Stitcher's Closure, and Naomi Mellor on the International Women's Podcast Awards

It was founded in 2008 before even Apple's App Store even existed , and Stitcher , sadly , will close on August , the 29th . Come on , what's going on with Stitcher then ? Why have they closed it ?

Wikipedia is wrong , so one of the things that I've unearthed is a demo of Stitcher Radio , as it was called when it launched , running in a web browser in July 2008 .

Now I have to say , as a listener , that was super helpful because we were all running old , useless mobile phones at that point .

I remember driving around the country in the UK listening to Stitcher Radio and listening to a relatively poor sounding version of the podcast that I used to listen to a lot , but of course it was downloading much fewer amounts of data and therefore it worked quite well in the car .

They ended up being in 50 different cars , which is quite a thing , but yes , it is going away as of the end of .

Basically , the listeners are either going to be encouraged to use the Sirius XM app or the app from Pandora . Now , you and I don't live in the US , so therefore , actually , we won't be able to use the Sirius XM app , nor will we be able to use Pandora , because neither of those are available outside of the US .

So bit of a waste of time really , because essentially , stitcher will go away and we won't be able to use either of the companies to replacements . But I don't suppose that the company cares about us particularly much . There's no job losses here .

The people who were working on the Stitcher app are now working on the Sirius XM app , so that kind of makes a bit of sense . The Stitcher name won't go away And in fact , there's a new podcast coming out in just a couple of weeks Better Tomorrow with Hannah Brown And that is from Stitcher Studios with a Stitcher logo on it .

So the Stitcher brand doesn't go away . It's still being used for the Stitcher Studios stuff , but in terms of a podcast app , yes , it's gone .

So a similar podcast app from a similar company , acast , closed in March 2022 . Now , that passed me by . Did we even talk about that ? I ?

So Acast closed the Acast app last year and they basically said look , we believe in open podcasting , why on earth would we run our own app ? And I think that's a pretty good view to have . And certainly you know what Stitcher have said is that the reason why their ad business is doing so well is that their podcasts are available everywhere .

So they're basically saying you know , there's no need for us to have an app , so we might as well close it . Acast still do run an app . They still run radio public , or at least they got a kind of half running that , because while the radio public app is available on Android , i did notice that it's no longer available on iOS .

So if you have a typhoon you won't be able to use it , and I'm not quite sure why that is , and I've pointed that that's out to the good folks at Acast And that seems to have come as a surprise to them . So not quite sure what's going on there .

But I mean , the one thing I would say about the Stitcher app is that it was , at one point , the number one app on Android , the number two app on iOS .

The last time we looked it was about number six or number seven , but it only had one point , i think 1.3% of the market , so really wasn't very , very big towards the end And it was losing quite a lot of users . So I think people are just , you know , getting used to using either either Apple podcasts or Spotify for their podcast playback .

That's what I think is actually happening here , and so my advice to any podcaster is if you have a sensible amount of people listening to your show on Stitcher , then you should probably say something in your show And you should probably help those listeners to find out a new podcast app that they might want to download and use .

Now , obviously , there's lots of new podcast apps at podnewsnet slash new podcast apps , but if I was going to recommend something that was quite similar to Stitcher , then I guess on iPhone , i would recommend the Apple podcasts app , kind of , and on Android , i would probably recommend the antenna pod app or pocket casts .

Pocket casts is a freemium , but you do have to pay if you want to use all of the features , and it's a very good app . If you want a free app , though , antenna pod is completely open source and is a really nice app , so worthwhile giving that one ago , but I think it's just worthwhile .

If you do have a lot of users on Stitcher , it is worthwhile just letting them know about that , because I think it's important just to hold people's hands . I think Will it be missed .

That was once , as I say , a number one podcast app on on Android , and so I think , from that regard , it's very sad when you see some of the original OG brands going away in terms of podcast apps .

You can pop in and buy those from their self-service portal , alongside the pre-recorded ads that you've always been able to buy in that way . So pretty good news , I think . If you're an Acast creator , what the tool also allows you to do is it's got some AI Drink .

It's got some AI , which means that advertisers will find new podcasts to advertise on , because they'll be matched up with additional shows .

And I think that's one of Acast's problem And , frankly , one of everybody's issues is that there are a couple of really big shows that everybody wants to advertise on and then nobody really knows about the long tail , and I think if Acast can manage to monetize the long tail , then they should do pretty well , given that they've got a quite fearsomely long long

tail , if you saw what I mean . So , yeah , i think it's a clever plan .

Now she's the CEO of Twitter . This week in tech is , i think , what it stands for . I wonder if Twitter would be better off partnering with Acast and you host red ads . But hey , why have they moved away from Spotify and why have they started looking at Libsyn ?

They have been testing a bunch of different dynamic ad insertion tools and an advertised cast appears to be the one that they've ended up going with Again . Another one of the OGs , leela Port , has been doing podcasts since podcasts were brand new .

Always interesting seeing Leela Port jumping in and saying we're using this particular company and this is why Yeah , Again , I do listen to some of Leo's shows .

The closure of Stitcher has been taken by some of the press as being the world is collapsing , the ceiling is falling in . I'm really not sure that I'm seeing that . Yes , spotify is changing a few things . Yes , there are some changes in strategy . Yes , advertising is having a hard time , but it's not the end of the world .

I think another friend of the show , elsie Escobar , was saying this on Twitter that it's really all of these changes at places like Spotify and Stitcher and everything else are almost irrelevant for the majority of individual podcasters who are just continuing on . So , yeah , i think we have to be careful how we report all of this .

It's a mistake to go after Hollywood talent and discussing the slowness of decisions at the company . Okay , well , that's one way , but the thing that did jump out to me was he said that shows that are resourceful rather than entertaining are what's next . I didn't understand what he meant by resourceful .

You know , i think that's what he was saying , but I thought it was an interesting thing to see him basically stand up and say we shouldn't have gone after Hollywood talent . Or rather , he didn't quite say that . He said it's a mistake to go after Hollywood talent , but obviously that's what Spotify did .

So therefore , it's very clearly he's you know , having a pop at Don Ostroff and that sort of thing .

you know that they're doing very well and you know , and they've got lots of positive numbers in there . It's just that their revenue is going to be lower than they previously thought And I suppose you know that is , of course , what's spooked the market there down 27% overnight for their shares .

And Eric Newsom ended up saying something he has taken a good look at the pod track data And he reckons that the average monthly audience for individual shows in 2023 is half of what it was in 2019 . And total downloads are down , he says . Now he's quoting pod track data , it looks as if he's only quoting February's pod track data , year on year on year .

But he reckons that because publishers are pulling back on new shows , that's actually harming the podcast industry , because it's the new shows that drive more downloads , because people go and check them out and find new shows to go and have a listen to . He reckons it's a bit of , you know , self harm .

you know that they're actually damaging their own business by pulling back on new shows . Really interesting newsletter that Eric ended up putting together .

So thank you for that , you're very welcome . But also there are a bunch of other apps that are giving 1% to the podcast index to help run that . Now that means that they have a bunch of stats and some of the stats are really good .

So sats per sender the amount of money that each individual person is giving is going up , is on the increase , which is nice . Sats per transaction is going up as well . Transactions per sender is slightly going up , but that's all very well if you've got lots of people giving those payments . But unfortunately the daily unique sender numbers are going down .

Now they're going down slightly . They're down from about what 430ish to about I don't know 350 , i would guess looking at this graph per day .

So the numbers were never particularly high anyway , but actually seeing those numbers going down is a little bit of a concern , i think , and I think just worthwhile at least raising the alarm that the amount of people using this is going down And we should probably be aware of that . What do you think in terms of that ?

Because you're kind of staking your future in terms of the pod fans on your platform , on sats and that form of support .

You'd ring up a call center , you'd give them your credit card number and eventually people did move across to the idea of putting their credit card online . And then one click came and now no one thinks about it And the size of the basket will increase , which is what Amazon found . And I think what the trend that I took was .

The size of the value , of the amount paid in sats , is increasing . So people are going oh , i mean , we've seen it ourselves . Did you get my sat , one sat sent right Because the worry was that you know he's going to go into the bank account and they're going to have to remortgage .

And we now say I mean , look , i listened to and you do as well Friday night with Adam and Dave and the numbers in there . I mean they hit over a million sats in the show a couple of weeks ago And I think they're regularly getting close to that .

So those people that are comfortable with the whole model of value for value and paying in sats are beginning to increase their amounts . Those are still early adopters , are . You know ? some people are going oh , i don't know if I want to bother , and I think The real irony here is that we haven't sold the value of what Sats are .

I know Adam thinks we don't need to market this , but the fact it's peer-to-peer , the fact that it's instant , the fact there's no fees , there's no advertising , no subscriptions required , again , those sorts of values that give V for V are the differentiator between the current ways of monetizing , which are ad-driven , sponsor-driven We just talked about host red ads and

then , of course , you know subscriptions , which I don't think really work personally . So I think it's a time where apps like mine haven't really hit the market . Fountain's doing brilliantly , i think . Podverse , podfriend are still putting all the features in , like ourselves . So I think we are not at full pace .

I think we are behind the curve in terms of where I think we'll be in six or 12 months . So no , i'm not worried , otherwise I wouldn't be starting a business . But having said that , i do think we as an industry on the open side , or just the podcasting side that use this , need to do a better job of explaining to non-tex . Really , what's going on ?

So you know , in the crossing the chasm the famous Geoffrey Moor book I think we are the visionaries , with the early adopters and the early majority , those pragmatists that we need to bring on next . I don't know if we are bringing them on and that's the problem .

I would say this and you'll never hear me say it normally , but I was thinking about it When I was at Netscape and we were trying to bring the browser through and you know , oh , look , it's HTTP , it's a URL . You know , people didn't understand .

In fact , it was Microsoft including the browser in the operating system and not having to get a disk from AOL or try and find it on the front cover of a PC magazine and load up your browser . That actually crossed the chasm for browsing . And I wonder , with Spotify , because it won't be Apple , will they ?

you know , with their fixed revenue model , that's not working . Their pricing model is awful , they're not profitable , they're going to have to change . Will they be the company that adopts value for value , that jumps us across the chasm into the mass adoption ?

Now this is two OP3 enabled shows which are relatively geeky , relatively new podcast apps . you know consuming them , but Fountain is a top 10 podcast app on both Android and on Apple . Podverse is number five in this list for Apple users , which is great Number 12 for Android users . So you know there's definitely something going on here .

You know Castamatic as well , doing relatively well for toy phones . So I think that there's definitely something going on here , certainly in terms of the OP3 universe of quite geeky shows . So , yeah , you know , i mean I do hope that it's getting there .

I would say and perhaps we'll come back to this a little bit later but I would say that you know , i think half of the problem is that it's all tied in with Bitcoin and SATs and all of that stuff , and that's a real leap of faith , whereas if it was using Fiat money then I think you know , it is at least easier to explain to people how the thing works

. Put five dollars in here and we'll share it with your favourite shows .

So , actually , you know , you can pay directly with Bitcoin if you want to , or you can leave all of that complication to the app , and the app deals with all of that , and you just give it some , you know , some pound sterling or some US dollars or whatever .

They need to adopt some of this stuff faster so that their customers can actually use it . I mean , you and I adopted the pod role , I think literally the day after it was announced , and yet I still see no host implementing something as simple as the pod role . That would just be another way of just bringing people into discovery of new podcasts .

Why are they ?

The complicated stuff is the support and everything else surrounding it , but the actual tech of being a podcast hosting company is not difficult And actually that way , if they were to do that I mean you know Spotify is already doing that And that way they can actually do some more interesting things with some of their tech .

Spotify only yesterday , talking about how many people are using video podcasts , or what they're calling video podcasts at least , is now more than 100,000 video podcasts on that platform , and the reason why that works on Spotify is that it's a proprietary thing on Spotify because it works much better than the Apple Podcasts equivalent , where you have to have a separate

RSS feed which is just confusing and just clogs the directory up . So perhaps we'll see podcast apps becoming hosts as well for some of those shows that actually want to enhance their shows in that way .

But anyway , what the podcast business journal at podcastbusinessjournalcom also has is it's got a bunch of data around podcast creation And that data is quite worrying because the amount of podcasts being actively updated are declining .

It's declined by over 3% in the last three months And again , i mean I'd love to give positive stories , but actually the amount of shows being made appears to be going down , which is a bit of a worry .

If you have a mortgage on your house , you're having to pay thousands and thousands more every single year , and that's having a real impact , plus , of course , the inflation in terms of food pricing and everything else .

It could just be that there's no fundamental issue with podcasting here , but it could just be that , actually , the rest of the world is having a bit of a hard time of it right now , and perhaps that's part of the plan , while talking about the rest of the world .

Now it used to be four or five years ago that Australia was trailing the US by a couple of years . Now Australia seems to be consuming podcasts even more than Americans do 33% of Australians listening to a podcast every month . That figure for the US is 42% , so it's one percentage point higher .

A third of Australians listening to a podcast every week compared to the US is 31% . So very good , exciting figures coming out of this country . Also , they ask which platform listeners use most often for podcasts , and Spotify is number one with 34% . Youtube don't eat me , todd Cochran , don't eat me , todd Cochran Number two with 24% .

Of course , that doesn't have any podcasts on it And Apple Podcasts number three with 11% .

So , yeah , interesting seeing that , and obviously Apple Podcasts is always going to do particularly badly in these certain numbers because they , unaccountably , don't have an Android app And Android has about a 52% share in this country , and so therefore , Apple Podcasts will always be doing relatively badly in comparison to Spotify and to YouTube .

One day they will realise this and start launching an app for Android . I mean , they're not stupid , clearly , but anyway , that's going on here in Australia .

In New Zealand , there was exciting legal stuff where a takedown order was made against a true crime podcast called The Trial , which is about a trial which is still going on And rather astonishingly for somebody that grew up in the UK where that's very illegal . Anyway , that takedown order failed .

It's the first time that takedown order has been sought against a podcast in the country and there's going to be a retrial for this particular trial , which I'm not going to talk about because it's a trial which is going on , but that trial is happening on August 21st .

But you can hear the extra shows that were threatened in The Trial's podcast feed if you're a fan of that . A couple of other interesting things There's some new research that's come out from Spain which says that everybody loves podcasts .

Basically , 97% of listeners say their perception of a brand improves or remains positive when it is advertised in a podcast , say A-cast . Well , they would say that , wouldn't they ? But actually this was some other research that A-cast paid for Another piece of study that came out of Spain from a university .

There looked at a bunch of original podcasts to discover that more than two-thirds of them were hidden behind a paid subscription wall . So Amazon Music , audible , kuanda , ivooks , sonora , podium , podimo an awful lot of paid for podcasts in Spain , seemingly , so some really interesting stuff there .

Podimo seemingly doing very well because they have a recording studio in Madrid . A-cast is doing some stuff in Denmark with a podcast studio called Podster , which is very interesting , which is taking shows which have been successful in other countries and translating them into different languages , which is nice .

And in Singapore , media Core , which seems to own all of the media in Singapore , they're holding a podcast talent hunt competition . There's a $5,000 top prize , which sounds very high , but it's $5,000 Singaporean dollars and therefore is not very much . How much is that in Great British Pounds ?

It's just under £3,000 , so not particularly great , but anyway hey don't sniff at it .

Yes , he's moving over to a more strategic role , which we heard a little while back And he was just pinging out to his Twitter followers to say how many jobs have you had while running your own company ? So yeah , daniel's moving into a different role .

According to an internal email which Sky Pillsbury , the squeeze , has seen Sky Pillsbury , of course , was on this show a couple of weeks ago , if you want to go back and take a listen to that There's a new boss in the UK for the Radio Academy , which is the kind of charity for the radio and audio community that helps push things forward , runs , awards and

everything else . It's the first woman , the first person of colour . I believe her name is pronounced Eradna Tayyal Leach , but I may well have got that hideously wrong . But really good to see somebody that isn't a middle-aged white bloke in charge of that organisation .

I used to be a trustee of that , which is nice , and there's a new CEO isn't there at Libsyn .

Maybe they want to change that , but anyway , it takes off from Bradley Terpac , who will remain with the company . He's got a significant stock investment And the good news , james , is John is going to come on the show next week and tell us all about his new role and what their plans are for Libsyn .

But value for value for conference speeches , sam .

And Stephen Bell's done something very clever , because Adam was talking about well , if you could do that an injection for a musician into a show when you're running it live , could you do something like having people on stage who happen to be the guest and the hosts , and then you could , you know , basically any sats coming in for that live presentation could be

split to the guest ? And they demoed it last week on the Friday night show with Adam and Dave . And , yeah , stephen B , i think , absolutely blew Adam's mind away because he was using something called the Split Kit , which is developed to actually change who was getting the money in real time based on who was talking .

So , yeah , that's what they're working on A little bit beyond my brain cell there , but , yeah , sounds like it'll be a very interesting demo anyway , Yes , it's impressive that .

The nominations are opening on Saturday , july the 1st . If you register , you can take part in that . It's the 18th year for the People's Choice podcast awards . It's run by Todd Cochran and it honors podcasters globally in 30 categories , which is very cool .

The British podcast awards is also open voting for its listeners choice awards , and you can vote for any podcaster , even this one , so you can do that if you like . I would vote for something more deserving , but maybe that's a thing . There goes that one vote . Yeah , exactly .

The Independent podcast awards have been announced in the UK and you can enter now for those . The awards will be held in London on October the 12th , and the podcasting seriously awards fund can help if you find it difficult to enter . And this year's International Women's podcast awards will be hosted in London on Monday , the 6th of November 2023 .

The entries are open now and you've got until mid-September to enter . What more can you tell me about this , sam Sethi ?

We've had a flood in already , which is really wonderful . I have been perennially surprised , but also delighted , about how many entries we had in year one and year two And this is year three .

So , yeah , we're pretty happy and we are really looking forward to hearing what people have been producing over the last year , both as hosts and behind the scenes , as writers , editors , producers , etc . As well .

The States and Canada have already had their summer holidays in swing , and so for that reason , we are open for quite a while , until Friday , the 22nd of September , to facilitate people working around time off for childcare etc . And also some people just need a bit of downtime over the summer .

We know that a lot of people in the UK go away in August and they just want to have a nice time off . So yeah , we've got that going . So Friday , the 22nd of September is the date that you need to think about .

that both Matt and Matt have done there and of lots of other awards internationally , but it felt that there wasn't a single central place where women and people of diverse genders could have their work celebrated in particular , and it just made sense to me at the time that we're a huge worldwide family in podcasting .

I know , sam , that you really like the idea of podcasting remaining a really strong community I do as well And I think , allowing people to put themselves forward within that community , even if they haven't had five million downloads or have got , you know , 60,000 Instagram followers or whatever .

We really celebrate the work that people are doing and the moment of audio brilliance that they've created , and I wanted to make something that was really accessible , really friendly , really welcoming And , quite honestly , was for people who didn't think that was the kind of thing that they were into , and I really love the fact that every year people come forward and

say I've never entered an awards before , but I've put myself forward this year .

because it can get quite expensive entering awards .

So we've been really lucky with the last couple of years and again this year , the podcasting Seriously Fund , which a lot of your listeners will be aware of with that supports independent podcasters in Canada , the US , australia and the UK , particularly people of colour , queer , trans creators And that allows people to reclaim awards entry fees of up to $200 a time .

It's an amazing fund that's backed by quite a lot of big organisations in North America and we have been really fortunate to have that , not just for our awards , but for lots of different awards across the globe , and I would definitely encourage people to have a look at that .

It's on podcastingseriouslycom and is run by an incredible woman who does so much work behind the scenes . Last year , we were really fortunate that Amazon Music and Wondery backed us with a bursary fund to allow people to have tickets who wouldn't have been able to otherwise attend , both online and in person .

This year , we're looking to extend that out so that we can provide tickets again where costs are a barrier , because we understand that , even if you're based in the UK , getting yourself to London on a train or by car or whatever , and then getting a hotel if you need one , it turns into a really costly business , and we're really aware of that , and equity is

something that's really important to me and for me , part of that is funds being a barrier to people , and I don't want that at any point for this award . So , yeah , we are hoping to again provide help for tickets , both online and in person . One of my other strong aims is to be able to provide help for people to enter as well .

Obviously , the podcasting seriously fund is there , but outside of that , we really want to be able to help people ourselves and have a bursary available for that too . So watch this space on that one . Sam , we're getting there and we will be able to have some announcements coming to you soon .

Categories wise , we'll be having 10 or 11 this year And the categories will be roughly the same as last year . So what we reward I mentioned briefly previously is moments of audio brilliance . So we are not super interested in how many downloads you've had or how many social media followers you have .

As I said , what we're interested in is this moment of audio that you are going to submit .

And the reason that we came up with that in the beginning was because I just kept having these little intimate moments walking along , listening to a podcast , or doing something in my house listening to a podcast , where I was like I have to tell somebody about this , i'm not the next person about what I've just heard , or I'm still thinking about it hours later

or still laughing to myself , or whatever it was . And so that was where that idea came from , and this year we are having two new categories , one of which is related to storytelling , and that can be around fiction or nonfiction interview panel , whatever it is .

The other thing about our categories is , i should say , they are quite open to interpretation , so we tend to get quite a lot of variety in each one , which is amazing .

So the storytelling and the other one which I am delighted we are putting on this year is for podcasts in a language other than English , and we've got a section of the judging panel where who are going to be solely looking at podcasts that are produced outside of the English language .

They will come with a transcript in English for people to be able to read alongside whilst they listen .

But we know that there is so much incredible work out there happening which , for those of us who , i'm slightly ashamed to say , don't speak other languages well enough to be able to listen to something , then I really want to be able to discover and to really help to celebrate their shows as well .

If anyone out there can subtitle shows for people to listen to , i think there's a really good niche market there . I think personally , but it's very exciting and we're delighted to be able to extend that open to just a really wider number of countries and a wider area of the world .

We've got some fantastic contacts in some really varied and brilliant locations in the podcasting community And they have been incredible about saying well , you know , there's this one language , but there's also X number of dialects that go along with that , and I think that's incredibly exciting .

So I always love to say to people it's nothing to do with me , you know , submit your entry , but then I don't get to decide who is shortlisted , which is a great relief to everyone , i'm sure , but also allows me to have a degree of independence , which is brilliant . We have judges from across the world . They come from both within the industry and without .

We have been incredibly lucky that we've been supported by a lot of quite large organizations from within the podcast realm previously And we've had judges coming from places like PRX , tink Media , acast , podbean , you name it . We've been there , broccoli , there's so many people out there and I have put out calls for judges once or twice . We've invited people .

I would expect to have somewhere between probably 50 and 60 this year . So , yeah , we're very lucky And that means that we can say to everyone who enters that your podcast will be heard by ears who are independent , and that's very important to me . I don't really feel that I should be the person deciding anything , because I'm not the judge .

I'm just the person that organizes this .

And keep your eyes and ears out for further news about sponsors and the bursary , and I'm sure you'll be talking more about other things before that date as well .

And it's also a really amazing thing that we've seen growing over the last couple of years as well .

There's the London podcast festival in early September as well , which is always good to end up going to , And , of course , pod news live in London happening on the 27th of September . We would love to see you there . It's the day before the British podcast awards . Who are some of the speakers for that ?

James , you were talking about how you've just had to do it through Apple and it's a pain , And it is a general pain when you have to claim a podcast and nobody really wants to do it on 15 directories . But if all you had to do was click one button and it happened , it would make it so much quicker .

And talking about that , scott , thank you for 1,420 sets . Wow , what a hateful man you are . I love to see Joe Rogan piss you off so much that you act like this . A little child . Well , thank you for the sets 1,420 sets that you've just paid me for that . That's very kind of you , scott . If you get it , you get a .

He doesn't listen to this particular show , clearly , because otherwise I'm sure he would have mentioned my little jingle . But still , what else have we got ? Kyren from the Mere Mortals podcast . Very kind of you , sam .

The first episode of season three of the value for value podcast should be out now , which will be a more digestible form of that long episode I did . He says lots of luck with getting the verify tag through And a row of ducks , double two , double , two sats . And he also says what the hell went into your sink , james .

Exactly , i also like to pour superglue down there , but I normally stop at one or two bottles . I'll tell you what it was It was .

You can get this fiber dietary supplement , which is just like basically husks of some plant or other , which we got for the dog And we got about halfway through and then it started going bad and it got bugs in it And so my wife decided she would throw it down the sink .

What we didn't really appreciate and what she certainly didn't is that of course , it expands to about four times its size and then bungs everything up completely . So it was quite a thing . So , yes , $2,500 later . Yes , it's an expensive thing . And Matt Cundle all the way from Canada . 515.0 sats , which must mean something . Great episode .

And enjoyed hearing Sky Pillsbury as a guest host the other week . Yes , she was excellent . She even did the whole recording in a pillow fort thing And she put a duvet over her head and I said we don't need to worry about that . You've heard the show before . We don't need to worry about that .

But she was super good , so hoping to have her back on relatively soon . You're actually off in a couple of weeks , aren't you ? You're going on a dog holiday , so I understand .

So , yes , she gets her own little dog walking holiday . So we're off down to Cornwall , her own little dogging holiday .

If you want to , you can become a power supporter at weeklypodnewsnet with money And if you want to support us with Sats , of course , their new podcast apps are the way You can support us with those Sats by hitting the boost button in your podcast app , And that would be a lovely thing . And we have a new supporter at weeklypodnewsnet Daniel Lopez .

Daniel , thank you so much for your $5 a month Much appreciated . That's a super excellent thing . You are an IT professional interested in technology , science and rock music , according to your website , which is all very exciting . And yeah , I'm trying to work out where it is that you are in the world . You're in Mexico , Excellent .

Well , we might see you later on this year when Pod News Live comes to Mexico , So who knows ? But thank you so much for joining . That's much appreciated . Now , what's happening for you this week ?

So my job really is to supply alcohol and then be a taxi driver this evening . So , yes , exciting job . Two really good podcasts I highly recommend people listening to . I listened to my old boss , Mark Andreessen , on the Lex Friedman show . It's a three hour podcast proper long .

He talks about AI , the future of the web , but he also does a really brilliant in-depth history of the web , Considering you've built a lot of the early stuff And then they just go on and keep talking about various interesting hot topics . So highly recommend it . Look up Lex Friedman's interview with Mark Andreessen .

And then the other one is also and I don't know why , it just happens to be the A16C network podcast . Talks about network effects , moats and web three . And when I first listened to it I was like , oh , I'm not web three , I'm not really that interested .

But actually Scott Duke co-comneers , who's a professor at Harvard , who's the guest , talks about NFTs but he talks about in the same way for you applied podcasting to it the way that you can have co-operations . So if you look at the way that founting pod first , pod friends , pod fans compete but also co-work together Again , the use of open source .

If you look at what the namespace is doing , So it has a lot of relevancy to what we're doing in the podcasting industry . So it's called network effects , moats and web three . They even talk about something called vampire attacks , which is a new theory of blood sucking from platform competition , which is really worth listening to , I promise you , James .

So what's happened for you this week ?

My plan was to do lots of coding and to fix some of the technical debt that I built myself five years ago , and the actual output of that has been nothing of that at all . So there you go , but I've put some shelves up , so that's good . So that's been nice .

I mentioned this earlier a little bit , but it was lovely to see you becoming a supporter of the Pod News Daily newsletter by giving 1% of all podcast support to the Pod News Daily and a further 1% to the podcast index within the PodFans app . So thank you so much for doing that . Much appreciated . That's a real help .

And also we've given 1% toward the guys at Olby as well , because I think , again , they've done some amazing work . So , yeah , they're the three partners Indeed .