Welcome to Podland. Podland sponsored by bud sprouts. The easiest way to host, promote and track your Podcast [email protected]. It's Thursday, may the 13th, 2021. I'm James Cridland, the editor of pod news.net here in Australia.
And I'm Sam Sethi. The editor of Sam Talks Technology here in the UK.
And I'm Brandon from pod TV later, I'll be talking about a brand new streaming service for Podcast videos.
He will pod lands a weekly podcast where Sam and I delve deeper into the week's podcasting news.
Now this week's Podcast news Spotify has got its checkbook out, but let's start with some big numbers from the U S. Now, James, the first thing you've been writing about is the IAB is set to put in a report that the U S Podcast ad revenues grew from 842 million in 2020, but it's up 19%
So the IAB released a big report cause they do every single year around the upfronts, which is there a way of getting in front of advertisers and things. And they say two exciting things. Firstly that's Podcast ad revenue in the U S grew 19% year on year up to 842 million. It was about 700 and something last year, but also it's projected to grow very quickly. So by 2023, they say $2.1 billion. Is going to be how much us Podcast and revenues are worth, which is quite a lot of money which is nice.
And it was also interesting, the data that they have, which has put together for them by price Waterhouse, Coopers was talking about dynamically inserted ads, which. last time was half of all of the revenue. This time is two thirds of all of the revenue. And one of the reasons for that I think is because particularly if you've got a very uncertain market, if you don't know whether or not, shops are going to be open, for example, because is there going to be a lockdown or not? Who knows?
I think like dynamic ad insertion makes that much, much simpler because you can just add ads into a show or delete them whenever you need to. that's a smart thing. It's a free report. It's quite an interesting report actually. And it's on the IAB website. You can get hold of it just by registering which is pretty good.
I do wonder though, have they taken into account. Subscriptions or are they just written this from the point of view that they're an advertising Bureau? So they're going to promote advertising rather than is there going to be a downside to advertising because I tell you now if I'm paying for some Podcast and they Wacker an ad in the middle of my paid Podcast, I'm counseling them.
you're right. all of these numbers here are only about advertising Sony about spot ads the Ron, any numbers in here for subscriptions, there aren't any numbers here for, live shows and merch sales So Podcast already bigger. Then $842 million in the U S and we'll certainly see more of that. And podcasting is already bigger than $1 billion because there are another 179 countries other than the U S in the world. And they're making money out of podcasting as well.
it's a very us report, but nevertheless, it does focus very much on the ad revenue here. this was all part of the IBS upfronts, which is something that a U S television used to do. They would show you new TV shows before the public got to see them so that you, as an advertiser might want to advertise in them. so you got to see those shows upfront, if you like. and they're doing this for podcasts as well.
So you end up with a bunch of people standing on stage playing clips from podcasts and saying how wonderful it would be if you were to advertise in it. which is one way of doing it. But what I really liked, Brian Barletta and Evo Terra doing is they launched last week. Something called up next. And that is a upfront, but instead of you going to New York or taking part in a virtual zoom meeting, it's an upfront, but on a podcast as well.
And I just thought that promoting podcasts on a podcast is the sign of a mature and confident industry. And I think it's a good thing. So if you haven't seen that yet, it's at sounds profitable.com. There's a big sign for up next, and it's certainly worthwhile to have a listen to some of the new shows which are coming up.
Excellent. Now Spotify can not stay out of the news. Spotify they've purchased the armchair expert, a Podcast from tax shepherd, not heard the armchair expert. James, is this one of your, Regular listens.
It's not in my regular listens, but it's a big show. Dax Shepard is a big Hollywood actor. He's married to Kristen bell. And he does this show with Monica Patman. and it's a long form interview. The New York times wrote this glossy long piece on the on the Podcast at the end of 2019.
And they compared it favorably to fresh air, which is a big interview radio show in the U S and it's to a point it's kind of Joe Rogan, but for people who have brains and that will be an exclusive on Spotify from July the first it's a content deal for two years. So they're not buying the entire show. They're just buying the. distribution rights for it. but it'll be interesting seeing that. I did ask the PR team who told me how much was it? Can you give us something to vague guests?
Is it about the same amount as Joe Rogan, which was a hundred million dollars? And I got the response back that Spotify doesn't comment on the specifics of the deal. So who knows how much he's going to, but maybe it's a Spotify, just again, jumping into a bit more exclusive shows trying to bring a number of more intelligent audience members along with them. Now that they've got all of the Joe Rogan fans in there as well.
the question with exclusives, the Obama's had it for a while and then it went away from being an exclusive. Is the exclusive going to be enough for somebody to make that decision? I'll go and pay my 1499 to Spotify. Do you think?
I think there's two things. I think firstly, the exclusive shows that Spotify have are exclusive to the Spotify platform, but not exclusive to Spotify premium users. So you can get listening to them if you're just listening for free on Spotify. which is one good sort of side of it. And I think on the other side, some of what the Obamas have been doing has been windowed. So it was exclusive on Spotify for a bit and then opened up to other people.
And there are various rumors about whether or not that was always planned or whether or not that was a rather desperate jump prior to the election who knows what the plan is there. but there are other shows which are very much exclusive to the Spotify platform. So Joe Rogan, obviously is, but you've also got, many others including the renegades podcasts with with Obama and with Springsteen's. So I think it's one of those acquisition. deals in terms of audience.
And certainly, we saw a couple of weeks ago in some of the releases from Spotify that they were saying that Joe Rogan has actually worked really well for them. higher than expectations in terms of getting new listeners into the Spotify platform and for podcasts. And if more users are using Spotify for podcasts and therefore finding more podcasts out of it, then that's good news for all of us.
it's the opposite strategy to the music industry though, because the less I'm mistaken, I don't find that you can get music exclusive to one platform or another these days, but we seem to be doing this with
podcasting. they did do a few pieces of exclusive music content in the past Apple have, and Spotify have, but I think both of them have shied away from doing that because people just get a little bit upset. whereas I suppose podcasting is a little bit closer to TV in this particular model and you expect there to be a Netflix exclusive or an exclusive on, I player or Hulu. and you don't necessarily expect every single service to have the same shows on it.
so I think from that point of view, yet it's different to music, but it's probably not different to the way that TV works.
Now you mentioned Netflix and it seems they might be working on a portal called N plus. Yes. Could include
podcasts. Yes, it could. I'm not quite sure what that means. Yes. I'm not quite sure what that means. I suspect reading all of the guff about it, it seems to be some sort of exclusive community building thing that Netflix are making, which has inside it, additional behind the scenes stuff. And that might include podcasts. It might include a clubhouse alike. everything includes a clubhouse alike these days. So why wouldn't it? And it might include something else in there as well.
so I think Netflix are busy working on that, but my suspicion is it's just going to be a complement podcasts to some of the shows that they already have.
Okay. Now you mentioned the infamous clubhouse. you must be a happy man. Now that it's available on
Android. I'm not because I don't live in the U S it's available on Android in the U S it's not for the likes of us. It's for the likes of us. Hey,
Thanks.
clubhouse is all very well, but if I really want to use clubhouse, then I get onto the iPod touch and I use it from there. So I'm okay with it. I am the recording, a podcast. Someone has asked me in to record a podcast on Twitter spaces in the next couple of weeks, which is an interesting thing, I said to him, so were recording on zoom or on Riverside or clean feed. And he said, no, we're going to record on Twitter spaces. Okay. So maybe it's a thing.
it is becoming a thing because tech meme the ride home this week to had an interview with Christmas, Cedar who famous, created the hashtag in Twitter. Great. Listen, actually, Chris talking about some of the new features coming out to Twitter, super follow subscriptions, but they record that whole thing straight into Twitter spaces. Now what it sounds like they've done is they've connected a road Podcast or straight to it, and then they just shoot him the record function
straight out of it. Okay. if it works that way, I know that my Android phone very happily connects to USB microphones. So if it works that way, then that would be great. I'd love to do that. so it'll be interesting seeing whether people are using it, as I've said in in many previous episodes, I think that clubhouse doesn't have long to last and, very exciting that they're now available on Android in the U S only.
but we'll wait and see what happens there in terms of whether or not they rolled it out quickly enough to other countries.
Now I'm very easily pleased as a techie and Spotify has added something that I've been asking for ages, which is adding sharing of timestamps. So you can share a podcast to a particular point in the podcast. And I know you didn't get that excited about it, but I did.
So you can now share when you're using Spotify on your phone, you can now share a timestamp so you can share or listen to this interesting interview in the middle of this show and you can share a link. And I think, I'm looking at that going, Okay, fine. Fair enough. Actually, there is something which as a techie is interesting, the way that they're doing it is they're doing it.
Astonishingly as a standard because there is a standard and I believe it's called media fragment, but there's a standard where you add an additional query string at the end of the URL. So when you're sharing a show, it's obviously sharing a URL under the hood. the query string is T equals and then the number of seconds that you want to start from in the audio. so I did a quick share to will pages interview on Podland last week. And that was T equals five one three, cause it was 513 seconds in.
And it turns out that Spotify accepts a T attribute now to allow you to share a timestamp, but so does pocket casts. So does pod friend, so does YouTube sodas over cost actually, although it's not particularly obvious from when you share stuffing overcast, but actually everybody accepts T equals and then a number of seconds in the URL.
So it looks as if it's a de facto standard that everybody apart from Apple and Google, obviously Have already stuck into their Podcast players, which is really nice. So it'd be interesting to find out how many more Podcast players are actually using that T equals thing at the end of a share URL so that you can actually share that timestamp across all manner of different Podcast players.
when I was talking to Adam Curry and Dave Jones, I was trying to explain what I wanted as a user. Maybe it didn't come across very well, but this is exactly it, because I think discoverability within a Podcast is great. And if I'm a listener I'm suddenly going, that's the interview I want to share with my community or network or my friends. I can now do it. I don't have to give them the whole Podcast and say, Oh it's somewhere about 20 minutes in.
if you go, and it's great, if we can evolve it and develop it so that, say Buzzsprout, if they were going to allow you to put a link next to the chapter. So you don't have to put the T equals, but you just have it. an icon next to the chapter. Marker. That would be awesome as well. So you could just share a chapter out and then there'd be another use for chapters, Robin. It's just nice to jump through a
Podcast. no, I agree. And I think that would probably need to be built into apps as well, obviously, but I think, the more of that, that we've got the better and I love the fact that there is a kind of standard there. And I love also the fact that quite a lot of apps out there support timestamps within show notes as well. So Spotify certainly does. there's a bunch of other ones that also do so if you write a timestamp and rather annoyingly it's done in the other way.
So you write a a minute code on seconds. but when you write, it starts at eight minutes and 22 seconds in if you were to write that out in a. Episode notes, then you'll notice that Spotify makes that clickable. So even though the Spotify client doesn't support chapters, it does support timestamps in episode notes. So again, a lot of this comes back to my broken record stuff.
Obvious, only we had a best practices group within podcasting that was actually helping app developers and Podcast hosts with these sorts of standards. Wouldn't that be a fantastic place to be. and again wouldn't it be lovely if that was to happen? we'll see, but a bunch of interesting kind of unofficial standards around timestamps in shows, which is really good.
Now we were talking about show nights. There has Apple fixed the HTML problem yet. James
has Apple fix the HTML problem. no, not so far as I'm aware and I don't use them price. So let's be fair to Apple. Even though I've been asking them questions this week about a different story. and I have been told in quite stern words that it would not be advisable if I was to run a story about this which is interesting. they would caution against me writing a story about this particular issue. which is red rag to a bull. So going to be carrying on that particular story.
But anyway, so there's a couple of things going on with Apple. Firstly, they are fixing their crawler. So instead of visiting every three or four hours, which it was doing, and so therefore episodes of Podland were very late. Episodes of pod news were very late. it now appears to be at least visiting every 20 minutes, if not more My suspicion is that what is actually going on is that they've got two different crawlers going on two different pieces of two different platforms.
One of those crawlers is still the old fashioned Apple crawler, which is a bit rubbish and the new crawler is running much faster. and I think if I'm correct on that, then the new crawler appears to be dealing with episode notes slightly differently than the old crawler does, but it's at the moment, it's a bit of potluck as to which crawler you have visiting your podcasts. So that means that weird things happen to your episode notes. And sometimes.
The links will show and sometimes the links won't and maybe the links show on the new Apple Podcast, 14.6, which is the one coming out in a couple of weeks time, or maybe it won't and it's all a bit complicated and I'm not quite sure what's going on.
if there's one thing that I've learned is that reporting on beater software, which the current iOS 14.6 app is if you're reporting on beta software, then you don't actually know whether or not the behavior that you're seeing from the beta software is going to be the Pavier that everybody else sees when it actually goes live. so I'm not writing too much about that yet, but it does look as if Apple is very slowly, beginning to fix many of the problems they've not communicated at all.
Because, why would they? but it does look as if they are finally beginning to fix some of the issues of their quite awful rollout at the end of last month.
So can we expect in the 14.6 released
I think more things will be fixed the will be a way for you, for example, to actually Mark all Podcast, as listened to. So if you join a Podcast, which has a lot of different episodes in it, then finally you'll be able to say Mark, as played, which you haven't been able to on this particular version. So I'm sure they are fixing some things. The question is how much they're fixing in the next version of the app.
And also frankly, how much is up to their crawlers and how much is up to their Podcast app. What we do know is that certainly for shows, which are in the Apple podcast directory, you are now seeing the information that the crawlers are getting, not the information being grabbed by each individual phone, which is actually a good thing. But, again we really don't quite know what the plan is for the new version of iOS 14.6 which is due to come out in the next couple of weeks.
Is that the one that will finally turn on subscriptions then
as I understand, That's the one that will turn on subscriptions. So there's a piece of text when you log into Apple podcasts connect, if you can. and that says on it, something about people using beta versions of software may be able to subscribe to your show using the paid subscription service. So my guess is that means that you will need the 14.6 app in order for you to subscribe, to paid shows in Apple podcasts.
But, as I say, it's only a guess and as ever Apple is treating us like mushrooms, keeping us in the dark and feeding us.
it seems that people are starting to get ready for that subscription launch but strangely James, he noted that it was wondering, which is owned by Amazon. That was going to be
doing it. Yes. I wonder if he's doing it They are bringing Wondery plus two Apple podcasts subscriptions. Which is exciting. They've run their own app for awhile now and their own app. weirdly for a time, you could subscribe to wonder repless here in Australia, but you couldn't download the app for some reason. Don't really understand why that was. Anyway.
They fixed all of that that offers ad-free podcasts and early access and exclusive shows and similar to luminary, they are basically offering exactly that, but in Apple podcasts subscriptions as well. I wonder whether or not they'll get rid of the one, three plus app, an app is expensive, although it does give you a bit of control. I guess part of that is up to whether or not the Apple podcasts app will ever appear on Android, which is a question isn't it?
Don't hold your breath.
I think it will maybe even this month,
Okay. I'll bet you an IPA when you come over or something. extravagant like that.
Yes. That's extravagant. Thank you. But I still have to be outside. I'm IPA is of type of beer in case you wondered dear listener.
if you can get into our Satoshis and get them out, we might be able to pay for it. Yes.
Yes, indeed.
Now CNN also are creating a channel. what's that
all about? Yes. So CNN, which is of course a TV channel. They're creating your channel in Apple podcasts. This isn't going to get confusing at all. Is it where be able to subscribe to CNN shows and get those both ad free and also be able to get additional stuff in there as well. They've just launched a brand new show, which is called the handoff, and it'll be an exclusive Apple podcasts paid subscription, and it's basically Don lemon.
And. Chris Cuomo who do their little jokey handoff in between their shows. I think Chris Cuomo's on first. and it's essentially that but longer. so that's some nice additional content, which they're sticking in there. so again, it'll be interesting seeing what else CNN actually offer in their paid for thing. And the one thing that does strike me is Spotify missed a trick here because both of these are channels and a channel is basically a group of podcasts.
if you subscribe to Wondery plus you get all of the Wondery podcasts. If you subscribe to the CNN channel, you can get all of the CNN shows. And that's lovely and that's something that Spotify don't have. So you can't sell, if you are a publisher and maybe you've got three or four podcasts, you can't sell those all in one, go in Spotify. You can only sell them one by one. So that's a big difference between the Apple paid subscription model and the Spotify paid subscription model.
and I wonder whether Spotify is going to add that or whether the concept of a channel is just going to be something that Apple really focuses on.
I can imagine that they will do it. if they see the apples making a good deal of money from it and advertisers are buying into it, then I can't imagine Spotify. Won't my question. going back to a slightly technical question is will those channels, given that they're grouped Podcast, will they be open AML that I could add? Export out
on share. No. So none of the Apple podcasts subscription stuff is going to be available in any other podcast player other than Apple podcasts. and that again is a big difference between Apple and Spotify, Spotify. When you subscribe to a page show, then yes, it will appear in your Spotify app. But Spotify have been bright enough to realize that actually some people really like PocketCasts or really like overcast or any of these other services.
And so they will give you, they won't give you an OPM feed, but they will give you an RSS feed, which is a unique RSS feed to you. And you will be able to plug that into whatever podcast app you wants to listen to that paid show in. so again, it's Spotify, I think Spotify being the good guy there versus Apple being their usual, closed platform, self.
Okay. I'll say I actually quite liked Don lemon and Chris Cromer, I wonder where the Trevor Noah from the daily show, he has a similar segments where guests, before they go live, I can imagine all, look, I produce a game. There's a free piece of content. Let's ship that out, right?
Oh no, I'm sure. I'm sure that will be part of it. from what I understand about CNN and from companies like it is that they are incredibly cautious around efficiencies. And if there's something which is actually going on during something which is prerecorded then I'm sure that people are sitting there going, we could be selling this and whatnot.
Now, another story we talked about last week was that Buzzsprout, it seems all listening to our podcast. Hello chops. Lovely to hear from you. they heard what I said the other week about the Cumbre integration, which was, I couldn't see my existing CAMBA worker could only see new work and that's the same problem actually in headliner as well.
Headliner have got an integration with Canva, but it's not very useful because it asks you to create a new piece of artwork in CAMBA rather than use your existing artwork. seams Alban's done as a favor once he done Jane.
Yes. Alburn has done us a big favor. He has not just said actually, you can do it. Sam Sethi, you idiot, but he's also a post-it, but he's also posted a video on Twitter of how to find your existing canvas artwork. I'm sure that we will remember to put that into the show notes, who knows? and Kevin Finn from Buzzsprout has also added it's a little bit hidden, but what they're also trying to do is to make it work both ways soon as well.
So if you're making stuff through the integration with Buzzsprout, that will be available on your standard Canva account. In the future as well. And so there's a bit of that kind of stuff going on. so there we are. it turns out that you can do that and that's good, although a little bit hidden. So nobody's to blame that's all. All right. we'll
be doing it straight after this show as person checking them
out. two things about Buzzsprout who our proud sponsor in April, they hit 100,000 podcasts, which is nice. So congratulations to them and their buzz cast podcast this week is Worth a listen, it's done in the style of how I built this with guy Raz which is at least it's not in the style of where in the world with diarize. That would be a very different sounding Podcast.
But anyway but sprouts co-founders Tom and Kevin are talking about how the company was first started the important decisions that shapes the culture at Buzzsprout, why the future's bright for podcasting as well. I thought this was because Buzzsprout was 15 years old this month but on having a look at Wikipedia, But sprout was launched on the 1st of January, 2008, which seems suspicious already. but that clearly isn't 15 years ago, so who knows quite what's going on there.
but I know that it is a big anniversary for. But sprout so many congratulations to them. And it's a good listen to their buzz cast podcast this week.
I interviewed Tom last year, actually for Sam Talks Technology I think I'm right, James. They started a separate company and they still have a separate company. Boss. Sprout is part of another company. And I think it's that other company that started 15 years ago in there for, that's
not quite as old could be it. And that's higher pixels is there's the other company who do all kinds of other interesting things as well, which has nothing to do with podcasting. yes, anyway, many congratulations to them.
I also noticed by the way, on their global stats this month, that Apple podcasts has eked above their figures for Spotify, which is an interesting, yes, it used to be that Spotify was number one for the last couple of months, but Apple podcasts appears to have popped its head up slightly above Spotify, which is interesting to see.
Now before we get onto other stories. wouldn't it be better if we all moved to website or even better? If we all moved to Potter ping.cloud, what the hell is pod pink.cloud James?
so Dave Jones from the Podcast index I got him into web sub. he looked at web sub and websites, basically a way where you, as a Podcast directory, you go to a web server and you say, Hey, tell me every time Podland publishes a new episode. And the web service has a Yoko.
Cool. and goes off and does that that's basically what website is, and it's a big change from the way that Podcast directors used to work, which is the way the Apple podcasts crawlers still works, which is it visits every so often and checks whether or not you have a new episode. so website is a good thing, but Dave Jones was saying actually, website, there are a number of difficulties with it when you're looking at it.
for the scale that podcasting is over 3 million podcasts now in the Podcast index. so w there's a problem there in terms of scale. and there are also specific problems around podcasting as well. Could they build something which is Distributed things so that it works on many machines, not just on one server and could they build something which works a little bit better for podcasting. And so they have, it's a thing called pod ping.cloud. Which I've linked to documentation on.
And basically it's another place where you would paying. If you're a Podcast producer, you would say, Hey, I've got a new show, come and get it. but the way that pod Pang works is instead of it just being one server, which is typically either run by a medium or run by Google it's any number of servers, all using the same software, you could run one from your house. and that would actually take the hard work of going off and checking all of the information there.
it's interesting seeing it's very early days, but that could significantly change the amount of time it takes for you to publish a show. And then for it to appear in your podcast app, like Apple podcasts or anything else.
Now, unlike your belief that Apple's going to do something with Android, how long do you think it might be before they do something with pod ping?
I don't know. Apple is relatively famous for reinventing wheels and to be fair, doing it normally in quite a good way. would Apple be interested in the whole pod pink thing? I don't know, maybe. but it would certainly help fix one of the issues that they have with their crawlers, but they are spending an awfully long time on their crawlers at the moment and making those work better. And so maybe they don't necessarily feel that they actually need it, but it would be a nice thing if they did.
I think one of the problems with all of these services is that they are quite easy to abuse. So the thing about pod paying, which is nice is that you have to have an API key in order for you to say, Hey, I've got a new Podcast come and find it, which you don't in the website world. And maybe that developer key is the key. If you like, sorry, pardon the pun.
but between something which can be easily spammed, which Apple's used to be and something which actually does work for them in terms of a way forward,
We'll watch this space now moving on Podcast, make it to the tele really casts on TV. Is this a good idea?
Is it a good idea? I think so. And I don't think it's just me thinking that I think it's some other people as well. So obviously there are quite a few podcasts which are available out there on YouTube. If you know where to look, Joe Rogan being an obvious one until the end of last year.
But there are a bunch of other ones available and someone bright and clever called Brandon has worked out that actually there's a way forward here in terms of not just a TV channel, but also a streaming service that contains nothing but podcasts that you can watch. So it's a new app called pause TV. It's launched on iOS and Android. It allows you to watch your favorite podcast. and it's available as a live channel if you have a Roku box. but also this week it's launched as an app as well.
Brandon Blackburn is the man in charge, and I asked him to outline what pods TV was.
Pod TV is the first of its kind streaming service that presents a over the top experience for Podcast videos. So we have a combination of new episodes as they are released from some of your favorite shows. And then we also have an on-demand library. So as you discover new shows or you want to go back and revisit some of your all time favorites, you have the freedom to do so on
our end. So you call it a streaming service that said a video streaming service. That's right.
It's
an app you can download. We're an app stores Apple, Android, Google play. It runs the gamut we're available worldwide. So all you have to do is download the app and you can access all of our content. We constantly have new shows being added and updated every week. So we're really excited about getting people on board and exposing them. Can
I watch on a TV as well? Yes.
We also have a, what we call linear channel and you can see that live feed running on our app. throughout the summer, you'll also be able to find it on other platforms that we'll be announcing. We look forward to announcing such matters with you, James, in fact. right now, when you go on the app at the very top of the screen, you'll see our live feed. So it's just like any other TV channel it's programmed 24 seven. So you can feel free to watch every show that's on the schedule.
And then, like I said, you can go into our on-demand library. You can binge, you can discover new shows. Based on some of your favorite genres, some of your favorite personalities, favorite guests, for instance. So we've really done our best to make it a user-friendly and all about the creators in the shows.
So what kind of shows do you have on pod
TV? we have from true crime, our friend, Sean Atwood, over in the UK, which is a huge, true crime show. We have the Jordan harbinger show. we have triggered optometry. Those are some of our leading shows. It's really a combination of shows like that, as well as some of our exclusive and original content that we'll be rolling out throughout the summer. we had the gangster Chronicles. If you're more of a hip hop fan.
we have some exciting new business and education shows like young and profiting that are coming up. so it really runs the gamut. Sipping the tea is one of my favorites. and over the next, like I said, few weeks, we're going to be making some announcements on some really big shows. That'll be exclusive to our well,
that sounds great. So how does the business work? is it ad funded? Is it going to be a subscription service? how does all of that work then? Right now we're
completely free. So we're ad supported, but really if anybody who's familiar to Podcast will find that it's a pretty similar model in terms of how the episodes are presented. You're going to have a couple short, mid rolls per hour, and you might have a host read ad here and there just like you would on the audio show.
But really as podcasting as an industry has embraced video our team realized within the last year that other than YouTube, there's not really a great option for podcasters to distribute their videos and get it out there to their audience. So that combined with the fact that. Ad supported services. Like this are actually outgrowing the paid subscription services.
You might have this experience yourself, James, where you just have so many paid services that you get to the point or, Hey, I'm willing to experience a couple of short ads per hour for content, but I don't have to pay for it. So we're taking that approach into the Podcast
world. And so there are a bunch of shows which are available on video now, which is why you're here. what's your advice to podcasters who are getting involved in the video world? What makes for a good show that you would have on pod
TV? Great question. the great thing about podcasting since its inception has been the storytelling and the narratives based on the show hosts, or, if it's a true crime show, based on the story that's being told and unfolding. So I think that's still the biggest thing, even with video, but you really get to see, what goes on in the studio. You get to see the expressiveness of the guests or the host, and then.
It goes all the way up to using visual AIDS and cues, similar to what Joe Rogan might do when he has a guest on talking about UFO's coming down to planet earth, we all have experienced those types of episodes before. So it's an added a way for podcasters to, to really bring in their audience and allow them to immerse themselves into the production and the recording. And, beyond that we are talking about a lot of at-home recordings these days. There's a lot of programmings.
We're using one right now called Riverside that can allow you to produce video without a lot of effort and resources. So I would definitely encourage any podcast or that has a good show and a good story to tell to Look into incorporating video because thanks to an app like ours. Now you can get that out in front of the audience. You're
working on some new content, but what else are you
doing? So a couple of things throughout the rest of the year that we'll be incorporating. We want to have some interactive components onto our app that allows the show creators and hosts to interact with those who are checking out there. videos on our app. We're also going to bring in some live events that have a Podcast component to it.
So imagine your favorite Podcast sports hosts being at a game for instance, or at a fight and doing the play by play in Podcast style throughout their Podcast show. While the fight is unfolding before your very eyes. So we're really excited about some of those initiatives that are coming up throughout the
summer. And if I do a podcast that I think should be on pod TV what's the best way to get in touch with you? Great
question. We're always interested in talking to new shows of all sizes, really. So you can visit us at our website it's pod, tv.live. and you'll find a tab to contact us for more information and a few questions about your show that you'll have to submit. So we can do a little bit of homework on our end, too. Very
cool. So it's pods TV in your app store as of this week on both Android and on iOS pod, tv.live on the web as well.
That's where to find us, like I said, we're really excited play around with us. We want to hear your feedback. We have been working really hard to make it a very user-friendly experience and give you a place to find all of your favorite shows and their libraries, but also discover some new ones as well.
And I know you've been working on this first sometime, so it's really good to see you finally out there and live and and really good to catch up. Thanks so much for your time, Brandon.
Thanks, James. We appreciate your support and look forward to talking to you more. As we have more announcements.
yes, Brandon Blackburn there. It's interesting. are we planning on doing a video version of this Podcast? Anytime soon, Sam,
I know I've got a face for Podcast and another Facebook video. It's going to be
radio. Nobody wants that.
you say that, but this morning I did explain that before this podcast, I was in the studio this morning, cause we were doing a Facebook live direct from the studio. So we're using stream yard now and we are broadcasting all the shows direct to Facebook and YouTube and eventually other platforms.
Oh, very nice. You'll be on Twitch soon and Tik TOK and and all of these other platforms that I'm too old to know about.
maybe we'll even do a
clubhouse who knows
it's radio, but not as you know, it. And now lots of new. Financial results have come out from media companies. everything looks to be up, lots of increases from companies like iHeart media, James, what's going on. It seems that everything's growing upwards.
Doesn't it? It seems that everything's growing up what's until you actually look at the bottom line. So I heart media, for example released their quarter one 21 results. Podcasting revenue grew 142% year on year. Yay. Order C has also seen more numbers in terms of podcasting.
although it's a little bit weaker because they didn't have any large shows in the first quarter Cumulus as well is crowing about the amount of Podcast stuff that they're doing, although they haven't given any direct numbers. However, once you start having a look at the bottom line of these companies, Because they're doing more than just podcasting. You see that it's a bit of a different conversation. So I, heart media companies fell.
the company's revenue fell my 0.5% year on year in quarter, one 21 order C, which used to be Entercom. they saw their overall revenue fall by 19% year on year. Cumulus is down 11.5% year on year. So it's not a case of radio and media companies doing well. It's a case of podcasting doing well, but not well enough to be honest, to cover the cracks in broadcasting and how well that's worked for them. And we probably shouldn't.
Forget that this is quarter one that we're comparing and quarter one this time, last year was relatively unaffected by the pandemic we had about two weeks of the pandemic. that was in effect for last year. we will doubtless see some very different figures coming out next quarter. and away from broadcast as a cast has also released their quarter one 21 financial report, which is interesting. I know that we have listeners from a cast as well. I said something about dynamic RSS the other week.
And Matt McDonald was put onto me to talk about dynamic RSS, but he didn't want to wake up early or stay up late and naughty die. So I'm not sure that interview is going to happen, but nevertheless a cast is doing well. They're investigating an IPO at the moment. So obviously they want their financial figures to look very good, but the good news is they are. so sales went up by 74% year on year $23.6 million in quarter one 21, which is 197 million Swedish crowns which is always nice.
And they've got 28,000 Podcast as part of their network at the moment, 872 million listens in the quarter as well. a cast is doing pretty well. It seems.
now moving forward sales changes and it helped median and Sirius XM have changed how they're selling Podcast. I, heart media is launching their own private marketplace. Really?
James. this is interesting. At least I think it's interesting. I, heart media is launching a private marketplace, which is basically one of the ways that you sell advertising in any media these days there private marketplaces, which are hooked up to advertising agency systems what you will be able to do with this thing. they're using Vox nests Technology, and they bought Vox nest.
relatively recently you'll be able to, yes, geotarget as you would expect, but you will also be able to psychographically target. and some of the categories in here are Intrepid listeners. You can target Intrepids or you can target conquerors. which all sounds very exciting. I don't know whether you can target quite tired and just need a rest consumers, or just fancy a nice cup of tea consumers. I don't know whether you can target those, which reminds me of there's a story today.
chartable are doing some weird and targeting as well. they've just announced a firmographic enrichment. Have you ever heard such a thing, firmographic enrichment? Do you know what that is?
if I did it, I think it takes this Podcast off the air from it's clean to make a statement.
It's not that firmographic graphic enrichment ladies and gentlemen is finding out exactly which companies are listening to your branded podcast. So say that you are Amazon, AWS. And you're doing a branded Podcast. Wouldn't it be nice to know if all of a sudden you got, 40 listeners from, I dunno, Tesco or from Walmart. Wouldn't that be an interesting thing for you to learn so that you can actually go, Oh, they're listening. They might be interested.
Maybe we'll target some messages to them specifically. so a chartable is doing all kinds of that firmographic enrichment. There we are new phrase, firmographic, enrichment. what's also which psychographic psychographics targeting. but what's also going on with Stitcher, which I think is a bright and clever move. And I'm surprised that they haven't done it yet to be quite Frank. they. have I actually had three sets of ad sales teams. They've had Sirius XM going out and selling radio advertising.
They've had Pandora going out and selling advertising in the Pandora app. And they've also had mid-roll who've been going out and selling advertising in podcasts and and And they've suddenly realized, hang on a minute, we've got three ad sales teams who are actually going out selling to the same people. Why don't we have one ad sales team? So that's what they've done. I know genius.
so their new group is called S X M media, which is very easy to say X, X, M. And they claim my goodness and they claim it has a reach of 150 million listeners which they reckon is the largest digital audio advertising platform in North America. I don't know about that, but it does sound an awful lot to me, but that's the sort of consolidation than I would expect these large companies to be doing. I'm sure that I heart is doing much the same sort of thing as well.
and I'm sure that other people will be doing that sort of consolidation in terms of salespeople.
Yeah. I mean, consolidation seems to be the name of the game, whether it's merging of companies into the big four and then merging their sales teams. it's a maturing of the industry,
I guess. I think so. It's so interesting to see. And, as I say I'm sure that they won't be the only people doing that. it comes with some worries because typically you end up selling the things which are easiest to sell. and so if you come from a radio background and it's easy to sell a bunch of radio ads, then why would you bother with, an extra 10% of Podcast ads? And so that ends up being a little bit difficult, but as long as it's managed then it seems to work quite nicely.
I would have thought.
a couple of other stories, James, I noticed on news this week the first one was the web browser. Brave has added a playlist feature in their iOS app, which allows users to save and access audio and video, including podcasts. Now that's a good way to go forward. I wonder if the other browsers will follow, have you used
it? I haven't used it because I haven't used brave on my iOS test things. I don't use iOS that much, but I am using brave as my number one browser as of now. and it's been interesting switching over from Chrome. It's essentially Chrome, but it's got a few additional features and they've pulled quite a lot of the Google stuff out of it. And it's quite nice. It's got crypto currency built into it.
It's got this thing called brave attention tokens, which pay you for looking at ads in cryptocurrency, but you can also share those crypto tokens with podcasts and. with websites that you like. So if you visit the pod news website, for example, then you can actually tip us some bat, some brave attention tokens. I've been quite impressed at it, actually. It's quite a good browser works very well.
So it's worthwhile having a play with it's a bit more techie, but I think it's a bit more privacy aware. worthwhile having a look at and their playlist feature is essentially just a read it later list, but it's a play at later lists. So you'll go to YouTube and you'll go, Oh this looks good, but I don't want to watch it quite now. So you add it to your playlist in there and then you add a favorite Podcast and then you add a favorite SoundCloud track or whatever it is.
So you're rich in Batson, SATs. That's all I can
say. Oh, very good. Yes. Bats and SATs. Nice. Nicely done there. Mr. Sethi.
I wouldn't go spending it all at once. That's all I'd say now. the one thing that I did. I think it was quite interesting. Pod news has got a Podcast search that might save you some time. The address bar in pod news allows you to go and search across Apple Podcast index. And Spotify is that new
James? it's not new. I've had it ever since I started pod news, but it's something which is there. And I always forget to mention it. So if you use Chrome or you use. brave as a browser. And I think this works in Firefox automatically as well. if you visited the pod news website once, then your browser knows about pod news and knows that pod news has a search engine in there.
And so if you ever want to quickly search for a Podcast, then just go into the address bar of your browser, where you would normally type in a website address and type in pod news and press the tab button, and then type in whatever show you want to search for. And it will find that or indeed whatever story you want to know about in the podcasting world. and it will automatically take you to pod news is search results page with the information that you wanted.
and it's something that I've had there for some time, but I thought to myself, Oh, I should probably, mention it every now and again. it's part of the open search standard. but it's actually quite a useful way to instantly find out more about podcasts that you have heard about, or indeed be able to jump into finding it on other platforms and even it's a RSS feed,
the other nice part about that as well is you've also added links to all the search results. So then somebody could actually hyperlink those out and share them.
absolutely. Yes. So if you ever want to share a story, one particular story from a pod news updates, then you can do exactly that. just do a quick search for it and you'll find a little link button next to it, which hopefully link direct to that particular story,
which is how we do our show notes when
Apple letters, hurray. So what's happened for you in Podland this week? Sam,
not a lot, James. I have to be honest and say, we're heads down doing certain things. buying more equipment, doing sponsorship deals and recruiting more presenters. So very boring stuff for most people, not related to podcasting, I'm
afraid, you're getting more listeners presumably and things are going well for you.
we're at 30,000 uniques a month now. And we're growing very nicely. We haven't turned on our DAP yet. We will be doing that in a couple of months, we're an alpha product, I'm not making big screams about it. We're not spending a lot on marketing is word of mouth right now. And I'm just very happy as we were getting great presenters. We've just got to get them trained up, get the flow. And then we'll shout a little bit about it.
And then once we've got a bigger audience, then we'll turn on the dab and, we'll see where we get
to then very nice. You could have a listen [email protected]. what's going on for me? I'll tell you. so I am taking part in the BBC Podcast festival, which is actually really good. They're running this open for anybody in the world to take part it's part of their production unlocked series. Sam has paid for a little bit of it for you. That's very kind of you Sam with your television license fee.
there are sessions available throughout may and you can sign up On a link that you'll find in pod news, if you search for BBC Podcast festival. I'm speaking in the final session, which is on may the 27th, but there are other excellent speakers to go and watch with that. I'm looking forward to Podcast day 24 which is a big 24 hour conference for podcasting, which is happening on the 7th of June. I'm helping with the Sydney part of that, which is going to be eight hours coming out of Sydney.
we announced last week that it is a. Actual event in an actual room with other actual people. And at the very same time that we announced it, that then was a Corona virus outbreak in Sydney. But I think that has pretty well stopped now. So we should be absolutely fine. it will be wonderful to see you there. If you are in Australia, if you're not from Australia, then go away. We don't know, but if you're in Australia, then that will be lovely.
you can buy tickets now for that, just to do a search for Podcast day 24, and there's a code to save, which you'll find in previous episodes of pod news. So that's all good. And I'm also taking part in the rain 2021 global audio evolution which is another zoom virtual conference which is happening in a couple of weeks time. It may even be happening next week. And I'm not quite sure what I'm doing, because I do know that the main person who they wanted to interview has pulled out.
So we'll soon find out what's going on there, but if I'm still involved in that, then that's worthwhile taking part and that's free. You'll find [email protected]. And that's it for this week. If you've enjoyed your trip to Podland come back again. Next time. Follow this podcast in your app or visit the website at Podland dot news.
So thank you for listening. If you have any comments about anything on the show today, send a voice comment to questions at Podland news or Tweet us at
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