Welcome to Portland. Podland sponsored by Buzzsprout the easiest way to host, promote and track your Podcast [email protected]. It's Thursday, April 1st, 2021. I'm Matt Degan from the British Podcast awards in the UK, and I'm replacing James well temporarily on Parkland. As he develops this new project, the pod clock, which is available on Apple podcasts today.
And I'm still here. I'm Sam Sethi, the editor of Sam Talks Technology, the managing director of a new radio station called river radio here in the UK, and clearly certifiable starting a radio station.
Portland's a weekly podcast where Sam and James well, normally delve into the week's podcasting news.
Now, please get involved with this Podcast centers, a voice message to questions at Podland dot news, or you can tweet us at Podland news. Now this week, speak stories. I'm really honored to have Matt Deegan here with us. And if he does a good job, James, you're not coming back. Now Matt, you're involved with the British Podcast awards. Do you create them the entries of clothes for this year, but maybe you can tell us how they came about and then little bit more about this year's awards.
so I think I all good British inventions. This one started in the pub me and a colleague Matt Hill used to work on. some podcasts and I'd appearance shows that he produced and I think were in the pub after one of those records one day, and we were talking about awards and we were saying, it's strange, there isn't a sort of Podcast awards in the UK. And I bet when there is one, some awful marketing company or run it and rip us all off, we'd already started.
It was going to be rubbish before a bit invented. And then after another few beers, I think we decided. Actually, why don't we try and do something that represents the sector as we understand it. And both of us had been in podcasting right from the beginning. we pushed off and decided that even if I had to stand on a chair in an all ball, one to read out the winners, that would be wouldn't be a bad start.
But actually the thing that we were more concerned about was that people were thinking it was real. It was kosher. That was decent. And so we spent quite a lot of time getting people in the sector to endorse it, to show that everyone was involved, but actually there was never a problem. And what we stumbled into is that people were crying out for something that reflected the sector and rewarded the sector. And they really
weren't. You mean. People wanted recognition.
Yes. Crazy. Isn't it? I think that we all know, and so it had a great start and it's great ever since. So looking at the entries this year we're up over 50% of what was entered last year into this year. Around 1600 entries, which is phenomenal. we've got over 200 judges who are involved in the judging. So that's suddenly a lot of audio to listen to. Generally, if they're awards, you enter 15 minutes of your best bits and huge amount of categories.
fantastic involvement from Podcast is recording in bedrooms and offices, right through to massive broadcasters and tech companies. we try and make the awards a really big tent. That's welcoming. We do outreach To underrepresented groups, we try and put ourselves out there to explain the awards. It's very cheap for independents to enter more normal pricing for corporates. And so it's an, all of that collectively is there to try and be.
Representative of the UK and make it easy for anybody to enter. And I think over the years there's been lots of giant killing lots of independence winning against big boys and the quite broad selection of nominees for categories. And a lot of that comes from the judges. We worked really hard to make sure the judges are representative of the whole country, both geographically and demographically and different types of people who can.
He can listen to something can maybe hear in it, something that other people maybe wouldn't, and there's always multiple rounds of judging. So there's lots of people that listen to things. So all of that together, I think makes it to me, one Weaver we're very proud of. And I think this year will be even bigger and better.
So you say judges, so who are these judges? I was pitting you for a minute thinking you had to listen to 1600 also on your own. And I was thinking by Christmas, you might get the awards now.
so there's two layers of judging. that's around one, which is, we just want everything listened to a few times. and anybody can register to be one of those round one judges you need a good ear and a sort of reason why you should judge, but that doesn't mean you don't need to be an audio professional. You could be, a excellent keep fit instructor. It gives you a bit of expertise. And the fact that multiple people are listening to those skips across any issues that you might have.
And then what that does is it creates a long list for each category. Over about 20 to 25 shows. And then there's panels of three people who tend to be on the more professional audio end and senior people in the sector. interesting folk from around the country. There's a full list of all those people on the British podcast awards website, and you can see their faces and see their names. And then that second round. Picks the gold, silver and bronze winners and nominees.
So it's quite an operation to get to that point. And I'm very lucky. We split our work, me and Matt Hill, who both of us still run it. and he looks after judging. So I'm over the moon that he takes on that role.
did I see a Slippy shoulder when that decision came through? who's that dad run the judges.
Oh absolutely. Absolutely. I think it's one of those things, I'm sure. A lot of people who are listening vented awards of some form in their sex or in podcasting, and you always make lots of assumptions about how it's run or I bet it's a bit fixed or I bet certain people do really well for certain reasons.
And when you actually run one of these things, you realize it's so unwieldily, if you are able to do something like that, you'd be some kind of miracle worker is just impossible to have the time to arrange something nefarious. Sorry.
Is that a Brown paper bag? Is that a Brown paper bag behind you? About I see that.
In the UK at the moment, if he posts can work to deliver you, that you'd be over the moon as well.
Now, when are the awards themselves going to be announced? What's the plan? Is it going to be a physical award ceremony given COVID or is it going to be a virtual or a hybrid? The word of 20, 21, the hybrid awards. I
don't want to tell you because it, Oh, it's gone. We haven't announced it yet.
Just don't know
what the plan is pretty exciting. the plan is that they'll be it's something that's in person but it will also work in a hybrid fashion. Should you not want to attend? no. One's
listening to this podcast.
so that's going to be, so the server is going to be in July, beginning of July. And we'll announce the nominees towards the end of may. excellent. And if you want to definitely find out the date, there's a great newsletter. You can join at the British Podcast awards websites that will keep you updated with all British podcast awards things, and you can follow us on Twitter and all that stuff, too.
Okay, we will do that. Now. Lauren Sweet. We interviewed Don Albright, the chair of the Podcast Academy about the ambience, all you a member of the Podcast Academy. I am. Yes. So you spent $50 or whatever it was that we all did.
Yes. I think partly I think I did it for just professional spying, obviously, because I knew that award was coming up. but it was just interesting. I think they have an interesting challenge there. Is it American? Is it international? what's their focus. where are their members, where are their awards entries and what do they want to become? Because I think there's definitely room for something more collective in America.
I think trying to do some international is going to be more of a challenge for them.
they were talking about opening international chapters. And that would be one thing. I think James Roy already put his hand up for the Australian chapter. Yes. I think he wants his $50 back. So this is value for money. the voting is now open for the ambiance. If you are a member of the Podcast Academy, you can vote, you can log in at the Podcast Academy's website, follow the prompts and. List your vote. Good. So lots of awards coming up, it must mean that COVID is coming away.
That's the main thing I can take from this. Now, another story that came up in pod news this week was Spotify is to hold a new round of sound up programs that global program gives. Underrepresented Podcast is the tools to boost their platforms and build their own shows. The website list shows from previous sound up Allmand I, and the full details about where they're taking part. The first two announces the Australia sound up program.
Again, it feels like James is so much involved in these things and that indigenous or Torres Strait Islander Podcast. Now, when I need James explain what the hell that means he goes and gets married. You've got until April the 19th to winter. Now ma'am do you know anything more about the summer programs? So sandbox
is going a bit around it, a few territories. it's definitely happened in the UK. Something in the U S might happened in South America as well. it's it's a really good initiative by Spotify and they worked really hard to find individuals who need support to create new shows. And have the ideas are more important than having the production skill. Cause what sound up we'll teach them is the production skill, how to put together shows. And I think it's important that podcasting is open to. Everyone.
I think it's very easy to go, anyone correct can create a Podcast. So why'd, you need to do anything like this. actually, there's a big thing about representation. If you look okay, the top 100 on Apple podcasts, there are a lot of white faces. They, there's a lot of male faces there and you're comfortable doing things when you see yourself reflected.
So anything that can make a difference and to suggest to other people from a whole range of backgrounds, that Podcast things for them is a good thing. And I think having someone like Spotify, what they're very talented audio, the Podcast teams around the world, very talented audio producers. they've got good budget and good money to put on a good event and to get people to places and to do stuff. And then also to support those shows when they come out.
if they've worked on something, obviously they've got that platform to promote it. And there's obviously other people that have done similar things, a cost here in the UK have a scheme as well. and I think the more the merrier.
no, I think it's great. the company has also launched behind the mic and new apprenticeship program coming up later this year to support aspiring black Podcast producers three apprentices will become permanent Spotfire employees as well. Sounds A series of the apprentice you're fired may not be the thing that you want to hear.
guys you're followed. Maybe
that's the word we're looking for? In fact, just a little bit of note happy sixth anniversary to Podcast in color. So again, you're right. I think having a more. Diverse demographic of Podcast is always going to be healthy. moving on still in Spotify land, it seems Spotify has bought locker room. Now this story that I have very little knowledge about, cause I've never heard of locker room, but it seems it's an IRS only live sports audio app. It's a bit like clubhouse and Twitter spaces.
It will let anyone host audio conversations. it says it's going to rebrand under a new name. And Gustafson system, the chief R and D officer at Spotify hints at integration with anchor and Spotify Podcast. Any thoughts on locker room? So it's
another one of those apps as you said a very sport to rotate. You don't see interesting Spotify on the ringer, so they have a sorts of sports network. Inside their operation. Hey, so it was important to think about with Spotify. There's quite a lot going on there and you've got shows which they've acquired companies they've acquired it's got exclusives that they pay for.
then they obviously have things like megaphone, which fund shows and so that they across the whole sector and they want to be in every single. Place where there's audio. I think it's always funny, Daniel lek continues to rail against radio and there's someone with a radio background that was slightly irks me and have radio is dead. And then he keeps launching radio like products. So there was music and speech Podcast thing.
now there's, there was some comment he made about how on demand destroys or linear. And it's Oh, you've just bought a business, which is entirely based on linear. I think the answer of that is. If you're in the audio space, you want to have your fingers in all these pies so that see what happens. for some, for house, which is still iOS only. It's still James said, you've given LinkedIn and microphone because quite a lot of the stuff on there is how to be a superstar, businessperson and dreadful.
I think at least Twitter spaces is both iOS and Android at the moment. So I don't think you can start a space if you're on Android, you can't do that if you're yes, but also I hear that LinkedIn and Slack at developing their own versions of this as well. So it's just going to be overload. I think what's interesting about it. Is people get very excited that you're anybody can speak in these spaces. And that's the worst thing about them.
The worst thing is that it's open to everybody because a lot of the comments like any conference you've been to a lot of conference comments from the floor can drag the topic off. It can be rambly. the great thing about production bit Podcast production, radio production is you've got skilled people who vet the callers or yes, that puts up a barrier to involvement, but also increases the quality, that's the trade-off. So I think where it is interesting is if you had a ring, a show and.
You can have a live audience for that. And you might have a few guests in it, it's a new platform to do that. but that's not like it's not super new to have a, a live stream of sorts. So I'm interested to see where this goes. I think in the end, it'll end up being. Like I wrote about this in my newsletter. I think it will be a sort of professionalized, more events, space, all of these things.
So pop up panels and pop up discussions, but it will be pro driven this sort of democratization of live audio, I think is maybe not going to be the thing about them.
I think people are very excited about being able to get onto clubhouse, start a room and become a radio presenter in their minds. I dipped into it for about five minutes. Again. Last night I was taking my daughter to netball and. Okay through all my Podcast. So I've done that. Let's go see if anyone's on clubhouse. I've got this guy, literally the first three words were, if you want to know how to do this, come to my agency. And I was just literally out to leave.
I think the interesting bit about them. Is if there's a social graph. So like something like Twitter, you follow other people you log in and it will show who of the people you follow, or maybe vice versa, who follow you currently doing something that's pretty powerful. So you go, Oh, PIP person. I like is anything. I'll jump into that. And so it gives a good routine and your Twitter has a good social graph. LinkedIn has a good search graph is Slack is a very personal social graph.
It's, your work colleagues or people you work with on projects, and then Spotify, historically, didn't have that in that you followed people and you saw their music playlist and recommendations and things though. The more recent version that's not functionality that's particularly flagged up, podcasts, maybe that's a version of the social graph. And again, So the Podcast they own. So there's some of that, but I think it's much less prevalent on Spotify.
It's not on the other places, so what's that entry route, if it requires you to like flip, flip, open the app and then go all what's on. That's a different experience than Twitter, which might alert you to something. It already knows that you're maybe more likely to click on.
Do you have a. Preference. are you using Twitter spaces right now?
I'm a big Twitter user and so spaces I'm sure become my default place to go. We did a clubhouse for the British Podcast awards on how to enter and it was great and it was interesting and it was quite a good bunch of people who were on it, but it annoying. It did annoy me that, a lot of Android. Folk couldn't be on it. And I'm at George launch that app, but I sorta think clubhouse it's very tech bro. iOS driven.
I find that quite a exclusive environment and know, that can work as a way to grow interest and you make a kind of cool thing and then more people pile on. I think some of it has a bit of a slightly wifi flavor.
So you don't think Mark Cuban's far, side's got any hope then. Hey, anything's
hard. If you don't have a social graph, it's hardly any, even if you're Mark Cuban news hard to establish a product, especially when there's so much competition And also you've got to remember the other thing with these apps is the vast majority of people are consumers of content, not producers of content. And so they've got to be environments where like the listening experience is a positive one rather than just anybody can barge in and create some content alive, which is suboptimal.
Now you said you're a big fan of Twitter. do you use their newsletter that they recently acquired for your newsletter?
no I don't. I'm really fascinated about Twitter's sort of membership payment stuff. That's coming and had an analyst day a couple of weeks ago where they revealed some of this I'm on sub stack. just because it's relatively easy to use. but. what Twitter is doing is they're required to review, which is a newsletter company. And they've also talked about super follows. and basically you can turn your. You're being on Twitter into a subscription platform. This is where they're going.
So I'm at Matt on Twitter. So I could say, Hey, you can become a super follower for a fiver a month. And some of my tweets will be exclusive and maybe my newsletters exclusive, or some of the additions are exclusive. Maybe my Twitter spaces are exclusive Or some of them are. And so you offer a premium version for fans and maybe it's only fans for non porn stuff. and that sort of on the way, I think that's really fascinating.
There's a lot to see social influencers or celebrities that would like a frictionless way to monetize their audience and what we've seen in sub stack, lots of people. Have opted out of traditional media and they've got an audience normally built on Twitter that has helped them grow to five, 10, 20 grand a month of of revenues where suddenly they didn't need to have a publisher or be part of a newspaper or magazine. And I think the Twitter product is going to be really powerful.
And for Podcast is that's interesting too spaces are there other audio exclusives, with Patrion, you can have obviously RSS feeds that kind of subscription RSS feeds a cost this week of announced a subscription thing. So I think we're definitely going through a route where paying creators or environments where creators can be paid directly exists, and you want something that's frictionless to do that makes it very easy. the sorts of in-app purchase equivalent of becoming a subscriber.
And I think Twitter's in a very good place to. To make that successful. However, Twitter have a massive history of launching products incredibly badly. and then bonding them. You got to remember, That, vine was Tik TOK before it was Tik TOK or they abandoned it. Periscope was a great streaming platform which they then shuttered as well. So they have it within their grasp when they mess it up. So we'll see whether they also fixed that
problem. it seems that iOS 14.5 beats to this week, is it connected to the iCloud, which is setting up for subscriptions? I wonder again, just talking on subscriptions because everyone in industry knows that's where it's going, Spotify, Apple. It seems to me that Apple with Apple pay and all of the functionality, there seems to have the least friction for. Going to that model. And again, we're all used to paying our 79 P for an app or whatever it was.
So they've got a history of doing this, whereas how do you see Spotify doing subscription? Even Twitter, because neither from memory seems to have a micro payment system, another macro payment system in Spotify. Obviously you pay your subscription. How do you see it going?
I think that the problem is we're heading for it. Massive subscription Podcast mess. Lots of rumors about Apple launching a service. And I would assume if I were Spotify as product team and I saw that coming, to put a sort of one slide mention of that in. What they talked about a month ago is very easy. how developed that product is, who really knows. but if I were Spotify, what a match what's coming with Apple, the big question is what is coming with Apple? Is there anything coming?
is it going to be. Spotify suggested a thing where you can pay three 99 a month or seven, 800 a month or whatever it is to subscribe to a show. Is it going to be more akin to Apple plus, or Apple TV plus? so will you pay like a tenner a month for Apple Podcast plus, which will get you access to a load of premium content? I was going a bit cold on that as an idea. So that's quite a poor idea that it was, I've been looking into how they run the Apple arcade and I'm not a big gamer.
So I hadn't really spent a lot of time in the Apple arcades. So in the Apple arcade that has a monthly subscription and then they sign deals with game developers and there might be some upfront payments for some, and then you get money based on the time spent in the game. So if you had Apple arcade subscriber, and only play explosive space seven, then they'll get most of your money. And I was like, Oh, actually, could that be there Podcast thing as well?
Now again, that opened, that's a lot of admin for Apple to manage and who's on that system and how's the money distributed So that's complex, but then if it's on the, Hey, pay me seven 99, have I, as a Podcast, does that mean I've got two setups? I've got my Apple Podcast set up and I've got my Spotify sets up and probably one's better for me with, fees and you can also probably follow me on Patrion and. My uploads.
I have to probably go into Apple podcasts to do one, and I'd probably have to go into anchor to do that. it's all, it's going to be a massive car crash of a mess and what you'd like both those companies to do go, you know what? We were interested in podcasters and helping them and be successful. So maybe we should work alongside our evil competitors and create somewhere that benefits them rather than forces them to work within our walled gardens. Sorry,
the first that isn't going to happen. Sorry, that,
it's crazy. It's crazy. Excuse me, my respect for all the companies. And we've worked with a lot of the people that work there, at that Podcast, success is built on the backs of Podcast, creators and whether that's changing the categories or introducing subscription or anchor only product. a lot of these people are making it harder for podcasts to do their job rather than easier.
And it would be nice if they maybe pause their development plans slightly and thought about what would be good for the sector and for creators rather than what drives daily active users and time spent in app.
outside in marketing rather than inside out. So
until we got my soap box
now, so no, that's fine. Please stay on it. It's wonderful. Now the other thing I was just thinking about was, I wonder if Jack doors he might consider using square as the payment mechanism for Twitter. does he have any involvement in that? I wonder. and the other thing that we talked about last week was that Apple podcasts had gone through the 2 million barrier of shows. that's pretty amazing. it doesn't seem to be.
Any slowdown in podcasting, it seems to be increasing any thoughts on why haven't people got bored of podcasts and can't you and I just get our podcasts out there and let all the people who did their ones and twosies go away now, please. people,
they get bored of making books. They're not going to get bored of making podcasts either. I think also you're locked down. A lot of people started the podcast and locked down and they had more time on their hands services, like squad cars that we're using today. zoom other things I've made this all much easier. We've seen it in Podcast awards. We have our best new podcast category, which has been super ever subscribed this year because there's lots of new shows. I thought it was interesting.
I looked at some of the data and. Like active shows or shows you had an episode in the last six months was pretty high. We're just going to three-quarters of a million. I was surprised. And that probably since the fact there's been a lot of shades in the last 12 months, but there's probably less pod fade than you'd expect respect, but there's a lot of shows with sub a hundred. Listeners as well. There's a lot of people that do it for themselves rather than obviously big audiences.
Okay. our friends at the Podcast index Adam Curry and Dave Jones, the Podcast index has also now listed over 2 million podcasts. It doesn't automatically pull new shows from the Apple podcasts. so seems to have overtaken the numbers there as well. It looks like people are registering on both directories, both the Apple and the Podcast index.
obviously it's great. You distribution we're very fortunate that Apple provides a free sort of API to get into some of their data, but that might disappear. One day. We don't know is having something like the Podcast index, which lists as many shows as it can. And it seemed to be doing well. There's a is definitely a good thing. and a little bit of a. sorts of protection probably for the sector.
And I know that lots of Podcast apps use the Apple podcast directory and they'd obviously be massively affected if suddenly that disappeared. One day I saw the James and pod news had mentioned that the Ramsey show has achieved 1 billion downloads and lots of announcements like this, we've hit a middle ear or we've hit whatever a billion. that's pretty impressive.
Hot tip to that, man.
I had a brief look, his feed, and one of the reasons I think he does so well is he produces three episodes a day.
Holy moly. and I think it's a longer those episodes though. I if they're five minutes, that's that doesn't count. Then I
think they are hours long episodes. 40 minute episodes should have a quick look. So 40 minute episodes, and I think it's basically three, one hours that he's divided up into three episodes. So it's perhaps. Maybe not a great surprise that he's managed to accelerate the downloads, but still even with three a day. billions impressive. And I think it was a radio show before it's been a ride in Podcast thing a long time. I think Podcast McGahn for 15 years.
So you can build up that steam, but a billion of billions impressive. I went to
him to Himalaya just to check Which is the Chinese host and I'm afraid he doesn't quite get to the top of their summit, I think it's 7 billion is the top download there. and it's the daily prayer. So he's got no chance of beating that one.
That's the market to get into. Yes, that
is now the talking of subscriptions as well, briefly. And the market moving. One of the things that the Podcast index is looking to do is to use Bitcoins. they've got a tag or the Podcast value tag. this is an extension to the RSS feed that they've been working on with Podcast to that. James has kindly submitted Podland And in the first 12 hours, we've made 3,129 Satoshis. So I told the wife we're retiring until I found out that was the $1 and 72 cents.
And I'm assuming that's American, not Australian dollars, James. so we're not, but the Podcast value tag is quite interesting. Dave Jones and Adam used this term value for value, which is quite an interesting way of looking at it. It's the idea that you own the pay from your bit queen wallet for the amount of time you listened to as opposed to a one-off payment. What do you think?
Cause I guess what you just said earlier, Matt, was that, you're going to be dilated being in paying your seven 99 or whatever it is for the podcast whether you listen to all of it or some of it, or none of it. You're going to be paying for it if you're a subscriber. Whereas I think Adam and Dave is saying, look, that's not really fair. Why didn't you just pay for what you consume?
the concept's quite clever. Isn't it? So you basically, you put some money on your podcast app in whatever form digital currency or. Dollars or pounds or whatever. And based on your listening some of that money gets allocated to the people that you listen to. And that's pretty, that's cool. That's pretty cool. the challenge for all these things is how many apps support it and the big three. Apple Google, Spotify won't because it gets in the way of their own models.
And so it stunts any opportunity for that to grow and because not enough apps have it, not enough shows go on it. and it Withers a bit. And it's a shame because It is a good idea. and it'd be nice for that to be more successful. that you've made a dollar 72, probably this is from some smaller apps as well. And we just think if that was applied to the larger apps, that would be quite a significant chunk of change going your way.
It's all us now because obviously you're taking over from James. No problem.
Good. maybe I'm more and more supportive of it. I think anything that they can transfer cash to great is a good thing. it's trying to keep it simple. I think a lot of the Bitcoin stuff, and, we might even get into NFTs in a sec is hard for people to comprehend isn't it and where the value is. but as I mentioned, we're going to see lots and lots of different ways for producers to make money. I was thinking of gold rush, it's the people selling the spades that make the real money.
the people that are making the products. So maybe there's a CMS to rule or CMS is that gets your subscription material into Spotify, Apple, Twitter spaces. To tack up your apps to get Satoshi is and all the rest, maybe that's what we should be concentrating our time on doing.
I'm sure that's what James is doing right now. Actually, just while listening to this, he's probably off running away, rolling up his sleeves and coding. Now, if he wanted to get into this payment mechanism, there is a service course to Tashi is.stream, and that's the service that James subscribed to. And you could submit your Podcast there.
there is another service which we have talked about in the past called breeze that also supports the Podcast value is a Podcast player, both on iOS and thankfully for you and James, Matt on Android as well. it looks pretty good. It allows you to contribute using Bitcoin as you listen to your favorite podcasts and you'll find pod news there. James, hasn't put Podland there yet. again, he's slacking.
But I think what we're seeing is, as you said, rightly all the other players are having to find a way of supporting Podcast creators because they're not going to be allowed into the walled gardens of Apple and Spotify. The one player that we seem to not talk about is our good friends, Google. They seem to be like regarding around Podcast. Yes. They're indexing Podcast, but what else. Have you heard on the grapevine?
Are they going to be making acquisitions or they're going to bringing out anything that makes podcasting much more ad driven because that's really their game. Isn't it? It's the index search discover and then supply arts, anything that you've heard on the grapevine. So
I actually was talking to someone at Google the other week and. There are some changes, I think, happening with the Google Podcast team and how they are managed and that sort of going on in the background a bit. And it's probably getting in the way of any announcements. but I think that they're pushing on the value of the Google Podcast bit is obviously there is an app, but the key thing is your parents search.
And if you haven't registered your Podcast on Google Podcast manager, you should go and do that because it gives you some good insight into that search. You get to see a bit like if you're, if you use Google webmasters for your for your website does a similar thing where it shows you how many page views. you're Podcast. Having mentioned your Podcast gets in Google search and then how many people click through and which episodes they click through. One of the things that I do.
I run a kids radio network with lots of podcasts from called fund kids. And I was looking at our fund kids science, a weekly on Google Podcast manager. And it was interesting seeing one of our preserves was doing very well click through wise cause it was calendar driven and obviously a lot of people were searching for that talent and then clicking through and that's new consumption year that's people who weren't subscribers, maybe wouldn't have found us normally.
and the found us that way, and maybe they do become a regular listener. So I think, Google Podcast is there's third or fourth, generally in the list of consumption destinations, obviously it's, pre-installed in every Android phone, so there's probably more of it than you expect and they don't read you the PR, so you don't really hear about it. but I would, it'd be brave to bet against Google, doing well in this space. I think also talking to them, they are very algorithm driven.
they want the systems to be the app and to be the service. They don't want to go down a route of having individual humans picking shows for featuring and all of that side. And so I think there. Continually working on how they come up with better algorithms that surface the right content. And obviously they back to social graphs, they know a lot about us, don't they?
when you go into the app, it should be pretty good in the same way that Google news is pretty good at learning about you, even though you don't really not much information directly, a lot of the podcasts and news audio side is plugged into Google news. There's a lot of knowledge in there and there's probably more going on in there than we expect.
Okay. the last part, we did mention one of the areas that I'm really interested in is NFTs non fungible tokens as a payment mechanism. And one of the things that I have been looking at was the use of NFTs for payments, for digital art, which I think is a little bit. emperor's new clothes when the internet really is the world's greatest photocopier. if you want a digital photocopy of something is pretty much accurate. so NFTs really just give you a license to one example of a digital copy.
But I was listening to a podcast with Scott Galloway and they had Ralph Paul on talking about how NFTs could be used for communities and how you as a Podcast owner, I guess this goes back to the Kevin Kelly, a thousand true fans, which I love as a book and. The whole idea is if you could find a thousand true fans for your podcast and you could create a payment mechanism that they could reward you and you could reward them.
And it seems that if you create an NFT token for your community, you could actually reward them for sharing it. Listening further down. I will be talking to Dave and Adam about whether they would switch from Satoshi's to NFTs next week, because I think it would allow you to pay. Value for value, just the amount in a token and allow you to then have those tokens within the community be reusable or shareable have you come across uses of NFT yet?
so I think one of the ways to think about NFTs is that token word. And there's a ledger which records who owns that token. the sorts of is persistent. And again, that as a concept is a good concept, isn't it? That's a different kind of way of recording. some connection that someone might have to some digital thing. and I agree with you. I think the artwork stuff. is a little bit people using it as an example of it.
and by having, 50 million pound stuff that, that gets sold, it just, it teaches people about the concept. So I think having that good I think We're in that time where it's quite a hard sell to explain the value and the connection. I think also the systems that support these things obviously don't really exist at the moment. So I was reading a tweet thread from someone who had bought a bit of a song, a kind of almost like rights to a bit of a song.
And he did it to demonstrate that actually he was buying a link to a URL and actually that URL might not exist in the future. and what's the mechanism to distribute money from that rise? there isn't one yet. And what if they choose not to actually do anything anyway? Is there any recompense for him? No. so it's In the future. you could do a lot of stuff with it. in the present, it's all a bit theoretical.
the best way I like him to do it. You can buy shares in a company. Those shares can have a registration to you and have a value, or those shares become tradable on an external stock exchange that has nothing to do with the day-to-day running of that company. And in many ways, NFTs are a digital share that you can acquire and a digital asset that have a token value and that value Can be traded external to that company, Podcast, community, whatever you want.
I think that's the nearest I've got as an analogy in my head so
far. No, That's a nice way to describe it. but also it's that thing of like in the shares and the new starkly with shares things like the chew lips back in the twenties and thirties. And that's the danger, isn't it is that you create something that sits on top of it a bit like the financial crash and people were sharing, virtualized financial instruments that were notionally connected to mortgages, but we're so detached from it. The, it didn't really make sense anymore.
so that's always, that's the worst. That's always the worst case dangerous. And then it's trying to find those day-to-day uses that people can understand. And and you feel that, actually, if I do want to buy. The rights to a tweets because I get some value from that, or I want to buy or I want to use it as a way to say I was early on something. And that money, went to somebody in the early days. And now actually my foresight could now be tradable later on.
I think those people that got into Bitcoin early and they're laughing back at us. There you go. That's all I can say, Matt. Thank you so much. Be my co-host this week, a part from the British Podcast wards, remind people what the URL is and what else are you up to?
So British Podcast, awards.com or the information's on there. I do a weekly newsletter about audio and podcasts and music streaming that you can subscribe to you for free. it's Matt deacon.com. and then my day job is I do some audio projects and I run this kid's radio station and network. I think that's the other bit that I'm fascinated by is his niches.
And your kids is a really interesting niche and kids, audios are interesting niche and what's different and what's the same about other sectors. And I think you have a lot of people listening to this successful in their niches and learning what works in their niche and what works with audiences. And that's like a super fun thing to be able to do.
Brilliant. this week, I'm finally on Adam Curry and Dave Jones Podcast. The Podcast index on the 2nd of April. So tomorrow and I'll be discussing all the things we talked about today. Value for value NFTs. but I'm also going to be talking about a little idea that I have with Dave Jones about using that little known thing in RSS called trap backs and ping backs for Podcast discovery. I firmly think that is an underused piece of technology that's already in the RSS spec.
I think we need to dig out dust down and reuse in today because discovery is the biggest challenge in Podcast. If there's 2 million, maybe 3 million. clubhouse start recording. There could be four or five minutes. so I think trackbacks and ping backs got a bad name in the blogging world because people started use them for spamming and fitting people's comments with advertising. But my idea is that there has to be a way.
of being able to put a market somewhere in the middle of the Podcast, not chapters, but actually comment podcasts that says, Oh, at this point, while I was listening, I found that interesting. And then I can tweeted out or some other mechanism of alerting people to that singular point. and equally someone can make a tweet with a track back that goes into your Podcast comments. I think there's got to be a way of.
Breaking up the one hour Podcast into chunkable items that goes beyond chapters that people can put markers in for other friends to look for.
Hey, it's interesting. I think there's a lot of opportunities over and above. What's been the standard RSS fees. And the more apps that reflect those, the more likely that functionality will be, it will be used. So that's it for this week. If you've enjoyed your trip to Podland, you can come back again next time. you can follow the podcast on all major podcast players or visit the website. Podland dot news.
Thank you for listening. We know that there's over 2 million podcasts out there and many other podcasts that you could have listened to. So we're really grateful for your time. If you have any comments about anything on this show today, especially if you'd prefer matte to Jane, please send a voice comment to questions at Podland dot news or tweet us at Podland
news. And I suppose 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 you've mentioned this week. happy April falls, James, we'll be back next week. the music's for a big night jingles. We recorded today with squad cast FM. We edited with descript pro our hosted and sponsored by
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Brown. I will see you in Podland next week and in the words of modern, keep following. Thanks, Matt. Cool.