Welcome to Portland. Portland is sponsored by riverside.fm. The easiest way to record podcasts and video interviews in studio quality from anywhere just by using a web browser. We're using it now. And by Buzzsprout used over a hundred thousand podcasts like us to host, promote and track your podcast. It's the 24th of June, 2021. I'm James. Credlin the editor of pod news.net here in Australia.
The editor of Sam Talks Technology here
in the UK and I'm Nicholas Hildebrand, the co-founder of Audrey. And later I will talk about the tools to grow your
podcast. And I'm David Markowitz from Netflix and later I'll be talking about companion podcast.
They will pod lands a weekly podcast where Sam and I delve deeper into the week's podcasting news.
Sweet James. The story that seems to be everywhere is Facebook podcasts. goes live, but there is a caveat isn't there, there always is a caveat. It's only in the us. So now, have you had any spottings of the lesser known Facebook podcasts
page? Yes. it's obviously not available to 95.7% of the population. There's a fact. so from that point of view, I was just there thinking, why would you launch something and not launch it globally? or at least launch it in all English speaking countries or something like that because otherwise podcasts. Promote it podcast has, can't say anything about it because he's not going to work in almost all of the countries where a podcast is available. So why would you do that? Really?
Short-sighted and also you're launching in the most crowded marketplace for podcasts in the world where things like Pandora is available. Things like, the iHeart radio app is available is kind of stuff. Why would you launch in the most crowded marketplace in the world when your product isn't properly there yet? It's really strange. Anyway. so have I seen it? No, because I don't live in the U S nor do you. I've seen Alvin, Brooke posting a couple of screenshots of it and it looks very nice.
Thank you very much. Although Alvin was saying that the audio doesn't actually play, which is, it's a thing. if you're going to make a podcast out, then, make the audio play is probably a good thing. and what we don't know yet is, there's stuff in there in the terms of conditions about caching and all of that. We don't know how that works. We do know though that there are comments, aren't the sandwich. You're very excited by.
comments, less excited by the fact that they're there. It just reminds me, I think Facebook could be onto a winner here. the reason I say it is Bloggers. Like I was a big blogger back in the day and we were on our WordPress and we were working hard to try and build an audience. And that feels very much like podcasting today. To me, we work hard, we produce our podcasts, we've try and grow our audience.
And then along came this thing called Facebook and suddenly comments were there and people had a built in audience. And bloggers just felt like if I'm working so hard, I want feedback. And that feedback came through the comments section on Facebook. And I wonder whether when this goes live, if people have got their groups and they've got their pages and they've got a community and they're getting feedback loops through comments that people are go, what?
I don't need other web pages or other hosting sites from them. Podcasts because I want the interactivity and I guess we all do it because we need or want the interactivity.
that was always the thing about SoundCloud, wasn't it? That they had those beautiful comments and they were comments in the audio at the right point. So when the drums came in, you could comment brilliant drums or whatever. and and so being able to do that, you can do that at the moment in video, in Facebook video. So if you can do that in podcasts as well then. Great.
unfortunately it'll probably be within the walled garden of Facebook, but even so it'd be quite nice to have, I think otherwise I have to say, I'm not sure what the opportunity is because what do you say? listen to us on Facebook, but then how easy is it? to be found?
what I've also learned by the way is that yes, it's launched in the U S I haven't yet seen a screenshot of it working on Android, which is about 45% of the U S also what I've been told is that quite a few people still can't see the podcast tab at all. So it appears as a tab in your podcasts page. but quite a lot of people apparently can't even see that podcasts tab yet. So you need the very latest version of the app.
You need to be turned on somehow as a listener, and they have only been inviting podcasts on a invite only basis. we're not listed obviously pod news, isn't listed Helen Saltzman, interestingly, who is a Brit who lives in the UK, who does a very good podcast called the Allusionist, which is well worth the listen. She has been invited to get her podcast into Facebook. Even though she can't actually consume it within Facebook because she's not in the us. it's a really strange rollout.
And by the way, I haven't heard anything from any Facebook PR about any of this. but it is very different to the Spotify rollout that they announced a couple of months ago, this is proper, within Facebook doing it properly. as I say, I'm not sure it's properly yet. They of course launched podcasts, but they've also launched live audio rooms, but live audio rooms is for the U S only. And it's only available on iOS and it's their clubhouse clown. And I'm sure it's very good.
I haven't seen anybody using that yet. but again, Facebook is clearly working on things, but whether or not they're actually rolling it out.
Hm. I guess they should have used that test bed of Australia, I thought that your comment on Twitter blue is quite cool. there's only 5 million of us. It won't matter. nobody will notice we're a good test bed.
It's pretty well, exactly how the thing works.
Okay. apple had similar launch issues with apple channels and we might touch on that later on, but assuming. That Facebook managed to get this off the ground and make it a global launch. Eventually they have 2 billion global audience in the platform. let's say they managed to get it going. one thing I didn't hear you mentioned was the fact will it work on desktop? We've talked about the app only.
the reason I ask is because I've been using one of the video templates that they have, they standard built in templates for my radio station, except now I can't move the tabs. When you click the edit button, they don't rearrange. So the order is awful. And so do you think they'll bring it to desktop? first question.
I may be I think, A lot of Facebook's traffic is on mobile. And so therefore, why wouldn't they focus on mobile? I may well come onto desktop as well, but I think it's probably a mobile, only thing for now.
And now extrapolate forward, assume that they do get it right. Cause I think they're taking the RSS feed is the way that they'll ask you to consume content into Facebook. How do you think it will work? do you think they will drive an audience there? More and what will be the effect on other
platforms? I suspect that what Facebook will do as much as what Amazon podcasts might well do is it's reaching people that aren't yet listening to podcasts. It's reaching a new audience. my parents are on Facebook. my mother-in-law's on Facebook, Facebook is a catch-all thing that reaches a lot of different people in a lot of different life stages. And, so it may work really well at attracting new audiences to podcasts that haven't yet found it particularly easy to get hold of them.
so from that point of view, I think it's great. Would people use the Facebook app as their main podcast app? I'd be really surprised if they did, but they could do. but I'd be really surprised if they did, but will it be a good introduction to podcasts for a generation of people that haven't yet really understood what they're about and haven't yet consumed a bunch of them? Yes. It could well be very useful for that sort of thing.
it might not be good for the likes of you and me, Sam, but I think we're different. And I don't think necessarily that where the types of people that Facebook care about,
no they're going for the mass. They're not going for the, tech audience. Okay. let's hope that they launch it sooner rather than later across other countries. And then we can actually try it ourselves and see what we think of it. Now talking of other platforms in the main to apple and Spotify this week, James you caught up with the guys at Netflix.
I did. And Netflix has been doing podcasts and has done for quite some time. They've mainly been producing companion podcasts to shows available on the platform. The crown is an obvious one where something else produced some. Brilliant backstage podcasts and you could hear the actors and you could hear the costume lady and you could hear all of this kind of stuff, but they're doing something a little bit more interesting.
Now they're doing a podcast around stranger things, which is a great show available on Netflix. And I caught up with David Markovitz at Netflix to talk about what the company is doing with podcasts and about the new stranger things podcast.
This one is, I think especially interesting because It's still within that world of companion podcasts, but it is a companion podcast to a novel that is coming out in June. And the novel is an extension of the stranger things world. So we're getting multiple steps in building the stranger things universe. when this novel was announced, they were like, oh, what can we do around marketing? Cause all of the companion podcasts are essentially in some form, a kind of marketing vehicle.
and so they were like what can we do to help promote this book? And they were like, let's do a fiction podcast. Let's, take the story of the book and go even further. So it was an interesting exercise because you still need to stay within the plot of the book and you need to find like where there are holes in that plot to go deeper without introducing too much other story, essentially both because.
Change stranger things And because you can't disrupt the plot of the book where you're like, wait the town caught on fire, that's not talked about. so they had to compliment each other. So it was a great exercise in finding that white space and being able to fill it in with a full story, but that also slots into the story of the book. It's multi-platform storytelling
at its peak. And it's a relatively unusual because it's a companion podcast to a TV series or a TV franchise, but it's also audio fiction, isn't it? It is
We are working with Lauren Shippen who created the bright sessions and worked on passenger list and marbles. And so she wrote and directed this and we. leaned on her creative talent and just to, let her like here run, go with this. and we got to work with my Hawk who plays Robin in the series. So she got to play the role in the podcast as well. So that was very exciting.
And it's where I enjoy that, that idea of what can you do with a pet companion podcast that feels like it's still its own content. And and in that way look, there are entire Marvel movies that are essentially companion movies to other Marvel movies. so really thinking of it in
those. But it's a very different thing to finding an actor who was on the show and them telling you amusing stories about what happened in the backlog. that's been the standard companion podcast up until now. And I think it's interesting seeing what you're doing is quite different there.
Absolutely. And, we do those too. those are great people love those. And because it was a novel that we were working with and we were like what would you want that companion to be? and we've done one fiction podcast before and really wanting to do more. And, this was our chance to take that. And especially also that not only does Maya have a fan base. And stranger things obviously has a fan base. but Lauren also has her fan base within that audio fiction world.
taking advantage of all of those to keep expanding the reach. And what's also interesting is that this story, while it's a stranger things, universe, it is taking place in Hawkins during what would be seasoned. One where no one who wasn't those main characters in the series know what's going on. So there's really very little supernatural element within this story, which is also fun. it's just character building, they're not that supernatural.
So is this marketing for new people who don't have Netflix yet? Is this marketing for people who have Netflix and you want to keep them subscribed? What's the strategy behind these companion podcasts?
I see it. Where Netflix and podcasting overlap is this abundance of niches. there's no single audience, there are many audiences. And within Netflix, we have almost these sub-brands where we're talking to specific audiences and using our podcasts in a very similar way. I think it's more super serving the fans. I can't imagine going to a companion podcast, for example, where you haven't already watched, for all mankind will I go listen to that podcast without watching?
Maybe I've maybe people are, but I do think that the most part, I think people are coming to the podcast and, after they've watched and want to go deeper. So that's where it's interesting because it's still within this marketing lens, but that lens is really about super serving the fans and not discovery. I'd be curious to know if people are listening to podcasts and being like, I need to go watch it. Film that this podcast is, I don't know if that's happening, but
maybe There are 3.9 million podcasts out there really happened on that one if they weren't aware of it. But no, that's interesting. there's obviously been plenty of ink spilled about what Netflix might be doing in terms of podcasts in the future. is that something you're able to talk about or is that just wait and see
it's a lot of wait and see a lot of the ink spilled is not, if you really read the ink, that's being written, it's saying that Netflix has been making podcasts and plans to continue making podcasts, which is the case we have, we've been making by guests for three years and we plan on Continuing. the podcast team sits in, more of that marketing arm of the company. we're making podcasts the way that HBO is making podcasts and Amazon videos making podcasts. Do we have ambitions for more?
I can tell you what I want. I can't tell you what the company wants really, because I don't have those meetings people aren't coming to me saying we should be okay. That's not happening. it might be happening in other rooms. no, one's talking to me about it. so they do want to keep making more. They do want to keep expanding what audiences we can talk to, how we can talk to audiences. I don't think that we're going to be diving into original podcast.
soon of original meaning like, let's make our own narrative nonfiction podcasts not yet. we don't do any advertising on our podcasts and the goal is far and wide, so we really do want it to reach as much of an audience. and we do have other podcasts that aren't companion. We have something like, okay now listen, which is really a talk show, talking to specific audiences.
I think one of the things that I've always been fascinated by given audio description I've been fascinated by the amount of great TV stuff that there is maybe not movies, but great TV shows. America's got talent being an obvious example and whose line is it anyway, They are podcasts. They just happen to have pictures associated with them. And I'm really curious to find out whether in the future TV companies that are producing video actually takes some of the back catalog that they have.
And remasters that for audio only,
I think it's a really interesting discussion and, this is public knowledge that there, internal talks about what if we created audio only mode, And I think that one of the reasons that discussion even comes up is, people are listening to podcasts on YouTube. I think people are listening to comedy shows on Netflix and they have it playing on the TV somewhere while they go do the dishes. I think we know that's happening.
And obviously we don't have hard data on it, but I think that's essentially already happening there are shows on Netflix that you can just listen to. You don't have to watch. so it would be interesting like you were saying, what would it look like to really intentionally go in that direction? A little
more rebel, Robin surviving Hawkins debuts next Tuesday, June the 29th. David Markovitz. Thank you so much for joining us, James. It's been such
a pleasure. Keep doing what you're doing,
David from Netflix. Now, James, I heard a little left field thought during the week about apple would apple start to deprecate podcasts with adverts in favor of podcasts that are being pushed to subscriptions. And the reason I said that was. if they're making money from subscriptions, wouldn't they just want to promote those. Cause clearly apple don't care whether we or anyone else are sponsored or have adverts in their podcasts, will they start to push those down?
Because those probably be free podcasts. Whereas if we made our podcasts subscription, we probably would have to remove any ads, which we don't have in ours. But if we did have ads so will apple start to promote subscriptions podcasts over advertising podcasts?
I wonder whether or not they're doing that already. just having a quick flick through the apple podcasts, browse function, there's an awful lot of links to channels in there. There's an awful lot of links to channels, which have. Paid for, extra services. they're really going big on the channels. And one would assume let's just say that there were two podcasts that were equally as good, but one of them was available as a paid podcast that apple would have make money out of.
And one of them wasn't, which would apple choose? I think I know which apple would choose. it would be the one that earns the money. So my guess is that. apple will be keen to promote as much as possible. Those new shows that do earn the money. I mean, featured channels at the moment for me in Australia, at the very least, yes, there's some free stuff in there, but there is also luminary in there there's Pushkin there's the athletic UK.
I'm not quite sure why we get the athletic UK, but still, but there we are, there's a paid for stuff from Headspace and Radiotopia. They're very clearly promoting the paid for stuff already. And it wouldn't surprise me if they carried on doing that in the future.
I wonder whether, again, one of the things I've done is I've set up a channel like you and it's working pretty well as a channel. obviously the one big caveat is you can't subscribe to a channel. You can only subscribe to individual podcasts in the channel. I wanted it. I've had to set up a playlist in Spotify to try mimic the channel effect in apple. Again, wondering what your thoughts are.
will you start to see Spotify looking over the fence and go, Ooh, money over those Hills, let's start to bring in subscriptions and let's start to create channels or whatever they're going to.
I think, there are two things here, there's channels, and then there's the paid for stuff. And you can do one, or you can do both of those. you don't have to have a channel in order to have a paid for thing. I am told that we have listeners in apple by the way. And you said that thing last week of, wouldn't it be really cool if there was a subscribe, all button. In a channel. and the good folks at apple may well be working on that now oh yes.
So who knows, but anyway I think, apple is, very clearly they've recognized that there's an opportunity here for them to earn money out of this channels are nice in that they're a good way of merging similar shows together. I think one of the downsides with apple channels is that, of course, you can only add something to a channel if it's owned by the same apple ID or if you have access to it.
So there won't be any Playlist's in the same way that you find on pod chaser or less notes and I've said in the past, what they've done with their subscriptions and with their channels has been a very good, very clever plan to move the industry forward. And I think it's very good. Will Spotify want to copy that? Spotify, theoretically, already making it available to pay, to subscribe to podcasts, although us only. So we don't get to see any of that, bless them.
and it's a very different experience. It's not as built into the app because weirdly apple won't let them. So you end up with this sort of strange thing where Spotify is selling a subscription to a podcast, but you have to get out of the Spotify app in order to actually buy it. So it won't necessarily work as well, but, I think it's interesting seeing how different companies are doing this. And there are some companies that are just producing ad free versions.
There are some companies that are producing additional content. There are some companies that are producing, the full interview instead of the edited, the thing that you hear on most of the shows So I think it's, really interesting just seeing how different individual podcast publishers are working out, how to use this better.
I think it's slowly catchy monkey. I think there will be a point where we, the consumer just become trained to accept a paid podcast. People won't have to do these extras and all these other gimmicks, to try and make you pay for a subscription.
by the way you've got affiliate deals as well. So if you want to, you run a website that is talking about great new podcasts to go and have a listen to, you can actually make some money out of that. You can link using your affiliate code to the apple podcasts page and I think you get half of the first months subscription money. So that's pretty good.
so my suspicion there is that I think you'll probably see a bit more of those sorts of podcast reviews, podcast, recommendation websites, because actually you can for the first time turn those into cash, but again, you have to be careful because. Otherwise it'll just end up being here are some more paid for podcasts that you can listen to.
and just, by way of openness pod news, does that completely automatically, so any apple podcasts link on pod news automatically gets the affiliate link added to it. and because why not get some free money off apple?
Indeed. Now, one thing that was spotted in the apple podcast app was something called stations. What is stations?
James? station sound interesting. I. Haven't played with them particularly much so far, but it seems to be a way of bringing different shows together in one feed. So you can sit there and have a listen to, lots of shows you might want to add pod news and this show, and maybe the podcast index 2.0 show. I'm only saying that for the boosts. you could add all of those through Sucheta.
and you could have that as a station on your own podcast app called, podcast industry or whatever it is that you wanted to end up doing. that's pretty cool. There's a big, long tutorial on the apple insider website.
in summary, I guess it's playlist, isn't it. It's not the best way of describing it.
I think so. I think it's smart playlists. I use smart. Playlist's a little bit of. PocketCasts where you can set up, some quite complex playlists where you can include particular shows and you only include the last two shows only if they've not been played yet So I suspect it's a little bit like that, but it's worthwhile having a look and I did notice stations in the apple podcasts app a while back and I thought, oh, I should probably have a look into that and never did so kudos to apple insider
Excellent now data everywhere. It's time to have a look around what's going on in the podcasting world. and who's listening to what and where the Reuters Institute, digital news report of 2021 was released yesterday. It gives podcast consumption figures for 20 countries in a comparable manner and says that 31% of people 302 million access to podcasts in the last month. Now James delve deeper into
this for me. So I worked out that 302 million, by the way. that's the amount of people in the 20 countries that they have had a look at podcasting. which is quite a nice figure. Isn't it? 302 million people listening to podcasts every single month. yes. So they've had a look at a bunch of data around this. It's good data in that we don't really have comparable information in this way. from any other data.
Yes. There's the Edison infinite dial research, but that's only in the U S and Australia and Canada. It's not even in the UK yet. So therefore those are really the only three countries that you've been able to compare. So it's great actually seeing the data here which has a little bit more information around podcasting and podcast consumption for 20 countries. Ireland is number one with 41%. The UK is last in their list of 20 with only 22% of people listening to podcasts in the last month.
They do those say that might be because people are using. BBC sounds for example, and then they've assumed that's radio and not podcasts. So it may not be quite as simple as all of that. but it asks a bunch of other questions such as how do you find new podcasts to go and have a listen to the most popular thing in the U S is recommendations from friends.
The most popular thing in Europe is searching the internet, which is interesting cause that points to Google podcasts, maybe being a big thing in Europe. And also it looks at why people don't use podcasts. And the number one everywhere is I don't have enough time. And so maybe shorter podcasts
Now just wondering with Ireland being at the top of the thank God, it's not your feed, your revision song contest, but it clearly, it might be cause England at the bottom, Neil POA. they've done it as a percentage, but having worked out that there's 302 million, what is 41% of the Irish population? If you read did that by actual numbers of listeners, do you know where we might?
Yes. look a piece of paper there. where I actually worked out. so if you were to have a look at monthly listeners, In terms of millions then Ireland is there at 1.9 million. but you've got the UK at 14.7 million. Cause there are rather a lot more of you lot in the UK. And the us is number one, obviously with 120 million, let's do this very quickly. You've got the U S at number one with 120 million at number two is Germany with 20 million.
Then you have you have Italy with 18 million France with 18 million, Spain with 18 million and so on. So actually yes, it is different if you look at the total numbers and maybe, it's lovely that, Norway is number four, but actually they've only got 1.9 million there. So does 1.9 million really moved the needle? I don't know, but interesting data. I'm glad I didn't throw that piece of paper away.
I just feel like Alan fluff Friedman just popped into the room there.
Not off. Nobody in America will understand that
Okay. Now more data Nielsen have suggested that light podcast listeners, who listened three times or less per month? Ah, that's what a light podcast listener is. Yes. Now make up half of all podcast listeners.
Nielsen's data is interesting. I think I'm about to make myself an enemy and Nielsen. Cause I'm going to write something for my radio newsletter about some of their radio numbers james.crit.land. If you want to get that one anyway Nielsen says that there's an awful lot of people who only listened to one or two shows per month. I've been pointing this out from the Edison research, infinite dial numbers for a while.
What Edison research say is they come up with a, an average, and I think the average is three or four, maybe even five, but actually when you have a look at it, most people only listen to one or two shows per week or per month. and that's a real opportunity I think for us, because I think if we can convert those people that already know what podcasts are, they're really listening to two podcasts. Let's just get them to listen to more.
The other thing that Nielsen said, which I liked was 42% of all podcasts listeners listen to comedy. So comedy is a good genre. And the one that has gained the most listeners since November art by 20% is fiction podcasts and fiction is, you know, I've been banging on about fiction being a growth genre for podcasts for awhile. And it's good to see that Nielsen's data seems to show that.
maybe people who know podcasting and use it are called light podcasters I'd probably even describe maybe me sometimes. The thing, you just mentioned time being the biggest problem, but also the other problem is I don't have time to go and find new podcasts. I ended up in my little rut of tech podcasts that I listened to and that's where I stay in my comfort zone.
And so I wonder whether going back to the Facebook comments, or maybe there's other mechanisms of discovery that are needed yet, which I don't think podcasting is really.
No, I think that's absolutely right. And I think one of the things that I was quite encouraged by in the BBC. Podcasts that they put out recently called the Lazarus heist was that they went to commercial breaks within the show, but the commercial breaks weren't commercial breaks. They were, merit hill graph popping up and saying, if you liked this show, you'll probably like death, a nice valley. And there's going to be a new episode of that coming out fairly shortly.
And you should go and have a listen to that. So cross promotion and stuff like that is something that I think we all benefit from. It's probably something that we should do a little bit more in this individual show actually. and maybe we should be linking over to buzz casts, the podcast that Buzzsprout puts together. We should be, taking clips from that. and and maybe her way around so we should probably be doing a little bit more of that.
And I think that's a great way of attracting more people, to actually have a listen. And it's funny that you should mention that because a really good way of, growing your podcast is to actually find more podcasts that are the same size as your own and very similar genres to your own. They're really good place for episodes swaps. They're a really good place for guests there is actually a product which is helping with that. and I chatted to them. The company is called.
And I chatted to Nicholas Hildebrand who was in a tiny little booth in the HQ in Berlin, in Germany. And he tells me all about what was
Andre is the only podcast community online is completely and entirely focused on growth by leveraging collaborations between podcast hosts.
Okay. And you're talking about growth in terms of growing podcasts.
Exactly. So our mantra is empowering podcast creators to own their success story. And for us, the success story can be different depending on what kind of podcasts you have. If you have some one with mass appeal, one is more in the niche area. So we'll run a focus on you, grow your podcast. Tool, according to the success goals that you've set for yourself. And that can be more listeners that can be more partners, more interview guests.
So it's really defined what you want to achieve, but it's really focused also on your podcast. It's not necessarily focused on anything
else. So this is a tool that allows you to get in touch with podcasters who are the same size as you who are in the same niches you, if you want to or in similar niches, is that the sort of thing? Exactly. So
one challenge we saw in various Facebook groups online communities is collaboration is one of the number one growth drivers. If you want to look for audience growth and reach more listeners, because other advertising opportunities are a bit tricky, like Facebook tends to be very expensive and very not ideal for audio. So we created this platform, which is only podcasters, right? Or like a database that you can look for the El patho.
So you can say, okay, I'm in this niche, I'm looking for an interview guests from that niche. They can do it. If it's a lot of the podcasts, I say, I want to give a shout out to a person that has a similar audience and they do the same. Then you can find them on
Audrey. pod news is in there, although pod land, this podcast isn't. So I should probably go and fix that. but you have things like how many people get your podcast every single week, so you can actually match in terms of sizes. you've got a ton of information about that. And so once you find other podcasts, then it's just as simple as sending them a messages. Exactly. It's
usually you can even do more. So we encourage people to send a proposal requests. So we have a templatized kind of use a flow. So if you find someone, you can just send them a message or the easier way to get to where they want you to just tell them what you would like to do. So you tell them. I would like to have you as an interview guest, but in return, I would like to have a shout out for my podcast.
So then you make it really easy for the other party that might not be aware of you to understand what you're looking for, what they can expect in return. And then it's all about you guys to figure out how to make the collaboration happen. That's a chat functionality and you can take it from there, but it's really like a
guided partnership. So what's the business model here. do you take money from us or how does that
work now? Andre is completely free and has been since its inception and there's currently not a way to give us money. So even if you wanted to give back to us, there's currently no option as a conscious choice. So we. Want to work on a model that makes sense for a lot of podcasts and the main chunk of podcasts as ellipse in published a study the other day is at very tiny, 3% of podcasts does have more than 6,700 views per listens, per episode.
So we want to build a model that ideally scales with the success and the growth of the podcast, not just asking for fee as a member. So we don't want to rush it before we have a model where we feel like there's growth. Actually, our business model is aligned with the growth of a podcast and we have some VC funding. So we have investors that are on the same side as us and say, it makes no sense to Russia's any kind of.
Revenue sources if it doesn't really scale well with what we try to ultimately build.
So how long have you been going then? So
the platform we launched in March of last year, so it's been one year and three months and we've started building the actual platform end of 2019. So we send out the first emails large-scale to podcasts. is this something you would even be interested in while building it understanding what the problems and challenges are. and then the first prototype was launched in March. And since then we've added a bunch of features, gotten a nice facelift. It looks way prettier now than it did back.
but that's been
bit over a year. It's always nice to give something a bit of a visual refresh to make it look a little bit smarter. So what sort of podcast is have you helped over the past 18 months or so
stories of success stories. We have someone on our websites. So if you want to check them out anyone can read them. We publish them. And we have a few stories where also not necessarily about cross promotion. So I can, the panto on our website have a cross promotion, but also other podcasts that have approached us and saying they've never had it as easy to just keep that interview schedule stocked is just completely booked out for three months. And it's so easy to just find new ones.
That's great. One other podcast is actually running an online radio as well. They didn't affiliate deal with any U S American podcasts, even though. In Europe. So they also, these kinds of partnerships happening now. other things that we're trying to do with connected to the older platform that necessarily through the Audrey platform is we putting out feelers out to sponsor different events and also put people on podcasts and positions they could not get without us necessarily.
So right now we have a partnership with a publishing house in New York, trying to get New York times bestselling authors on as interview guests on smaller podcasts.
So there's a couple of stories that will be coming out very soon or try to build these opportunities that not necessarily only a podcast, but saying we as an aggregator of a large number of great podcasts with high quality that not necessarily that easy to discover and create opportunities that they wouldn't have without us necessarily, it would be just much tougher. It's just much easier for us to create these opportunities
so you can actually help PR companies and help, people wanting to promote things to actually get out there and to get into the niche podcasts that they should be getting into.
Exactly. And we're still trying to keep it as close as the value as close to the podcast as possible. So for example, a great interview guest that wrote a book that is popular, or it's like a celebrity is still a great value for the podcast.
Whereas advertising itself for the podcast, success is a completely different direction and not touching right now because they have, we also, we have very good relationships with large scale advertisers that spend six figures a month on podcast advertising, but we also know how they work, how aggressive they are and how structured and how easily they could take advantage of inexperienced podcast us.
and also one thing, one just microscopic thing that we want to talk about what are we in the focus on is. Many podcasts will never be in a position where advertising will pay for the, let's say their podcasting job, because they never get to that size just based on specificity of the podcast, the loan, if you're not a massive Helion each, then we put, we will be pushing people in direction where they think advertising is the holy grail.
When you can probably make more money or be actually independent podcasts without advertising based on different models. And we don't want to create this push in a certain
direction. no, that makes a bunch of sense. So if I'm a podcast listening to this and I'm thinking, oh, this Audrey thing sounds like a good idea. how do they get started? It's pretty
straightforward. If you go to audrey.io, you can sign up and all you need is the link to your apple podcast page. And the reason why you have to use that one is because we use that link to verify you're actually the owner of the podcast. So whoever signs up with the linkage is type it in type email. You want to sign up with, we send a verification request to the email that specified in your eyes as feed. Cause you're the only one that can change it and I'm access to that.
And at that point you have verified own of the account. We get a confirmation link, you confirm it, you have access. it's pretty, pretty
quick and pretty straightforward. Cool. So the website is audrey.io. Nicholas, thank you so much for your time. Thank you. So the folks at Audrey with a way of finding podcasts, like your own to work together with, and maybe one way of doing some interesting podcast. Discovery Sam indeed.
Now talking about podcast discovery I think it was just at the end of last week show, but I don't think we've talked about it. Spotify has bought pods, a podcast discovery platform. So maybe discovery is the next big thing. Have you used pods? What'd you think
what they did is they bought it and pods is essentially closed down instantly, but the idea was that it would automatically go and grab clips of podcasts so that you can promote them in other places. And of course that works fantastically for Spotify because you could, if you wanted get a little clip of, since you've been listening to these two podcasts, you might like this one, here's a clip. and so I suspect that there'll be doing that sort of thing with it. so pods is one way of.
Doing that sort of thing. There is also that uses artificial intelligence, but there's also another tool called hark audio and hark uses human beings to find clips. And I was actually really excited. I had a good chat with Don McKinnon who is their CEO, and we will have that next week in this very podcast. and I think it's a really good and exciting app annoyingly USO me.
They all aren't there, but I think it's a really good app that might really help people find new shows that they want to go and have a listen to. So next week on this show you'll learn a little bit more about hark audio.
Okay. Twitter spaces launched ticketed spaces and super follows, on the back of the fact that Facebook's coming out with their clubhouse clown. is this the next course as well? Oh yes. And they're all recording.
And yes. And they're all recording so I think, Twitter is there. I think there's currently an arms race at the moment of who can work out the best features and who can iterate fast enough. And one of the things that I've noticed I'm a real fan for clicking the button on my phone that says, are there any updates to apps? and I must click that two or three times a day.
I have noticed so many updates happening for both Spotify greenroom and for for the clubhouse app, they have been updating and updating And I find that really interesting because they are clearly iterating very quickly. And this is what a Twitter is obviously doing as well. And you can expect Facebook to be doing that sort of thing too. I think it's just get your devs working as hard as they possibly can to launch new additional features.
if you've been on Spotify greenroom, it's all about the gems and everybody's talking about gems and everybody double tapping people's faces to give other people gems and everything else. That's a really clever, simple gamification tool that none of the others have. and it's those little touches which are going to make or break these apps. I think so, if Twitter is adding ticketed spaces, super follows, some people I gather already playing with a far side as well.
so all of that kind of stuff, really interesting to see what's going on.
I still suspect clubhouse will have to be an acquisition. And the one player that seems to be missing in the party is apple
or Amazon even. apple or Amazon, there is also stereo as well, which has a live social platform. There is Reddit talk to read it already has quite a lot of these sorts of bits already in their platform. So read it. Talk is a thing. Telegram voice chat. LinkedIn are having their own LinkedIn live audio rooms. there's one on discord. There's one called. Yerba.
and there's also lay her and backstage, which are both used in India as well, and pod bean live, which I did a thing on the other week, there's a full article about this on pod news. the last couple of days written by Jared easily, who is from podcast movement. And he had a look at all of the alternatives. there are loads of these companies out there. So I suspect that we will see these survival of the fittest or we'll see individual communities using individual things.
Reddit has a very different feel than Twitter, which has a very different feel than Facebook. So a ton of these services, which is worthwhile just bearing a mind and seeing what's best.
So just thinking it through there. Oh, are we seeing a change in the way that people record podcasts? Do you think? we prerecorded podcasts, we edit it and then we put it out. but these feel like they're going to be just live podcasts. That could be literally. then posted straight after a live audio
session. And that's, I think what Spotify is getting very excited by. So there is a sports journalist called Ariel. Helwani never heard of him, but he's announced he's to do an exclusive show for Spotify as the ringer within green rooms. he announced earlier on this week that they're going to do a live show with callers taking your questions and everything after every NBA game, or maybe NHL or maybe some other sports ball and it will be made available as a podcast.
so it's green room being used as the recording tool. And then presumably somebody is going to post produce it tighten it up and stick it out as a podcast. so I'm sure that we're going to see more of those sorts of things. And I suspect that, there's no difference to where we are now. There are some people that will happily press the record button, record a podcast, press the stop button and then publish. and there are some very large podcast industry podcasts that work in exactly that fashion.
Or there are those that actually take a little bit more time and, Polish it and everything else, which is what this particular show is. You do all of the editing. I think there's a bunch of that going on, so I don't suppose that it changes much, but I think it just gives people another set of tools. And actually I think Spreaker has had these sorts of tools for the last three or four years.
it's probably not a particularly new thing to some people, really interesting seeing how some of these tools are taking off. And clearly, the fact that Spotify greenroom is like clubhouse, but it records is a big deal to quite a lot of people.
A couple of other platforms have launched as well. squad cast has launched version four with a couple of features that sound interesting. They've got Dolby, IO support and spatial audio. Is that spatial audio following apple special.
Yes, I'm not sure what their spatial audio is. I know that they have been working with a bunch of, one-click audio mastering so that the audio quality will be as good as you possibly can. The big deal is up to 10 people in a session, which they've never had. and that's more people than Riverside actually, too. So that maybe there's an arms race there. but really good to see squad cast continuing to iterate with their tool as well. I think Dolby is doing.
Interesting things in terms of using their audio technology in ways that, up until now, haven't really been available to anybody other than very expensive, professional gear and all of a sudden they've opened up a bunch of API APIs and anybody can actually jump in there. but it's great to see that that squad cast is innovating as indeed, Riverside FM is as well with their media boards. or. All competition is good in this particular space. I think.
the other one that's in this space is stream yard. And the reason I only mentioned it is because I'm doing a conference in my bear and a friend of mine who's running it, Ralph has used to do the big mobile conference in Barcelona and he he's running, I think in the last month, he's run 220 online conferences and he's done them all with stream yard. And for one reason only he says the quality isn't as high as Riverside or potentially podcast Scott cars.
But it's a, it enables you to push the video to YouTube links, tin and onto Facebook live. So I wonder whether these other platforms will also start to integrate to third party. Social media platforms.
that may well be the case. I learned about a new platform called Mellon. the other day and Mellon is a system which essentially does all of that. sending a video feed to a bunch of different platforms automatically. so that has been launched relatively soon. I think that there are two different sets of tools here. There's one set of tool, which is a remote recording tool, which Riverside is, which squad cast is in which, others are as well as Zencaster and all of those.
And then you've got additional services which are particularly good for live video. for conferences for those sorts of tools, I think podcast day 24 used a combination of zoom and a few other things as well in order to make that bit work. So I think, those sorts of tools are really good, but I think they are different. And, I think you need to be careful, to focus on the right tool for what you want to end up doing.
as I say, any work in this space that actually, continues to improve what the audience gets is always a good thing.
Great. It's competition. Now, one of the things that you talked about I don't know, probably couple of months ago now, James was a climate category for apple podcasts. Seems someone at iHeart radio. Might've been listening.
Yes, correct. So it's not quite the same as a climate category that podcasts can add themselves to. But what I heart radio in the U S has done is they have a climate category within the iHeart radio app. So you can actually go in and find podcasts, which are all to do with climate, which is great. It's the first major podcast app to have a category that is specifically around climate change. And that's a good thing.
I found it interesting that apple as a company they're hugely excited about how green they are. They did all kinds of exciting things around earth day which was earlier on this month. I think they have a big environmental section of their website, which has lots of green in it but they've not bothered. Putting a climate category into the podcast app yet. And I think that would just be such an easy win for them.
and I'm not quite sure why they haven't bothered doing that yet, but presumably they don't want to change any code while they're still making it work, which is the other side, maybe just exhausted
developers.
exactly. And I'll tell you what, we've actually got some feedback. we got a message. So yes, you can send us email questions at Podland dot news. And here's one from Benjamin Richardson who works at RSS podcasting, rss.com. He says, I was just listening to last week's episode of Portland news and thought I would let you and Sam know that we have a robot that we built to police for copyright content. We have it at 98% accuracy and it continues to improve based on machine learning.
I was surprised. He says to hear you say that others aren't doing that, which shows that they host, perhaps there are more doing it than we just don't know. I love listening to the show. I love reading pod news daily. Thank you both for all your hard work.
Thank you very much, Benjamin. We don't know if they're doing it. I guess that's the point? you may well be hearing James, but I'm not that people are having podcasts taken down for content violations. I haven't had any buddy come back on anything I've seen or posted that said, oh, that's a podcast violation, but I tell you what if I stick engineering up on Facebook, that's got any music in it that has a audio element. I've instantly got the Facebook police.
I know that anchor does have copyrights checking for music. but they don't have copyright checking for other podcasts, but they do have copyright checking for music and that's handy. But anchor has a rule, which is no music on anchor podcasts, regardless of whether or not you've got a license. If it's music in their database, then you will get thrown off Eve, even if you've paid for it. And you think that you can use it legally.
so just worthwhile knowing that's the way the anchor works and they can work however they want to because they're anchor.
what's interesting though, with the apple channels, is they actually give you an option when you create your podcast to say, yes, I have a license for copyrighted content within this podcast. So you can actually check it. And I've done that several of my podcasts for the radio station, and then it gets green-lighted and I assume if they want to ever ask me for my PRS license, I will present it.
Yes. I'm not entirely confident that you are covered, but but yes, I think I think in terms of licenses, it's really hard, there's no programmatic way to check that anybody has a license and I banged on about this, a couple of shows ago that it would make an awful lot of sense if there was a programmatic way of checking whether or not you had a license, the only problem is that actually the music industry, isn't at a stage where it can give you licenses yet that work properly across the world.
So until we're at that stage, then there's not much point, playing around with how that tech might actually work. we need to wait for the music industry as we've been doing for the last 15 years. We might as well carry on waiting there. exactly.
Now a little bit of a podcast tutor. Oh, tech news. then
James space talk.
Yes. they've just posted that they've hit 4 million podcasts in the podcast index. but oddly only 640,000 were active in the last 60 days.
Yeah. we've know, always known that the amount of shows which are still being updated is quite low. but there again, when you go into a bookshop, you don't only want the books which are still being written. you want some good books to read and the same goes for podcasting as well.
So yes, but it's, nice to see that they've actually hit 4 million podcasts in the podcast index which is good to end up seeing, I think there's a story behind this, which is, essentially saying there are a lot more podcasts out there than exist in the apple podcasts directory, or indeed in this Spotify directory. and so that's, just worthwhile knowing But I think 640,000 updated in the last 60 days, I've actually asked them, can you possibly come back with a figure for 90 days?
Cause that's the normal figure that most people use, in terms of how these things work. hopefully they might come back and and fix that so that we can see 90 day number, as well.
Now the godfather of podcasting, Adam Curry. So there you go. I've mentioned them already. he believes that podcast require an open RSS feed and that other shows should be called net costs. What side of on the bed?
So Adam believes very strongly that a podcast is only a podcast, if it has an RSS feed. And if it's open to everybody to listen to, and exclusive shows, things on Spotify, things on apple, paid for podcasts and stuff, shouldn't be called podcasts. And it should perhaps be called net casts.
Now net cast, of course is what Leo LaPorte used to call podcasts a long time ago when Leo a didn't like the fact that it was called after podcasts and B was a little bit worried at the time that apple were going to trademark the term podcast which was something that could have happened. I don't think they can now, so Adam is Firmly on the line that a podcast is a technical definition. and that technical definition should include, enclosure, tags and RSS feeds. And that's fine.
Adam can certainly have that point of view if he wishes. I have a view that whatever people out there called podcast is probably what a podcast is. And we should maybe talk about open podcasts if we want to be strict and accurate in terms of whether or not something is an open podcast or a free podcast or an exclusive one, but, that's the wonderful thing about this. You can have a good debate about what a podcast is. And Adam probably has rather more of a view than I do given Adam's long history
my one little claim to fame is I went to school with Ben Hammersley who came up with the term podcaster.
there we are. I'm sure you had a wonderful mustache even though
probably
The other thing that Adam has said is that there will never be an apple podcasts for Android. and he has said this and I have bear Tim 100,000 sets will be an apple podcasts for Android. By the end of the year. That's not really an awful lot of money. Did you check
with your boss the wife before you make that
bet, but a hundred thousand sets? I reckon there will be an apple podcast for Android by the end of the year. Absolutely adamant. Adam is adamant that there will not be. So, there we are. Sorry. you've lost that bet, Adam, but that's how that works. other news from a podcasting 2.0 cast pod is now supporting the gooey tag that Ty wittered on about last week in pod land and pod serve.fm, which is a podcast host now supports chapters and transcripts the chapters, by the way I was using.
One of the new podcast, 2.0 apps on my phone, not so long back. And just being able to see the chapters appear when I was listening to the podcasting 2.0 podcast. very impressive, really smart. And I think it's one of the things that I wish PocketCasts or someone like that. Someone who is a big podcast app on both iOS and Android would actually focus a little bit more on integrating some of the new podcasting, a 2.0 namespace tags.
because that is the big difference between an also ran that works pretty well. The same as apple podcasts or Google podcasts and something which offers people, something additional and something special. But it'd be really good just to see a bit more of the bigger podcast apps starting to integrate some of these tags, particularly chapters and transcript, they seem to be really obvious ones that have some real clear and simple wins,
I add the transcript of this show and chapterize it in bus sprout sadly apple, no longer support chapters in the current podcasting app. And it doesn't appear in Spotify either as chapters.
it's a real shame. It's a real shame. And it would be great if that happened and a little bit of a plea, if there are techie people who are listening to this particular podcast, I would really like to make sure that my show art, my episode art works on. Apple podcasts for pod news. And at the moment, my episode art does not.
And I would really like to know what the magic incantation is for FFM peg or whether there's something else that I need to install on my Mac that I can do with a command line. Don't point me towards the iTunes app. I'm not interested, but if there's something on the command line that I can use, I would love to know what that is. So if you think, the answer, then please write it down on the back of a stamp, turn a envelope or a postcard and send it to [email protected].
that would be really good. I will share it with the rest of the community because even something as simple as episode artwork would be nice to be able to actually do.
Excellent. Now, James, we're coming to the end of the show. So what's been happening for you in Podland this week.
Finally, the end of the show. I've been having good fun. Actually. I was working with a French radio broadcaster the other day on the future of that. Radio brands which was fun. I was talking to another company about maybe helping them with some of the things that they're doing with their technology. And I'm speaking on the I'm speaking for the podcast academy on July the seventh.
If you're in the U S July the eighth, if you're in Australia, podcasting a whole world of opportunity, just, pointing out that the might be more to the podcasting world than just the United States of America. so if you are a member of the podcast academy, then it's free. You should come and watch. And if you're not a member of the podcast academy, then you should be go to the podcast academy.com and sign up and I will see you on July the. What's happening for you in Portland this week? Sam
eat, rinse, repeat. It feels the radio station clearly which is taking up a lot of my time, but that's fine. the podcasts that I shouldn't mention, you told me because then it might actually make the podcast charts about football. and
yes. Don't mention it until it's time to launch. Yes.
So we've produced a few bits and pieces for that. So I'm looking forward to producing that and getting that one out. very good. And that's pretty much it for me at the moment.
Excellent. that's all the good thing. and in terms of podcasts this week, I would recommend the signal from the ABC. They had a really good story. the other day, maybe even today about financial scams and how there are lots of financial scams going on at the moment. And even quite intelligent, people are falling for them. it's well worth a listen. You'll find it in your podcast app, probably under ABC the signal and that's it for this week.
Come back to Podland next time you can follow us in your car cast app or we're at pod lands.news on the web.
If you have any comments or questions, please tweet us at potlatch news or send us questions. Questions at Portland news. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, always ping us.
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