traffic. And so I'm always conscious. It's what we do for clients.
And I tell people this all the time, be on all the platforms from a publishing stamps. Every single direct duty, you have access to make sure you're on there. You don't have to promote it there all the time. It's hard for you to figure out which one of these sites they're going to be doing their own work to get high SEO rankings and pod chasers. And example has done a great job of this.
When we publish those requirements, we'll go into the pod chaser and add their guests on as a credit on patisserie, because I want them to be visible if people are searching for a famous name. So I think as podcasters, we can't really rest and there's always new ways for discoverability, but I think it's really interesting to see what YouTube is doing. They're going to be ingesting RSS feeds, which is interesting to see how that's going to work.
But I think we'd be remiss if we slept on paying attention to what they're doing in the space, I feel it's going to be disruptive. They've supported podcasting in terms of reach and availability. And I think that's just going to increase. Whatever we call it. I know that there's people who have shows on YouTube that don't have an RSS feed, but they still to their audience, they say, listen to my podcasts. So it's semantics.
And so I think the short answer is for the podcasts, make sure that they have a YouTube strategy built into their marketing plan. It's going to be really important.
Podcast doesn't cover what it actually is evolving into, but equally we use the terms Hoover to describe we're vacuum cleaner and we use Googled Stripe search trend and they become. Synonymous terms that people understand immediately. So when you say it's a podcast, most people understand it's a talking show of nature with audio and or video. So I think we're rebranding it. Unless someone comes up with an amazing name over to you, Harry, unless someone comes up with an amazing name.
I think we're going to be stuck with the word podcast anyway, video or not. Look, Harry, thank you so much for your time. Tell everyone where they can get hold of all of these things or where can they go for full cars? Where can they go per vertical farm on remind them where they can go for the POTUS fare?
So the short answer is full cast.com. Forward slash HD bio. It's a page I created with so many moving parts in there. Even got my SoundCloud DJ page on there. If you want to go that far back, that's a great place to see everything that's happening and obviously full cast that CEO for the agency, but it'll list there. Everything that's happening with vertical farming podcast, junkies the POTUS sphere as well.
So as an entrepreneur, lots of things in motion, but it's a space that I just become a part of my identity, so to speak. And since 2014, it's an incredible community. And as we just demonstrated at podcasts within evolutions, it's a really great group of folks who are really genuinely interested in growing the space, which is really comforting and reassuring
Ari. You're not coming to London for the London podcast chair and you're off to, the other podcast movement podcast.
Yes,
but maybe I'll see you before. If not, I'll see you in LA for certain next year.
So next year it's convenient.
Vegas, baby. What happens there? Stays there. That's not very good for podcasts is to talk about,
Sam it's, it was a pleasure actually meeting you in person after and being a fan from a distance. And just the way things worked out, we got to spend. Chunk of time together and meet some new folks and new faces as well. So I'm grateful
Harry Duran. He's a very nice man. I first met him at the NAB show in Las Vegas about what four years, five years ago. and he was, trying to get me to, make the systems that run pod news, used on other podcasts as well. And, I keep on me classed maybe at one of these days, I should probably do this. But anyway, really good to hear that. And, and he's a good man and has been working in the podcast world for long time.
I'm going to preface the next story with a cost. We do like you, we really to, but you've been a little bit naughty again, or you continue to be a little bit naughty. but let's start off before we tell you why you've been naughty again with your annual report. you saw the company, massively grow with a sales growth of 73%. So congratulations. and while its operations in the UK and Sweden became profitable, the company overall still lost 300 million Swedish krona. Or 31 million us dollars.
it's almost double the loss of last year. So James, what's going on that they seem to be growing fast. They seem to be profitable in certain areas, but overall they're losing money. They've
not made money yet in terms of a company. they're in a very, heavy growth mode, which is, good to see the annual report is a really good read actually. And if you're interested in the podcast business as a whole, if you're wanting some slides for your pitch decks, if you're wanting some numbers, then it's got a load of detail in there, which is, really well put together. In there, Ross Adams who's the CEO talks about entering a new era in podcasting.
he's very bullish of course, of about the open nature of podcasting using RSS. and it says that is most certainly where the future is. he's also talking though about, different advertising going forward, pointing out that, podcast advertising has always been pretty good and private and is talking about targeting conversations, not users.
and so one of the things that he's talking about is a privacy safe initiative from the company dubbed conversational targeting, And really trying to underline the fact that, the platform doesn't necessarily, attract people, but instead is tracking individual, subjects that are talked about in podcasts. So that was interesting seeing that. but it's a really good report and well-worth, look at one thing I did notice though, is that their total amount of listens is slowing.
So they're still growing, of course. they're still growing the amount of people who are listening to their shows, but the total amount of listens that they get has actually halved in growth from last year. is the something to worry about that I don't know or is it a cars just reaching a certain size? I don't know, but, interesting to, see a little bit of a slowdown in terms of their growth anyway.
So it all seems pretty well at a. But a taco crumb tweeted this week. He's still not happy with them. he got a. Email from them, this week, thankfully it didn't start with hello friend. It started with high podcaster. he said, Hey, cars cannot decide if they spamming you or emailing you because you opted in. You can guess I did not opt into their mailings idiots, spammers. So Todd was not happy.
Is. Exactly. no, Todd, isn't happy. And you can understand why I've asked in a few places for the spam. The day cast is, sending out to be sent to me. And what I've discovered from that is actually some quite interesting stuff. They are going, against a specific podcast hosts and actually the contents of their emails is. Quite nicely, combative against those podcast hosts.
So in the state of, blueberry, for example, which Todd Cochran owns, of course, then, a cast are sending blueberry customers things saying here's how to move from blueberry to a cast. Here are the benefits of doing so, they'd done the same thing with, other podcast hosts where they've actually realized, okay, a cast has no cap on this podcast. Hosts might have a cap. And so therefore we're going to promote that bit. So they're doing some very heavy marketing. The only problem is it's illegal.
and, because you can't do Direct marketing in this way. And the particular emails that they are sending both have bogus copy, pasted stuff from other emails on the bottom of them, don't have the right information for the CAN-SPAM law in the U S and it's not the best way to proceed. Anyway, I've asked the company an number of questions about these emails and I will be following it up, but, again, I think I edited out, from last week's episode where I was basically saying, please say casts stop.
but I don't think I'll edit it out of this week's episode. Please. Add cast, stop. Be a good thing. Now talking
about Ross Adams, he will be in London. On the 25th of May, at the London podcast show, as one of the keynotes, talking about open for business and open for creators, I'm sure that if you fancy asking him about this spamming issue, he won't be so key. but that said, I am looking forward to that talk cause he's actually got some really great guests on the stage. He's got Fern cotton from happy place. Gary, Lynn's go from goal hanging up productions, on stage with him.
And he's got Lizzie pilot, senior VP of marketing communications. So I think there'll be quite an interesting talk as well.
no, I think that'll be really good. Lizzy is in charge of the A-class brand and it's Lizzie. That really should be more concerned about what all of this spamming is doing to the ICAST brand. But I think that should be a really interesting thing. So that's coming up at the podcast show London in, may, looking forward to that and
congratulations to Sarah Jackson. On a new promotion to global head of PR had a car. So I'm sure that she'll be listening intently. I'm sure she will. Now, more brain drain from the BBC this week. it seems mark Kermode and summer mayor. We talked about leaving the BBC. it seems that they've found their new home James. It's going to be at so many productions.
It is. And actually it's not their new home because it's the home that they always were on. they're show. Produced for the BBC buy something else. which of course owned by Sony. And what they've basically done is they've taken their show, as an independent show now. So it's now called Kermode and Mayo's take it launches in early may. You can also watch that live at the podcast, show London as well.
they'll also be an additional page show, which is called take two, which is very clever on apple podcasts, which is a nice, the BBC doing their typical job of treating their people like dirt by canceling Simon Mayo's, security pass while he was still in the building. So we had to, ask for help to get out after 40 years working with the corporation, what a company to work for. but anyway, really interesting to see that, there was quite a lot of debate.
At, podcast movement evolutions, and on some of the, social groups that I'm in about whether the BBC would forward the RSS feed and the answer is a most certain, no, they're not going to be doing that. that's why you'll probably see quite a lot of advertising for Kermode and Mayo's take, on things like social media. I'm certainly seeing. Because they need to keep their audience aware that they have moved and changed.
but, so many congratulations to them, funded by a cast as well, who study music, entertainment work with. here's hoping that they have a long and happy relationship, on that platform.
So when Peter crouches podcast moved from the BBC to AA cast last week, the RSS feed didn't forward either, but the BBC did allow them to promote the new feed in a special 20 minute advert in the old face. According to mark,
it's nice at the BBC, isn't it giving cast to 20 minute, ad in their feed. Wonder how much that, that cost zero.
Now it does bring up the, sticky issue or in future contract negotiations, should content creators insist that they take the RSS feed with them, I guess who owns the RSS? I
think that there's so many privacy issues in terms of this. I think there are two things here. Actually. I think firstly, the BBC probably doesn't have the technology to actually do a. Relocation in their RSS feed, knowing the BBC as I do. but I also think that secondly, there's a lot of, privacy issues, with, just forwarding an RSS fees to a commercial company. so I can understand why the BBC is not particularly keen to do that. but, I it should be part of a contract as you go forward.
What happens when my contract finishes do you forward the RSS feed? you know, you've mentioned Peter crunch, leaving the BBC, Mayo and commode leaving the BBC Dan Walker, who was a host of BBC breakfast there a TV show, is, leaving and moving to, channel five as well. and basically. you used to end up joining the BBC 10 years ago because the BBC gave you distribution gave you a coverage of a tremendous audience. You don't need the BBC anymore. And I think that's what we're seeing in the UK.
there's no requirement for the BBC to really exist and to put itself in between your relationship with your fans. and, I think this is a severe problem for broadcasters all over the world that they're beginning to see people, jumping off their platforms and just using a platform that they themselves own. Sean Keyvani, was a, breakfast show presenter for radio six music, and he has been, happily selling access to a music radio show.
Not quite sure how the music licensing works, probably shouldn't delve too deeply into that. But anyway, so he's doing that on. Patrion and seems to be doing quite nicely, seems to be earning thousands of pounds a month, from, doing that.
it reminds me of the, power balance change that occurred in football. many years ago, they were very limited in their wage caps and they had fundamentally slave like control by the clubs where they were under contract. They couldn't move, they couldn't change. And then there was the Bosman ruling, which freed them up.
And then obviously since then agents came into the business and subsequently certain top players are on humongous amounts of money, like a million pounds a week or half a million pounds a week. this movement here, I feel from BBC, certainly maybe indicative of the industry where the control of distribution of content has now been broken. and. I guess talent or stars, not just from the BBC, but worldwide are beginning to see how they can reach their audience themselves.
I suppose I've called it DTF director fans. And I think this is the way that most celebrities are going to start to look at it and say, actually, I can get to my audience myself now without the need of a distribution network.
And I think one surprising thing is that the BBC has just added themselves to Podtrac, which nobody was expecting least of all me. what they've done very cautiously is that they have. declined to share their global download figure with a pod track, but they are there in terms of us unique monthly audience, they've scraped in a number 20 in the top 20 us publishers. but interesting to see their size 2.7 million people.
They reach every single month in the U S with their podcasts, just to compare that with other broadcasters, w NYC is 3.9. So I'm half as big again. And NPR is 21.5 million, in comparison to the BBC's 2.7 million. So 10 times larger. I find that quite fascinating, because that's both the BBC for the first time making themselves available in a ranker. Type, but also a cast for the first time making at least part of their data available in a ranker of this type two.
that was an interesting surprise to spot them on, the pod tract chart
moving on. it seems, we talked about it and we keep talking about it. There is no excuse now for every podcast to have a transcript within it. And we highlighted that Spotify might be bringing in transcriptions. But what about apple, James? Do you think now apple against be bringing in anything to do with transcriptions?
I've not heard anything around Spotify bringing in full transcriptions. What they are doing is that they are doing some automated, closed captions in their app. and I think one of the important things here is that closed captions are different from transcripts, close captions. are those things that appear, on the screen, that coincide with the audio that you listened to and those are important.
but at the end of the day, the podcast has, should be in control of what those say as well as a more edited polished transcripts. that's what the podcast index, namespace has been working on Spotify. Certainly isn't doing any of the work around that, which is a real shame. And that means that it's actually impossible for us to give our corrected transcripts to Spotify for them to use, because there's no way of doing that.
Similarly for Amazon music, similarly you know, apple doesn't have any of these transcripts, and so on and so forth. it's a real surprise to me that no one is none of the big podcast apps yet are taking advantage of the new transcripts namespace. It appears.
I've been, work, which, answers a lot of the questions around, transcripts, but, one would hope that Spotify and apple and other people will implement this specification rather than just rolling their own slightly poor, automated transcripts. That would be a mistake, I think. We include a
transcript with this podcast, but, I noted this week that headliner has launched a new transcript service as well called. Yeah.
I mean, it's a bit more of a descriptive thing. it's basically headliners answer to descript and it looks rather good. editing audio in the same way as you would a word document, you know, all of that kind of stuff. I haven't tried it yet. you've spoken to Neil at a headliner, haven't you?
Yeah. they basically feel that this is a service they want to launch. again, I did try it. It's a little bit basic to begin with, but it's a beater. but it works very well. As you said, it is very descript, and again, it'll come down to pricing eventually what they price this service out.
But again, if it's, reasonably priced, I expect, most podcasts who can just put their, feed into it and it will produce a very good transcript that you can upload, or at least a transcript that can be useful enough for somebody who
needs it. that would be really helpful. And there are actually a bunch of free transcripts or ways to produce free transcripts out there, which is really good. And the benefit actually of the podcast namespace is that the transcript can be hosted by a third party company. And that third party company could be a commercial company if you wanted it to be as well.
So it's an opportunity out there for somebody that wants to jump onto this spec and go, I would like to earn money out of this specification by essentially helping podcasters, host transcripts. so I think there's, real, opportunity. So if there are some budding entrepreneurs having a lesson, then that's a
plan quick news. Now, we've got quite a few little stories that I just wonder to highlight for people. So the first one is, the pod Sage himself, Dave Jones has written a vision document. what is podcasting today all about? I think Dave, on his own show with Adam Curry was talking about, there is some confusion out there as to what. The podcast index. And what is the podcast namespace? So he's written a document about it.
it's it's a good piece of work, basically explaining that, podcasting 2.0 is a vision, but it's also the standards to achieve that vision. And he talks about what that vision might be. I think one of my criticisms about podcasting 2.0 or the podcast namespace or. whatever it is that we're supposed to be calling this is that because it's been very organically, driven and has grown very organically.
it means that, some of the wording around it, some of the language that we use around it, isn't really as precise and as clear enough. And, it's really helpful to see Dave doing that work well worth a read that you'll find in your show notes. if you use power press, which has blooper is a rather lovely WordPress plugin to enable you to publish, podcasts, then power press version 9.0 has been released. It's got improved onboarding and a bunch of other additional tools in there as well.
And you can host your podcast anyway, you don't have to host it with a blueberry. so a worth a peak, if you use word. And if you're
hosting your show on transistor, they've updated their website builder as well. So again, you can now add extra pages. It's great for adding sponsor pages or about pages.
also the podcast hosts has been busy. They have launched something called the personalized podcast planner, which is a free tool to help you kickstart a new podcast. Basically it asks you a bunch of questions around what your new podcast is all about and gives you a set of resources, which are tailored to you and your budget and what you want. Achieve. so that is worth a peak.
also John Spurlock has been doing some very excellent work in terms of trumping the numbers, for, last month, as he often does. So anchor Buzzsprout and spree Kurt with the podcast hosting companies who published the most new episodes in March, which has nice lips in rose, quite substantially, possibly because of loops in studio may be, which is it's free podcast hosts.
and what, Spodak has also said is he's taken a look at trackers for, podcasting and he's spotted that both pod sites and chartable saw a nice increase in market share, even though they've just been bought by Spotify. So lots of people out there who said, oh, nobody will go with them. Now that they're owned by Spotify. but actually the reverse has happened. They've actually increased, which is interesting.
Bradley Davis, has launched their third annual reviews for good program giving 25 cents per review left on Paul chasers. You can get started by leaving us a review if you like, but now well done Bradley. I did see him out, podcast movement to lovely guy and, great initiative. If you want to give away a review, they will support it with some money behind that
as well, indeed. And if we respond to reviews, then, that doubles the money, which is nice. So that's good. And all the money goes to charity. Daniel J. Lewis, congratulations to him celebrating 15 years in podcasting. he says he's hosted around a thousand episodes across eight of his own podcasts. Totally more than 2000 hours of content.
With 10 co-hosts, which is a thing I took a quick look at pod news yesterday, and I think I'm four episodes away from 1,250 episodes of that, which is a little bit terrifying. Isn't it? But still, but there we go. So congratulations status. Yes. Yes, no, I will. I will try not to, what else is going on? Advertise costs? Libsyn's advertised cost, reported their cost per thousand of $23 44 cents, which is up ever so slightly for March, almost identical year on year, which is nice to see.
and listen is a new podcast playlist app that creates playlists of podcast clips on topics you care about. it's spelled L I S M because, where would a podcast app be if it included all of the vowels and all of the words. but, Interesting idea. There, I think
on the back of other companies doing this, pods is basically what, Spotify bought was very similar headline or if. That would there, tool creates, automatic audio clips for you as well. And there's a tool called lately.ai that does something similar. I do think all of these are very good because when you get a longer show podcast, if you don't break that down and start marketing it, people may not want to come and listen to the whole show.
obviously we use chapters to help break that down, but equally, it's a good way of putting out on social media, little things that people can come and, dip into. we did see the Spotify. What was that Tik TOK like UI, which is basically
clips of the show. It is, It's clips of the shows and everything else. And I think, that helps with discoverability, which is, again, something that Adam Curry thinks that we don't need.
And last but not least our very good friend Benjamin Bellamy has. Cost the part one dot oh, in B12, it's up there. And also amazingly, he's got translations of it in now, German, Brazilian and Portuguese. You can grab your custom pod, [email protected]. So a very cool platform there for hosting
as well. Now there's also, people moves Steve Pratt. Boys are both leaving Pacific content, which was the company that they co-founded, quite some time ago, Pacific content was bought three years ago by Rogers. I suspect a three year, clause. Don't you try it? Something tells me. but Steve is, leaving to universal commerce. Take some time to search for his next big adventure.
Chris Boyce is leaving to well, actually work for his wife's family business for a couple of months, which is called mail order mystery. but, they're both off. It's a great company has specific content and they leave it, in a very capable hands as part of Rogers, which is a big media company in Canada, So they've done very well, many congratulations to Steve and to Chris. I'm seeing both of them in June for Canadian music week. which should be great fun.
and, I've got a dinner laid out with, Steve so it'll be great to see Steve again. And, and something else for you. that's a little joke, Sony music, entertainment's global podcasts division, which of course includes something else. has a head of us entertainment, podcasts, she's called Serita Wesley, and she, joins from fresh produce media. And she's looking after the entertainment podcast strategy in the U S, which is interesting. So now
for your favorite time of the week, James. Please the Graham corner. Now it's time for the
boost to Graham corner,
Dave Jones, contacting us and giving us a rush boost. Talking about website. Yes, because I was talking about the website specification last week. Oh, it wasn't that exciting. And, I was talking about, the length of a lease with a website, Dave, points out that, the hub can allow any. exploration at once, but in practice, everybody uses Google and Google limits to 15 days. Someone else told me it was only 10 days.
In fact, that Google are doing, but yes, so it's all about website and all of that. It's good to understand a little bit more, about that. so really we're at a point where website probably doesn't work particularly well at scale. and then we've got, pod ping, which uses the blockchain and everything else. And, that is, an option. and, and that's where we are. So thank you, Dave, for that. I appreciate it. Now, Adam
Curry has been very generous 10,000 sites, but he's not being very happy. I think he's referring to a well, both of us, probably you might want to listen to what we actually said about hijacking booster grams into comments, much deeper than you realize. I did listen to it, Adam, I did indeed.
And, Oscar Mary, who may be responsible for some of that. he also sent us 2000 sent saying great interview with Chris and congratulations, Sam on the radio launch. Yes. Congratulations on the radio launch. You're on the radio now. Aren't you?
I'll talk about that in the end, but it's very weird.
Oh, there you go. so yes, events, that you should be going to include the podcast show London, which is, may the 25th and 26th. They've just announced their first wave of content sessions. There are lots and lots of them. really loads of them out. You can find out more information at the podcast, show london.com. both Sam and I will be there as well. And if you want to save 20% off your day pass, then the promo code is pod news, which is nice. and also, podcast movement, Dallas.
Which should be fun, in August, which I think I'm going to go to, my track record so far of going to the U S has been going to the U S once catch COVID. So let's see what happens if I go again. but then there's also, she podcasts coming up in October in Washington and podcast evolutions. Next year, we'll be in Las Vegas, which is a curious choice, in early March.
Then what goes on in Vegas stays in Vegas, which really isn't very useful if you're a podcast. So it needs to
talk about it. No, I think we'll be able to talk about that. but yes, it's strange. I was unaware that, too much of the podcast, industry happens in Vegas. I know that there's a little bit of blue wire and that's it, so it's a strange place to put a conference. I always thought that a podcast movement evolutions was, set in LA forever. I don't fully understand that, but in any case, that should be fun. pod.events is where you can learn more about all of the events going on.
what's happened for you this week, in Podland you have a radio station, do you not now I like a proper radio station broadcasting over the. To radio
receivers. That's the funny thing. So while I was at podcast movement, I think I told you I got my off com license. And then when we got back, on Monday this week, we actually got it turned on. So like the Saturday that you said I would be James, I sat in my car at midnight waiting for the signal to go on. And yes, I had done the obligatory post it anywhere and everywhere of my little radio station on the dab in my car.
It's one of those things I've always said that dab doesn't mean that the world will come to your door. You still have to tell people that you're there. But what it has done is a lot more people have said, oh on my way to work, I can now listen to you. Or, and we've suddenly had people. a long way away, we know we've got a vast area that we cover, but we've suddenly had people in south Hampton and Oxford who could pick it up, which is outside of our, known permitted, broadcast region.
So I'm really chuffed. we will see the numbers because it's digital, we will know the numbers very accurately. so give us a couple of months and we'll be able to say how accurate RDAP
uplift has been. What else have you
been doing while apart from creating our wonderful YouTube channel? I was the guest slot that I had on buzz casts on episodes. I'm three years out. So if you fancy or listened to me again, that may be an overkill, but if you do fancy listening to me again, then I'm on with
opening up. Excellent. And I'm sure that Albany, Kevin has slightly more energy than I do this week. the
last thing I wanted to ask you, when did.fm become a thing for podcasting sounded or FM and many others. Dot FM I noticed. is it a thing now
Well, I mean, WFM FM has existed for many years. Last FM, was a big thing. And, there are a bunch of these, dot FM, TLDs, which is supposed to be something around, audio and, and radio and that sort of thing. It's owned by a nice man called George, who was it? Podcast movement, which is nice. yes, I would agree that, dot FM is a bit weird for podcasts, but it's probably the best we've got. There is.audio. and, ear bards is now [email protected] as one.
so.audio is a pretty nice, top level domain, if you care about such things. but, obviously there's all kinds of other plans in there as well.
What was it that we looked at? probably six months ago, we came up with the idea of possibly dot podcast dot pod. And when we investigated it, James didn't, we, I think it was about half a million quid to start it or some stupid
idea. it was half a million quid to go through all of the regulatory hoops. And even then there's no guarantee that it would start and stop. Talking to people who've been playing around with top level domains and everything else. They're basically saying it's really difficult to make money out of. and I think our plan was that might be a way, to earn money for the podcast index and for various other things.
I, it looks as if it's quite difficult and there was a big rush for new top level domains, three or four years ago that, that haven't been any more that have been properly launched since. And, I'm not necessarily sure that it's a quick route for riches and success. Certainly if you need to make back, half a million dollars, then that makes it quite difficult, but still there you go.
I I've got a.radio domain for my, my, radio station. But, if there's a domain host out there who thinks that, they can chunk out half a million quid, maybe dot podcast is the one they should go for next.
yes. And the reason why.radio, exists is that.radio was there specifically for, specifically for the EBU, the European broadcasting union. So the EBU, just trying to get a little bit of internet that they control, which is always nice, but, no, it's, top level domains have always confused me. [email protected] or.net seem to work quite nicely. that's probably where we should be.
So James what's been happening for you in potlatch this way, apart from catching
COVID. Yes. I managed to catch COVID the proper COVID. I am, so legally we are under isolation and we've been under isolation now for the last, six days tomorrow. We actually, I can actually leave the house again. and so can the other two people who live with me, so that should be nice. so looking forward to that, hooray.
so apart from that very little and, yes, I have been working mostly from the spare room bed because that's all that I can really do and, and negotiating time in the office so that I can be in here with my infections. so that's been.
Did your daughter say to daddy, you been to LA, what did you bring back for me? And I don't think your answer was
COVID yes, I think, I think I got it from the Uber driver on the way back from the airport here. That's where I think I got it from. But anyway, I don't think I probably got it from anywhere else, but, anyway, there we are looking forward to waving goodbye to COVID restrictions that tomorrow, to be able to go out and get a decent coffee, which will be a tremendous, tremendously good thing. I've very much missed decent coffee and that's it for this week.
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