0:00

It's Friday , the 9th of June 2023

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.

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The last word in podcasting news

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. This is the Pod News

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Weekly Review with James Cridland

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and Sam Sethi .

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I'm James Cridland , the editor of Pod News

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in Smokey , canada .

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And I'm Sam Sethi , the CEO of Pod Pound

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in sunny .

0:20

London In the chapters . today , spotify

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cuts another 200 jobs . maybe

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an end to exclusives too , is Tucker

0:26

Carlson's first show on Twitter , a

0:29

podcast . What's new in

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Apple's podcast app coming to

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iOS 17 and Acast's

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PodChaser launches Collections

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Plus using AI And

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also .

0:41

Hi , I'm Michael Devachan . I'm the editor of programming

0:43

for New York Times Audio

0:45

, which is a new app from

0:47

the World's Paper of Record , and it's a new

0:50

daily front page of audio

0:52

. I'll be talking about that later .

0:55

This is Bradley Davis here with PodChaser , and

0:57

I'll be on later to talk about our new service

0:59

, Collections Plus .

1:00

Hey , I'm Josh Adley , the managing director of Listen

1:02

, and I'll be back on the show later to talk about

1:04

our recent deal with PodX . Hi , this is .

1:06

Staffan Rossell , I'm the CEO of

1:08

PodX and I will be back

1:11

later to talk about our investment

1:13

in Listen .

1:14

They will . This podcast is sponsored and hosted

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by Buzzsprout . Last week , 3,445

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people started a podcast with Buzzsprout

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. Podcast hosting made easy with

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powerful tools and remarkable customer

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support , and now AI to help you publish

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your show And we're brought to you

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with Pod News Live , where podcasting connects

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, in Manchester on June the 13th

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. You can get your tickets now at podnewslinkcom

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slash Manchester .

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Pod News Live Live Where the podcast

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industry connects . Get

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your tickets now at podnewsnet

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slash , live From your daily

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newsletter , the Pod News Weekly

1:52

Review .

1:54

Let's start off with Story 1 . Spotify

1:56

is to lay off 2% of its workforce

1:59

, mainly from podcast groups . That

2:01

doesn't sound good , james . Spotify

2:03

is to cut 200 jobs from its podcasting

2:06

division . These are substantial cuts

2:08

, certainly affecting podcast

2:11

and gimlet , and this is on

2:13

top of the 600 jobs they did

2:15

in January , which they axed . This

2:18

doesn't sound good , james . Tell me more .

2:20

No , it doesn't sound good And I think particularly the

2:22

jobs that they axed back at the beginning

2:25

of the year were all over Spotify

2:27

And you know that was

2:29

a big cut . These jobs

2:32

200 jobs are just

2:34

from the podcasting division . Now I asked

2:36

Spotify how many staff work

2:38

in podcasting in Spotify

2:40

and they gave me a very mealy-mouthed

2:43

answer which was basically we can't tell you , but

2:46

there aren't that many people

2:49

who work in podcasting

2:51

in Spotify . If you take

2:53

a quick look , gimlet has around 125

2:56

employees , podcast has about 40

2:58

, the ringer about 120 . So

3:01

you're not talking about an awful lot

3:03

of people here . So cutting

3:05

200 jobs from that is a

3:07

big cut . So I'm not necessarily

3:10

sure that it's been reported

3:12

by most people , but , as you know , it's

3:14

only just another 2% . It's a big

3:16

cut of their podcasting people

3:18

, parkasting , gimlet being merged

3:21

as Spotify Studios , which you can kind

3:23

of understand . I don't know whether

3:25

that's just an internal plan

3:27

or whether they are going to get rid of the podcasting

3:30

gimlet brands altogether

3:32

, the ringer continuing as

3:34

a separate brand , and obviously this

3:37

is , you know , four years since Spotify

3:40

started really acquiring

3:42

podcasts in a big , big way .

3:45

Yeah , i mean it does make a lot of sense . I

3:47

mean , eventually , unless those brands were

3:49

going to be , you know , like Wondry standalone

3:51

, well-known and kept as a

3:53

separate entity , merging them

3:55

a bit like they did with Anker recently . I

3:58

think it makes a lot of sense . Bloomberg

4:00

were also reporting that something

4:02

odd is happening with Spotify . The

4:05

exclusive strategy seems to be

4:07

unbundling itself , but they've

4:09

now announced a certain exclusive

4:11

podcast that they had , and how can

4:13

it be available everywhere ?

4:15

Well , yes , this is something that Bloomberg are

4:17

very keen on trying to spin

4:19

as a story . I'm not too convinced

4:21

, to be frank , that there

4:24

is a particular story here . What

4:26

Spotify have always done is they've always had

4:29

some shows which are exclusive

4:31

, some shows which are windowed

4:33

, so they start as exclusives

4:35

and then they're opened up . The Obama's

4:37

stuff was exactly like that

4:39

. It sounds as if Emma Chamberlain's

4:42

show Anything Goes , which was

4:44

exclusive , is now not

4:47

exclusive and available on other platforms

4:49

as well . We hear that there

4:51

are talks going on about armchair expert

4:54

going non-exclusive

4:56

relatively soon . Now , that's

4:58

interesting , because when armchair expert

5:00

moved to Spotify to become

5:02

a Spotify exclusive , dax

5:05

Shepard was saying that it was a three-year

5:07

deal . It's only been two

5:09

years , so therefore , it

5:11

does sound as if they're sort of opening that up . But

5:16

, yes , i'm not necessarily

5:19

convinced that there is

5:21

a big change of strategy

5:23

here , and the company has actually

5:26

said to Bloomberg well

5:28

, we've experimented with windowing shows

5:31

for several years and

5:33

this experimentation about both wide

5:35

and windowing content will continue . So

5:38

not too short . I think one

5:40

of the interesting things is the new Louis Thru

5:42

show , which appears to be being promoted

5:44

all over the place , and

5:47

that is a exclusive

5:49

at the moment , and the question , i suppose

5:51

, is what happens when it's made available

5:53

wider .

5:54

Well , the question is will it be made wider

5:57

? I listened to the first episode . If you're

5:59

a Louis Thru fan , it's total Louis Thru . I'm

6:02

not a massive fan , to be honest , so

6:04

I find it quite boring . But there you

6:06

go .

6:09

Yeah , i mean , yeah , he does a good act is

6:12

Louis Thru And you know , and

6:14

it kind of makes sense . He's sort

6:16

of well known in the US as well as the UK , so

6:18

you've got that sort of tick from the

6:20

Spotify side there as well . So

6:24

, yeah , you know , i mean it was a very

6:26

big signing for

6:28

Spotify at the end of last year . But of course

6:30

, you know , we shouldn't forget the Spotify earns money

6:32

either way . They earn money on

6:35

exclusive content because that drives

6:38

more signups to the

6:40

podcast app . Some people are writing

6:42

that it's a paywall . It's

6:45

not a paywall . You can get in for free

6:47

, it's a registration wall . But

6:49

of course , they also earn money from

6:51

advertising on other platforms

6:53

too , through their ownership of the megaphone

6:55

platform and the Spotify audience network

6:57

. So actually , from that point of view , they

7:00

still win , regardless of whether or not it's

7:02

an exclusive or not , which is why I'm

7:05

kind of there going . Is this really

7:08

so much of an exciting story as Bloomberg

7:10

seemed to think it is , when

7:13

actually there are really good reasons why

7:15

Spotify might want to expand

7:18

some of their shows across everywhere because

7:20

they get more advertising revenue that

7:22

way ?

7:23

So maybe it's not as big a faster clock

7:25

as we think . There you go .

7:29

Maybe not . I mean Spotify . you know it's

7:32

interesting times for them

7:34

, of course , but yeah , i'm not sure

7:36

that there's a big change in terms of exclusives

7:38

, but I do understand that other people might

7:40

want to talk that up . There

7:42

was a peculiar thing , though . in their

7:45

release , sahar

7:47

El-Habashi , who is the

7:49

head of Spotify Podcast Business that's

7:52

another person using charge of podcasting at Spotify

7:54

they ended up saying

7:56

in collaboration

7:59

with the podcasting community , we are broadening

8:01

our analytics capabilities by expanding

8:04

Spotify for podcasters . So

8:06

I thought that was really interesting . I

8:09

never heard Spotify say in collaboration

8:11

with the podcasting community in

8:13

the past , ever . So I thought , well

8:15

, okay , what's going on there ? I

8:18

asked Spotify's PR team

8:20

, and the answer that came back made

8:23

it pretty clear and obvious to me that

8:25

they didn't know what this

8:27

statement was for at

8:29

all . And , being fair

8:31

, that's probably okay , i guess

8:34

. But yeah , i'm just curious

8:37

as to what this collaboration with the

8:39

podcasting community that they've

8:41

been doing is and what these

8:43

new analytics are going to be by

8:46

expanding Spotify for podcasters

8:48

. What's that ? What's going on there

8:50

then ? So if

8:52

I do ever get more clarity

8:54

on that , then you know , i'll

8:56

obviously be able to get that into an

8:59

exhibition of the newsletter

9:01

.

9:02

but yeah not quite sure what's going on there Well

9:04

talking of analytics , a friend

9:06

of the show , john Spurlock , released some stats

9:09

for OP3 . One

9:11

of those was Spotify , for podcasters

9:13

saw a slight fall in market share

9:15

for new episodes in May . I

9:18

mean 0.6% , but

9:20

they remained the market leader by some strong

9:22

margin . So again , did you have

9:24

a look at those numbers ? anything that stood

9:27

out for you ?

9:28

Yeah , so these are numbers . They're not actually anything

9:31

to do with OP3 , but they're numbers to do with

9:33

all new podcast episodes And so

9:35

John does a very good job of basically

9:37

going through every single new podcast

9:39

episode which has been made

9:42

available in any given month and working out

9:44

where they're hosted . And yeah

9:46

, spotify for podcasters actually saw

9:48

tremendous growth from January onwards

9:51

, basically as soon as it changed

9:53

its name away from Anker , moved

9:55

to the Spotify brand , then

9:58

it's been increasing and increasing and increasing

10:00

. It's gone back a little bit this

10:03

month , but not too much

10:05

change there , but

10:09

you know . So maybe they were right in junking

10:11

the Anker name and putting everything into

10:15

Spotify .

10:16

Yeah , well , anker had a few other problems . this month

10:18

, 14,000 podcasters have had

10:20

their Anker usernames , emails

10:23

and passwords posted on a Russian language

10:25

black hat hacking website

10:27

. So I think your advice , james , was change

10:29

those passwords .

10:31

Yes , change those passwords . And if you're not if

10:33

you're , you know , using the same password

10:35

across multiple sites then that would

10:37

be a mistake . I would

10:39

recommend Bitwarden . It's very good and it's free

10:41

And , yes , and you should

10:43

be using that as I do . But

10:46

yeah , that's slightly worrying

10:48

. So you know you can still log in . My understanding

10:50

is using those Anker usernames and passwords

10:53

. So

10:56

yeah , if you're an Anker , you know , podcaster

10:58

, make sure that you change your password as

11:00

soon as you can . Now

11:06

, moving on to the next question So

11:09

yeah , if you're an Anker

11:11

, you know , podcaster , make

11:14

sure that you change your

11:16

password as soon as you can .

11:19

Now moving on . Story this week

11:21

in pod news was that Acast's

11:24

pod chaser , the company they bought a

11:26

little while back , has released a new

11:28

thing called AI Collections

11:30

Plus . James

11:33

, tell me more . What are AI Collections

11:35

Plus ?

11:37

They are using the data that they know

11:39

about podcasts to be able to

11:41

give advertisers a better

11:44

list of shows that they

11:46

miss , that they a

11:49

better list of shows that they may wish

11:51

to advertise on . So an

11:53

Acast has been using this internally for

11:55

a little bit and they've opened it up to others

11:57

now . So you know

11:59

, it used to be that you would just choose shows

12:01

based on you know names or

12:03

categories , but now they're

12:05

going through all of the topics that are being talked about

12:08

and actually helping people

12:10

understand what shows

12:12

to be advertising on , which sounds

12:14

like a bright and clever idea .

12:17

Yeah well , luckily I thought I'd reach

12:19

out to the CEO Bradley from Pod

12:22

Chaser and find out from

12:24

the horse's mouth what they're doing .

12:26

Pod Chaser is a giant

12:28

database . We VURSELS

12:30

is sort of the intelligence engine behind the podcast

12:33

industry , aggregating data from

12:35

all kinds of different sources into one

12:37

singular product and or API

12:39

.

12:40

Okay , and for

12:42

most people , they just create an account . They get

12:44

access to their podcasts , favorites , keyword

12:47

tracking I think there's a

12:49

paid version as well . So you

12:51

get a free version , a paid version , and

12:53

if you're a developer , there's an API as well

12:55

, isn't there ?

12:56

Exactly . We have a free version that's generally

12:59

for podcasters or listeners

13:01

. Podcasters can come in , add their credits

13:03

, add data , add categories . Then

13:05

we have a paid version used by marketers

13:08

and agencies and all sorts

13:10

of different organizations to access

13:12

additional insights about podcasts

13:14

.

13:15

So now you've added a new service

13:17

called Collections . Tell me more about Collections

13:20

.

13:20

Yeah , so Pod Chaser was acquired

13:23

last year by this cool Swedish

13:25

company called Acast , and

13:27

as part of that , acast's sort

13:29

of bread and butter is the ad

13:31

buyer's journey , and so a

13:33

cool thing since being owned

13:35

by Acast is applying

13:38

our core competencies around

13:40

data to that buyer journey , and

13:43

so the first project and undertaking

13:45

we've done is Collections Collections

13:48

Plus is what we're calling it , and

13:50

at its most basic form , we're

13:52

taking a group of shows

13:54

that may seem very similar or may seem very

13:56

dissimilar , and grouping them together

13:58

based on a ton of different data

14:00

attributes and utilizing AI

14:03

and machine learning to do this

14:05

much more efficiently and less

14:07

manual than before . What's cool

14:09

about this is based on

14:11

a buyer's intent or what they're trying to go after

14:13

. We can sprinkle some of this data

14:16

dust on this large group

14:18

of shows and immediately

14:20

spit out a group of highly selected

14:22

niche shows for that intent .

14:24

So let's take a couple of steps back . One

14:26

of the things you're doing is using OpenAI's

14:29

whisper to do transcription of

14:31

the podcast first , to aggregate

14:34

all the data together . Is that step one ?

14:36

Yeah , transcriptions are certainly handy

14:38

to add to the pile or

14:40

the stack of data that we're analyzing , so

14:42

we utilize the whisper technology

14:45

, which is an extremely efficient and

14:47

cost efficient way to transcribe

14:49

large amounts of content .

14:51

And then , once you've got all that data together , you said

14:53

you use machine learning to find keywords

14:55

and stuff . The good example I've heard

14:57

before use is that you might have a

14:59

podcast that traditionally would

15:01

be , let's say , about cars , but suddenly there's

15:03

an element within that podcast

15:06

that talks about a secondary subject that wouldn't

15:08

normally get an advertiser to be aware

15:10

of it . Is that the sort of finding

15:13

the needle in the haystack that you're working on ?

15:16

Yeah , there's sort of content matching , which

15:18

I think traditionally

15:20

has been oh , this has forward

15:22

as a keyword and this show has forward as a keyword

15:25

. Those shows must be similar . So

15:27

what AI allows us to do is

15:29

make predictions and inferences about

15:32

keywords that may seem completely dissimilar

15:34

to the eye , especially if

15:36

you're looking at , you know millions or billions of different

15:38

keywords . So that's the sort

15:40

of content matching . There's also audience inference

15:42

. So , based on the

15:44

tone or specific

15:47

words or conversations in a podcast

15:49

, ai can pick up on . well

15:51

, based on how this podcast is talking

15:53

, we can predict what sort of audience this

15:56

is going after , and so we try to kind of

15:58

blend those two things together to create

16:00

links between podcasts .

16:02

So I go into Podchaser . What

16:05

level of account do I have to have ?

16:07

So this first is going to be available just through

16:09

the API .

16:10

Okay , yeah , so as a developer

16:13

, then I get access to it , so I can then

16:15

go out and say these are the keywords

16:17

or the key inferences from these podcasts

16:19

or a group . How would I , as a developer

16:21

, want to use it ? I mean , is it for

16:23

advertising companies to use it ? Who's the

16:25

audience ?

16:26

Yeah , so the user in this case would be a

16:28

publisher or a marketplace such

16:31

as a cast . So anyone who

16:33

is over a ton of different shows

16:35

is willing to group and package those shows together

16:37

to get in front of an advertiser . That's the use

16:39

case , Okay .

16:41

One of the functions I would love

16:43

, i guess , for me is to go

16:45

in as a user , because one of the things

16:47

about discovery of podcasts people have been talking

16:50

about at Aerieon this is in Blatt and the guys

16:52

at Tink Media about cross

16:54

fertilizing podcasts Again , this would

16:56

be a great way for me to go and say , oh okay , who

16:58

else should a pod news weekly go and talk

17:00

to ? Oh , look , here's eight or nine podcasts . Then

17:03

I can go and create an ad that will get ingested

17:05

into those . Is that something you

17:07

plan to bring ? So we have

17:09

a version of this currently .

17:11

It's a little bit different and help functions And I think

17:13

that the technology from this will inform

17:16

how we evolve what we call similar

17:18

podcasts . So this is a free function

17:20

. It's on the website . If you go to any podcast , there's a

17:22

tab called similar podcasts And

17:25

that uses things like credits , keyword

17:27

, inferences and some

17:29

other signals to basically link the

17:31

shows together . You also use like the network , the

17:33

category , etc . So similar

17:35

podcasts is available in the product And it's also

17:37

one of our endpoints for our API

17:40

. That is going to be a

17:42

bit different because it's more about the listener

17:44

perspective of if you like

17:46

this show , you'll like this one , which is as

17:49

similar but different mix

17:51

of signals than an advertiser

17:53

buying a cluster of groups or podcasts

17:55

.

17:56

Yeah , i guess that I'm thinking of a middle

17:58

ground , because I'm a host of an independent

18:01

podcast . I'm not really looking to buy

18:03

a campaign or anything , but I'm looking

18:05

to find other podcasts that I

18:08

couldn't find myself through natural

18:10

discovery . That might , through

18:12

this new collections plus system , allow

18:14

me to go and find without having

18:16

the API access . So okay

18:18

, there's the 10 podcasts in my cluster

18:21

that I think . Actually that's my collection

18:23

of comparative podcasts . I'm

18:25

going to cross fertilize ads on them .

18:28

Cross promotion is a very typical use

18:30

case for our pro product . I think

18:32

what you'll see is within the actual product

18:34

, kind of the ability

18:36

to input

18:38

what it is you want . So say , i'm

18:41

wanting a group of shows like mine for cross

18:43

promo , or a group of shows like mine

18:45

for listeners and one for advertisers

18:47

, and kind of let you play with the ingredients

18:50

to spit out a collection . That's

18:52

a good idea , yeah .

18:53

Cool Availability now .

18:57

Yeah , so this is available for any

18:59

marketplace or publisher . now , like

19:01

I said , it'd be through our API

19:03

And then this will trickle

19:05

down into the pro product over

19:07

the next few months .

19:09

Cool , and if I want to go and get it , where would

19:11

I go now ? What's URL ?

19:13

The easiest way is to email me or

19:16

call Bradley at podchasercom

19:18

or call podchasercom and start

19:21

a conversation . We're really

19:23

excited about the early results that

19:25

we've seen with ACAST and think this will

19:27

be a huge deal for the industry

19:29

.

19:29

Bradley Davis from Podchaser

19:32

Good to hear

19:34

them . Another

19:36

great tool to help sell

19:38

more advertising , which is a good thing .

19:41

Going on now . yes , i did

19:43

give YouTube a little bit of a kicking last

19:45

week and it seems

19:47

that it doesn't really matter what I say , james , because

19:50

YouTube is now the most utilized podcast

19:52

listening platform . I put that in quotes

19:55

in the US , 29%

19:57

say it's the platform they use . They're the most

19:59

, followed by Spotify at 17%

20:02

and Apple at 16% . This

20:04

data came from Cumulus Media

20:06

and Signal Hill Insights . How

20:09

have they come about to make , i

20:11

guess , youtube the number one podcasting

20:14

platform according to this ?

20:16

Yes , Signal Hill Insights are a good company

20:19

. They do some very good work

20:21

in terms of that . They use a

20:23

company called Maru Matchbox , which

20:26

talks to 608 podcast

20:29

listeners in April

20:31

, and they , of course , ask them all kinds

20:34

of entertaining questions , including which

20:36

platform do you use the most

20:38

for podcasting ? YouTube

20:41

was the number one platform in

20:43

terms of that . That's

20:45

great . I

20:48

don't see that in the figures and

20:51

I don't think any podcaster sees that

20:53

in the figures . There's

20:56

that big disconnect between what people

20:58

are telling surveys like this

21:00

and what is actually happening . I'm

21:04

not quite sure what

21:06

is actually going on . They

21:09

also say that about

21:12

10% of the weekly podcast

21:14

audience only

21:16

consume podcasts via watching

21:19

. Therefore , that would

21:24

lend me to believe that there is YouTube

21:26

stuff going on , but

21:28

actually still there's an awful lot of listening

21:31

on other platforms as well . I

21:33

have to say I do find it a little bit weird that

21:36

you've got Cumulus Media promoting

21:38

the heck out of this report

21:41

and basically saying how wonderful YouTube is

21:43

as a platform , When

21:46

Cumulus Media don't sell ads on

21:48

the YouTube platform because they can't they're

21:51

not allowed to . Cumulus Media

21:53

have nothing

21:55

to gain if YouTube ends

21:57

up being the number one podcast

22:00

platform . Why Cumulus

22:02

Media ? I know Pierre Bouvard very

22:04

well . He's a good bloke , but why

22:06

he's there promoting the heck out of YouTube

22:09

is anybody's guess really .

22:12

I don't know any of these people , so I

22:14

defer to the goat here in this occasion

22:16

. The goat

22:19

, but moving on swiftly , according

22:22

to another part of the report

22:24

, 50%

22:27

of YouTube creators now earn more than

22:29

$500 per month . But

22:32

is that true , james ? I

22:34

mean , that seems quite high 50%

22:37

.

22:37

It does seem really high . Yeah , this is from a different

22:39

study . It

22:44

was a study that was put

22:46

together , reported on in Search

22:49

Engine Land , which is a very well-known

22:52

and very good site . Again

22:54

, it's

22:57

a piece of data from Aspire

23:00

, which is an influencer marketing platform

23:03

, which is always fun

23:05

, but , yes , that seems

23:07

very high to me

23:09

. But it also says that 40%

23:12

of Instagram creators and 36%

23:14

of TikTok creators earn more than $500

23:18

per month from

23:20

the platform as

23:23

well . So who knows what's going on there ? But

23:25

only if YouTube like you , because

23:28

a well-known YouTuber , mike Figurito

23:31

he , has posted that YouTube

23:33

has basically turned off his channel's

23:35

monetization and

23:38

he couldn't get any answers from

23:40

the folks at YouTube at all . So

23:42

again , youtube

23:45

absolutely fine as long as they like you , and

23:47

if they don't like you , then

23:50

they get rid of you and you don't really

23:52

have any right of appeal

23:54

. You don't have necessarily

23:58

any way of getting in touch with any of these

24:00

folks . So again , todd

24:02

Cochran is right Ownyourowncom

24:04

and don't rely on other people .

24:07

I think he's got to update that one . James , i think it's

24:09

got to be OwnYourRSS Yes well

24:12

, yes . OwnYourRSS

24:14

.

24:14

I think that's an important

24:16

part of it as well . So , yeah

24:19

, so interesting seeing that There's

24:21

been other research , the Gen

24:23

Z podcast listener report unveiled

24:26

by SXM Media , which

24:29

again looks at podcast listeners , but

24:31

this time only podcast listeners age

24:33

between 13 and 24 , which

24:35

apparently is what Americans mean by Gen

24:37

Z . According to the study

24:40

which Edison Research put together who

24:42

I'm having dinner with tonight 47%

24:45

say that they've listened to podcasts in the last

24:47

month of Gen Z . They're more

24:49

diverse than US monthly podcast listeners

24:51

as a whole , and they discover shows

24:53

by using YouTube and TikTok

24:55

and Instagram . So again

24:58

, all of the research saying that YouTube is a massive

25:00

, massive thing . And in

25:02

the podcast business journal

25:05

tomorrow you'll find an

25:07

interview with Kevin Jones from Bluewire And

25:09

again , kevin is very , very excited

25:11

about what YouTube can offer

25:13

him and the creators

25:16

who use Bluewire . So

25:18

there's clearly something there .

25:20

Yeah , i mean , as much as I

25:22

might dislike the way YouTube's done

25:24

things at certain events recently and

25:27

hijacking the word podcast seems to be top

25:29

of my list I don't think people

25:32

really care , and that's the problem , i think

25:34

. If I look at my children , they

25:36

jump between those three platforms

25:39

YouTube , tiktok and Instagram and whether

25:41

they're consuming the content through audio

25:43

or through video , they

25:46

don't seem to care . Often when they're eating

25:48

dinner or cooking dinner , they'll

25:50

have it on in the background , so they're not even

25:52

watching it half the time . So , yeah , they

25:54

don't .

25:55

Yeah , well , because it's because it's audio

25:57

first . I think that's the benefit of a podcast

26:00

, or regardless of what platform

26:02

a podcast is on , who knows . But

26:05

still , there you go . And I

26:08

mean , interestingly , given that YouTube

26:10

is supposed to be the one that everybody's

26:12

using these days , downloads from Apple

26:15

podcasts are on an all time high

26:17

, according to Buzzsprout stats for May

26:19

. Buzzsprout stats are so

26:21

, so useful in terms of this . What

26:23

I think is going on in terms of those

26:26

stats is that Apple

26:28

is now , of course , correctly identifying

26:30

more of its traffic with

26:32

the recent updates to the

26:34

Apple podcasts app . So

26:37

, instead of calling themselves Apple call media , they

26:39

call themselves Apple podcasts , and so , therefore

26:41

, that's where those numbers

26:44

are going . If you look at Apple call media

26:46

numbers , those are decreasing , so

26:48

there's clearly good news there in terms

26:50

of Apple .

26:51

So , talking about Apple , james , did you watch the

26:53

WWDC , the World Wide Developer

26:56

Conference ?

26:57

I didn't know . I saw some of

27:00

the coverage from it . You're a big fan

27:02

of those stupid goggles , aren't you ?

27:03

I'm not as fan of the goggles . I'm a

27:05

fan of the augmented reality . I'm a

27:08

firm believer that the goggles will eventually

27:10

come down to a form , fact that we'll all

27:12

end up wearing . I mean , if I think

27:14

of the original phone

27:17

with a battery that you'd have to carry around

27:19

and it was like a brick . Do you

27:21

remember , dom ?

27:21

Jolly

27:24

, my first job was carrying

27:26

the mobile phone for a news

27:28

reporter . Oh my God , yes

27:31

, and it was literally there . I was

27:33

fresh out of school and

27:35

I was carrying this great big briefcase thing

27:38

for a news

27:40

reporter who , yeah , so

27:42

yes , i know exactly what you mean . So there's

27:44

a big amount of change there And I think

27:47

augmented reality is going to be . It's

27:49

going to be interesting . But , yeah , i'm not quite

27:51

sure that that great big you know

27:53

that great big visor is quite

27:56

ready at prime time , but it's one of those things that's really

27:58

difficult to demo as well

28:00

. You can't really see what other

28:03

people are actually seeing within

28:06

their weird visor thing .

28:08

So , yeah , Now I thought 5,000 patents

28:10

, and if it does 80%

28:12

of what they presented , I'm seriously

28:14

interested . I fundamentally believe

28:16

I'm living in a pre AR world and I just

28:18

want to get to it because I think it is going

28:20

to be that interesting . Anyway , we're not here

28:23

to talk about that . There was

28:25

, thankfully , one mention

28:27

, for one second , of the word

28:29

podcast totally tangentially

28:31

, by the way , in relation to the Apple

28:33

Watch , which I thought was very weird

28:35

. But that's the only mention of podcasting .

28:38

Nice . Well , there you go , but there

28:41

is some change , though , and some quite welcome

28:43

change for the Apple Podcasts

28:45

app , because that is to get

28:47

a new look and new features in

28:49

iOS 17, . As

28:52

that comes out , it's

28:54

got a nice new player which looks

28:56

very spic and span I

28:59

believe that the Australian word would be schmick So

29:03

it looks very smart indeed . It's

29:05

got some quite nice chapter

29:07

stuff , but the exciting thing

29:09

is , episode artwork is

29:12

now being supported . Now , when I spoke to

29:14

Apple last year and asked them about episode

29:16

artwork , they said , oh no , we support

29:18

that , that's all supported

29:20

. And I said , no , you don't . Anyway

29:22

, they now do support episode

29:24

artwork , which is well they will , which

29:26

is excellent Well , they will . I

29:29

think that's all very exciting And , given

29:31

that episode artwork is supported

29:33

by Spotify and Pocketcast , i think it's all a good

29:35

thing .

29:37

No , i think it's great . I'll let

29:39

you know when I get it working , but

29:41

the chapters work really well And

29:44

that's an improvement on I still think

29:46

they're too subtle . The

29:49

place where they are still is a little

29:51

bit subtle for non techies

29:54

or geeks . But anyway , i'm sure people will eventually

29:56

find it . And then

29:59

the other thing that they've added , and

30:01

I didn't quite understand it , but it sounds cool . If

30:03

you subscribe to apps like the Economist

30:05

or Calm , you'll get access to premium

30:08

audio from those apps automatically . I

30:11

wasn't sure what they were trying to do there

30:13

. Linking apps with audio

30:15

is what it sounds like , but what's the strategy here

30:17

, james ?

30:17

Yeah , well , i think that they're linking they're

30:20

linking subscriptions

30:22

to that you

30:24

do through the Apple App Store

30:26

, if they're

30:29

linking those with additional

30:31

stuff that you can get hold of within the Apple Podcasts

30:34

app , and so , basically

30:36

, they're trying to stop , it

30:39

would seem , people like

30:41

the Economist or Calm building their own

30:43

players and instead just

30:46

, you know , just play all of your audio

30:48

in the Apple Podcasts app , which

30:50

is , i think , quite a bright plan

30:53

really . So that's happening alongside

30:56

Apple Music's radio shows

30:58

, which will now be available on

31:00

demand within Apple Podcasts . So

31:03

that's what happened to Beats , one

31:05

which , if you remember , was their original online

31:08

radio station that Zane Lowe

31:11

went to work for And it was all supposed to be the

31:13

future of radio and it died a

31:15

complete death . But those shows

31:17

are now going to be available in there

31:20

as well . And , yeah , and

31:22

we can play around with those

31:24

new versions of

31:26

Apple Podcasts . If you live

31:29

dangerously and you want to download the

31:31

Developer Beta , then you can go ahead and do that

31:33

.

31:34

Well , anyone can now do that . So previously

31:37

you had to have a Developer account

31:39

and had to pay you $99 . And

31:42

Apple have made it available free

31:44

for everyone now to go and get the

31:46

latest Mac OS and iOS

31:49

downloads .

31:49

You think you've found the

31:52

Apple engineer working on the Apple Podcasts

31:54

app .

31:55

The one engineer that exists

31:57

is named Stephen Peterson . He's here

31:59

in London and he put out . another thing

32:01

I've been working on this year is the

32:04

new player in the podcast app , and

32:06

it's been super fun getting to expand my

32:08

work beyond music this year . I thought , oh my

32:10

God , i found him . Clicked on his profile

32:12

. Of course he's a member of the Men in Black . Nothing

32:15

, not a word about working

32:17

for Apple in his profile . No

32:19

links , no , nothing . So , yes , of course not . So

32:22

he's probably been sacked for revealing

32:24

that he's worked on the product already . Well

32:27

done , stephen .

32:28

Yes , well done , stephen . It looks a lot

32:30

nicer now . I made friends

32:32

with Apple by saying

32:36

that I really like some of the

32:39

design nods that they've got from

32:41

Android in the latest app

32:44

, and of course , that went down , as you would expect

32:46

. Yes , but still , there you go

32:49

. Other things that happened at

32:51

WWDC . There's PWAs

32:54

. What's a PWAs ? Sam ?

32:56

So PWAs are progressive

32:58

web apps , so things like Podverse

33:01

, podfriend and Podfantral

33:03

PWAs . What's really

33:06

cool in this build Mac OS

33:08

14 , is you can now

33:10

, through Safari , click on

33:12

the file menu and click

33:14

Add to Desktop . When you do

33:17

that , it basically says like

33:19

Save into your home page , it allows

33:21

it and adds it to the tray at the bottom . And

33:23

if you support in your progressive

33:26

web app things like push notifications

33:28

, then it acts like a

33:30

full blown native app

33:33

where you get the red dot badges appear . So

33:35

you've got first hand

33:37

, completely a quick way to

33:40

create an app

33:42

on the user's desktop . And if

33:44

you use something called a manifest , which

33:46

is just a bit of code that goes at the top of

33:48

your website , you can detect the

33:50

operating system and you can then

33:52

prompt the user to click a single

33:54

button which creates that app

33:57

on their user desktop

33:59

and also on the tray as well

34:01

.

34:01

Very nice . It's been available in Google Chrome for

34:03

the last year and a half , so it's always nice to

34:06

see Apple finally sticking

34:08

to something that Google have been doing for

34:10

the last number of years

34:12

. But , yes , i

34:15

think having progressive

34:18

web apps within both

34:21

Mac OS and also

34:23

iOS is going to be a very good

34:25

thing .

34:26

Let's move on Now . our wonderful host

34:28

, buzz Sprout , came out with

34:30

a new feature service last week that we

34:32

talked about with Albin Brook , there head of marketing

34:34

, called Cohost , which is AI

34:36

, generated transcriptions

34:39

, titles , show notes and

34:42

chapter markers . James , we used

34:44

it for the show last week . Actually

34:46

, you used it because obviously you

34:49

uploaded the audio and then pressed the button

34:51

. So what do you think of

34:53

it , having had your first play ?

34:55

I have to say I was really impressed

34:57

by it . It

35:02

gave us , i think , five choices

35:04

of title of

35:07

the show and they were all much

35:09

longer than I would normally go for , but

35:11

that's the way of these

35:14

things . But yeah , they

35:16

were really good . And then

35:18

the show notes that it came up

35:20

with very successfully

35:23

worked out what was in that particular

35:25

show and wrote a very nice piece

35:27

about it . So , yeah , you can well

35:29

see that for a busy

35:31

audio creator

35:34

, you could well see that this

35:36

sort of tool would actually save

35:39

quite a lot of time . So , yeah , i thought

35:41

it was a really smart piece

35:44

of AI .

35:46

One of the things that was missing and I think

35:48

it's coming , according to Albin is

35:51

speaker labels don't

35:53

have names of the hosts and

35:56

they doesn't seem to be a way to put

35:58

that in , but I think that's coming

36:01

. And given that we just said

36:03

, apple is going to support chapter art

36:05

and we do put in our

36:07

chapter art pretty much every week with links , it

36:11

would be great as a version two

36:13

feature for this Cohost

36:15

function to use I don't know again

36:17

AI to do

36:19

generated chapter

36:21

art .

36:22

That would be fun , wouldn't it ? There you go . If

36:24

the good folks at Buzz Brown are

36:27

listening , they can stick that down

36:29

on their feature request list .

36:31

Now here's another story we talked

36:33

about . Listen , which is a London production

36:36

company , got acquired by

36:38

PodEx . We've

36:40

had on in the past Derby Doris

36:42

from Listen and we've had Stefan

36:45

Rossel , the CEO , on , but

36:48

again , james , this is a

36:50

really interesting acquisition PodEx

36:52

has made .

36:52

Yeah , it's a really big deal . PodEx already

36:55

own a similar company called Goldhawk

36:57

Productions , but Goldhawk Productions way

36:59

, way smaller . The difference

37:02

, i think , between podcast content

37:05

creators in the UK and elsewhere

37:08

is because of the way that

37:10

the BBC works . quite a lot of

37:12

these audio production companies are

37:14

making radio shows as well , and

37:17

that's what Listen does . That's what

37:19

Goldhawk Productions do

37:21

as well . So

37:24

they've ended up buying a company

37:26

which has guaranteed work

37:28

in terms of what it's guaranteed as you can do

37:30

in terms of their work with the

37:33

BBC as well , of course , as

37:35

the podcast stuff that they're doing

37:38

as well . So I thought it was a really interesting

37:40

purchase . No terms were

37:42

given , but it is probably

37:44

one of the biggest purchases in the

37:46

UK , alongside Sony buying

37:48

something else which is a very

37:50

similar company . a couple

37:53

of years ago , you managed to catch up

37:55

with Josh from Listen and

37:57

Stefan from PodEx

37:59

to ask them a little bit more

38:01

about the deal .

38:02

PodEx is an international group

38:05

investing in the

38:07

best podcast creators

38:09

in the world , with a focus

38:11

on Europe , the Latin

38:13

America , and our mission

38:15

, if you like , is to put

38:17

podcast creators in the driver's

38:19

seat , opposed to platforms

38:22

and sales houses running this business . We

38:24

think that and we strongly believe

38:26

that the best content will always be

38:28

the core of this industry

38:31

. So that's how we think and that's

38:33

what we are trying to do .

38:35

Josh , hey , how are you Now ? we briefly

38:37

saw you running around like a mad thing at

38:39

the podcast show . Now we

38:42

had Darby Dourish on the show a couple of weeks

38:44

ago . But just remind everyone

38:46

who or what is Listen . Let's

38:48

start there .

38:50

Sure So Listen is an audio

38:52

and podcast production agency . We

38:54

produce premium shows and we have a really diverse

38:56

slate of shows . We produce a ton of

38:58

radio strands , predominantly for the BBC

39:01

, as well as lots and lots of podcasts , as

39:03

well as other types of work like strategy

39:05

consultancy and creative work within

39:07

podcasting .

39:08

How long has Listen been going and

39:10

when did you start it ?

39:12

So Listen was actually born out of another business

39:14

, and we did that four years ago . I was with that

39:17

prior business called Wise Bidder . I've been with the

39:19

whole company for seven years . So four years ago

39:21

we launched Listen and here we are today

39:23

.

39:24

Now , the reason why you're both here talking about ambition

39:26

is that PODX is now

39:28

invested into Listen . Can

39:31

you , Stefan , explain what the deal is

39:33

? I mean , how is the deal structured

39:35

? You're not a traditional VC . It's

39:38

not like a pure money investment

39:40

with an equity release . So

39:43

how is this deal structured

39:45

?

39:46

It's structured very much the same as

39:48

most of our deals . We like to build

39:50

a group where everyone should be

39:52

incentivized to work together

39:54

and the sum of the parts

39:56

should be better than the individual

39:59

parts . So we want to be majority

40:01

shareholder of the companies that we invest

40:03

in And that's the basic

40:05

principle and opposed to more

40:08

financial investors . We are media

40:10

people Everyone who works here have

40:12

a background in media radio

40:14

, television , podcasting And

40:17

we like to think that we can actually

40:19

help to develop the businesses that we

40:21

invest in . So we are not buying

40:23

and selling companies , We are only buying

40:25

and we are helping the management

40:28

to create something better and also to create

40:30

synergies and cooperation and

40:33

format exploitation and exploitation

40:36

between the entities .

40:37

Josh , you tapped who on the shoulder

40:40

and said , hey , do we have a little chat ?

40:42

Go on , stefan , i'll let you jump in .

40:43

Yeah , because I think actually we should

40:45

admit if that's something that you admit

40:48

. But I think we tapped listen

40:50

on the shoulder first because

40:52

we saw this very interesting business

40:54

and we wanted to meet the people

40:57

behind it and the people leading it and the people

40:59

owning it and talk about

41:01

the possible journey together

41:03

.

41:03

Okay . So when you got that

41:05

tap on the shoulder , Josh , what do you think

41:07

? Clearly it was out the blue . I'm sure you weren't actively

41:10

hunting for some acquisitions

41:12

.

41:13

Yeah , i think it's been little bits of interest

41:15

in the business over the years because we're in a really

41:17

exciting industry And so when

41:20

PODX came I was really excited

41:22

by the conversation because it felt like when

41:24

they launched they made a really big splash of

41:26

what they were looking to do And it felt like , in

41:29

the space that we're in , it was someone that actively

41:31

wanted to invest in the sector And I'm always

41:33

interested in people that kind of have a long term

41:35

view of our sector and want to be ambitious with it

41:37

. So we were really open to that

41:39

conversation . But ultimately you've kind of got

41:41

to work with people that you think that you can get

41:43

along with and share your ambitions . So it's

41:46

not an overnight process . You have multiple meetings , you

41:48

have lots of conversations , you talk about business models

41:50

, you talk about creative , and

41:53

those happen successfully over a period of

41:55

months And here we are . So you

41:57

know it was always nice to be tapped on the shoulder and the

41:59

conversations were really positive .

42:01

Just to understand how long ago was that

42:03

tap . Are we talking a few weeks ago

42:05

, a few months ago , or are we talking last year

42:07

?

42:09

We're talking last year .

42:11

Okay , all right . Josh

42:13

was like should I say anything ?

42:17

I think I , just like Josh said

42:19

, i think it's very important that both

42:21

sides should really feel comfortable

42:23

going into a joint venture

42:26

like this . And I think the time

42:28

factor , you can probably reduce it

42:30

but you cannot take it away , because it

42:32

takes time to get to know people , to

42:35

understand the business or

42:37

both businesses , for the other side to build

42:39

trust and to sort

42:41

of agree what we could do together and

42:43

to have that plan and agree

42:45

on it . It's not something that you do in weeks

42:47

.

42:48

Josh , what does it mean now going forward

42:50

for Listener ? What if anything

42:52

has changed in your planning ? or is it business

42:55

as usual ?

42:57

I think a lot of aspects of what we do will remain business

42:59

as usual . The products of their strategy is

43:01

to buy into businesses that they trust

43:03

the people leading those businesses , and what's

43:05

great is we've got an active majority

43:08

shareholder that we can have conversations with

43:10

and we will have lots of conversations with

43:12

, but ultimately we're trusted to run the business

43:14

. So the vast majority of what we do

43:16

will be business as usual and is in the

43:18

plan . We've had plans for the next few years and those

43:20

plans are in place and they constantly evolve . That's

43:23

how we stay ahead . So , in terms

43:25

of what's next , you're going to see some that's

43:27

more of the same . You're going to see some new stuff that

43:29

was always going to be there , and then , through this acquisition

43:31

, it'll open up opportunities that perhaps

43:34

may not have been there otherwise .

43:35

Stefan does this mean ? let's say

43:37

, listener got plans . They can accelerate

43:40

those plans , but what if they need to come back

43:42

to you for further funding ? Is

43:44

that also open to them ?

43:46

It is . We will continue to

43:49

invest in great podcasting

43:51

ideas and projects , and

43:53

they could be in a company that

43:55

we already invested in or

43:57

it could be in a new company that we will

44:00

invest in . So we want to

44:02

expand and we want to help

44:04

this industry to expand and

44:06

grow by making great

44:08

ideas come true .

44:10

So , absolutely , Josh , does

44:12

this mean you'll go international now ?

44:15

Yeah , we've already been working in an international

44:17

way . We've had clients and commissioners outside

44:20

the UK for quite some time . We're continuing

44:22

to grow . That spent some time in the US earlier

44:24

this year and we've already come back and started

44:26

working for some clients out there . So I think

44:28

that's always been on the plan and certainly

44:30

going forward . I'm excited by talking to the other

44:32

businesses within the group , excited

44:34

by talking to people within PodEx and figuring

44:37

out between us what we can do to supercharge what

44:39

we're already doing . I think the key thing for

44:41

us at Listen and anyone that works here will sense

44:43

a level of energy and ambition within the

44:45

business and we've constantly evolved it . So we

44:47

were Wisebudder and we made that move from Buddha

44:49

to Listen and that was a really active , big change

44:52

From there . We then spent the first few

44:54

years really building a stable business and then we've

44:56

evolved it and we've evolved it again and I think the thing

44:58

that's the past year has shown for Listen

45:00

is everyone internally senses

45:02

that we're constantly looking to move . You cannot

45:05

stand still , and I know that's quite a traditional

45:07

thing for anyone to say in media businesses

45:09

, but I feel like podcasting is true

45:11

more than any other industry and so

45:14

that's why we're constantly looking for other areas , and

45:16

so this opportunity is great . Let's take

45:18

this . Let's see what else that's going to open up . We

45:20

were already thinking that way , though .

45:22

Yeah , i agree . Anyone who stands still

45:24

is actually moving backwards . The last

45:26

thing what are you working on these days ? What's

45:28

in the pipeline ? What can we expect from Listen

45:30

?

45:31

There's a lot and a lot of varied content , which kind of

45:33

comes back to the mission behind Listen

45:36

, which is diversity of our output . So

45:38

we're working on a follow-up to 28

45:40

Ish Days Later , which was a huge show that

45:42

we did for BBC Radio 4 and BBC Sounds . We've

45:44

got the follow-up to that confirmed which is

45:46

in production , which will probably launch early 2024

45:49

, which is going to be a landmark show for them . We've

45:51

got a few really exciting always-on

45:54

entertainment shows where we're building podcast brands

45:56

so that's video as well as audio that are going

45:58

to have a huge presence across TikTok , youtube

46:01

, instagram , not just in audio feeds

46:03

. We're doing a load of really exciting creatives

46:05

and strategy work for some huge organisations

46:07

globally at the moment , so working out

46:09

what the role podcasting can play is for them

46:12

and we're kind of seeing how that can evolve . So

46:14

there's loads to come , lots to announce and

46:16

a few more really exciting shows for big brands as well

46:18

.

46:19

Well , gentlemen , it just leaves me to say congratulations

46:21

to you both .

46:23

Thank you very much , sam .

46:25

Thanks very much . Appreciate it . Josh

46:27

Adley and Stafan Rossell

46:30

from Listen and PodEx

46:32

, which , of course , is now one of the same and

46:35

, yeah , really interesting hearing

46:38

about their plans .

46:39

Yeah both gentlemen will

46:41

kindly be at our London event

46:44

on the 27th of September

46:46

, so we'll hear more from them . Excellent

46:48

, we will indeed . I did try and find out how much they

46:51

got for the deal . You know , lip's

46:53

worth the ill . So I started doing things like Have

46:56

you bought a Ferrari ? Have you bought an Aston Martin

46:58

? Just to see what Josh's eyes did . There

47:01

was a few smiles there , that's all I'll say

47:03

. There was a few smiles .

47:08

Very nice , very nice , but that's a fantastic

47:10

organization , so I'm really pleased for that .

47:12

Now . We also talked a little

47:14

while back about the New York Times launching

47:17

their audio app . James

47:19

, tell me more about this new app .

47:20

Yeah , so it's called NYT Audio . It

47:23

includes an exclusive show called The Headlines

47:25

, which is basically

47:28

a nice

47:30

way to keep up to date with the latest

47:33

news . It's got a few

47:35

other things that you would expect being a subscriber-only

47:38

app . It has the DisAmerican

47:40

Life a day early , for example . It's

47:43

got a range of narrated articles from the

47:45

New York Times and other organizations

47:48

. iOS only for now , for some weird

47:50

reason , but you

47:53

, of course , sam Sethi . you know

47:55

everybody in this industry and

47:57

you're a big friend of

48:00

someone who works there .

48:02

Yeah Well , michael Devichand , who's the editor

48:04

of programming Yes , i have interviewed

48:06

him before for my previous podcast

48:08

, sam Talks Technology . He's a lovely , lovely

48:11

guy . I've been trying to get him on to the

48:13

show for months and

48:15

obviously he couldn't until they released

48:18

the product . So , yeah , i reached out to Michael and

48:20

I said hey , let's have a chat about this new app

48:22

of yours .

48:23

So New York Times Audio . Let me tell

48:25

you what my journey has been with them . So

48:27

, as you say , two years ago I

48:29

was very privileged to

48:31

be asked to join The Times and

48:34

I moved from London to New York , and

48:36

everyone who listens to this podcast

48:38

will know that The Times , even

48:40

two years ago , had already was well underway

48:43

with its journey in audio . In 2017

48:45

, it launched The Daily , which , it's

48:48

no exaggeration to say , i think changed

48:50

the podcast world , really

48:52

invented a new form of audio journalism

48:54

And beyond that , before

48:57

I joined , that sort

48:59

of one story a day idea was

49:01

already being built upon into a much

49:03

more well-rounded audio

49:07

report is the way to phrase

49:09

it . So you can engage with

49:11

The Times in audio in lots of different ways

49:13

. For example , new podcast title Run Up or

49:15

Hard Fork Ezra Klein Show

49:17

. But also The Times had acquired

49:19

Autumn , which brings

49:21

long form magazine journalism to Life in

49:23

O and Serial and

49:26

the big one yes , and the partnership with

49:28

the American Life . So that was the kind of amazing

49:30

mix that I was privileged to get to come

49:32

and kind of engage with , and what

49:34

we have been doing is developing

49:36

a way to experience that audio

49:39

journalism and The

49:41

Times is journalism , bringing more of it into audio

49:43

in a new way , and that is what just

49:45

launched . So it's a new app , new

49:48

York Times Audio . It's available to time

49:50

subscribers at the moment on iOS . And

49:53

really , what is it ? It is a daily

49:56

front page told in audio . It's

49:58

curated and produced by Times editors

50:01

, it's powered by the New York Times' newsroom

50:03

And what's in it is a roster

50:05

of exclusive shows and output , a

50:07

daily playlist , which is really

50:10

your distilled way of engaging

50:12

with a wide range of New York Times journalism

50:14

quickly , ideas , culture

50:16

and essential listens . And

50:19

that's the kind of weekday experience . And then at the weekend

50:21

it kicks off with a new episode of This American

50:24

Life , available a day

50:26

early . In the app And infused

50:28

through the experience are new

50:31

audio formats , like narrated articles

50:33

, which turn New York Times text

50:36

articles into a new audio format , but

50:38

also articles audio

50:41

from a number of other publishers like Rolling Stone

50:44

, new York Magazine and

50:46

so forth .

50:47

Yeah , it looks very comprehensive . You've

50:49

got an interesting space , though , that

50:52

you're coming into . Obviously , apple

50:54

has its own news . You've got the BBC

50:56

as well , which is part of your heritage . One

50:59

of the questions , though , that I was curious you've made

51:01

this only available to existing subscribers

51:04

. Was that a premeditated decision

51:06

to keep it tight to begin

51:08

with And maybe you'll go open later , or

51:10

is it only ever going to be available to

51:13

subscribers ? Is this the way that you

51:15

want to monetize content through the New

51:17

York Times ?

51:18

It's a good question And what I'd say

51:20

is certainly so much of our audio

51:23

journalism is part of the podcasting

51:25

ecosystem and will continue to be

51:27

, and

51:29

there's plenty of development there and we're growing

51:31

there , and it's really important . This

51:33

app is a paid for service

51:36

. It's available , it's actually included

51:39

in your existing

51:41

Times subscription , whether

51:43

you're a news subscriber or what we call an

51:45

all access subscriber . And

51:47

what I'd say is , as well as being

51:49

a really established leader in audio

51:51

journalism , the New York Times

51:53

also led the world and the journalism

51:56

industry in developing a

51:58

direct paying consumer relationship

52:00

And , simply

52:02

, we believe our journalism and

52:04

these products are worth paying for when

52:07

they're envisioned together , and

52:09

that's what New York Times audio is

52:11

. It adds incredible extra

52:14

dimension and value to your New York Times

52:16

bundle And the New York Times bundle

52:18

. Honestly , sincerely

52:20

, i would say it's already quite a wonderful

52:22

thing , right ? Not only does it provide

52:25

really like world class

52:28

journalism that is not available elsewhere

52:30

, but also games , cooking

52:32

, but the athletic and

52:34

now a new listening experience

52:37

that really adds value to your life

52:39

as a Times subscriber . So the

52:41

way we see this is that we're creating more

52:44

and more reasons why being in that relationship

52:46

with us is better than

52:48

not being .

52:49

Yeah , one of the statements that came out was

52:51

New York Times wants every second of

52:53

your day , and I think Alex Rayner

52:55

was a Times head of audio product said that

52:58

the New York Times is aiming for

53:00

what they call yellow up for grabs blocks

53:02

of times , jim , commute

53:05

, commute home and chores . So

53:07

is this a 24 seven type

53:09

platform that you're trying to aim for ?

53:13

I think what we have done

53:15

and what we do in programming

53:17

the app is we're

53:20

aware that and I don't need to tell you this , sam , because

53:22

you like listening to stuff , right , yes

53:24

, but smart , curious people are

53:27

engaged with us and

53:29

want to be engaged with us through

53:32

the day , through the week , and

53:34

it was just a fantastic

53:36

way to to consume

53:39

ideas , to consume stories , to consume

53:41

journalism , and so what we

53:43

are doing is finding ways to

53:46

make more and more of work

53:49

of our journalists available

53:51

in ways that suit the

53:53

moment of your day , that suit , you

53:55

know , the frames of mind that you might go through through

53:57

the day , And we think that's

53:59

a service And , as I said , it's

54:02

, to use the jargon , at a subscriber benefit

54:04

and can be a wonderful service

54:06

for people and increase your level

54:08

of access to what

54:10

is some of

54:12

the most important journalism that you know you can

54:14

consume , that helps you understand the world .

54:18

So one question that James will ask

54:20

, i know because he has an Android phone when

54:22

will it be on Android ?

54:24

Back on again , sam , in the future

54:26

, and we can have that chat . At the moment , we

54:28

are focusing on the iOS audience And

54:31

, to be honest , that is where we normally launch

54:33

a new product . So that's where we are at the moment .

54:36

Now , given one of your backgrounds

54:38

, i remember when we last spoke at

54:41

the BBC . You were producing an AI bot

54:43

for the BBC . Can you remind me what

54:45

it was called ? I was searching back through my

54:47

brain .

54:48

Thank you for remembering Sam . That was

54:50

part of the BBC

54:52

sounds kind of team And we

54:55

were developing a bunch of services for smart speakers

54:58

like , for example , the interactive

55:00

audio news and the BBC sound skill . One

55:03

of the things that we piloted in beta was

55:05

a BBC

55:07

synthetic voice called Bebe

55:09

.

55:11

Right , that was it . Now , given your

55:13

history and your knowledge and background

55:15

, and with the AI glory

55:18

days that we're having again , is there

55:20

something that we can expect you might

55:22

be bringing to the New York Times ? Is AI

55:25

going to be helping you recommend articles

55:27

, summarising stuff for me , and

55:29

are you going to be doing any of that sort

55:31

of thing with the New York Times

55:34

?

55:35

To be honest , the audio app is really

55:38

about bringing audio

55:40

content from the report

55:43

, hearing the voices of our

55:45

reporters , And that's really

55:47

the focus . So my

55:49

background is not yes

55:51

, that was a great thing to work on , But I

55:54

was an audio . We used

55:56

to call it radio . I was a radio producer

55:58

for many years at the BBC , doing

56:00

sort of serious journalism , And I think the

56:03

privilege of this job is really much more

56:05

about finding ways

56:07

to bring so much of the Times'

56:09

daily report is available in audio

56:11

, but actually still a lot of it is not

56:13

, And so much of it has great audio storytelling

56:16

potential . So what I'm thinking

56:18

about is about how to bring in more

56:21

and more of that more tones , more range

56:23

and create this distilled New

56:25

York Times experience each day .

56:28

Okay , it's very specifically

56:30

called the New York Times Audio app

56:33

. Obviously , we're now living

56:35

in a TikTok generation . Youtube

56:37

is certainly becoming more interested

56:39

in podcasting . Whether they're successful

56:42

or not , the jury's out still

56:44

, but again , i can

56:46

imagine I'm on the subway in New

56:48

York . I'm with my New York Times app . Maybe

56:50

I get the app out . Would

56:53

video be the next evolution

56:55

of this , bringing some audio content

56:57

into video content so I can watch as

56:59

well as listen ?

57:01

I love the fact that you keep on asking me about

57:03

the far future . We just launched

57:05

it , But I think I can say definitively , our focus

57:07

for right now is very much on

57:10

the ear and the listening . I

57:12

think this is something that , in some

57:15

ways , we haven't really seen . I don't

57:17

think there's any kind of direct comparator to

57:19

what we're doing here . Like where

57:21

this comes from . A

57:23

little bit is a strong signal that I think

57:26

I'll say I personally can relate

57:28

to it , and maybe you can , but I think a

57:30

lot of people out there feel

57:33

that the podcast ecosystem is

57:36

basically both wonderful but also a little overwhelming

57:38

. There's a sheer

57:40

volume

57:42

of what to listen to , and it's exploded in

57:44

recent years . You guys do the stats right

57:46

. I heard your thing about YouTube . I don't know , After

57:49

listening to that , maybe it won't be on YouTube

57:51

, but the sheer volume of what's available to it has

57:53

really kind of gone up . I think that

57:56

leaves people with a problem of deciding what's

57:58

worth listening to every day . right

58:00

, And especially for what we care about here , which

58:03

is informed people

58:05

, journalism . What do you listen

58:08

to ? New York Times audio is one answer

58:10

to that . It makes it easy for you to find something

58:12

worth listening to every day . It

58:15

is completely anchored in the world around

58:17

you . When you open it , you'll get a

58:19

sense of what's happening in the world . You get the top

58:21

stories , but you'll also discover what our

58:23

editors and that's actually

58:25

me and my team at the

58:28

times are picking to meet

58:30

the moment Tell the story of the day . It's

58:32

really like audio journalism from the ground

58:35

up . It's a front page , And that's

58:37

why people come to the New York Times in print and we hope

58:39

that you will come to us in

58:41

audio , right , It's stories

58:43

that are different every day . We change the mix

58:46

. We look at what's happening in the world . We look at what's

58:48

going on in the culture . We want

58:50

to catch you up , but we also offer

58:53

you serendipity . We want you to go deeper on certain

58:55

things . So I think the choice that we're

58:57

offering and this is where we're doubling

58:59

down , okay , This is the relentless focus

59:01

is we all go to big

59:04

platforms and you can go to big platforms

59:06

and there you will find a volume of content

59:08

and it'll be very

59:11

varied and you will have to sift through it

59:13

, Or you can come to us and

59:15

we'll create a really essential

59:17

, interesting , high-quality audio journalism

59:19

mix , And

59:21

that's what this is about .

59:23

Yeah , I mean newspapers . Traditionally , that's

59:25

what editors did They picked the best of the day

59:27

and got great writers aggregated

59:29

all together and presented that to your front door

59:31

, which is what you're doing , Correct ? I

59:34

get that . In terms of interactivity

59:36

, being a digital medium , is

59:38

there any mechanism for me to comment

59:40

feedback ? Because obviously I have

59:42

newspaper as a single , one-way

59:45

broadcast medium . Right , It's telling me , I read

59:47

it and that's it . And in the old traditional

59:49

words , you used to write a letter to the editor

59:51

and get it published . Right , We're here

59:54

in the digital world Again , not

59:56

having had the privilege of using the app yet . Is

59:59

there a mechanism for me , as the subscriber

1:00:02

, to say oh , I've just read this lovely article , Now

1:00:04

I want to comment back on it ?

1:00:05

Yeah , look , i think there's a theme in a lot of what we've been

1:00:07

chatting about . Right , we've been talking about some

1:00:09

of the stuff that I did at the BBC . You talked about video

1:00:12

and interactivity , and what

1:00:14

I'd say is that one of the great attractions of joining

1:00:16

the New York Times has been

1:00:19

that . I think you know , and , look , you say you haven't

1:00:21

got a subscription so you should have a go . But

1:00:23

even just look at it without the subscription , like the

1:00:26

world of digital media , i think

1:00:28

it's maybe 170 years old , so

1:00:30

it's a very traditional journalistic organization

1:00:33

. It's the paper of record in America

1:00:35

and , i think , the world really . However

1:00:38

, we have been very successful at putting

1:00:40

that marriage of really journalistic

1:00:42

thinking with new forms

1:00:44

of storytelling that really work for

1:00:47

the mobile or the

1:00:49

technologies that we're in right now , and

1:00:51

so you definitely you will see interactivity

1:00:54

, innovation with video , innovation

1:00:57

in storytelling , woven through the New

1:00:59

York Times report . It's not

1:01:01

like an afterthought that they do . The newspaper

1:01:03

is still very important , but it's really the digital

1:01:05

product that is , for many

1:01:07

people , the focus , and so audio

1:01:10

. I think we'll be part of that as well . We

1:01:13

have just started , but you know

1:01:15

, for example , there's the playlist features that we have

1:01:17

this daily playlist , which is really a frictionless

1:01:19

hit play Start

1:01:22

with the news and then carry

1:01:24

on through the daily , but then also an

1:01:27

app exclusive range of culture

1:01:29

shorts , picking from the

1:01:32

latest music that's out . Or this

1:01:34

morning we have this wonderful piece in

1:01:36

which two of our top theater critics

1:01:38

kind of debated what's two of the

1:01:40

biggest plays on Broadway right now , and

1:01:42

then we ended it up with another culture piece . But we

1:01:44

end up often with the narrated article , which

1:01:47

is this was profiling the Disney

1:01:49

executive who's pushing in that you know , then the

1:01:51

new live shows , right , so it's kind of going deep on that

1:01:53

, i think . Tomorrow we're featuring

1:01:56

a narrated

1:01:58

article that is to do with a piece looking

1:02:01

back at the history of wildfires So very

1:02:03

topical right here in the United States , but

1:02:05

a very deep piece of journalism which is making it into all

1:02:07

because of what we're doing . And so the

1:02:09

innovation right now is very much about understanding

1:02:11

your day , where you are , the uses

1:02:13

that you might be in , and trying to

1:02:16

provide just the perfect listen for that .

1:02:18

So one of the criticisms

1:02:21

of newspapers today is that

1:02:23

obviously they can't refresh

1:02:25

continually through the day because it's

1:02:27

printed , it's in the shop , that's it

1:02:30

. So sometimes by the time you pick the paper

1:02:32

up , the story's moved

1:02:34

on and it's pretty dead . So with

1:02:36

the app , do you reprint that

1:02:39

continuously through the day ? Is that a

1:02:42

download once and then the download again

1:02:44

, like the newspaper ? So I'm

1:02:46

just trying to understand , with you

1:02:48

being the editor of programming , do you

1:02:50

go right ? no , that story's moved on . We do

1:02:52

it . Or is it an audio fixed copy of

1:02:55

the newspaper editorial ?

1:02:58

It's a good question And I think it's probably

1:03:00

a little bit of both , in the sense that we

1:03:02

really aim to keep a fresh

1:03:04

mix each day and the principle

1:03:07

kind of refresh

1:03:09

is done for

1:03:11

the New York morning . It's actually

1:03:13

done from London , but we think

1:03:15

really about the mix that you're going to get that day . There

1:03:18

is news and there is kind of we

1:03:20

do follow the latest news . for example , in the headlines

1:03:22

this morning we had something about wildfires

1:03:25

, we had something about CNN and

1:03:27

Chris Licht and all of but it's . but as

1:03:29

well as that , i think you'll

1:03:31

probably agree , the strength of audio is often

1:03:33

that it can be a

1:03:35

journey . It can be it's . you know , there's

1:03:37

very strong storytelling here . It

1:03:40

is programmed to meet the moment of

1:03:42

the day . It's

1:03:45

not a live news app . The

1:03:48

New York Times has a live news app . This

1:03:50

is a listening app and certainly

1:03:52

includes elements of that . So , yes , of course

1:03:54

I have a news background and I'm very much

1:03:56

aware of what

1:03:58

is happening through the day , but really the mix

1:04:00

is much more like a listening menu Like , and

1:04:03

we're not just thinking about what's in the news although we

1:04:05

are thinking about that but we're also thinking about the themes

1:04:08

and the culture . We think a lot about

1:04:10

how it feels on a Friday and how it feels on a Saturday

1:04:12

, because you might feel differently

1:04:14

on a Friday and on a Saturday . So

1:04:16

we're trying to make the mix hit the moment . But , for

1:04:19

example , like , this weekend

1:04:21

is the Champions League final And

1:04:23

I think tomorrow night it's Djokovic

1:04:27

against Alka Rez in the French Open

1:04:29

. So we're quite aware of that

1:04:31

. We're working with the athletic to get some

1:04:34

special material ready for that

1:04:36

. We're not going to While

1:04:38

the game's on . You probably won't follow it through our audio

1:04:40

, but we'll certainly offer you something

1:04:43

for either the sports fan

1:04:45

or the non-sports fan to have something to listen to .

1:04:47

Yeah , you actually pre-empted one next question

1:04:50

, which is would it ever be audio

1:04:52

first rather than news first ? And what

1:04:54

I mean by that is would you commission

1:04:56

content purely for

1:04:58

the New York Times app that didn't

1:05:00

actually come or generate itself from

1:05:02

the paper ?

1:05:04

I think we're doing that now , in

1:05:07

the sense that a number of our

1:05:09

podcasts , some of the

1:05:11

stories I think we are part of

1:05:13

the New York Times And a

1:05:15

lot of what comes out of the Times newsroom

1:05:18

comes from the same journalists

1:05:20

. But the way that you experience it

1:05:22

in audio , the way you tell the story , will be different

1:05:24

. And there have been great things like I don't

1:05:26

know if you've caught the latest series of Serial

1:05:29

, but that was with Kim Barker

1:05:31

, a New York Times reporter , and

1:05:33

they told the story of

1:05:35

what was going on in this town of Laramie in

1:05:38

an original audio

1:05:40

way . It's a wonderful listen . But

1:05:42

even I think I mentioned earlier that

1:05:44

in the app this morning and this is exclusive to

1:05:46

the app there's a New York Times short . This

1:05:49

is one of the sort of new exclusive strands

1:05:51

that we've created for the app And

1:05:53

that is two of our top critics talking

1:05:55

about the theatre , but they're not reading out their pieces , they're

1:05:58

going back and forth each other . They're actually critiquing each

1:06:00

other's reviews of two of the best pieces . There's a wonderful

1:06:02

moment in this morning's where one

1:06:04

critic says to the other I can't

1:06:06

believe you didn't give that one a critic's choice , and

1:06:09

I don't know whether that's breaking the third wall

1:06:11

or the fourth wall or something , but it's something you couldn't do in

1:06:14

text or couldn't do as easily

1:06:16

in text storytelling . So it's really

1:06:18

interesting as an editor , what an

1:06:20

amazing opportunity to take the journalism

1:06:22

of the New York Times and bring it into audio , and

1:06:25

in so doing I think we do create something original

1:06:27

a lot of the time .

1:06:29

Michael Davichand . Thank you so much for your time

1:06:31

. Congratulations on the launch of the

1:06:33

app . Look forward to getting my hands

1:06:35

on it . I will go and do that very quickly

1:06:37

. Then , if somebody does want to subscribe

1:06:39

or wants to get a hold of the app , where would

1:06:42

they go ?

1:06:42

Well , at the moment , as we've discussed , it's on

1:06:44

iOS . You can go to the app store

1:06:47

, download NYT audio And

1:06:49

, as a time subscriber , you can sign in

1:06:51

there or you can get a subscription , and

1:06:54

it's certainly available in the UK and across the world

1:06:56

And it's right

1:06:58

there for you .

1:06:59

Thank you , congratulations and thanks for your time

1:07:01

.

1:07:02

Michael Davichand from the New York

1:07:04

Times , and great to have them

1:07:07

on the show . Shall we go round the world , sam

1:07:09

.

1:07:10

Yeah , where should we start ? Oh , i know , let's

1:07:12

start in Spain . Ivoex

1:07:14

has launched monetization using

1:07:16

Dynamic Advertising for its Spanish language

1:07:18

podcasters . Is

1:07:21

that Dynamic Ad Insertion ? Is that

1:07:23

what they've done now ?

1:07:24

Yeah , that's exactly it . So Dynamic

1:07:26

Ad Insertion in much the same way that other

1:07:28

podcast hosts are doing iVoex

1:07:30

or iVoex doing the same thing

1:07:33

in Spain . They're based in Barcelona

1:07:35

, where , of course , we will have

1:07:37

an event later on in the year , so

1:07:40

that's a good thing . In Africa , chirulemba

1:07:44

is to be the face of the upcoming African

1:07:46

podcasters and voice artists award

1:07:48

season . It's born in Zambiae lives

1:07:50

in South Africa these days , and

1:07:53

the awards are to be sponsored by Afri

1:07:56

Pods . So good luck if you have entered those

1:07:58

. Finland podcast

1:08:00

listening takes time away from

1:08:02

traditional media , according to a study

1:08:05

. Who'd have thought it ? Yes

1:08:07

, traditional media .

1:08:08

Is that the obvious study ? Is that the obvious

1:08:10

study ?

1:08:11

Well , this is data from Podomo

1:08:13

. It's actually from a company called Nordstat

1:08:16

, which was released by Podomo And

1:08:18

Podomo claiming in Finland 40%

1:08:21

growth in subscribers since the beginning

1:08:23

of the year . So that's pretty good . From

1:08:26

then , the Australian podcast awards have just opened

1:08:28

in Australia And finally in Vietnam

1:08:31

. Pod news this week had

1:08:34

our latest look at podcasting in the East

1:08:36

And

1:08:39

absolutely fascinating article Guangjin

1:08:41

Yeo , who has written this

1:08:44

series of articles for us . He'll

1:08:46

be speaking at Radio Days Asia in

1:08:48

Kuala Lumpur in early September . He's

1:08:52

done a really good job of going through the history

1:08:54

of how Vietnam

1:08:56

podcasting works , why

1:08:59

it's a bit different

1:09:02

in that country . It turns

1:09:04

out that because the roads are so dreadful , actually

1:09:07

there's not very much listening to podcasting

1:09:09

cars , as one example , or indeed on

1:09:11

the back of your motorbike . So

1:09:14

that's quite interesting , but it's a great , great read . So

1:09:17

if you have any interest in understanding

1:09:20

how podcasting works in Asia

1:09:22

, then you should

1:09:25

absolutely be checking out some of these articles

1:09:28

. You'll find all of those articles , including

1:09:30

the deep dive in Vietnam

1:09:33

, at podnewsnet slash

1:09:35

articles .

1:09:36

The tech stuff . Tech stuff On the Pod

1:09:38

News Weekly Review .

1:09:40

Yes , it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News

1:09:42

newsletter . Here's where we do all of the tech

1:09:45

talk . There's quite a lot of it , which

1:09:47

is exciting , But we'll go

1:09:49

through some of the new

1:09:52

things . Disco Free by Headliner

1:09:54

was launched this week . On Product Hunt

1:09:56

, which is an AI-driven podcast discovery

1:09:58

tool It's a very clever thing that basically

1:10:01

surfaces your podcasts

1:10:03

in articles that are

1:10:05

relevant to that , which is quite

1:10:08

nice . Pocket casts

1:10:10

did you have a look at their self-serve

1:10:12

ad booking system , Sam ?

1:10:14

No , no , i haven't had a look at all

1:10:16

. No , so I can pretend

1:10:18

, but the reality is no . So over to you , mate

1:10:21

.

1:10:21

Well , i tell you what . There's

1:10:23

clearly a business there , because prices

1:10:25

for you to promote

1:10:27

your podcast they

1:10:29

start at $1,700

1:10:31

in this app and they go up to $5,000

1:10:33

. So you're paying

1:10:36

anywhere between $1 and $10 per

1:10:39

tap , which sounds tremendously high to

1:10:41

me . But yeah , it's probably

1:10:43

a thing .

1:10:43

Hang on a minute . Wow , hang on

1:10:46

a minute . Those CPM rates are minty .

1:10:47

Yeah , they're mental , aren't they Absolutely mental ? I

1:10:50

couldn't possibly justify

1:10:52

running an ad

1:10:54

for this show in there . I mean , that

1:10:56

doesn't make much sense at all . But

1:10:58

yeah , i mean it's a popular app and

1:11:01

people are using it , so I suppose that they can

1:11:03

go and command those sorts of numbers

1:11:06

.

1:11:07

When you're paying $40 for the app , i suppose

1:11:09

those app prices don't matter

1:11:11

. Those app prices yeah .

1:11:13

Yes , indeed , but yeah , and it's new

1:11:16

from Pocketcast , because you used to

1:11:18

have to go through a human being to

1:11:20

book advertising , and now it's just a self-serve ad

1:11:22

booking system , which is very nice Codenamed

1:11:25

Blaze , i say

1:11:27

, because that's what the URL is blazepocketcastcom

1:11:30

, i think . So that's all very fancy

1:11:33

. They've also updated

1:11:35

their privacy policy . I couldn't really see any big

1:11:37

changes . It just looks as if they've spent

1:11:40

lots of money on lawyers for

1:11:43

a new privacy policy . The one thing

1:11:45

that I would say , though , and what I quite like

1:11:47

, is that they've made their privacy policy

1:11:49

available under Creative Commons . So

1:11:52

if you want to nick it and use

1:11:54

their privacy policy for something that you're

1:11:56

working on , then go

1:11:58

right ahead . I mean , obviously , change the information

1:12:01

, because otherwise that wouldn't be

1:12:03

your privacy policy . So go right ahead , which

1:12:06

is , i think , quite a nice plan , and

1:12:09

so Harajah Automatic for doing that

1:12:11

, and also Albi is partnering with

1:12:13

Podcast Guru to offer value-for-value

1:12:15

payments to podcasters in the Podcast

1:12:18

Guru app , which I downloaded

1:12:20

the other day and promptly uninstalled again , but

1:12:22

nevertheless had a

1:12:25

quick look at , and it's a nice app

1:12:27

, and I think their supporting

1:12:29

boosts didn't look as if they were supporting

1:12:31

streaming sets , but maybe I didn't look as

1:12:34

closely in there , as I possibly should have done

1:12:36

.

1:12:37

Now talking of value-for-value

1:12:39

. The Podcast Index 2.0

1:12:41

Phase 6 has now

1:12:43

formally closed last week . These

1:12:46

new tags that have been voted

1:12:48

in need to be formalized , but

1:12:51

some of them are very cool . We'll

1:12:53

go through a few of them . The Podcast Remote

1:12:55

Item Tag James . What is it ?

1:12:58

Yes , and , by the way , i should say that

1:13:01

the phrase was voted

1:13:03

in inverted commas . It's basically

1:13:06

enough of the community thinking that they

1:13:08

are a good idea to move them forward . So

1:13:11

that's what's really going on .

1:13:12

Daniel said yes , that's it .

1:13:14

No . Daniel says no . I think more

1:13:17

to the point , but yes , so there's no

1:13:19

actual voting going on there

1:13:21

, just in case That's

1:13:23

important to anybody

1:13:25

listening Adam Curry . So , yes , the

1:13:27

Remote Item Tag is

1:13:30

pretty cool . It allows other episodes

1:13:32

or items to be referenced , and

1:13:34

it's particularly being used around

1:13:37

the value time split . So it's being used around

1:13:39

being able to play , for example , music

1:13:42

in a podcast and knowing

1:13:44

that the

1:13:47

right people are getting paid for that music

1:13:49

. So the Remote Item is being

1:13:51

used in that And

1:13:54

that , i think , makes an awful lot of sense . I

1:13:56

think the other plans for using Remote

1:13:58

Item , bluntly , don't make an awful lot of sense . It's

1:14:00

great to see it's being used

1:14:02

in a place which does

1:14:04

make an awful lot of sense , so that is nice . The

1:14:07

other few that I'm going to mention are

1:14:09

Podroll

1:14:11

, which you and I have spoken

1:14:13

about on this very show before , which

1:14:16

is a way for us to recommend other

1:14:18

shows in a list

1:14:20

that might appear in your podcast app . The

1:14:24

Pod News Daily RSS feed supports this

1:14:26

, as I think does this one too

1:14:28

. I think the Pod News

1:14:30

Daily RSS feed supports it in

1:14:33

the new proposed way , whereas I think

1:14:35

this one I'm not sure whether it's

1:14:37

the new proposed standard or

1:14:40

whether it was the original . But anyway .

1:14:42

Yeah , i can tell you , because PodFans

1:14:45

obviously supports it as a client app And

1:14:47

yeah , so we supported both And

1:14:50

we still do . Oddly , because

1:14:52

of this show not supporting or being updated

1:14:54

, but Buzzcast updated

1:14:56

their show this week

1:14:58

, the Immortals does , so it's quite a few

1:15:00

of the early adopters who've implemented

1:15:02

it . It takes a few minutes to do And it's

1:15:05

really , really useful as a new

1:15:07

tag .

1:15:07

Yeah , so it's a good way to share

1:15:10

other shows that you should be having a listen

1:15:12

to . So you'll find that also on the

1:15:15

Pod News podcast pages as

1:15:18

well . There's something called Accept

1:15:20

Guests , which was my idea , and I think it's a bad

1:15:22

idea And I think we should take it away again

1:15:24

personally . So

1:15:26

that's always fun , and

1:15:30

there's a few more as well . Update

1:15:32

Frequency is the other one which Nathan Gathright

1:15:34

came up with , which is

1:15:36

a way for a creator to indicate when

1:15:38

episodes will be made available

1:15:41

, and that's actually a pretty good , well-specced

1:15:44

piece of

1:15:47

code there , particularly specced

1:15:49

to help . If

1:15:51

you are a fiction

1:15:53

podcaster , for example , and you're producing

1:15:56

six shows and they come out

1:15:58

on these particular dates , then you can actually

1:16:00

specify that . So it's a good

1:16:02

piece of work . So all

1:16:05

of these go forward and

1:16:09

hopefully will be

1:16:11

incorporated into the

1:16:13

standard , and that standard is , of

1:16:15

course , the new podcast

1:16:17

name space , which is part of the podcasting

1:16:20

2.0 podcast index work

1:16:22

.

1:16:23

Yeah , i think the other two that are interesting , just

1:16:25

very quickly , is podping Again

1:16:27

. That's the ability for apps

1:16:30

not to have to continually poll hosts

1:16:33

to see if there's an update to the RSS , but this

1:16:35

is then a push notification

1:16:37

in some ways , and now you can

1:16:39

put in your RSS feed whether you are podping

1:16:41

enabled or not . So that's quite nice . And

1:16:44

the last one is the one that I think

1:16:46

Adam's most excited about , which is Value

1:16:48

Time Split , which is a really

1:16:50

interesting ability for you to be able to

1:16:52

have within your podcast

1:16:54

, both live or recorded the ability

1:16:57

to suddenly switch out where the value for

1:16:59

value payment is going . So you might

1:17:01

, for example , have a music track that

1:17:03

you're playing in your podcast and

1:17:05

you want to pay the music artist

1:17:07

, and you can then set that with the Value

1:17:09

Time Split for pay

1:17:11

. Now , 90% of any

1:17:14

streaming sat i'm receiving for

1:17:17

the time of this recording

1:17:19

of this show .

1:17:20

Yeah , it's a really good , really interesting thing . It's

1:17:22

obviously got a real use for music

1:17:24

in there , but it also has Use , for example

1:17:27

, for interviews . If we were to enable

1:17:29

it on this particular show , then

1:17:31

maybe you know the interviews that

1:17:33

you've heard . Maybe some

1:17:36

of that money goes to the people being interviewed

1:17:38

, you know , which , again , is a good

1:17:41

thing . So really interesting seeing all of that

1:17:43

. Yes

1:17:49

, it's time to have a quick look at some events

1:17:51

and , of course , pod news

1:17:53

live in soul food in Manchester

1:17:55

is happening next Tuesday

1:17:57

, which i'm

1:17:59

looking forward to going

1:18:01

. Our sponsors have been so generous

1:18:04

to us that we can give the

1:18:06

last few tickets away

1:18:08

for free . So if you want to get hold

1:18:10

of some of those tickets , pod news

1:18:12

link slash Manchester is

1:18:15

where to get hold of those pod news link

1:18:17

slash Manchester . And

1:18:20

yeah , you've , you've

1:18:22

, you've organized an awful

1:18:24

loss of this , haven't you say ?

1:18:25

Yeah , i mean it's great . We're at the lorry

1:18:27

theatre in Manchester , which is by

1:18:29

the Bebsi media centre

1:18:31

. We're in the compass from on the top , so So

1:18:34

long as it's not raining in Manchester it should be quite

1:18:36

nice the views , and we've got some amazing

1:18:38

speakers there . We've got Mark

1:18:41

as with from captive a might car

1:18:43

from crowd networks

1:18:45

, jim Salverson from voice works , a

1:18:47

whole bunch of people talking . Obviously

1:18:49

, james is going to be doing a keynote and

1:18:52

there's a few other people like myself in my right

1:18:54

to the end of the day do one as well . But other

1:18:57

than that , come along and meet , mingle

1:18:59

and chat . It is a very

1:19:01

focused event . So you know

1:19:03

we are talking about the business of podcasting

1:19:06

rather than The generics of podcasting

1:19:08

yeah , and i'm really looking

1:19:10

forward to it .

1:19:11

You know , show and tell is always a good thing , so

1:19:13

it should be . It should be really good . Other

1:19:16

events going on podcast movement in

1:19:18

Denver . I've just put my tickets for that , which

1:19:21

is August twenty first to the twenty

1:19:23

fourth . I'll be there . I'm

1:19:25

not currently speaking , although i do

1:19:27

like moderating panels

1:19:29

. So just saying the

1:19:32

british podcast awards at

1:19:34

the end of september , with

1:19:36

our own pod news live

1:19:38

the day before , on the twenty seventh of september

1:19:40

, which should be good

1:19:43

fun . Again , more information about

1:19:45

that . Pod News dot net slash live and

1:19:48

and yeah , and a few other things

1:19:50

as well pod fest , of course , happening next year

1:19:52

, the beginning of next year , in Orlando

1:19:55

, in florida . There are

1:19:57

more events , both paid for and free , at pod

1:19:59

news , virtual events or

1:20:01

events in a place with people . And

1:20:03

if you're organizing something , it's free to be listed

1:20:05

to at pod news dot net slash

1:20:07

events .

1:20:08

Boost a gram , boost a gram . Corner , corner

1:20:11

, corner on the pod news weekly

1:20:13

review .

1:20:15

It's our favorite time of the week . Sam , it is indeed

1:20:17

. It's boost a gram corner , james , and we've had

1:20:19

some boost a grams in james , one from Kevin

1:20:21

Finn . He sent us a thousand starts

1:20:24

. He said a quick test did

1:20:26

the valley for valley code , added to the feed

1:20:28

along with the updated pod role , appear

1:20:31

? can you confirm by receipt

1:20:33

and i'll send you a proper boost . Well , kevin

1:20:35

, i can confirm , yes , we

1:20:37

, we got your first

1:20:39

boost and we also can confirm

1:20:41

, yes , your ninety percent split

1:20:43

to bus sprout and ten percent the podcast

1:20:46

index worked very well and

1:20:48

also all of the updated pod roles

1:20:51

using the remote item worked as well

1:20:53

yes , it's all very .

1:20:54

It's all very nice and fancy . And yes

1:20:57

, it's nice That our

1:20:59

value information is now

1:21:01

in this podcast rss

1:21:03

feed rather than relying on

1:21:05

the podcast wallet . Podcast

1:21:08

wallet is great , but it is a bit of a bit

1:21:10

of a clutch , isn't it ? and it's nice to be in

1:21:12

the in the rss feed properly

1:21:14

, so that's some good in terms

1:21:16

of that . Also

1:21:18

, a couple of other messages just in M

1:21:21

from the optimal

1:21:23

living daily podcast , who

1:21:26

sent us seven hundred

1:21:28

and seventy seven sets for James

1:21:30

, using the word moist in a podcast

1:21:32

. Indeed , i think i was trying

1:21:34

to promote radio days Asia And

1:21:37

saying that it's very moist in Kuala

1:21:39

Lumpur . But justin

1:21:42

was saying my wife is Malaysian and we were going to

1:21:44

try and visit during radio days Asia so i

1:21:46

can expense the trip . But your , your description

1:21:48

is making me rethink this . I

1:21:51

mean your , your wife , should know how

1:21:53

warm and humid it is in

1:21:55

Malaysia , heavens . But

1:21:58

still , there we go . What

1:22:00

else we've got ? we've got quite a lot of them

1:22:02

, haven't we are kairin row

1:22:05

of ducks . Double two , double two sets

1:22:07

. My feet have always been squeaky clean , he says

1:22:09

, which is nice

1:22:11

.

1:22:12

Yes , not , not a hundred percent

1:22:14

. Ninety nine point nine , kairin , you

1:22:16

know and i know . So , yes , that's

1:22:18

why he's chocolate nervous .

1:22:21

Five thousand cents from Brian and Sminga

1:22:23

. Have i pronounced that correctly , brian

1:22:25

? i hope i have talking

1:22:27

about youtube and Brian says , in

1:22:29

addition to the end of all

1:22:32

hosting companies , it'll also be the end

1:22:34

of having Real relationship with

1:22:36

your audience , where there's not an algorithm

1:22:39

in between , constantly trying to distract

1:22:41

them and get control of their listening habits . It'll

1:22:43

be like waking up to a jukebox to ask for songs

1:22:45

from an artist only to be

1:22:48

served almost everything but that , yeah

1:22:51

, i , i i share an

1:22:53

awful lot of concern about , about

1:22:55

our new overlords of youtube , and

1:22:58

i will completely agree with you , brian . So

1:23:00

thank you for sending

1:23:02

that .

1:23:04

Anonymous . I wish we knew your name

1:23:06

, but it was under anonymous great show

1:23:08

this week . I think you're spot on

1:23:10

about the gas lighting . Thank you also

1:23:13

. That was a great chapter graphic

1:23:15

explaining it well .

1:23:16

And again , thank you very much to to to set

1:23:18

a duck yes , and Adam curry

1:23:20

, the pod father himself , ten thousand

1:23:23

sets talking about the cast media

1:23:25

announcement and whether

1:23:28

or not he felt that it was

1:23:30

a . It was a kosher announcement

1:23:32

or not . Yes

1:23:34

, which i should probably not read out because you

1:23:37

know lawyers . But

1:23:39

if you get value from what we do the pod news weekly

1:23:41

review is separate from pod news salmon

1:23:43

. I share everything from it really appreciate

1:23:46

your support so we can continue making this show . You

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can become a power supporter if you like weekly

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dot pod news dot net . You can subscribe

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maple apple dot co slash pod news . I

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was only obviously not android . Or

1:24:01

you can support us with sets by hitting the boost button

1:24:03

, which works in android as well , in your podcast app

1:24:06

. You don't have one pod news dot net slash . New podcast

1:24:08

apps will help you find a new

1:24:10

app , like fountain . So

1:24:13

what's happening for you this week , sam ?

1:24:15

i still . I think i came down i don't

1:24:17

think it was covered , but i came down with something pretty awful

1:24:19

. I was out for about five or seven

1:24:21

days , so i have been flat

1:24:24

out . On top

1:24:26

of that , my developer on pod

1:24:28

fans had a car

1:24:30

accident , so he was out for three days , so it's

1:24:33

been a great week . And then i

1:24:35

realized have i got key man insurance

1:24:37

? so quickly scrambled for key man insurance

1:24:39

. So , yes , other than that , no , not

1:24:42

a lot . Prepping for Manchester is

1:24:44

the other thing . What's key ? what's key man insurance

1:24:46

? When you have a start up

1:24:48

, one of the things you have to do is get

1:24:50

yourself key man insurance . If you're Significant

1:24:55

point of failure in your business

1:24:57

might be the developer or you

1:24:59

or your city or somebody

1:25:01

else , you can get insurance

1:25:04

in case they fall under a bus or die a

1:25:06

bit like life insurance , and you

1:25:09

get a lot of money and then maybe

1:25:11

able to replace them . But yes , it's called key

1:25:14

man insurance . Wow , and

1:25:16

it's actually called key man insurance

1:25:18

it should be called key person insurance

1:25:20

, but he's called genuinely is called

1:25:22

key man insurance .

1:25:23

Wow , gosh . Yes

1:25:26

, although i do notice that some

1:25:28

people call it key person insurance

1:25:30

. Yes , that's Canada

1:25:33

. Canada life , for example . Yes

1:25:35

, but gosh . Well , there you go . The

1:25:38

world of .

1:25:41

What's been happy to be a .

1:25:44

Well . So , yes , i'm in here

1:25:47

in Canada , i'm doing a keynote tomorrow

1:25:49

. I tell you what scary thing . So

1:25:51

i walked into this hotel and there's

1:25:53

a big vinyl post

1:25:56

like this start up a good joke . Yes , well , there's

1:25:58

this big vinyl poster of Daniel , and stand

1:26:00

it , who did the keynote this this

1:26:02

morning . Great big

1:26:05

vinyl poster of his grinning face

1:26:07

looking at me , with details

1:26:09

of the of the keynote and everything

1:26:11

else . And so i

1:26:13

took a photograph of it and i

1:26:16

stuck a tweet out saying

1:26:18

you know , obviously

1:26:20

there's one of me here isn't the right . I mean

1:26:22

, they wouldn't have forgotten me , would they ? you

1:26:24

know , right ? anyway , i then go

1:26:26

to the loo And as i'm coming out

1:26:28

of the loo , there's my face on

1:26:31

one of these great big vinyl things staring

1:26:33

at me promoting my

1:26:36

, my session tomorrow

1:26:38

morning . So that was a . That was a rude awakening

1:26:40

, i tell you , but that's all

1:26:42

, but that's all fun . So radio days

1:26:44

North America is it's part of Canadian

1:26:46

music week , which is a big , a

1:26:48

big music event , but radio days Is

1:26:52

focusing on the radio

1:26:54

and a little bit of podcasting in

1:26:57

terms of , in terms of the event here

1:26:59

. So , yeah , it's a good . It's

1:27:01

always nice to see the wonderful

1:27:03

Canadians . They've made me feel very at home because

1:27:06

, you know , coming all the

1:27:08

way from Australia up to Canada

1:27:10

, they've made me feel very at home by setting

1:27:13

fire to their own country so

1:27:15

i can smell all the wood

1:27:17

smoke outside and go . I

1:27:19

reminds me of home . So that's very

1:27:22

kind with them another moose on the barbie that yes

1:27:24

, so

1:27:27

, yeah , so that's been fun . And then , of course , making

1:27:30

my way to pod news live in soulford

1:27:32

next week over

1:27:34

the weekend . So that should be . That should

1:27:37

be good fun and you have a nice

1:27:40

holiday after the pod

1:27:42

news live , which is excellent . So there will

1:27:44

be a guest host This

1:27:47

time next week , maybe . Maybe

1:27:49

it might be a Canadian guest host . Maybe

1:27:51

i can have a

1:27:53

chat to someone who

1:27:55

is here And get them doing

1:27:57

that . But yes , that might be fun .

1:28:02

As they won't need that poster of

1:28:05

you again . Yes

1:28:07

, how are you fitting it into your suitcase

1:28:09

?

1:28:09

do you know . The wife has already asked

1:28:12

for it . So

1:28:14

when you're away they can leave it in the lounge and

1:28:16

i will tend to still there and i've said , i've

1:28:19

said no , i'm not , i'm not bringing it back . but

1:28:21

the first , the weird thing is

1:28:23

that they're not . you know , if i've

1:28:25

walked past and i think this is tells you

1:28:27

everything about where we are

1:28:29

in terms of technology if i've

1:28:31

walked past that Being

1:28:34

shown on a big flat panel screen , i'd

1:28:36

have gone oh yeah , that's nice , i

1:28:38

walk past . it is the fact that it's printed

1:28:40

out on vinyl And

1:28:42

stuck up somewhere , so

1:28:44

it's not a piece of , you know , online

1:28:47

ephemera , it's actually a big

1:28:49

, great big , you know vinyl , you

1:28:52

know poster . isn't

1:28:54

it interesting how just the difference

1:28:57

of something not being

1:28:59

electronic but actually being a physical artifact

1:29:01

makes such a difference ? You know

1:29:03

? so yeah , it's really really interesting

1:29:05

. so So you haven't answered . how

1:29:07

are you fitting in your not

1:29:09

taking it home , absolutely

1:29:12

not take my . Can't think of anything worse

1:29:14

. And it's got a beautiful

1:29:16

pod news logo on there for some

1:29:18

reason , and had they

1:29:20

asked me for the version of pod news to

1:29:23

go on a dark background , i would have given

1:29:25

them one . You can't read it at all

1:29:27

, but

1:29:30

still , there you go , but it's

1:29:32

a great . It's a great event . It's wonderful to

1:29:34

be here . I was here this time last year and

1:29:36

canada was still closed , basically because

1:29:39

of the pandemic , and very

1:29:41

, very few people here and

1:29:44

really not an awful lot was going on the

1:29:47

place . The place is completely

1:29:49

changed and , yeah

1:29:51

, and the city is full And

1:29:54

pride month is that is is up and running

1:29:57

here in a massive way and

1:29:59

it's just a really busy place to

1:30:01

be and that was certainly not

1:30:03

the case last year . So that's really

1:30:05

good And

1:30:07

that's it for this week .

1:30:09

Thank you to our guests . You can

1:30:11

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1:30:14

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