Pay Attention, Cash is King, Bitcoin is the native currency of the Internet and it's raining Sat's on Fountain.

It was a backgrounder into how Bitcoin is now changing the way that we use money online. In fact he called it. Bitcoin is the native currency of the internet. he went on to say, not only is our fit money broken, but the monetization model of the internet is broken to the advertising base platforms. Day and age optimize for engagement by division and polarization using dark patterns and addiction by design. It won't be easy to break out for the compulsion loops that are set up for us.

But thanks to the self-sovereign tech stack that is currently emerging, there is a viable, alternative, the value for value model. So all of that together, his conversation about that, his book and his thoughts on the attention economy. I thought I'd reach out to him and we got an interview with him. I came across Gigi over Christmas. He wrote a wonderful essay about the attention economy and micro-payment XXII. Hello? How are you? Hey, Sam. I'm doing very well. Thanks a lot for having me.

Now you wrote this blog post called the freedom of value. It's got a lot of attention, no pun intended. And it was about the attention economy and micropayments. What made you write. Well, the things actually. So I think we can all agree that the internet could be better. I don't want to say that the internet is broken, but some parts of the internet are broken. And I think a lot of it has to do with the way that payments work online. I try to.

Lay out why we are at the current iteration of the internet, how we pay for things online. And I also describe the problem of selling information in the first place. So trying to sell a good, that is non scars, like trying to sell it an image that you can just copy and paste online is a very tricky problem. And so I think we have to think about these things differently a little bit. This is what this essay is. So what is the attention economy?

Explain that to me first, basically everyone got used to the current situation that we find ourselves in neighborly. That's, everything is free online, and you can just read and consume stuff without paying for it directly. And so you pay. With it for other meats and you pay by either being the product yourself, or by being forced to watch a lot of advertisements.

And of course, like everyone knows that data is the new oil and we are all being harvested by Google and Facebook and Amazon and the rest of it. And so the name of the game is just getting. The most few time and the most eyeballs possible. And we all know these kinds of problems. I think one great counter movement to that is long form podcasting.

So I'm very happy that this is happening, but it's sometimes suffering a bit from the similar problems that the written content suffers from that every week, everything devolves into soundbites. Clickbait. And you just try to get the attention of as many people as possible. I use this as one of the main examples to show where this leads and how bad the end result can get. I use Tik TOK is one of the cursed apps. Like it really finds out what you like, and then it feeds you. Crack cocaine.

It really like it uses AI to figure out what you like. And then if it fits you, the shortest snippets, it can, and it gets your really addicted really quickly. And that's also why it's so successful. And I think it all has to do with how information is monetized online. And I'm interested in exploring alternatives to that model. The alternative model is adding in micropayment.

Marc Andreessen Netscape said when he created the Netscape browser, one of his biggest regrets was not building in a micropayment system at that point. We're talking several decades ago now. And mark Zuckerberg. Try to build a micropayment system called Libra, thankfully that didn't succeed, but we now have a new micropayment system don't we it's based around Bitcoin using something called or Sam. Can you tell me more about what is this new micropayment system?

It's difficult to understand because you have to parse everything apart. Why do payments. Work the way they work currently. Like why do credit card work and how do they work in? And you have to understand money first and foremost, like what money is and what its purpose is in society. And the difference between. Money and the currency and also the monetary base and the payments like visa and MasterCard for example, are our payment rails. And historically until 1971, we were on a gold standard.

So you had gold. That was the base reality of money of the. The world use basically, and we were trading paper certificates, and that was a sort of payment system on top of gold and very similar. We now have like, the problem with gold is, and with traditional monies is that they just don't work online. Like you cannot send the gold bar via an email. It just doesn't work. So everyone understands it. And this is a very hard problem and Bitcoin solved this problem.

And the problem with Bitcoin is though that it is not very suitable for high-frequency. Micropayments. So what we currently have with podcasting 2.0, and if your listeners don't know what podcasting to buy, I'd always about, I recommend checking it out and looking into the work of Adam Curry in particular, he understood very early on that. Now we have a way to send value. Online in a micropayment fashion so that you can do it in a very fine-grained way.

Every minute you listen to a podcast, you can choose to stream Satoshis to stream small fractions of a Bitcoin to the podcast hosts. However, it is configured basically. And so what we have now is we have a new kind of money that works exclusively. In the information space. So it's not a physical thing. Bitcoin is another physical thing. You know, like you can't touch it, you can't call it in your house, but it is money that has all the characteristics of good money, just like gold.

It's very much what gold used to be in the physical space. Bitcoin is in the information space and with the lightning network, which is basically a payment solution, very similar to Venmo and PayPal and visa and MasterCard. These are payments solutions on top of the existing monetary system. And for Bitcoin, the payment solution that is currently being used at that works since Kayla's really well is delighting network. And so when podcasting 2.0, does it combines all these things?

It realizes that selling information, selling something to this non scars is an impossible problem. So you have to. Turned a problem on the 10th. It's like, here's my podcast. Here's my blog post here is what I have to offer. And if you like it you'll get value back. This is the core of the value for value model. So if you enjoy the content, you can set up your absence. It's like, you don't have to even think about it. Basically. You can set it up that I really enjoy this podcast.

Every time I listen to it, I stream Satoshi's. I give Bitcoin back to the people that, that make it happen. And so it solves a couple of. Problems that we currently have online payroll is stonework. If something. Really good. We see this all the time with pirated movies and those kinds of things. If the movie is really good, it's really easy to download it.

If an article is really good, someone will take a screenshot and we'll circulate it on social media, send it around in that central center or grab it in some other ways someone pays the paywall and then you copy and paste the whole thing. And that's it. The article is free. So the main thesis that I also lay out in the article is since information wants to be free and information can always be copied at zero marginal. Don't even try to build a cage around it. Don't try to sell information.

Like it was an apple, don't try to sell information. Like it was a digital good. You have to think about it differently. And this is where the value for value model comes in. All of it is very new and we still have as a podcasting community, for example, that's a society in general, figuring out what works. And as you can probably tell I'm terribly excited about this because it already works.

And some people that already can live off of this model and it works for everyone because it's an open protocol, just like RSS, just like podcasting. Like there are no good gatekeepers. Everyone can just create this, set this up. And it's a beautiful system really. And they're really.

That we can turn this ship around, like Aaron turn, it turned the internet on its head, so to speak and offer more value to those that produce content to those that enjoy good high quality content and the cut out the middleman, which are the, the platforms of the advertisers and so on because with those kinds of models, There are all kinds of problems that immediately enter the picture. You run into a censorship issue. You run into all kinds of issues.

If someone has a way to close down your accounts already platform you on a long enough time scale. This will usually happen. Joe Rogan is seeing that this weekend was Spotify, but so going back to it, as you said, let's focus back now on podcasting and. At value for value. We've turned these in podcasting boosts to grams and what they are from my understanding is the ability to be able to leave a comment along with a micro payment to the creator.

So the listener can feed back on what they think of the podcast, but also. It gives them some micro reward as well. One thing I noted was that you did a really interesting mock-up on Twitter. You showed her a podcast player with boost to grams along the timeline. Tell me more about that. So the main idea is that once someone. Since this gram, because the payment is attached to it. And just maybe since this is so new, I assume most people are not familiar with this.

So they, the idea is that you have two ways to give back in value for value. First and foremost, the things that we already discussed, that you can set up your podcast completely voluntary. Of course. So like you can listen to the podcast without giving back as well, but let's say you have a little bit of money in your podcasting app, and then you can do. That's like a fraction of the pennies is stream every minute. And this is just like a baseline that you give back.

And if you really like something, those new apps, they have what are called boost buttons or where you can send a boost and you can think of it as clapping and throwing a couple more coins into the hats and the article. I. Busking analogy like a street performer. If you really like something, you just throw something in extra. And what's so interesting about the boosts is, and also about the street payments.

This is a real signal, as everyone knows in the podcasting world, like all the measurements that are being used to pitch to advertisers, for example, it's like, I have so many downloads and I have this and that, then those kinds of metrics, sentiment, a lot of it is nonsense because if. Pop catching apps that just download all the feeds all the time. Exactly flames over. So it's nonsensical to use these kinds of metrics.

And we have the same issues online that there are some people like myself that block out all the tracking and block out all those things. And so we don't even show up and all these metrics can be gained of course, as well. If someone decides to give you money, it's a very strong signal. Like it's really a pristine high quality signal that these are real users. These are not bots because I bought the army will not give you money. That's not how it works.

And it was really engaging and it, it provided value to them and so on. So it's a direct signal. And that's what this idea of the visualization came from as well. Where imagine if you have your not only visualization and some people might. YouTube, for example, where you can see what parts of the video are being watched. And so it's the same idea basically, but it's not the eyeballs that you track, but it's the, the true value flows that you track when.

Press the boost button and how much should he gave and those kinds of things. And the interesting thing about Bitcoin and the lightning network is that there is no middleman. It's a censorship resistant payment mechanism and you have the technical possibility to add a small short text message. With a payment. And so this is being used slash abused through built a feedback mechanism for the value enabled podcasts, where you can send a short piece of grandma's short message to the podcaster.

And this is something that we explored as well with the things that we are working on at the tools that we are building. What fun ideas can you think of? What can you add to this message and how will people use this? And all of this is currently being explored by the people at the forefront. So one of the things. I noticed before Jack Dorsey left Twitter was that in the Twitter client, he's enabled a micropayment system using Bitcoin and sat.

So if you go to the podcast, index.org, Twitter account, you'll see a currency icon. When you click on it, it allows you to pay Dave Jones and Adam Curry. If you say. Satoshi is for their tweets, which is great. Now it isn't common knowledge and most people aren't using it yet. Um, one of the biggest problems that most of the podcast apps have like fountain and the cast offsets you can't easily set up a wallet. So what I'm trying to say is it feels like there's stuff going on.

So the value for value, this stuff that's going on with boost to grams, the lightning network, the stuff on Twitter. But I think one of our biggest problems as an industry is that it's still complex. Isn't it? It's still which one it should. I use. How do I set up a wallet? Where do I put my fear currency? Which one? It can I trust? How much should I pay? Where are you in your head with how we address those? That's a good question. And you're definitely right.

That it's a little bit confusing in the beginning and it's very much, do you know those like news clips from the early nineties when no one knew what the internet was and what is. W though. And so that's where we're at currently with Bitcoin.

No one really understands it and it's still a bit clunky and weird to use, but I can encourage everyone to just give it a try because there are some wallets that are super user friendly already, like wallet of Satoshi, for example, this is a one that's super easy to set up. Breeze is another one that I really liked. I view Bitcoin as the native currency of the internet. And if you want to do something. Online in the future, you will have to have this currency.

I see myself as mostly living online. So Bitcoin is my, do you think the timeline will be before this complexity becomes simplistic? Because my favorite expression is complexity is failed simplicity. And where we are right now is we're in the complexity people. Most people would struggle if they had to understand. How to set up a wallet and how to buy SATs and how to then make the payment. So in certainly the invoice thing is certainly confusing.

How do you think we're going to make this a much simpler, easier to understand. I think we are very close. I think we're almost there in the podcasting to Pardot apps. For example, you will never see an invoice. Basically. Everything is abstract that you press the boost button and it just made a payment without a middleman, which flies across borders. And it's virtually free, basically instant. And, um, for me as a. The regular feared world is where the complexity lies.

I can recommend the book that I wrote to get a broad overview, which is called 21 lessons it's available online for free. So you can just read it without buying the catheter. And I run everything that I do on a value for value basis. All the things that I do are free available online. And of course, like for physical books, you can't copy and paste physical books yet. So you have to sell them in the old fashioned way, but everything else I give away for free online.

And if you like it, it's very easy to give back. If you happen to have a couple of subtleties to your name, if you have a little bit of. And in general in Bitcoin, there are a couple of great books already now. So a couple of years ago there were zero books on Bitcoin, and now there's like a good dozen or two. And usually if you really want to dig down into the question of what is money and the history of money, and why do we need Bitcoin in the first place?

The Bitcoin standard is often recommended. There's also the Bose case for Bitcoin, which is a great book. If you want to look again in the money side and then the answering the question, how this. Play out in the next couple of years and decades ahead in terms of the lightening and payment side of things and the podcasting 2.0 side of things. This is so new. There are no books about this yet. Basically there's one single lightning book, which is very technical. So it's mostly for programmers.

I would say. I think it's called mastering the lightning net. You can also read this online for free, like it's on good hub. If you don't know what GitHub is, this book is not for you. And so what I would recommend if you're interested in podcasting 2.0 is look into the work of Adam Curry. Like he is championing a lot of that stuff and just play around with it. Some great new value enabled podcasting apps. You can see a list.

You podcasting apps.com and also on the podcast index, you can see all the different kinds of podcasts that are a value enabled them to use their value for value model. And there are you don't like it started out very humbly. They were telling us like five podcasts that use this stuff. And now it's in the a hundred. Maybe in a thousand plus, and that's what just play around with it.

Again, it might be intimidating at first, but don't be afraid to buy like $5 worth of Bitcoin and play around with some new podcasting apps. And there's a lot of fun to be had. I am Gigi on Twitter and also there gg.com is where all my long form writing is I helped to start a podcast as well called closing the loop where we discuss a lot of the things that we discussed today.

And also the last episode where I was on talked a lot about the value for value model might be an interesting followup to this current. And again, Bitcoin resources.com. If you're interested in Bitcoin 21 lessons.com, if you want to get a broad overview of what this all is about and where it might lead. And that's basically it's thanks a lot for having me there.

So instead of giving them a retweet or a heart, you can now actually give them cash in the form of Satoshi's. last week or the week before, when I then clicked open my wallet, nothing happened. It didn't click through to anything. It just came up with a screen saying custodial or non-custodial wallet. But this week now that the cash apps on lightning, when you click it, it opens up your cash app and instantly you can make a payment.

In fact, I think the only thing you can do for me, because I'm in Australia is you can send me Bitcoin, but You can't send me SATs over the lightning network, which is a bit of a shame. But, yeah. interesting hearing that, that has moved on a little bit. and, and also interesting seeing, how many people are using it.

So what we've done is we've made it really easy just to quickly claim your podcasts on fountain. We'll set you up with a Bitcoin lightning wallet and we'll update your what's called value block in podcast index, which means that just after those two clicks within. You'll be able to stop receiving Bitcoin lightening payments from your listeners from any podcasting costing 2.0 enabled. Great. Now, does that mean once I'd got Satoshis in my wallet? Can I export them anywhere? Yeah. So you can.

Withdrawal them to any Bitcoin lightning wallet. We've just seen cash app in the U S announced that they've rolled out lightning to all of their users. So you can explore to cash app if you want, or any of your other Bitcoin lightning wallets. Now you've been testing clearly with creative spots, the feedback, the feedback has been great. I think one of the interesting things that we've found over the past six months, one of the reasons that we wanted to actually build.

Product for podcast says, is that there's a lot of podcasts out there that actually do have the ability to receive Bitcoin lightning payments. And they're receiving the payments, but they're not necessarily receiving all of the amazing data that goes along with that. And that's actually one of the most exciting things about this feature.

So within the fountain podcasts, You will be able to see not only the list of incoming transactions, but you'll be able to see a summary of which users are supporting you the most over time. And this is not just users on fountain. This is users supporting you from any other port costing to point out that you'll also be able to see which episodes have brought in the most. And this is a great feedback mechanism for you.

So you can see that this episode was really good or maybe the way that I. For value back in this episode was actually worked really well. I'm going to, I'm going to go with that script again. I also have, we got, obviously we've got all of the incoming messages as well, so that you can just quickly view them and then use them as part of your show format, um, going forward.

So we really wanted to make it just really easy to have all of the data from value, for value, just in one place where you can access it. Congratulations. Now, one of the things that people may not know, there's two forms of wallet, wants a non-custodial and wants a custodial. This is a custodial wallet, which means that you are holding the warning. Correct.

Right now is a custodial wallet, but we're working on ways that we can extend that to at least have the non-custodial option for podcasters that want to take it to that next level. And there's some really exciting things. With the lightning network that should hopefully give us that ability, uh, further down the line. But right now yet is a custodial. Now that's brilliant for creators. Now, looking at the side of you.

Obviously people who use the fountain app can put their wallet in and then start to reward creators with SAS. Do you have any plans to integrate with cash app or do you have plans to create a user enabled wallet locally in terms of cash app? Person in the U S can already send lightning from cash app into fountain really easily. That works today. Obviously the lightening within catch-up is not available in the UK.

I think probably we won't end up offering the kind of fear on ramp or the ability to buy Bitcoin or lightning because that's fundament. A bit of a different business model and comes with a lot of regulations. So we probably will just stick with allowing people to send that Bitcoin on lightning, into fountain. I think the great thing that cash app shows us is that this is not just fountain and podcasting 2.0, talking about Bitcoin and lightning. This is happening globally.

This is every digital finance app that wants to survive over the next five years is going to have to do this. The any poke cost is out there that have been maybe hesitant about this. I think that's a great signal to show you that this is a round and it's the best technology for the job. Fundamentally. There's no other payments technology that allows you to stream micro payments per minute. It just doesn't exist. It was a crazy one.

Somebody given a hundred million SATs to this film called Cindy mark, a movie that say it's just coming out. So that will be one Bitcoin, but it's around 30,000 pounds. Now going forward. What else do you have in mind? When we first spoke probably about six months ago, it was all interesting ideas and stuff, and every time we speak or every time the market looks forward, we're beginning to move all those difficult geeky things out of the way.

So what do you think is the barrier now for mass adoption? Great question. I think that's two things that are limiting the growth of body for that. I think the first is just making that initial onboarding easier. So I think cash app has made a giant leap forward in the U S market. I think suddenly you've got 60 million people that are aware of lightning and have a lightning wallet on their phone. I think internationally though, we still don't have the.

Big players that are offering that, but I think that will come naturally over the next year or so. So I'm pretty optimistic that we'll solve that. The second thing that I think is limiting value value is just the education around. How do you talk about it on your podcast? How do you explain what value for value is, how do you ask your listeners to send you, uh, do you make it part of your show format? Like I know you. Do the booster Graham corner. That's one way of doing it.

You could ask at the beginning of the show, you could ask at the end of the show, you could do a special Roundup episode at the end of each month. We're just starting to figure out the different options. And I think that's a really important piece because fundamentally it's not enough as a podcast that value enable your podcast. You actually have to talk about it on your show. You have to talk about it regularly in order to get people supporting, they will support if you ask them, but it takes.

Do you see a point because now you've got the analytics about who your superfans are. Do you see a queen where the creator cause it's called value for value as a two way street gives stats back to the, the sun? Definitely. I don't see why not. I think the really cool thing about Bitcoin and lightning is that there's no limits to what we can do. We can be completely creative because at the end of the day, it's just programmable. So I'm really excited to see what we can do along those lines.

I think we're still at the first stage. So that's why we'd launched the podcast, the wallet, because hopefully now it, maybe there's podcasters out there that have thought about doing this, but maybe they'd been a bit puts off by having to run their own lightening node or some of the other options that are out there. Now, if you're a poke cost that you can just set this up. Two clicks within fountain and you can start experimenting.

So I think we've got to get as many podcasters on board as possible because the more podcasts that are doing this, the more examples we'll see if the best way to integrate it into the show. I'm really excited to see what people do with that. I think also the thing that you mentioned cash app. So when I go to my Twitter, Account. And I go to the podcast index account on Twitter. I've got a little dollar sign icon. When you click on it, it brings up a pop-up for cash Satoshi's or Bitcoin.

And in the past that would just ask me for a wallet. And of course I'm not us and it wouldn't have. Only yesterday. Did I notice when I now click open one, it goes straight into cash app. As I have a local version of cash app and I think 300 million roughly Twitter users. So if there is a way that even a percentage of that starts to get into the Satoshi reward system value, I think it will begin to go mainly.

Now very quickly, where can people get the fountain that tell them where they can go and try it? So you can download fountain on iOS or Android. It's live on, uh, both of those app stores. And if you're a podcaster that wants to set up your podcast to receive Bitcoin lightning through value for value, all you have to do on fountain is find your show on fountain, click the lightning bolt on your show page within the. And there's a big yellow button that just says claim podcast.

And if you hit that button, you would just need to put in the owner email address that's in your eyes, that's feed, just so that we know that you have a control over that feed. And from there we work with Adam and Dave at the podcast index to just update your value block from there. So it's really simple one-click process. And then you can start asking your listeners to send you some stuff. A magazine or skip. Congratulations. Once again, look forward to the next big update from you.

Speechy seen mate. Amazing. Thanks to my son. Pleasure.

it's one of the first podcast hosts to build in support for value as well. So if you're on castoffs, if you're hosting on castoffs, then you can, add the, Bitcoin information into there and away you go. And I think the difference though, between castoffs and fountain is that car stars has enabled a space for you to type in your Bitcoin node information. So that sort of thing, but what fountain has done is they've gone the whole hog.

So they've given you a proper podcast, a wallet, which includes. All of that stuff. So it's a very different things. So many congratulations to Oscar, for doing that. And it's great to hear.

Just, a lot of really useful information around, podcasters and monetizing of, all of that from a mumbler, which is a Spanish company and it was kind of them to have got in touch with, pod news and given us an English translation in there as well. yeah, if you want to have a peak at that, you will find it a couple of days ago in the pod news new. Yeah.

But I think, the advertising model is tried and tested, and value for value is actually tried and tested. Just ask Adam Curry about that. I think anything that, offers creators choice in how they produce their content is a good thing. So really excited to hear that. You know, the future, isn't just selling Casper mattresses. The future is all kinds of other things in there as well. And

He started podcasting in 2004 and has been doing it ever since. Also Glen Washington, who's producer of snap judgment, Molly wood, who I used to listen to a long time ago on nets, a buzz out loud. she is now working on this week in startups. and finally a very nice man, a proud bid owner and pipe owner, the host of podcast pontifications and CEO of simpler media productions. Evo Terra.

When I ran an agency, in fact, the agencies that I worked at, we had a policy that we would not submit to awards because we wanted it to be about the work itself and not about the accolades that we get. So that's something I've carried with me for awhile, but at the same time, I'm incredibly honored. I've been doing this for a long time and to be recognized by my peers, many of what you've also been. For a long time.

It's almost overwhelming just to look at the list of people who are in there already. And to know that some of them said this guy's efforts and podcasting is worth having that accolade to his name. Now, what

And that's both good and bad for all of podcasting, but I tend to like it as a good thing, changes always comes with its challenges, but I think it's a good thing because that will continue to put the spotlight on podcasting and hopefully in ways that continue to bring more people into. We'll have to wait and see what the numbers come out from medicine research this year, but we haven't cracked that 30% number in the states. At least the people who listen on a regular weekly basis.

So I'm hopeful that we'll see more people coming into the space as the, as more attention is poured on it from these big mergers and acquisitions. My big

And I've been puzzled about this since the beginning of podcasting. Why audible, which is now owned by Amazon. Doesn't take a bigger stake. Podcasting, audible. What apple did with iTunes back in 2005, they would clearly be the default standard because they already had a spoken word mobile platform. And the fact that they don't do more always puzzles me. So I'm not counting Amazon slash audible out of making a next great big push and flipping things upside

Maybe 5% can get their heads around creating a digital wallet. And instead of giving you a heart or a like, or a retweet giving you some stats, I think that's a great step in, hopefully, maybe. Paul fade go away. Podcasters who create something, but get frustrated that there's no engagement or interaction or monetization. None of us really want to sell Casper mattresses

There's a bunch of others that are now making it a much easier onboarding process when it's as easy as giving someone at PayPal payments or signing up for a Patrion account or clicking that tip button, as you mentioned in Twitter right now, when it's that simple and it's that integrated, I think that is an engagement. Some people do more often say yes, I would like to show my love to that podcast. Are there now? Will there be enough? That do that.

There is still the 99 1 rule that says 90% of your audience won't do anything 9% maybe will, and 1% will do it. So if you're a podcast with a hundred listeners, which is around the average number of listeners, the average podcast has a, that means, well, give you some boost. That mean a feed from pod fading. I don't really know, but nonetheless, I am encouraged by making it easier to access this form of listeners and maybe not the head.

I think that may be just the requirement of it rather than it's my retirement fund, but it could be just, you know what, that's just a nice pat on the back. Thank you so much for letting me know you're listening and I'm onto my next

So if we podcasters and more importantly, the podcast app makers can figure out a way to provide that sort of a feedback mechanism to just so you know, people are actually listening because you don't know that. You only know that from your download numbers, which don't mean lessons, you can log into apple or you can log into Spotify and get that. But even that's only a sliver of your, of the information that is tied to that platform.

But if you could know, overall people are continuing to get what you want to say. I think that helps podcasters keep. And also help refine your show. If splitting this kind of content out gets me more kudos, gets me more. Woofy whatever word you want to use, then that's the way I will structure my show. That's hard to do when you get one piece of feedback a month. Now

I guess I will find out when and or if something arrives in the mail or when I'm on stage at podcast movement,

You don't need a ticket for podcasts moving to evolution, as you can just rock up, I believe. and a watch. so that's all very good. And of course you can also watch online too.

from number five to number one at five stuff, you should know what for this American life at three crime drunk here to the daily. And number one is the Joe Rogan experience. so that was nice to hear. But then there was another chart, pawn track, who, release a chart every month or so, which is participating publishers only. And it shows that I, heart radio is number one for podcasts. And the number one is the daily, which is all very exciting.

And NPR number two, and a number three and NBC news up at number four at the Ben Shapiro show at five. So you've got that chart, which has gone on as well. And then you've got the pod chaser 25.

but, they also have though another 29 data points, which they wouldn't tell me what any of those are. apparently some of them has something to do with social media. So maybe if you follow followed on social media a little bit more, then you might get a little bit higher in this chart and blah, blah, blah. but I could get very little information about any of this. and they're called hottest up and coming podcasts. I went through the list.

One of the podcasts in that pod chaser 25 was released only a couple of weeks ago, right? At the end of January. some of the other charts in the Paul Chase chaser 25 were released at the beginning of December. So I'm not quite sure how that works in terms of these charts as well. And I'm just, I don't, I dunno, I'm just looking at pod tracer and I'm thinking there's an awful lot of black boxes there where they're not telling anybody how anything works.

And I'm just a little bit dubious about the whole thing. I thought I'd go in and have a look. I can see, the data for pod news in there. So I thought, that'll be interesting seeing what that data shows and how many listeners that it thinks that pod news has. It thinks that pod news does 25,000 downloads a month, except pod news does a hundred thousand downloads a month. So that's wrong by a factor of four.

again, I'm just slightly worried that they've got this tech, which isn't probably tuned particularly well, and they're diving into something which just seems a bit proprietary and a big black box. And if they're not telling us quite how it's worked out, then, I don't know, I'm just slightly dubious, but maybe I'm just being miserable about the whole thing. And maybe they're doing a fantastic thing for the industry.

if you have a look in the middle, of people who really haven't made a decision one way or the other, should Spotify have editorial control, should it be Joe Rogan, should Joe Rogan be able to release anything he wants? then there's a little bit of information, Then there's really not that much. middle ground it's either. I really believe that, Joe Rogan is wrong and that Spotify should be, exerting editorial control or on the other side, Joe Rogan can feature whoever.

And that's particularly strong in terms of Americans, 37% of all Americans say that Joe Rogan can say whatever he wants because of that whole freedom of speech thing, which is very much part of the American culture. But as you can see here, not part of the Canadian culture. So I just thought it was really interesting data from signal hill insights. And there's a bunch more data in the report that they, kindly shared, with, as well.

and I think it just goes to show that actually, a it's really polarized, but also B don't go thinking that everybody wants freedom of speech because that's definitely not the case. And don't go thinking that everybody just wants Spotify to editorially control this. Because again, that's definitely not the case either. It's very much a very polarized view on that.

I'm the only one in five of Joe Rogan listeners think that Spotify should have any responsibility at all. whereas Joe Rogan listeners, for us of five nearly basically say, absolutely Joe Rogan should invite whoever he wants on and they should say whatever they like. so again, really interesting seeing that sort of side of it. Yeah. I

thoughts may have changed since that, but, yeah. as I say, I, it is interesting seeing that basically the concept of freedom of speech is actually quite a polarizing concept. and, I went onto the podcast index.social. the other day to say, we might want to be quite careful about promoting podcast index as the best end of free speech, because 40% of Americans don't like that idea. and that went down like a bucket of sick, but nevertheless, it was nice. It was worthwhile doing.

70 Joe Rogan, episodes disappeared from Spotify last weekend. And the reason why is that Joe Rogan wanted them gone, at least according to Daniel EK. Daniel Lac has given some guilty money, a hundred million dollars, for, audio content from historically marginalized groups. You don't do that unless you're feeling slightly guilty. Interesting to see, that's but he then adds that he doesn't believe that silencing Joe is the answer.

And then rumble offered Rogan a hundred million dollars to move his show to the platform, which was a very clever tweet from rumble. Of course, Joe Rogan won't do it. but they've earned significantly out of the. The marketing and the PR of doing that. I was going to say, well done rumble. Although of course looking at the types of people who are on rumble, maybe not.

somebody complaining that I called rumble a right leaning video service. When you have a look at the type of people who are on it, hello. but unfortunately it seems that, the world is getting. Even more polarized and that's one of the unfortunate side effects. Yeah.

So very much looking forward to hearing what they end up saying. hopefully we'll have Marshall and Tom on the podcast next week. And if they're not, then you'll know, that their PR team have declined us probably how.

They will show you how many subscribers and followers you have in various players and services, which is quite cool, not the massive big ones, but some of the, a 1%, 2% market share podcast apps. So for example, it shows me that I have one. Thousand subscribers, or followers in a podcast addict, a whole 164 in Castbox and a whole nine in the podcast app, whatever that is. some quite interesting, data, and of course that's a data which is available for everybody.

So pretty cool stuff from a refinance.

Says it's very similar to also another company I've not really used myself. Listen notes. Have you used at listen notes yourself?

So last year or maybe a year, two years ago, I can't remember what time-wise. Now he has a niche and it was like, I want to get on these podcasts is simple, spent a day going through Google iTunes, try to find ones that were active and then getting the contact details. So reach out to those podcasts. And within that day, we managed to reach out to three or four podcasts. So being a developer, you thought I'll build a solution to this. And that's where it started.

Literally that I came at it from a different angle. I wanted to find out all the guests and see how they were associated. And that's how we came together. Okay. This work in the way that I can come to you guys and say, look, I'm in sector X. I want to reach all the podcasts in that sector. Tell me who they are. Is that. In the sense of that you would do the work.

We're not an agency, we're a platform, but so you were coming to the platform and we've got the ability to filter the podcast by category dates, alive, et cetera, all those sort of things and keywords. So if you were looking for a marketing, yeah. Go and find all the podcasts in marketing and we'll return all those results here. Do you take the standard RSS categorization or do you enhance the data?

So at the moment we're taking the standard categorization, we're bringing some more dation as well, but also we have a team of human beings, agile people, not AI, not AI, not ML. There was an acronym. And we go through the top podcasts that alive basically. Cause there's so many that aren't and we're starting to add data to our own data. So languages is one element is the category, correct? All those sort of things. So we're cleaning up the data.

But you can imagine at the moment, we've got 2 million shows in the database and we've got them over three to 4 million coming in there, plus all the episodes, but it's going to take a long time. So here's your competitors who in the market space, can people anchor themselves? Yeah, it's interesting because up until about 18 months ago, this wasn't a problem. So you've got pot chase approach. So they came from the basis of being a sort of two-sided marketplace.

And now they have a product similar to ours. In the sense of you can go and find the contact details. And what podcast of the show we've got a common. They've come about in the last 12 months, similar aspects to ourselves. And then you've got listened notes, which only been in this industry. Now has a database of podcasts has been around a while now. And again, has the contact details and all sorts of show details on that sort of thing.

And that database that you can pull through an API or make a request and get, so the question that's going through my mind is are you using any of the podcasts index taxes? If it's a search engine, and if I want to find the person. Would you be using the person tag, or if I want to find the location, would you use the location at the end of this quarter, for those that are in sales or for normal people? The end of March, we will be. So that's our project this quarter.

That's how we've kicked off. So we've built the functionality over the last 12 months. Everything works. You can search, you can do all campaigns and stuff. Now we're on a big data exercise. So we're bringing all that richness of a podcasting debts. How do I use the product? Do I sign up? Is it free? What's the cost of it's a seven day trial and you get 10 credits, 10 credits equates to, 10 contact details of a host and you'd log in supply. And get started from there.

And then we have plan starting from $39 up to $79 per month with rolling credits around that and think of credits as just a contact persons details around that. And in some of the higher plans, we have a campaign feature, which is our differentiator, which is our automation tool. You build campaigns to reach out, to get on shows. And we do that in the background. It all happens. You don't have to follow up. We have a three or four day drip campaign, and that is separate from credits.

Credits is active. The contact show, host campaigns and emails and searches. Any other activities is all part of everybody's. So you said you're a platform, not an agency is the goal eventually to move, to become an agency. So could someone say, look, I want to reach out and get my CEO onto. They sit vertical sector transport, or let's say fast moving goods and you go, no worries. We know the top 10 podcasts. We can give you the data. We can give you the analytics.

You can cherry pick the ones you want. And through us, we'll get you as a guest onto those shows from reach. Certainly we'll be calling an agency cause raised, come from that background. I've been involved in agencies before. It's a challenge and painful, but we do have clients, our agencies, and we'll have a, again, some functionality coming out in Q2 Q3. That is designed for agencies to have access to the platform, give them all the user access around that.

But that's where a lot of our tests has come from. We've had people that are book authors based out in a forest in Canada that have limited technology knowledge. And then we've got agents. Is it using the platform to save them time and reduce that process of searching and costs? So let's say it's Portland, for example, do we have to do anything as Portland with you? To claim anything or do anything as the relationship? No. So not at the moment.

We will bring the data in from podcast index or from iTunes or any other data sources. We then marry to it, external API data sources. So there could be social data mapped against that web data backlinks, that sort of thing. But as a host of a podcast now, as we move forward, But this year, we'll reveal those podcasts as pages can make a claim. And there's other platforms that do that is lots of other platforms that have that available.

But what we want to do is then make that available and then updated to give people the capabilities to, to own that page. And so. Okay, fast forward 12 months, where will podcast hope beam? What's what, when he Peter deliverance. So they've got all these to be the defacto platform to automate the process of getting booked on podcasts. So giving individual users the ability to build up their personal brand and share their knowledge for the creative space is a great one for that.

Or moving up to large agencies that have. Sense of clients they want to reach out to and get them on podcasts or PR agencies. And in the back of that, we want to be the de facto data standards. So we have a thing called the podcast, hope score, which rates podcasts based on different metrics that are alive and it's ever changing. And as we bring more data in that will get plugged into that. So we want that score to be recognized and published externally.

Brilliant to remind everyone the very quickly, where can they go and how the can they try and test podcast hall? Yep. So go to podcast, hort.com. That's P O D C a S. H a w K u.com podcast.com. If you want to reach out to me, I'm Stuart, a podcast, hort.com. I'm supposed to Scottish way. I'm slightly awkward way. So it's S T E w a R T. Love to get feedback, love to get people's awareness of it and just go and sign up for a trial there's no credit card needed. It's 10 credits.

Start to test the platform and start to reach out to them, host and get some of those benefits of what we talk about is the benefits of SEO. Once you're on the podcast, you become part of their community in their outreach. And you're getting side benefits of that. Guest podcasting is the new guest blogging chert Townsend. Thank you so much. Good to say. Hey, thanks. Thanks. I'm good.

So that's why the information is put on playing cards. and the deck is a podcast, which is focusing about those particular cases. And if that sounds familiar than it should, because dealing justice was a podcast that was launched, last year, which is exactly that too. And, what dealing justice have been saying is that the deck basically have rocked up stolen their idea, stolen their format, and have used, format for their idea without actually working together with them.

It's not the first time that Ashley Flowers has been accused of plagiarism. crime junkie was a clue accused of plagiarism in 2019, after basically, copying other people's work. and it, from, talking to the dealing justice people, it seems as if that's happening. Again, I have reached out to audio Trump. They haven't responded, they are very aware of the story in pod news. They haven't responded to that either. there's just an awful lot of, really obvious.

similarities in between these two shows and it does seem a bit of a shame for a large company with lots of money to come in and basically go, oh, see that idea. We'll steal that and take that and use that a little bit further, which may or may not be what they've done, but it certainly, the seems to be quite a lot of evidence pointing to the fact that they did know about this particular podcast in the first place.

it is difficult, but at the end of the day, it's just putting something in front of people to basically say, yeah, no, you shouldn't be importing that particular podcast somewhere else. That's a bad idea.

Again, who's comedy is his copyright. He might not want someone to be able to clip or snip them up just like Locke shouldn't. We start to include things like creative, common licenses with podcasts, as well as copyright.

And if a creator turns around and says, I don't want you clipping my show up, thank you very much. Then I think there should be a way of signing that in the RSS feed, it still won't stop, bad people from doing it if they don't want to. But I do believe that, there is something there in terms of respect of creators, to end up doing that. I'm not sure that license tags of the other right.

to be honest, but I do think that the should be a way for us to basically turn around and say, no, I don't want you clipping this by the way. No, I don't want you cashing this audio, as well. because there are plenty of podcasters out there who will be quite happy if you catch the audio. if you can actually. Allow creators to keep control of their content. I think that's a very wise thing, but as I say, I'm not sure that a licensed tag necessarily does that.

I've been thinking this evening have a way of keeping the internet going, which will keep the umbral going, but that may be having the router in a plastic bag, suspended from the ceiling. We'll see quite how far that. But anyway, while we still have them booster Graham corner, if you have a boost button on your new podcast app, then you can hit it and send us a message and a boost. If you find value in what you're listening to. first, is a boost, for you, Sam from, Dave Jones, 726 sets from.

Is that true?

So if you're, if your thing is up and running, then, once we've finished recording today, then I will get the relevant information and I will stick you in there so that you get half the boosts. There's a plan. there's

And, one of the things that's happening with heli pad over the next month or so is that, is going to look a little bit more exciting and, we will be able to see those timestamps if they exist. so that's going to be very exciting. So Kevin, thank you so much for your boost of 4,401 sets. I'm not quite sure what the numerology is around that, but, thank you so much for that.

Thank you both for your very kind, boosts. appreciate that. And if you're listening to it, On a new podcast app, then great. Hit that post button and send us a message. And if you're not, it's time to [email protected]. now you are going to, somewhere exciting, what, next week or the week after podcast futures, 2022, which is in Westminster in London. Yes.

Next week, they are promising 350 world-class speakers, inspirational content, and more than 120 industry brands by day and by night, a week long program. Podcasts stage shows, including this very podcast, which is very exciting and possibly we'll get a live pod news as well, because I need to record it. So I record it at the beginning of recording of Podland. You can sign up to the newsletter of the podcast. today, for, the latest pod news is a media partner.

I should tell you, they aren't at verb podcast, show london.com. That's the podcast show london.com and it would be fantastic to see you in my birth city, as I believe I have to call it these days, in may.

And Sam and I will also be out podcast movement evolutions in LA, in March. I am very much looking forward to it. I've just been filling out some of the forms, getting myself an international COVID certificate and everything else. still trying to understand exactly what I needed to do in terms of tests, but I'm getting there so that. So I'm hoping to do that. So what's been happening for you this week on pod lands?

Very nice.

I did notice a couple of other things PocketCasts is doing incredibly well. I notice, for the pod news podcast, I'm not quite sure why. Facebook has 20 lessons, Spotify. 27 lessons, podcasts about podcasts do really badly on Spotify and Amazon music. Amazon music has about 27 lessons, less than Spotify, Amazon music. why did they get into, podcasting? when clearly they're just not driving any traffic really interesting, but anyway, so they have a smart. Yeah, they do have a smart speaker.

Funnily enough. I'm in there as well on their news daily thing as well, their daily briefing, as well. And that does virtually no traffic whatsoever either. I wonder what the deal is in terms of Amazon. and podcasting, it's a fascinating thing almost as much as the deal is with Google and podcasting. I noticed today that the Google, the Google play namespace, which are Google used to support for many years has been removed from their website completely.

so they no longer actually support their own namespace, which is interesting. So I'm going to. Around that a little bit more and see if I can find anybody who's still working at Google podcasts and, find out what the deal is anyway.