Welcome to Podland Podland is sponsored by riverside.fm. The easiest way to record podcasts and video interviews in studio quality from anywhere just by using a web browser. We're using it now and by Buzzsprout used by over a hundred thousand podcasters like us to host, promote and track your podcast. It's the 1st of July, 2021. What is it? When it's the first day of a month, is it white rabbits or something like that?
No. Pinch punch,
no returns. There you go. pinch punch, no returns. I'm James credit and the editor of pod news.net in lockdown here in Australia. And I'm
Sam Sethi. The editor of Sam Talks Technology here.
I'm Ari on this and let from podcast taxonomy. And I'll be on the show later talking about the new board and I'm
Don McKinnon from hark audio. And later I'll tell you about a new way of listening to podcasts and
I'm of Lega entail. And later I'll be talking about making podcasts more interactive.
They will pod lands a weekly podcast where Sam and I delve deeper into the week's podcasting.
So James, here's all the news headlines from potluck this week. The big story, that broke at the end of last week's podcast was Amazon has bought the enterprise podcast hosting and ad sales company, art 19. Now mystic Meg, because you've been talking about that deal for a number of weeks, months, years don't know how long you've been saying it. What are your thoughts on it now that it's happening?
Yes. I said that they would do exactly that in December when Amazon bought Wondery. it makes perfect sense for Amazon. it's an enterprise podcast hosting company, but what it is also is it's an ad sales company. It's got a monetization platform in there. It does dynamically inserted advertising across all apps. it's very good. and more interesting Kintown brand bat, your mate from Amazon podcasts says that the company is hiring as well, which is always good.
What was very funny though, was I saw the Twitter thread and then people started putting Amie. I'd love to know about this ad me. I can't see a link though from kittens. Tweet that actually links to what jobs are being available in Amazon podcasts,
right? No, indeed. I think he's just basically seeing what he can find in terms of individual folk who are looking for jobs and and why not. so that was certainly interesting, obviously makes a bunch of sense and, comes as no real surprise that Amazon have jumped in and bought a. Podcast host to mean clearly they could build it for themselves. they have all of the technology to do that, but far faster and quicker, just to go out and purchase a company who is already doing that.
We've spoken to plenty of people that aren't 19 trying to get an interview, but surprise. No one's talking. And we also don't know how much a 19 went for, but doubtless, we will find that out in due course. So
that's two out of the big four that now have their own podcast hosting. So who's apple going to get them.
apple is already a podcast host for themselves. If you do paid for podcasts, then you have to upload it to apple directly. So I don't know, maybe apple might not touch this. apple isn't interested in the advertising. Portion of this apple is for very much focused on, earning money from the podcast subscriptions So I wonder whether apple really needs a podcast host of their own because they're not making shows of their own.
They have no intention of making shows of their own, other than companion podcasts to their TV stuff, which is all fine. So I think from my point of view, I'm not sure that apple needs to buy anything.
clearly somebody got Jeff Bezos, his sign off for, he gets on his rocket to address his midlife crisis because Amazon has bought Smartlist as well, a podcast for between 60 and $80 million. I had a quick listen yesterday. It's okay. it's in great shakes is basically a bunch of very famous people talking to a bunch of other, very famous people. but it's like a drinks session you're just jumping in on $18 million.
between 60 and $80 million, we knew that CAA who's the talent agency that represents that podcast was out shopping them, And so you know, between 60 and 80 million, is what they've sold it for. But what I find fascinating is that what of Amazon actually bought here? They haven't bought exclusivity. They've bought a one week window. that's worth $80 million now. Fair enough. They've also bought the ad sales rights.
so they can actually sell advertising within it, but are they going to make their money back? No, because they're not, absolutely not going to make 60, 70, $80 million out of the ad sales for this particular podcast. No matter how good it is. and it's always nice to see three privileged white men being given more privilege. I'm particularly negative because I have no idea who these people are. And I said this on Twitter the other day.
And somebody said, that's some impressive avoidance of popular culture there, James. Apparently one of them is in 30 rock, which I've never seen. One of them is in another TV show, which I've never seen, who these people Anyway, what is a video recorder? You
were too busy to listen to podcasts, to watch TV, James. That's
clearly what it is, although I am capable of listening to that casts on Amazon podcasts now, because it launched in Australia and New Zealand today on July the first nine months after launching in the U S and the UK. It's quite impressive. the opening screen has a lot of Australian and New Zealand podcasts on there. I counted at least 22, so that was pretty good.
So it's interesting to actually see Amazon podcasts finally now that they've remembered that we exist down here so that was nice and I'm interested in playing around with it and seeing what I can find it's always nice when you type in pod news Into the search engine on the Amazon podcasts website to have three, not just one, but three other podcasts in front of you. all for the same podcast in Italian, I went to check 1.06% of people here in Australia speak Italian. So that's going to be good.
So anyway, I've just sent off a DMCA take down notice, cause it's my trademark and we'll see quite where we get from that, all interesting stuff, but Amazon podcasts at the very least, we can now see down here, which is good. And art
19 clearly are very happy to start spending some of their money or doing deals very quickly. They've done a deal with the upside down digital network. Is that something in Australia, James? It sounds like that's what it was.
that's clearly what it is. No, it's not. it's too. us comedians who naturally, I've never heard of James Patrick Gallo and Jimmy wizman and it's a new podcast network. the deal was brokered through UTA, which is another one of these talent agencies. my understanding is that they have agreed to be acquired by Amazon, but the deal hasn't gone through because it takes time to go through.
And actually there's some rumblings about whether or not this is a bit of a concern from monopolies and an antitrust. Anyway I doubt that's going to be a real issue, but nevertheless, my suspicion is that aren't 19 was already going to do that deal and good for them. And the fact that happened the week of their acquisition from Amazon is nice. But I suspect unrelated. Now,
moving on seems that some people you haven't been listening to our podcast last week, cause everyone's launching everything in Australia now first or at least they've remembered that Australia is down there somewhere, vaguely useful, So Spotify just announced that it's made the Spotify audience network and advertising marketplace available to advertisers and megaphone publishers in Australia also decided to bring it out in Canada, in the UK as well.
The service was made available in the U S in February, and it allows advertisers to buy ads on and off the Spotify platform. So good news for you there, James.
all 25 early in Australians will be able to buy advertising on the Spotify audience network. I don't think necessarily that's going to happen, but anyway, it makes a bunch of sense. obviously they've had to ensure that their product works well in Australia, Canada, and the UK, which are the three new countries that have got it this week. there's obviously, tax and legal stuff that you have to sort out in order to launch in new countries. And, fair enough.
I think the interesting thing is that you won't just be by advertising on Spotify as podcasts. You'll be buying advertising on megaphone shows as well. And I'm seeing an awful lot of shows moving over to megaphone right now. so this will be another way in for you to buy advertising on that platform as well. so if you are a megaphone podcast publisher, you can opt in Viacom, CBS, and the wall street journal have already done exactly that. And the blog posts contained.
I think it was Volkswagen who were very excited about the fact that they could buy a podcast advertising in a way that they were comfortable with instead of buying it completely unseen. They feel that Spotify is audience network is a little bit more comfortable in terms of targeting and everything else. I think it's probably a good thing for podcasting as a whole.
That's good news for you guys down there. Cause campaign Asia says that 66% of internet users in the Asia Pacific region listened to a podcast on an average day. That's good. That's two thirds of you. Lot of listening.
two thirds of all of us down in the Asia Pacific region are listening to podcasts every day, which is an almost unbelievable figure. In fact, I would go so far as to say, not just easy, it's unbelievable. it's rubbish. It can't possibly be anything else. The data, which is from a company called GWI, it says, for example, that 54% of Australian internet users. listen every day to podcasts. Let's put that into some perspective here.
Edison research does their infinite dial survey here in Australia, every single year, their most recent infinite dial data. Didn't say 54%. Of Australians every day it said 37% of Australians every month. And the writers Institute has also said something quite similar as well, 31%. So ready, 54% every day. I think that this number is completely unhelpful and it's just nonsense and shame on campaign Asia for sharing it. Oh, it's going to be in a slide
deck very soon. Coming to an event near you.
exactly. It'll be in a slide deck and somebody will turn around and say, isn't podcasting. Fantastic. And then all of a sudden advertisers won't get the returns that they're expecting because they've been sold a pack of lies and then they won't come back and buy again. it's a ridiculous idea maybe I'm just being old fashioned
fashion. That's good. Now, Spotify,
what is a video recorder?
You can have to by a television first, James, now. And do Spotify has launched sound up in India, a training, mentoring, and support program for women podcast creators. That's a good thing. Isn't it? Jane?
It is. So they've done sound up all over the place. in the U S they were doing it for voices that they felt weren't that audible in podcasting. I think they did a bunch around people of color. They did some around the LGBTQ plus community. Similarly, they've run sound up in the UK and Ireland, and also in Scandinavia as well in India, they see the real opportunity being women, podcasts, creators.
and so it's great actually seeing that Spotify is piling more cash into training up a new generation of podcasters. I would just point out that apple don't do any of that. And apple, for all of the bluster, from the old guard about, what Spotify doing and Ruby, Spotify is dreadful. apple has not spent any money at all in this kind of trading. They have a flashy website telling you how to promote apple podcasts, but that's about it.
So it's really good to see Spotify putting their money where their mouth is here. Excellent. Well
done. I'm Daniel moving on podcast. Taxonomy. Now we interviewed the guys when they first launched this, but podcast tax on me this week announced that they've got a new board and I thought we would catch up with one of the founders of it, Ariel Nissen, black to find out more about what the podcast tax on me has been doing. About
a year ago, we had the idea to standardize job roles in the podcast space. And this has been a problem that has needed a solution for a long time. When I started in the podcast space four years ago, I remember what I thought was innocently questioning. Oh, what does a producer do? And then it turns out everybody has this exact same issue. The film and TV industry has this standardized at least to a certain extent, way better than the audio industry does.
And I was working at a coworking space at the time in Los Angeles. And. I made friends with somebody named Daniel Rosenberg, whose name is now all over the podcast taxonomy. And he's the vice president at staff me up, which is an organization dedicated to filling job roles in film and TV for the most part. And he thought maybe this is a problem that we can tackle.
As part of staff me up then I introduced Daniel to Cole and the team at pod chaser and pod chaser obviously has so much data about the podcast space and about the people who are creating in the podcast space. So it was a perfect match and we all came together and decided we could do nothing about this, or we can.
Create a white paper and try to standardize these roles and try to professionalize this industry further by giving official names to the jobs that people are doing when they're producing
a podcast. So that was how long ago, when did you first
start? I want to say it was may of 2020, right in the middle of the pandemic when we all started coming together. And then in October we released the first white
paper.
So it's not been long since then. I know that a number of big brands have come on. You've just recently also announced the new taxonomy board who's on the board and then why'd you need a board.
We're calling it the podcast taxonomy community board, and we've got Amber Smith from slate. We've got William White from Pandora, Blake day from Spotify, Emilio Mareno from Ono, go-go from black pod collective. And Buzzsprout Cole of course, from pod chaser, Daniel from staff me up and Sandra Yee Ling from Q code.
And the reason we think we needed a board is because in order to really make sure that the podcast taxonomies roles are adopted across the board, we want it to have some real power behind the people who are adopting that first. And we're hoping that it will trickle down to the rest of the podcast community and partnering with on a go-go from black pod collective. And now recently Buspar.
Gives us access to all of the people who are on Buzzsprout and hopefully that will trickle to other podcast hosting sites. And she has a really big community with Blackbaud collective and all of the other companies that I mentioned have pretty big name recognition. And we're hoping that people see that and say, if Spotify is adopting this set of standards in their job descriptions, maybe I should in my smaller podcast studio or podcast production house, that's based in Kansas
city looking at the list of partners as well. It's the who's who of the podcast industry? A lot of friends that I know on there, you've got Matt Degan from the British podcasts award, Kevin Finn from Buzzsprout mark Asquith from captivate.
And that was important to us because we realized at first that we were scooping up partners from the U S and we quickly thought, okay, that's not going to work. We also need to involve not just other countries. Something that was interesting to us was that British English is of course different from American English. So a producer might be somebody different in the UK than it is in the U S either. We're going to standardize that across the board or in the future have different types.
Classifications for what a producer is based on language. So that is something that we're going towards in the future is other languages. One
good thing is James, who does Portland with me, he's already implemented the taxonomy on the pod news jobs, board, pod, jobs.net, to see that people can see actually implementations in the world.
We are very happy that James did that and he did it right away. James is great.
But don't tell him that please. So what happens next with the podcast taxonomy? I can see also Dave Jones is involved for podcast index. I'm sure it became a tag within the podcast index. I know you're going to podcast movement.
Yes. Our board is meeting at the end of July to have our first discussion of what it means to be part of podcast taxonomy, and more importantly, to plan for this kind of public. Release of what podcast taxonomy is. So at podcast movement in Nashville, August 5th, we are having a panel moderated by Cole, Raven of pod chaser.
And he'll be asking questions of the folks who can make it, who are going to be at podcast movement about why this is important to their companies and how we see that shaping the future of not just when they're seeking to fill roles within their companies, but also how to professionalize the industry further.
And we want to make sure that the podcast industry is future is diverse in thought in career status and in professional background, and most importantly, inclusive of people from historically underrepresented communities. And we think that having. A standard set of job titles will help that along in a big way.
And to you is podcasting is a fast evolving business and jobs will be appearing that may not have a job title today. So somebody comes up with a new job title. How do they get that added to the podcast tax?
Anybody can contribute to the podcast taxonomy. We have what we call a living breathing document for a reason. One challenge that we recently received was that. We should have an open document, like a notion document where people can contribute to that, what we have as of now. And that is definitely something that we're considering. But what we have as of now is a slack channel that anybody can join and contribute an idea.
Then we're going to take it back to the board and also open it up to our larger community to figure out what the wording should be. That best describes what that role could be. Recently, we added music supervisor. We hadn't had that initially, and that's something that we are very open to making sure that the. And ever evolving document to match the ever evolving nature of the podcast space
with podcast index, supporting it, obviously being a tag within the two dot O RSS feed. But is there any plans for you to make it into a micro format or an XML extension so that I could create a search engine that would say, I want to go and find a producer job and it will come back with everything from across the industry because there's a standard. And so then there's a way of aggregating all those jobs into one view.
Sam, that's a wonderful idea. I hope you join our community and contribute that in our slack channel. Yes, because Cole is on the board and he is representing pod chaser. We have so much data, like I said about pod chaser, and I know that. They want to be able to create an engine that makes job search easier for everybody. So we are open to all of this. It is all possible.
Brilliant. Ariel Nissen, Blatt. Thank you so much for your time. Congratulations on starting the podcast taxonomy, but you didn't think 18 months ago you'd be doing.
No, I did not, but thank you so much for having me and for amplifying this mission,
catch her at podcast movement on the 5th of August. And in the meantime, please visit if you're interested, the podcast taxonomy.com. Yes. As Ariel said, it's a white paper, but it's a fluid white paper. So join the slack group contribute, become a part of the podcast taxonomy movement. Don't leave it all to Ariel as they say. Brilliant. Thanks Ariel. And then Terry on this and black, thank you so much from podcast taxonomy.
You can find them at podcast movement on the August, the fifth, also at podcast movement and August the fifties, mark Cuban and Fallon for Fatemia. Who've been confirmed as keynote speakers at podcast movement. They're the co-founders of fireside, the social audio platform, similar to clubhouse which is currently in closed beta. But if you want to go and find out more about it again, Go and see the podcast movement guys, and go and see mark.
In other stories this week in Portland boundary, Scott was banned from YouTube by a bot, according to Bantu on his podcast. What was this story about James?
this is a really strange thing where YouTube is now using bots, not just to flag suspicious content, to, alert human beings. No they've given the robots now have sentience. They're actually allowed to ban people completely. Boundaries Scott had his Google account banned for doing something he's still not quite sure what and YouTube ended up banning that, which essentially meant that he lost access to all of his YouTube channels.
It wasn't the band Ru says channel, which is essentially a channel, which is all around testing, microphones and things. It was a different channel of his, but he basically lost his entire Google account. my advice has always been, if you're going to upload anything that might be, a bit dodgy to YouTube, my goodness don't use the same Gmail account that you use for everything else, because if Google wants to, they can get rid of everything of your entire life. So that will be a bad thing.
But I was really surprised that YouTube has been using bots to ban people. They have apologized, they have reinstated his account and all of that, but it should never have come to this. in my view automated banning, probably not such a good plan. we've talked
to about it for the last couple of weeks about how content in podcast hasn't been tracked. And obviously we were told that there are now tools out there. Maybe this is just the start of where, companies are going to have to start to put in place some sort of automated system to look at content. Now they've got it wrong in this case, but it shows that there is a step forward or step back. I don't know which way you want to look.
Yes, but I would also say absolutely use robots to flag things up to human beings, but for heaven sake, get the human beings to have a listen first, before you ban somebody and take away their livelihood. That's probably a good plan. I think using artificial intelligence makes a bunch of sense, make sure that there are some form of a human being involved.
Now, NBC has turned today, it's morning TV program into a podcast. There's a separate episode, very chow without the 23 minutes of ad. It's the audio from the TV show. Now that's what Netflix has started to do as well with some of their shows. Is this a trend?
is it a trend? I don't know. it's certainly a really popular show today from NBC, not the today program, that's something different in the UK. and what they've done is they have realized that their audience might wish to continue consuming it in a different medium. And so they've basically put the audio of that out as individual podcasts which in my goodness, 23 minutes of aunts, every hour during that a TV show, that's quite a thing. I'm surprised actually, that more TV shows aren't doing that.
So Netflix is doing a lot of companion podcasts, but not necessarily just putting the audio online, whereas this is, very much showing a different thing of just basically putting the audio of a TV show on as a podcast. There's not an awful lot of that going on. In other countries and I'm surprised by that, but I thought it was interesting watching NBC, piling into this.
I'm surprised that they're not doing, more of that sort of thing around some of them or entertainment shows particularly when you've got audio descriptions there as well. So you can actually be able to commentate if you like what's actually going on too.
just to say nice to see NBC following the trend because. All of my radio shows now as listen again, but I've also got them as podcasts and I've also got them as an apple channel. So we're taking and repurposing that. Now we don't have ads in our shows, thankfully they're all sponsored and we take out the music and that works brilliantly and I've used to do that. And it's been a dream it's just work simply. So it's even automated.
So I don't even see why people can't automate this and do it quickly.
Oh, makes sense. Wouldn't it? I do have
one gripe. They were Spotify. I tried to create a playlist of all my podcasts to create a coherent of an apple channel. You can't create playlists of podcasts. You can only create playlist of episodes.
oh, I see what you mean. So you can put individual episodes in there. But you can't basically produce something which merges together individually. Oh, that's interesting. I've not considered that. That would be a use case and down north of Spotify, it's why it's not available. but you could certainly see that as being a benefit. that's what you can do with apple, with stations and you can also do much the same sort of thing if you have the PocketCasts app.
Cause you can do some, interesting sort of filters and stuff like that. Oh, that's a, that's an interesting thought. If Daniel's listening, that will be nice to feel.
Now you met up with somebody who I should possibly use as well called Don McKinnon at Harker audio because they might allow me to do a playlist connecting all of my shows and even get some clips from it. Who's Don McKinnon and what's hardcore.
there's a bunch of podcasts apps out there that do clips. we've spoken about some of those in the past. Spotify has just bought one called pods with a Zed that did, AI grabbing of interesting clips from podcasts. Moon beam is a brand new app that's just come out. that was founded by Paul English who built chaotic and Lola kayak is the big travel website that I used to use when I could travel.
but what it's doing is it's basically, again, using machine learning to include the ability for podcast is to create shareable clips and all of that. So there's lots of these. Podcast apps. Hark. Audio is one that I thought was interesting. It uses human beings to present like a radio show, a curated collection of clips. I thought it was a really smart idea. So I caught up with Don McKinnon. Who's the founder and CEO hark
is an app that lets you hear the best moments from great podcasts organized around your interest. So essentially you can come in and start with your interests, whether they're politics or books or music. And we find the best moments around those topic, but we organize them into playlists. We call them heartless. They're essentially mixed tapes of podcast moments. and as you play through a mixed tape on hark list, you can hear it go from Clifton.
Or at any moment, if you love it, it'll jump you into the full episode. And that's how people are discovering all kinds
of new pockets. You've got a bunch of clips in there is that human beings that are curating nets or is it AI instead?
It's all human beings. I really believe in the power of that genius moment that I think we've all heard when we're listening to a podcast. That's often the thing that makes us tell our friends to listen to it. and we've all gotten that text or email that says in start at minute 44 37. And that's because those geniuses. Are the way in and yet AI will continue to surprise us. But as of right now, you can't derive those moments.
You can not point an AI Regan at a hard drive array and have it yield the best moments in podcasts. There's not enough signal to train it. Every attempt I've heard cuts in the middle of a sentence for us, it's all done by humans and that's our humans. We have folks from NPR and the New York times and various folks that are curating with us. But also, the people who really know where the best moments are the creators themselves. So we have Hrishikesh, Hirway choosing his favorite moments from.
Song Exploder and introducing each moment and telling you about how this moment of his interview with Billy Eilish made him cry or bill Nye or Alan Alda. And they actually bring their listeners into the act and the listeners suggest their favorite moments as well,
which is really powerful. So this isn't just a jumble of clips, which quite a few of these services are it's much more around I would call it a playlist or maybe a mixed tape, but you call it something else don't you.
mixtape is definitely the metaphor that I liked that you said, and the power of a mixtape for any listeners who remember what it is or was is I give it a compelling theme, if I'm going to make you a mix tape, I give it a theme that gets you intrigued. And then I, don't just jumble a bunch of clips of songs in there. I actually take out my pen and on the little cardboard insert, I write a little bit about each song so that, you know, What it is and how to listen to it.
And that's really important with music and we all know the order is important with music, but now that we're doing this, not just with songs, but hark is doing this with ideas and stories and perspectives and mixed tapes of stories, ideas, and perspectives are like an order of magnitude, more powerful when you. Combine them in new ways. And we have human hosts that actually introduce each clip and tie it to the larger theme.
Wow. So these are really very much being curated. And I think one of the things that I quite like about this is that it's not just grabbing stuff from your newest episode, it's grabbing stuff from the entire back catalog of a podcast. so it's really giving new life to older shows that podcasts have done.
Exactly. And, they do love using heart. We've got a really beautiful creator platform that allows them to curate new clips as they make new episodes. But one of the real powers of it for them is helping their current listeners and new listeners dive into the archive and explore it. And it can be really overwhelming, So Reid Hoffman of masters of scale, He used to start every show saying, listeners, please tweet me a moment from masters of scale that changed your mind about something.
And now he's organized six different hark lists. One is the art of the pivot. Another is understanding revenue, et cetera. Alan Alda has done how to be a better listener and wonders of the animal kingdom. So it isn't just that they're picking their best moments. They're actually able to organize their archive. And one of the folks from Monaco said, we really love how our back issues of Monaco magazines look, and hark will allow us to make our audio back issues of monocle 24. Beautiful too.
so it's cool. That's quite a thing. And in terms of the podcasters who are in there there's opportunities in terms of revenue and sponsorship, isn't it?
Yes. So what we're doing is bringing on a lot of brands who haven't been able to. Participate in podcasting or a chosen not to So brands, big aspirational brands like a Starbucks or other major brand marketers who you don't hear advertising podcasts. And that's partly because they worry about that kind of dynamic insertion and programmatic, where they don't know what conversation they're interrupting in a sense.
And so what we did with Starbucks to start, and we're now bringing on a bunch of really exciting brands when Starbucks came in and started by sponsoring. Climate change and sustainability. And we created a series of Harkness for them. The first was women leading the fight against climate change. We curated clips from big podcasts, like Ted radio hour. And my favorites, small ones like Sanchi sings amplify from Mumbai who had Dr. Vandana Shiva talking about non-violent agriculture, which I love.
And, she was just astonished that. An episode, I did six months ago and here's, someone's pulled these killer three minutes. And it's gone into this beautiful heartless, which was hosted by Mave Higgins and tamale Koda. Carra from mothers of invention and promoted by Starbucks. And so she got. Money. We shared that revenue with all of those podcasters, but she got the cross-pollination.
It was almost like she was on a podcast network with Ted radio hour and a bunch of other folks that weren't in her world. And they were promoting each other, including the guests like Jamie Margolin. and then the third thing was just that halo of being part of this sort of super group that Starbucks had convened.
So if I'm a podcaster and I'm keen to get involved with this, is there a way that I can get my show in front of your humans? Yes.
So you go to hark audio Ford slash podcaster or hark audio, and just hit the podcast thing. You can claim your show. There you'll get access to the Hart creator platform that lets you curate clips. organize them into hark lists and. Our humans will contact your humans.
So what sort of podcasts are you looking for? That's the
beauty of podcasting, right? there is no answer to that question. We are not taking a slice. I think we are certainly looking for ones that lend themselves to that clip. That will be a way in for them to discover that. But that doesn't just mean it's Conan, O'Brien talking to Lin Manuel Miranda about under pressure, It could also be, series on the NBA and on the premier league. And we'll be launching series on books and music, et cetera.
So you could be doing very current things and be using hark, and we'll be featuring that. NBA weekly on hark, curates the best discussions about what's happening at basketball around the Pato sphere each week. And that's something that you really can't get anywhere else. So I don't want you to, just to think it's Storytelling moments from
your back catalog. So the hark audio app is available on both iOS and on Android, hooray for including Android. That's only 80% of the world. So it's very nice to see you'll find [email protected] and that's where you'll find more details, if you would like to be involved as a podcaster and Don time and tide wait for no man. that's probably us in terms of time, but thank you so much for spending time with us today. Thank you. It's great to be here, Don McKinnon from hark audio.
What was nice is that when I went to have a play with it I discovered that hardcore audio is only available in the U S typically I've been given special access, which is always nice, but they are actually making sure that a hark is available across the world. if not by now, then very shortly. so really nice idea. I think of actually helping people find new shows that they otherwise don't know about. And I loved his idea of talking about them as mixed tapes. So a smart thing.
My only comment when I listened to that interview was time. Time is the challenge. again, how do you go back? I've got over 150 podcast interviews. I, how would I go back the time just to find those clips to listen to it? that's my biggest challenge, right?
I guess so. And I think maybe that's the benefit of having human beings there who would actually be able to go, you know what? These guests are interesting. I'll go and flip some portions from individual shows. But I like the idea of basically using some of your old shows to get your listeners to your new shows. I think that's a, a smart plan. So that was interesting to chat with Donny he was testing his microphone by reciting Chaucer. So it was clearly a very educated man.
Hence why I ended with a Chaucer quote. I don't know if you spotted that I'm not educated, which I furiously Googled it. It was talking to, so there we go. Now, have you noticed my smart shirt?
I have obviously not grateful to podcasting, but yes, I
have. Yes, it's a very smart shirt. It's the shirt that I wear at conferences. it's a pod news branded shirt, and the reason why I'm wearing it is that one of the things that I am doing in the next few weeks is hosting a panel session at the Napes content cast virtual conference.
and the reason why I am wearing it today is that's when we recorded the panel session earlier on it's a panel all around augumented experiences beyond audio, fascinating panel with some really good people on including the [email protected], which is nice. so the idea is when you listen to a podcast, there's things to keep your eyes and fingers occupied. If you want, as well as your ears enter.
Is a company that I've followed for a while, which does exactly that they're based out of London co-founder and Blake is the company's new CEO
entail is a podcast platform and app that uses artificial intelligence to deliver a more interactive podcast listening experience and to help people find. And discover podcasts in a different
way. Okay. So that's entail E N T a L E. What sort of interactivity do people get when they're listening to a podcast? through the entail app.
So when we started about three and a half years ago, we would work directly with podcasters and publishers, and we had this lovely backend interface and people would upload their audio. And from there they could add pictures, links to more information maps, quotes, and they would publish that to the app.
and so people could, if they're listening to their true crime podcasts, they could see behind the scenes images, if it was a makeup influencer, talking about each product and could find the link to go and buy the lipstick. We did a lot of granted content. So brands were able to have their assets alongside. And you can add whatever you wanted to add in. And people loved it. And we actually had great engagement rates because a lot of people, when we first started would say, but it's a podcast.
It's going to be on my phone while I'm driving. I'm not going to look at my screen. Now. I said, no, people are looking at their screen. People are clicking and engaging, but our massive challenge was well, how do you get that experience to scale to every podcast? And so about a year and a bit ago, we built some algorithms in house that started to do that all automatically. And so they're able to currently our algorithms work on written episode descriptions.
So we detect stuff within a written description, and then we pull back a person or a place. and then our next iteration on that is to take the full transcription of an episode and do the same.
And you've even won an award for this artificial intelligence as well.
We are award-winning we're twice. Award-winning actually. So last week we went. a Cognex award for best AI product in entertainment. And then two years ago we won a Webby award for best visual design. So you get the best visual design and you get the best AI,
but it's a fantastic thing. So in terms of this, does any podcast appear in your app then? Or are they only specific podcasts that have chosen to be part of this app? what's the thinking there? So any
podcasts that's available on RSS fee? So obviously we don't pick up anything that is exclusive, but anything that we can catch via the feed, we
can do it too. Ah, so you can do it. do podcasters need to opt into this sort of thing or you
don't need to opt into it? It happens automatically. And as I said, we have lots of podcasts is asking how they can better make their version work better. And it's all in how you write your episode description currently. So if you have links in your description as well, we'd pull those sooner in a kind of interactive way through
the player. So what do you say when people turn around and they say I listened in the car or the phone's in my pocket and never have a look at it. Actually. You've done quite a lot of research around how people are actually interacting with the screen and things like that. So we
tend to appeal to gen setters who are much more fixed to their phones. and they just naturally they're the top generation, each generation, they are on their phones, even when they're walking and doing whatever. That really appeals to them. People who are driving. it applies much more to people in the states. It's much more of a driving culture, out there. And, but we find that people come back after it.
So once you've listened and you've had your hands free, you can then come back and say what was that book? What was the, on the other? And you can go and interact with it. but what's really important. And something that we've been developing recently is If we've detected something in the podcast, we can actually use that as a starting point, then find other podcasts talking about that thing. So that content doesn't just serve as a way to interact with what you're hearing.
You can actually afterwards say I love that person. They were interviewing and you swipe on that person and it shows you other podcasts that have that person in it. So it's a sort of discovery tool as well as being able to, interact with what you're
hearing. And so what's the long-term goal here is entail wanting to be the next apple or Spotify, or are you actually building some great tech that large broadcasters or large podcast companies like Spotify or indeed apple could actually put into their own apps. What are you you an SDK company really? or are you they're trying to build an amazing app? We think
we felt the best. But we're also quite realistic at building a B2C business in this current climate is challenging when you're not huge, like Spotify and apple. we have a dedicated audience that's growing and they actually contribute to our AI because they can add and they can correct stuff.
So they're very important, but actually the bigger play here is the technology that we've built behind the scenes, because not only can it apply to podcasts and radio, but it can apply to any spoken word audio. So I don't mean to talk about, the platform of the moment clubhouse, but for example, a platform like clubhouse, where discovery is still really challenging. You can see a world where actually this technology can help to allow users to better navigate what's being spoken about. so that's
our big ambition. that's really interesting. So it would work on live audio as well as on demand audio. Maybe in the future. and maybe you could use that for, clubhouse or, an app that people are still using. so that's really cool. So from a podcast is point of view. if they want to have a play with this, then they'll find the entail app in the apple app
store. It's just an iOS at the minute, but it's available. It's in the app store.
Worldwide. yes. Who would have thought that Facebook, that will be an amazing thing. so it's available worldwide on iOS and chances are your podcast will be in there already, but is there a claiming process to get a little bit closer
in a claiming process yet? but that is something that we are looking at as the transcription piece comes in. They'll probably be the opportunity to do that. the other feature worth mentioning that we recently just launched is something called collections, which is a way for people to be able to add episodes, show snippets of shows and the extra content to a playlist that they can then share.
And obviously for us, the idea of being able to save the links to the content is really important because if you're listening, we've actually got a collection of Jay Reyna's out to lunch podcast, all the restaurants that he's been to. There will Sage in a collection. And if you're then going around London and you're like I'm back on the restaurants now, where am I going? I can use this collection at entail to find where I'm going to go, but I can't quite decide.
And is that again, AI, or is there a bit of human interaction involved in building those sorts of things built
by humans? So they can be built by anyone so anyone can download the app and then start building their own collections. but obviously the content generated that you can then save is driven by the AI.
that sounds really cool. it's worthwhile having a play I might even get out the iOS device that I have in the drawer and. Give it another go. And I should also say thank you so much for supporting last year you supported the bugle, which is one of my favorite podcasts. So thank you for supporting that. That was a wonderful thing. Hannah Blake, thank you so much for your time.
Thank you very much, James, more artificial intelligence helping a more augumented experience for podcasts listening, Sam.
it's a nice juxtapose between Hannah and Don one's human curated and ones I actually
created. I'm glad you spotted that. Yes, indeed.
Which will you think we now.
I have a feeling that actually both has opportunities. using AI Google has been using it for a long time of grabbing the topics that you're talking about and making those available in their app. And entail is going one step further and grabbing, images and all kinds of other things and links to more information. So I think that there's definitely something there. I am a fan of being able to overwrite those with humans, if you've got the time that's always a good plan.
but Intel has been going for a number of years now and this very nice tech, I think, in terms of that.
Great. In other news fuse box and embedded player for podcast website is adding episode level images. Wasn't this something you wanted to do technically last week?
so there's episode level images in apple podcasts, which I'm still trying to find someone who will help me with, if you know how to use that using a command line, then that will be really cool. I've got them appearing in MPS three files, just not in a C files and they should. and I still don't quite understand what it is that I'm doing wrong because they show up in apple music, but not in apple podcasts.
So anyway this is actually the episode level images from the RSS feed, which frankly apple should be supporting. Anyway and indeed Google should be supporting cause Google don't either. Amazon does. but fuse box has added that. So fusebox is a very smart, embedded player that pat Flynn and various other podcast are behind what it also does, which I thought was interesting. Here's that fuse boxes had an upgrade.
So now the only time that it loads audio into the web page is when a listener hits the play button, which I thought was the rules. Anyway, I thought the IAB rules were such that if you preloaded the audio, then that was a very bad thing. So I'm surprised that fuse boxes gone along for so long without doing that. But the good news is that they're doing that now. So I suppose there is something. Okay.
Now other people doing stuff, podcast addict now supports the alternative enclosure tag. A podcast addict has also integrated privacy information for podcasts. So these are the additional tags from podcast index tutor. Oh, what does it mean though? explain what those two things are doing
for us, James. So the alternate enclosure tag, which has a 2.0 namespace tag allows you to basically say I spend a lot on my data and I would like for example, this podcast, but in a low bit rate. Version. So I pay less for data. And the amazing thing is if you listened to the pod news podcast, not pod, but pod news through the podcast addict app, it will, if you ask it to automatically download as a very low bit rate 12 kilobits per second Opus file, which will automatically download and play.
And it sounds a bit like am radio, but it sounds okay. You can still understand it. so it's really nice to see that working. what they've also done is they've added the privacy information for podcasts, which isn't a podcast, a 2.0 tag, but it's the type of thing that Marco almond has already done in overcast.
that pod news dance on our podcast pages to basically give information around whether or not you'll hear dynamically inserted ads and whether or not somebody is tracking you and all of that kind of information it's using the same open data, actually that pod news does, which is great. good to see podcast addicts continue to pile more features into their app. It's an app that I think Xavia gets very upset when I call it slightly ugly, but it is slightly ugly. it could do with a good graphic.
Designer, he says, have you seen any of my websites recently? but it's still great app and I have a play with it every so often. and it's always good to see how well it's being worked on. So well done Xavier for doing that.
Now the other bit of news is radio line. The French audio app has done a deal with an in-car app store to make podcasts available in car. Is that really
big news? it could be I wonder whether the company is called radio lean because it is based in France. what the company that it's working with basically does is that they make app stores for cars. You will never have heard of, the company is called for ride-share app toyed. they give their app store to car companies like Volkswagen and Volkswagen called their app store VW play. And that's basically this particular app store. It just happens to be rather better branded by the Germans.
and it'll be nice to see podcasts available in car, through the radio line or radio lean app it's used by 3 million cars worldwide. So if we can get another 3 million people listening to podcasts on the go great. Okay.
why you wouldn't use CarPlay or Android auto? I don't
know. I would agree. I would completely agree.
okay. W th the missing Facebook podcasts any sight or sound of them yet? James, have you found one in the wild.
No, they haven't let it be used for people like us. but the good thing that Facebook is doing is they're making a new podcast. I think it's made by the Facebook tech labs or something it's called boss to the future. and it has a logo that looks just like back to the future and I'm sure is a completely legal copy of that. It's produced by the Facebook reality labs.
And he's relatively amusing is yes, it's available on Facebook itself, as long as you're in the U S and Europe, the latest Facebook app and Facebook I've actually turned it on for you because apparently it's not even turned on for everybody in the U S yet, or, for everybody else it's on Buzzsprout, which they're using as a podcast hosts all the best people use Buzzsprout I think you'll find this Amusing.
I think that actually the press release for this new podcast actually had a Buzzsprout embedded player in it because they couldn't even link to Facebook. which I think says quite a lot about how Facebook's podcast player is going at the moment, but never fear because Facebook haven't given up with new and interesting ideas. They are developing a new thing, Sam, they are just getting the patent for it. Now it's an augmented reality hat. so there we go.
I think we'll all be wearing that in the future.
I think it was even worse, James, as a baseball cap.
It was, it's a baseball cap with this kind of really big screen that goes over your nose. It's the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen, but anyway, I'm sure they
know what they're doing that James and I initially had the same thoughts here, but then I imagined somebody at a baseball match in America or a football match in America with their baseball cap on and a little visor dropping down while they're watching the match. And they're getting augmented reality data. So I could see it working for certain use cases where you clip it underneath the peak of the baseball cap and drop it down when you need it.
who's to say it's a better way than all of us having to wear glasses because not all of us.
great. yes. I can't think of anything. I would least like to wear than an augmented or mentored reality hat, but there we go. Maybe it's just a us thing who knows. what's been happening for you
now. I've got to go, I've got to do two parts and I need to record a little bit. but before we go on Jane, the other thing that I found out about Facebook's lovely invisible podcasting apps is it only allows one RSS feed. So if you've got a podcast with multiple, or if you have multiple podcasts you can't put those into Facebook, you'd have to create a separate page for each of your
podcasts. Wow. Okay. Maybe there is a product in something which you basically say, Hey, here's a bunch of RSS feeds, make me one Uber RSS feed. And so that you can then import it into into Facebook. Maybe that's. go on then just in Jackson, code that one up. and do that live on Twitter, Y over not so what's happening for you in Portland this week, Sam? I've got my
tickets to go to the British podcast awards, which is run by Matt Deegan. It's in Brockwell parking London. It'll be on July the 10th between two o'clock and 5:00 PM. it's a COVID safe event. I'm looking forward to being there, trying to meet up with a few people. tickets are still available. So if you go to the podcast British podcast awards website, you'll be able to get them. very
nice. Sadly, you can't join us, James can't. I was invited and I was invited by their PR team and I replied and I said, yes, small problem. it's that problem of being 10,000 miles away, the other side of the world and not being able to get out, but anyway, so yes, east, you got an invite. don't, you know who I am and and you're also playing on your show and you're also playing around with a new podcast app as well. Aren't
you? Dave Jones ping me and said, would I like to try this new podcast app from a company called fountain.fm, the developers, Oscar Mary. So next week on potluck, I'll let you know a
little bit more about it. Excellent. at least you got it.
You don't have an iOS phone. That's
why? Oh there is that. I've got an iPod touch though. there we go. And I was on the apple insider podcast or I will be on Monday. I recorded that yesterday. I was quite polite about apple. You'll be amazed to find out. And I know that the folks at apple have a listen to this particular podcast. you'll be amazed to find out how positive I am that comes out early next week. from the apple insider folk.
And I'm also on a bunch of other podcasts as well this week, including podcast essentials, which is from San cartel in Melbourne talking about the future of podcasting. And that's it for this week, come back to Portland. Next time you can follow us in your podcast app or we're at www dot Podland dot news on the web. And
if you have any comments or questions, please tweet us at potluck news. If you'd like to be a guest on the show, or you think we've got a product and we should be talking about
do let us know. Okay. Yes. And send us invites too. And if you want daily news, you should get pod news, the newsletters free APOD news.net. The podcast is in your podcast app. That's where you'll find the links for all the stories we've mentioned this week. Our music is from ignite jingles. We are hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout and by riverside.fm, which I notice this afternoon for me.
Has had a little bit of a tweak and things are in different places and it's all looking a little bit smarter. that's happened in the last 12 hours. It's always nice to see a product which is still being worked on and working really
well.
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