Welcome to Podland Podland is sponsored by Buzzsprout the easiest way to host, promote and track your Podcast [email protected]. It's Thursday, January the 14th, 2021. I'm James Cridland the editor of pod news here in Australia. Hello? I'm Sam
Sethi the editor of Sam Talks Technology here in the UK
and I'm Kevin Finn from Buzzsprout and later I'll be talking about
dynamic content. I'm Pasco Hughes and I'll be on later talking about our new Podcast advertising
platform and I'm Paula Rogo
and later we'll be talking about the BBC world service international Podcast competition.
Podland is a weekly podcast where Sam and I delve deeper into the week's podcasting news, which I cover [email protected]. Please get involved. You can send us a voice message to questions at Podland dot news, or you can tweet us Podland news. We'd love to hear from,
so this week we're going to be talking about dynamic content first? We want to loop back onto a story we had in last week's Podland. We had an interview with Rob Greenlee about the Podcast Academy and some of the announcements that were made, James, what's been happening since?
Yes. Lots of change. At the Podcast Academy. First, they announced three new members of the board, Quinton Brahmbhatt, who is the boss of Amazon podcasts. And you always know when somebody is big, when they are allowed to talk to the press as contain is so great to see him on the board of the Podcast Academy. Also Amy S Choi, who does a podcast.
And does it, lots of other things around the mash-up Americans, she's a Korean American and DeRay McKesson, who is a civil rights activist and a host of pod save the people. They've also announced the new executive committee. You remember that Rob said last week, the committee gets reelected every year, while they've elected Donald. Albright from Tenderfoot TV as the chairperson for 2021 spoke medias, Alia tavakoli and his secretary. And your groomsmen from NPR is treasurer.
She spoke to next radio once, and she's very nice. And Christy Mirabelle from Sony music entertainment becomes vice chairperson. And if it wasn't clear, Rob is still obviously part of the bores, just not the chairperson anymore.
Some big hits and names on there. At least now. They announced when the Ambien.
Yeah. So the MBS have been announced for Saturday, March the 28th. That's the big Podcast awards ceremony that they're doing. They start at eight o'clock, New York, time to eight in the evening. That's one in the morning for you, but it's 10 in the morning for me. I win. And there'll be, if anybody to watch as well,
I'm not staying up for the mug. I'm not winning anything. So it's okay. You might, I won't,
I would doubt that very seriously. Now, first up James, first story of the week club house. Have you played with it yet? Have played with clubhouse? It's really good. All of the events that I want to take part in there at three o'clock in the morning for me talking about time zones. So yeah. Have you played
with it? I used clubhouse, I went on to one of the rooms and there was a great. Talk, somebody in Australia, actually, James. So she was running a session, but all she kept doing was saying, add, I'll be tweeting about this on my Twitter account. And I Put my hand up and I went into the room and I said hang on a minute. I reckon Twitter.
spaces when it comes out will actually be a better option because you're then in one platform, I said that I didn't think clubhouse is a longterm viable option. But given that I did want to try something. And this week, a friend of mine, Wayne, who runs Podcast Asia, we decided that it might be a good way for us to see if we can record a clubhouse, room. So we actually did it this week and we've called it club casting. But have a listen to what me and Wayne did.
Hey, I'm joined here by Wayne, the founder of pod Fest, Aisha we're hearing clubhouse. We are trying an experiment, which is we're using our road. Podcast the mixes to try and record this conversation. Why are we doing this way? I think
this is not just to execute a proof of concept. It's basically just to try things out to experiment. And if you never try something new, you would never guess, or even know exactly 100% that you will work out. So why we're doing this? I think it's because a day ago we had a short conversation on clubhouse instead of other apps like zoom, or even like other live virtual streaming platforms, like stream yard. We chose club house because we are already on it.
And. I think so far, we had great experiences and stories to share about our clubhouse experience. So we thought why not? Let's do a Podcast room together.
The goal of what I want to achieve here today though, is to work out whether it's possible to record a clubhouse conversation, because if it is. Then, what you've got is the ability for Podcast and us to create live podcasting with an audience. And that I think is the key part of what we're trying to achieve, because you could use stream yard or zoom and just have a conversation, but now you can invite an audience to that conversation.
They can then join in if they want to ask a question and there's nothing because we can record it. That stops us then. Taking that recording, putting it onto our bus sprout or wherever we want to put it and pushing it out as a normal Podcast. But I think club castings, we call it that may be the way forward, because I think that's, what's missing in podcasting. Is that live interactivity of an audience. Exactly.
One of a scent. And I think that the two terms that you just
come up, clip costing the pot housing. Yeah. The first one is better podcasting. I love it. I was on, on call in clubhouse and they are talking about bringing back recording to clubhouse officially as a feature. So I experiment the other day with just using my iPhone. I set the iPhone recorder in the background, the screen recorder, and then I went into clubhouse and they instantly to take to that, I was recording a conversation. They said it's against the terms of service to record.
When the listener and also the speaker doesn't know you're recording. If you actually tell them that you're recording and we're pretty lax about it, because they said originally that's what clubhouse was there to do. It was going to be a Podcast recording app, but they've decided to put the recording part away, build an audience, and then bring that in and maybe a pro feature or bring that in as a new feature going forward. I think if
they allowed us in a very. Open way if they actually promote it as a feature or courses will be flocking into a clubhouse for the very reason that it's so easy to set things up, it's like a, Oh, you needs an iPhone. Yeah. And all you need, you've done. If you don't have an audience for the amateurs that are beginners. It's even easier to start. So I think it's a thought Sam,
which is why we're
trying it. So a recording from plump house, if clubhouse are listening, then my colleague's name here is Donald Trump. That's spelled T R U M P. how did you record that then? Donald?
Thank you. It's not fake news. The way we did it was we got. Our road Podcast of might mixes and Wayne hardwired hairs to his iPad and he used a pod mic. Now that enabled him to be able to record it locally to the Podcast and mixer. And he captured both sides of the conversation. You'll hear in that recording that Wayne's voice is very clear. Mine wasn't a mine wasn't because I was using a Bluetooth connection to my road. Podcast to mine and sadly. It was not crystal clear.
My pod, Mike didn't work there for, and it was just going through my AirPods, but the point was we could actually do it. So I do think there is something in this that I think podcasters will find it quite attractive. Not all Podcast need to be live and have an audience, but some people like that concept and the idea of having an audience who can come and listen to the live recording. I think this is going to be a game changer.
Maybe clubhouse, let it happen at clubhouse have said that they did have a feature for recording in an early version of clubhouse. But they've taken it out and talking to them in a clubhouse room, actually, they said they will be bringing you that back soon. So watch this space.
Okay. That, that, should be interesting. Maybe they might both add recording and also add an RSS feed. And then you've basically got automatic built in podcasting in there as well.
See where the club casting takes off or Twitter spaces. Do you know quickly when Twitter spaces might be available? No idea. Clubhouse. You've got a window of opportunity. I wonder if you're going
to take it. Yeah, you've got a window of opportunity. If you have a toy phone, if you have a real Android phone, of course, then no clubhouse for you. You're not in the club. Something that works on both though is Buzzsprout they launched something didn't they? Yes,
Buzzsprout have launched dynamic content, which they say is a free way for everyone who uses Buzzsprout to add content. Either side of your Podcast.
I asked one of the co-founders of Buzzsprout Kevin Finn. What dynamic content was?
I think the simplest way to talk about dynamic content is it's the ability for you to add audio content at the beginning, or end of any podcast episode in your entire catalog very quickly and easily.
So the use cases that we give for it is there's the obvious one that comes to mind right away is sponsorships or affiliate, marketing opportunities, things like that, but we've built the tools so that you can use it for things well, beyond that, like the ability to just give timely messages to your audience, regardless of where they jump into your podcast. So we've have lots of podcasters. Who've been podcasting for years and have hundreds of episodes, but.
They might just be doing a, a virtual event next week. And they want to let everybody know who listens to their podcast. Whether you start with episode one, or you start with episode 246, that they're doing this virtual event next week and they want to invite you to attend. And so now with these tools that allows you to record a short message and very easily drop it into your entire catalog. And then once that event has happened, click another button and we. Seamlessly, take it out of all your
episodes. That's very cool. So as soon as your sponsor stops paying and moves on, then you can just get rid of the sponsor credits from all of the shows that you've done.
Yes. It's very interesting in the sponsorship world, because it allows you to not only sell sponsorships based on the volume of downloads that your current episodes are doing, but you can also look at the volume for your entire podcast. Yeah. Maybe 80 or 90% of your downloads every month come from the episodes that you're releasing that month, but you've got another 10 or 20% of downloads that come from your back catalog.
And now you can include those in the sponsorship as well, and potentially get a higher fee.
Now you're deliberately calling this dynamic content insertion, not dynamic advertising, insertion. What's the thinking there. We choose
something different because we're doing something different. We're not doing targeting, we're not doing tracking. We're not doing audience profiling or any of that stuff. All we're doing is we're bringing a very powerful and useful tool and we're trying our best to make it available to what we would call the everyday Podcast or, and it's 98% of the podcasting world, there are. Top tier Podcast that have very different needs and get millions and millions of downloads every month.
That's not the audience that we built this tool for the audience. So we built this tool for, it could be anybody who's just starting a podcast to somebody who's been podcasting for a long time. You could be a professional Podcast and use these tools.
Yeah. But we thought there's a lot of value in providing a dynamic content tool that allows you to insert content in your entire back catalog and make it very easy for you to apply that same dynamic content to new episodes that you upload without having to be on a pro-level plan or have to have a master's degree in audio engineering tools or fiddle with all these different settings. So we wanted to make it.
Very simple to use, very easy for anybody to jump in and apply dynamic content to their entire back catalog, regardless of whether it's just something that they do as a hobby for one or two hours a week, or it's something that they do spend, 30 or 40 hours more time doing, it could be a useful tool
for them. And you mentioned it. Yeah. That you don't need to have an expensive account for it. What's the cost of using it? It's
included with all of our plans. We do give everyone 90 days to figure out if podcasting is right for them without having to pay us a diamond. And then if they do decide that podcasting is fun, they want to continue with it. Then you upgrade to one of our pay plans, which start at $12 and go up from there, depending on your needs. All our plans are limited based on. How much content you want to upload every month.
So the $12 plan gives you three hours and we have an $18 plan that gives you six hours and up from there. So it's very affordable. And these dynamic content tools are included with all of those plans that no additional. So
keep your Podcast short is my thing. Do you have any examples of how Buzzsprout Podcast is using it already? A couple of examples,
come to mind. One, they are planning on using this because they're gonna rebrand their Podcast. They're going to change the title of their podcast. And they were trying to figure out how they should let their audience know. And so we suggested these dynamic content tools are perfect for that because they had hundreds of episodes and now they want to change the name and they didn't want everyone to open up their podcast app one day.
And all of a sudden the podcasts that they know and love isn't up there, alphabetically listed anymore. It's now moved to a different place than their list. So use the dynamic content tools to go ahead and put a short message at the beginning of all your episodes very easily and quickly. And let everyone know that, Hey, two weeks from now, we're actually going to change the name of this podcast. So when you open up your app, we're not here alphabetically anymore. Now we're here.
That was a use case. That was just out of nowhere that we're like, Oh, that's a fantastic use. We didn't see that coming. We also have a lot of people who do affiliate marketing affiliate marketing is a great way for podcasters who are just starting out to take more of the risk on their side. Instead of trying to set up a sponsor who the sponsor is taking the risk with you, if you have a new show.
And so affiliate marketing is a fantastic way for you to test different products and figure out what is resonating or aligning with your audience. Whether it be a Casper mattress or a, a piece of tech equipment, you can go ahead and try that out and you can try it in your entire back catalog of episodes and see. Very easily. Oh, look, I sold a bunch of, mattresses, but I didn't sell any tech gear, so maybe I should look for more affiliates in the mattress category.
What else can we expect from Buzzsprout in 2021? It's a new year. It's going to be a, hopefully a changed year. What have you got in the works?
Oh, we are just going to do our best to continue to provide professional level podcasting tools and make them available to professional podcasters everywhere and professionals alike.
But we feel like the underserved audience, especially when it comes to advanced podcasting tools, are all these people who are jumping into the Podcast ecosystem and loving the space and seeing all the great opportunities it has, but saying, but I don't want to spend a hundred dollars or I don't want to spend $200 a month to get access to these advanced tools. That is.
One of the challenges that we've taken on at post sprout is how can we provide the best technology at a very affordable and approach approachable price point. And it's not just price. It's also making the interface super easy to use. Like you shouldn't have to have hours of training or, get on the phone and walk through support. All the support process and everything that goes along with, steep learning curve software.
And so that's where we're investing heavily is the best technology that we can provide people on making it as simple and as affordable as well
possible. Kevin, thanks so much for your time. I appreciate it as always a pleasure. Thank you, James.
I think adding that to all episodes of your podcast, in fact, with my own other podcasts that I'm going to try, that I think is actually a great way of trying to yeah. Monetize it. Yeah. I think it's a good plan. What else has been going on a venture capitalist loop ventures floats the idea that Apple should launch. Podcast plus a set of exclusive Podcast available to anyone with an Apple one or Apple music subscription. James, what's the story.
So this is a venture capitalist company or venture capital company. Who's busy giving Apple some hints for the future because Apple obviously needs it. And one of their ideas was that Apple should do some premium podcasts because somehow it'll help them fend off Spotify. Not so sure about that. But one thing that I did notice from this is essentially that there's no reason why Apple shouldn't be. Charging for shows if Podcast has want to charge for them.
At the moment we have a reliance on ad revenue, Apple should allow podcasters to set a price for their own shows. If they want to, if that's something that Podcast is, wants to end up doing,
I can't understand because both Apple and Amazon have a micropayment system built in Apple. Obviously when you buy apps can even do the 74 75 P or one pound. Purchase a small apps. They know how to do it. Both ways, both taking money from listeners and also distributing money back to Podcast is because they do it with app developers. So I'm hoping that they would do this.
The one thing I would say though, is if Apple did turn this on and you did set a price, not, everyone's going to be able to set a price and get an audience because not everyone Podcast. Has that size of audience, but there are lots of people who do Podcast index have an extension tag called lock. I would really want to use that and hope Apple was supported because there would be no use Apple having done this, where they've enabled payment for podcasting.
If you could then get it free on Spotify or any other podcast, hosts two links to the Apple directory.
Yeah, I think whenever you start talking about money, as anchor has found, then some people will try and take advantage and to be fair, Spreaker has also found that in the past as well. There are only really three companies that have the capability of. Paying out tiny amounts of money or relatively small amounts of money to people Amazon, Apple, and Google who all have, app stores and things like that.
There's certainly something there which is actually going to be quite difficult for anybody else to actually do this. Yeah. Interesting stuff. Wonder
what Spotify would do if Apple turned
that on? I guess Spotify can't really. Charge per individual show. So yes, it would be really interesting to see what Spotify would end up doing Spotify, reason of being there is that currently they are pulling people in with shows that you can listen to on a free Spotify. Account would Spotify put some of the most successful shows that they have behind a paywall? I don't know, but at the moment, the only paywall that they have is a monthly nine 99 service.
So it would be interesting to see how they would fight back then.
Wonder if they'd have to go on an acquisition trail again? One of my favorite companies is called de script. And it's how I edit my podcast, the D script company this week raise 30 million in funding. So congratulations to Jay and to Andrew
Yeah, $30 million is not bad in a funding round. So de script recently have added a video editing to their audio editing service, and it's just editing as if it was a word document, which is very cool. And there's actually been quite a few funding rounds announced recently, backtracks announced 1.6 million. They are a analytics and advertising platform.
And well done to Cole at pod chaser for a $4 million funding round, which they've just announced as well where it should enable it to expand its work, both enriching Podcast data, but also doing some interesting things in terms of putting advertisers in contact with good Podcast is excellent.
The BBC this week launched the BBC world service international Podcast competition. James. Tell me more.
So the BBC world service is the international radio station for the BBC. So not very many people tune into it in the UK about million actually. But they do lots of things across the world and they're particularly strong in. Africa. And this is where the international Podcast competition is for. I got Paula Rogo one of the judges for the competition and John Manel. Who's the Podcast commissioning editor for the BBC world service. And I asked John about the competence. It's
something I've really wants to do for a while now. I wanted the BBC world service to have a scheme that gave new talents, a unique and important opportunity in podcasting. And that's what this is all about. So I'm so pleased. We've got this up and running. It's the BBC world service international Podcast competition. It's brand new in this first year. You can enter if you're in Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa and not already a professional.
In broadcast media or have a credit on a commercial Podcast. So if you're in one of those three countries, and it has an idea for a Podcast in English, which will appeal to listeners in Africa and throughout the world. And in particular to women, then get ready to write down the details of how two ends up because the prize is what I think is amazing. We will team the winner up with a BBC production unit. You will get to make your Podcast with their help learning from them.
And with all the support of the BBC world service, it will be launched as a BBC world service Podcast hopefully
sometime this year. That's fantastic. And why those three countries? It's
an exciting time for podcasting in Africa, the BBC world service launched the comb last year, our weekly podcast. We're about to launch Africa daily, which is going out Monday to Friday. Those are the three countries where we tend to have our biggest Podcast downloads.
In Africa. So one of the judges is Paula Rogo. What are you looking for as a judge for the BBC world service international Podcast competition. I'm
looking for as a judge, as the BBC has set out a great list of criteria that they're looking for. From podcasters who are entering the competition, including suitability to work as a Podcast resonance for international audiences and resonance for women is just one of the criteria that the BBC has for good reason, because this will be a BBC production. If you win right.
But for me also, as a judge, I'm also looking for that uniqueness, that magic, that one tends to feel when something is working with a Podcast. So it's an opportunity to also be creative, try new things, try new ideas. I think that's what the BBC is also going for it. And. Putting together a competition like this. So go there with your creativity and bring the magic into your,
Entry. You're no spring chicken to podcasting either in Kenya or in Africa as a whole. You're involved with a ton of different things in terms of podcasting, aren't you? Yes,
I am. I said I've never really committed to seeing podcasting grow on the continent because I really think once it takes off, because it hasn't. Fully taken off just yet, but once it does, I think Africa will be one of the places that you can't miss when it comes to podcasting. We are a continent of oral storytelling. We tell stories to each other verbally and radio is King here. There's a reason to BBC world service is a huge component in Africa. And that's just because we.
Love audio storytelling. And I think Podcast fit into that really, really well. So it's no surprise that it's taking off here in
Africa. Yeah, I've done a few pieces of work for the BBC world service in Ghana, and I'm always amazed at how many people listen. To the radio, how many people enjoy great audio? However it gets to them in Africa. It's a fascinating thing, John, where do people go to enter this company? Yes, this
is the all important information. The deadline. Is Friday the 22nd of January, 2021 at 1300 GMT. It's easy to enter. You just need to write a few words. We asked for two minutes of audio as well, but all the details of that, the full terms and conditions and all of that can be found on our website. That's even an email address if you have any questions. So it's BBC world service.com/ Podcast competition. That's BBC world service. Dot com slash Podcast competition.
And you need to be 18 or over, not a professional in Brooklyn arts media, or have a credit on a commercial Podcast and you need to be in one of those three countries, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa. And I love that phrase that Paula just used about magic. That's what we're looking for. It's difficult to define. I think we just want to be surprised. The only thing we aren't looking for is a scripted comedy or drama. But apart from that, it could be anything.
The lovely thing about being judges for this is that Paula and I have, and the others have no idea what to expect. We have no idea what
people are going to come up with. So you're starting with these three countries for this year, but you've deliberately not called it the African international Podcast competition or anything else. Are you looking at expanding this perhaps for next year? Yeah, I
mean, I'm really pleased. We're doing this for Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa for this year. It made sense. Because it is a really exciting time throughout Africa and in those particular countries. And that is, as I say, where we tend to have our biggest downloads in Africa for our BBC world service Podcast and it's important to get the competition established and to ensure we can manage all the entries we expect to receive. So it made sense to focus.
On three countries for year one, but it was, I hope it's successful. I hope we can invite entries from other countries
in future years. And Paula, just one last question for you. It's Africa, Podcast day on the 12th of February, which is very exciting. There's the Africa pod Fest happening then as well. Isn't there.
Yes. The Africa Podcast day is this annual celebration of African Podcast. This will be the second year that is happening and Africa Podcast, we'll be putting together a virtual event. We, our first year was supposed to be in 2020, but COVID sadly had us canceling the event. So we're putting together something a little smaller that will be taking place on Africa. Podcast. Day as well.
And you can go get details on that Africa Podcast festival dot com and it's really a chance to celebrate what's going on here on the continent. I think 2020 was a huge year for African Podcast. I think COVID had a big part to do with that, and we just get to come together, celebrate each other, acknowledge each other, and really put forth what could be a great year for podcasting on the
continent. Paula and John, thank you so much. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for having us. Thank
you. In other news Todd Cochrane of get new central stay released is 1500th episode. That's
amazing. Yeah, it is amazing 1,500 episodes, Todd of course, CEO of blueberry, which has a big podcasting host and yep. One of the things that he said to me when I was reporting, this is how important it is that actually, he's the CEO of a big Podcast and company is one of the big old guard Podcast in companies.
And he says that the only way to stay abreast of what's happening in the Podcast world and actually really understand the struggles that Podcast has have in terms of building a show in terms of keeping up a ties as happy. The only way to really. Stay abreast of that is to actually make shows to actually Podcast. And I just thought it was worthy of note that he's a CEO of a big Podcast company who is podcasting.
And there are surprisingly a lot of CEOs managing directors of large Podcast companies out there who don't Podcast and who don't use their tools every single day. And maybe that's something that they're missing a trick with. Oh, side
ta-da. Looping the story back to Rob Greenlee Todd and Rob do a podcast as well together, which I find it amazing that he has time to do 1,500 podcasts and also do other podcasts which has been doing
yeah, it's a two hour Podcast twice a week. So have a knows how they have the time to end up doing that. But the one thing I love about the new media show is while there are two things, firstly, Todd is incredibly indiscreet and talks about things. He says, Oh, I can, can possibly talk about this. And then says something that's completely. under NDAs and things like that. he's very good at doing all of that sort of stuff.
And the other thing is hearing the trains from Rob Greenlees house, which you can also hear. it's a great show. you should check the new media show out. It's well worth the listen.
Now, we started off talking about Twitter spaces and that was basically a Aqua hire of the team from. Breaker Leah Culver and her team, but it turns out we thought breaker was then gonna obviously be subsumed into Twitter or just closed down. It turns out it's not James. Yeah.
So breaker, they announced that breaker was going to close tomorrow actually, but the app has been acquired instead by a different company called maple media. And I find maple media fascinating. They're a publisher based in Los Angeles in California. And they already own player FM, which used to be run by a nice man called Michael, who was an ex Googler and a Kiwi. They also own a Podcast app called Podcast. And now the guns be owning breaker as well.
So it seems to be where the good Podcast apps go so that somebody is still is loving them and caring for them. So it's quite interesting seeing maple media getting hold of another one, as we record, there's a breaking news story about. Pocket casts, which apparently is going to be sold. So it's currently owned by a bunch of folk, including NPR and PRX, and a little bit of the BBC. And apparently they've basically said, nah, it's got no future with us.
We'd like you to go away and sell it to please. So one wonders whether maple media has yet another Podcast app that they may pull into their, a stable as well. Excellent.
Good luck to maple media now. One last story that we wanted to leave you with in last week's pod news, there was a story by James talking about a company called add delicious.fm. So I thought I'd reach out to them. They're based in Bristol and we thought we'd have a conversation about what is that delicious FM and how can they help Podcast is the idea of
adolescence was that we'd have a flexible solution for professional Podcast is whether it's quite a few, one size fits all type solutions. We wanted to bring a tailor-made. Solution for Podcast as you have audiences around the world. So we focus on communication. We focus on our relationships with sales agencies around the world, and really the idea is just a tailor-made solution for
professionals. And how did you two guys meet? Hi, Dave.
So myself and Pasco, we're based in a lovely little city in the UK called Bristol, and it's very creative and it was quite a serendipitous meeting. We met over a cup of coffee. We both run Podcast companies, production houses, and we got talking and eventually the relationship. Progressed to a stage where we were sharing an office and naturally in these situations you get talking.
And because our productions where our businesses, where our means to make money, naturally, a lot of the conversations went towards the best, the most efficient way to make money. And in that way at delicious became a seed of an idea. we'd start talking about, could we do this ourselves? Obviously, there are companies out there that do it.
They've helped grow the pie, so to speak, but we just wanted an agency to be much more of a flexible, more transparent option for us to make money in podcasting. But we don't always want a contract that ties all of our content into one platform. We don't always want something that provides programmatic, but not host reds.
We don't always want a platform that we have to upload to their server and they have control of the global network and means to selling around the globe in different territories, especially in the us where a big percentage of our listeners occur. And so we started talking about this idea of white labeling and meeting the demands of professional podcasters that want different things that don't tie them down into long-term contracts. That give them the ability to use other agencies.
We want to be a Podcast first selling agency, which gives them the best opportunity possible to make money out of podcasting. Because in my experience, Podcast has got to this stage where. The industry has matured and there needs to be the best possible chance for Podcast is to make businesses out of their content. Unless you're a big production company or you're a big media house, or you have a massive marketing budget. It's just really difficult to make money in podcasting.
And if you have a contract that ties into something that doesn't give you the best deal in terms of percentages for sales, or doesn't allow you to leave the contract, because another options come up, then are we really giving producers the best chance? Probably not. So we saw this opportunity where we were creating something that's quite new to the space we have. Different types of relationships with different types of producers.
And we started on this journey probably at the end of last summer and the traction and the progress has been quite incredible because truth be told when we're talking to other producers about this. They're as excited about it, as we were thinking about it in the first
place. Now if I'm a Podcast, how do I get involved with you? What do I do? What's the process? Do I have a bar? Do I have to have, I have to have 10,000 listeners like a cost demand? W w what's the process? I think
firstly, get in touch and we can, we will chat to anyone and everyone. Ultimately we have different tiers, which enable us to work with different size companies and individuals. Based on the type of show they have.
And we'll always just try and offer transparent feedback really, in terms of the bar, we, one thing we do is international podcasts who have sales companies in their own country, but are not monetizing their UK or EU listens we can offer to just often that segment of their audience, but equally people can join us in a more. Exclusive manner in which we can have, can look after all elements of their advertising out, giving them a host read solutions, as well as spot had some programmatic.
When it comes to numbers, we are at the moment working with more premium loads, the scale Podcast, but certainly with our verticals, if the show works well within one of our verticals we sell they were more than happy to chat or help them find the best solution for them.
Great. Now look, how do advertisers get involved as well with you?
So many of them do email directly, but also we are plugged in with agencies across Britain, but also we work very closely with a lot of American Podcast agencies. And so it's a mixture of agencies working with us as well as brands contacting us directly. And we also plugged into programmatic as well.
in the last few months we've made a couple of key hires on is Craig Eastwood, who has come from radio works, who has a very experienced background in audio, digital sales. And also we've just hired Donna Meechie. Who he basically was part of the core team of audio. Boom. And so in terms of podcasting and digital sales, he's got a lot of experience and context there.
He also had a very senior role that mixed cloud recently, and I call them key hires because they have the connections already in the digital space. They have these relationships where they understand the medium. They understand what works well for advertisers and they have those relationships. And also they're great at explaining that to advertisers and potential brands, Pascal, and myself, where producers, we understand the production side. And obviously the connection that Podcast is.
Can have with an audience. It's another skill to then have that conversation with brands and understand how valuable podcasting is to brands. Because as well as anyone, Sam this kind of intimate relationship that listeners have with the person on Mike and you need a special skillset to actually talk to brands and understand that there's a pipeline and there's planning and there's. There's campaigns. And so those guys are key to manage that for our delicious
David Pascal. Thank you so much. And good luck with adolescence now, can you please tell us where we can find you on the web?
Certainly the best way probably is to go to our website, which is adolescence.fm abolitionists. For those who might be unfamiliar with that word is a D E L I C I O U s.fm. Otherwise you can reach out to me and Pascal on LinkedIn. We'll be more than happy to say hi.
I pronounce them a delicious when I was doing the pod news podcast last week. There you go. That just goes to show, never listened to me. So Sam, what's coming up in Podland for you this month.
So I've. Had an interview with a guy called Adrian Fitzpatrick, who was the founder and CEO of re incubate. They have a new software app called camo and camo turns your iPhone into a high definition video camera for use on zoom stream yard, or any other videos. It's great. It's about 40 pounds. I've been using it. It actually does. Turn your camera into something that makes you look half decent, as opposed to the seven 20 P camera on your very high end, very expensive Mac.
And the other interview I had was with a guy called Dr. Matt Borum and this is a fun app. I've got a company called audible reality. And what you can do is take your Spotify tracks and you can remix them. They're called vibes, and then you can share your vibe with friends so you can take famous tracks and you can remix them. Now, if you want to hear any of that, you can catch them on Sam. Talks. Technology very
nice. And I spoke with Ron bait long from pod metrics, which is a new company in the Philippines. They're working on new ideas for ways Podcast can earn revenue in Southeast Asia. And I'm hoping to get him to speak at radio days, Asia, which has taken a bit of my time at the moment. It's a big radio and Podcast conference some great speakers there. They've got some cheap tickets available, still radio days. asia.com is where to go for that. And that's it for this week.
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