SoundStack's Rockie Thomas; and has Podcasting 2.0 failed?

And that then gives us scores where we can follow the trending views of people who are using those particular platforms , but that also gives those platforms themselves enough opportunity to get some , you know , potentially some more engineering resource or some more marketing resource or whatever it is that they need , and I know that they found it really really useful .

So I go through the results of the Pod News report card every year at Evolutions , which I'll be doing this year in Chicago . But , yes , it's a really really useful thing for the entire industry . So if you haven't filled it out yet , please do podnewsnet slash report card .

But it started to pique my interest probably back in December when Rocky Thomas was appointed chief strategy officer , because we know Rocky she's one of our power supporters I thought I'd reach out and ask Rocky who or what is Soundstack ?

And I always like to joke I was 10 when I started doing this and actually my first , I guess my experience with streaming was streaming some local radio stations on Mark Cuban's company back in the day . Oh yeah , broadcastcom made me learn how to hate the real media server , kodak .

And so , through my entire career , I started doing ad insertion client side in 2000 with a company on Silicon Valley and really have been in the tech side of the audio business , did a stint in TV for four years during the recession , realized I'm not quite pretty enough or speak slow enough for that industry , so I came back over to audio .

So it's been a great career . What I love about digital audio is I have a music degree . It just really speaks to me . So it's great when one of your passions is also a career for you , and I love how much it changes . I know it drives a lot of people crazy , but it is constantly iterating , which makes it really exciting .

Because it was the media leader that said that podcasts have a $74 billion opportunity in advertising , but we're only getting about 0.2% of all ad spend . What can we do to change Rocky ?

I'm like , well , let me rephrase it , it's too hard to buy at scale for large brands and I think one of the challenges is consistent measurement across the side . So today we're getting bought , basically because you know , we're getting the extra 10% buys that are happening at the buy level and we're not actually part of what we call sales planning right now .

And that's not just . That's just not podcasting , that's actually digital audio as well , if you look at it from a streaming standpoint , and we're never going to get more than our five or 10% afterthought until we are actually part of the media plant's initial planning time , like when they're looking at their year-long strategy .

We're talking millions upon millions of dollars and right now it's getting in . What we're focused on and we are working with partnerships which will probably be coming out in the next couple of months , of how to get measurement into those platforms so then those buyers can actually identify .

All right , how many like old school stuff , like gross rating points , which some of them still use . If I have 10 GRPs in New York , how can I bring podcasts in there to basically target those listeners within New York and how can we basically keep on expanding it ? Because , at the end of the day , I don't blame the demand or the advertising side .

It's really hard to be swivel-chairing . I call between a whole bunch of different platforms to buy a very large media spend and so I think really gosh , I sound like a broken record . But it comes back to measurement .

I mean , I would say that our biggest challenge and our biggest opportunity in this industry right now is measurement and also making sure we're consistently passing the correct signals to those buyers . And that can mean everything from you know the type of , you know the type of content it is .

I would say brand safety is not so much of an issue , and I say that just because you know . I think that I would say that most of the podcasts out there are pretty brand safe and if a podcast user is going to go listen to that certain type of podcast , it's a user-initiated action . So I kind of look at it .

As you know , that's what if you want , if an advertiser wants to target that , that's what they're going to get , and also dynamic ad insertion plays into that as well . So really our goal , my goal this year is to figure out how we can get measurement of podcasts into the planning tools that buyers are using today .

You know local sales managers in the back of my head saying increase rate . You know , hold . You know . Basically constrict the supply so you can increase the rate on the demand side of it . I know that's easier said than done .

When everybody else is opening up all their spot sets and they're getting more money , it is going to impact how people are going to want to listen and when they know that you have a two-minute spot break , they're going to take out their phone and they're going to skip versus having a 30 or a 60-second spot break . I'm a big fan of a 15-second ad .

I know that's really tight , but I find that we really have an ADHD transactional brain nowadays and I think that people really like to have concise messaging and I think we have to be about that .

That's one of my biggest challenges with a personal endorsement or live reads is the guys don't hold , or the people women too they don't hold tight to like a clock when they're doing their reads . And I've heard like two minute Casper ads . Sometimes I'm like , oh my gosh , guys , you've got to keep it tight .

And then also hearing the same bullet point creatives going over and over . The beautiful thing about live reads is they're not supposed to burn out on creative and they're starting to burn out , and that's where I think it's an opportunity to mix up the creative , have a different challenge . Find out the first demo , the second demo , the tertiary demo .

Make sure you're making a message towards that , just because , at the end of the day , it increases your outcome , which is going to increase the ability for you to get bought again .

Has it succeeded ? Has it failed ? Has Soundstack adopted it ? And if they have , great , and if they haven't , why not ? I mean , where do you sit as strategy director on this ?

And because I mean Sam , I think you , you've heard the , you and I think Alberto , there's a couple of guys you literally have implemented almost all of them , which is incredibly impressive , I have to say it's incredibly impressive . I would say you know , obviously the transcripts , the person , the location ones , because that makes a lot of sense .

A lot of our broadcasters , a lot of our publishers also tend to be broadcasters or they tend to be podcast networks . And then also I wouldn't say it's a secret , but actually kind of is we actually provide a lot of the delivery for some people who would be considered competitive to Soundstack .

That I can't talk about , because that's how we have grown as a company . We actually provide delivery and hosting for other companies . But the one I'm excited about is , you know , the live item tag .

I mean that's the , because I see that as really like the cool thing about merging possibilities between the linear as well as the on-demand and doing live events , and I mean this is like . This is where it gets really cool for , like local sports and just it's just . This is like a kind of a geek audio girl's dream come true .

And so , to answer your question , do I think that podcast 2.0 has failed ? No , I would say that it has failed in its focus , and when I say that is that I think we'd be better served if we find a couple of the tags that are really going to help . Either one's going to drive monetization , maybe for more transparency within what I call programmatic signals .

One's going to help , you know , maybe merge like the lit tag between linear and on demand , Maybe one that helps out with metrics , I think , really kind of focusing , you know , taking elements of it , the value for value .

One , or you know all the and I know that recently changed and I'm still trying to follow you guys on how because we don't do too much of that type Most of our clients are enterprise clients .

I understand that like the concept tip jar and trying to get that in there , but I'll be honest with you , I still do five , you know , I still do the credit cards with you guys , just because it's I , I'm not .

I'm on pocket cast , which is , I feel , like a newer two , oh , but it's definitely not like the true fans app or some other stuff that we have out there .

There are many that are doing it , so I'm really hoping hosts will start to provide their clients , the podcasters , with that one-click access to live , and then I think you'll see more people adopting it .

We just launched our own , you know our own stream server with HLS and this we could really help out the industry , because we are those people who are independent , who want to help out creators , who actually have incredible deep knowledge on streaming protocols .

And I was listening to I think it was maybe a podcast 2.0 or one of them with those guys and I could feel their frustration of figuring out metadata within Icecast or Shoutcast .

And how can we at Soundstack help bridge that gap a little bit is something that I'm really excited about and where I'm working on , because I've been on revenue forever and I love making revenue and I love making publishers successful . That's really kind of what I like .

Paying publishers , I like seeing them continue to grow because , I'll be honest with you , they're the heroes . If we don't support publishers , we don't really have an industry anymore and I don't think people kind of think about that . We can have an industry that's basically driven by the mega companies and we'll be back to where radio was circa 1996 .

And I don't think we really want that . I think we want to keep independent voices thriving , and that's something that we're excited about too , because we want to help out the industry with our knowledge .

We actually really understand that , and I would say we probably need a little bit more Podcast 2.0 people to kind of work with us so we can figure out how we can help make it easier , Cause you're right , it is deep geeky , deep geeky .

I think it's all about , you know , making sure that we're all kind of figuring out the best way , path forward , and I'm excited about it . It's a great time to be in this industry right now .

She knows the stuff and she's very good in terms of understanding the opportunities of selling audio all in one , making sure that people understand the difference between host read ads and , you know , dynamically inserted ones and all of that kind of stuff . So , yeah , super good . One of the other things .

Interestingly , they have just done a deal with Supporting Cast , which has allowed them to now offer Sirius XM Podcasts Plus to other places as well everywhere from Spotify , pocket Casts , overcast , all of those other podcasts apps , as well , of course , as YouTube Music , which also plays RSS feeds as well .

So I think it makes a bunch of sense to remember that , of course , apple Podcasts premium subscriptions are only available for people who are using Apple Podcasts , and there are a lot of people out there who don't , and so therefore , anything that makes it easier and simpler to also get money out of everybody who's listening in other platforms makes a ton of sense

. And SiriusXM going for supporting cast . You could also use Memberful , and there are a couple of other services as well there .

But that's why I think we need this discussion , but I think we'll do that another day , if you don't mind . Milestones there's been a few milestones this week , james . What's been happening ? Who's been getting across the line ?

They have a show called the Magnus Archives and really unusually , I think , for an audio drama , it has surpassed 100 million downloads , and so that means that they were eligible for one of Spotify's new Creator Milestone Awards , which actually meant for the first time we could actually see one of these things physically , which was nice .

They picked up the award from Spotify in London last week , so that's nice . There's a picture of that on the Pod News website . Also , a couple of shows doing well in terms of their milestone numbers of episodes . There's a podcast out of Winnipeg called Humans on Rights which has just published its 100th episode .

They've been going , I think , for four years or so , I guess . In terms of long podcasts which are still going , 1,800 episodes for Geek News Central . So congratulations to Todd Cochran , the CEO of Blueberry , who has been doing that show pretty well ever since 2004 . So he's done very well . Pod News also . By the way , the Pod News Daily hit episode 2000, .

I think last week You're over your 2000 . Yes , yes , so you know . So there's always that too . But many congratulations to those . And there will be a major milestone , we understand from Podimo next week .

There's an embargo until Monday , so I can't tell you what that is , but we will have Morten Strunger from Podimo , who will be on next week , telling us all about that too .

What is interesting is that for the first time there is a brand new number one , the Mel Robbins podcast . Now , the Mel Robbins podcast it's a SiriusXM podcast . It's represented in Australia by Southern Cross Austereo , one of the big radio companies , which is why it appears in the Australian podcast ranker .

But I thought it was interesting to see , you know , a foreign in inverted commas podcast being number one in the Australian podcast ranker . That show is doing incredibly well . Everybody still talks about Joe Rogan as being the number one show . By the looks of it , the Mel Robbins podcast is pretty well beating Joe Rogan quite consistently .

Now , if you take a look at Spotify , if you take a look at Apple Podcasts , you will notice that number one more often than not is the Mel Robbins podcast . I have no idea who she is . I have no idea why it's all of a sudden a number one show , but it seems to be doing incredibly well .

There's how to celebrate re-signing Audioboom and Sony Music Entertainment for another couple of years . Never to be called that again please , yes , true crime in the UK .

They are working together with the US company iHeart producing a true crime show which will be released later on in the year called Crying Wolf . I heart producing a true crime show which will be released later on in the year called Crying Wolf .

I think it's really exciting to see three different companies in three different continents working together on a big show , so I think that's a very good thing . Also , going on in true crime how do you fancy Sam getting on a boat and going on a cruise ?

A true crime cruise On the cruise will be a number of podcast stars , crime experts and crime-related activities , like a murder mystery game . That sounds fun , doesn't it no ?

More details on that at exhibitcruisecom .

I'm thinking that you know more and more now we're seeing the Joe Rogan still being a very popular podcast , of course , but just being pipped at the top by some of these other new shows coming up from behind . So , coming up from behind , so that's interesting to see , but the numbers are still relatively close .

So I think this is the PodSites data here Joe Rogan experienced 50 million downloads per month , quite a substantial drop according to PodSites , down by 25% , whereas the Midas Touch podcast , up by 120% , yikes with 57 million downloads a month . And at number three , candace Again never heard of it 44 million downloads per month up 110% .

And I was thinking finding tools , what on earth have I written here ? Anyway , funding tools and other features as well . So Godcaster is the place to take a peek at that . It's just quite an interesting player , and PWA seems to be something which you know other people might want to take a peek at . Godcasterfm is where to go for that .

It was like no , no more DJ shows , please . No more , no more . But there is a job , if you want it , for Spotify's VP for .

But yes , if you , if you want to apply for that , then it's on the Spotify website , although I'll probably link to it from podnewsnet slash jobs as well , it'll be in Sweden .

I think we've called it the US Podcast Awards before now , but anyway , you're more than welcome to go and vote for lots of American podcasts .

If you are making documentaries so original and innovative documentaries , uh , in terms of podcasting , um , then you can pitch your show to the wickers um and um awards are . Well , you've got until February the 28th , so you've got another week to enter those . It's part of the legacy from Alan Wicker , who was a big UK broadcaster .

So , yes , there's a thing too .

But any comments that you make to that post go back and appear on the Transistor podcast website . So I thought to myself well , that's interesting because that's relatively easy to implement , because Blue Sky has a little JSON field which you know anybody can get hold of , and so it shouldn't be too hard to code .

And hey presto , it's not too hard to code because I've coded exactly the same thing , and so messages can appear on the Pod News website and all of that . So that's all fine , and that essentially means that all of the complicated stuff goes away in terms of having to run a full activity pub stack , having , indeed to run any sort of OAuth into Blue Sky .

It's just super easy , super straightforward and away . You go for a listener to leave a comment , as long as they're subscribed , you know , as long as they're registered on the Blue Sky platform . So , theoretically at least , that makes it very easy to integrate comments into any particular app .

As long as we don't mind the fact that the comments are all hosted on the Blue Sky platform , then that's easy . Now you could do the same sort of thing on Mastodon as well , and I think this is where it begins to get a little bit complicated , because you can do the same sort of thing .

It gets a little bit more complicated because of the way that Mastodon works , but you can still do roughly the same sort of thing . You can integrate it properly in a podcast app if you want to , in the same way as you could with Blue Sky , or you can just have a link to somebody's app that they already have installed anyway .

So I suppose we're back to the problem of well , do we go with Blue Sky for everybody ? Do we go go for mastodon with everybody ? Um , or should we have five different social media networks , and in which case this is where it all gets .

So we read the social interact tag , we follow the comments and then we present those in the episode so that all works now and that's live and it works for pod news daily and it works for a show called the panel , which is justin's show . So that's that . That was easy .

Like you said , took us about an hour or so to get that done , so hopefully all the other apps will do it as well . We already have an ActivityPub stack built into TrueFan , so we will have this week later on the Mastodon comments coming in from a social interact tag .

And the thing with the social interact tag that's quite nice is you can add more than one URL to that tag , so you can put one , two , three or four tags and you can put what's called priority one , which is your look here first , then go here , then go here .

So again , it just needs a little tweak from our side , but we could support multiple social interact tags and pull comments in from multiple places like X , linkedin , whatever .

That is not cross-app comments , that is cross-social comments , a word we've never probably used before , but that is basically one app going out to multiple social media endpoints and pulling in based around the RSS creator sorry , the RSS feed and the creator saying where they want comments to be posted . Now cross app comments .

The next bit is can I get comments that are posted in Podverse , podcast Guru , castomatic , fountain and then bring those into TrueFans and vice versa ? That is still a little bit more tricky . Now .

We've not applied a lot of work has done something , which is they use the Olby API in Fountain to go and use Fountain comments next to Olby comments that are posted from all the other apps . So they've actually got a quite nice integrated comments section where they're pulling in app comments from others like TrueFans and Podverseverse and mixing it with Fountain .

We need to go and do the same for Podverse , podcast , guru , the old B1s , but we have a whole different challenge with Fountain and I have spoken to Oscar already and he's pointed me in the right direction .

So maybe in a couple of weeks time we will be able to do cross app comments , but at the moment we're trying to focus on cross-social comments , if that makes sense .

munge them together in some way so that I can actually show them . If we're then adding , you know , fountain stuff in there and adding more things in there , then all of a sudden we seem to be hitting a number of different endpoints just to display comments , which is kind of you know . I mean , that's fine if we're all up for that .

You can stick with one place , the . That challenge is not hard and that will be done pretty quickly . Of aggregating comments from social media end points , that's not a big problem . There's APIs out there . The problem is the cross-app comments getting comments from Fountain and TrueFans and Podverse to mix together , and that's the bigger challenge .

And so it's always been something that's been parked by all of us because it's like , oh , that is so difficult to do .

I don't know how we're going to do it , and I thank Justin for doing what he did , and I hope other hosts now follow suit and do it as well , because it won't work unless self-hosting people like yourself , james , put it in , or hosts give it as an option to their users .

I think it just does get a little bit more complicated . If you know , if we're expecting podcast apps to have to deal with , well , let's , we need to have the code to pull from Mastodon and the code to pull from Blue Sky and the code to pull from Fountain and the code to pull from , you know , x , y and Z .

Then all of a sudden it gets complicated again and I suppose that's what it would be nice to try and avoid . You know , for it to be as complicated as that .

The benefit of being able just to pull in blue sky comments is that that's something that you can do on the client side , because it's one JSON call and it's very easy to write a piece of JavaScript to just pull that in , you know , on the fly , which is the way that I'm doing it , so that the rest of the page that you see is beautifully cached and has

been cached for a long , long time . But just that little bit in my case goes through a proxy on my server because I don't want Blue Sky to have all of the IP addresses of my users . But that's certainly you know , but that's certainly a doable thing .

I think once you start having to do that for multiple services and then have JavaScript to try and fathom out how to bring them all in , that all of a sudden gets a little bit complicated again .

How long are they going to be playing around getting their code ready to incorporate something which is three times more complicated than it frankly needs to be ?

We've got to that point where everyone keeps saying they want cross app comments and I think now we've got a chink of light that might lead us to that . I think it's worth trying to get done .

What Fountain doesn't necessarily want to do is to give away all of that social goodness to other podcast apps as well . I used to think that way .

They're great for the podcast and they're great for interactivity , but they're not going to be the thing that says , oh , as an advertiser , you know what I must , I must go on that platform because the comments are amazing . That's not going to be .

I think we've got a bigger problem with comments , by the way , coming down the track , which I think we're going to get spam in them , and I think we're going to get um well , that that's number one is spam .

And then you'll have you know , have stupid governments like Australia copying the UK because it was an idea that the UK came up with . So therefore we'll do it . Yes , it's going to be interesting to see all of that stuff , too Good to see the colony still following along , good chat . Absolutely .

Again , it's still very early days . I don't have a lot of details , but I was listening to the podcasting 2.0 show last week and Adam and Dave were talking about how Fountain have got examples of it , and so we actually have tested it . We actually have tested it . So the podcasting 2.0 podcast itself is configured to use the new LNURLP and LN address .

So if you send sats to that podcast and Adam gets them , then it works , and if you send sats to Adam and Dave and they don't get them , I'm afraid you need to go back and recode .

And by the way so the difference between where we've been in the past , which is having to quote node addresses and all sorts of complicated things , and where we are now , where you just type in something that looks a bit like an email address , is it's kind of the difference between the internet before , domain names .

So we were typing in the equivalent of an IP address , you know 192.168.0.1 . And now we're just typing in a DNS , you know a domain name , so examplecom , so easy and simple , and that's where we should be going . So hurrah for that NOSTA . So they're supporting Nostr payments , obviously , but they're also supporting Nostr live streams .

What is a Nostr live stream ?

So you might want to watch the show Rabbit Hole Recap or the Bitcoin podcast and watch it directly in Fountain and then give them some sats , or you might be in Nostra and giving those shows sats a bit like super chats , I guess in YouTube equivalent . You can do that and you'll get a stream of chat going on as well at the same time .

So I think what Fountain have done is basically replicated the YouTube live function with super chats and chats , but they've done it with with the Nosta platform and I think it looks really cool .

Well , I think it's something like TuneStar , you know , when you look at what they've done in Nashville in the past with Ainsley Costello and Phantom Power Media when they broadcast those shows live , they've done that through the Nostra , they've done it through the live item tag , but they've fundamentally been using TuneStar , which is a Nostra live platform .

Right , and I think that's what they probably use on Nostr live platform and I think that's what they probably use on Nostr to create those live streams . But I think what Fountain has done is created a way for you to pull those in and then be able to watch the video of those live streams within Fountain .

So , again , you don't have to go to a Nostr relay , and I think that's really nice . I mean , look , you know , we've said it before Nostr sorry , fountain and TrueFounds are going slightly different directions . We might be podcasting apps , but we have slightly different directions in where we're going with live .

But , yeah , I think it's very cool what Fountain have done and you should try it out . It's in beta , though , still , so I don't know if you can get a hold of it if you're not on the beta program .

You know , just a fairly typical normal stream available on the internet , but you then send , you know , a message , a bit like a pod ping , via the Nosta platform , to basically say , yep , this is the activity that we're doing , we're doing a live activity and here we go , but the stream here looks to be just a normal m3 , you know , m3 u8 , um playlist , um ,

which kind of makes a bunch of sense . So , um , yeah , very smart , uh , very nice .

I mean , it seems the most natural extension of what Spotify will do .

But yeah , according to this story , advertisers have complained that their ads are no longer reaching enough of Spotify's audience and that some advertisers aren't satisfied with the results of the advertising , and Spotify isn't doing very much to improve it , according to the information .

But I'm not going to spend 700 and X US dollars in order to actually get that whole report .

There was a report last week in a few of the Android trades that basically said that Spotify was giving people advertising even if they were a Spotify premium user . So it does sound as if there was a wider bug that may have been at play here .

I've not heard back from my contact at Spotify , so I can't tell you for sure which way it's all gone , but yeah , it was an interesting one , and that took a few people by surprise . What was , though , interesting is all of the wording that Spotify has released . All talk about uninterrupted videos . Ie , no mid-roll showed an ad that interrupts a video .

I am still , um , and and I've had a few people contact me saying this is really sneaky of Spotify because they late , they led us to believe that everything would be ad free if you were a Spotify premium user , but actually what , um , uh , what you're actually getting here't that , but they've never actually said that in the first place .

So , yeah , I think it's just sort of kicked off . A few comments , and I'm just busy waiting for Spotify to come back and confirm , or you know , or whatever , what's actually going on there .

It's interesting because I think creator portals , or fandoms as I'm calling them , are going to be fairly big in 2025 . And I think Podpage is doing a great job of allowing that customisation . I think Buzzsprout's done a great job with the pages that they offer us weeklypodnewsnet , and I think many of the other podcast hosts have got them .

I probably shouldn't do this as a CEO of True Fans , but a great idea I'd like to give out to the hosts is why don't they create an aggregated page of all of their best websites so that when you land , you can see other websites right ? So , for example , we might promote weeklypodnewsnet , but they must have bigger and nicer and better or different websites .

Why don't they create a landing page that is a aggregated page of here's the best of our web pages for these podcasts ? Have a look and go and discover new stuff .

You know , occasionally I will forward through an email that I've had , launching a brand new big show on , you know , Transistor or Captivate or whoever it might be , and just saying , oh , by the way , just for you to know . And I'm always surprised at how few of them actually will go . Oh , look , you know , so-and-so is hosting with us .

So yeah , definitely there's something there , I think .

Yeah , or Dillick , I think , is the name of the company , is an audio processing tool for podcasts that uses the broadcast standard , which I've never heard of , called Orban Optimode tool . I thought it was a drug that I was supposed to take . I have no idea Now . I've never heard of it , but I did look it up and it looks pretty sexy .

It allows you to do audio broadcasting over FM , DAB plus and HD radio , but the things that I thought you know . It had some nice features within that , but one of those was you can remotely control HTML5 web browsers as well , and I'm like what is this thing ? I have never heard of it , but I thought I know a man who does .

So come on , James , tell me what it is .

But essentially what it is is it smooths out your levels , your audio levels , so that everything doesn't sound too loud or too quiet . Everything sounds just right . Orphonic is the tool that a lot of podcasters use . If you're using Magic Mastering on Buzzsprout our sponsor then you're using Orphonic .

To be honest , behind the scenes it does a very good job of smoothing out the audio levels . Optimod is significantly better . It deals with an awful lot of very clever stuff to do with just making audio clearer and easier to understand .

And it was really mentioned because I ran a slightly tongue-in-cheek feature this week called Having a Bad DAI , and it was some pretty awful DAI that had been produced , you know , with an ad , half the volume of the surrounding content and all of that kind of stuff . So that was quite interesting .

But essentially , what this tool , audilic , allows you to do is it allows you to use Optimod , optimod's technology and Optimod's algorithms on any piece of uploaded audio so you can get your podcast sounding just as good as a punchy sounding FM station .

So the microphone I'm talking to you on today , which is the Shure MV88+ , this has got limiting in it , it's got compression built in , it's got EQ built in and this is why I'm sounding you know , whenever I use this mic slightly more butch than when I use the mic that I have at home uses quite a lot of additional work .

It was built by somebody that really understood how to process audio , especially how to process audio for it to sound as good as possible on AM or on FM , which have their own things as well . So basically , yes , things like this exist , but nowhere near as good as the OptiMod algorithm . So that's what you're essentially getting you know with this Audillic tool .

I mean , you know , I said that it was a bit clickbait and Mark Asquith says yes , absolutely , but it got some ideas . He's very good at doing that , but it got some eyes on that . But what I said to Mark was that Podcasting 2.0 is a collection of ideas . It's not one thing , it's a collection of ideas .

Some of those ideas are total failures , like the images tag , completely unusable . It's a duplicate of a different tag that already exists . It's a total waste of time and effort . Virtually nobody's using it . We should get rid of it , but seemingly we don't have the balls to get rid of it to exist , which is bad .

But secondly , most podcast hosts either don't support it or , worse , do support it but mess it up , which is even worse . So , actually , the podcast GUID . Maybe I should agree with surprise . Maybe I should agree with Dave Weiner when he pointed at the podcast GUID and he said no , no , no , just use the RSS feed URL .

Yes , there are problems with using the RSS feed URL as well , actually , but that is significantly better , in my humble opinion , than the podcast GUID , as somebody that has a database of shows using the podcast , guid has just been a bit of a nuisance , and I'm busy trying to work out whether or not I should just get rid of it , you know entirely .

You know , some of the ideas in the collection of ideas that we call Podcasting 2.0 are brilliant ideas , ideas that even Apple has taken up , like the podcast transcription tag , for example , the pod roll awful name , but a great , but a great idea that anybody can do . Only one person's done it well , but a great idea that anybody can do .

There's lots of different things and some of it has been a tremendous success and some of it has not been . In my humble opinion , this is what we need for Podcasting 2.0 to move on . We need a feature champion , one person to promote each feature and responsible for that feature's take up Um .

So , instead of um , uh , you know , buzzsprout or whoever it is , um , uh , occasionally talking to Dave Jones and saying what are the new features that we should be supporting ? And uh , and Dave , you know , takes time out of his um day to um , go through a couple of these new features with him and blah , blah , blah .

It should be , you know , if there are 30 features out there , then 30 different people contacting Buzzsprout , contacting Libsyn , contacting whoever it might be , and saying , look , this is this feature , it's really cool . When can you support it ?

And really pushing that particular feature and everyone knows that if it's the podcast location tag , you have to talk to James , because James understands how the thing works . If it's the pod role tag , you have to talk to , you know , daniel , because Daniel understands how it works .

That's where I think we should go , and I think we shouldn't be waiting for somebody to lead the podcasting 2.0 movement , because , I mean , that's kind of Dave and Adam , but also they've got their own things to do as well . So , yeah , so that's my plan .

So where they're obvious , like chapters and transcripts , it's pretty easy to understand and again don't understand when hosts don't support it or apps don't support it . That's just me .

So they take a strong look at whether that tag is worth doing and then they make a decision and so I get the business point uh as well . Um , but what I , what I do think is , and I say , and the lack of leadership is is where I think we have a problem . Now , look , look , adam and Dave champion podcasting 2.0 .

I listen to that show religiously on a Friday night , right , and I love what they do , but Adam has made it absolutely 100% crystal clear . He will not be leading the charge from the front by being the keynote speaker , and unfortunately , I think that's .

I wish he would change his opinion , because you standing up , james , is amazing , right , and I've seen your keynote speeches and they're great and um , that's great , but you never invented podcasting . No , you don't have the gravitas of adam curry . Adam can stand there and wandry will listen to him in awe and they will then go .

What is this new thing you've invented adam podcasting . To tell me more , adam . If James stands up and says let me tell you about podcasting , I go . Oh well , you know , whatever , I think Adam doesn't appreciate what he is and who he is in terms of the gravitas he would bring to the market if he would take that role on . But he won't .

And it's four times a year . You know you're talking about the London podcast show , podcast movement , twice , maybe in one other show , you know , and that's where I think it is , and I think it's that leadership element of being the symbol bearer of podcasting 2.0 and carrying that gravitas with it that Adam can bring . Now he won't change his mind , I think .

But that's where I think we lack . I also think we're going to talk in a minute about where we are with the apps . Now . Many , many months ago , pod2 came up with an idea with me for a small fund right , it was , I think , russell offering 5% of his revenue . Now he's a small host , so that's very small .

And then when you divvy it up between all the little apps , I mean it's nothing of nothing but it's a gesture and it's a very appreciated gesture . I've tried to say that . You know , again , in a leadership format , the PSP , which , again , I don't know what it's doing , where it is , who's running it , what's going on .

But again , you know , if , if each one of these big hosts put in I don't know a thousand pounds each , they could fund an evangelist right , but they won't do that .

They could put money aside to help the apps who are promoting podcasting 2.0 while the market adoption is slow , but they're putting in the technology at the time to support them until they get to the point where they get external funding , in which case they don't get supported by an angel fund .

These are ideas that I think we should be talking about because , unfortunately this week , martin from Podfriend has said he's hiatusing the Podfriend . He can't afford to keep the servers going . So there's one app who did a lot of work that's going to go away for a while . It may be going away forever . Have you heard from Podverse James ? I haven't .

I don't know what Mitch is doing . I hope he's well . I hope he's squirreling away on an amazing new version that we don't know about , but I haven't heard a thing from him . Castamatic and is doing I don't know what customatic is doing . I think they're adding support for strike , but I don't hear from them .

Um , you had this week castro talking about what they did this year . Pocket pc hasn't announced anything recently . Um , I just feel that all these apps that are supporting the podcasting 2.0 tags and implementing them and spending time trying to educate their users and the market need help , and that help would come from the bigger hosts who make significant money .

Right , it's not going to happen . None of this will happen . By the way , james Adam won't lead the charge and the hosts and PSP won't take on the role of supporting the apps , and I think my biggest fear is that some of these apps will go away in 2025 because they can't survive and we will just be left with Spotify and YouTube .

And every single time , there is no new feature and it's just a nice man called Ted with a beard who has to get up early that morning because he's got his annual database management stuff that he has to get done and everything else . Everybody does this , everybody does this .

So , yeah , so if you don't know , yes , apple Podcasts Connect , which is just the back end for Apple Podcasts , none of the you know , nothing will be impacted , uh , other than you going in and having a look at your analytics and stuff like that . Um , won't work . Um , the morning of March the 1st , if you are in , um , uh , la , um , and that's basically .

That's basically that . Um , I uh would not think that there is any new app uh coming , because there never is , so we probably don't need to particularly worry about that .

So from that point of view , I mean , yes , I wouldn't be buying my daughter it , but then my daughter uses Android and has always used Android , and thank heavens for that , given that she managed to drop her phone last week and had to go out and buy a new one .

But the new one was $227 , which is Australian dollars , which means that it was about 120 quid . It was not an expensive phone , but yeah , I don't know . Anyway , Right .

And if you haven't done that , and if you haven't done that , then your stuff gets taken down because it's not legal to have there anymore . So now you can ask whether or not this is malicious compliance by Apple , apple making unpopular changes and blaming it on the EU , but it does seem to be .

You know much of what the EU wants and similarly , apple did say last year that every podcast has to have a website attached to it in the RSS feed and that website has to have corporate information on it , because otherwise Apple will , you know , I mean potentially take shows out in the future .

I can't see them necessarily doing that , but at some point they might have to because , again , of the EU's rules .

But they've launched in five new countries now . None of those in Europe yet , but it's interesting to see that they're moving into those markets first , rather than the Western .

Yes , perhaps , but yes , that's about as far as we will go . Yes , now interesting moves from Huawei . And of course , that $3,662 US dollar price is not what you would pay in the US anyway , because doubtless there will be quite substantial tariffs on that price as well .

Um , no fan mail this week , but , um , a couple of boosts that we'll read out anyway , both from Neil Velio . Thank you , neil Ree . The boy from space , neil says you may need to go back to last week's episode to understand what any of this is about . I think I must have watched it in 1984 on a tape in school .

Oh , do you remember when there used to be ? There used to be a trolley with a big television on it and a VHS video recorder and they used to move that trolley between classroom and classroom and you always knew that you were in for a good day when you saw the teacher pushing it into your classroom . Lights down , go to sleep in the back .

Brilliant , yeah , that was it . My favourite was occasionally in Italian class . I think they would bring it in and we would watch Italian news , and I found that fascinating . Anyway , that was Mussolini . Neil , how dare you ? Neil Velio says they used to show an episode to us as an end of term treat Education establishment endorsed trauma . Awesome , Right .

Well , there we are . He also says something about a story that I'm not going to read out because I know Malay bull laws , so let's move on . And he also loved the Spotify warning jiggle . Yes , we love the Spotify warning jiggle too . Please do send us messages however you like .

That would be very kind of you , and thank you for the Super 16 subscribers that we have .

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We would love that . That would be super excellent . I had a lovely chat with Si Jobling this week , by the way , Did you Well there ? we are . What are you planning with him ?

But he also talked about something that we'd launched , which was support and monthly payments equivalent to Patreon or Buy Me A Coffee or again similar to what Buzzsprout has here , and he was going should I go and do it there with Sats ? I was going , no , no , no , stay where we are , it's fine . You don't need to use that feature , you're okay .

Stay on Buzzsprout , please , it's fine . So , yes , so he's lovely to talk to and he's got a plush new him .

As I said , we took the leaf out of PodPage and so we now allow you to copy and paste your playlist from YouTube , put it into a field in your admin dashboard and we will automatically sync the video into the alternative enclosure for you so that , when you're in TrueFans as a listener , you can switch between the audio and video .

We've done that for you , James . You can take it out if you don't like us . We've done it on PodNews Daily as a test , um , and it worked perfectly . So , um , you can , if you so wish , James , remove your video support in your alternative enclosure and have YouTube pay for it all instead , if you want .

You'll be able to use your own domain name with true fans pages oh , fancy yeah fancy um and finally , yes , we are upgrading to Nextjs and React . I've been warned and we lead off on the native apps after that . So yes , it's all kicking off . That will be exciting .

Why would people be saying that WebSub is not , you know , is not fit for purpose ?

So in this case , websub's the way we're going to do it , because otherwise we're just going to have a lag between some of the podcast hosts updating to our apps , and that's not a good thing . So , yeah , we need to go back and support WebSub .

I don't think WebSub was originally , if I'm right , when it was PubSub , hubbub and originally Comet , if I remember rightly in my history of updates , was mainly for RSS feeds and blogs .

Look , this person has updated their show .

So I'm just sort of curious as seeing companies saying , oh , we're supporting WebSub now , when I've been always very clearly told that it is totally useless for podcasting . So , yes , somebody needs to understand what's actually going on here , and I think that somebody is me .

So first one is you put in the social interact tag for the episode on Monday and Tuesday and then on Wednesday maybe because you were flying , you forgot to do it , but the episode with Todd didn't have it in for some reason . So , yes , and then so we keep looking . Is he doing it ? No , he stopped . Okay , so that's the first one .

And then the other one is updating your location because you're not in Brisbane , but your Pod News Daily says you're in Brisbane .

That needs fixing and so I need to rewrite the publish code in order to do that , but that will essentially mean that the social interact tag does appear in the RSS feed as soon as possible . So , yes , I need to do that , and yes , and the location tag .

I'll be honest , I've not done the location tag for a while because , firstly , I haven't been travelling and I'd forgotten that I have to do it .

I've just got to kind of build that into the system , right , because at the moment it's very manual . So I should probably try and work out a method of making that a little bit more easy to do . But still , there we are .

So now I've got this nice little thing , which I've got , which is showing me how much power the solar panels are making , how much power is going into the electric car . It even pulls information from the electric car , like you know , what's the range on it , how charged is the battery already , are the doors closed ?

It's got all of that kind of information , which is quite cool . So yeah , so that was interesting .

And what I could do with Home Assistant and this is all Gene Bean's fault what I could do with Home Assistant is I could actually program the car to charge only when I've got enough electricity to charge it for free , and then , as soon as the clouds go over the solar panels , I can actually get it to stop charging the car automatically , which is pretty cool .

So I can actually write the code to do that . It's just a case of getting around to it , to be honest .

I should probably do that first , given that I've got that sponsored and everything . So , yes , but anyway , there we are . That's where I am and that's it for this week . All of our podcast stories were taken from the Pod News newsletter . You can subscribe to the newsletter . Oh heavens , I thought I'd edited all of this stuff out .

So I will say and that's it for this week . All of our podcast stories were taken from the podcast daily newsletter at podnewsnet .