Welcome to Podland were sponsored by Buzzsprout the easiest way to host, promote and track your podcasts. Thereupon sprout.com. And your first 90 days are free. It's the 3rd of June, 2021. I'm James credit, the editor of pod news.net here in Australia.
And I'm Sam SETI. The editor of Sam Talks Technology here in the UK.
Portland's a weekly podcast where Sam and I delve deeper into the week's podcasting news.
Now there's a story that I noticed this week, James is it was all about space costs. Have you heard of space costs?
in a vague way. Yes. I've heard of space costs.
It seems that this week there is a thing about space calf's apple channels and Spotify lists. Everyone seems to be aggregating everything together. Now, space casts is a new collective of people who are trying to solve the problem of live audience monetization. It's a group, primarily of tech focused hosts who are launching a shared podcast feed that they'll round up as many social audio chats that they've started plus guests, and they plan to run ads across the collected feed.
What are your thoughts, James?
I think it's interesting. So this is nine sets of people who've been doing a bunch of these chats on things like clubhouse and on Twitter spaces. Brian McCulloch from tech meme, ride home and Christmas Siena who invented the hashtag. I'm sure he's a famous for many more things, but he invented the hashtag. so what they've, what they're doing is they have, I think appreciated that firstly, there isn't really very good ways of monetizing clubhouse and Twitter spaces yet, but also.
that on demand audio works for quite a lot of people. so they've launched this thing called space casts, which is a podcast feed full of these chats, which is great. And they'll sell ads on the podcast and everybody will share in that money, which I think is quite a clever idea. To be honest.
Now, this feels very much like. An alternative to apple channels because I've set up a channel on apple connect it's not live yet. Any news or when they might be live James.
they announced something at the very, end of last week. So it was a bank holiday weekend for you. It was a holiday weekend for people in the U S. here in Australia, we had to work, but Friday night, five o'clock in the evening in New York, apple sent out an email to podcasters and said, oh this whole paid for apple podcast subscriptions thing and all of these channels and things that we promised in may. That's going to be in June now.
so my guess is With a few chats that I've had that probably the middle of June don't expect it this week, but probably the middle of June is my guess.
Okay. And that will come with subscriptions, won't it?
it will come with subscriptions and to give apple there. Do which I thought I might as well. every so often I went to the apple podcasts connect thing and signed up to have a pod news channel. Got no idea what else I'm going to put in there apart from pod news itself. But nevertheless, it's there. And it worked and everything all worked very nicely and apple were very good at taking my money. So that was good. all of that bit is working quite well.
It'll be interesting to see what happens when it's actually turned on.
I'm putting 26 podcasts into my channel and it'll be a way that maybe we'll might monetize it later on. It won't be a monetization at the beginning, but this space call seems to be a similar idea to that. is that just because they don't want to use apple whereas this clubhouse plus Twitter, because Twitter says it's working on a native recording function, haven't launched it yet. But it says it's going to be doing it.
And clubhouses it's launching an in-app tipping service, which is helpful, but doesn't monetize the actual chats. So are they just trying to find a way of getting recorded clubhouse and Twitter spaces? Because if you don't record them, it seems like they're just thrown away and wasted. but isn't apple or Spotify better way.
I think that's exactly what they're doing is that they are recording the Twitter spaces and the clubhouse chats, and they're monetizing them by sticking adverts on them and doing it that way. So making them freely available, but advertising funded. so that what they're not doing is they're not charging for access to them. And instead they're using. The thing that works for most people, which is ad funded media. it's worked for TV and radio channels for a long time and will continue to.
So I think it's a bright idea from them to actually realize that there are lots of people who would listen to some of those chats that can't because of time zones or because they're busy working or doing something else. So I think it's quite a bright idea.
they have put it out as an apple and Spotify podcasts eventually. So they've aggregate it all as one feed. I'll put it out as one podcast, which again, I suppose it doesn't really work in the new apple world where they could have just put them out as separate podcasts and then created one channel. I
guess we'll have to see, could have done. But then of course, apple is only 40% of all podcasts downloads. nothing else supports channels. So therefore it's neither here nor there really. they could have launched, 10 different podcasts. podcast feeds, but you can't group them in any other service other than in apple at the moment. Funnily enough, that's something that podcasting 2.0 is working on the idea of actually being able to group podcasts together in that way.
so I think it's probably a realization that apple isn't the center of the universe, which is a realization that quite a few people are yet to have, I think.
Spotify have announced a couple of new things today as well. They've announced only you, which gives users personalized pay lists insights based on their habits. And this thing called blend, which lets two friends merge, tastes in a playlist. There you go. Just want to let you
know. Thanks. Thanks for that. Yes, blend. I thought that they were doing anyway in terms of, if you are in a Spotify premium account with your other half, for example, then you can have a listen to. both of your favorite music, if you like. so I thought that they were doing that already, but clearly, this new personalized feature called blend allows people that aren't sharing the same plan.
So it's just two friends can merge their musical tastes, so I can listen to, all of the wonderful, old fashioned music that I listened to. And you can listen to, Billie Eilish or whoever it is that you're listening to Sam. I think that works.
I think it's the bit that got me. It was letting two friends most tastes. I wonder whether we should create a playlist James and see what comes of it.
Okay. A terrifying idea. And anyway, I don't use Spotify for music anymore. So you would get the music that I was into two years ago, which is probably not so good. What do you use? I use YouTube music.
Oh, okay. Now you did write about some alternatives there. If you don't want to use apple and you don't want to use Spotify, you talked about a service called mumbler. Tell me more.
So mumbler is another one of these podcast subscription services. it allows any podcasts to create their own paid podcast in just three clicks. It says the differences that firstly, the commission feeds are 8% plus payment costs are not Apple's 30%, which is a handy thing. And the other main difference is that you get to see your subscriber details. and to be fair, the other difference is that it's more fiddly than apple or indeed more fiddly than Spotify.
So you've got that sort of side of it as well, but mumbler is interesting. It's a Spanish language. Service, which has now got a proper English front end to it. And it looks pretty cool. There is also plenty of other companies like super cast member for a sub stack allows you to do this sort of thing. Patrion allows you to do this sort of thing. So there's a bunch of different tools which allow you to sell a subscription.
it's been interesting, The podcasts that I've been on recently, where I've been a guest, have all been talking about podcasts subscriptions, and are they going to be the future? And my view on it is, just take a look at television. That. Yes, you do have some people who are paying for, Hulu or paying for HBO on cable or paying for sky TV in the UK or Foxtel in. Australia. Yes, absolutely. You've got some of that, but the predominant amount of consumption of TV is free to air.
it's the free stuff that you get through your antenna or through basic cable. So that's probably. What we're going to get in terms of podcasting, the vast majority is going to be freely consumed podcasts, and yes, there may be some paid for podcasts that are additional, but those are going to be relatively few and far between I would have thought.
Moving on, friend of the show, Bradley Davis is CEO of pod chaser, and also a new father, by the way, he's just launched a new API for pod chaser. What can you do with his API, James? What have you done?
you can do quite a few things you can, of course pull in things like reviews and ratings and cast members and that sort of thing. If you are running a podcast website, for example, or you are running, a podcast app, what you can also do is you can log in through pod chaser and be able to add ratings and stuff from the comfort of your comfy app. And I believe that there is an app which has already launched with a pod chases API and I'm going to tell you it's podcast guru.
for example, you can log into pod chaser through that app and rate podcasts and episodes directly. And so all of this is essentially what I've. B prodding pod chaser to do for some time, which is to make sure that they are the central place for ratings and reviews and sinking your listen history and all of that kind of stuff so that it isn't just in each individual app. So it's great to see that working.
Brilliant. Well done. Bradley must have been busy father and putting out an API.
No sleep whatsoever. That's what's going on there?
another friend of the show, a good friend. Who's been a cohost with me as well. Matt Deegan. He's got the British podcast awards coming out, heats powered by strangely Amazon music, which I keep forgetting about Amazon. Now. tell me more. About the British podcast awards.
So they announced their nominees last week and it's a very big awards. It's a properly done awards. What I like about it is that is got a. Proper judging panel who go away and listen to the podcasts first, before judging on them, which is always a good thing. Not very many podcast awards actually do that. You'd be amazed to find out. So that's one sort of thing, but also they have a people's choice award. Which is open which has independent adjudicators and all that kind of stuff on it too.
but it's a really nicely run award. And one of the things that I like about it is that a couple of years ago, prior to to the pandemic, of course, one of the things that they did is they took all of the nominees of all of the awards that they had. And they got them into the award venue a little bit earlier and did a proper photo shoot with every single one of them so that they all had really nice professionally done photographs, which is a lovely thing.
And more people really ought to be doing that kind of thing, I think, in the future. so it's a really nicely run awards and you can already vote now for. The people's choice award, which is basically any award. If you want to vote for this podcast, then vote for this podcast. Just do a search for pod land.
and Matt is a very busy man because not only is he working on the British podcast awards this week, he is also behind the podcast day 24, which is the planet's podcasting conference, which is next Monday. I am hosting the Sydney leg. So I will be hosting for eight hours. I'm also doing all of the tech for the slides and everything else for that. imagine my life at the moment. And so that'll be fun, but anyway it's a whole 24 hours. You can watch the whole thing on demand as well.
If you don't want to stay up for the 24 hours, you can go to podcast day 20 four.com to buy your ticket. It's not too late. And if you want to, you can use code P news day 21, and that will save you some money P news as important news, but P news day 21.
I'll be going to the British podcast awards this year. It's in a field.
Yes. because it'll be, COVID safe, won't it? which is a lovely thing. it's just such a well-organized awards that I think more people could learn from and watch.
I love the winner of last year's award. I don't know if you ever heard their podcast brown girls do it is actually hilariously laugh out. Funny. I have to say I had never heard of that podcast till they won the award. So I thought I'd just download it last year. And I have to say the stories those girls told. Made
me
blush. Yes, it's very rude. I was going to put the trailer for their podcast into a pod news of on the day that they won and then I had listened to it and then I thought, no, I can't do that. I'll get into trouble,
but it was very good. If you want to listen to it now. I hopefully when I'm there, I'll be able to interview people. So if you're there at the British podcast awards, please do come up and say, hello, I'd love to interview some of you. and see what you're up to now James, a bit of trend analysis that I want you to give me some reviews on you've written about how anchors hoovering up Plenty of paid for podcasts, but they also lost plenty too. That doesn't make sense. What's scoop James.
It doesn't make an awful lot of sense does it, so I keep a big list, which is an automated list of shows that have changed podcast hosts. so you can see, a bunch of shows which are leaving for example, SoundCloud, and you can see through a Sankey diagram, it's a Sankey diagram exactly where they're going. so a bunch of people leaving SoundCloud, going to Omni studio, and there are some going to anchor and there is I'm going to megaphone and so on and so forth.
and I'm in quite a lot, of course, going to, Buzzsprout as well as you would expect, but. what is interesting is yes, tons of shows going to anchor because anchor is free and you can see, loads of shows leaving, paid for podcast hosts and moving over to anchor. Maybe that's because they're then are dead and they just want to keep them on the internet. And that's fine. and good thing, but there's also a bunch of shows which are leaving anchor and going to.
Guess what paid for podcast hosts, so there's a bunch Of the data and it's updated every single day. So it will have changed by the time. you see this, but currently for example, 11 shows last week skipped from anchor over to pod bean. Two shows went over to wash Kearse, six shows, left anchor and went over to. Buzzsprout five shows left anchor and went over to Omni studio and so on and so forth. I find all of this really interesting.
just seeing how things are changing and who is in the ascendent and who is going down. The hasn't been a week when I haven't seen Libsyn losing a bunch of shows. And I wonder whether this is just. That Libsyn hasn't updated their interface in a long time. And people are realizing that, there's more shows, to end up going to but there are a bunch of other podcasts hosts in there who were doing, pretty well in terms of grabbing a show.
So it's always fascinating to have a look at this page and completely, automatically done as well, which is always nice.
So the podcast index data shows that anchor plus megaphone, which is also owned by Spotify are hosting 1.6 million podcasts out of the 3.8 million podcasts available in their directory. that's 41.4% of all shows currently are on a Spotify platform.
it basically is the industry number according to podcast index. the podcast index of course includes shows that are in apple as well as shows that are not in apple, which is why it's 3.8 million and not apples 2.1. but It's just worthwhile clocking. I think that more than 40% more than four out of 10 of all podcasts out there are hosted by Spotify. that's That's getting close to being somewhere near.
it's clearly not a monopoly, but it's clearly close to being a very large, portion of the industry. So just one thing, just to keep an eye on it. I think
again, apple, not the center of the
universe. Who'd have thought it.
now Spotfire is also making more exclusive shows. they've signed up the two Johnny's from Ireland. Have you heard that podcast yet? I
have not heard the two Johnny's, but apparently it's incredibly popular and it's done some really good figures. It goes exclusive on Spotify from the 14th of June. James cater, all the best people are called James he's head of studios for Spotify, UK, and Ireland. The wax is lyrical out of the fact that there's so much great talent coming out of Ireland and the massive fans of Johnny and Johnny.
and of course the name of the show is presumably a little gag about the two Ronnies that used to be a a popular comedy duo. back when you and I were young. it really was that that long ago, wasn't it for candles? it's interesting to see actually just the amount of talent which is coming out of Ireland because Ireland is so close to the UK and so much smaller in terms of people. It's something which is forgotten about, I think, by many people and interesting to see that.
Spotify has jumped in and grabbed a very well-known Irish show as an exclusive from the middle of June.
I'll be looking forward to releasing into that. Now I just wanted to highlight some of the cause that you've been reading this week. James one was from another friend of the show. Brian of London. He's been writing about why podcast apps and aggregators should be using pod ping. Of course, last week we had the pleasure of interviewing all about it. But did you read the article yourself as well? What were your thoughts? was there anything new that Brian reveal?
I did. I think it's really helpful to have a number of different people evangelizing all of the podcasting 2.0 stuff. So Brian was talking about the benefits of pod paying, which is essentially making sure that. As soon as someone publishes a episode of their show, then it automatically appears on any pod ping, enabled podcast app. so as soon as I publish a new version of Pod news. There it is on your podcast app. it needs two separate lots of people to make it work.
One, lot of people to make it work is the podcast hosting companies. So Buzzsprout already supported because Buzzsprout very good at supporting all of this kind of new stuff. captivate also support it as to transistor and RSS hosting as well. and of course it also needs. Podcast apps to support it as well. And that's something that is growing, I think, but it's great to see. People writing stuff about this and spreading the news.
I think one of the worries that I have about podcasting 2.0 is that it's a group of people who aren't necessarily spreading the news as much as they could. So it's great. To see Brian doing that. And also Alex Gates who wrote a lot about podcasting 2.0, the podcast namespace as well value for value and the benefit of that. And so any of that sort of stuff, evangelizing what podcasting 2.0 is all about, is a good thing. I think
the one thing Dave Jones said from last week's podcast was the top 25 hosts. Pretty much do over 85% of the industry. And the fact that four or five have already turned to pod ping now is very healthy. I think Dave Jones wrote he's already turned off the old way of RSS feeds being updated into the index from Buzzsprout RSS, captivate, and transistor, because they're already supporting popping. if the others can join in, it might really, make apple or Spotify set up. Who knows?
You never know James. Well,
indeed. And the other news around podcast index and podcasting 2.0 is that Buzzsprout, which is our sponsor of course, but sprout can now support any. Of the custom RSS channel tags. So if you are on Buzzsprout and you want to support some of the new podcasting 2.0 tags in the channel, not in the in the episode, then you can, as of today which is really good. So Tom Rossi tweeting that.
So it's good to see, if you are, I'm really keen to make podcasting 2.0 work for you, then Buzzsprout is a good host for you to be on, which is nice.
Excellent. Now how to make money with your podcast seems in South Africa, we should be moving there, James. they're about to hand out social tokens. S a T are you on the Cielo? Blockchain. Okay. I'm re-up that one before we, James.
It's something that actually crypto currency is something which has really taken taken hold in Africa in a way that it hasn't necessarily taken hold in some parts of Europe or some parts of the us. so this is a social token. I think the social token itself is called ATR you to be honest, Not sure I understand all of it, but the idea is that it is a reward for African tech. Roundup's most engaged community members for contributing time and insight and support funds and all of that sort of thing.
they are very excited about it. They're very keen about it. They were thrilled when I mentioned it in pod news the other day. And when I said in the pod news podcast, that they've launched a social token on the cello blockchain, and then whispered. Whatever that is. then they also noticed that as well. they clearly know what it's all about.
I'm sure you can find more information on the African tech Roundup website, but I think, again, worthwhile keeping an eye on this sort of thing, because these sorts of social tokens and the brave browser has a social token of its own. the bat these sorts of tokens are, useful. Way of rewarding people and an interesting way to actually keep this sort of engagement going.
So there's a really interesting site called rally.io, R a w L y.io, which has created a marketplace for producing tokens. Basically. You've got Jason Calacanis, you've got wow. Reid Hoffman and many others up there. it's actually a place. If you wanted to, James, you could create the kids, your own token. Yes. There you go. Oh, wait,
why don't we create a pod land and we can give pod lands out to people who listen. Tip pod that already is going wrong. Isn't it?
If you're into behavioral marketing, then tokens are a godsend because what they allow you to do is set goals for what you want your listeners or fans to achieve. And so it could be as the example in Africa, if they are contributing time. So they're doing something for you or they are sharing it around the community, then your biggest fans get given token. So it's behavioral marketing really? That's what the tokens are there for.
and, I think one of the difficulties with all of these things is just actually explaining it in a really clear, simple way of what the whole thing actually means, because that's probably a good thing, useful thing to bear in mind.
Now, other ways of making money with your podcast seems stripes getting into the game. What they up to James?
So Stripe has launched this thing called a payment link basically you can sell something without having to have a website for it. one of the problems about using Stripe, which is a way of accepting credit cards and stuff like that is that you've up until now had to have a website. Now you can just basically give people a link and that link will automatically send money through to people. So if we wanted to put a support the show for Podland. then we could do that.
We could put a little link into our social media and stick it into our show notes and everything else.
knowing you, James, that will be done by this afternoon. How,
how much should we be asking people for? Should we ask $3, $5?
Are we talking Ozzy
dollars or I know we're talking real dollars.
well, let's not be greedy. Let's start with three,
$3. Okay. There you go. there will be a link in the show notes. if someone remembers to put it in if you want to support us or just basically give this a go then you can buy us half a cup of coffee. if you like, we'll share out between us with this particular link and that will be a lovely thing.
Excellent. Now, James, let's end up with what podcasts are you listening to?
Oh, at the moment, I'm listening to Corona cast which is a really good, podcast, all about the Corona virus thing at the moment, I think it's just a nice relaxing nonsense station or 10 minutes every day. Dr. Norman Swan, who is this reassuring Scottish voice and Teagan Taylor who's based here in Brisbane. and it's just a really good show. All about the pandemic and all of that. I'm looking forward to meeting them in the flesh on.
Monday, assuming of course, that they haven't found anything more important to do. So Corona cast, I would heartily recommend it.
so James, what else has been happening for you this week in Portland?
so apart from podcast day 24, I'm also speaking at how to start a podcast live which is at the end of next week. as we record this. it is on June the 10th to the 12th. And it's a virtual thing. If you would like to watch me talk about the opportunities of podcasting across the world, but also the latest podcast news, then go search for how to start a podcast live. And if you use the code pod news, you can get in for free.
Excellent. I never get anything. So if you're going to ask me what's going on and put on this week, nothing, no one ever asked me to join. So I've never spoken at anything. Oh.
yes. if there's anybody listening that wants to invite Sam onto their podcast then please do then that's absolutely fine. And that's it for this week. You can come back to Podland next time. Please follow us in your podcast app or we're at Podland dot news on the web.
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