Spotify video - we speak to Maya Prohovnik; plus Crossed Wires and podcast consumption

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And he went on to say in its current state , I urge the podcast industry not to take part in Spotify video and streaming audio as it stands to have a massive and long term , and streaming audio as it stands to have a massive and long term negative revenue and reputational impact for those involved .

Crikey , he didn't really hold back , did he in terms of some of the claims that he was making in that piece . Did you get to read it , Sam ?

There's , you know , so there's a bunch of information there which you know clearly is something that needs to be clear .

But I think it's also , you know , it shows the nervousness I think that there is , particularly in the advertising community around video , because video in both Spotify and in YouTube , does break quite a lot of the ways that we earn money from podcasting , and I think you know Brian's piece is very emblematic of that that actually , you know there is real nervousness

out there .

You know what I mean ? Yes , If you're using that type of advertising , which I'm going to call programmatic , just for fun , targeted advertising perhaps , then all of that goes away . If you're on Spotify and you're using video , and all that , by the way , goes away if you're on YouTube as well .

Brian also points out that you lose analytics and attribution prefix URLs and there is also a bit of a sticky thing in terms of revenue when you're looking at IAB certified downloads , which Spotify doesn't provide you with , versus , obviously , the I IB certified downloads which you might get from your own podcast hosting company .

So there's a bit of a concern there , I think , from Brian , but it's most definitely a very you know , a very combative article .

So when you scroll down , it's very much a single column , you get the cover art , but if there is a video element to that podcast , it bleeds the video straight through .

So you're watching the video trailer or you're watching the start of the video and then you can keep scrolling down and if it's just audio , it'll play an audio , and I think the speed of the way that the video bleeds through , I think the way that the UI for the customer works , is really cool , and that may be because they do require you to upload the video

to their servers and their CDM , which they can serve , as opposed to relying on it coming from a third-party host .

So I think yeah , I think Spotify is actually focusing on the audience and I think quite a lot of the conversation that we hear in the podcast space is people focusing a little bit too much on the business and focusing a little bit too much on the way that things have always been .

But I think certainly there's nothing wrong with having an article which points out in relative clarity what you are giving up when you upload video onto Spotify , given that , you know , in many parts of the world it's 50 , 60 , 70% of all podcast consumption .

You just need to be aware , if you are going to upload a video of the things , that it will actually break for you , even if your audience is just listening to the audio .

And it says something that the market thinks their strategy , maybe for video , maybe for audiobooks , which we'll talk about shortly , but the overall profitability of Spotify and their strategy seems the market likes them it does .

Spotify up 6% the only company which isn't down in the last 30 days , and I think that says quite a lot in terms of how the company has done . I suppose what will be helpful for us now is to learn a little bit more about how Spotify video works , and probably the right person to talk to is at Spotify , the head of podcast product .

I spoke with Maya Prohovnik Well tomorrow , as we record this , I've got no idea what she's going to say , but I thought I would get in touch and firstly , I asked her how she thought Spotify video was going .

One is that since last year , we're seeing users have increased by 44% how much they're looking at Spotify , which I think is really interesting , like they're actually using it in the foreground .

We've also seen that if you look at the top 20 video podcasts , for example , who have signed up for the Spotify partner program , they're seeing an average of 24% growth on Spotify in terms of their audience . So we're really happy , both in terms of the offering we've been able to bring to users , but also in the outcome that we're seeing for creators .

It just feels very positive , and we're still super early .

There are all these new ways to get in front of audiences on Spotify , um , and while we're not limiting those experiences to video shows , you can clearly see that you get a lot more evaluation information when there are visuals , um and so , uh , I think that is really helping kind of get users closer to what the content is of an episode .

We're always trying to think of new ways to make podcast discovery better , and so this feels really like a step in the right direction .

Video is not new on Spotify . This is not something we suddenly added . We've had video catalog on Spotify for five or six years , I think , since 2019 . But there's a couple of things that have shifted that I know you're very intimately aware of . One is that the demand from podcast audiences for video is , I would say , undeniable at this point .

We've all seen that the definition of podcast has expanded . We see that now the vast majority of users expect and prefer podcasts to have a video option , and more and more of them are actually consuming that content in the foreground . So I think it's it is happening to the podcast industry .

It maybe has already happened , so I think that is one of the things that's new in the past few years . The other thing that's new is this Spotify partner program . So we've we've had video on the platform for a long time .

We haven't had a great way to sort of like , um , to monetize video and to optimize for video , and so this is the piece that that we're really excited about and that I want to make sure people understand .

The reason that we did this is because , you know , spotify is primarily a premium subscription business and we saw this opportunity to both improve the experience for our subscribers right Like now , when you watch um a video podcast as a Spotify subscriber , you don't have to be interrupted by ads , which is really nice .

But the other exciting piece of this is that we're able to give creators a direct cut of that premium engagement , that revenue and spoiler . I'll go through the details , but , like , what we're actually seeing is that for almost all shows who have switched from audio to video , they're making more total revenue .

So I'll pause there , but that's like at a high level . That's why we're doing video . That's how the Spotify partner program works . Any questions there ?

So if and when you do try the Spotify partner program , you can just log in and see exactly what's happening with your show . But I think again , I would , I would love to zoom out and go back to talk about total revenue , because this is the question we keep getting from people is like how much money will I make from premium ?

What is the exact RPM in premium ? And I think that really misses the bigger picture , because the the landscape for podcast monetization , as you know , is very complicated and the reality is that you have to look at how all of this stuff works together .

And that is really like the thing that I'm most excited to talk to you about today and try to dispel some of these misunderstandings or like pieces of concern that people have about the program .

So , if I've understood this right , whenever the Spotify Partner Program is expanded to more countries , every eligible creator is earning more from the audience in those countries as well . Is that how that works ?

That is a big part of why we're so excited about the expansion .

One of the questions that I do have and it's possibly a rude question , but if you've got Spotify Premium , you get videos that are uninterrupted by ads . Why would advertisers only want to reach people who can't afford to pay for Spotify Premium ?

So I think what advertisers care about at the end of the day is reaching as many audiences , as many people as possible , and maybe this is a good opportunity to kind of like step back and talk about the whole revenue picture here , because the way that SPP works , so just to kind of go through how it works on every platform where your podcast is available I'll

start with off platform like how this works on your RSS feed . So the short answer there is it works just like it does today . Right , we still are distributing that content over RSS . It is monetized with DAI , dynamic ad insertion , as it is today . Nothing changes In Spotify free .

You're still able to run dynamic ads , but they're delivered through SAI , streaming ad insertion , which is our on-platform equivalent of DAI . But so you're still able to reach Spotify free audiences and use dynamic ads there .

With Spotify premium , what you can do , even if you have video content , is you can bake in sponsorships , and so what's really cool there is that if you have an advertising campaign that spans dynamic ads and baked in sponsorships , you are still reaching the same audiences on Spotify .

And because we have the ability , there's some improvements that we're working on now , but we have the ability to actually measure audiences who are experiencing those baked-in sponsorships .

You can imagine a situation where advertisers actually are able to reach those premium audiences , publishers are able to sell those sponsorships at a premium price and so , you like , the benefit is there for the creator and for the advertisers .

So I think , like we , we often get this question of like people are so nervous about quote um , we're not on video , but I'm putting quotes up um losing access to Spotify premium users . That's really not the case .

Um , and this is part of why we're so excited about baked in sponsorships , and we've seen that this is a really exciting piece of the puzzle for publishers who are open to experimenting with that . It can actually be a way for this revenue to be additive for you , as opposed to just thinking about what you're quote losing when you switch to video .

So that's really important to us and we are , as I said , we're , working on ways to fill some of the gaps that you mentioned . I'm excited to share more information when we can , but I just want to start with . We acknowledge that gap , we see it , we agree with the problem and so we're working on that . I do want to talk about the whole picture here .

So when we talk about losing something , I really think we can change this conversation to talk about how video is an optional and additive layer to your existing audio podcast strategy is an optional and additive layer to your existing audio podcast strategy .

So if you think about what happens when you turn video on on Spotify which you should not do if you are not making video content , I would not recommend that but if you are already making video content and you want to experiment with monetizing it on Spotify , first think about most shows . The vast majority do not have a hundred percent sell through rates .

Maybe a couple do , but the vast majority of them are not selling through a hundred percent of their inventory . So one thing that immediately happens when you do this and you stop trying to fill premium inventory is you're able to more effectively fill the inventory that you have available on Spotify free and across your RSS feed .

So that's one calculation that I think sometimes people miss the reality of Um . And then , as I said before , what actually happens in total is that um for almost every show , premium video revenue matches or exceeds the payouts from the dynamic ads that you were running previously in Spotify premium .

So the picture that I want to paint for you is like let's imagine a world where nothing else changes , except that you are now delivering video instead of audio to Spotify . We are confident saying that the vast majority of shows almost all of them that we've seen make roughly the same amount of money from that transition .

So premium video revenue pays out as effectively as your dynamic ads do . There's a lot of variables and factors here depending on the show , so there's a little over under , but think of that as roughly equivalent to what you're making today .

But what actually happens is that two additional things happen as a result of switching to video , and one , as I mentioned , is you can start selling those baked in premium sponsorships for Spotify premium , and a lot of publishers are already starting to do this today with video that they have on other platforms or with Spotify .

These can be sold at higher premium rates and , as I said , they still enable you to reach that same audience on Spotify premium . So overall and again I think we have some work to do on measurement and attribution but overall you're still reaching the same audiences .

You have these sponsorships at higher premiums , so you're actually getting some additive revenue there . And then the other thing that happens as a result is that audiences grow directly and meaningfully as a result of switching from audio to video . So you and I talked about some of these new features on Spotify that make video perform better .

So we're seeing that video episodes , you know , all else being equal , convert and retain users better than audio only . But it's also because we have these new surfaces where Spotify is able to really like , let that shine and get you right in front of those users , and so I mentioned this at the top .

But we have all of these great success stories now and I'll just point again to like the of the top 20 video podcasts on Spotify . They've seen an average across all of them of 24% audience growth as a direct result of switching to video .

So this is why like it's so it's it's so hard for me to sort of have this debate of like what do I lose when I switch to video . I really think that's the wrong way to look at the big picture , and I also just want to reiterate we are not forcing anyone into this .

This is an optional thing that I would recommend if you are already making video content or if you're thinking about expanding to video . If you are in that bucket , I think you're going to be thrilled by the outcome of SPP . If you're an audio only show , I think there are all kinds of or you know , or a primarily audio show . There are operational challenges .

There are um . There are some gaps with um , with reporting back to advertisers that we need to fill Um . So I think the the reality is this is a new program for us . We're really thrilled with how it's going . We think there's a ton of room for improvement in the future .

But the true answer is that almost everyone who is using this program today are really happy with what it means for their revenue .

So I think we just have to , as an industry , I think we have to get comfortable with talking about this in less black and white terms , because you know I'm happy to talk to you about why video doesn't make sense over RSS , like , I've been down that road many times , but it just doesn't .

It's not the right solution for video , and I want all of us as an industry to focus less on how we can squeeze video into the standards that we're currently used to and more how we can lean into video and make sure that people who are making video can reach as many audiences as possible and can make as much money as possible , and that's really what we're

focused on .

Is video upload going to be available to other podcast hosting companies soon , or is this a special because it's Stephen Bartlett ?

So we have to make sure that the right infrastructure is in place and you know it's not done yet and we also have to make sure that incentives are aligned with hosting providers . So we're really excited about it . We do believe in that as a goal and we're in .

You know , we're talking to a number of partners and publishers about how we can work together with them on this . So , again , we're excited to share more when the time is right , but , as you've noted , yes , that is already in the works with Flycast .

I would just say generally , um , we're seeing a lot of excitement from users about consuming video , um , and I think what's really interesting is like , obviously , we're looking at video podcasts , but the reality is that Spotify users are starting to look for more and more video on Spotify , and so what I get really excited about is just seeing what else is going

to make sense on our platform . I don't really know where that line is going to be , but users are telling us increasingly that they are expecting more types of video on Spotify .

I you know , I listened to podcasts when I'm in the car and I certainly am always getting solicited and unsolicited podcast recommendations from people I'm sure you are , but you haven't necessarily found any , any new ones .

It's called Good Hang and it's extremely wholesome and very funny , as you would expect from Amy Poehler , but I really love her whole pitch , for the show is just to give people an opportunity to , like , forget about everything that's going on in the world and just have fun .

And so , as a new mom , as someone who is sort of in a constant state of busyness and stress , it is really nice to just watch her and her comedian friends get goofy . And I say watch , because I'm actually watching it as a video podcast , but you can of course also listen to it in the background . Hooray , and that's a ringer show , isn't it ?

So we started at four-ish years ago when we had our son , uh , and we have continued using it to complain about how hard it is to be a parent of small children . Um , it's , if people are interested . It's called the end of the world as we know it . Um , and it is sometimes depressing , but we try to keep it into everything else .

If people do have questions , what's the best way of getting those answered ? Yeah , absolutely , and I know a lot of people do have questions , and I just want to say , as I mentioned , we're working with a ton of people throughout the industry our partners , many publishers , many hosting platforms .

We are interested in talking to everyone about how we can make this work with the industry and what gaps people are seeing that they'd like us to address . So I would love for people to reach out . If they want to have that discussion , I would say so . If you're a show on Spotify and you have a partner manager , obviously reach out to them .

They are ready . They have all the same information I have . They're really eager to talk to people about this . If you don't have a partner manager , you can reach out to us through support channels on either Spotify for Creators or Megaphone , and I think this is clear .

But , just to clarify , you can use Spotify for Creators even if you are hosted somewhere else , so it's still a great portal for you into many of the features that Spotify has to offer . And then , as always , people are also welcome to reach out to me .

I'm Maya Fish on most social media platforms and I love talking about this stuff , so always happy to have those conversations .

I think you know we it's always so great to get to talk to other people in the industry who are thinking about these challenges , and so we welcome the questions , we welcome the discussion and we really appreciate your kind of attention to detail on this and thinking about what this can look like for the future of the industry .

pass through . And yet I don't believe one host is brave enough to stop distributing to Spotify or YouTube their RSS feeds .

We are podcasters , we work for a podcasting company , we are trying to influence the podcasting ecosystem . This is our home and it's now being changed to be more like the rest of the web .

And so , yes , there's plenty of problems around the web , and some of the exact same type of problem , even worse and yet it's not all right , all here yet , and so we're not going to be the ones to change it . Like , no , daniel is not going to call us and actually try to get Buzzcast into Spotify , but it's still principled .

It's not moral , but it is principled to say , look , we don't like this and so we're not going to participate in it . It probably won't matter to , except for like 300 people who would like to use Spotify as their main app and they don't really want to listen , and now they don't want to listen to Buzzcast .

And actually , when you have a look at the numbers I mean numbers that I shared on the evolutions stage in the Pod News newsletter a couple of weeks ago showing how big Spotify is in some of these countries , particularly South America you know no one in their right minds would pull off Spotify . So I don't think that's necessarily the issue .

I think the issue is more an issue around concern about what video does to the audio experience .

You know and Ashley has covered the fact that Spotify is doing a lot of music takedowns right now , and I think that that's probably the right thing for Spotify to end up doing .

Having said that , there was one thing that I was able to get a little bit more information on from our friends at Spotify , as clearly we've got the friends at Spotify these days , if you have commercial music in your show now , then you get eight days to prove the fact that you have correctly licensed that music and or to argue the case that it's fair use or

whatever it might be . There is also an appeals process in there as well , so that's super helpful , and I've heard Todd Cochran and other people in the past saying that they get tons of relatively automated takedowns every single week from podcasters using copyrighted music from Spotify .

So I think what they're basically going is we don't have enough books in France , we don't have enough books in Holland . I mean , you know , in the Netherlands , how many audio books are there really going to be made in Dutch ? So actually sticking some money behind that .

Some of it is going to be AI , some of it is not , some of it's going to be real human beings . But according to Spotify , less than 3% of French language books are currently available in audio format . 20,000 books available in France , for example , 20,000 audio books , so not very many . And similarly , you know Dutch audio books .

I mean , it's tiny 15,000 audio books in that country . So yeah , so they can . Certainly . If they pile a little bit of money in there , then , who knows , that might help that .

So they've now rolled it out not only into France and Germany , but they've also gone into Austria , switzerland and little old Liechtenstein . Yes , americans , please look it up on a map .

I have to say , though , we did cover a story this week around one of the potential things that Spotify diving into audiobooks has changed , and that's that if you have a podcast which is essentially an audiobook so you're reading out public domain stories , for example , or you're reading out works for which the podcaster has the rights for , for which the podcaster

has the rights for then you will not get into Spotify's Span advertising tool at all . They will turn around and they say it's against our monetization policies , you can't earn any money from these audiobook-like podcasts , and perhaps the right way for you to earn money is to actually release it as an audio book properly , which is interesting .

So , um , uh , so that's based on , uh , a particular podcast , um publisher who , who came to us , who actually acquired a big show , um , but was unable to turn it into money , slightly embarrassingly , um , because , uh , spotify turned around and said no , it's not , it's not a part of , not part of the deal . So I thought that was really interesting as well .

It's somebody reading a story about a conversation or a thriller . It's not a interview format podcast like this and I can't see the difference . But is it because they've got a publisher that it makes it an audiobook ? Is it because it's ? I don't know what makes the difference .

We're also doing pre-order countdown pages , which they've done for music and albums for a while , and we're using our algorithmic recommendation system in order to guide users to audio books they love . So they're trying to make it much more like music discovery or podcast discovery . But it's the integrated supplementary materials and I just wonder how they're doing that .

Is it going to be like an e-book , Is it going to be whatever ? So quite interesting to see what they'll do with that .

We clearly label AI-narrated content and again , I'm thinking okay , we've talked about an AI label for Podcasting 2.0 in the past , but we haven't really got a clear idea of what we should do . Maybe we should look here , maybe , indeed Now , james , there was a report out this week from SiriusXM Media and Edison Research .

I would sort of also say on that that female podcast listenership is less than male , so we still need to bear that in mind , and there are clearly , you know , issues , of course , with some of the content which is available on shows . But yeah , you know it was a good looking audio report .

I'm looking forward to reading the entire thing , which I believe you can get from the SiriusXM media website .

And I hope it's not , but I suspect that that will be the delineation between the type of content that men are listening to and women are listening to .

So again , just worthwhile bearing in mind that there's real opportunity there 52% of women aged 18 plus consuming podcasts monthly , whether it's audio or video . So there's some good numbers coming out of that .

Surely talking to some younger people might be helpful , but anyway , talking about women in podcasts , interesting to see that Goalhanger , which is the largest independent podcast company in the UK and possibly even the world . They are to release a brand new show or have released a brand new show . It's called the Rest Is Football Daily Brightness .

It's being hosted by England women footballers , millie Bright and Rachel Daly . I thought this was interesting for two reasons . Firstly , obviously , it's a show elevating England women footballers to the same heights as male footballers , which is a good thing . But also , secondly , this is a brand extension .

Now , brand extensions are a big deal in terms of the radio industry in the UK .

If you have a look at Heart , which is a radio station aimed at 30-something women , there is also Heart 80s and Heart Christmas and Heart 70s and lots of additional Heart brand extensions which they sell as one whole , and similarly , we're seeing brand extensions beginning to happen now in terms of podcasts .

So the Rest Is Politics had , the Rest Is Politics US , which is a US version , and now we're seeing the Rest Is Football having a female version , the Rest Is Football Daily Brightness . I think it's a really interesting trend in podcasting and I'm curious to see whether or not we will see more brand extensions in that way in the future from other large shows .

You know I mean Joe Rogan he could very easily do a brand extension , um , doing something a little bit different .

And instead , Acast has partnered with Supercast so that you can sell your listeners access to exclusive audio and video content , ad-free feeds , the ability to engage with other fans , all of that kind of stuff , and they're using Supercast to do that , which means that they will get into Spotify and get into other platforms as well .

So an interesting move from Acast in terms of that . But certainly Supercast and Supporting Cast appear to be doing really well at the moment in terms of signing up clients and everything else .

Um and um , that , I'm sure , will be a tremendous boon , uh , to the porn industry , I think also , I hope patreon doesn't become only patreon I have a feeling that it already is in some way in some places clearly haven't got a membership , then right , but uh , but yes , so , um , so there's a bunch of that kind of stuff going on .

supercast is interesting , by the way , and if you look at uh , supercast's uh payment , um , uh , charges , charges then they charge essentially 60 cents , so $0.6 for each subscriber . They don't charge any Apple fee , obviously , and all of that . So all of that is quite nice .

So if you're listening to this show in Pocket Casts , because our sponsor , Buzzsprout , supports the podcast funding tag , you will see it's a little picture of a dollar coin which you can click on and , um , you can become a um , a weekly supporter , um through there .

So that's a pretty cool thing and I would imagine , given that Pocket Cast has got that through Apple's app checks , I would imagine that that opens that up for other podcast companies to also do that . Shh , don't mention it .

So I think , actually , that Apple does pretty well out of it . If Patreon has an app , if other people have apps , then Apple still gets their 30% . So I think it's a good thing for Apple . Actually , I think Apple could earn quite substantially out of that .

Only I actually think these are the platforms that I'm really keen to look at in 2025 .

Because I think , as I said last week , there's a move away from free to quality paid content , and I think the quality paid content to get around the Apple is going to be these super apps , whatever they want to call themselves , and I think these are the ones that I think we should be watching closely to see how they're creating content , commerce and community

together in one place .

But Crossed Wires , which is a podcast festival , has named a brand new person , greg James , who is a podcaster but also presents the BBC Radio 1 Breakfast Show . You caught up with Dino Sofos from Crossed Wires and the first thing you asked him is what is the Crossed Wires podcast festival ?

We all went for a long walk and a pint and as you know , sam , the best ideas are formed over pints .

And we were talking about this growth of live podcasts and just if you think , over the past year or two , the shows we've seen Parenting Hell selling out two nights at the o2 , restless politics selling out the o2 shows going on uk tours alice levine herself has done like a world tour with my dad , wrote a porno .

Sydney opera house , new york did a whole us tour on that and we were saying that there's lots of events , the sort of events that you and I go to , sam , where we sit in windowless rooms talking about CPM rates . That is a kind of like business is booming there .

You know there are lots of those events all around the world where we have a whale of a time and you know everyone's wearing lanyards and it's great , but there isn't something really big and ambitious for fans of podcasts , for listeners , and ambitious for fans of podcasts , for listeners , and we just thought there's a huge gap in the market there .

So let's create something . What is the Edinburgh Festival for podcasts ? What is the kind of the Glastonbury for podcasts ? And we started talking to different podcasters around it going would you be up for , hypothetically speaking , would you be up for doing something ? And the resounding answer was yes .

There's a huge gap in the market for this Because we all know that listening to podcasts is a very solitary experience .

You listen on your headphones at home or the dog walk , but actually what we're seeing with podcasts and you know this better than anyone is the communities around shows and people subscribing and wanting to get closer to the hosts , but then also wanting to share the kind of in-jokes with other podcast listeners , and that's what we see at live shows .

So , for example , recently we did a couple of live shows with Miss Me , with Lily Allen and Keita Oliver at Hackney Empire Stalled out in minutes and people wanted to come and have a party . They weren't there to listen to a kind of like boring Q&A . They were getting out of their seats when we were playing music . They were dressed up for the night .

It was an event and they wanted to be with other podcast listeners , so we wanted to tap into that basically . So the first festival was last year and we sort of didn't really know what to expect . But we had some huge names sign up had katherine ryan , we had romesh ranga nathan , we had danny robbins and uncanny , we had adam buxton , the king of podcasts .

Um , and what was great is it wasn't just go and see a show go home , there were after parties . We even had our own beer brewed for the podcast . Do you know what it was called ?

Afterwards we had a couple of really great late night parties where you looked around and there was like five different podcast hosts and then just loads of listeners and everybody connecting and it's just such a special . You know , when you're at the start of something new and you feel like this is really , really special .

And there were some industry people there who just come to watch , you know , and be part of it . And so Wondery and Amazon Music sponsored our first year . So we had a lot of guys from the BBC there and everybody was just like , wow , this is special , nothing else like this exists and we really want to come again next year .

So you know , when you launch something and everybody starts talking about the next one , you're like , oh right , I'm glad you've assumed there's a next one . So Greg came on . He came last year . He really , really enjoyed it and he said I want to come again .

And Alice James and I just started talking to each other and going well , should we see if Greg wants to come in on board in a more official capacity . So we approached him , sat down with him and he said 100% yes , I'm all over it . This is really exciting . I want to help grow it over the next few years and see what this thing can become .

So he's now joined , he's a co-owner of the company , he is creative director and he's already getting to work on booking some of the amazing lineup that we have this year . So this year . So the dates are 4th to the 6th of july in sheffield and we'll come on to why sheffield in a bit . And we've got , you know , help . I texted my boss .

We've got dish with nick grimshaw and angela hartnett . Um , we've got no such thing as a fish . Uh , richard herring , pa C Brunson . So the Flight Studio guys have come on board Loads of BBC shows and we'll come on to talk about that . Any international shows in there ? Dino , yes , so well , I'd say , paul C Brunson , we need to talk .

Is an international show . No Such Thing as a Fish , massive international audience there . So I mean , look , it's a UK festival , right ?

If you go to the australian chart or the irish chart or the us chart , there are a few like similar shows , like joe rogan , whatever . But if we were to do an event in a different country , it would be the same ethos and the same spirit , but it would be a completely different lineup , which I think is really exciting .

Um , that's why music festivals actually differ , because actually , pretty much you look that could be the same lineup for Glastonbury , right ? So , yeah , back bigger and better this year . Some amazing sponsors so Audible have come on board .

They're going to be sponsoring our main venue actually , wondery are back on board and there's some more sponsors which I can't announce just yet , but they're really really big ones . And then you know the why Sheffield question which a lot of people ask . Look , it's an incredible city , fourth largest city in the UK and it's got some amazing venues .

And I think the thing about the venues and what we really like about it , it's an it's an incredibly small footprint . So we've got the crucible . The world snooker championships are happening in the crucible over the next couple of weeks . It's an incredibly intimate venue thousand cap .

We've also got Sheffield City Hall , which is an amazing art deco big venue which is over 2,000 . So we've got some really perfect size venues for podcasts which aren't too big , allow us to put big acts on , but I still feel intimate and they're all within a stone's throw of each other .

So you really create that kind of it's a city festival but you're not having to get in taxis . So it's that model which is great . And it's also great to be in the middle of the country . So Sheffield's about as far south in Yorkshire as you can get . So people from Scotland can come to us , people from Manchester can come across the Pennines .

40% this is a really great stat which I hadn't really appreciated until I started talking to people who run festivals how unusual it is . But over 40% of people came from outside South Yorkshire for the festival and that's very high . So we had a lot of people travelling from London making a weekend of it Again just to take part in that community of podcasts .

We're really pleased with it and we're in the growth phase . Definitely it's only year two , but we're really excited about what this could become .

It's funny , as you said , people listen solitary to a podcast without realising that thousands of other people are listening to the same podcast and then when they get together , it's that parasocial moment of oh , I remember when Lily said that , I remember when they said that on that show and that show , right , and it's that fan-to-fan connection .

So , as you said , let's focus on the Sheffield thing . If I wanted to get tickets , where would I go ?

You can come and see 10 shows if you like , so there isn't a festival ticket . And then also alongside the ticketed shows , there is an amazing free fringe , and we are I can't say too much yet , but we're going to be taking over an iconic building in Sheffield .

One of our partners , who we are yet to announce , is coming on board in a very big way and is helping us program an amazing weekend of free stuff .

So you can buy tickets to one show or two shows and then fill your weekend with after parties meet and greets and free fringe events as well , and in the fringe there will be a mixture of , I guess , panels where podcasters talk about you know how they made their show and Q&As and things like that .

But the big events like Help , I Sexted my Boss at Sheffield City Hall or no Such Thing as a Fish those are ticketed shows that you can buy a ticket for on our website ? Now , in fact , no , as a fish . Those are ticketed shows that you can buy a ticket for on our website . Now , in fact , no , sorry , help I sex .

I had underestimated the stress , the amount of work involved in putting on events . Oh my god , it is . You know , you think launching a podcast is stressful ?

So you have to really like , offer something great and unique and , as you say , kind of something different , and I think that's what we really try to do with Crosswise . It's not just come and see a show , get the train home bye-bye , it's how can we make a real weekend of it ?

So people want to spend the whole time here and be part of something amazing and also the shows that we put on . So last year , alice and greg did a show we sort of made up on the hoof , called now that's what I call podcasting , which was their journeys in podcasting .

Now that's not a show that they'll probably ever do again , but it was great and everybody who was in the room really loved it . It was off the cuff . It was , you know , funny , unprepared . It was a bit of jeopardy in it .

He's done such a great job with it and great job with it . And one of our strap lines was tangle chats and that idea of like people from different podcasts coming together , and that's something we really want to do Because , again , it's something you had to be there for , that had to be their moment , not just something that we can repeat .

And actually I think that's the great thing about live podcasts as well , as people aren't necessarily putting them on their RSS feeds , which I think is great , because actually sometimes listening to a live podcast , I don't know if you find it .

When you listen to it in a feed , I'm not really that into it , to be honest , because I feel like it's a bit of like you had to be there .

If they're paying , you know , 35 quid a ticket , if you come and see some of those big arena shows , it's way more . People expect a show . They don't want just two people having an unscripted chat .

Would there be a secondary market for people to be able to watch it from home with an online ticket ?

We're in a city that isn't expensive to stay if you want to come . It's not expensive to get a train here . We want to make it as accessible as possible . Last year we had the Guardian did a free show , tortoise did a free show , the Brown Girls do it too , from the BBC did a free show .

So it's sort of free events that you would pay for , and that's the ethos of our fringe . So we don't want it to just be like anybody can just pitch up and do a podcast . It's actually really really great stuff that you pay for , and I think that's different to a lot of other festivals .

So we want to make something that , even if you can't afford , even if you're like a student in Barnsley and you can't afford 30 quid for a ticket , but you want to come and be part of it , you absolutely can , and I think one of the great things as well . You know , this is not an industry festival , right , we're really clear about that .

But we have a lot of industry here and we have a lot of creators here and we had a studio as part of our fringe where Steve Lamac and some of the university students volunteers were just kind of recording chats with the podcasters who were there .

So Steve Lamac went into the studio , greg was involved , and we had these two young lads who turned up from Barnsley . They were doing a podcast for their college and it was actually really moving because they came to the festival and all of a sudden they were getting Greg James to record jingles for their show .

Now , there's absolutely no chance that those lads would be able to afford to go down to London to an industry event , right , pay a ticket and get that access , and what CostWise provided was something on their doorstep .

And actually the next day we came back and they were in the podcast studio because they obviously just felt like they could come and use it , which was amazing to see and Greg's really , really passionate about . This is just inspiring the next generation of podcasters .

And we know , don't we , that we've got a huge problem in the media industry as a whole with diversity and accessibility and how people who don't live in London or the Southeast get access and get those opportunities . So that's something we really want to do .

We want to show people and also it's not just about being a host , and I think that's what's really interesting about this live podcast scene , as kind of the music industry is dying on its arse and music venues are closing . Those people who've got transferable skills , who are sound engineers , who were , you know , roadies all of those jobs .

If you see one of those big podcast shows , it's like a gig , right , it is so . So there are so many jobs that are opening up in this live podcast space and it's great to be able to show people like there is a whole industry here that's booming and there are opportunities .

Not the Top 20 football podcast . I could go on , but I won't head to our website , crossedwireslive , to see the full line up . Sign up on our mailing list . You will be the first to hear when tickets drop . And if you're listening to this and you're in the industry and you're just curious , come and book a hotel room . Drop me a line .

We would love to welcome you , and there'll be lots of industry people here as well . One of the things that was just so memorable from last year was with chris bourne from wondry and some of the bbc guys , and they were going to see their shows , like the shows that they commission , and it was just fascinating .

They weren't looking at the stage , they were looking at the crowd going aha , this is who listens to our show . Fascinating , just to see the whites of the eyes of the audience that are actually paying 30 odd quid to come out and see a show . That is your next level dedicated fan , and it was just so interesting .

So , from an industry point of view , if you fancy it , drop us a line . We'd love to welcome you in Sheffield this summer .

Um , it's fully international and nearly 34 000 charts from apple podcast and spotify . So I haven't seen it . Uh , probably you should go and have a little nose around . If I'm allowed to have you had a look at all James .

So the fact that Podgagement has got all of the international charts data from all of the charts and there are a lot of them for both Apple Podcasts and for Spotify is , I think , really impressive , so that's an excellent thing . Podcasts we just mentioned it , but it's worthwhile mentioning again . They're now supporting the podcast funding feature .

That's now supported by well , it's supported by a ton of podcast hosting companies Buzzsprout , our sponsor , blueberry , captivate , rsscom , transistor and many others . You can also see the big support button in Podnew's podcast pages as well , which is pretty cool . How popular is the podcast funding tag , sam Well ?

I assume that's through OP3 , james that he's pulling that . I'm not quite sure how he's getting the data .

I look at some of the data and I go , oh , not sure , because locked is the most popular and we know that locked is not even really used by many people . It may be in there because hosts hope it Locked is the most popular and we know that Locked is not even really used by many people .

But I suppose Locked , Gooot and Medium are all totally automatic and they don't require anything from a podcaster , whereas podcast funding clearly does . So . That's the thing .

The entire market of podcast apps outside of Apple and Spotify is peanuts to Apple . They'd crush us all without a second thought . God he's hopeful If the thought we weren't giving them a cent they deserve . So any chance of Overcast , your favourite podcast app , actually adding the funding tag . Well , you now know from the creator that's a fat no .

Marco then took that link out for two reasons Firstly , because he was worried about Apple and what Apple would actually say but by the looks of it , has never actually had that conversation with Apple but also , secondly , very few people were using it . I think more people would be using it now because I think it is more visible everywhere .

So I'm still hopeful that Marco does try to put it back in . It's not a complicated thing to put in . But you know , one person responded to Marco saying are you OK ? Hon , you might need a therapist , apple is . Another person has said you know that . You know Tim Cook is the worst thing to happen to Apple , and blah , blah , blah .

So you know there's a lot of that going on . But I think when you have a look at who supports the funding tag now , podcast Addicts which I know isn't available on Apple but nevertheless supports it Cast-O-Matic , podcast Guru you've got Pocket Casts now . You know it is a growing thing and of course Apple Podcasts kind of supports it .

Anyway in terms of links , if we were to link to our Patreon from our description , it would appear there . So you know , so it's kind of supported , but not overtly . So I think we should just keep on pushing and see what happens . But anyway , we will see what happens there .

Again , I wonder how they're going to do this with licensing .

If you've got a Netflix license , you can use it in Australia and New Zealand on the iOS app already , but the rest of the world we ?

If the podcast is supporting the social interact tag in one particular flavour , then there will be a comments button and you can click on that and it will go to that particular root message and you can leave a comment there . So the beginning of a way of achieving cross app comments , which is nice .

Now it doesn't work with ActivityPub , so , as of yesterday , you will find both Blue Sky and ActivityPub social interact links in the Pod News daily RSS feed .

But also please , if you would like to comment on any of the news stories that you hear in the Pod News Daily podcast , then use those buttons or similar and leave messages on Mastodon there . That would be a good thing . What else is going on ? Fountain ? I'm sure are doing something exciting . Don't tell me they're doing something with AI , are they ?

Okay , I won't Move on .

So that's very exciting Snippets that you can pick up . Podverse we know Mitch is working on a rebuild and hopefully it's coming soon . Um , he was , um , uh boosting on the um podcasting to the o show , which means that he's risen his head above the parapet and he's coming out to play again . So that's good news .

And also , somebody who's been off the scene for a while is martin from podfriend , and he posted about Podfriend 3 coming soon .

Truefans , of course , as well , does Things like total followers on that app listens , even completion data as well , but all of that data doesn't come back to podcast creators , partially because there's no standard mechanism to do so no standard mechanism , at least , in terms of doing that automatically .

So , of course , you can log in to all kinds of dashboards the Spotify dashboard , the TrueFans creators dashboard and various other things but there's no automatic way of getting that in . So there's a new proposal out there from John Spurlock the excellent John Spurlock . It's nothing to do with OP3 . It's completely separate .

It's called Standard Podcast Consumption or SPC , and it aims to hopefully fix all of that . Sam , you've talked with John , haven't you ?

I always like to just think about , as a canonical example , the Apple Podcast Connect , so a podcaster could go and log in see not just the downloads that they get on the server side , but then also what the app only knows , so listens and followers and how long the listener listens to their podcast . And this is actually incredibly useful to the podcast .

They get a bit more information about how they're doing , at least for listeners to that app , and that's great because it's kind of like the podcaster puts their work out into the world and they allow all these apps to include it for free usually , and this is one way for the app to say oh , like you want to be in this app because we're showing you all this

great information . Sometimes that can drive how you do your show , but even not , at least there's some signal out there that people are listening and you're doing a good job . So it's a lot of work for apps to construct these portals .

You can imagine you need a whole team to do this , and it's hard work collecting these metrics and then displaying them , and that works for apps of a particular size . But it would be nice if any app could give this information or make it available to podcasters in a simple way , even without doing a portal .

So just something where the high level aggregate numbers could be communicated without having to do a portal or without having to do a lot of extra work . There's been a lot of proposals on how to do this . Most of them , I feel , have not thought about the app's point of view .

If you think about it , the apps are the one collecting this information , and it's hard work developing an app , and really we ought to make whatever standard we do here as easy as possible to do for an app , right To fit into their busy schedule and something that they can get started on right away , and so the idea of SPC .

So hosts , listeners , podcasters , what are the kinds of things if we had to ask for a handful , what would be the most impactful metrics to collect and display to podcasters ? And so , again , this is where the conversations come into play and like , what if we can ask for this ? But you know what , if we can calculate this based off of that ?

So really , I think part of this project is defining those metrics . And so , if you go to the spec , there's a link off of livewireio slash SPC . It links to a one pager that anyone can read . But I think the really important thing here is the metrics themselves .

So , really , there's two metrics at the show level and then there's three metrics at the episode level , and again , these are aggregate metrics . This is not like . I don't know if you remember the rad initiative from back in the day from NPR . That was like you know , at this particular point we send all these WebEx . It's nothing like that .

These are numbers , these are aggregate numbers . So this is you have 354 followers . This isn't this particular listener at this location listen to this episode . That's not at this level at all .

The idea of this is to go big and to say any app , any existing app today could implement this without waiting for anything on the server side and without changing really anything that the podcast apps are already doing .

So a lot of these apps are already computing this sort of thing internally and it's just a matter of let's get on the same page and define a mechanism for how to make them accessible to hosts . So , again , it's probably worthwhile to go over the metrics if you want to just say and everyone , think about them . The two shore level metrics are follower count .

So this is something that I think we all know what a follower is at this point . It's basically what used to be called in the old days a subscriber , but it's something that a person that's listening to a podcasting app has actually made a particular interest in a particular show , whether that's for auto downloading or for notifications .

It's basically a way to call out like this listener is interested in hearing from this show and again , this is something at the show level . The second metric is all-time total listeners , and so it's like this is a number that always goes up and to the right , so it's like how many listens have you gotten on this show , or how many all-time listeners ?

But there's basically three defined standard metrics at the episode level . One is episode level daily listens , and so again , that's a listen in this standard is defined as anything greater than one second . Episode level all time listener count .

Again , it's very similar to the show level listener count , but since those can't be aggregated , this needs to be defined at the episode level as well . And then , probably the most important metric , which is something that came out of a lot of conversations that I would not have expected , is the listener histogram at the episode level . And so what this is .

This is not you know what a particular listener does , but it's basically among all listeners , those nice charts that you kind of see on YouTube or Apple , where you see a hundred percent of the listeners start out with an episode and then it's sort of falls off over time .

So 90% fall off at minute two , then 50% fall off by the time it gets halfway through , et cetera . And again , these are aggregate numbers . This is just a hundred percent , 90% , 50% at a at a one minute resolution . What's great about this metric is that not only the app knows this , so this is like all new information to the podcaster .

The podcaster would love to know this information , but it also can be used to calculate things like listen time . So listen time is a metric that I know a lot of people are talking about , but you can actually compute that via listens and the histogram . The other thing is streams .

So some apps actually define a stream as greater than 60 seconds , that sort of thing . But if you have these episode level histograms , that also falls out right , because you can see oh you know , this dropped off after minute two , that sort of thing .

So this again , the whole intention of this spec is to be as simple as possible for the apps , and so any redundant metric was kind of thrown out . It's like we want the minimal amount , so you have to do the minimum amount of work . And again , all of these are optional , so the app can choose to ignore the ones they don't want to provide .

But those are the five we're asking for to start out .

So Dan Meisner from Bumper was one of the first people I recall talking about listen time and percent completed as two vital metrics , because a three minute podcast like James Cridland's Pod News Daily , you could say I listen to only seven minutes a week , but actually that could be a hundred percent of each show .

So as opposed to seven minutes of Pod News Weekly , which might only be 10% of each show , so as opposed to seven minutes of Pod News Weekly , which might only be 10% of the show . So percent completed is an equally important metric .

Now Dan Bumper then managed to get his clients to give him access to Apple Connect , spotify Connect I think it's called YouTube's dashboard and through some mechanism they've created a dashboard for clients to aggregate that first party data using the metrics and very much the ones that you described , and so they've done a non-standard , non-industry , open a method , but

they've done a bumper method to get that first party data into an aggregated dashboard , which is great for the client , but it's singular because each individual client has to give Bumper the information individually to allow them to access their account . So it's not scalable , and so I think what you're trying to do is answer that question .

I think Dan Granger , from Oxford Road as well , was asking for this similar first party data standardization of metric data so that it could be aggregated somewhere to allow them to then for whether it's advertising purposes or for creator purposes give them some first party data metrics .

So I can see where you've come from , I can see what you're asking for and I can see the value in what it would do . If you're a creator on many apps , you've already got that in your siloed app . That's the problem .

Why would the app want to give that data to a third party like a host or an analytics service , when fundamentally , that first party data is the gold dust that the app has on what that creator did in their app , and maybe they might make that a chargeable service , which is the only revenue that they might have .

So I get the reason why people want that data , but can you give me a reason why the apps would release that data ?

And Apple should release that data because they actually don't charge for that either , as you just correctly said , but they don't release it . Spotify and YouTube , I can't imagine , will release it . So we're not going to really talk about them because I don't think whatever we do in the industry is going to get them to open the door to their closed platform .

But I'm talking about some of the podcasting 2.0 apps . I'm talking about some of the overcasts and the pocketcasts and people like that . Isn't this the data that gives them some economic value that they want to then share with the creators directly , rather than allow it to be aggregated into the host ? And that's ?

I'm just playing devil's advocate , because I think that's going to be one of the biggest things that app developers will say why should I give you this data when actually that's the data I ?

It doesn't really implement any of those standards but for the longest time Overcast has sent , every time it fetches , every time it server fetches the podcast feed , it will send how many followers that particular show has on their platform . This is something not everyone knows and the host could show this information and some do .

But that's actually a very elegant way to do things and I think it is probably born out of the fact that the developer of Overcast is a podcaster , right , so he's aware of the value that any information that's coming out of how your show is doing is available .

I would say to the podcaster I would leave hosting companies , analytics companies , because that quickly gets into sort of their interest . But I'm really defining a standard here for the podcaster .

So this approach scales to , yes , if you have a hosting company as a podcaster , but it also scales down to if you're self-hosting your feed , if you're putting it on S3 , this particular spec still works . Basically , the way it works is instead of sending the followers directly inside of the user agent , like Overcast does .

It just sends back a URL , that's kind of a secret URL . Then the podcaster can go out and query followers and all of these other standard metrics , forever going forward . So it's kind of nice in that it requires no new work from the app's point of view . The app , yes , it needs to collect the metrics .

But if you think about some of the other approaches that have been proposed , they propose making daily calls for every single podcast in their directory , which is , if you , to implement one new API endpoint on their server . So they say apipocketcastcom slash , spc . That's the endpoint that any podcaster can go and get their metrics .

But they need to know the key and that key is sent in the user agent . That's basically it . That's the entire spec . The hard part is having all the apps actually creating the metrics in the same way and making them available via the standard endpoint . And what's cool about this is the existing portals . They don't have to change their portal to support this .

This is just a very high level single kind of computer to computer call that is like in addition to . So this doesn't mean any existing app like Apple and Spotify , which could actually implement this spec very easily . They don't have to change their portals , they just need to implement this one API endpoint .

The benefits of a standard endpoint , then and it really benefits kind of the long tail podcast apps is that each host doesn't have to create a point to point integration , so they don't have to scrape Apple's website and Spotify's website , which is what folks are doing now , but they can just implement one SPC integration than any app , large or small .

You know the app that people are working on in the garage , they automatically get included in this , and that's kind of the benefit of podcasting right Is that there are thousands of apps . Each show has a different breakdown of where their listeners listen , but this mechanism doesn't require meetings back and forth .

It basically is just like using the calls that the apps are already making . So in that sense , it should be a very simple lift for apps , and especially apps like TrueFans . You actually keep track of , even at a lower level . You keep track of like this listener does this and publishing that , like at the social layer .

It would be very easy for you to do this . In addition to right and again , these are high level aggregate numbers . This is not meant to replace anything . It's really in addition to . The other thing is it's in addition to downloads .

So downloads everyone knows about downloads at this point and their pros and cons , but that's something that can be measured on the server side . This is something that's completely self-reported and that needs to be sanity checked . Still against the downloads . So the download is still very important in this world .

This is just new information that all the apps are collecting now but not really making available , and the problem to be solved here is how to make that available in a standard and simple way .

And making that available to the host , related to the podcast that we're collecting the data on , again is a no brainer because you've got an SPC endpoint so that they can then talk to that endpoint and then interrogate the podcast that they're hosting for the information . I think in my head there are a couple of things I might try .

One is certainly to allow the creator to give permission for that data to be collected , so it's a opt-in rather than an opt-out model . And then the other one that I would probably be looking for is if we are giving this data for free back to the host . Maybe there's some preferential co-marketing that we could do together .

But that's just from me as a CEO of an app trying to improve .

So they'll see these user agents coming in with a URL and say , oh , what's this ? Click on it . Oh , this is nice , right , I love these metrics . This is great . So there's kind of a nice self-marketing aspect to this that the podcaster immediately sees the benefit , and that's the whole point of this .

And the podcaster itself has a good feeling about having their work presented in that app , and that's really the whole point of this . You asked why an app would do this . It's to give their app the best light , right ? The best reputation for podcasters .

I think the right place for this to be aggregated is at the host level , because the host has a holistic view of all the apps .

So , for example , yes , downton might implement it , podcast Guru , podverse , podfriend , pocket Casts , but the host of that one podcast which is now distributed to all of those apps , if there was an SPC endpoint , could bring all the data back from those apps into one analytics dashboard to give the creator that total overview , not that siloed overview just from one

app , which is what we would provide only to them . We would only give them a true fans view of the world , which is what spotify , apple and youtube do . And that may be not enough .

And I do think the right place is at the host , where they can give you that bird's eye view of where your listeners are spread across multiple apps and where the engagement may be highest on one of the apps or whatever . That will help create us immensely .

The work is actually put onto the host to do the aggregation , and to me that makes sense Because , like you just said , it's like that is the value that they're bringing to the podcaster .

They can ignore these metrics as well , so the nice thing is the app is not making any new work that is not being used , so the host can call this endpoint every year if they want . They could not call it , or they could call it every day .

It depends on what they want to do , and there's batching built in so that they can request metrics for more than one show at a time . That's something that was built into the spec , so I encourage everyone to go read it , and I think , if you're an app developer , this is something that you could do relatively easily .

The only requirement is that you have to have a server , right , you have to have something that can host an API , and with serverless platforms you can do that as well . But most good apps will have a feed server that's crawling all the feeds , and that's also necessary . For this , it's worth calling out again that there's nothing listener-specific in this .

So if I'm the podcast app and I'm requesting audio , that's where a lot of analytics are done today . That's where the analytics prefixes can see this . That is not being modified in this , so that can still work the same way it does today . So no need to change the client .

The only thing that the app has to do is add this SPC endpoint and then , when they server fetch the RSS feeds for every podcaster , send the particular user agent . So just to be clear , there's no listener IP leakage anywhere here . And what's nice about that ? We talk about the development work , but there's also policy work involved in some of these changes .

We wouldn't want a spec that caused everyone to create massive changes to their existing privacy policies . And what's nice about this is , if you look at most apps' privacy policies , they already include this .

They already include even if you look at Overcast , for example , hey , we create aggregate listening stats , non-identifying aggregate numbers based on each show , and that sort of makes sense . That's not compromising the listener's privacy . But those are the high-level information that we collect and that's all this does .

It just makes that available to the podcaster itself .

Is it something that we can start to use against and start to get case study examples out , or should we wait for more peer review before we start to get our teeth into it ?

If you're an intrepid app developer , you could start doing this today . One thing I didn't mention that you can probably tell , but it does not require any new RSS feed tags on the server side . So this does not require any new namespaces or any changes to your feed contents at all . So that's kind of .

Another benefit of this is that apps don't need to wait for podcasters to implement this . They can start sending this whenever they implement it themselves . And again , like I said , with the self-marketing aspect of it , podcasters are going to start to see this in their logs and be like oh , what's this ? Oh , interesting , let me Google SPC . Oh , this is great .

The specific feedback I'd love to get is , again , those standard metrics , because we'd like to have a world where the apps are doing this work to collect these metrics . It'd be nice to have a very crisp definition of yep .

We've all agreed , these are good metrics to collect , and so that's where I could see I'd want a little bit of feedback , but you could definitely , if you're collecting these already , you could definitely implement this today without any major changes .

Now , the one caveat I will put in there and I think it's only because I think it's going to require a lot more work is the histogram element . I think the other metrics that you mentioned are simple , easy , quick , aggregated numbers . I think the histogram is something that we would have to then try and put that together , because that's high value .

I get it , but it's also something we haven't done ourselves yet . Now we capture that data weirdly already because we do a per second billing because of what I call remote items and wallet switching or value time splits , whichever word you want to pick .

We have to track shows like Adam Curry's Booster Grand Ball or when he does a switch to an audio artist and then a switch back to himself for the wallet payments . So we already do a per second billing . So I'm pretty sure we've got all the data anyway . I just think how we put it into an array will be the next challenge .

But that's the minor challenge , I think .

I'd love to see some hosts actually integrate it . But that's sort of step two . Step one is apps . I've already had a bunch of conversations with the apps that are possibly targeted by this , but I would love anyone to get in touch if they have any questions or anything about it .

So I'm very keen for podcasting to the oh apps to implement the verify tag . I've been trying to do this for two years and apple then came in and simply told the hosts to do it and they all fell in line , which is wonderful . I wish we could do that , but they all implemented the verify tag with the txt tag and so now they all know how to do it .

It's very easy to replicate . So that's step one . Step two we've been asked to create a true fans api so that people can post directly to our directory um for feedback , which then opens up the door for us to provide more data .

So I will very happily do spc as a level where we will just look at partner hosts that will work with us um and then you know quid pro quos , hopefully , from there in terms of marketing . But I think there's another level which is then I don't know if you've spent any time with it . It's something I am very excited .

The next layer , because you mentioned that you know most apps TrueFans included have more data than the ones that you mentioned more metrics , and whether we then could have that data sent back to those hosts who want even greater detail .

But that's a payment model Because , as I said , the data that we have as apps first party data is really the only really usp that we have , and if we then just give away that for free , we've lost our usp . I think that's going to be where we are . So I think level one from the metrics you've described , I think we should all implement .

But level two may be a charitable model . If hosts really want that data because they see value in it , then maybe they need to pay for it , or creators pay for it to be aggregated in their hosts . I don't know how that will work .

And then , yes , there's hosts and apps can work on possibly additional payload fields right . So you could say we have a special mechanism to go deeper . But again , the idea with this spec is to kind of go above a level than the newer apps . It's like every podcast app , so this is going really wide here .

So any app that's out there today or that in the future doesn't even know about any of these new standards can just implement this particular spec . It has no dependencies on a particular namespace or any other tags .

We've heard from Dan Meisner , who's scraping data for their customers from the dashboards of Apple , spotify and YouTube . So we know that the problem exists and this is an interesting solution , potentially to get lightweight metadata which is nonspecific to an individual , so no breaking of personal privacy , which is critical .

And on that side of it , I think great and yes , all the apps have it . We have that data . You can see it in our show notes , james , in the graphic I've left , but I'm sure every other app has , you know , total listens , times , total followers , et cetera . The problem I've got is why . It's not what or how , it's why . Why would the apps do this ?

Now , with my pod news hat on and and loving podcasting 2.0 , I'm like , for the greater good of the ecosystem , for the , the counterweight to spotify , apple and youtube , and I go . Absolutely that's what we should do .

And then I sit with my true fans , hat on and I go , but that is the unique , identifiable data that we could maybe create a pro account for , or charge users to see the dashboard , right , and if I just give that away for free , then what have I done ?

Now , it's not that the creators , because you said right at the beginning you said the creators don't get that data . The creators do get that data . They don't get it aggregated . What the hosts want is that data because all they have is download data . They don't have first party data .

And to enhance their analytics , they want first party data To address the advertisers .

Creators want a holistic view of first-party data and it should again , with my PodNews hat on , it should sit with the host and not just with the apps , because Buzzsprout , for example , right , this podcast is on multiple apps , but if all they got was , or all we got was , the view from one app , app , we wouldn't know holistically how many people listen to this

, how many follow it , uh , etc . So we do need it aggregated at the host level . So I've got two hats . One is a business hat and one is a technical hat , and the technical hat says yes , I understand what john's done .

It's a lightweight metadata aggregation to the host level which gives us a way of looking at more than just downloads as a number , which is said is wrong because it's not a listen .

So we'd have one step forward with how many followers maybe that's a better metric for advertisers and then later on how many listens and actually the histogram element of actually where people listened . So I can see it all . But I can also see from the app's point of view . Why are we giving this away for free ? I don't get it .

Making your search better there is some benefit in terms of being nice to the creators that you have on your platform , but that's kind of as much of a benefit there . So , yeah , I think I can certainly see that .

I think the nice thing about John's SPC proposal is that it doesn't need any fiddling around with RSS feeds and it is by design , totally , firstly , privacy , you know respecting , but also , secondly , by design . The only people who can see this data are the hosting companies .

Because of the way that it works , it's a very clever system that we can all start using today and , in fact , overcast has been doing this for the last five , six , seven years . If you look at your RSS feed server logs , then you can actually see in there how many followers you have on Overcast . That's all that Overcast gives you .

It doesn't give you anything else , but just sort of seeing . That is actually quite useful , but the only people who can see that are your hosts . And I had somebody saying oh , that's brilliant , I'd love to find out how many followers I've got on Overcast . And I said well , you're hosting with Megaphone , so you need to talk to Megaphone .

So that's about as far as it goes , but I do think it's a really neat tool . Again , it comes back to well , who's going to pay to put this kind of information into the podcast apps ? Who is going to end up doing that ? And then you've got on the other side .

You've got that some podcast apps will want to inflate their numbers so that podcasters talk about their podcast apps more , and so you've got a whole new sort of certification side here , because all you're getting back is whatever that particular podcast app thinks is a play , and that again begins to get a little bit concerning .

So I think it's a really nice idea from John .

I'm just you know , and I would love to see it taken up absolutely love to see it taken up , but I just can't see right now anybody beginning to be particularly excited , particularly when , of course , 70% of all podcast plays are with Apple and with Spotify , neither of whom , sadly , would look at this spec and actually work out how that works .

It's gold dust to them , so they're not going to do it , and nor is YouTube , so , unfortunately , I had said to John that you know , look , I would look at at it , but I would do it on a business level deal .

Now , what I what I mentioned was I would approach a host as a partner and say look , I'll give you these four or five bits of metadata , but in exchange , you will add us to the verify tag , you will promote us as a destination point app on your website and in return , we will give you the data .

Now , I haven't done that with anyone yet , but that's the sort of thing I would look at . So it wouldn't be a chargeable element , but it'd be a scratch my back , you scratch your back type exchange business deal . That would be the starting point for me .

But Benjamin Bellamy I love Benjamin , I think he's really , really good . He's come up with something which he is calling privacy first , accurate audio analytics . It's not privacy first , it leaks the IP address of the listener and it's not accurate because it could say anything .

And I've told Benjamin this and I don't think he's very happy with me in telling him this , don't think he's very happy with me in telling him this . But , um , you know .

So , looking at where um , looking at where John has come , at this , I think what John is really good at doing is really cleverly thinking about the problem , thinking about a solution , um , and working out a really good way of of achieving that . And I think , like any great engineer , the issue isn't the technical way that he has done that .

The issue is more around the politics and the business side . And you know , I think from that point of view it's a real shame because I would really like to see SPC , you know , working well . I've sent it to a number of people saying I think this is really good . Why don't you have a look at this ?

I mean , you know , one way of thinking about it is could it be that some of the larger podcast networks who want this data , or indeed the Podcast Standards Project , actually sponsor this feature to be added to some of the larger podcast apps ? Is that something that we can actually get ?

You know , we would really like it if you would put SPC into this app and we will give you 10 grand if you do it .

That's how this technology would actually work . I think it's quite neat . I'm sure that it would not sound particularly brilliant , but it's a really interesting idea . And you know , as I keep on saying , the only reason really why I use Overcast over any other podcast app is the playback engine .

And if the playback engine is as good in other podcast apps and Pocket Casts comes close , then I will move over there , because 99.5% of all of the time spent in a podcast app is listening to a podcast , yet we spend probably 10% of the time on the actual playback engine , if that . So anyway , I thought the pod pace was interesting . It's worth a peek .

What's the website address ? Oh , it's a complicated GitHub thing so you can ignore that , but yes , worth a peek . Also in there , just very quickly Faircamp version 1.3 . Faircamp is kind of like Bandcamp , a way for you to sell your music , but you can host your music on a serverless web server , so you can very quickly do that .

What's the phrase I'm looking for ? Static server alternative . That's what I'm actually looking forward to . That's what I'm meaning to say . So Faircamp has been just a music service . It now includes full support for hosting podcasts as well . So all you need is static hosting somewhere and you can do that .

I thought that was an interesting idea and I'm surprised that there aren't more static server podcast hosting tools out there . You could probably build one quite easily using Hugo . And finally , aaron McQuaid has produced something which is quite nice . It will produce a podcast app for any podcast and you can install it on your phone .

It's a PWA , which I think is quite neat . You're doing something similar to that , aren't you ?

No , and look , you know , I have that tightrope walk between talking about the industry and talking about my own app .

It's just so , so complex to the extent that even I had to ring up Moritz that walked me through creating a sub account because I was in fear of deleting the wrong thing or not adding the right thing . And even when he walked me through , I still was like clicking buttons with no idea what I was doing .

Um worked it strangely , all works um , but they saturn , if you remember , was one of their development platforms that we used to use in the early days to look at .

You know the amount we need to keep the lights on . If nobody meets that amount , well , let's turn the lights off . I did learn one thing though , this week , which we are playing with and it's a good thing for the industry , which is the Albi API , allows me to look at all of the transactions from Podverse Podcast Guru Podfriend .

Anyone who's using the Albi API , the Saturn API , which is using that same Albi API , shows every transaction , and so what you can do as a developer is use that API and we're going to do that to try and pull back boosts .

So cross-app comments from paid comments are available through Saturn or through the Olby API , and we might then be able to show those within TrueFans , and other apps could do the same with us , but non-paid comments , no , that won't be available through the Albi API .

I've got them in front of me . Sam doesn't , so thank you , neil Velio . 10 out of 10 for the Spice Girls reference featuring three UK podcast companies merging . I'd have given you 11 out of 10 if you had opted for Three is Family from Dana Dawson from Dana Dawson Wow , okay , obscure , obscure , I've never heard that ? No , nor have I .

Three is Family from Dana Dawson . Never heard it before . Anyway , thank you for that , neil . Lyceum . A bag of Richards 1,111 sats . Sam , did you say Haribo's ? I did . You did say Haribo's last week . It was founded in Germany in 1920 . The candy brand is very popular in Scandinavia .

I tell you what the candy brand is very popular everywhere , including in the US , so Haribo does particularly well . So , including in the US , so Haribo does particularly well . But the types of stuff that you can get differ between each country . I've noticed Not that I like that sort of thing , lyceum . Thank you , silas , on Linux . A row of ducks .

Double two , double two sats . I have lifetime gold on their line as well . Get you , except it is gold when you don't crash and your lifetime continues . I only take 16 euro flights with Ryanair , oh , dear , due to giving all of my other money to you . Hooray , fully planned and booked transport and stay for the podcast show Cheers .

He says Well , that's excellent . So thank you for doing that , seth . 503 sats . Keep up the good work . Reporting . I love the banter between you two . Your interviews are top notch . Sam , your interviews are top notch .

This is Lyceum , but he's wanting to send a friendly note to the late Bloomer actor , crikey . Time to take the starship and have a space flight to the top of the leaderboard Game on 1701 saps .

Sending us boosts or super comments or whatever it is that you call . What do you call them ? On super comments ? Yeah , super comments . There you go . Thank you for those much appreciated . You can use true fans if you like to send us some super comments on there .

You can also click that link you'll find in our show notes to send us a fan mail through our sponsor , buzzsprout . They make those fan mail links available to everybody and it's a super easy way . If you're listening on your mobile phone , it'll just open up your text app and give you a local number to text to and it comes to us , which is very cool .

So , yes , worth a peek buzzsproutcom for that . And thank you also to our power supporters , weeklypodnewsnet 18 excellent people who are all giving us actual money . That , and thank you also to our power supporters , weeklypodnewsnet 18 excellent people who are all giving us actual money every single week or so .

We should spend some money giving people beer in London . So I think that's what we're going to do .

We are , but anyway , thank you so much to Star Tempest , to Brian Entsminger , david John Clark , james Burt , john McDermott , clare Waight-Brown , ms Eileen Smith , the aforementioned Neil Velio , also Rocky Thomas , jim James , david Marzell , cy Jobling , rachel Corbett , Dave Jackson , mike Hamilton , matt Medeiros , marshall Brown and Cameron Moll All excellent people .

Thank you for doing that Much appreciated .

And it's very well done . So , yes , congratulations to James .

Uh , the other thing we added was a feature that I've wanted called paid chapters , so you can have a freemium episode but make one chapter within that episode paid to unlock it . So , yes , oh , okay .

But we're just trying to put in the first part of it , which is look , if you want to , the creator's saying look , this content's a little bit more valuable , please give me a bit of money to unlock it . If you do , it will unlock . Obviously you can cheat right now . We to unlock it . If you do , it will unlock , obviously you can cheat right now .

We may turn that into a secure tokenized chapter , but we haven't done that yet .

He will be sent a picture Maybe it's a picture of your grandfather from 1910 . And he's there on a motorbike somewhere in the world and you want to find out where that photograph was taken . Well , gio Gessa is his name and he will find out where that photograph was taken .

And the way that he has been doing it up until now is he's been looking at things and going I think this is in Italy , somewhere . I'll go and I'll take a look and very laboriously goes through Google Maps looking for , you know , it looks like a river and it looks as if it's this big and blah , blah , blah and so all of that .

Anyway , I was watching him doing this last week and he was doing this for yet another photograph that he has been sent in and it was somewhere that he knew was in Italy , because the person told him but that's as much as they knew and he used OpenStreetMap to say I can see a city wall in this picture . We're also very close to a river .

So he went to OpenStreetMap and he said show me all city walls in Italy which are 500 metres or less away from a river .

So he did that particular , really tight query onto OpenStreetMap and very quickly found out exactly where that photograph was taken , the real power of OpenStreetMap and what you can do with the data in OpenStreetMap , and that's the power that I'm hoping to get into the podcast location tag . You knew that there was something about podcasting in this , didn't you ?

Yes , mad , rambling about and I found my grandfather , said James and I found my grandfather , no , so this is why I've been very excited about the podcast location tag , because I think that there is definitely something there in terms of unleashing the power of OpenStreetMap and the nominative API that it has access to and all of that sort of thing .

With that in mind , the OpenStreetMap IDs are proposed as part of the podcast location tag . There are lots of people that have been using Google Maps , though , because it's relatively good . It's a production-ready system and you can very easily get lat lons , but you can't obviously get anything more than that .

After all of that , sam , in terms of Google Maps and OpenStreetMap , where are you ? Because you've been using Google Maps , haven't you ?

So initially it might be tell me all the podcasters in Brisbane . Now tell me all the podcasts in Brisbane who talk about technology and and uh podcasting as an example , and then it would show you those . Um .

I I'm hoping that if we can make this work , it will be beneficial to people who want to do in real life meetups for people who are podcasters , because it can be a lonely um podcasting thing . You know , sat in front of your mic if you're a solo podcaster . So again , sometimes we are seeing a lot more meetups .

Actually , I think we've talked about in the past where people are doing those meetups and so I think they're good . And also , I remember you showed me a very cool app sadly closed down called mapsfm and um , we've worked out how to put the cover art instead of the uh pin , you know , the normal red pin or whatever you would have .

So anytime you look at the map , it will now show you the cover art of the podcast , um , and then we're going to add the filtering capability around that . But yeah , I think it's a nice way to go forward .

But as soon as you know that this is a winery , then all of a sudden you can plot these things on a map as shows as a winery Probably not brilliant for podcast apps but probably really good for different ways into podcasting , and I think that's the reason why I'm so excited about it .

So really good to hear that you are moving away from Google Maps and moving into OpenStreetMap on there as well . Finally , you've got a new podcast .

Um , but I didn't have anywhere where I just wanted to riff about what we'd done this week and what's going on and highlight maybe a podcast of the week , music of the week , super fan of the week , maybe talk about some industry stuff at a higher level that relates to true fans , not like we do here .

And so just to make it something like a three or four minute . You know , I don't know how long , I don't know how long we'll see . Three or four minutes is probably half an hour in reality , but whatever length it is , I remember I said to you , james , would you like to do a half hour podcast called Pod News Weekly Review ?

So here we are with a half hour Pod News Weekly Review . So when I set three or four minutes , uh , I'm I'm probably underestimating dramatically , but we'll see . So claire's going to be my co-host on that one as well . Um , for the bad person that I am , I haven't really come up with any ingenious name for it so far .

Um , or a podcast platform would be very useful to a lot of people , I'm sure . Well , you have to tell us when it's out um go and submit it to newpodcastsnet and you can make sure that it's in the pod news newsletter , maybe and we have to work out the day we so .

But still , there we are A few things that I've been trying to do which have nothing to do with podcasting , but anyway , you know , vaguely interesting , I suppose . One of them is I've been paying for a very nice RSS reader now for many years , called InnoReader . In fact , I started paying for that in 2014 . So I've been paying for it for over 10 years .

Anyway , that runs out , I think , next week , and I thought I wonder if I can just self-host an RSS reader . And it turns out that I can . There's a really good one called Fresh RSS . It turns out that podcasting's Adam Curry uses that , so it must be good . So I'm now hosting my own instance of that on one of the boxes that I have , which is nice .

It's a very old fashioned box . I need to rebuild it and move it up to the latest spec , but anyway , so that's super good . So it's been quite fun to have a play around with that . If anybody has any other suggestions in terms of a decent RSS reader , then that would be good . One that is free , that I can use . That would be a lovely thing .

I tried to move away Sam from Gmail last week . How ?

But then I was just really struggling Because everybody's using webmail these days , all of the actual programs that people use for email . They're all rubbish . You've got Apple Mail , which is kind of the best of a bad bunch . But Apple Mail , I discovered , had some bugs in its IMAP functionality , which was brilliant .

So you would mark a mail as read and it would disappear and then reappear two minutes afterwards for some reason . And you'd try again and it would disappear and reappear two minutes afterwards , for some reason , and you'd try again and it would disappear and then it would reappear , but it would only do that if it was in folders , and it was just a nightmare .

So , yeah , so I'm back with . I use a desktop app called MimeStream , which is a brilliant , brilliant app , but it only works with Gmail . So if you're a fan of gmail , um , but you don't want to use the web for it and you want to use an actual program , mime stream is brilliant and I just simply could not move away from it .

So , yes , email is just such a nightmare . One of the things genuinely that I think you could get incredibly rich by doing is to be an email trainer and to go around large , large companies and train people on how to use email .

I'm clearly not the person for that , but , um , but you know , training people on how to send email and send email , uh , you know , correctly and politely , um , I think would be amazing the amount of money that you could save large corporations .

When I was at the BBC , I think I got 180 emails a day , um , and it was all internal emails and it was all you know bullshit copy somebody important , because you know I want to cover myself if I'm making a change . You know what I mean . It was all that . I'm sure that would be an incredibly rich field for somebody .

I don't want to do it because it sounds boring as anything , but I'm sure that you'd be incredibly rich if you were that person to fix email in large companies . That'd be an amazing thing .

So this is a thing that you plug into your computer and you can't log on to an account without it . So my two Google accounts are locked with this Titan key , so I have to have the key with me on a what's the word I'm looking for ?

And God knows how many people forgot it at home , left it at their mother's , didn't have it .

That's it for this week .