Welcome to Podland. The last word in podcasting news. Portland is sponsored by Buzzsprout. He is by over a hundred thousand podcasters like us to host, promote and track your podcast. And by riverside.fm version 2.0 recording podcasts and video interviews in studio quality from anywhere. Just got an upgrade. We're using it now. It's the 26th of August, 2021. I'm James crude and the editor of pod news.net here in Australia.
Hello, I'm Sam Steffi. The editor of Sam
Talks Technology and I'm emo Tara. And later I'll be talking about podcast apps and why they suck
pod lands a weekly podcast where Sam and I delve deeper into the week's podcasting
news. So James let's get on with the big stories of that week here in Portland. And they're taken from a pod news. How was podcasting doing for Spotify? James? Let's start off with our massive
question like that. Yes. let's start off with a massive question like that. It turns out the business insider got some leaked data from September of last year, 331. Million hours of podcasts. They measure podcasts by the hour at Spotify in that month, September 18.7% of all podcasts time listened to was made by Spotify. So 18% seems to say that Spotify is doing quite well, but Gimlet accounted for just not 0.4% of all podcasts listening. I'd given it was bought for $230 million and the.
Commentary around that from business insider is, was Gimlet really a very good investment. And I kind of wonder,
it doesn't seem like it's getting much value now. Gimlet, we're a bit peeved though, because they started putting out on Gimlet reply or a tweet. What did they say,
James? they posted this very strange tweet, basically saying ever since we were sold to Spotify, we haven't had any control over the ads and just know that we don't endorse the ad, which is currently running. And then there was a pause and then we meant the ad for the U S Miller. Okay. Somebody at reply all is not particularly happy about their show being used to recruit new soldiers and stuff. as I said on the pod news podcast, a couple of days ago, the children are fighting again.
It really does
feel like that. Nick Hilton, right? Good posting medium about the separation of creators and advertisers. And I feels like it's an old argument, the magazine, and paperworld used to have this where advertisers want to slam an advert right next to content. And it seemed inappropriate. He said, I expect a relationship between a show and an advertiser and podcasting that I don't in any other medium. So I think what he's trying to say.
And he might be trying to back a Gimlet, which is look, if the show's about, I dunno, cooking, is it appropriate to slam an ad for the U S military right next to it? It doesn't seem appropriately
related. yeah. And I think also podcasting is very much closer to the advertisers in terms of, for example, later when I talked to you. Yeah. Evo talks about a feature that he would really like, am I pop in which you'll hear later and say, and Buzzsprout offers that and Buzzsprout is our sponsor. And I talk about that for a bit. That's the sort of thing that podcast listeners expect is that closer relationships, I think next, absolutely right there.
You don't expect that close relationship and India. It's very much frowned upon. When you look at the print media, everybody talks about, the relationship between church and state and all this kind of stuff. But actually I think that there is something there around podcasting being much more intimate. if you're playing the drinking game. Yes. Did say intimate, have another drink about podcast advertising and, yeah. So I think Nick's absolutely right there. Now,
Matt Deegan also has written about what's been going on with the Spotify figures and he said, it's interesting to see hours consumed rather than downloads, which is what you just said, James, as a streamer, it's a metric that's pretty exclusive to Spotify. They know what you actually listened to rather than just adding up downloads, which is what I've been saying for a long time that I think downloads. Oh, dead.
As a metric let's as an industry, get rid of them, because I think it's the dirty little secret of podcasting, you'll say to advertisers, yeah, we had 500 downloads or 5,000 or whatever your number may be as an advertiser. You don't know whether your advert was listened to or not. Whereas Spotify can actually tell you how far along the stream the podcast was listened to and therefore, whether your ad was, I think. The industry ourselves needs to move away from the CPC model to a CPA model.
I think cost per thousand versus cost per action is a different conversation. But I do think certainly that, Brian Violetta in sounds profitable, very good website newsletter sounds profitable.com. he was saying that apple actually missed a trick. Obviously apple had a bug with some versions of apple podcasts recently, which essentially meant that they weren't automatically downloading shows.
And he was saying that apple missed a trick because actually it will be better for the industry if we were to stop automatic downloads. Now, I think that apple don't necessarily think that's particularly fair because I think that, it's just somebody else piling onto apple and apple have not had a very good couple of months and I can quite see apples.
But, I can also, I think the point that, I took out of Brian's piece was that auto downloads shouldn't be the default in any podcast app these days. We don't really need it these days. I'm not saying get rid of downloads. Altogether. I'm not saying even get rid of auto downloads. But what I am saying is for the vast majority of people, we don't need automatic downloads anymore.
It would make for much better stats, it would make for much better information for advertisers and frankly much better ad targeting as well. If we didn't have auto downloads. And instead when you press the play button, that is the user initiated download, that gets the podcast for you.
I think. A bug or a feature when it first came out. And I still think he should have been a feature, apple called it a
bug, but it's a difficult thing because if you then turn around and you say, that's 11% of podcasts, which are auto downloaded and never listened to. We know that number now, which we've never known in the past. So that's a glimpse into that data because of apple podcasts. But yeah. Which means that there are a significantly larger amount of podcasts, which are out there now, which are never being listened to, it's all priced into the cost per thousand.
So I don't think it's a problem for the industry, but a wouldn't it be interesting if there was a change in the way that we thought about these things and that actually also downloads wasn't given to people by default, by some of these large, apps and yeah. It's very difficult to get Spotify to automatically download shows.
it's very difficult to get Google podcasts to automatically download shows in PocketCasts, downloading is something which you turn on, but in overcast and in apple podcasts, auto downloads are on by default and maybe that's the best thing. Maybe we need
a new metric cost per listen. That would be an interesting one. Wouldn't it? Now James, you've been getting out your napkin as well, going back to Spotify.
I'm not quite sure what that's supposed to mean, but yes, I did some math or maths depending where you live. please add the S I got hassled by Harry who listens to this podcast and Harry said, no, say maths, but anyway, I did a little bit of, I did a little bit of calculations. If you look at the leaked Spotify, You can work out. So we know that the average length of a podcast is about 37 minutes. We know how many hours of podcasts were played on Spotify.
So therefore we can work out that there were 543 million podcast plays in total on Spotify. And Spotify is about 20% of the industry. So you can work out there. If you include 11% of podcasts being auto downloaded and never listened to, you can probably work out that there are at least 3 billion podcasts downloads per month. And actually that figure is probably too low because that assumes that everybody on Spotify. Never bails out of a show early or fast forwards it.
So let's assume that two thirds of shows are listened to right to the end, which is data that I've seen in a number of different studies. So maybe we have 4 billion downloads per month in terms of podcasting. I notice that Libsyn is currently quoting 7.9 billion per quarter for their network and their network is. not necessarily particularly large. So maybe again, maybe I'm underestimating it, 4 billion downloads a month is not bad, I think. Yeah,
no, it's very tasty that number now, the number I thought that was interesting was the 37 minutes though. and it goes back to again, if you've got a streaming measurement, you could actually then put a different price point on ads, anything before 20 minutes, anything in the 20 minutes to 37 minutes and then anything after
this one. NPR was trying to do with rad a couple of years ago was to have a much more robust analytics platform that allowed you to know what ads were listened to in a particular show. And therefore to be able to report that back on a sample basis. And that could be a plan for, how you pay rod had perceived issues with privacy. And that was the reason why that didn't get anything.
But, maybe there's something interesting, particularly around what you can do with boosts with, cryptocurrency, because actually a cryptocurrency payment for this show is being made every single minute. So you could theoretically go and have a look at the amount of cryptocurrency payments and work out some form of audience numbers from that. But, I think it's a little bit too early to be talking about that quite yet.
Some have pointed out to us that their favorite Spotify produce podcasts have disappeared from their usual podcast feeds. Can you explain that to me, James
Spotify has apparently taken a few more shows away from standard RSS feeds and have made them exclusive. I think what I have since discovered is some of those shows are actually they've killed the RSS feed altogether. So if you try searching for. You still might find that podcast as a ghost in one, in some of the is, but as soon as you try listening to a show, you find out that you can't anymore.
Spotify have explained that the reason why is that they get better stats from exclusive shows because they get the streaming stats, not the streaming universe comments rather than the download stats. And so therefore they can use that to make better shows. I'm not so sure. Interesting to see them. Adding a few more exclusive shows. One of those is serial killers, which is one of my favorite names for a podcast. Cause it does what it says on the tin serial killers.
I wonder what that's a podcast about. Oh, I know what that is. A podcast about is about serial killers. Yeah. It passes the Ron seal test it. Doesn't it just, no one in America will understand
that. No. Or anywhere around the world actually, but there you go. Subscription Spotfire has now turned on subscriptions to elect all US-based anchor podcasts, sell subscriptions. What are they? Yeah.
So anyone with an anchor show in the U S can now put their podcast into, a paid podcast, subscription service, with Spotify. And that's all very exciting. They've added new price tiers. You can now. Ask for your listeners, email addresses, which they can share with you if they want to, which is one of the criticisms, obviously against apple. The other criticism against apple is keeping 30% of the revenue.
Whereas Spotify is keeping nothing of the revenue for the first two years and then 5% of the revenue after that. And I think that interestingly coincides with a piece in the verge where a number of podcasts companies are criticizing apple podcasts for their subscription products so far, Spotify is going to let everybody else. So even you, Mr. Sathi sell subscriptions on Spotify. If you're an anchor podcaster, probably in September, so we'll be able to buy shows in September as foreign types.
And it basically said, pretty well soon after that, we'll be able to sell them as well. So good news for people who wish to sell their particular show.
Now do you have to pay the, anything to become a creator of subscriptions like
you do with apple, you don't at all, from what I understand. So it's just as simple as, getting your stuff in there, which might be interesting. I think it'll be interesting to see what Spotify does here. Interesting. Also to see what Spotify does, if I was to. Create an anchor podcast, put one show in there, sell a bunch of subscriptions and then not do any other shows. I'm not quite sure what recompense Spotify has, for that.
And I'm not quite sure what that means for people that might get a little bit upset about that. I think it's going to be really interesting to watch. It's a very different model than the apple model of paying, whatever it was, 20 bucks or 30 bucks to get into this service. And then apple actually humanly moderates, you and checks that you're a good person. my suspicion is that Spotify will work in a slightly different way. So it'll be interesting to watch.
I did read somewhere today and I'm not quite sure where the figure came from. That only 100 anchor shows so far have made themselves available for paid subscription, because it has been available in beta for a couple of months. I'm not quite sure of the veracity of that number, but, again, I think that's an interesting number to see. And for the record. Over a thousand paid for podcasts with apple podcasts and over a thousand podcasts surrounding value for value with the podcast index.
so that's where we are and by the way, nearly 4 million podcasts out there. So it's still a very small thing.
Okay. Last bit of, Spotfire news before we move on, Spotify has expanded its music and talk shows to 15 more countries, including Germany. The Philippines and Brazil, the service also has a new look, which is very nice. And there are a few examples which mix music and talk. You can look at, Brad Hills take cover, and you can look at our Tom Webster's deep six, for example. it's still a service though that I find is one Dato. It needs to move on. If it wants to actually do what radio.
Presenters though. Yeah. And allowing you to mix
over the music. Yeah, I agree. And I think that part of that is due to the music licenses that Spotify have. Because if you allow somebody to talk over the music, then you're making a derivative products, which, Spotify don't necessarily have the rights for both Brad Hills take cover, which is a very good show. All about cover versions and Tom Webster's deep sex. which is a very good show with six songs, which are somehow related to each other. Both of those are pod faded.
If you like both of those Tom and Brad have given up on. So what does that tell you? partially it might tell you that they were just. Kicking the tires and trying it out, but also partially that may tell you that, it wasn't necessarily something that they were getting any feedback from any data from and didn't feel it was worthwhile. Continuing. I can't really talk for either Tom off or for Brad, but you get that feeling that might be happening, interesting to see it being rolled out.
There's, a nice, more swish UI, which people might have fun with. And, but I would agree. Yeah. Think it's not quite there yet as a product
now swiftly on this week's James and whether you meant to or not, you've been writing a lot and I've called it discovery. Now we've got seven different forms of new discovery that we're going to discuss now in the next three hours. And then next round I pull up at coffee and settle
back. What's
number one, he says moving swiftly. number one, just fuck that. Feel. Matt Deegan, a friend of the chair again, he's been talking about, there's too much material around in terms of you probably haven't got enough room to really give Spotify promo value. Yeah. To your acquisitions. Basically, he's saying that the issue with gambler and podcasts and ringer and all the other shows that have been created Spotify, isn't allowing that discovery of those new shows.
Maybe that's the reason why Gimlet has only got 0.4% in the Spotify stats. So the question is, should Spotify create a new separate podcast client and make discovery easily? Maybe we've talked about this before, briefly as well. Haven't we, James, they
have made us per radio client for their algorithmic jukeboxes, which they trialed in Australia. We got something first for a change. so that was nice. I think the problem with Gimlet isn't promo, I think the problem with Gimlet is that Gimlet staff appeals to public radio lists. Slightly younger public radio listeners who are not using Spotify. And I think that, that's the main issue. It's the wrong audience for the wrong product.
And I think either that means that Gimlet needs to get younger in its outlook and produce more of the sorts of products like, call her daddy and Joe. Or it means that Gimlet was just the wrong purchase because it's just not a well aligned audience. I don't actually think it's a promo issue at all here, but I would also agree that it is really hard. If you've got 300 shows, it's really hard to promote all 300 at once. It's like a radio station you end up promoting the breakfast.
Because that's the thing that you want to promote. You've got your heroes that you want to promote. Nobody is promoting who the evening show is. He says as an evening show, not for a year, nobody ever promotes the evening show. They only promote the breakfast show because that's where you get the best bang for your buck. And maybe that's what Spotify has an issue with right now.
ITunes probably went through this when they were trying to have music. And then they were trying to have films. They were trying to have other content and they then tried to create one client. Then they separated them out. I suspect Spotify is going through that same tension internally. Do they try and create the Uber client one single app or do they Spotify? Break it out into two or three apps
and they're chucking audio books in as well. Of course, they've had audio books in Germany for a while and they're moving that out to other platforms as well. How's that going to fit into the Spotify UI? yeah, I agree. I think it's going to be harder and harder for Spotify to promote this kind of stuff.
Okay. Now a discovery too. And this one. Pod chasers refresh their creator profiles, and now you can follow creators across different shows. and they've also changed the roles to credit. What do you think of that
one, James? Yeah. So they've stopped calling everybody a creator and they've started having a list of credits, which I think is a good idea. So if you have look at the listing, for example, for pod land at the pod news websites, then you'll find it now says credits and not creators. Cause I was using their language.
It's a data that has come from the podcast taxonomy as well, which is helpful because it means that we all know now what an editor is, what a podcast host is, what an executive producer is and all that kind of stuff.
Now, jumping ahead slightly, one of the companies captivate. Has done something very interesting for discovery as well. It now sends the podcast credits automatically to pod
chaser. Yes. So I'm an advisor to captivate. I need to say that upfront, if you are doing a podcast within captivate and you're actually. Adding people to your authorization list, so you can have the host to using captivate and the editor using captivate and everything else. It uses that as credits, which it then automatically sends off to pod chaser as well. They're using the podcast taxonomy too. again, a great plan because it allows.
Anybody who is using a podcast host and captivate in this particular case to get those credits, in, as a standard fashion, into a pod chaser to, what captivate has also done. And I just mentioned it there around podcast networks is that they've added. Podcast networks available to all users.
now, so if you want to run your own podcast network and you want full visibility of how everybody's doing, and you want team management and you want a network website and everything else, then captivate is the place to be. Because it's ma it's giving that available to everybody. if you're on the bottom tier at captivate, I think you can have a podcast network of three or maybe four shows and that goes up as your, tier goes up as well.
I think it's a good thing, although I would say that would not,
I've also done one other thing, which is they've introduced cross-promotional
feed drops. Oh yes. Which mark is very proud of that. and that's very clever because it's enabling you to, put a drop throughout your entire network of a new show that perhaps you're launching and that sort of thing. you've probably heard that through Wondery and other large companies. Now you can do that with captivate as well. And I know that they are working on analytics around that too. So you can actually see how well that is going for you.
So there's some really interesting stuff going on there, and I'm a, it's a company which I'm proud to occasionally take part in and advisor meetings for. And it's, it is a very occasionally no, but you can really see that's a company which understands what podcast is want. That
was another form of discovery. And I think as we'll hear from me, Terra shortly, one of the things is he's looking for all the apps to start to add more features. One of the features I'd love is what captivates done is for all the other podcasts companies to push their credits up into pod chaser, just making it a simpler way that we can all be, then be discovered across multiple other podcasts that we do. That'd
be nice. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. What I would like to see is that the podcast person tag, which is how you put credits into the RSS feed, I would like to see that being implemented by these podcast hosts as well. because I'm sure that pod chaser a lovely. But, one com one company, one point of failure is a concern to me. So if there's a way of pulling that credit's information out of the RSS feed as well, then I think that's probably where we should be going.
And again, that's podcast taxonomy compatible, and so it's well worth having a look.
Okay. Another discovery that you wrote about or is entail is also added away. To follow people, as well as films and TV shows discuss within a podcast it's driven by their proprietary AI technology. So Hannah Blake wrote about this. She said, we've released another feature. That's transforming podcast discovery. You can follow people, films and TVs, as I just said, within the podcast. And then you'll be notified whenever they feature in new episodes. So again, nice.
If you can list people or that you want to know more about and you discover what else.
The difference here is the entail is using its own AI technology, which of course means that you can then follow any mention of that person or that thing in any podcast, which is listed in entail. So it doesn't have to rely on an individual human being to put that information in. And that's particularly useful for, obviously films and TV shows, but also frankly, for brands who would really like to know what people are saying about them on podcast.
Now, continuing the theme of discovery, which I am, Buzzsprout our sponsors and our good friends. they have basically taken on board. I think we discussed this many months ago. Actually. You mentioned it being able to put a specific timestamp in a podcast episode and share it. That's
great, isn't it? Yeah. I think that's really good album. Brooke gave a demonstration of this on the bus sprout blog, which you should all go and have a look at. And he chose this very podcast, which was quite a thing. So thank you album. That's very kind of you and yes, what they've done with it is that they've used the standard T equals at the end of the URL, which YouTube uses Spotify use it. Okay. Casts and pod friend also uses.
And that also works on overcast, even though overcast has a preferred way that they want you to do it. Google podcasts of course works differently. And of course, apple podcasts. Doesn't let you do that at all. as is usually the way, but, being able to share a specific timestamp and being able to say, go and listen to that. From here is a really helpful thing. And I'm sure that will be a useful plan for the future to actually share stuff on social media. Sam, should we talk, goods and tech?
No, I think we should talk
Evo. Terra let's talk Evo Terra. You're absolutely correct. Evo wrote a really good blog post the other day and also a podcast. He has a great podcast. Podcast pontifications and it was all about what he wants to see from a podcast app. So I caught up with Evo and firstly, I asked him who Evo Terra is and what his podcast pontifications
Evo. Terra is a guy who has been podcasting for a very long time. Since the beginning of time, actually since 2004. Since 2016, I focused my attention on making a podcast for others where businesses specific, basically my mission in life. Now, here we are in 2021, recording this as you know is to make podcasting better. And that's where the whole impetus behind podcast. Pontifications a daily short form podcast where I talk about ways. Working podcasters can make
podcasting better. That's great. It gives you something to think about when working on a podcast and you spoke about podcast apps the other day, you reckon that there's a problem with some of the big apps.
I reckon there's a problem with every app. I haven't been happy with podcast apps for a very. Long time. And I think it's finally time that we collectively do something about it and regime change begins with me. So I'm on a mission to try and find, or at least make podcast apps better
as well. I miss the simple days of iPod personally,
I Potter X. Yeah. Race like Kinski and a few
others. Yeah. Yeah. I Potter X. I apologize. Yes. I forgot the expert. You're recommending that people go and try some new apps. So why are you saying that?
Look, the choices from podcast apps have been stagnant for a long time. And we have the big ones that people tend to use. Like most people like to use for their iPhones, at least the apple podcast app, because there's default it's, what's on your phone for the last three years, Spotify has been doing everything they can to get us to migrate to the Spotify system. And now we have Amazon out there and then we have a slew of podcast apps that have been around since the beginning.
not necessarily the beginning, but have become staples podcast ads. Overcast and a slew of others. And they all do the basic job of giving you access to podcasts roughly the same. But then they stopped doing that and they each have their own different things that they do well. And some of them do better than others, but there are some missing pieces I think, in, in what these apps should be doing for podcasters. And it's when I found James is really hard.
To get podcast app developers to actually. Use their app and get into it and really understand how it is that podcasters and podcasts listeners want to consume content.
That's interesting. you say you've got a list of must haves for podcasts, listening apps that none of them are doing right now. None of them
wow. Doing all four of them. So I have things that I want podcast apps to do, and some of them do some of them, but none of them. All of them, shall I run through my list of four to why not? number one, I want to be able to create show level cues or lists or groupings or stations, whatever you want to call them.
Now, the reality is a lot of the podcast apps out there do that, but when looking at the new podcasts, The ones that are being pimped out by the podcasting 2.0 folks that are enabling value for value and lots of other fun things, you'd be amazed. How many of them don't allow that to happen?
They'll let you queue up individual episodes, but they will not let you break down the podcast you subscribed to and group them into individual queues so that if you're in the mood to listen to long form audio dramas, you don't have to be interrupted by somebody every day. Putting out around three minutes worth of really cool podcast tech. for example.
So that's number one. Yeah.
Number two. Let's talk about those cues. I would like for one very specific cue to be developed and that very specific cue is I'm calling most recent. If you will. And here's why I want that. James, you and I produced daily podcasts. The number of daily podcasts out there has skyrocketed in the last few years. Now, I don't know about you, but if I go on vacation for a few days and I don't pick up my daily newspaper and I'm gone for a week, I don't go back and read the episodes.
Starting from the day I was gone and get caught. There's no point in doing that. It's news it's information. That's no longer relevant to me. So I want to most recent, only queue that has just that I get to decide which podcasts which shows go into that queue. And then the only thing that shows up in there is the most recent episode of all of those, rather than having 16 episodes of. For example, a daily podcast news story queued up for me when I get back from it. And I
hear some people do binge on pod news. How can you possibly do that? Then this drive, you mad I'm with
you as well. the nice thing is I just want that to be a cue they're there. All the episodes are still available, right? it's not like we're removing them and we can't access them any longer. I just want this one simple little cue to say here's where you can get caught up on the most recent. That you specifically added to this queue? That will be great.
So that's Evo second commandment. What's your third.
I want podcast apps to respect RSS feeds that are serial IIS podcasts that are designed to be listened to from the beginning, not the most recent. you didn't read Michelle Obama's last book from the last chapter. You didn't start on that last chapter and you certainly didn't watch the 10th episode of Ted lasso before you watched the episodes one through nine, right? It makes no sense to do it that way.
Every reasonable person accessing a serialized podcast wants to listen to the first episode first. So why not podcast apps present that to people? I did a little research on this, James right now, there are about 42 thousands.
Podcasts that are tagged as cereal and in most podcasts listening apps and in almost all of the, if you will, not the big ones and all of the new podcast apps, none of them are flipping the feeds and showing it from the first one first, weirdly enough, apple, Spotify, and Amazon actually do this. It's just hard to find the settings,
Come on with number four,
I have beat this horse for a long time and I'm going to keep on beating it as well. Thanks to the amazing work of the people at podcast index. We now have a transcript tag which goes in our feeds. Wouldn't it be great.
If that transcript, which is SRT and timestamp to nicely put right there on the player, on the phone or on the web app, the actual transcript, as the words are being spoken, all of the info is there timestamps, text, everything, just display it the same way it works on YouTube, close captions, or even those are no television shows. We are ready in our podcast apps. So that's it just those four things and I'll switch to your app and I'll evangelize it to
the end of time. And this is one of the things that I keep on talking to the folks at Google podcasts about they already have the technology to add, not just take the podcast transcripts, tag from somebody's podcast, but also add transcripts. Everyone's podcast, it's built into Android phones and I'm there going, why don't you build this into your app specifically so that you can go out and say, it's the only app with transcripts for every single show out there.
And they they look at me and they go, yep. It's really
frustrating. It's almost like you need to say Google podcasts. There's this other app called YouTube. Maybe you've heard of it. It actually will do that. That very same thing. I'm talking about. YouTube can with a click of a button automatically and transcripts to every single video. So I think that alphabet, the parent company has a technology. Can you share
that seems okay. To me that I get frustrated at with podcast apps is I look at some of the individual apps. Yeah. There's a lot of work put into some of the UI, but the actual player has no work put into it. And one of the things that I like about PocketCasts and frankly like about Google podcasts is the smart speed. So it gets rid of the gaps and stuff like that. It's not called Smartspeed cause that's an overcast registered trademark. yup.
And what a pocket cast also has is something that it doesn't call voice boost. Cause that's another one of Marco's. but it's something that makes everything a little bit louder. There are some shows out there, not this one, I hope, but there are some shows out there where you're interviewing somebody or somebody at the other end of a phone line somewhere. And the other person is really. And the interviewer is really loud and it's really hard to listen to it.
It surprises me that things like Smartspeed that voice boost or whatever, the generic terms for both of those things. Haven't been productized into a bunch of, Android or iOS, player, SDKs quite yet. I'm
with you on both of those things, I think some responsibility lies on the host themselves. Who've Evers assembling this show produced show. But I also think, especially for the idea of, let's just call it, normalizing the volume and getting everything to a nice 16 minus 16 lumps or whatever standard we're using. I like minus 16 laps. And I think a lot of that could be happening on the hosting side. Yes. If in fact we were uploading wave files, which. Podcast hosting companies aren't 19.
And come to mind. We'll allow you to upload a wave file and we'll whoosh. I know for a fact automatically normalize the tracks. If you click a little box to do that and get it all nice and sunny, it'll send out MP3 files. And then I know other alternate enclosures as well for much smaller things. So a lot of that can be happening during the time of creation, but I am totally with you.
I use overcast more than anything else for that voice boost feature, because when I'm driving in my car, There is road noise and road noise, significantly interferes with podcasters. Who've decided to let some dynamic range creativity run free on their episodes. And which basically means I can't hear the dialogue, which I think is important to do so I do love that feature. And yes. For must haves.
I think there are some table stakes that everyone should do just because it's the right thing to do. Getting voices normalized, allowing people to adjust the speeds back and forth. Yes. All of these things are certain necessary to do, to make a real podcast app worthy of promoting. In
20, 21, or we have a fine sponsor of Buzzsprout, Buzzsprout have a service called magic mastering, which does much the same sort of thing. You can upload away a fight if you like to buy a sprout and it will remaster that and sort out the dynamics for you and make that into a lovely MP3 file. If that's what you want. What have you tried so far then? Eva, what's the one that you're using the most. It sounds as if it's overcast, but that's not got all of the features in there.
What else have you found? That's good.
So I've been, I spent most of last weekend playing around with three new. Podcast apps from new podcast apps.com to plug that little free service, which details out the new podcast apps
boost button. Now yes. Hit the boost.
Yes. so fountain and pod verse and pod friend are the three that I'm playing with most right now. And I've spoken with the developers in all of those and they all love what I have to say, but they also say. We are working either on a shoestring budget or we're or no, or a virtual shoestring budget. We are, we're totally out of shoestrings. or it's, we've got a laundry list. That's a mile long as we're trying to get to. So it's a nice to have just be happy.
We're making what we're doing right now and I get it and I am happy with what they're doing right now. I just want to encourage them to do more.
Yeah. And I wonder whether there is something there. Maybe taking, an open source app and getting a little bit of resource into it to actually make the podcast as podcast app. Maybe that's a plan for the future. Although, maybe that's about it. Who
knows what they could do rather than trying to play the let's do everything game. I think another great angle would be let's focus on a particular underserved. Portion of the listening audience. who's not getting what they need out of the current podcast, listening apps. I think it's not a crazy idea to think someone will come along and build a podcast listening app that doesn't have 4 million podcasts in it, but is only designed to, for example, listen to.
Sports-related podcasts, but maybe there's a special way. Sports podcasts, listeners want to consume their content grouped by teams or sporting types or various weird things like that. W I think we're to the size now where rather than trying to get everyone, everybody together, maybe we just make hyper-focused. These are the things that this does, and if you really want the best possible experience in this. What we've built. We've got an app that does just
that podcast. Pontifications is in all good podcasting apps and quite a few bad ones, too. Evo. Thank you so much for your time.
Thank you very much for your time, James. And don't forget that, that boost
button . I have to say those for a wishlist, is what he's asking. Very useful. what, the most recent transcripts individual cues, I mean that, they're all things that, that we want.
And it, what it got me thinking about is, again, with all the other features that we've just discussed as well, with captivate, pushing to pod chaser with entail, doing discovery is that we're in a. I want to call it a podcast wars because before I explain that somebody this week, and I know we're coming to boost the Graham quarter, but he, whoever you are, mark, please reveal your surname. Come hoping you're not mark Cuban. You said something that absolutely the penny dropped for me.
You described apple podcasts as the new internet Explorer of podcast players. And it, the minute you said that I do. Yep. That is exactly what they are. I was with Netscape during the podcast wars. I was the European product manager for communicator. What we were fighting, what were for new standards? We were fighting for new versions of HTML.
We were fighting to push the browser forward and Microsoft with IAE where the dominant incumbent, who just drag their knuckles didn't do anything, came up with predatory standards. Do you remember active ex
James? Oh yes. Active
ex. Yeah. And they had so many, any ways that they try to kill the industry or turn it into an internal wall garden. Apple, I'm sorry. You are the new internet Explorer. And I think. I think that's the title they need to take in. I try to make friends with apple, but they never get to sponsor as James is to the way he both,
they're never going to sponsor anything. that's not how it work.
Yeah, exactly. But I think what the funniest thing for me is somebody who was really heavily involved in that timeframe. Microsoft now use chromium as the basis for their browser. Yeah. Yeah. They've gone full circle. Yeah. And I hope that maybe apple, one day we'll actually start to look at the podcast index tutor, own namespace and start to say, yeah, actually. The industry's working around that. And maybe we need to adopt it. I dunno where Spotify fits in all this, by the way.
Cause I can't come up with a good analogy to what browser they would have been, but they're certainly not Netscape
that's for certain yeah. Cello. Yes. I think there you go. that's showing my age. Yeah, no, I agree. I think that the podcast names. Is something that people should be particularly apple and Google should be looking into very seriously, because I think there's a bunch of very useful things for Apple's current issues with not updating shows properly and all of that kind of stuff. There's a bunch of useful tools that can be built in to help all of that work.
So I'm surprised that they haven't been doing, more looking into that.
Going back to evoke terror. So what he's saying is that lots of smaller apps are beginning to put tools like chapters, and as we've seen, credits and people support. Is there going to be one of those that steps forward you think, is there a potential winner out of that's coming out or is it too early to see as an alternative
client? Oh, I think it's very difficult to see and I, my hope and my hope has always been that PocketCasts or someone similar overcast, maybe, although that won't happen. Grabs the opportunities given to them by the new podcast, namespace with both hands and goes away and makes the best podcast app that deals with all of the new podcast namespace tags. To me, that would be the differentiator between pocket casts and the incumbent. The Google, the Spotify and the apple.
And I think that would be the absolute right choice for Russell and for, Phil, I think it is to end up doing, obviously I'm not the product manager and by all accounts, it's not been a fun 18 months at the pocket costs. folks, I'm sure that they've got a bunch of tech debt that they need to fix first. but that would be my ideal. Now, the other
thing that came out of, listening to. Was, he was just something that he was saying all the way through. And you said something as well about boost grams as well. You Chub's client actually is really where I think a lot of podcast clients might want to have a look at the timestamp things now, just beginning to come in. So if you take bus sprout, cause we. We use that a lot.
So fundamentally that timestamp thing, which has been in YouTube forever and a day, the sharing capability, but they've got comments, but the one that it's most interesting in YouTube, if you follow any of the, I know football ones that I do, you've got this thing called super follows and which I think are really interesting and very similar to boost to grams. But they're done more often with live streams where you can actually pay $5, $10 or whatever, and it is cash amounts.
but then the host will see that and it'll highlight up in the comments very differently. And then they can read that comment out. They ignore the rest of the comments by the way. So the stream could be flying through and they'll only look at the super follows. I wonder where the, in a real world environment where you let's say we did this podcast live via a client where the Brewster grams would be that as
well. Yeah. I don't think there's anything to stop booster grams. the way that the whole thing has been built, there's nothing necessarily to stop them from using fierce, from using real currency. but. I'm also very aware that actually the benefit of using the cryptocurrency stuff is that it means that it's completely de-centralized and no one is in charge.
And we've just seen all of that kerfuffle with only fans that is kerfuffle, which has been driven by MasterCard who have turned around and said, we don't want people paying for smart, with MasterCard. Thank you very much. Could you please stop the smart. I think, that, that's the concern.
I think I put quite apart from the individual cost of, taking a credit card payment, that's the main concern that many people in podcasting should have of, just making sure that this is a open thing, but I do wonder sometimes. I've started talking with a few people about, booster grams being internet tokens, and you buy internet tokens and you give them to other people. And that's really what a sat is. Yes. You can turn it into cash. Yes. It's actually a Bitcoin. Yes, it's cryptocurrency.
But at the end of the day, it's an internet token. It's the same as a fairground token. When you go into the, when you go to the fair or, any of that sort of thing. And I think if we think about it in that way, it becomes far less scary and some people may choose to cash them in. Some people may just choose to hold them. And that's fine too. Yeah. It's a
micro payment system. We've wanted for a while on the internet. In fact, yeah. I remember listening to Marc Andreessen. Talk about the one thing he wished he did creative when he first created Netscape browser was a micropayment system. You said that was the one thing they wished they'd done. And I know Facebook tried recently and failed abysmally with their micropayment systems, cause no one trusts mark Zuckerberg. and that's why I think a lot of that failed.
But it's the, I think the problem is it simple enough? You've implemented it. How easy is it to
implement hideously complicated at the moment, but it is much easier now than it was three months ago. And that's the point? I think it's very quickly beginning to be easier. this isn't iPod X, as we were talking about with Eva, it's not. I was, trying to tell somebody the other day about, it was listening from Norway and he wants to help this show and her downloaded fountain and found the whole thing really complicated. And I said, you're probably not young enough.
To have been playing around with your copy of windows 3.1 and try to configure your wind sock. but you'll remember configuring wind sock and everything else so that you could actually get onto the internet, and all these kinds of weird and wonderful stuff and how complicated all of that was. And now it's super easy and it's built into everything. I think that's basically where we are at the moment. And I think. Anything that makes life easier and simpler. We'll come and we'll come very quickly.
And certainly it's far easier. Now then, as I say, than it was three months or so ago to set up value for value and to start accepting Sam. So
talking of, value for value. Have we had any
boosts this week? yes, let's play. Adam's very exciting. Very top 40 booster Graham corner jingle. Now it's
time for the
boost
to Graham corner.
It's too much. And we've got a number of different messages here. Mary Oscar from fountain 769 SATs. It says here, although that might not be what Mary Oscar thought he was paying, because of the way that these things work, I should just point out. But anyway, Mary says, or Oscar says another great episode looking forward to coming on in a few weeks time. Oh yes. Oscar's coming on in a few weeks time. Isn't it? A fountain. So that should be good. He is excellent.
Dave Jackson, the podcast has podcaster. he, very kindly sent us a 500 SATs or so with a fountain. He says, keep up the great work. Thank you. Dave. Dave has put together a brand new podcast called leading the bleeding, which is essentially Dave, trying to understand how all of this stuff works. And, working to enable his podcasts as value for value. He's going to turn that whole experience into a podcast, which is really good.
And, it should be well worth having a listen to, that is available now in all good podcast apps. And in Spotify,
Nick says he loves pod land. Thank you, Nick. Add he sent us 990 stats. I knew he was using fountain. I think that may be
fountains. Yeah. Ah, maybe who
knows. and Dave said, thanks for the kind words SAB. You're the host of the football podcast. You can't let an Australian guy with a raspberry PI school, your base styles, yellow card. Thank you, Dave. Thank you so much. He said just 20,903 stats. And again, using fountain. Yeah.
20,000 SaaS is a lot as well. Dave, thank you very much for that. That's a very kind that's that? That is probably. Another beer that I can school Mr. Sethi on when I can finally get over to the UK in 2025. Assuming of course that you actually have any pubs left or indeed any food available in your country, which appears to be falling apart as we speak. Yeah.
Anyway. Yeah, we might end up just having to grow what we can find in fields. So yes, that's it.
it's quite a thing. And Adam. I it has, I think, sent you a message here. 4,900 sites through Curio Casta. Thank you, Adam. What does Adam said here?
Thank you for considering the podcast index with your academy fees. Yes, I would. I'd rather pay you Adam, that I would pay the academy.
I'm sorry. I think he's not looking for a promise if I'd rather pay you. I think he's looking for some money. Maybe we might. Okay. Maybe we might send them over.
So yeah, they're great. You know what they are great because it does what you just said, James. It just allows us to know that people are listening and what they think of what we say.
Indeed. No, I think it's a really good thing. And I think the easier that we can make it, the more satisfactory it will be for anybody that is doing a podcast.
Yeah. And I fully agree with your comment. I think it will be, hidden into apps and made very simple way. You take fear currency converted to. Token SATs. And then you can just use them where you want your data. It'll be a good model. Lastly, Buzzsprout going back to them. boss sprout has now included the podcast guru ID into the RSS feeds what a Gilead's again, just
remind me, ah, this is a, it's a standard way of an ID for your podcast. It stays with your podcast. Whatever you use. So if you shift from, and they've seen to, and then maybe you shift to captivate and then sprout, obviously, cause bus parrots are brilliant and then you're good will never change. And that means that you can link to your podcast in a standard way, which means that no one is in charge of that ID at the moment.
We're all using apple ID numbers and those are not particularly helpful. it's a great thing to see. Buzzsprout. Are now doing Google ads, fully in their system. And I look forward to more podcasts companies doing that too. I wonder if apple
Explorer will ever change now, apple
Explorer. Ouch.
Oh, I sell you. Mark has given me so much hope with his little statement. Aye. Aye. On the basis that I deleted by apple podcast, player, client, wow. It's gone. Gosh.
Yeah, that's a thing I'm going to use
it until next week when I have to. Cause there's a feature, I'll leave test it, but then that'll be that now, lastly, and it feels like we are beating them up, but apple podcast download bug. it, again, it seems to be raising its head. Is there anything else that's been said about, I think Triton digital had some data about it. Triton,
it's been basically saying with all of the podcasts rankers that they produce, is there's been a significant drop in the amount of podcasts downloads if you compare may to July. so in the middle of June was where, people were transitioning over to the new apple podcasts. And if you compare may to July, it's down on average by, somewhere in the region of. A percent or so, which, backs up the random number that I came up with earlier on.
So yeah, you can see that's happening, but you can also see pod tracker releasing, weekly figures, which I don't typically report on because otherwise that's the only thing that I would be doing, but they are showing that those are beginning to increase it. As the fix has, has rolled out. good on apple for fixing that and for rolling it out. I'm sure, there are lots of things that we can criticize them for, but I think, they did act, relatively fast once they knew that there was a. Okay.
A few things coming up, which might be useful to know about the Australian podcast awards is back for 2021. I'm a director of the company this year. It features a total of 31 award entries. You should take part it's really robustly, judged. Proud of it. well-worth going to, take a peek just to a Google search for Australian podcast awards. There's also the New Zealand podcast awards. If you're a Kiwi and you say the word dairy a lot, the deadline for nominations for that is September the first.
So get a move on and the IAB has announced the final agenda for the IEB podcast upfront. Which is happening in New York, actually in New York, between September the ninth and 10th. it's something that allows media buyers to preview new shows, coming from podcast publishers and new ad tech tools to, don't see if you can go because it's invite only, but it's a good thing to take part in if you have been invited.
And finally there is the international women's podcast awards, which sure has been announced as the headline partner of a that's already been judged. I understand the ceremony is in line. On September the 23rd. Excellent.
I always thought the only way to tell the difference between Kiwis and Aussies was to ask them to say fish and chips,
fashion shops. yes, there is that. Or, yes, they call a corner, shop a dairy, which is very strange. And, yes, there a strange, one of the clubhouse rooms that I occasionally jump into is basically run by Kiwis. And it's great fun to jump in there and hear all of these, Americans, gassed at the fact that they're talking to somebody from New Zealand. So it's very interesting. It's always a good thing.
Did you say clubhouse? Sorry, this is 19. I did say club's sorry. Are we back in January 20, 21 again?
No, it's still going, I believe. so yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Finally then James. So what else has happened for you in Portland this week?
so I have spent much of the week talking to lawyers about a news story that, we're not mentioning today. so that's good. It's been a bit of a fraught week for, reasons, best knots. gone into, Sam, what is happening for you in Portland over the next few weeks?
my wig sounds a lot quieter than yours. That's for certain, I'm interviewing Gary Lineker the, famous football on TV pundits. Crisp salesman. Yes, indeed. So that's this week, I just interviewed Joe Royal from, any Everton fans out there would know who he was.
Family. Yeah. Yeah. very funny. No,
yes, no. Unless you read the football, it's not a podcast you want to.
Yeah. All the Americans listening have no concept of what's going on
now. I'll just say soccer and
there'll be fine. And this is for your, this is for your English premier league soccer podcast, which is called the old spice book. Indeed. And you'll find that in all good podcast apps like this one. And that's it for this week, you can come back to pipeline next time. Follow us cost app. Oh, we're at Podland dot news on the web.
If you have any comments or questions. And you'd like to talk to this show as well, tweet us at
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