James: [00:00:00]
[00:00:00] Welcome to Podland sponsored by Buzzsprout the premier podcasting host, and a whole lot more than buzzsprout.com. It's Wednesday, December the 23rd, 2020. I'm James Credlin the editor of pod news and happy Christmas Australia.
[00:00:17] Sam: [00:00:17] Hello, and I'm Sam Sethi. The editor of Sam Talks Technology, and yes, happy Christmas from the UK.
[00:00:23] And I'm Adam Curry and I'm Dave Jones. And later we'll be talking about Podcast index and why you should get involved.
[00:00:29] James: [00:00:29] They will the weekly podcast where Sam and I delve deeper into the week's most important news, which I cover daily at Podnews.net. And if you have any questions or comments about what you hear today, send us a voicemail to [email protected].
[00:00:45]Sam: [00:00:45] the theme of this week show is going to be about the open independent podcast ecosystem versus the closed behemoths that we're beginning to see Amazon, Spotify, and Apple.
[00:00:56] Now James wrote a lot of stories this week. the first one that came up.
[00:01:00]Is Podcasting going to struggle? [00:01:00]
[00:01:00] James was about Eric Newsom. He's writing in Neiman labs. He's saying that the industry is going to struggle in 2021. In fact, he's not on his own. Steve Han, who is at Google audio news says the same. So let's start off Netflix Audio Only Mode [00:01:14] Programmactic Ads v Streaming Ads [00:01:14] The Good and Bad about Spotify [00:01:14] with Is podcasting going to struggle in 2021
[00:01:18] James: [00:01:18] there's an awful lot of dire predictions around where podcasting is going Nieman lab to a great job every single year of getting the great and good of journalism to give their predictions and their views on the year ahead And Eric is one of those people Steve Hannon Kerry Hoffman as well from PRX so they do a really good job of pulling together some really interesting ideas Eric really isn't playing around here he's very keen to point out that we did pretty well in 2020 virtually All of the other media companies did very badly for a number of months because of COVID and everything else and what Eric is saying is there has been a lot of consolidation that consolidation isn't always good he points out that there are quite a lot of companies that really haven't thrived under their new ownership There's lots of different podcasts companies where you can see them being subsumed into the larger bog and not really thriving and doing as well as perhaps they were as smaller independent companies Eric is a bright guy He used to work for re NPR He works for magnificent noise Now he's written a book which came out at the beginning of this year called make noise a creator's guide to podcasting and I think he's got a good viewpoint into where things are going
[00:02:38] Sam: [00:02:38] we mentioned Carrie Hoffman She was also fairly negative about the future of podcasting Did she feel that there was no reason for it to be opened that a closed ecosystem was the best way
[00:02:47] James: [00:02:47] forward she is very much concerned about podcasting's openness and the open standards of podcasting So she's the CEO of PRX the public radio exchange and PRX extra very large podcast company So they do an awful lot of really good audio that goes out on public radio across The U S and Carrie and her company have done a bunch of things around the podcasting open ecosystem earlier on this year they held a privacy symposium which they didn't stream online because privacy which I found moderately amusing but they've very much being focused on keeping podcasting open keeping the standards open And really making sure that podcasting doesn't get subsumed into one big company And she's concerned that threat now looks rather less theoretical than perhaps it was a year or so ago So that
[00:03:44] Sam: [00:03:44] all brings us nicely to the fact that you had an interesting conversation this week with a few people in the
[00:03:51] James: [00:03:51] industry
[00:03:51] Sam: [00:03:51] about that behemoth and let's name it that behemoth is Spotify So what's good and bad about Spotify then
[00:03:58] James: [00:03:58] Spotify is interesting I think it's certainly good in terms of the fact that it is putting podcasting in front of a bunch more people there are lots and lots of people who use Spotify every single month whether it's free or whether it's paid for and podcasting is definitely being pushed in front of audiences in that app and that's good news And the more people that hear Great podcasts is good Having said that there are certain things that Spotify are doing where they're ignoring what's come before and trying to reinvent how podcasting works Now some of that is good in some ways podcasting is relatively broken but in other ways podcasting isn't there's an article in Axios which is an interview with Jay Richmond Now Jay is the boss of Spotify advertising business And he's very bullish in that article And he's saying I think that podcasting is splitting between the way that we do things And what I see in the rest of the industry which is flooding podcasts with radio style and programmatic style ads And he is very excited by Spotify streaming ad insertion and so instead of being the benevolent company trying to help podcasting move forward he's now turning around and saying now we know what we're doing we're doing it better than everybody else and we're not gonna play in this field and that's a bit sad to see I think But one of the things you
[00:05:28] Sam: [00:05:28] said before we came on air is that actually the way that Spotify is approaching it is actually fixing some of the challenges that we currently have with podcasting So what is it fixing
[00:05:39] James: [00:05:39] if you look at Juleyka lentigo Williams she runs lentigo Williams and co which has a great podcast network in New York And she again was writing a Nieman lab this week And she was talking about advertising and the way you charge people for advertising in podcasting And she's saying that downloads frankly aren't the thing that we should be focusing on We should be focusing on How much people actually listen to a show And I think what she's really saying and it'd be good to get her on but I think what she's really saying is you should be charging for people hearing the advert not just for downloading a show that has the advert in it because there are plenty of people who don't listen to the whole show who don't listen to half the show I know that there are people from the stats that I see who listened to our bit Sam but don't listen So the interview at the end and that's absolutely fine And so the point of all of this is really saying we can get that data We can absolutely get the data of how many people here is that specific advert That's 22 minutes into a show but we can't get that from an open platform that we currently have at the moment with podcasting The only way of getting that is a closed platform like Spotify where you have The same person owning the podcast host To the podcast player to the ad system that runs on that podcast player as well And that's essentially what Spotify is doing So Spotify talks a lot about streaming ad insertion versus programmatic style ads So the old fashioned way if is that a Programmatic ad gets put into the podcast when you download it and that means that if you're promoting the big sale on tomorrow MFI then you can do that That's absolutely fine but you've got no control over when somebody is going to actually hear that ad Whereas with streaming ad insertion the system works out what ad you're going to hear a split second before you Cost through Spotify You're not typically downloading it And that makes a big difference because it can work out exactly where you are It can work out what time of day it is whether it's raining or whether it's sunny Do I advertise frappe a lattes at Starbucks or do I advertise a nice warm chocolate mocker you can do all of that clever stuff with streaming ad insertion To a way that you can't really do with old style programmatic style ads And certainly Jay's point is that some of the creative that's also being used probably doesn't work in a podcast style And I think there's a certain element of truth in that as well And that's all fine But that comes with a closed platform that comes with a platform that you can't use 50 60 different podcast apps to have a listen to a piece of audio You can only listen to one of them and it's made by Spotify and it's called Spotify and so we can't necessarily have our cake and eat it We can't necessarily have the detailed consumption data that some people want to charge differently for podcast advertising alongside keeping podcasting open
[00:08:57] Sam: [00:08:57] You seem to be advocating for a closed system in the sense that it works And that's maybe the way forward for podcasting because you and I both have our own podcast within Spotify I know that Spotify is looking to get our podcasts and other podcasts to actually
[00:09:17] James: [00:09:17] have
[00:09:17] Sam: [00:09:17] streaming insertions added to them as an option
[00:09:20] James: [00:09:20] So if
[00:09:21] Sam: [00:09:21] I then get paid For my podcast through Spotify and everything seems to work in my reporting works and it's all IAB compliant What's wrong
[00:09:30] James: [00:09:30] and that's an interesting question lots of the podcasting old guard will say it's all dreadful because podcasting is built to be open And we should be able to listen to podcasts on whatever app whatever platform we want to and then you have people who are a bit more pragmatic about this and go If we're going to turn this business which is a 1.4 billion global advertising business If we're going to turn it into a two or three or $10 billion business Then what are we going to do in terms of advertising and will it end up being a better plan for there to be much more control over this it's that difference between using the Mac app store and downloading any kind of program that you find on the internet there are certain people who like the safety and the security and the payment options and everything else of the Mac app store And that's why they put their software in there And there are other people who would much prefer you to not go anywhere near Apple and just download the software straight from a website And it's much the same in terms of Podcasting as well I think it's a clash of cultures from my point of view I look at this from a radio standpoint I've worked in radio for 30 years and radio's big cost is a distribution cost It's running a transmitter It's making sure that you're carried on all of the other platforms as well If you're already a station in the UK you will pay a lot for FM transmission You'll pay even more For dab transmission which is another form of how radio works these days And you'll pay even more for a slot on the TV as well She's where 10% of radio listening happens That's an awful lot of cash When you look at podcasting it works completely differently because we get our podcasts free onto all of these platforms and that's great And so I look at it from that side and go this is fantastic If verbal wants to take this podcast if Spotify wants to take it if luminary wants to take it then great go for it but many other people will look at that and go Oh no because it's not open it's not as open as podcasting has been and I think Adam who we'll be interviewing later he's very much of the view that podcasting should remain as open as it possibly can
[00:11:48] Sam: [00:11:48] they killed him was talking about one of his predictions that podcasting or podcasts long tail will begin to chop itself off that certain people have podcasts that nobody listens to and nobody subscribes to why would they continue to do that if we're going to see maybe whole bunches of podcasts that are free that these Other podcasting apps are subsuming into their index in order to look big Maybe there is no need for the maybe it's only the top of the tree That's going to make the money and the top of the tree that's going to have the subscribers
[00:12:23] James: [00:12:23] I think you can say that but then Tom Webster has done some great research from Edison research around how much of the market independent podcasting has So you can look at the big podcasts from the gimlets and the podcasts of this world and the iHeart radio's and everybody else and then you can have a look at the in inverted commas long tail of independent podcasters And Tom has done an awful lot of research around this and has shown that independent podcasters are still massive they still account for a sizable amount of the podcast listening that happens out there And I think it would be a shame for us to chase the populist big Numbers and big downloads and the Prince Harry is and the Megan's of this world and to throw away some of the smaller more niche shows I discovered a show the other week which was a show all about why McDonald's don't make pizza anymore in their restaurants as one example it's a
[00:13:26] Sam: [00:13:26] lead to sleep with that night
[00:13:28] James: [00:13:28] gloriously niche podcast But nevertheless it's something which is out there It doesn't cost money to apart from somebody who's hosting bill So I think there's a great reason for podcasting to continue being open but you can also see on the other side a desire from those that make money out of their podcasts through advertising a desire for the analytics to be better for the advertising to be charged in A better more equitable way
[00:13:56] Sam: [00:13:56] but it doesn't seem that old well in the world of Spotify in the closed tower Liz Gately it seems who was heading up Spotify as podcasting initiatives she's being moved aside now What's that all about James
[00:14:10] James: [00:14:10] So that was reported in Bloomberg a couple of days ago the end of last week Liz was the person who was essentially in charge of podcasting so that's essentially what she was there to do She was tasked with overseeing the development of podcasts such as sport and comedy The thing is though that's absolutely fine but then Spotify went and bought Gimlet and Parcast and the ringer and everybody else and Spotify also obviously it has Dawn Ostroff who is their chief content officer and she knows a thing or two about content as well So potentially it's one of those classic experiences where somebody is squeezed out of their job unexplained Berg Gimlet knows what he's doing bill So the ringer knows what he's doing And so what was there to do for Liz understand that I understand from Nick choirs a newsletter that quite a lot of people who've been working with Liz Gately recently have found this really surprising that all of a sudden she's off She'll continue consulting for the company for some time the other sort of side of the story is that Bloomberg is talking very much around there's real friction going on internally at Spotify There are different executives they're competing for shows they're competing for control Who's in charge of Joe Rogan who you know so maybe that's part of the story there as well And certainly having spent my time at the BBC for two years and the amount of internal friction going on in large media organizations is quite or inspiring once you actually get into one of these large operations And it may just be that sort of thing has actually happened there
[00:15:56] Sam: [00:15:56] So moving on there was another story that I think is related to this that you wrote about which I thought quite interesting because we've talked in the past about I've talked about and you've just completely nodded at me really It's the honest answer which is that Netflix will buy Spotify or they will merge And I think you've just said move on But on that basis Netflix rolled out an audio only mode What's that about
[00:16:23] James: [00:16:23] So I think this is really interesting And I made this a lead story earlier on in the week and I've already heard a number of podcasters Who've turned around and said this is rubbish James has gone mad so let me explain why I think this is interesting and exciting Netflix has an awful lot of content and there's an awful lot of content on there that actually works quite well from an audio point of view So the David Letterman interview series that they have on there is that great listen and you don't need a screen on to listen to the majority of that what's quite useful is knowing that somebody was doing something funny in the middle of that in terms of visuals but other than that you can listen quite happily to that you can listen quite happily to some of the comedy stand-ups that they have You can listen quite happily to a bunch of these things and Therefore audio only mode is quite interesting for Netflix because could you sit there and listen to the David Letterman show in audio mode absolutely You can But then what Netflix has also got which I don't think people cottoned on to is that they've also got a feature called audio description and audio description is essentially someone explaining what's going on the screen It's built for people that can't see very well so it's built for accessibility Here's a little clip of the crown and I'll show you what I mean
[00:18:09] So in that clip you can hear a little bit more than you would otherwise get from that conversation between Churchill and the King so you get to understand what's going on there does that all of a sudden make the crown a really interesting piece of audio drama maybe not Could they do that audio description less clinically so that it's still very good for accessibility but also actually makes the crown a really good piece of audio drama as well as visual drama I don't know I think there's something in that and if you could listen to Britain's got talent or the X-Factor or American idol if you could listen to
[00:18:52] Sam: [00:18:52] that just slash my wrists
[00:18:54] James: [00:18:54] just slash my wrists on those three options No way I
[00:18:58] Sam: [00:18:58] want to listen to those let alone watch
[00:19:00] James: [00:19:00] they have a big big audience time was when you could listen to the David Letterman show when he was on the telly You could listen to that on a bunch of us radio stations because it was great content So I just wonder whether or not there is something there which yes it is not podcasting Of course it's not podcasting but will that be something which competes for our ear time And I wonder whether that might be in the future if they have a think about how they can pep up that audio description a little bit more
[00:19:32] Sam: [00:19:32] audio subtitling Wonderful So we've heard the arguments from Spotify and possibly Netflix for the closed environment And many other people thinking that the closed environment for podcasting is going to be the Alexia the fix as many of our woes but this week James you have the opportunity to interview Adam Curry and Dave Jones
[00:19:54] James: [00:19:54] Indeed it was 20 years ago this month that podcasting was first invented as an open platform I'm talking to the person who did that from podcast index is Dave Jones and Adam Curry Adam you are the pod father 20 years ago This month you met with Dave Weiner in a New York hotel And you talked about something that became the RSS feed with enclosures The thing that powers podcasting So it's all your fault I was wondering can you remember the name of the
[00:20:22] Adam: [00:20:22] hotel you were in Oh goodness I think it was 50th street It was a nondescript Midtown Manhattan hotel I think it was the Marriott
[00:20:30] James: [00:20:30] We should see if we can get some sort of plaque there or something in this
[00:20:34] Adam: [00:20:34] bar returned into an apartment building filled with Russians who knows if it's there anymore
[00:20:40] James: [00:20:40] Dave Jones is the creator of the freedom controller a piece of software that's half RSS reader and half a blog Have I got that right Dave
[00:20:47] Dave: [00:20:47] I don't know if it's half and half is more like one 10th of 10 different things I think you're being kind there So
[00:20:53] James: [00:20:53] how did you and Adam get together initially
[00:20:55] Dave: [00:20:55] And we started working together again on another Dave Weiner project which was the opium mill editor slash PC two for poets And and that was just a continuation of the old frontier software And we got to know each other on those mailing lists And I was the listener of no agenda show And so we just started working together
[00:21:14] James: [00:21:14] So Adam you've been doing no agenda with John for many years The only thing I know about John is that he gets no spam but in September this year you launched the podcast index What's the thing there then
[00:21:28] Adam: [00:21:28] a couple of things occurred I had really been only interested in doing the show and we'd developed a value for value model which had been working very well for over 13 years now where we do our podcast and only we have to worry about is can we pay the rent and feed our families and maybe send their kids to school And the simple premise of that is not setting a price but making it open-ended and the pitches What is this time that you just spent listening to this worth to you is it on a time basis the same as going to the movie theaters and you took a date and you had a drink It was 50 bucks was two hours listening to us worth 50 bucks Was it five And what we learned very quickly over 10 years ago Is if you pose the question that way and you keep reminding people a lot we'll send you $5 So we'll send you a lot Actually we'll send you 50 many We'll send you 500 and lo and behold some we'll send you 5,000 and we never looked back from there So I never really had any problem with cancel culture or with de platforming and was very pleased with how Apple heads stewarded podcasting for the past decade But two things happened One is Alex Jones was uniformly de platformed By Silicon Valley in one night across Twitter Facebook and a couple others but also Apple podcasts And I'm with them I'm sure there's hundreds if not thousands of podcasts that never make it on because they don't make it through their intake process or whatever process you go through there But I saw that the Alex Jones so disappeared from A whole slew of apps because they were all tied into the Apple index to retrieve the listings because as it turns out after a decade RSS at scale is very hard to manage So that was disappointing to me And I realized that we have no incentive for app developers to actually make new experiences And if we don't do anything about it We'll be left with Apple Spotify Google play Amazon maybe an overcast or a couple of other smaller apps that are just out there So I knew that we needed a couple of things Joe Rogan I went on his show in March and I became friends with them and I didn't know he had the Spotify deal then it probably wasn't done yet But I remember there was a moment that came out when people tried to the platform him because of some old video that surfaced and he was talking with another comedian about some horrible sex act whatever it was he lost a couple of advertisers And he told me that in confidence at the time And I said Oh man this is only going to get worse And not long after that a few months He announced the Spotify deal And I noticed that we have a secondary problem for podcasting The number one reason to use any podcast app for a lot of people It's the Joe Rogan show And if you open up any independent podcast player before December 1st the Joe Rogan show would always be featured This was a draw This was important that went away So now we have two strikes and I realized we needed to do two things One Preserve podcasting as a platform for free speech which means no matter what you're saying it should be retrievable the pointers to what you're saying I should be correct because we don't host MP3s only feeds that should be immutable and we need to have copies of and anybody needs to be able to set up a shadow directory And the second piece was we need to retool podcasting as a platform of value And that comes in two stages As we've learned the first one is the namespace with all this pent up creativity and energy that developers and people involved in podcasting had and ideas that have been fleshed out but never went anywhere So it was like uncorking this bottle of energy that wow And here's everyone doing these cool things And because we have an API You can quickly spin up a podcast app and create a completely new experience which we have We have cast coverage we have cast a pod We have all these different ways of discovering podcasts listening to podcasts I think we're just getting started And when I'd seen the possibilities of Bitcoin with the lightning network I knew that if we could garner enough speed and get enough developers interested in Preserving podcasting as a platform of free speech but also retooling it and giving the app developers love and attention and feedback and PR and money and a way to participate in the system that we could really create a force of decentralized although that's not entirely true but at its core decentralized content distribution That is hopefully uninterruptible for all the above reasons And I called up Dave and said brother we've been working for 10 years And we've made some crazy ass stuff that five people wanted two of which were us And I think this is the one we have the experience we've been doing 10 years of aggregation publishing We know what's out there and foolishly he agreed with me and jumped in
[00:26:30] James: [00:26:30] So Dave I mentioned the podcasting namespace a few weeks ago much to Adam's annoyance what is the name space
[00:26:37] Dave: [00:26:37] The namespace you can think of it like an overlay on top of your podcast feed And it's just a general way to apply new properties to an XML feed which is what all podcast feeds are So if you publish an episode of your podcast it goes into an XML feed and a podcast feed And then that is distributed by your host to anybody who wants to consume it any service or app or platform that wants to find out the information about your podcast and how to play it So what we've done is created a namespace to add extra information to podcast feeds that have never been around before And a lot of people have wanted new information to be in there and there's pent up demand for that And so early on when we first started the podcast index we started it with the idea that we were going to be a platform for freedom of speech And we were going to be a decentralized free API but then very quickly within the first couple of weeks we saw this demand for the namespace We saw that podcasting really had stagnated on a technical level for a long time for many years And so we said let's shift gears here and jump in and try to create something that the industry needs because we're self-funded and we're donation-based and that's something we can do Cause we're Our only expenses are time So we jumped in there and started creating the namespace And guess what We figured out lots of people have fantastic ideas and They all found us and they all started dumping their ideas and you included James and everybody pulled together and started just creating What's a fantastic set of information that now Podcasts can put in there things like the location of the podcast or the content It talks about things like the people that are in the podcast that information can be specified guests and hosts things like
[00:28:36] Adam: [00:28:36] chapters with pictures
[00:28:38] Dave: [00:28:38] Yep Trap captors picture transcripts just lots of extra rich Content that can now be put into a podcast in an open decentralized way that doesn't depend on a mega host or a siloed app like a Spotify or an audible or something like that We don't have to wait for those people to do We can do it in an open ecosystem Now that we have this namespace
[00:29:05] James: [00:29:05] been doing this for awhile podcast hosting companies have become involved at least some of them So Buzzsprout which is the sponsor of this podcast has supported a lot of the new namespace tags If I'm working for a podcast hosting company what should I be doing to find out more about the new podcasting namespace
[00:29:23] Dave: [00:29:23] I think the first thing you should do is join the podcast indexed on social because that's where a lot of this conversation happens they get hub repository for the podcast namespace namespaces open for all to comment and post issues there that is reserved for more of a Refining the technical details of the tags themselves A lot of the initial ideas for the tags emerge on podcast indexed us social And so really being active in both of those places is probably a good idea And you can always ask for help in any way And other people can give you implementation details It's a very active community And both on the get hub and on the Mastodon server So I think joining up there and then going to read the documentation for the namespace on the get hub which is very thorough I think those are your two best bets And Adam what
[00:30:14] James: [00:30:14] can podcast has be doing to help the podcast index I guess part of that is asking their podcast hosts to support this stuff but what else can they be doing
[00:30:22] Adam: [00:30:22] I'd like you to send your audience to check out some new podcasting 2.0 apps and services new podcast apps.com check them out And many of them are web apps that just work in a browser Several are in the app stores both for Apple and for Android That's really a great starting place to send people to check out some of the new features And then obviously if you have a host that doesn't support them yet ask if your host would consider that And either Dave or I'd be more than happy to talk to anybody by the way if anybody needs any convincing and Jay's by now I'm sure you've Probably already mentioned it in pod news maybe in the written newsletter but Libsyn is also going to support all of the new namespace tags which we're also quite happy with
[00:31:08] James: [00:31:08] That's fantastic news And that was important news on Tuesday I'll tell you are you talking to the big podcast apps as well You're talking to Apple
[00:31:16] Adam: [00:31:16] Apple did reach out I had a great chat with them and I believe I have an opportunity to present the namespace to the team in January they're a big company that moves slow I think they had a path of some other things they were working on and then we popped up We'll see but that's it for me I'm more interested in working with the hosts, with the hosting companies and of course, with the developers.
[00:31:38] Of the apps. That's where I find the most fun. I love breaking things. I know you're good at that too. James is breaking an app and then watching a developer scramble and then fix it. And then five other people chime in and, Oh crap, I have a better solution for that. And it's like a band, it's like all of a sudden people just, it's this wonderful synchronicity that takes place.
[00:31:57] And if you've ever seen that in development process, it's easy to get hooked on it. And it's a lot of fun right now. So
[00:32:04] James: [00:32:04] while we have you on, what do you think is going to happen next year in podcasting? So much consolidation this year so much focusing around Spotify in particular, what do you think is going to happen next year?
[00:32:15] Adam: [00:32:15] Have anything to do with it? Micro payments, with a value for value, the pledge model, as we call it for podcasting, where you pledge to pay a certain amount of money per minute, for every show you listened to. And that'll be variable. I really believe we can push that where I've seen it in a small test environment.
[00:32:33] Once we have apps and infrastructure that scales, which will be coming in this new year, I believe we'll see quite a flood of people moving towards that as the infrastructure on the payment side, which I don't want anyone to be afraid of Bitcoin or something that's running under the hood. You should be able to put your dollars, your euros in and a podcast, or should be able to get that out.
[00:32:55] Unfortunately. When you put them in Australia, they come out less here in America, but that's not something that podcasting has anything to do with.
[00:33:04] James: [00:33:04] . We've got our government to blame for that. Dave Jones. Thank you very much. And Adam Curry dunk saw hat, outfitter and
[00:33:11] Adam: [00:33:11] van podcasting, but being a doc on Lisa, your heartsick, James, I've no idea what
[00:33:16] James: [00:33:16] you just said, but thank you so much.
[00:33:19] I checked there's a little bit of Dutch right at the end of this, but I have checked with a Dutch person what he actually said.
[00:33:26] Sam: [00:33:26] . Are we clear?
[00:33:27] James: [00:33:27] We're clear.
[00:33:29] Sam: [00:33:29] James. That's all double Dutch to me, but I think that the open podcasting solution that they're putting forward seems to be working.
[00:33:38] There's a lot of companies who are adopting the new namespace and I suppose, podcasts to dot zeros it's been termed. So james, do you think that Adam and Dave could hold back the tide, like King Knute against the likes of Apple, Spotify, and Netflix Or do you think it's never going to go any way further.
[00:34:01] James: [00:34:01] I think what Adam and Dave are doing is what I really hoped the podcast Academy would do and it's failed to do.
[00:34:10] And what I really hoped that other organizations would do and other organizations at the open podcast analytics working group , would do, and they failed to end up doing, which is. To act as an industry. If you go and you look at the radio world or the TV world or the movie world, there is a big industry body where you go to, if you need to understand how the industry works, we don't have that in terms of podcasting.
[00:34:38] It's why you see these people. Jumping into podcasting with both feet and getting things wrong. And I think that Dave and Adam have finally got there and gone, you know what? We do not have money for politics. We don't have money for going slowly. We don't have much money at all, but the money that we're going to spend, we're going to produce something which is really easy for developers, for podcasters, for everybody else to get involved in podcasting.
[00:35:07] As an open ecosystem. And so I think they're doing a fantastic job doing that. I'm so excited to hear in that interview, that Adam. Is talking to Apple. I'm so excited to hear that he's, got in front of Apple and the Apple are interested in what they're doing there. certainly in terms of support of some of the new.
[00:35:28] Podcasting tags. I think that would be really handy. let's hope that he has great success and Dave, who's a brilliant coder and a brilliant sort of marshaller of developers as well. Let's hope that they both have great success in pushing podcasting forward because somebody has to, and right now nobody else is actually bringing the industry together.
[00:35:51] It
[00:35:51] Sam: [00:35:51] does remind me of my days when we were doing the browser Wars, where new standards would appear both within Netscape and within Microsoft. And it was like a features war. And eventually those were adopted as an overall standard and even Microsoft. Came to the party and adopted those standards.
[00:36:10] So I guess we could only hope that Adam and Dave are pushing new standards and new tags and eventually Apple and Spotify will adopt some of those in their own closed environments. So that it's standard across the industry.
[00:36:23] James: [00:36:23] . It makes no sense, , for Spotify to ignore, the transcripts, , or for Spotify to reinvent a wheel
[00:36:30] If there's an open standard there. , in terms of those tools that are really helpful tools, but actually don't earn anybody any money anyway. I think open standards makes an awful lot of sense. And so I really hope that some of these standards work and that's really why, I was asking him what.
[00:36:48] Do we need to do So if you're a podcast or listening to this, and you're not on a host, which is already saying that they'll support podcast index, then talk to your host and find another one. If they're not going to support it because things need to move. I think, on this and I'm very grateful that we're supported by Buzzsprout who is supporting, a bunch of these tools I advise for captivate and captivate is also looking very closely at what's going on here because there are great tools that can be used.
[00:37:19] Benefits to them as well. And I think, if you're with somebody like, SoundCloud that still hasn't implemented the new Apple tags from three years ago, you need to be taking a long, hard look at yourself.
[00:37:31] Sam: [00:37:31] I'm on simple cost and I'm talking to their CEO, Brad Smith, because they haven't jumped on board yet.
[00:37:36] So James, that's it for this week. So what's coming home pod land for you this week or next month? I believe it's a it's a holiday some form of religious holiday coming up relatively shortly.
[00:37:48] James: [00:37:48] Actually, if you get bad news on Christmas day, there is a gift for the first 100 people who press the link And it's a gift of if you've ever wanted to get some great audio from somebody. And then you've had to fiddle around with them, trying to record it into some weird app and then putting it onto Dropbox or we transfer it or Google drive or anything else.
[00:38:13] And you just want a really simple, straightforward tool then you will love. The Christmas gift that I have for you on Christmas day. So if you don't get pod news already, pod news.net, it's free to subscribe. And that's a jolly good thing. And next week on this podcast, I will be talking with Steve Pratt.
[00:38:30] Who's co-founder of Pacific content joining me from blisteringly cold Vancouver in Canada. And he will be talking about the year ahead. I might use some
[00:38:41] Sam: [00:38:41] I'm looking forward to having a little break, but in the new year, I'm going to be interviewing professor. Let it go.
[00:38:48] She's an amazing FinTech entrepreneur. And she's going to be talking to me about programmable money. And I'm also talking to Minter doll about his new book on leadership called you lead and helping yourself makes you a better leader. So there to the podcasts
[00:39:04] James: [00:39:04] coming up for me, why do I recognize mentors named from.
[00:39:08] Sam: [00:39:08] Mint has written several books. One of his other books is called heart official empathy, which was how to add empathy into AI very nice. I'm looking forward to that and that's it for this week.
[00:39:19] James: [00:39:19] If you've enjoyed your trip to Portland, don't make it your last. You can subscribe on all the major podcast players or visit our [email protected].
[00:39:30] Sam: [00:39:30] And if you've enjoyed this episode, thank you. And please tell your friends by sharing on your socials. And don't forget to send us in a audio question so that we might include it in a future episode at [email protected].
[00:39:44] James: [00:39:44] That's a good thing. If you want daily news, you should get pod news. It's [email protected], or ask your smart speaker to play the news from pod news, podcasting news. And that's where you'll find all of the links from all of the stories we've mentioned this week. Music. This episode was from ignites jingles.
[00:40:02] Clean feed.net to interview Adam Curry and Dave Jones. They use it as well. I discovered, and I edited that on Hindenburg journalist pro Portland was edited by Sam Sethi and D scripts and were hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. And we'll see you in Portland next week. Keep listening.
[00:40:32]