Welcome to Podland Podland is sponsored by buzz sprouts. The easiest way to host, promote and track your podcast [email protected]. It's Thursday, March the 25th, 2021. I'm James credit and the editor of pod news here in Australia.
Hello. And I'm Sam sniffy. The editor of Sam Talks Technology here
in the old country. And I'm Corey lighten from IRNS iHeart Podcast network Australia. And later I'll be talking about Podcast down on that. I'm the
Keshawn from Riverside that a femme and later I'll be talking about that remote recording tool.
And I'm Donald Albright chair of the Podcast Academy. And later I'll be talking about the Andes.
Well Podland is a weekly podcast where Sam and I delve deeper into the week's podcasting news, which I cover [email protected].
We'd love you to get involved with this podcast. So if you want to send us a voice message, please do so two questions at Podland dot news, or you can tweet us at Podland news. This week's big story. it's not really a big story, James, but it is a number we've hit 2 million podcasts coding to Apple podcasts, or according to Daniel, J Lewis at the Podcast industry insights tools. Now you have to say 2 million every time, James, is that going to be okay for you?
Yeah, 2 million, So what you'll be able to spot now is you'd be able to spot the people that aren't really up to speed with the podcasting world. Some of them still say, Oh, there's about 800,000 podcasts. Nope. Some of them say there's about one and a half million podcasts. No. 2 million shows in Apple podcasts. 37% of those are active by which Daniel J. Lewis means published at least one episode in the last 90 days. Ask me if I care. Sam, do you care, James?
No. Good. No.
If you go into a book shop, does anybody say, Oh, I wonder, ah, yes. I wonder where the Dan Brown is still writing those books. Are there any more books of the Bible being written now or has that pod faded? What a load of nonsense? I don't care too much about that sort of thing, but perhaps I should. I don't know.
I think he's just an indicative that the industry is growing still. That's all.
Yes. Which is probably a good thing. So 2 million is that the magic number, the big piece of work there is to work out, which are the good podcasts in the 2 million and which are the bad
one way might be to see who won an award. That would be a way to find out which of the good ones and bad ones. So let's see. A few weeks ago, we talked about the nominations for the ambiance, the new Podcast awards for the Podcast industry what's happened there. James, any news?
we did, I was able to chat with the chair of the Podcast Academy about how the Ambius all works. The chair is Donald Albright, and I started by asking him what the Podcast Academy aims to do. So the Podcast
Academy is a professional member organization. And we celebrate both excellence in audio diversity in the Podcast platform as well as a focus and spotlight on education. Networking and community.
And one of the things that you have started doing is the ambience, which is a Podcast awards. What are the ambers setting out to celebrate? The Podcast
industry deserves to be celebrated. And what we wanted to do was create an award show that was a peer driven award show that celebrates excellence in audio and excellence and podcasting, and also the diversity and the. The depth of talent that the industry has. There's so many podcasts with 2 million podcasts out there and we deserve our night, right?
So we want to make sure that we're celebrating all the different diverse voices, wanna make sure we're celebrating the impactful podcasts and one of to do it in a way where. It's actually the industry speaking up for itself versus, not just one segment of an industry, but not just the press or not creators alone, but everyone who was working within the industry building up and celebrating all the different projects that are coming out within that calendar
year. So earlier this month you announced 164 nominees. How many interests did you get and how were the nominees chosen? We've got over
a thousand entries. We were really impressed by that. There was just an overwhelming response. We weren't sure. How many we would give, but a thousand was really a number that we thought was great for our first year, 164 of those were obviously our nominees, the process. We have two rounds of judging. We have a hundred member panel called the blue ribbon panel, and they're all made up of members of the Podcast Academy. Our current numbers.
And the Academy itself is over 800 members, but the a hundred members of the blue ribbon panel went through two phases of judging. They judged all of the different submissions based on several different criteria. And that basically kicked out a score and the. Top seven scores became our nominees in each category.
Why wasn't my pod news Podcast. why didn't that get into the nominees? I'm only joking. I know why, because he's not very good. so how will the winners be voted for, so the
difference between the nomination process and the process of determining the winners is that any member of the organization will be voting on the nominees, whereas it was the panel that any member. So if you're a member of the Podcast Academy I think we are extending membership through the 26th of this month. So if you're a member by the 26th, then your vote counts. Just like my vote counts towards who those winners are.
Okay. So you have less than 24 hours. If you want to vote, if you want to become a member of the Podcast Academy, but you should becoming a member of the Podcast Academy anyway, so they will do the final voting. And then there's a big presumably virtual awards ceremony coming up. Isn't there.
Yes. So we are doing our first inaugural Abby's. It's been. in the words we announced the ambience, when we first set out to launch the Academy. So this is now over a year in the making May 16th at 5:00 PM is when the show will kick off. We have a pre show prior to that. And yeah, we're looking have a night of. Virtual fun.
initially we set out to do this in person, but obviously we want to make a safer work award show this entertaining, not, it's for the industry as a whole is for the listeners is for the creators. So you want to make it a fun event where you can honor excellence in an audience.
So we'll be able to watch that on online. Will you need to be an Academy member or is it open to anybody
it's open to anyone to watch. We'll be streaming live on YouTube and on Twitch. and yeah, we encourage everyone to, Vote become a member and vote watch, see who wins and follow your favorite Podcast. We're looking forward to some announcements coming up soon in terms of pre-show and hosts. So we have a few more things up our sleeve before that
award date hits. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. Now I had a look at the nominees, lots of nominees. Of course, fewer than 10% from outside the U S and most of them from the UK, which is my home country to, from Australia, which is where I live now, which is exciting four from Canada, one from the UAE. Do you think that the U S focus is just the way that the industry is? Or is that something you'd like to work on in the future? Sure.
Yeah. There are a number of things that you want to work on in the future. Part of the reason that I joined was. To become part of the change in the industry. if you want the industry to reflect something, then you should get in there and help to, help it to help build it to be what you want it to be. And we want to become a more diverse organization. We want to become an organization that is just as beneficial to the big players as. To the independence.
And one of the big things on our list that we talk about on a monthly basis is how are we truly going to be represented as international organization? All right. Currently we only have one governor outside of the U S based in the UK. And we want to expand that out. We want to have in the future subcommittees that are helping to inform us of the different policies and practices across the nations.
Actually, there's a language barrier in some In some countries, so we're going to be working on that as well. But, I think there's, there is a path to expansion in, throughout Canada, throughout Europe, South America and Australia. that's
definitely a focus moving forward. Yeah. Yeah. And I noticed that I think all of the nominees were English language. Maybe there was one Spanish language in there, but I think that was basically it is again, is that a reflection of where the industry is right now or again, is that a plan.
Yeah, I think it's a reflection. if you just look at podcasting in general and how the, just where are the numbers and where are those listeners coming from there? Even our shows, are nine, we're getting 90. I believe 6% of all of our listenership is coming from the U S so that's the big bulk of listeners. I think the good thing is that. People you listen to podcasts, you're exploring.
And I think what we should be doing is outreach into other countries, finding other stories, talent, and bringing them not only for the U S audience, but if the USI is discovering talent from outside the U S then they will also go there to hear stories that are taking place outside of the U S because you want to travel, you want to remind to traveling and listening to audio showed, or we're working on A project now with a host that's from New Zealand. yeah we're open.
And we definitely want to make this, we want to be inviting, right? We want people to want to be a part of this and accommodate and make sure that they're there. We're also providing them with the services that we're proud of when in the U S so the fact that we can do a lot of this stuff virtually, I think is great because everyone, no matter where you are, I can participate in our webinars, in our socials where you can just meet and greet and network. yeah, we're looking forward to bigger and
better things. Yeah. I'll tell you what I can take parts of them. If I get up early enough. that's always a hard thing for me. So the future plans for the Academy, obviously the awards are going to be a tent pole event that you do every single year and hopefully a physical event in future years. you've alluded to things like webinars and stuff like that. what else are you planning for the future of the Academy?
So we want this to really, it's all about the members, right? We want this to be beneficial. it's not really about. The award show is the glitz and the glamorous thing you want to dress up to just up for and go to, watch whether it's streaming or in person, but. it's the other 11 months out of the year of this really the benefit to our members, right? So we want to make sure that we are leveling the playing field and providing access to all of our members.
If that means like we just finished a sales and monetization guide. So if you are interested in, in in how to sales and monetization work in the Podcast industry, you want to provide those guidelines and materials for everyone to be able to have access to a lot of the things that you might have to either. Pay a subscription for, or go to a masterclass.
We want to be able to provide a year round access to all this stuff, as well as so while you're getting the resources from the resource guides, you're, attending monthly, AMH, which we have coming up in a couple of days, which is ask me anything where we have four governors. And if you have whatever questions that you have, you shoot those out to us and we'll, That all of our experience collectively on the, on that panel. And we'll be able to answer and give you some advice and guidance.
we also have a mentorship program where you can be a mentor a mentee or both. we wanna, we want this organization to be where we're all continuously giving. So if you feel like you're intermediate to high level in the Podcast industry, maybe your involvement is because you want to give back to the new Podcast. And that's really where.
My involvement comes in is that, my the way I came up in Podcast and was like many of these people who are just becoming members, I had a brand new Podcast and knew nothing about the industry had to learn everything firsthand. So I wish there was an Academy or something that I could have joined back then to really understand even the terminology of what's, all these things that are being thrown around. So can we just about. servicing that, that group.
we've been talking about internship and fellowship programs, placement early access to job postings, things like that are all the things that we're throwing around, just so that our members are really, truly getting
the benefit. And if I'm listening and I've not yet joined the Podcast Academy, is it fearsome expensive? And how do I join in the first place? It is
hopefully not very expensive. it is a hundred dollars a year. We also offer plenty of discounts throughout, throughout the year. and we have parks organizations, so we'll do promos with certain organizations in order to give discount codes, things like that. So go to the Podcast academy.com and there you can fill out. A form to join is for people who are in the industry for thinking about becoming a Podcast, or you can you should follow what we're doing.
And we do have some free events, but for what we're geared towards people who are already in the industry who are launch, who have launched their podcast or who are building their company. so yeah, join up. go to the website Podcast, academy.com and yeah, a hundred dollar membership that's for the entire year.
And we, you are welcome then to participate in all the activities to put your hat in the ring, to join specific subcommittees, to actually be part of building the organization, not just on the receipt.
that sounds really interesting and really exciting Donald Albright chair of our Podcast Academy. Thank you so much for your time today,
James. Thanks a lot, man. Appreciate
it. So there was Donald and the international chapter sounds quite interesting. James, maybe you and Ali will be invited to sit on one.
Yeah, I think that, that was sounding very interesting. The fact that they're obviously keen to get the world involved which is a good thing. probably, relatively rare for a us. Organization. I have to say I didn't appreciate, he said that there was one of the members of the board who lives in the UK and I didn't actually appreciate that, that wasn't made clear before. So that's, really interesting. I think also, more work within days is nice.
and those shared resource guides that he was talking about is a really interesting idea. And I think it goes back to, one of the things that I was talking about. Yeah. When the Podcast Academy originally started, which was a whole load of best practice work. And that appears to have been taken up now, which is really good. Great.
look, let's see what happens if this chapter thing comes alive? we'll let you know. Now, another story that we noted or you noted was that podcasts are now available on TV. Is that really news? Could you not get them on TV before
James? you could, but you couldn't. there is a. TV channel much the same way as Podcast radio exists as a radio station and iHeart radio of course have their own Podcast stations as well. in some parts of the U S now TV is available. you can shoot in so far on TCL smart TV channel one Oh four eight. No idea what that means or on Roku, I've heard of Roku. We can't buy Roku here in Australia, but nevertheless, I have heard of it. or you can watch free on their website, which is pause, tv.live.
There's a, quite a few shows on there, including the Jordan harbinger show trigonometry and the gangster Chronicles. it's just quite a nice idea. I think if you're flicking through the channels you discover something that you think you might quite like, and it happens to be a podcast and that's good news too.
It's going to make it a lot harder. Walking the dog with the TV attached to me though.
Yes, you're absolutely right. Don't go walking the dog, watching the TV. Although, many people do I suppose on their mobile phones, but still there you go.
Good. Most podcasts listeners don't want to have to pay or donate money to listen to podcasts as U S research from YouGov users, their data to estimate that Podcast might be worth. Just 13, a million dollars a month. That's it. It's not enough, James.
Yeah. just $13 million a month. I will be quite happy with, 10% of that. I'll keep that. That's fine. so that would be nice. Sometimes I upset research people because I say what they've basically said is. You're getting a lot of Podcast for free at the moment. Would you like to pay for those and unsurprisingly, most people have turned around and said, no, if you have some amazing content, if you have game of Thrones from HBO, that's enough for you to pay for HBO.
If you have, the crown from Netflix, that's enough to make you pay for Netflix. If you're a big fan of that, what these research questions have been asked about is essentially you're getting lots of stuff for free. How about paying for some of that stuff in the future. And they've not actually talked about what some of the new content might be. And my suspicion is that if you were to go to them and say, would you like a special Podcast with Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen on it?
Would you like to pay for that? I suspect that more people would have said yes. So I'm a bit dubious about some of this research, but there again, I'm sure that you go. Do a fine and excellent job at this sort of thing. who knows, what do you think
I think we've got a flight to quality right now across the whole web. not just in podcasting. I think there is a real flight to quality around content. You read content, you watch I'm happy paying for Netflix, Spotify, a bit of medium Ft. And, I guess for those podcasts that I really want and I want to support, I'd be prepared to pay. So I think. As an industry trend, we've been talking about it for weeks. Spotify and Apple are hinting at, subscriptions coming in.
So we know that's going to happen sometime soon. And that 2 million that we just talked about, the long tail would just exist. it will be free. And. Great. but the head will certainly be amortized by payments through subscription. I guess that's the way to filter it out.
Not heard that phrase, the flights to quality, but I think that's absolutely right. I wrote something today in pod news about tortoise media, which I've never heard of before. It's a slow media news platform. it's based where you are, Sam in the UK. Yeah. and it's basically headed up by among others, James Harding, who used to be the director of news at the BBC. And I went to her, look at it and it's a really good news website. The idea of it is that they take their time to research long pieces.
They don't take advertising, so they charge you for it instead. it's laid out beautifully. the quality of the journalism looked fantastic. It looked like what the correspondent could have been, but wasn't, they've just signed with Podcast by the way for their podcasts. and I was looking at that and I was thinking, yeah, maybe that's another thing that I'll pay for alongside the guardian, which I also pay for and the economist, which I would pay for if I didn't get them free from my library.
I was looking at that and thinking, maybe there is something, but it has to be the right content. And if somebody was going to turn around and say, would you like to pay for your news tomorrow? I'd say no, of course I wouldn't. So I don't know. Maybe that's
the one thing I have an expression you may not have heard of, which is it's not free. It's at my expense. It's an expression that I love using because so many people come up to me and say, come and just ask you something very quickly. Can I pick your brains and fundamentally saying, can I have some free advice? And often if it's a friend, I don't mind, but really what they're asking is I want something for free. And I often say to them, this is not for free. This is at my expense.
And I think what we're seeing with that report is. You guys were saying that the Podcast things aren't free, it's at someone else's expense that you're getting this data that you're getting access to it. And it's time that somebody pays for it. Now you've had enough free time that we start paying. We're seeing that across other mediums. I think we'll see it in podcasting.
I think we probably will. Now these days, I come from a land down under where women glow and men plunder country here. Can't you hear the thunder? It's been pouring it down over the last few days here. Anyway, I thought it high time to find out more about podcasting in Australia, who better to ask than Corey Leighton, the head of digital for ARNs iHeart Podcast network. But despite the name they're not owned by iHeart radio. No, we
are listed on the Australian stock exchange. and we licensed the iHeart media brand out here, or Lisa iHeartRadio and I ha Podcast. And we are together until 2036. So we are absolutely in it for the long run.
That's a marriage, isn't
it? It
isn't a marriage. So ARNs. IHeart Podcast network Australia. Snappy name has been going for just over a year. What have you learnt from that?
I think we came to the Podcast party quite late in Australia and I think in a lot of ways, there was an advantage in coming in, in late to understand where the opportunities were in the market, which I think we capitalized on. And when you look at the Australian Podcast, Ranko, which here is run by a Triton We've been number one since the day we launched for over 12 months now, continuously.
And I think in part we can thank being late to attribute to that because we were able to build a strategy that fulfilled some of the gaps that we. I'm sorry in the market. And
you're number one, not just because you've got an awful lot of shows, but you do have an awful lot of shows, but you're also number one in terms of individual shows as well.
Aren't you? Exactly. So currently we hold the number one, the number two, and the number three shows in the market in casefile, which is number one through our partnership with audio, boom stuff you should know via iHeart. And the number three show is a catch-up radio show, which is, it comes out of Sydney. The Sydney breakfast show called the Kyle and Jackie O show. So
how does this work? You have access to iHeart radio's podcasts. You produce your own stuff from your radio stations, but you also sell ads into others. Is that how it works?
I think it's inherent in the word network. We are set up to help a bunch of our partners in our own shows to monetize their podcasts. But also I think it's really important. It's similar world over where you look at the Edison infinite dial research and that awareness of podcasting is always high. And in Australia it's always higher than the U S yet the number of people listening. lower and for us where we're the number one radio network here in Australia.
And so for me, the exciting opportunity is to be able to use our broadcast megaphone and show people about the plethora of podcasts that are out there and all the exciting reasons and the different shows that they should be listening into. So a large part of what we do with all of our partners in our online shows is work with them to boost their amplification and grow their numbers.
Yeah. So you're doing a bunch of Podcast first shows as well as obviously catch up radio in there as well. The Podcast first shows. Are you doing that? Because because you're working with clients to do some branded content or is it just different content that you can't get out on the radio? how does all that work?
there are aspects that are absolutely to do with clients. But I think for me, when it comes to creating our own original Podcast, it's about finding areas in the market that aren't copycat Podcast. Cause I don't think that does justice to anyone. We want to be able to continue to create podcasts that fulfill niches or albeit niches that provide scale. and also from that, yeah. Commercial opportunities. And there's a number of really exciting formats that are currently underway.
Give us an example of one that's worked really well for you.
I think our biggest one to date has been stuff of legends with Christian O'Connell. If anyone is listening from the UK, you would remember Christian from his days at a Virgin absolute and Christian has since come out to Australia where he's held the number one breakfast show in a little old city called Melbourne. Which is where I'm sitting right now. And what Christian has done with the show, stuff of legends is he's talking to high caliber people like a Ricky vase, a Russell brands.
and he's rather than having the standard. Interview with them. He's unlocking stories from their past that you've really heard by getting them to bring in three objects that hold a deep meaning to them. And in doing that, the sorts of content we're getting and the quite deep conversations we're having with some really high profile people is pretty refreshing to listen.
Yeah. And that's a sponsored by a
brand or sponsored by Reedley which is essentially like a Spotify, but for
magazines. I'm sure that there'll be delighted with the extra plug that you just managed to get them. I hope so. So that's really smart. So let's talk a little bit more widely about podcasting in Australia, because you're obviously passive that the other radio groups are involved. there are non radio people involved as well. How big is podcasting right now? What sort of stats do we actually have access to?
It's a bit weird getting that question from you given you're normally the stat man, but it's one in four. Australians are here in Australia are listening to podcasts. The infinite dial dip will be happening in may. So we're not far from seeing how the effects of Corona have continued to grow that number. I'm quite excited about the potential of what's behind it in regard to growth.
Yeah. Cause I was going to ask about the pandemic. we've been affected far less than other countries, but was podcasting in Australia effected by the pandemic, certainly in the lockdowns that you experienced.
Absolutely and affected for the better. So when you have a look at the last 12 months, month on month across our entire network, we've seen an upward trend across that time, which continues to peak. So with our February numbers, they have out Shaun any month for the previous 12 months. And we've also looked at a state by state analysis. Cause there are certain States in Australia that were in hard lockdown and there were others that were quite. Wide open.
We didn't actually say much of a difference when you look at state by state, the overall upwards trends sticks true for all
States. I remember doing a few things for Oz Paul, which was a Podcast conference here, which may or may not come back. But and I remember looking at some of the data that I got from Omni studio, actually around individual Australians. States and seeing that the big metropolitan States of Victoria where Melbourne is and new South Wales West Sydney is seems to have an awful lot of listening as you would expect per capita.
But when you started looking at other States podcasting was a bit less part of the media landscape. Is that still the case now?
Yeah, I think Melbourne and Sydney Metro areas absolutely is where the. Dominant lion's share of Podcast. Listening is happening in this country then through to Brisbane, which is where you are as we speak James. and then from a
Metro to where I've been for months, Corinne, sorry,
stuck in that same old room. and the difference from a Metro to regional perspective, absolutely Podcast, listen, still lean towards Metro leaning. The other interesting thing that we saw through the outbreak. Is the time of day that people were listening to their podcasts. We could very much say that people were sleeping in which was great when it lasted. We can now say that people are now waking up early again, by the time that they're pressing play on podcasts.
The one shift that we did notice is there was in the mid to late morning, a definite. Uptake of when people were pressing play on their podcasts. and we attributed that at the time to people being stuck at home and trying to break up their day and using Podcast to do it. But though here in Australia, we have thankfully for the moment touch wood, got COVID behind us. We have, we've seen that trend with that mid to late morning.
Our listening remained throughout, and this is from a sample of over 1.2 million Australian devices that we work on together with megaphone. So it's a robust sample in where we're pulling that data.
So where do you see Australia in podcasting? you said that we were a bit late to the party. Are we now. Leaders in this space or are we laggards? where do you see the wider Australian industry? I think
compared to the U S we continue to remain two to three years behind in terms of audience take up listening commercial sophistication from advertisers and also investment from publishers and content creators into the sophistication of the types of content that we're creating. so that. That is definitely behind. However, I can radically feel that we are catching up with rapid acceleration, so that might be condensing across.
And in terms of advertisers I saw some data from a Podcast who obviously have a point to make, but I did see some data from them basically saying that ad agencies aren't producing special audio for podcasts. They are essentially taking a radio ad and singing that onto it. Pop onto a podcast as well. And wondering, in some cases why that's not the best plan are you seeing that, that sort of thing as well or, are ad agencies becoming more sophisticated in the way that they're buying
Podcast? We don't allow pod radio ads to our own podcasts for the same reason and all the research we've seen that it's a different listening experience. radio ads serve a great purpose when you're listening to radio and sometimes you'll. Very much leaning into that song or talk break that you're hearing. And there are other times it's there in the background. And so Podcast, radio ads are built to grab your attention. Whereas in the Podcast world, you already have the listeners attention.
And quite often it's in the soulless environment. So we find radio ads in the Podcast environment don't work. And therefore we don't allow it to your question about. do advertisers understand that? I think it's starting to change. There are many that don't who maybe aren't resourced as well and are just running a pace. And Podcast is one of the last elements on the bias. So can you just take my audio and run it?
And there are others who do understand the difference and they're frequently the ones that are leaning into podcasts and he uses and listeners to themselves. And they're the ones that understand the value of adapting as existing, creative, and be at getting the host or a network or announcer voice to deliver it. They are the ones that, that I think are leaning in the most.
And you're no stranger to the Technology you were previously at. Washco a podcast host. And Australia's also obviously the home of Omni studio as well. Both of those are quite leaders in dynamic ad insertion. Do you think that advertisers are using dynamic audio to the best of their ability? I think
in Australia, unlike in the U S dynamic ad insertion is essentially the. Go to base that everyone is using. Whereas in the U S particularly there is definitely a battle between, should we do baked in? Should we do dynamic? Should we do a bit of both that doesn't exist here? I think that's partly Because again, we're two to three years behind and had the ability to circumvent some of the issues that I think baked in deliver.
And the other benefit of dynamic is particularly here in Australia is because we're serving ads locally into often international Podcast. We've become used to dynamic is the way where if you want to monetize some of the biggest shows that Australians love that aren't from here dynamic is the only way that's possible. So therefore it's become. Very normal from the start.
One last question, because you the iHeart radio app, which you have for Australia obviously also works on smart speakers as well, both on Alexa which isn't the market leader and Google, which is are you seeing a growth of use of smart speakers here in Australia? And what does that mean for podcasting generally?
Absolutely smart speakers are becoming more prevalent in people's homes, especially over the Christmas period. When both Google and Amazon go head to head and discount and they just become great stocking fillers. those devices are turning up more and more from a Podcast perspective. I think we are all playing with. The runtime of podcasts and trying to find that balance between long form and hyper short form.
I think when it comes to smart speakers, particularly it's that short form content that will likely thrive in that environment. And I think globally, everyone's still trying to scratch around what's our answer to Gimlet chompers. The great idea about accompanying. Kids brushing their teeth. What are we going to do? That's in that space. That's not quite that. and I'm really excited as publishers world over tackled that
challenge. Corey, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. Thanks
James.
Now let's move on. The IAB has published its annual report. Predicting that in 2021 U S Podcast will be a $1 billion market. The organization had a 33.2 million of revenue in 2020 6.4 million of that is from the IAB tech lab who work on the Podcast measurement standards. Yeah. Is that useful as a report, James, another report within another statistics. Tell me more.
It's an interesting, isn't it? The annual report, two numbers out of that. Firstly in 2021 will be a $1 billion market in the U S we are already of course, a $1 billion market globally. we're 1.4 billion. So far, according to Andrea. that's one side of it. but I'm absolutely convinced that we'll hear lots more stories about way podcasting reaching $1 billion at last. so I suspect that we'll see a little bit more about that.
the other thing is how much money does the IAB tech lab get $6.4 million of revenue, 6.4 million. I'm assuming all of that. Isn't from podcasting, but that's still an awful lot of money. just looking at that, you'd have thought that they could, operate an email address. That worked or stuff like that, but it's still, there you go. so yes, quite a lot of cash there. but they do useful things and one of the things name one I think that the Podcast measurement standards are probably a good thing.
I would like them to make sure that all of the IB. organizations across the world behind those, because that's not actually the case. but yeah, I think that they do a good job. I think $6.4 million for those measurement standards and their measurement standards for many other things as well is quite a thing it's certainly not a small organization. Yeah, no,
but I have to say it never crosses my path, so I never really understand what they do. So good luck to them.
Yes. Which is probably fair enough, I guess
it's a good day for Podcast accessibility. Google has enabled automatic subtitled inside the Chrome browser. So it allows closed captions to any web based podcast player, as well as other audio. It's pretty simple. James had you said stop. And what do you think of it? Yeah,
it's really simple. So you just go to the accessibility section in the settings in Chrome browser, you turn on a thing, marks live caption. it would even work for this conversation that we're having now, Sam, actually, you could just turn it on in there and you could see so you see the subtitles appear. It works in absolutely everything. It's a really clever thing.
What I found interesting is I obviously led with the fact that it'll work on podcasts and the fact that you can turn it on in terms of podcasts. And I then saw lots of other news coverage who thought it was only available on podcasts. Because that's the thing that I led on. no, it works on absolutely everything, but it's but it's nice seeing so many news websites that are essentially rewriting what I've written. That's nice. So you
I think one thing that's really interesting that you said it works across everything. I'm going to tell a friend of mine, Ali Barrett, because he's working on a. Program to improve children's readability by turning on subtitles for all of TV programs. it's campaign is running called tots. and that's subtitled again, if we could, if I could let him know that Google has now done it for all websites as well, that might be something that he'd be really
interested in. Yeah. You can just turn it on. I think what's missing is the recent a. Programmatic way of turning that on. You have to turn it on in your browser, in the accessibility section. It'd be really cool. And maybe this exists, but I haven't spotted it yet. Be really cool if there was a browser, PI so that I could just have a close, closed captions button and that would automatically turn them on. But that is really good for basically it now allows anybody who has.
Difficulty hearing anybody can actually therefore get a live captions from the podcasts that they want to go and and have a listen to. So I think that's all pretty good news.
Now doing remote recordings is really hard, James, isn't it, there's a bunch of tools that make it easier for Podcast is one of those is Riverside FM, which gets audio and video from. The person you're interviewing. Yes, we use Riverside FM don't we we're
using it right now, full disclosure. They gave me an account, which was nice of them. I chatted to Nadav key Sohn. Who's the CEO and the co-founder about it. And what to expect in the future,
FM is a platform that allows you to not only record, but also make your Podcast in essence. And the main reason why people use our platform is because of our quality. in comparison to say zoom or Google
meet. why is the quality of Riverside rather better than zoom or any of those other platforms?
So basically what we do is during the call, we are locally recording on your computer audio on video. So it's almost as if you're recording offline out your own video. And what we do then is we during the call, we upload that audio on video. So imagine while we were speaking to each other on your phone, you start recording yourself that recording that's happening on your phone is not dependent on internet connection.
So similar to what we are doing right now, we are locally recording on your computer. We're shedding a dare and uploading at the same time. audio and video. And because of that local recording, internet connections don't affect the recording. So what you see in here now during this interview is actually not how the actual recording sounds like, because even for example, let's say my internet can drop completely like my wife. I can go out completely.
And of course the car will disconnect, but actually the recording will be unaffected. And so that's in a nutshell White people use us.
Yeah. So I was having a chat with somebody the other day on this and the internet for whatever reason, went a little bit weird and I missed half of their sentence. Now, if I was using something like a zoom, then I would have had to have asked them to say that again and blah, blah, blah. But I actually knew that the audio was just going to be there anyways. It's just the fact that I didn't actually hear it is fine.
So you can just guess
yes. which kind of works. you're not the only one doing this. It's beginning to be a bit of a crowded market. You've got companies like squad cast, and Zen caster who are also involved in this sort of thing. What's different about your product to some of those.
Sure. So first of all, we are the first ones to also record a video in their browser, up to 4k V for Kirby solution. So we have a lot of we've launched one year ago. So we have a lot of experience regarding reliably video and audio in the browser in this local recording way. so it like reliable sounds boring, but it's so important when you are doing interviews or you only get often one chance to record. So it all starts with the reliable aspect.
But then we also have a lot of really catered features features that are catered to Podcast or people that want to create a high quality content such as a producer mode or producers can be a backstage be present while they're being recorded. We've got this very clear and overview what's happening to the recording. So you see it's uploading, but actually more exciting. So this is all like you can also live stream. You can also live stream by recording.
So while we're recording, you cannot slash into pattern, search Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter, and you can have people call any of the questions. So all these features. But even more exciting. We've got some big stuff coming as well. so people are trying to catch up, but now we are going to move forward. Again is we're launching an iPhone app. So that will be first that you can also actually do that whole local recording on your phone.
I'm actually right now using my phone as a webcam because what we've seen is phones have actually a very good camera and Mike and everyone has a phone. So that's really exciting. So we've got the iPhone coming. And then on top of that, we also have which we call magic editor. So not only can you record downriver Riverside, you can actually also. Produce on Riverside. So actually make an entire episode on Riverside. that editor allows you to very easily, but in a powerful way, create your
contents. Okay. So how does the magic editor work? what sort of thing can I actually do with that? Let's say after
this recording, we finished a recording and then in your dashboard, you see the separate checks. As you see one check for me, one check for you. So first of all, you can nurse those tracks and then let's say for video, you can add the logo. You can add a frame to it. So really make it look professional and unique to what your show wants to represent. And then we also have things such as remove background noise. So you can actually do it like all this outer enhancement stuff.
So you can you can, we've always one click. So all very simple, but very powerful things you with one click, you can also make the audio levels equal to each other. So let's say I speak very loud, which I'm probably doing right now. and you're speaking red or soft. You can very easily, you just click, okay. Equalize the audio levels, bump, remove background noise, click that. Bam. It's done. so it's artist features that are very catered to this kind of contents creation, basically
your and you guys appear to have come out of nowhere last year. You, you I think we've originally spoken in September, you launched in November. what's your background? How did you get into all of
this? So it all started with, I built a together with my brother and I previously, we had a debating platform where politicians would come and debate with video and audio. All right. And that was going, yeah. Like we had some big politicians on our platform as the four minutes of the Netherlands, but it never really took off. And for some polls we saw a lot of people started to ask us if they could use our technology.
So then we decided to make pivots to Riverside, which is more of a technology platform instead of a social platform. And we launched one year ago. It's actually very sad. It's been in the making for quite some time, but officially we launched the river shot Riverside a
year ago. Cool. And when you go onto your website, there's Hillary Clinton saying how brilliant you are and not everybody has a testimonial from a former first lady. how did that one happen then?
Basically her producer test out all different platforms and she loved the, our Audi quality the most, and it was actually organic. So word of mouth and then her outfit, her producer, it turned out the producer. I was the producer of Hillary Clinton and They were very happy with the platform. And then without even asking, like she named us, she mentioned Riverside dinner Podcast thinking us. So then I testimonial, we use in our landing page, which so it was, I would say luck.
I don't have any connections with Hillary Clinton. Although I met her. Which is pretty good, but virtually I met her, but yeah, so basically she just stumbled across Riverside and she liked, they liked
it. Yeah. Which is a fantastic thing. what's your next big launch? You able to give us any clues? Yeah, it's an
iPhone app. That's like a, the iPhone app and the magic editor. Basically those two things are really what we're working on. So the iPhone apps is going to be really cool. And so easy. So that's really why I'm really pumped about it because we're all about making things easy, because of course you can also work yourself locally on your laptop doing it your own way, sending the files, but diversity is all about making the whole process easy. and having.
Your phone is actually pretty good mic as well. Especially if you keep it close to your mouth, the quality is pretty good. And like I'm doing right now. unfortunately this is only the only recording, but actually the webcam of the camera of the phone is also really good. Yeah. So those two things I think are really exciting. And then we have the whole, the magic editor, which basically allows you in a few clicks, create a show
without any editing. Very cool. If anybody wants to give Riverside a go how do they do that? And do you have a free a freeway in
a free one hour trial? You can just sign up on Riverside at the fam. And give it a go. you don't need to have a credit card to sign up so you can just sign up thoughts, credit cards, and the one hour trial, you can try all features. So there's no restrictions. And I'm honestly very excited about, plus not only because it's my own our platform, but we're getting great feedback. And if people have questions, they can also just reach out to me, happy to personally assist as well. That's
fantastic. after we talk, I'm going to give you a boring feature request, but not I've. Thank you so much for your time. I appreciate it for sure. Likewise.
Thank you.
So
James, that magic editing sounds good. How do you think it all work? Yeah,
I think I, it sounds really good and I'm I'm always amazed actually at how few Podcast companies deal with things like noise reduction and audio levels Buzzsprout of course, who is our sponsor. They do a very good job in terms of magic mastering. So it's an automatic way of making sure that everybody is the same loudness and you can hear everything and it does noise reduction and everything else, but that's not something that's in most podcast hosts. And similarly, this.
Adding it directly into the tool that you're using to record is really nice. And I thought it was quite telling when he was saying that it isn't just a tool to record people. It's a tool to make podcasts now. And I thought that was quite interesting. So there's that sort of side of it. And then there's the whole crafty use of the better camera in your iPhone.
The breeze lightening client has added a native Podcast player on their iOS app. I've never used the breeze lightning client, but I might try it because they use in the Podcast, two dot Oh. Podcast value system, which lets listeners opt-in to share cryptocurrency with the shows they listened to, including us.
Yes. Now it says including us, because you're reading that out of pod news during this Podcast. No, because I haven't turned on the Podcast value for this Podcast yet. I wouldn't worry
about it. I don't think anyone's going to sleep
well. You know what Pod news has been Podcast value enabled for some time now for a couple of months. And I thought, wow, I must be rich. Now I must have like loads of this weird and wonderful cryptocurrency. so I went to have a look and I think I've got 44,000 SATs, 44,000 Satoshi. I was quite excited by that. And I thought that sounds like a load of money, 44. the
retirement plan
plans in place. I then went to have a look at how much that is in us dollars and it's naught point naught, naught, naught, $5. it's not even a 10th of a cent yet. so we won't be getting rich on that. Can I just
say this week Elon Musk enabled you to buy your Tesla. Using Bitcoin. So in theory, I think you now qualify for a hubcap.
I'm not even sure. I qualify for a hubcap with just 44,000 Satoshis but yeah, even on Musk, right? What amazes me about Elon Musk? Is, he is clearly a James Bond villain, And the most sensible thing that we think of as Elon Musk is the fact that he's called the Elon Musk for any other person being called Elon Musk is like the weirdest name out there, but Oh no. Oh no, that's totally fine. That's normal. It's everything else that he's doing, which is just insane.
Wow. It's the flame throwers that he. Did and sold that got me. just cause you can,
he's just amazing. Anyway. Sam, what is in Podland for you over the next couple of weeks?
it's actually quite interesting. I've been working on a brilliant broadcast to Podcast platform service they take the live feed and they put it through the Wishkah system. So very much like Brian Barletta uses it for podcasting. It allows you to take your live feed, put tag markers in it. And in my case, it means I can drop out the music and I can then Podcast or the radio shows. Automatically. yeah, it's called broadcast to podcast and I'll be delving deep into it.
Rolling up sleeves and playing with code. So that's my little week ahead. So what's in
Podland for you. I am speaking in a couple of weeks time. A podcasting conference. Who'd have thought it this podcasting conferences happening in Australia, it's Australasia's pod Fiesta, summit. You'll find more about [email protected]. And it would be good if you were to join me. There's lots of other exciting people on there as well, and probably hanging out on clubhouse and things like that. As well. so that should be a good thing. Yes.
I've noticed you more on there these days. you've been
converted. I've been converted because I'm a bloke because it's mostly blokes on clubhouse. I'm not quite under 35, but it is mostly under 30 fives on clubhouse as well. Apparently, according to new research, fewer than 20% of Canadian adults have even heard of it. So there you go. What does that tell you that they're out hunting deer. Yes probably at all, or trying to drink Molson. Let's stop being rude about Canada. I'll be enjoying taking part in that in a couple of weeks.
And Sam, I need to give you a note just to say that can I have a day off next week please? Oh, no. Yeah. What are you going to be doing? where I'll be getting married. So therefore I can't be here to record a podcast because apparently that's not a thing on your wedding day.
It's not accepted. No. A number of people who put the football on while they're getting married. Yeah.
No, apparently it's not acceptable. so that's not going to happen. so therefore you're going to have to find somebody else next week. or just do it yourself.
That's never going to work. Is it? No. So offers out already. My email will be flying out here this morning. So if you get an email from me, please open it and say, yes.
Yes, that's a very niche comment. They're aimed at one person and that's it for this week. If you've enjoyed your trip to Podland come back again. Next time you can follow the podcast on all the major podcast players or visit our website at Podland dot news.
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Clearly something amusing going on in your house is Sethi. I don't know what it is, but it's still there we are. If you want daily news, you should get the daily pod news newsletter. It's [email protected]. And that's where you'll find the links for all the stories we've mentioned this week. Music is from ignite jingles. We record with Riverside to.fm edits with Hindenburg journalist pro, and we're hosted. Sponsored by Buzzsprout and I really
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