This week's report card: ACast very bad, GoodPods bad, ActivityPub very good and Super Listener Wayne Cheong dies, very sad.

[00:00:00]

[00:00:00] Welcome to Podland the last word in podcasting use. It's the 24th of February, 2022. I'm James. Cridlin the editor of pod news.net.

[00:00:08] And I'm Sam Sethi, the MD of river radio, the podcast, first radio station going live on dab on the 1st of March.

[00:00:16] And I'm John Spurlock, and I'm here to talk about the new podcast comments, open standard at podcast, social.org

[00:00:23] hey well, Portland is sponsored by Buzzsprout podcast. Hosting made easy last week, 4,386. People started hosting with Buzzsprout. You can't do it past pratt.com. And if you use chapters in your podcast app, then Buzzsprout supports those. And so do we

[00:00:39] BadPods Let's Anyone Claim Your Podcast

[00:00:39] Now this week, James, you and a friend of yours, Danny brown had a bit of fun. It seems that you changed ownership of podcasts. Danny became the owner of pod news.net and you became owner of his podcast. Is that okay, James?

[00:00:53] No, it's not. Okay. So this was in an app called good pods. And typically when you go [00:01:00] into an app and you want to claim ownership of a podcast, then it will send you an email and you have to click on the email. If you get that email in the first place and blah, blah, blah. And then eventually you can prove that you own that particular podcast except in good pods where good pods just allows anybody to just say that they own it.

[00:01:15] So I could go in tomorrow and say that I own the Joe Rogan podcast. And I could probably do that too. which seems a little bit of a mistake. JJ Rambo who runs the good pods app, got all legal and said that if you do that, then we can terminate your good pods accounts. You may be subject to civil or criminal penalties, which is one way of responding.

[00:01:34] The other way of responding is, to actually fix the bug, from my point of view. But anyway, yeah, it was interesting. See,

[00:01:40] must be better ways to claim ownership of a podcast. I know that fountain, when you use the app there, ask for your email, that's held within the RSS file. Now that's one way of doing it. Is that a good way?

[00:01:54] Yeah. that's all right, but it does end up being misused because obviously you've [00:02:00] got lots of RSS feeds out there. 2.4 million of them, which all have email addresses of podcasters in them. So if you're a naughty company, then you can probably, see all look 2.4 million email addresses of podcasters.

[00:02:14] I think I might be trying to email those and it's particularly if you're a bad podcast host and you wants to do something mean and naughty to a competitor.

[00:02:24] Why Acast? Don't Spam Podcasters.

[00:02:24] Ah, yes. Now this week, sadly, a cost is going to be put on the naughty step aren't they? Because they've been spamming, podcasters says our sponsor Buzzsprout, and it's proof actually, because, we've seen the emails that have been going from a car saying to people to remove themselves from Buzzsprout and join a cast.

[00:02:44] And it seems that what they've been doing is using that, email held within the RSS file, to actually spam, people, the tweet that went out from album will where it was, this is why we can't have nice things. RSS feeds needs to have the iTunes email [00:03:00] tags so that directories can verify you own your podcasts.

[00:03:03] But companies like a cast, we use it to spam everybody with a podcast with emails like this. So clearly they've upset. Buzzsprout did they cost do anything wrong though?

[00:03:14] in most countries? No, actually in Europe. Yes. And that is still includes you lot. even if you're not in Europe anymore. because it's against the GDPR rules, That's pretty clear if you're not in Europe, then, it's still weirdly legal, but everybody says that's bad behavior. Everybody says that's a bad thing.

[00:03:32] Alvin, Brooke, when I, spoke to him, he said, it's a spammy marketing tactic that has no place in podcasting, especially from one of the most respected brands in the industry. I asked her a cast of, point of view cause I'm good like that. And they said, email marketing is one part of our marketing strategy.

[00:03:49] As we look to bring even more great creators to Ucast and we're focused on providing the best possible tools and services to help them reach their potential or if you'd like it better, that way stuff off [00:04:00] we'll spam people. If we want to, I think it's a very disappointing thing and I'm very sad to hear a cast doing that since I reported on that I've had other.

[00:04:09] really interesting and quite depressing, emails about, a casts, behavior, spamming, customers of particular podcast hosts or particular podcast networks, basically spamming those and, telling them to move. I think it's a pretty bad practice and it's a real shame that a cars who have been one of the good people, seem to be stooping as low as this.

[00:04:32] Yeah, I know that they're going after the long tail of podcasting now, rather than just going after the top end, which is where they started. So clearly that's their strategy to reach out to as many podcasts as possible.

[00:04:44] Yeah, there's a very good way of reaching out to 20,200 podcasters and that's to advertising pod news, which is something that they haven't done, to promote the fact that they are good and promote the fact that they are worthwhile switching to at the moment, what people are hearing is that [00:05:00] they're actually not a very good company and they're treating people without much respect.

[00:05:05] And that appears to be a bad plan.

[00:05:07] New Podcast Claiming Proposal

[00:05:07] Okay. So we've got the RSS feed. It's got email within it. Is there an option that we could look at that you think we could change to for making claiming of a podcast better?

[00:05:19] Yeah, I think so. I've written some proposed documentation of how something might work. so the idea is instead of having email, which is a bad thing, anyway, it's bad because it helps bad actors like a cast, spam people, but it's also bad for privacy reasons and all kinds of other things instead of using email, that actually just pass a token, through.

[00:05:42] so the idea is the proposal that I've written up is that when you try and claim a podcast, on, let's say good pods, then good pods will give you a button to claim your podcast. You click it, it goes to your podcast. And your podcast host says, do you want to claim this in good pods [00:06:00] and you click?

[00:06:00] Yes. And you're back in good pods and you've got a claim to podcast and you also have a, good pods also has proof that you own your podcast, which is a good thing. and that seems to be a pretty straightforward thing it's based on off, which is the standard way of doing this.

[00:06:17] And I think that would be, a good plan to eventually remove email addresses from RSS feeds.

[00:06:23] Yeah, I was talking to John Spurlock and we'll be listening to his interview in a minute. But one of the things we talked about was the fact that you could use OAuth, but in fact, there's a protocol that's been around. That's related to O Wharf called web finger. web finger would do exactly what you're saying, James, it would allow you to create a URI to your account. that looks like an email address that would be with your host. So it's fundamental like a pointer back to your host saying here's where we are. Yes.

[00:06:57] It's validated take it away and you can [00:07:00] claim it.

[00:07:00] And so that might be the way that we go.

[00:07:02] Yeah. whether it's web finger, whether it's that or whether it's, auth, whether it's, an hour like system or whether it's something else, frankly, I don't care. from my point of view, it needs to be easy, straightforward for anyone to code. That's the most important thing here.

[00:07:17] and, it needs to be, secure ish. you're not talking about a bank feed here, you're talking about an RSS feed. so it needs to be secure ish and as long as it is, then, it would be great, but something would be really good.

[00:07:31] Yeah,

[00:07:32] look, let's wait and see whether this is the way forward or not, but I agree. leaving email open within the RSS may not be the best way forward.

[00:07:40] Interview with John Spurlock about ActivityPub

[00:07:40] Now I've mentioned him a few minutes ago. John Spurlock is a developer over in Dallas. Who's been working, very hard on the activity, pub integration with RSS, fundamentally adding a social layer network to what we do with RSS.

[00:07:55] And the first iteration of that is adding not just [00:08:00] comments to your podcast app, but actually adding federated comments. So the idea is that if you are listening to an episode of this show and you wanted to leave us a comment on your favorite app, that comment could also appear in other apps as well.

[00:08:15] And you could have a threaded conversation. So I caught up with John and asked him how he's getting on with activity pub and what he's been doing.

[00:08:22] I am with John Spurlock, John. Hey, how are you? Good, Sam. How are you glad to be here? Where in the world are you? So I'm a independent software developer located here in Dallas. It's a little chilly today, which is not normal for Dallas. Now you've been working on something to do with the podcast index space called podcasts, social interact.

[00:08:40] Who've been working on, I guess, for end users, the ability to comment and cope. Across something called the fed river. So let's split that back down. First of all, what is the fed diverse and then whatever. Sure. So in general comments is a very interesting feature and I think it's one of the more interesting features, uh, the [00:09:00] podcast namespace initiative.

[00:09:01] One of the reasons for that is that it's something that all users intuitively have an understanding of. We don't have to do a lot of explanation if a new app comes out and they want to show comments, that's a great differentiation feature for them. Same with podcast hosts, any sort of podcast hosts that wants to perhaps offer something a little different.

[00:09:17] They can offer comments and moderation as a service on their side. So it's a great kind of feature that is not really related to any of the other podcasts, 2.0 features. So even if you haven't looked into any of the other features so far, you could imagine just implementing comments as a good first step.

[00:09:32] Something everyone knows standard feature of the internet. It'd be great. If every podcast app could show in LA. Right below each episode of the replies for that particular episode. So that just like YouTube, you can drill down on more and then also possibly posts. So if an app gives you a box to reply, you could be part of the conversation.

[00:09:50] It'd be nice if all of those apps are using the same conversation. So it's one thing for one app to lock comments within their own app. But then the [00:10:00] podcaster has to go to that app to look at that discussion. And the users are really only seeing the discussion for that particular app, but the new standard.

[00:10:08] That the podcast namespace is proposing would be a way for podcasters to control where the particular comment venue is for a given episode. And then also for the apps to then I'll use that. So it solves a bunch of problems at once. And what is that standard? What is the actual tag standard? So the tag is fairly simple from a podcast, or they want us to get started today.

[00:10:32] They add a tag at the item level, which is at the episode level, it's called podcast, colon social interact. And that tag takes the platform. So Twitter or activity pub, and then it takes the URL. So let's say you have it. That you've created. That is the official post. For that particular episode, you put the tweet in there and then also the fed reverse is similar.

[00:10:56] It's probably we're talking about the fed rivers. A lot of people haven't heard of that. Just [00:11:00] think of Twitter as a water cooler, where everyone exists in the world. Everyone is at the same water cooler. Uh, the fed averse is hundreds of smaller watercolors. Where you could have a water cooler of one where you just have your name at that particular domain, but you're still able to talk to the other water coolers.

[00:11:19] And the way that they do that is using a protocol called activity. Pub activity pump is an older standard. It's a W3C standard uses the same standards. Bodies is a lot of the core protocols. Again. And it was used to do this, but what's really cool about it today is that there are a lot of active fed averse instances where people are actually commenting.

[00:11:38] So this isn't just buying this guy. This will be nice to have, but this is something that people can get started with today. And there are many active discussions going on, but ultimately it behaves a lot. And a lot of the implementations look a lot like Twitter. So you get a URL and then you see the comments at that particular URL.

[00:11:57] So the tag itself is simple. Again. [00:12:00] Either for Twitter, here's the link to the tweet and for fed averse, here's a link to the fed rivers. What's great about the fed verse in particular and Twitter to a lesser extent is that apps can pull in that data in line. So they don't have to just put a link in the app to actually send them outside of the app.

[00:12:17] As part of the experience, they can pull them that data directly and even post directly, uh, Twitter with the Twitter API and then the fed rivers with a little bit more of a complicated set of eight. But that really helps us realize this vision today of all apps can show comments in line and then also participate.

[00:12:33] And then the podcaster is still in control. So I'm really excited about it. And I've recently been creating some open source components, so that apps maybe have a little bit easier time getting stuff. We've created a couple of websites. The first one is podcast, social.org. Tell me what's app to podcast social.

[00:12:52] So that's meant to be a few things. Number one, it's meant to be in English. What is the deal with podcast comments? What's this new standard. How do I get [00:13:00] started? So from various points of view, if you're a podcaster, how do I get started? What is the tag? But what do I need to put in my feed? If you're a podcast host, what do I need to do to get tickets started on the app side and then from all the various folks in the ecosystem.

[00:13:13] So it's meant to be something in English to say, okay, I've heard about this, but how do I get started? The second thing is for app. There's an interesting problem where even if all apps supported this today, no conversations are officially taking place because podcasters haven't added it to their feeds yet.

[00:13:29] Hopefully they do, but we need something in the interim so that we don't go back to all implementing comments in our own apps and siloing the conversation. So what would be nice is if for any given episode, you could call a service and say, where is the unofficial conversation for this taking. And it would be a single unofficial stable sort of URL so that all apps can participate in it.

[00:13:53] So that's what this second service that I created as it's a programmatic API service. The primary function of that [00:14:00] is to provide a very simple way for app developers to say, Hey, I have someone that's ready to comment. I would love to have posts that exists out in the world. Ultimately, I'd love to see that API come back into the podcast index.

[00:14:12] But we'll see how that goes. What difficulties or challenges did you find when you were starting to put this together? One of the things is, again, Twitter has a great API. So today, if you put a Twitter link and your tag apps can show that decently well, and there's great documentation activity, pub, as I'm sure, you know, cause I know you have a history with open source standards and developments, the implementation slightly differs depending on which of these servers are being used.

[00:14:38] Mastodon is one of the most popular servers in this it's free. It has a great UI and it speaks this language activity pub to the other servers. So I highly recommend anyone. That's looking into that to either find a Mastodon server that they can have an account on, or even host their own or have someone host it for them.

[00:14:55] But it's tricky because it's not exactly documented. There's no one single site that says [00:15:00] here's the current version of what everyone's speaking. So I went through and did a lot of that work and just poked her. Looked at the current state of things. And so on many pub.dev, that's a site for kind of that work.

[00:15:12] And I have some examples of calls from various federal, our servers and that sort of thing. Some of the technical details that apps would need to do. So that's one thing that's challenging. The other thing that's challenging is just it's distributed just like the internet is distributed. So some of these servers don't exist anymore, but I think in general, I would say the podcasts index project, which is a great kind of.

[00:15:32] Project moving these standards forwards. Did a great job in adding this as an option. And I would say even if a podcaster wants to point to their Twitter posts for a given episode, I think it's worthwhile for them to just check out what Mastodon offers and you can actually choose to, you can say for Twitter, here's where the URL is.

[00:15:49] And then for the fed rivers, here's where the URL is just to get started because it offers us the ability in the future to do things like reviews and some sort of additional metadata [00:16:00] along with the message. That apps and the hosts could actually work with. And I could see an extension to the activity pub that kind of does that.

[00:16:07] Yeah. Cause once you can federate comment. It's not hard to think about federating other content, as you said, reviews, ratings can get federated. Now, one of the things I was looking at with the OAuth 2.1 standard that has recently been updated, and one of the things that was interesting to me. Let's say I was in Casta port or port friend, or one of the apps that's already looking to support activity, pub and comments.

[00:16:34] Okay. App still requires me to log in individually into that app. One of the things I thought that might be really interesting and I did a little bit of squirreling around was that you can actually use a Mastodon activity pub address or with OAuth 2.0. And actually log into an app. So instead of like we did today in web two, you've got no login with Facebook or login with Twitter or login with whatever.[00:17:00]

[00:17:00] And it does the OAuth jump. Do you see activity pub once it's embedded into apps, allowing people to say, look, you don't have to log in locally with. Credentials on a single app and then another set of credentials on another and another set of credentials. I happened to have a Mastodon account and happens to be at the podcast index as an example.

[00:17:19] And I'm going to use that as my credentials to login. Is that something that's been in your brain? Absolutely. That's part of the activity pub model. So the activity pub model defines a users at a particular domain, but it really has nothing to do beyond that. So you mentioned Mastodon, but, um, again, that open source project basically implements the pieces to allow users to be defined at an app level.

[00:17:43] So let's say overcast, for example, wants to support app. They would basically put a sub-domain like comments that overcast FM and you'd have a user at that domain. So each app could actually define automatically for users and identity that could be used to respond to these [00:18:00] podcasts, common threads, which is exciting.

[00:18:01] And then, like you said, if you had an existing account, Let's say you use multiple apps and you want it to appear as the same user across all of them. You could bring your existing account. Now you and I are a little technical than most people. A lot of people won't have that to start out with, but the protocol is something that allows all of those scenarios.

[00:18:19] So that's, what's really exciting. That's something that Twitter doesn't do. You have to have an account on Twitter. And so each app would have to have the floats, a login as your Twitter account when you're logging in. But that's why this activity type is interesting because it allows all these various scenario down the road.

[00:18:34] And even today, actually, it's not impossible to run your own mastered on, but it's like anything. It's something you have to self host in may. One of the original specs for activity pub was to be an open source social network standard. Basically, that was the original thinking because obviously we'd had my space and we'd had friend feed.

[00:18:54] If you remember those. And then of course we all Facebook and there was this anti centralization. And [00:19:00] from what I remember of the code, the structure is active verb object. Isn't there that John followed. Uh, this thing here over there, that's true. Imagine extending the podcast, indexed, namespace podcasts, social interact to allow social networking within podcasting as well.

[00:19:20] So extending it so I could follow a particular episode or I. Comment on a particular episode, but also sharing a particular, all of these social networking type things that we've got used to in web two. Could we apply that to podcasting? That's what's interesting is you can do that today. So all of the podcasts are needs to do is specify where that takes place.

[00:19:43] And all of these features are available today. So it's just a matter of programming to get that done. But for example, that mini pub, which is a small activity, pub service, it talks activities, and it says new users created and then a new post is created. And then you can delete a post. You can actually edit [00:20:00] a post.

[00:20:00] It's actually interesting. The Federer supports editing posts, but a lot of the implementations don't because they want to be like Twitter, but the model supports it just fine. You can hear a lot of feedback. I hear them already about moderation. So if this model is very open, which it is, how does one control?

[00:20:17] Let's say a comment appears that I don't want to show in the official feed. How do I do that? So all requests for federations are just that they're just requests. And basically a local copy is created on the sender side. So all activities happen on the center side, but then the receiver has the ability to see all these inbox activity.

[00:20:36] To decide whether or not they want to display them as a reply or not. And again, that's up to the UI of that implementation to give them that ability. Mastodon has a pretty good facility for this. So, so in that way you get best of both worlds. You have the ability to own your own little sphere of the domain, but you can also then request to be federated to the other servers and they have moderation ability.

[00:20:56] You've mentioned the, a lot of times you can use a Twitter URL as an [00:21:00] alternative to an activity. Nope. Twitter's got a project that is working on called blue sky. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you know of blue sky and how that might fit into I've been following this from afar, and if anyone's interested in this, they can just Google blue sky discord and see what the conversations are going on there.

[00:21:18] But from a very early on, I don't know if you remember in Twitter, Jack actually was very interested in making Twitter more than just a single site, but actually federating out the data. And they did this through the AP. Make it more available to other internet kind of comment services. And that has not really gone anywhere yet, but there's very much interest in this.

[00:21:38] So blue sky is the latest initiative. Now that fed versus hot again, they are looking into how to support activity pub coming in and out of Twitter and what that would look like. Now, a lot of these discussions are still very early on and there's a lot of astronautics being discussed there and it's like anything, we'll see what comes out of it, but they're definitely interested.

[00:21:58] So that's another reason why having [00:22:00] your own kind of activity pub or fed diverse identity right now is interesting. One thing that's interesting that we haven't talked about is from the host point of view. So hosts to get started with this, the host of they're ultimately the ones creating most of the RSS feeds out there today.

[00:22:15] So you can imagine them to support this tag, adding a simple text box, whereas the Twitter post for this URL or for this episode, whereas the fed versus instance, that's a kind of V1 implementation, but what's interesting is. Provide a service. They could be. The comment host for the podcast is on their platform.

[00:22:34] They already provide a similar service for let's say an episode website, you get a basic website for every episode. That's one less thing a podcast or has to do. They could implement the small part of activity. Pub it's necessary to be a comment, so they wouldn't have to use Mastodon or incorporate any other third-party software.

[00:22:51] I have like comments dot, I dunno, buzzsprout.com URL created for every episode. And that would be very cool. And that way [00:23:00] they could give the podcasts, there's the ability to moderate and so forth on their end and participate in the system in a bigger way. And then in the future, if Twitter decides to implement these sorts of protocols, they'd be ready for that as well.

[00:23:12] If anyone's interested in that, by the way, I've been looking into this over the last few months. So John at podcast, social.org, if anyone, some pointers on how to get started with some of the. Yeah, it took him about how to get started. And again, going back to the website, you've created podcasts, social.org.

[00:23:26] Is that a good step-by-step guide to begin with? I just to remind everyone, I would say absolutely. Absolutely. I would say if you have no prior knowledge on this, that's a decent place to get started. It has links to the actual underlying spec from the podcast namespace project, and it has links to other components that are out there.

[00:23:43] And I guess I'll keep it updated as things go. And I think it's a very interesting new feature that potentially the open podcasting system can offer both on the app side and on the host side. Brilliant. John, thank you so much for your work on activity pub and [00:24:00] Hanco commenting. Keep it up as they say.

[00:24:02] And what's the next part of your plan? This I've been working on a top secret podcast client app. So I have a kind of a client app in development. It's not a standard app, but it's interesting in a different direction. I probably will have the ability to comment either in the first pass or the second pass of that out.

[00:24:18] So that's another reason why something like this would be interesting, but I've been around following podcasts from the very beginning and falling RSS from the beginning. So being able to program media is very interesting. And so that's a, that's something that I'm definitely working on from a variety of different angles.

[00:24:33] Yeah. I noticed Dave Weiner the other day had woken up again. I was starting to use RSS to tweet. Which is very interesting. Yes. I've been following him from the beginning as well. And it's actually quite amazing. 20 years later that RSS is still being used. But some of the simplicity I think is part of the appeal and yeah, it's interesting to see where things will go data transport layer, not a podcast layer at the enclosure tag was when they added the [00:25:00] podcast.

[00:25:00] The actual original XML was the data transport that absolutely. Do you remember? Point cast? That's where I first got into found out about RSS and I loved Pointcast. So I'm a news junkie, so it's great for being pushed new stories as they occur. And I think if I remember correctly, RSS was the open version of that.

[00:25:18] They would show up in the Netscape widgets and that sort of thing. I still use RSS to manage my incoming news flow every day. So it's great for that. It's cool to see podcasting coming along later as well. Brilliant, John, thank you so much. Keep in touch and hopefully catch up with you when you bring your up out.

[00:25:33] Yeah, absolutely. Thanks a lot, Sam.

[00:25:36] John Spurlock. He's a very bright man. Isn't he? Sam?

[00:25:39] He is, he knows his beans.

[00:25:41] Oh, he certainly does. Yeah. And I already got in here. does an awful lot of, data work with, the podcast world as well, which I link to every single month. fascinating guy. really good.

[00:25:51] Yeah, I highly recommend going over to the websites. He's created because literally I think the next step forward for podcasting [00:26:00] is adding this social layer so that users can start to interact with creators. And I think that will really make podcasting much more, interesting because as podcast is, what do we want?

[00:26:11] We want that feedback loop. And, this seems to be a really good way of doing it.

[00:26:15] Yeah, no, I think that's a really good, you could look at it the other way and go, we've got a feedback loop it's called booster grams. And there's another benefit of that is that we earn money, when we get a boost to gram. and of course we've crossed out comments, you don't, and what we've essentially done is we've built two messaging systems and that's probably a bad thing, but I can also see from the other side that, it's a good thing to have something which is federated invisible tool.

[00:26:41] so any clever person out there who can combine the two comments system together? Put your hand up, please.

[00:26:47] Yes, indeed.

[00:26:48] Linkedin Podcasts

[00:26:48] All right. moving forward. One of the other stories I read about this week was LinkedIn. It seems as woken up and it's going to part with. And enter the podcasting arena. James, what are they doing? [00:27:00]

[00:27:00] What are they doing? they're partnering with Verizon. Verizon is sponsoring something. they are launching a podcast network of three different shows. and that's going to be fun this net, and that's basically it. one of them is sponsored by, LinkedIn. You would have thought wouldn't you, that LinkedIn would be a little bit more exciting about adding podcasts into the LinkedIn platform and everything else, but no, they're just going to do a show with Reed Hoffman in it.

[00:27:23] so that'll be a thrill, yeah, crushing disappointment. So I'm sorry. I can hear the disappointment from here.

[00:27:30] I think I wrote a post recently, which said LinkedIn's totally failed in the sense that it should have owned the business graph. And it just doesn't, Facebook pages are irrelevant and Facebook groups are totally irrelevant. and LinkedIn should have owned that business graph where we all go.

[00:27:45] we've got our connections and we've got our social graph in there. But if you apply, I don't know if you've tried James for the newsletter, you never get a response. If you apply to do live broadcast feeds. So if you use somebody [00:28:00] like stream yard and you want to be able to broadcast this podcast live as well, you never get a response from LinkedIn saying, oh yes, here you go.

[00:28:08] Here's the process. No, you have to randomly know somebody in LinkedIn and scratch their back and rub coin to them and eventually might get,

[00:28:17] it. And so nobody uses that. So half the things that they've rolled out or try to roll out, they've just done so badly that I don't know what LinkedIn is anymore, but again,

[00:28:30] you would have thought wouldn't you, that, at the very least linked in would have a simple, straightforward way for developers to go. I would like to link to Sam, Seth, his page on LinkedIn. How do I do that? And can I please grab a photograph of Sam Sethi? And you can't even, you can't even.

[00:28:46] You can't even do that. so I linked to a LinkedIn page for anyone who's just been hired or who's leaving a job or whatever it is in pod news every day. And I thought, wouldn't it be nice if I could [00:29:00] have the image from their LinkedIn page, which is publicly visible to everybody.

[00:29:05] Wouldn't it be lovely if I could just go and grab that, but there isn't actually an API way of doing that at all in LinkedIn. And you're there thinking surely it's an obvious use case, bless them Microsoft once they touch anything, then, it all changes. Doesn't it?

[00:29:21] Yeah. as long as you pay your 400 pounds for InMail you're okay.

[00:29:25] Yes. Good Lord.

[00:29:27] Edison Research Super Listeners

[00:29:27] now, at some research released their super listeners study this week. What is a super listener, James? And what was the study of.

[00:29:36] Well, a super listener is an adult in this particular case, a us adult who listens to more than five hours of podcasts a week has super listener. And it turns out that the data that they released this week with ad results media or last week, says that they are listening to podcasts longer.

[00:29:52] And they're also paying more attention to ads on podcasts than other social media or other media. Indeed. So that's pretty good. [00:30:00] but, there is a bit of a warning sign in there. last year, 18% of people said that there were way too many adverts in podcasts, 22%. So that's significantly up now say that there are way too many adverts in the podcasts.

[00:30:14] And these are super listeners who listened to a lot of shows. So that's probably a little bit of a warning sign that perhaps we're beginning to get a little bit too podcast advert heavy. the other thing that it was talking about was, where people consume podcasts over half of them have listened to podcasts on YouTube and 19% say that YouTube is their primary way of discovering new shows, not listening, but discovering new shows 19%, which is a big number.

[00:30:44] yeah, really interesting data from the super listeners study. It's the second or third year, I think, with ad results, media and Edison research.

[00:30:53] Yeah, I was in London this week out the podcast futures event. And, Laura Ivy was [00:31:00] there the director of research at Addison research.

[00:31:02] brilliant presentation, Laura, well done highlight of the event and yeah, she went into great detail about all of the super listeners and the metrics they have and YouTube, unbelievably James.

[00:31:14] I know you've been saying this for months now. but in their data stood out like a sore thumb of ways that people are discovering podcasts in the younger generation and then converting over to becoming subscribers.

[00:31:28] And converting over to becoming subscribers on different platforms, I think. And that's the interesting thing, but YouTube is very large and it was interesting, the pod news report card that we're doing this week. I had an email from somebody saying, why aren't you asking about YouTube? and I said, because it's not a podcasting app.

[00:31:45] And they said, and this was somebody who, may have had a Google email address. and they were saying, it'd be really interesting what people thought of YouTube as a podcast plan. Um, I, my response, it isn't one is possibly a little bit old fashioned [00:32:00] because it clearly is.

[00:32:01] so that was interesting by the way, over 130 responses now to the pod news report card, which is really good. There's still time for you to have your say about podcast platforms and stuff like that. Pod news.net/report card, is where to go. But that wasn't the only piece of Edison research data.

[00:32:18] Was it this week?

[00:32:19] no, it's not James Edison research also released their first us top podcast networks, ranker and S X, M media, came out as number one for podcasts. yes. they released to top 20, which is interesting, an awful lot of tide publishers in there. And I have to say whenever I see tide, numbers in a piece of research, this, that, that is so big, you do wonder whether the, the, survey, number was large enough if you're seeing ties.

[00:32:47] But anyway, it's top three at number three, iHeartRadio, number one for podcast, number two, Spotify, and at number one S X M media, which is Sirius XM, Stitcher, and all of that kind of stuff. it looked at, [00:33:00] and that's basically data from the whole of 2021. Cause they ask people every single week during that particular year, it really interesting to see now there are two other rankers that we know of in the U S one of them is pod track and they show iHeart radio as number one, they don't show Spotify because Spotify don't measure with them and they don't show S XM media because they don't measure with them.

[00:33:22] whereas if you have a look at the other one, which is Triton digital's podcast, ranker, then S XM media is number one of theirs. and I heart radio, isn't measured by Trice and digital. So you end up with this sort of weird thing where you've got two individual podcasts, rankers who are measuring different people.

[00:33:39] And this one, because they are essentially asking 8,000 different podcasts listeners, what stuff they listened to, and they can actually turn around and give you a full, proper view of the entire market. so interesting to see the data, in there, the rest of the top 10 NPR for the New York times at five order.

[00:33:57] See it's six audio boom at six [00:34:00] Cumulus podcast network at eight PRX at eight and wonder at eight. so that's the top 10. and, yeah, fascinating figures, so good on them for releasing.

[00:34:09] yeah, Tom Webster, the, Edison research SVP said, we've tracked this space for 10 courses with thousands of lessons. And the data we see has been incredibly stable over that period of time.

[00:34:22] yeah, no interesting stuff, Tom Webster of course, a good man currently in Boston at the moment with his dog called Walnut. And if you're a friend of his on Facebook all you see every single day is another picture of Walnut.

[00:34:35] Spotify Roundup

[00:34:35] Okay. Quick Roundup of, Spotify. Cause they'd been quite heavy in the news again. if they keep making the news, we've just got to report it. now take a bow. Mr. Quintlin take a bow. It seems that the world is catching up with the story that you broke many months ago about Spotify announcing podcast, but not creating podcasts.

[00:34:54] It seems the Spotify splashy deals with stars like Ava DuVernay to Kim [00:35:00] Kardashian, which aren't podcasts is now gone mainstream. I think I've read it in the Reuters news, Bloomberg and various other places. So yeah, except no one's mentioned you James, as the source

[00:35:11] No business insider, very kindly linked to hotpot, which was good of them. Thanks business insider. think you'll find that we covered that list. and, Hotpod just, took a grumpy response from Spotify when they couldn't be bothered to talk to me. interesting to see and, this has rumbled up every couple of weeks.

[00:35:29] more people have been realizing that Spotify have made an awful lot of announcements and haven't actually launched very many. Now, there are some of these announcements of first look announcements, which basically says that Spotify gets first look, but they don't actually buy anything.

[00:35:42] some more of those announcements are, announcements that they're working on something, but it might not actually lead to anything. but at the end of the day, these are all announcements, promising new and exciting podcasts that don't appear. So I think, you can look at, the mitigating circumstances here and you can go, [00:36:00] that's fine, but that's not the impression that these announcements give.

[00:36:04] And what business insider said is that Dawn Ostroff likes a good announcement, and is less interested, frankly, at whether or not the podcast actually goes to air, which I think is interesting.

[00:36:14] they got the bounce up on the share price, but currently they're getting the bounce down on the share price. It's below one 50, which again, bodes well for my prediction of Netflix buying Spotify.

[00:36:26] we will see. And of course, Spotify, they obviously licensed the Joe Rogan podcast for a lot of money. Now we have all been reporting that it was about a hundred million dollars. but actually it turns out the New York times has done some digging that it wasn't a three-year deal.

[00:36:42] It was a three and a half year deal as if that matters and that the money wasn't $1 million, it was over 200 million. so twice as expensive as we thought that it was, and it was already pretty expensive. yeah, that was a, that was an expensive show. So no wonder that they want to keep hold of it and, try and make as much money out of it as [00:37:00] possible.

[00:37:00] yeah, they've also, they announced that they were going to buy the, find a way audio books. but that deal hasn't closed yet for some reason. So looking at their Q4 figures, it's very clear that they paid 14 million euros for

[00:37:16] yes, that's 15.5 million us dollars and, yeah, which is a pretty good deal for, it's a pretty good deal for certainly. yeah. th that's, interesting, to see those numbers as they come out.

[00:37:30] all I'm going to say is Robert's drinks on you at podcast movement. I'm not getting my wallet out.

[00:37:37] Exactly. Exactly. If he's allowed to go to podcast movement now, of course, which is the other thing,

[00:37:43] Yes. Embargoed never to be seen again.

[00:37:45] Spotify Auto downloads

[00:37:45] Now. Spotify, we've been alerted by friend of the show. Christmas scenar is adding auto downloads for podcasts. what does this mean, James? Why would they do it?

[00:37:55] auto downloads of course exists in, the other main podcast [00:38:00] apps, particularly apple podcasts, and also overcast and others. what it essentially does to podcast numbers is it adds about 30%. That's the amount of podcasts that are downloaded automatically, but it never listens to. And that's the number which is costed into podcast advertising and everything else.

[00:38:18] So it's not a particular concern. But it would make a big deal. A big difference. Certainly if Spotify were to add auto downloads for podcasts, because they are a very big company. And if all of a sudden they add auto downloads, then you know, that changes the world quite a lot. So I asked whether or not it was just a test.

[00:38:39] and I asked some more technical details about, when does it stop downloading and all of that kind of stuff. they spent 36 hours coming back to me and they've come back to me. And they said it is just a test. And the spokesman tells us, we're always working to enhance the Spotify experience.

[00:38:56] And we routinely conduct tests to inform our decisions. Some tests end up paving the [00:39:00] way for new offerings or enhancements while others may only provide learnings. We don't have any additional information to share at this time. So that's a clear as mud, isn't it?

[00:39:08] It's a bit like the, sponsors thing they added for a little bit, and then that's gone away as well.

[00:39:13] Yeah, exactly. yeah, so maybe there's testing stuff and going away, maybe that's why they didn't want to actually answer any of the questions, but it's a really big deal. If they were to add also downloads, that will be a big deal for the industry. And I hope that they are open about it, and I hope that they are collaborative about it because, we all need to know, if all of a sudden that essentially means that we need to double our, double our servers capacity at peak times when we release a new show, then we need to know about that.

[00:39:44] That will be useful. because, currently, Spotify of course doesn't do any of that. tell us Spotify, tell us all of your information.

[00:39:51] Now, we talked about Spotify pod sites and chartable last week. I just want to point out Brian Barletta did a brilliant review of it on [00:40:00] sounds profitable. I love the line from it. It's a bit like grading your own homework. Isn't it. Third party measurement. basically they will provide you with the analytics on your own data from the company itself.

[00:40:15] Yeah. So I don't think that Brian necessarily made, friends in high places with his points, but he is basically saying, look, you can't give people third party measurement by yourself. You do actually need a third party in there. and he says, it'll be a hard case to make, to continue using pod sites.

[00:40:35] When your actions in aggregate benefit at all, it's most beneficial to Spotify and their direct clients. he thinks we should take collaborative action. He thinks. Third party measurement is really important for the health of the industry. And he points out that, if you're buying ads using Google, then you end up, using a Google tool to buy ads from the Google display network.

[00:40:59] And you [00:41:00] get all of the data from Google as to whether or not it worked or not. That doesn't seem to be the world's most. safest way to, get some independent measurement out there. You also of course, have to look at Facebook who only a few years ago were found guilty of essentially making lots of stuff up about the videos, video advertising that they had on the system at the time and various other things.

[00:41:23] so third party measurement really has its place. And I completely agree with Brian that it is an important thing for the podcast industry. And actually we don't have any pod sites is owned by authentic who go out and sell advertising. Triton digital is owned by iHeart radio who owned a few things in terms of podcasting.

[00:41:41] So we don't actually have any, well-known third party measurement tools now. And that's, I think it.

[00:41:48] now, James, how's your Snoop doggy dog album collection coming along.

[00:41:54] Oh, it's a non-existent Sam, but thank you for asking.

[00:41:59] So you didn't [00:42:00] buy the new album back on death row or B O D R. Then I take it. You're not one of his fans. He didn't get an NFT and pay Snoop for his album.

[00:42:10] I didn't, no. that would not necessarily be me. I'm more art of noise and weird 1980s music personally.

[00:42:16] The only reason I mentioned it because it was quite fascinating after his appearance on Superbowl. he basically sold his album, and received over $44 million worth of NFT stash boxes. They called for the album. Now that in itself is not that interesting, but what it was, Snoop's album would have had to have been played more than 11 billion times on Spotify for him to earn anywhere near the same amount of money.

[00:42:45] And he did that. He and his $44 million in just five days. And it just made me, begin to think, is this the start of, creators connecting directly with their super fans and [00:43:00] showing that the value for value model cause that's really what Snoop was doing. actually works. And what would this mean if podcast is followed.

[00:43:07] Yeah, it's certainly interesting. It's always interesting seeing musicians doing different ways of selling their content. Radiohead of course did a very famous thing a while back where they were basically saying pay as much as you think it's worth. and, which is essentially value for value all over again.

[00:43:25] and that was really successful or really not successful depending on who you talk to there. But I think. it's all fine. but NFT is, to me, just a little bit of Hocus Pocus.

[00:43:37] I'm not really a believer in them. I think that it's just a bit of nonsense, to be honest,

[00:43:43] I know that you're, really into

[00:43:45] No, I'm not I'm with you, James. Moxie wrote a brilliant report over Christmas, highlighting the emperor's new clothes. the ability to change the actual image of the NFT. Cause it, was a URL outside of the blockchain, to anything you?

[00:43:58] want. So [00:44:00] now I'm with you on that, but. Could have been interesting here is that they could have made these NFTs with an IP license within them.

[00:44:08] So for example, Bowie bonds that came out many years ago, people could buy them and they had future royalty rights to his music. And if Snoop had made the NFT with an IP value, so 0.0 0 0, 0 1% of the album sales from this new album,

[00:44:26] and you own it because you've got proof with the NFT on the blockchain, then it becomes a tradable item, just buying the NFT cause you get a pretty picture and because you bought the album, I just don't think has the value, but it could have gone to the next stage.

[00:44:41] And I think that's where it will go, where people will release their content and they will release the, some of the IP value as a percentage of that content. And it will be proof within the NFT. That's where I think it should go.

[00:44:57] let's be interesting watching. I, for one will continue [00:45:00] buying compact discs.

[00:45:01] have you been in a green room recently? Just thought I'd mentioned that the other thing that Spotify hasn't got going yet?

[00:45:06] oh, yeah,

[00:45:07] no, no. I don't think anyone's been there yet.

[00:45:09] Castos integrates with Stripe

[00:45:09] Moving on. cast us, we interviewed Craig a couple of weeks back. it seems they've partnered with Stripe to allow all of their customers to accept payments directly from listeners.

[00:45:19] so yeah, they're using the castoffs automations engine to do this and it adds new paying customers as private podcast subscribers. It's a good step forward. Isn't it? James?

[00:45:29] yeah, that's a pretty neat idea and very easy to code into Stripe. take it from somebody who has, but also very good in terms of, in terms of, castoffs, enabling that Stripe is really interesting in that it's probably one of the only ways that you can charge for something in virtually any country across the world.

[00:45:47] but also on the other side, get paid from virtually any country in the world. So it's a pretty good system for that sort of thing, as long, of course, as your behaving within the rules and regulations of [00:46:00] how Stripe works. So a nice to see castoffs, diving in and doing.

[00:46:04] Yeah, My only concern is that, you get the 3% transaction fee. but other than that, it sounds good. It, they give a really simple how it works breakdown. So you create your Stripe account, you create a product in Stripe and set the price that you'd like the customers to pay for access to your private podcast.

[00:46:21] You drop the product checkout link on your website. And this is what I thought was interesting. They using the funding tack of your RSS feed, and that's where it shows up in your podcasting.

[00:46:34] Yeah, that's a clever idea because I'm sure that a quite a few people could end up doing that. Putting a. Stripe link because you can put these product links in various places. it's a really neat, that's really neat way of using Stripe. I think we used a while back, we used a tip jar for, that you can do versus using a Stripe as well.

[00:46:55] And that seems to work quite nicely. And you're absolutely right. There is a fee and the [00:47:00] fee goes to Stripe and it's a 2.9% of everything that you sell. Plus a, I think, here it's a 39 cent fee. it's no good for sending tiny amounts, but once you're over a dollar or so then actually, it's, it ends up, you do end up seeing, a good amount of your cash and it comes through within three days.

[00:47:18] So it's a pretty good service.

[00:47:21] Now talking about tiny amounts. Of course there's still Satoshis around. And fountain have announced that a very generously Oscar at fountain are going to give every new user who plays a podcast. A welcome gift of 1000 SATs. The offer ends on the 1st of March, but that's an interesting way to get people to understand how to use Satoshi's.

[00:47:41] It's a really interesting way. And so if you are listening to this right now, and you're thinking I have never used this, boosting thing, and I keep on hearing Sam and James Witter on about it, and I should really understand how it works. Download the fountain app. Now you'll find it in either the apple app store or the [00:48:00] Google play store, download the fountain app now and, open a podcast wallet.

[00:48:05] You'll be given a thousand sets by fountain within 24 hours or 48 hours or so. and, that is all good. And as you're given those sets, you will begin to understand how the whole thing works and then give us the thousand sets. Please press that boost button, and send. And send them to us. That would be awfully kind of you, but seriously, it's, well-worth a play and I heard, Todd Cochran and Rob Greenlee have turned on, value for value on their podcast a couple of weeks ago.

[00:48:33] It's very clear that Todd has yet to play with it properly. And yet it's to understand how to, boost a podcast. And this is a really good way of having a play and seeing how the whole thing works. So I'm good on your Oscar for sorting that out. That's a very smart thing.

[00:48:50] Libsyn Studio (Beta)

[00:48:50] Talking of, Rob Greenlee, Libsyn has launched lips in studio beta an all in one free platform for new and casual creators to [00:49:00] plan, launch and distribute their podcasts. Is this the anchor competitor?

[00:49:04] this was very strange news when they ended up launching it. What would you do if you had been for the last five, 10 years, you had been saying, don't go with free podcast hosts because they all fall apart and, you're the product, not your podcast and all this kind of stuff.

[00:49:23] and setting Libsyn up as a premium podcast, host, why all of a sudden, would you launch something under the lips in name, which is a free podcast host? I just found out a really bizarre thing to do. good on them. It means that they can sell, I, I did a show yesterday on Libsyn studio, and it seems to be fine.

[00:49:45] And it's got an ad in there, in the middle and it's got a little post-roll at the end saying produced by Libsyn studio and it all sounds very good. It's a very easy system to record a podcast into. But why [00:50:00] would you do that? If you're a paid podcast host under the name Libsyn

[00:50:04] what you, James often report that the number. Podcast, moving to anchor is significant. And often it's coming from Libsyn

[00:50:13] moving to anchor and I wonder whether this is a bit like crack cocaine marketing, give it away for free hook, come in and then upsell them to the full enterprise Libsyn or a pro version of Libsyn.

[00:50:26] So maybe they've sat down and said, look, we can't compete at the bottom end, but we're losing out on this new growth. So let's stick something out there. That's free. Slightly does the job. Doesn't do everything. So we'll hook come in. And then once they're in the camp, they'll probably then upgrade to the next version and bingo, we've got our,

[00:50:45] Yeah, I can see that. and I can see there being a benefit for the Libsyn holding company to own a free podcast host. I think it's just highly confusing to call it lip sin. I mean lives in a [00:51:00] currently sponsoring pod news. There's an ad on the top of Libsyn saying, get a month's worth of podcast hosting for free by using this code.

[00:51:08] and it's a code that you can go and use. But I can get free podcast hosting through Libsyn through this new Libsyn studio thing is just to me, it's just really confusing. if it were me, what I would have done, not that, proud will care, but if it were me, what I would have done is I would have launched a new brand and that brand may be on a green or Brad or whatever it is, but that's the El cheapo, like an airline, launch, if you're Quantis, you also have, a different, a different airline, which is called Jetstar and Jetstar is a.

[00:51:43] not very good airline, but it does the trick, but it's owned by Quantas. And if you want to upgrade to a lovely experience in a lounge and everything else, then you go with the Quantis thing. I think from my point of view, good on them for having a free [00:52:00] podcast host, which will be funded by advertising.

[00:52:02] they own advertise cast. It's a great, clever way to keep everything in house. I just wouldn't have called it Libsyn. I'd have called it something else. and I think that's, my, my concern is just from a branding point of view, trying to explain to people the difference between Libsyn and Libsyn studio.

[00:52:19] it's going to be really hard. but I'm sure that they've thought of it and I'm sure that they've, can't come up with a good plan.

[00:52:25] Is this also just a hat tip from them to say that the value of podcast hosting is diminishing. It's becoming a commodity. Spotify give it away. is it something that, companies are going to say, look, hosting is free, but here's all of our other premium services around hosting.

[00:52:43] Yeah. and that may well be, absolutely right. that certainly captivates model, that's certainly the model of, of megaphone and of other, larger podcast hosts. I think, the additional stuff that you have in there makes your, company, the company that somebody wants to [00:53:00] stay with.

[00:53:00] so I think, yeah, I think that's, I think that makes perfect sense. I just think I would not have called it Libsyn studio. I would have called it a, they had a brand called orcs pass, which was not a particularly good brand, and I probably wouldn't have called it that, but I'd have called it something similar, but your podcast ends up being hosted.

[00:53:20] On Libsyn. it's a proper Libsyn hosted podcast. It's just been assembled by the lifts in studio, system. and it has an ad in the middle of it. But with that exception, it's, it's a proper Libsyn show. It's hosted on the same infrastructure. I wouldn't, I, I possibly wouldn't have done it that way, great plan.

[00:53:39] I am also very much enjoying watching Libsyn in employees who have for the last five years been saying free podcast hosts are all rubbish. Don't go anywhere near one. Now fronting up this new free podcast host. There's something that I find relatively amusing about it, which again, wouldn't have been a [00:54:00] problem if they had launched it, not called it Libsyn.

[00:54:03] So anyway,

[00:54:05] maybe we'll get Rob Greenlee on next week and ask him to tell us all about

[00:54:08] Oh, that wouldn't be fair because Rob's a nice man. It's not Rob's fault.

[00:54:13] all about it.

[00:54:14] I'm sure he could. I'm sure he could, but now I'm looking forward to seeing I'm looking forward to seeing all my friends at Libsyn podcast movement and, and I'm sure that, it will be a good, it'll be a good thing.

[00:54:25] Okay. They also announced today that Libsyn's advertise cars is to buy par what is power James?

[00:54:32] So par is a, is an ad company, sells advertising in podcasts. It's got about 120, shows in there. run by two people called Rick Salaam, who I've known for a while. And who's very nice. And Anthony Savannah, they actually used to work for Himalaya a long time ago. and, yeah, so Libsyn have, have, jumped in and bought this particular company.

[00:54:52] It will be merging with advertised costs. So it's essentially, it's adding 120 premium shows to advertise casts, roster, which makes a [00:55:00] bunch of sense, terms, it costs in $5 million worth of cash. Plus $2.7 million worth of stock. over the next three years and a possible 6 million payout, if they hit targets and things like that.

[00:55:13] it wasn't a cheap purchase, but I think it's a good purchase. And, Rick, I know very well will be a very good asset to that particular company.

[00:55:21] Veritone Synthetic International Voiceovers

[00:55:21] So moving on', I helped media signed with a very tone to use synthetic voices to translate shows into different languages, which is quite cool. now you and Brian

[00:55:31] Use the third party product to do something similar to.

[00:55:34] We use this same product that they're using. So it's great to see them using it. It's Marvel, AI, run by Veritone and yeah. So if you go to the sound's profitable website, the Spanish sounds profitable website, which is a spaniel dot sounds, profitable.com. then you can actually click the button that says, listen and listen to, a automatic, synthesized version of Bryan, reading a article out [00:56:00] in Spanish, and Brian speaks no Spanish.

[00:56:02] So it's a really clever system and great to see iHeart using that as one way of, translating their shows into. Different languages. There may sound a little bit robotic, but certainly it's better than having no content there at all. So that's, one interesting way of doing it. The other interesting way of doing it is a jewel Lipa, who has released her podcast in lots of different countries and things she is using, actors, instead.

[00:56:29] And so you hear a very sort of a BBC, thing of, somebody talking in a foreign language and then it's faded down and you hear, somebody else over that over the top in your language explaining what it is that they're actually saying. So that's, certainly another way of doing it.

[00:56:43] It's probably the better way of doing it, but of course it's far less scalable.

[00:56:46] Yeah, but I think talking to Tina, he was saying that he just didn't think that AI and voice translation was ready for it yet, it's a need the

[00:56:55] I would, yeah. I w I would agree with him there and I think, it's. it's [00:57:00] nice that you can do it, but I'm not necessarily sure that I would listen to an entire podcast made with an artificial voice. Having said that there are quite a lot of those available now anyway.

[00:57:10] it could well be that I've been doing that anyway. in fact, there's a radio DJ somewhere in the U S who has trained, a similar tool to, do his voice so that he can do more shows, which I find hilarious. So he already does a number of shows on a number of different stations.

[00:57:29] He's trained that particular voice to be the DJ, so that he, his voice can actually be taught to do a bunch more shows on a bunch more stations, which I find weird. So maybe your next presenter on a river radio, might just be a, a computer.

[00:57:46] God, who would say a lot of herding cats around that's for certain? yes. Love them dearly. All of them now. social podcasting, podcast host OSHA. Is that how you say it?

[00:57:58] yeah,

[00:57:59] Alisha?

[00:57:59] [00:58:00] they're French.

[00:58:02] They are. Okay. So moving on podcasting Hurst, Asha has launched a complete social media management tool. I'm totally confused by what that would be.

[00:58:11] And it says it's the first in the world to do it connects to Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. what is this promotion tool? Is it just adding links so that you can push your podcast out?

[00:58:22] it's what it's basically doing is that it is automatically sending links out and players out to Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. So when you release a new episode than it will automatically send those out, but you can also shed tool clips. You can shed tool, video clips, you can put in, other tools in there as well.

[00:58:44] So it's a little bit more. Probably I'm not entirely sure it's the first in the world. I think Libsyn actually have quite a few tools to integrate with Twitter and with Facebook and other things. so I'm not sure that it's the first one, but nevertheless, it's quite a nice [00:59:00] trick that they can actually basically, stick a bunch of this stuff up and make it all available.

[00:59:06] So it's a clever, it comes back to what we were saying earlier. Our HSA is just another podcast host, but this is something that people will stay with them for, because this is something which is saving them, spending as I do $300 a year on a Zapier, just so that I can send out automated emails everyday or automated tweets every day.

[00:59:25] this is a good reason why somebody might want to stay with, our shirt. yeah, so good on them for doing that.

[00:59:31] Yeah, lately, which we, interviewed many months ago when we first started Parkland. they've been doing this for ages and they've integrated with Hootsuite. So you can just plan it out of your HootSweet, to do this. So now I don't think they are the first, but what's interesting is that our HSA also owned radio king, which is the platform I use for river radio.

[00:59:48] but what they don't do, like podcasts co in Manchester, they don't do any integration between the radio server backend and their podcast hosts. So one of the [01:00:00] things that.

[01:00:00] they should have done or could have done was do what we do with . So we feed our,

[01:00:07] Icecast feeds straight into who then turn it into a podcast, but.

[01:00:12] Alisha should have done that, that, that would be a no brainer to take my live radio feed from radio king, which they own converted it into a podcast and send that out me. So that would be a smart thing, but they

[01:00:25] if they're listening. Maybe they'll fix

[01:00:27] they don't fix anything. They don't fix anything. Both your customer support. Hello. How are you now?

[01:00:35] Queue BBC Sounds

[01:00:35] BBC radio music and podcasts app. BBC sounds. Now let's use a control your own play queue. Doesn't sound that exciting, James. but what is it.

[01:00:47] No, not really. It's it's basically BBC sounds have realized that play cues and ice, the play cue that you have on your Google podcasts or on your Spotify, where you can work out what you're going to play next after you've finished listening to [01:01:00] this thing that you're listening to right now.

[01:01:01] that's what BBC sounds is going to get. If you're using an iPhone, obviously if you're using an Android phone, then the BBC hates you. And so therefore you won't be getting that any time soon. it's a long running thing that the BBC do, with just ignoring Android users, which is bizarre, given that all Android users pay the same money as iPhone users, to, get their stuff into the BBC.

[01:01:21] yeah, so it's a very annoying thing. I noticed that the person who sent me the press release, about this new, play queue sends me the press release and then instantly sets is out of office, on, and goes off on holiday. tip a tip for PR people don't do that. That's not a clever plan. So anyway, the BBC of course does, other things to annoyed me.

[01:01:45] I think more than anything else, it blocks, it shows on Google podcasts. and then now brilliantly in a master stroke, removing some of their shows from the open podcast ecosystem and moving them into the BBC sound's app, for [01:02:00] the first 30 days. So if you want to listen to Friday night comedy, which is a topical news quiz about the week's news, then you'll only have to wait for a month before you can hear it on your favorite podcast app genius, BBC you've, you've just done another great thing.

[01:02:16] and, of course the spokesperson says that this gives license payers more value. don't really understand where the more value comes

[01:02:23] They are running ads like nobody's business to ads that they run. One is,

[01:02:28] you can get your shows on BBC sounds before you get them live broadcast. So I think that become a podcast first radio station, but that's another comment. But the other one that cracks me up is that they are now. actively targeting the value and the reason why the BBC is good value and it is good value because the Tory government here is trying to kill them.

[01:02:50] So they're basically putting out ads every day saying, this is the reason why the BMC shouldn't be taxed and the reason the BBC should exist. So it's quite

[01:02:59] [01:03:00] Yeah, and one of the reasons why the BBC shouldn't be taxes, it should be there for open, for an open ecosystem and it should be there for an open ecosystem across all, all platforms. So if the BBC wants to do that, then it should actually, talk the talk, as well as walking the walk, whatever the phrase is, it should actually do that.

[01:03:17] It should keep things open. It was the first major podcast, in the UK, in November of 2004 with the, in our time podcast, which is another podcast that they're shutting behind the BBC, app. And you'll only be able to hear new shows of that behind. The BBC sounds app now, if the BBC is trying to prove that it's a good member of the, of the UK, then, why not try being one instead of arrogantly, trying to bully people to use your dreadful podcast app that hasn't even got a play queue yet on Android.

[01:03:51] anyway, I, this is a soapbox that I'm on. I will get off it.

[01:03:55] That was the sound of James getting off it.

[01:03:57] Podmatch Pays

[01:03:57] Pod match now pays podcast hosts. When [01:04:00] they released new episodes, how does this work, James? And why would they be.

[01:04:04] So pod match is a tool which allows you as a podcaster to find guests for your podcast. and, it charges podcasters and charge his guests, to take part in this, if you're a podcast and then you can either pay $6 a month or you can pay $39 a month, which seems like a, quite an eye watering it an amount, to join pod match and to get in touch with a bunch of people that wanted to be on your show.

[01:04:31] And, and that are worthwhile interviewing. What they're now doing though, is that they have, that they are beginning to, pay you if you, use particular, interviewees in your, show. My guess is that they're doing that so that they have many more people who join, and many more people who take part.

[01:04:50] So if you're a guest, then you know that you're going to get a ton of interviews. And that will be a wonderful thing because they're being paid to take you as a guest, having said that [01:05:00] they're paying you up to $16, 50 per interview, $16, 50 doesn't sound like an awful lot of money, but nevertheless, it's something.

[01:05:09] And and yeah, that's what they're currently doing. it's an interesting business model. and so it will be quite fascinating to see how that pans out in the next two or three or four months.

[01:05:19] One way of getting customer acquisition, I suppose

[01:05:23] Yeah, exactly.

[01:05:24] Facebook, yes. I said that read word, or should I say Metta? I don't know anymore.

[01:05:28] Spreaker adds podcasts to Facebook

[01:05:28] Spreaker has worked with Metta to produce a new simplified way to add your podcast to Facebook. It uses a new API and currently podcasts on Facebook though, as we all know are only available in the us and on mobile.

[01:05:44] Yeah. So spree Cara finally got to Facebook to, just to, a nifty little API to get their podcast into Facebook. and that sounds like a good plan. Hey Facebook, why don't open it up to everybody else. That'd be nice. but still, good to [01:06:00] see a speaker, doing that. It's pretty cool.

[01:06:01] Also, are owned by iHeart radio out of the U S so they're a pretty big thing.

[01:06:07] talking of iHeart radio in Australia, the own Rover iHeart podcast network that's not to do with iHeart radio. Is it? it is, it's the same brand. so they own the brand, the iHeart radio brand in Australia. In fact, I've been listening. I've been commuting to school every day. I don't work at school, but my daughter obviously goes to school. So I've been going to school every single day in the car. The traffic where I'm currently staying is just ridiculous and half an hour in the morning, I've been enjoying the delights of the various radio stations on iHeartRadio.

[01:06:38] one of them is iHeart. Radio is Tik TOK channel, which is, she's really good, which we're all enjoying, but anyway, they've just released their year 2021 results. and, it's all good news. And, the company's called M H T E here there and everywhere.

[01:06:52] and, ARN, which is the bit of HTD that, runs the iHeart podcast network so that they plan to invest heavily in [01:07:00] podcasting, which is nice. And meanwhile, their big competitor SCA, is going to be investing in audio fiction inside its app, which is called listener without the, for some reason. so nice to see that growing nice also to see some work in Germany and a podcast as a new podcast ranking tool for advertisers, quite similar to Triton digital, if we'll use log file analysis and the existing IAB version 2.1 standard and prodigy over there has launched a dynamic ad server as well.

[01:07:32] I think this is the first dynamic ad server within the German. the podcast hosting, companies. so good to see that's rolling out over the next, couple of years.

[01:07:42] ah, finally, a new podcast by Googlers lost. There was this a bit like the LinkedIn, where I got excited that they'd launched the new podcast this one's even funnier. So it's a podcast, it's some podcast from somebody at Google startups, which is some department of Google. and it's talking about startups and it's the, [01:08:00] it looks. the most tedious thing that you've ever seen, but they sent out a press release. This is Google sending out a press release about a Google podcast that they have just launched.

[01:08:10] And they said on the bottom of the press release, They linked to the show on apple podcasts and they said it's available on apple, Spotify and all major podcast platforms. Now the first episode of this show looks out team culture. So just imagine the team culture at Google podcasts after even Google forgets that it exists.

[01:08:31] it's just genius. you couldn't make it up. How I loved is that podcast app

[01:08:35] bless him. moving on, movers and shakers a big congratulations to Janine, right? For starting a new position as the COO slash general manager at Wondery. wonder if James has moved over there yet,

[01:08:48] Yes. I'm wondering if James has moved over. James cater has moved over there yet. we've not actually been told that he's moved there yet, so

[01:08:55] but it's, job's been advertised,

[01:08:57] but it's jobs being advertised. So that's nice. lots of [01:09:00] stuff from the BBC, Emily Maitlis and John Sopel, two big BBC people. Emily May close.

[01:09:04] You may remember was the person who interviewed the very non sweaty prince Andrew, about being,

[01:09:09] you sweating now.

[01:09:10] I bet he's not cause he's reached agreement. hasn't he, so I'm sure everything's all fine. Anyway, they've both, joined global. they're going to front-end new podcast as well as do a show on Global's LBC.

[01:09:21] And I thought it was interesting that they put it that way round rather than we're doing a show on Global's LBC, which is a news talk station. they focus on the podcast first. So it was interesting seeing that will be produced by Dino softwares as well. Fan of the show. And, Louise mentioned who is also a BBC, ex BBC person.

[01:09:39] She is, she's actually Already been doing one podcast and she's about to do another with a, company, which is a company to do with, athletics and stuff like that. And it's called push your peak, which is good. and some sad news coming out of Singapore, Wayne Chung, who was the founder of pod Fest Asia, and it's just such a [01:10:00] genuinely nice guy.

[01:10:00] he, died earlier on this week. He was 44. He has a Memorial service being held this weekend and, you, and he share a bond. Do.

[01:10:11] Yeah, we became good friends through COVID because, obviously of the podcast first Asia, but we also our fellow Liverpool fans. And, I went on his, Liverpool podcast a few times. So Wayne, you will be missed, in the words of every Liverpool fan. You'll never walk alone.

[01:10:28] Now Boostgram corner comes back next week. Cause that's where the umbrella is, but we're really grateful for your boosts. So if you get any value from what we do here, talking through all of this stuff and the interviews and stuff, then please do boost us. And from next week, we'll also have other ways to contribute to the show.

[01:10:46] If you wish to do that. that's all good. We are looking forward to being at podcast movement evolutions as well as, aren't going to radio days, Europe. Rob Greenlee has just been announced there as a speaker and that's in Malmo in [01:11:00] Sweden or Malmo in Sweden in may. it's a as yet unannounced. I don't think we can talk about, but, I'm going to talk about it anyway, on Sunday, just before the main podcast, the main radio days, Europe, event on Sunday, there is a podcast summit, and lots of podcasts.

[01:11:17] People will be there. And that's why Rob is there. So that's going to be a really good and of course, where we'll be at the podcast show 2022. just after that, too. what's going on for you this week on Portland? then Sam, I attended podcast futures in London, so thanks Jared for organizing that. yeah, I'm head down talking to off com getting the final T's and C's and giving away blood samples and don't know what else I have to give away, but I've come a demanding. So six days till we turn on dab and my little crafty beer vessel on the water called the craft, he targets now in dry dock, James.

[01:11:55] So yeah, very exciting. That's going to be launched soon as well.

[01:11:59] very [01:12:00] good. That's very exciting. And just if in case you are not in the UK or Europe or Australia, DB is a way of broadcasting the radio, using, like an antenna and speakers and everything. It's just like the radio basically, but a little bit better and yes, you're going to be on all over, new brewery and Redding and a Basingstoke and Andover and even a little bit of slouch.

[01:12:24] so won't that be exciting? yeah, that would be fair. That'll be a, that'll be a thrill. I look forward to lots of pictures of your car radio tuning into your radio station in various,

[01:12:34] Tom Webster's dogs.

[01:12:36] In various things. my week is interesting. the reason why I may sound as if I speed it up slightly towards the end is that, in 10 minutes I will be speaking at a conference in Belgium about the future of podcasting.

[01:12:48] and I suddenly realized I need to go and, get my pod news shirt on and go and sit somewhere proper. so I'll go and do that. But, yeah, I've been speaking at the EBU and various other things as well. so [01:13:00] I've been enjoying doing that and enjoying planning some of the things that I'll be doing at podcast, movement evolutions as well in, LA quantitative only council about flight twice.

[01:13:10] So I'm looking forward to finally getting out there on whatever flights they have left.

[01:13:16] Any who, that's it for this week. please follow port land in your podcast app and on Twitter at Portland news, you can also find previous shows on the web at www dot potluck news. And Mark Watson on Twitter says, you can't say it anymore. Get it wherever you get your podcasts. He's not happy with people saying that at the end of podcasts, he says it likens it to the phrase, butter adverts that used to say, get it in a corner shop or wherever you get your butter.

[01:13:44] He says, stop it. Now don't say to anymore.

[01:13:49] when I used to always say, get it in your favorite podcast app or in Spotify, which used to be a joke, but it's increasingly not really. Anyway, if you want daily news, you should get pod news to the newsletters [01:14:00] [email protected]. The podcast can be found in your podcast app and all the stories that we've discussed on pod lands today are in the show notes.

[01:14:06] We use chapters and transcripts too.

[01:14:07] music is from ignite jingles and we're hosted and sponsored by a good friends. Buzzsprout.

[01:14:12] Keep listening.