0:05

- Welcome to the New Media Show. We're back doing the

0:09

- New media show again. - People are actually gonna listen to this jump.

0:12

- We do it live. - We're live right now. We just doing live.

0:16

- We're doing live. - We

0:18

- Just can't get enough. The new media show, - Let's go. Just do it live.

0:23

- Let go in live, let go in live - Being bad.

0:26

Boon the new media show. - If we do it live, - Just do it live.

0:30

- Let do it live. Go in live, go - Go. The new media show.

0:33

- I'm unlike Adam Curry and you're more like John cvo.

0:35

- I think I am Adam Curry. And you're the old for budgeting.

0:39

We do it live with the new media show Again, the new media show technology.

0:44

We make it sound so special. - Yes. And we always try and make it sound so special.

0:50

So thank you for joining me on, uh,

0:53

a solo attempt on my part of the new media show,

0:57

minus Todd Cochrane, who is, uh, on the road.

1:00

So thank you so much for joining me on the show.

1:04

I have a, a terrific show planned and,

1:07

and we're, we're gonna talk about kind

1:10

of podcasting 2.0 today a little bit

1:12

and kind of dive into the details on that.

1:15

And it's very exciting. I've got a couple of terrific guests

1:18

that are certainly in the midst of that world.

1:21

And, um, I'm sure many of you are very familiar

1:25

with James Cridlin, the editor in chief

1:27

of Pod [email protected].

1:30

He keeps us up to date every, every workday on what's happening

1:34

around the world in podcasting. And Sam Sie, who's the CEO of a kind of a, uh,

1:40

a new platform that's supporting all the podcasting 2.0

1:44

standards, and that's it. Pod fans fm. Yep.

1:48

Thank you so much guys for streaming live.

1:51

I know James Europe, uh, pretty early down in Australia. No,

1:55

- I'm up. I'm, I'm up pretty early, but that's, that's all. Okay. Really.

1:58

- Yeah. And it's probably fairly normal. I'm sure you do this quite often, <laugh>.

2:04

- Oh, indeed, indeed. Yeah. It's, uh, it's a, it, it's a wonderful place to live,

2:08

but it's also a very, very long way away, uh, it turns out.

2:12

So, uh, and the time zone is not,

2:14

is not fantastic, but still, there we - Are.

2:16

Yeah. And it's great. It's, uh, it's coming into summer

2:19

for you and we're all getting cold out here. So it

2:22

- It is. And in fact, uh, um, uh, I have, I have,

2:25

uh, two apps on the phone. One app on the phone is, um, my, uh, weather app,

2:28

which was telling me, uh, yesterday

2:30

that we have a heat wave warning for this week.

2:33

Uh, and the other app that I have is a, is a Fires app,

2:36

which tells me whether the, you know, whether the country's burst into flames near me.

2:40

Oh, there you go. So it's all, it's all going on

2:42

- <laugh>, right? Right. Well, I kind of wish I was warm now, so I'm <laugh>

2:47

funny how we, uh, we kind of feel in the summer months.

2:50

It's like, oh, I'm so hot all the time. Yeah.

2:53

I want it to be a little cooler. And then, then we get into the cooler,

2:55

then we want it to be warmer again. But

2:57

- I'm sure for Sam, for Sam, he's outside.

3:00

Uh, I, you know, it's, um, if he was to look outside,

3:03

it would be drizzling and, and wet <laugh>. So, uh,

3:06

- I I, I dunno, I'd never noticed the difference anymore. It's just

3:09

- Constant. - It's the weather. We don't have an app for it.

3:12

'cause there is no change. It's the weather.

3:15

- Yes, the weather. Well, it's enough of the weather,

3:17

weather talk on the podcast here. But, uh, Sam, thank you for joining again.

3:22

I know Bo both of you guys are fairly regular on

3:25

this, uh, show. And then also both of you guys do your own podcast too.

3:30

I want you to share some information about that your pod news weekly that you guys do together. I

3:37

- Over to you, James, go. - Oh, okay. Right. - Go ahead and plug your podcast. Uh,

3:42

- Be there, right? Yes. Um, so, and Todd, Todd will love us, uh, plugging, uh, our podcast.

3:47

Okay. Uh, on this. Yeah. So, uh, yeah, we need to be, uh, obviously careful there.

3:53

Um, five news industry connects.

3:57

Uh, anyway, get your tickets. - I wanna battle you with my audio to play over top of it.

4:03

- That's quite enough of that. Um, anyway, um, uh, yes, uh, so we do a weekly, uh, show,

4:08

which is, um, all about, uh, podcasting essentially much the same as yours to be honest.

4:13

Um, yeah. Without, uh, without Todd telling you to go out

4:16

and buy your own.com, um, <laugh>, uh, it's called, uh,

4:18

the Pod News Weekly Review. Um, you'll find [email protected].

4:23

Um, there's a lot of interviews in there.

4:25

Um, Sam is very good at finding excellent people to interview.

4:28

Um, and, and I'm very good at trying to make sure that it,

4:31

um, it, it doesn't last, um, uh, four

4:34

and a half hours, so, um, yeah.

4:36

But it's, uh, it's, uh, really good. Yeah. You should go and have a listen.

4:40

- Yeah, no, I think you should. So I've been on that show before and it's, it's terrific.

4:44

And I know, Sam, you're even, you've - Co-hosted it.

4:46

- I, that's true. And mm-Hmm. And Sam, I know you've been working hard on this,

4:51

uh, pod fans platform. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> for, for what, a couple years now?

4:55

Or what's the, uh, what's - The duration of it?

4:57

Year and a half. Year and a half. It was last October. Okay.

4:59

That we, they, we started doing a little bit of it,

5:02

and then we stopped and it was like, okay. And then we really went for it last October.

5:05

So yeah, it's day in, day out every day. But I love it.

5:08

Yeah. It's really cool. Loving it. - <laugh> and Mark, uh, Esquith, thank you

5:14

for the, the comments here. It's always great to have you with us,

5:18

but, um, well, let's, let's dive into it.

5:21

I know I got an email from you, um, Sam about Mm-Hmm.

5:25

<affirmative>, um, this alternate enclosure tag.

5:28

And I thought that was an interesting, um, idea

5:31

that has been, you know, talked about in the podcasting space.

5:34

I mean, if I think about it, it goes way back, um, many,

5:37

many years ago, back when, um, video podcasting was a big thing, <laugh>

5:42

back in the early days of the medium and a little, and frankly, a lot of people don't realize that,

5:48

you know, I've been shocked. I shouldn't say I've been shocked.

5:51

I've just been a little bit surprised that a lot

5:54

of people don't really fully understand what the,

5:56

the history of this medium has been. And there was a time fairly early in the medium when

6:02

video was probably 30% of the market.

6:05

I mean, a true video podcasting.

6:07

And there's a distinction here, and that's, that the enclosure tag in the RSS

6:12

was a video file. And, and so I think a, you know, there's a lot

6:17

of discussion right now about, well, what is a podcast

6:20

and what is a video podcast, right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And I think we're all open

6:23

to maybe expanding that, um, definition a little bit

6:27

to include what's happening at YouTube today.

6:30

But there's also a lot of folks that are kind

6:32

of pushing back on that too. So it's like, well, it can't be called a podcast

6:36

unless it's in an RSS beat. So, so that's why I thought this was an interesting

6:41

discussion, was this whole concept of trying

6:44

to have an audio and video file in the RSS.

6:48

And I'm just curious, you know, Sam and, and,

6:50

and James, what you think about that?

6:53

I mean, what's the implications of

6:56

that as you look to the future? - So, I've been talking, yeah, I, I,

7:00

I'll start, 'cause I started the email. I, I've been talking to Todd

7:03

for six months plus now about the alternate enclosure tag.

7:06

Uh, it's part of the podcasting 2.0 namespace.

7:10

It's, it's a completely out there ratified extension.

7:14

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and Todd being what you and him do.

7:18

This show, for example. But also, uh, you know, geek News as well.

7:22

You have two feeds. You have a feed that is a video feed

7:26

and a feed that is a podcast feed.

7:28

And I said, I said to Todd,

7:31

why aren't you using the alternate enclosures?

7:33

And he said, oh no. Because of Apple,

7:36

I have to have two feeds. I need to have one that goes as a video feed so

7:40

that people can watch it in Apple as a video.

7:43

Same with the podcast. 'cause they don't support the alternative enclosure.

7:47

I went, fine, no problem. And that got battered back and forth between us.

7:51

Uh, and it led to nothing this week.

7:54

Uh, Alberto from RS s.com said, look, um,

7:59

I'm going to use live to video broadcast into a number

8:03

of different applications. You know, pod fans, fountain Pod first pod guru.

8:08

And it was great. And for the first time, James can,

8:11

you know, confirm or, or this, but I think it's the first time that we've had a,

8:16

a live event using the lit tag with basically audio

8:20

and video capability. And the live tag also supports the alternative enclosure.

8:25

So within that live tag, you could put an audio feed

8:28

and a separate video feed. So then I started looking at the new media show,

8:33

actual RSS feed. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And you actually have the Alterna

8:37

enclosure in your live feed you have.

8:40

But what Todd or whoever has done is put in the main enclosure.

8:45

You've got MP three, and in the alternative enclosure,

8:48

you've got MP three mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then if you have a look at your video

8:52

feed, you've got basically the video in main

8:54

and the, the video and the alternative. So the email I sent you is, look, why don't you just

9:00

put the alternative closure as the video for this audio feed and put the mm-Hmm.

9:04

<affirmative> audio in the video feed, right?

9:07

So you're not having, if you scroll to the right top, um,

9:10

Rob, just slightly, you'll see the end where it says alternative enclosures,

9:14

you'll see they're both the same file again. And it just seemed to me that you've got everything there.

9:19

It's not a lot of work to change one URL in one feed,

9:23

one UL in another, and suddenly, boom, you're supporting the alternative enclosure

9:27

and you are giving people the choice to watch or to listen to you.

9:31

So again, within pod fans, as you can see there,

9:34

we did an experiment we did actually, that we copied over your video feed into your audio

9:39

and your audio into your video. And I just played it in pod fans.

9:42

It comes up with MP three and it comes up with video.

9:46

I clicked on the video and there you go. It plays the video in the podcast app.

9:51

Not a lot of work was done. It takes five minutes to do

9:54

and it supports the alternative enclosure and it gives the podcast in 2.0 community.

9:59

You know, that one leg up against what we're seeing

10:02

with YouTube currently. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So that was what I was talking about.

10:05

James, any thoughts from you? - Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things, just to sort

10:10

of reel this back a little bit, I think one of the, um,

10:12

things that doesn't work very well in the podcasting world

10:15

is if you've got a video, uh, feed and an audio feed, then that's essentially split.

10:20

So what you're producing there is you're producing two different shows.

10:23

You are producing two different shows that Apple Podcasts will treat differently.

10:27

That mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that Apple Podcasts will promote differently.

10:29

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And in the same way that, you know,

10:31

with Google, you don't want to split your Google Juice.

10:34

You don't want to have, um, copies of,

10:37

of different things all over the place because then Google doesn't know which

10:41

to promote the exactly the same thing goes in terms of,

10:44

of a podcast as well. And so it's really confusing when you do a, a web search

10:48

for, for example, the new media show.

10:50

You end up with two different, um, two different shows.

10:54

One of them is, uh, the audio version, one of them is a version with video on Mm-Hmm.

10:58

<affirmative>. Um, so really, you know, the, the point

11:00

behind the alternate enclosure, a part of the point

11:03

behind the alternate enclosure was to get rid of those, uh,

11:06

additional feeds, make life easier for the listener

11:08

because they've only got one new media show to go and find.

11:11

And I think when you start having a look at, um, you know,

11:14

some of the, um, and Adam will hate me calling this a new podcast app,

11:17

but YouTube music, um, YouTube music, when you are listening

11:20

to a particular, um, podcast on YouTube music, then

11:25

what YouTube music allows you to do is it allows you

11:27

to flick between the audio and the video.

11:29

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, uh, uh, of that. Now it's not quite the same 'cause it's not

11:33

using alternate enclosures. Right. But that's the sort of user experience

11:36

that will be quite useful to enable.

11:38

Um, so that you can have a listen to a, a video, um, um, uh,

11:43

or an audio, uh, file. If you are, uh, you know, commuting on the bus,

11:47

you can watch the video Great. And when you get off, you can turn it back onto audio only

11:51

mode and carry on walking around. So, um, yeah. So I think it's a,

11:55

it's a really good thing if we can actually turn that on. Yeah.

11:58

- Yeah. I think it really plays into this kind of convergence strategy that I'm,

12:04

I'm really talking about a lot now and, and this whole thing of, of trying to

12:09

produce video at the same time you're producing the

12:11

audio if you can do that. And so sometimes that makes sense

12:14

and sometimes that doesn't. It just depends on the type of show

12:17

and the format and things like that. But, you know,

12:20

some podcasts will always be just strictly audio.

12:24

Um, and that's perfectly fine. Um, but I think that there's other shows like this one, uh,

12:30

obviously the new media show is a perfect example of that.

12:33

And I'm doing a, a new show for Streamy Yard now

12:36

that's moving in that direction too, of, of having

12:39

that support across all that stuff as well.

12:41

Mm-Hmm. It does take a little bit of work to get, you know,

12:44

everything set up and get everything working properly

12:47

and getting all these things. But if you can set up one account, uh,

12:52

with these hosting platforms and be able to upload a video

12:54

and an audio file to that account, then yeah.

12:57

'cause Right, right now I have to create two separate RSS feeds, one

13:00

for video, one for audio. And that's kind of like, just like what you say, James,

13:05

I've been, I've been thinking about this for many years, is

13:08

that this combining of the two mediums makes a lot of sense.

13:11

Right. Um, if a show wants to support that, right?

13:15

- Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm. Yeah, absolutely. And, and, you know, you can use,

13:19

you can use alternative enclosures for other things. Um, yeah. Pod news, um, the pod news, uh, feed, for example,

13:25

the pod news Daily Feed, um, has a video in there.

13:28

It's not really a video, it's just, um, it's just a fancy,

13:31

uh, graphic, but it's also got two different audio versions.

13:34

Um, one of those audio versions is the nice big 128 K

13:38

version that, um, everybody, uh, is used to,

13:41

um, here in the West. But actually in some places like South Africa, the cost of,

13:47

uh, bandwidth is massively, massively expensive.

13:50

Um, and so what we make available in

13:53

that feed is a very low bit rate.

13:56

It's a 16 kilobits, uh, file. No, that's great.

13:58

Through Opus and, um, which is playable on any Android phone

14:03

and any COOs phone. So that actually, if you are in a bandwidth starved, uh,

14:07

place, you can actually get a, a, a different version

14:10

of the Pod News Daily podcast, which only consumes, um,

14:14

about a 10th of the, the bandwidth.

14:16

So you can use it for a lot of different, of, of different things.

14:19

But I think that actually helps us, um, make sure that all

14:23

of these different versions of the show

14:25

that we produce are under one listing in Apple Podcasts,

14:30

one listing in Spotify, one listing in, you know, all

14:33

of the other podcast apps as well. And this is actually how Spotify works already.

14:36

I know that Spotify's a proprietary, um, uh,

14:39

service when it comes to video, but, um, yeah, if you want to turn video on, on, you know,

14:44

when you're watching Joe Rogan, then it's just a little, a little one button and away you go.

14:49

- Yeah. But I, Joe Rogan's not a podcast anymore, right?

14:54

James <laugh>? Well, well, - I mean, I, I mean, I mean, it is Rob.

14:59

- I know he is. I'm just teasing <laugh>, - Let's - Go.

15:02

But there are some in the podcast in industry that,

15:05

that think Joe's no longer a podcast. I know he still has his active RSS feed on,

15:09

on Lipson, but he's not using it. Yeah.

15:11

- So, no, I think, I think it's important, it's important

15:14

for us to split the two sets of people.

15:18

There are, um, people who, um, are very keen.

15:21

It's like the, you know, the work that I've been doing, um,

15:24

for the YouTube music app this week. Um, uh, YouTube music is a really bad thing for podcast,

15:30

for the podcast industry. Um, uh, you know, there's lots of bad,

15:34

uh, things about that. But for listeners, it's an amazing thing, right?

15:38

58% of Americans don't listen to podcasts, uh, every month.

15:42

So if we can convert some of those 58%, um,

15:45

using the second largest search engine, um, you know, using,

15:49

using a massive, great big, um, uh, app,

15:52

which is pre-installed on all new Android

15:55

phones, then great. And I think we just need to bear in mind. Yeah.

15:58

You know, it's, it's, um, um, there are things that we want

16:01

that are good for the podcast industry, and then there are things, um, that we want that are good

16:06

for listeners, and they don't, they aren't always the same <laugh>. We

16:09

- Do not, and I agree with, with you. That's a good example of that.

16:13

Um, and, and then also, you know, if,

16:16

and this is how I think about it is, well, I mean, what,

16:19

what is YouTube strength? Uh, YouTube strength is video, right?

16:24

And if we're taking audio and putting it into YouTube,

16:27

that's not playing to YouTube strength. Now, granted, looking at the future, maybe

16:33

YouTube can become a stronger

16:35

consumption app, uh, for audio.

16:38

Um, it's never gonna be audio. It'll always be a video.

16:41

But that's more of a technical distinction, not a UI distinction.

16:44

- Yeah. But, but YouTube music, uh, I think, I think the difference is, and the, and the,

16:48

and this is the hugely complicated thing, is

16:50

that YouTube music, um, is an audio app.

16:53

That's exactly what YouTube, uh, music is.

16:55

So it's a separate app which does audio,

16:58

and it does audio for music,

17:01

and it does audio for podcasts in there as well.

17:03

And you can subscribe to RSS feeds in YouTube music.

17:07

So I think I, I think that's the other sort of, uh, side

17:10

of it, um, you know, that we just need to be,

17:13

um, uh, careful about. So that actually YouTube is a brand

17:16

and it's got a video player and an audio player in there as well.

17:19

And the pod news weekly review, by the way, looks fantastic.

17:22

Uh, if you subscribe using RSS, it's got no, no,

17:25

weirdly no podcasting 2.0 features.

17:27

Can't think why. Um, but nevertheless, it looks fine.

17:30

Um, uh, but of course you can get, um,

17:32

the pod news weekly review as a, as a smushed up audio video file, uh,

17:36

on the proper YouTube as well. So, uh, yeah. But,

17:40

but you know, so, um, with all of this, all, all of this,

17:43

um, comes back to alternate enclosures being really helpful.

17:46

Mm-Hmm. For people like YouTube and for people, um, like, uh, Spotify, neither

17:50

of which are using, um, this particular standard,

17:53

but, you know, it's early days, um,

17:55

but also useful for many other, um, use cases as well.

17:59

- Yeah. I mean, that's a good, that's a good point.

18:02

I think that, uh, you know, it does seem a little silly

18:05

to me that they didn't embrace the import of, um,

18:09

video files through RSS. Yeah.

18:11

- I can probably understand. I can probably understand why

18:14

that would be a massive backdoor. Sam, you were trying to, uh, to, uh, jump in there.

18:19

- Well, now, I was just saying with, with Todd

18:21

and Rob's show, for example, if you took

18:24

what you are doing now to, uh, Rob, and you took the URL

18:28

and you put it into the live item tag and you took the audio Mm-Hmm.

18:32

<affirmative>, you wouldn't have to broadcast this on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, right?

18:35

As you're doing now, you could have then said, Hey,

18:38

you can go and look at it on any podcasting 2.0 app live

18:42

right now using that same feed, the one we've got here.

18:45

Right. So I could watch it or I can listen to it in there.

18:48

But what would also be clever is

18:50

that you could have people paying you in SATs

18:53

to stream while they're watching that, because they can't do it as we are now

18:57

through Twitter or through YouTube. Um, and the last part is

19:01

what was really interesting from Pod Con, uh, in Mexico, uh,

19:05

is that there was a back channel for conversations.

19:09

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So yes, within Streamy Yard you've got the ability

19:12

to accept comments, but also within the podcasting apps,

19:14

using boosts, again, with payments,

19:17

you could have a back channel where there is a conversation.

19:19

So what you are doing now is you are creating a live audio

19:24

and video feed and broadcasting that out to endpoints

19:28

through Stream Art. But you could take that same URL

19:30

and put it into your live item tag of your feed.

19:34

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> use Pod Ping to alert all the podcasting to apps we live, which is really

19:39

what Stream Art did to Twitter and everyone else. And at the same point, have those people who are

19:45

participating in the world of micropayments paying you as well.

19:49

So again, it's an evolution, not a revolution,

19:52

and it takes steps. But one of those steps I was trying to get you

19:54

and Todd to do was to switch your audio

19:57

and video in those feeds.

20:00

So you had one of each in the same feeds. Keep two feeds.

20:04

Todd's never gonna, for now take two feeds

20:08

and smash them into one because he will always argue Apple, apple, apple need

20:13

to have, have a separate feed, but you can be smart

20:17

and use the alternative enclosure so

20:19

that podcasting 2.0 apps, those people watching

20:22

and listening there will have a choice.

20:25

And that's what I was trying to say. - Yeah. Just to kind of clarify on something, I am streaming

20:30

through Todd's channels right now, so

20:34

it's possible maybe that it did, um, trigger a pinging out

20:38

to all of the, the podcasting 2.0 apps

20:42

for this episode is that - Sam will have a look now. Sam will check <laugh>.

20:46

- I'm just checking while we're in the background. Yeah.

20:49

Hold on. Corner. Nice. <laugh> <laugh>

20:51

- Might as well. But it is, it, what, what I found really weird.

20:54

So my, what my other, my other, uh,

20:57

job is a radio consultant and I talk to radio companies

21:00

and I help them understand, you know, what's coming up next.

21:03

And I have so far spoken four different continents

21:06

about the live tag. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and saying, you run a radio station,

21:10

you have a podcast of your breakfast show.

21:13

Um, why are you not using the live tag?

21:16

If you were to implement it today, you would be the first radio station, proper radio station,

21:22

um, to be implementing it. Why are you not implementing it?

21:25

And, and it's, and it's interesting. I mean, you know, and Rob, you won't find it particularly

21:29

unusual that the, the radio industry has looked at progress and gone, oh, no.

21:33

<laugh>. Um, but it's, but it's, but it's interesting to see that, you know,

21:38

that is a real obvious slam dunk for a radio station

21:43

to be running a live tag in their podcast feed

21:46

to pull people to their live stream.

21:49

Um, and, um, still, I'm not seeing any,

21:52

any radio stations doing it.

21:54

Now, of course, you know, if you are a large radio station

21:57

like iHeart, it's gonna be quite difficult for someone to

22:00

make a decision to go ahead with that.

22:03

But if you're a smaller station, then, you know,

22:05

I'm surprised that we haven't seen, you know, more of that,

22:08

um, uh, actually happening. - I, I, what do you think is holding

22:13

that back, James? I mean, - Oh, I mean, I think, you know, I mean, in,

22:17

in the same talk I show, so I show, um,

22:20

it's a very good talk, by the way. I highly recommend it <laugh>.

22:22

Um, uh, I show lots of different tools from, um, podcasting

22:27

and, um, that you can use in the world of radio and Mm-Hmm.

22:30

<affirmative>, um, one of the tools I use is de Script,

22:33

and I show, um, actually a podcast that Sam

22:37

and I recorded about three years ago, um,

22:40

where I get the name of a podcast wrong, except I don't really, but then I,

22:43

I change it on the fly using, um, using the AI voice clone

22:48

that it had, uh, at the time. And I show this to, uh, radio companies

22:52

and they go, oh, wow, we've never seen anything like this.

22:56

And, and they're thinking it's three year old technology,

22:58

it's been out for years. Why have you not seen it? Right.

23:02

And I think a lot of it, a lot of it comes down to there are specific processes, uh,

23:06

that the radio industry has, um, where they've not really bothered to look outside

23:12

and they've just gone on with what's been done in the past and Yeah.

23:15

What they've always done. Right. Yeah. And, and to an extent, we just need

23:19

to be careful about doing that in terms of the,

23:21

the podcast world as well. Right. You know, we, we are seeing more

23:25

and more people now support new features like pod roll,

23:29

which, uh, went live, um, in a number

23:31

of different podcast hosting companies this week.

23:34

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, uh, and various other, um,

23:37

things such as that. And I think that's great.

23:40

And I think we should probably be careful not to sort of,

23:43

you know, um, um, uh, sleep on our laurels, so to speak.

23:47

We need to, you know, keep on pushing new ideas

23:50

and eventually Apple and Spotify will, will wake up, smell the coffee

23:54

and go, oh, you know what? That would be quite a good, a quite good feature

23:58

for us to include as well, - Rob.

24:01

Just, yeah. I think it would one - Great. - Yeah. Go ahead, Sam. I was gonna

24:04

- Say, uh, no, the bat signal's not been sent out, so,

24:07

but normally it is sent out. So normally the new media show is sent through

24:11

to podcasting two apps. The other thing I'd say is, James knows this, I used

24:15

to run a radio station, which we did 40 live podcast

24:18

shows per week. And we used an RMTP server

24:23

and we broadcast it on Alexa Web, mobile,

24:27

and also on DAB. It's all there. What wasn't there was the

24:30

live item tag at the time. So we couldn't use that. But if I was still doing that,

24:35

what happened over in Mexico with Alberto

24:38

and rss.com is a very simple setup.

24:40

It takes what comes from the laptop, puts it through a, uh,

24:45

audio and video grabber through to an RMTP server

24:48

that then broadcast that out. Right. And,

24:51

and that in itself now could happen even easier than it was

24:55

when I was doing it three or four years ago with River Radio.

24:58

And so, as James said,

25:00

what we've gotta do is get these case studies in front

25:03

of the radio stations, in front of conference organizers.

25:07

So, you know, podcast movement, the London Podcast show should be doing

25:11

exactly the same thing as pod. That's when we want to get this,

25:14

the technology's now matured and we are now ready to actually use it, you know,

25:19

eat your own dog food and we are ready. And, and I guess James,

25:23

it's probably gonna be another 12 months before, you know, you've done the rounds of keynotes

25:28

and everyone else has picked up on it, but you know, it's now that we're ready to start

25:32

to put all the pieces together that we've been building and start to create solutions for events,

25:38

radio and podcasters. - So as far as your guys' perspective on this, I mean,

25:44

what would a platform like a Streamy Yard need to do

25:47

to simplify this to, to make it available, um, in an,

25:52

in an RSS feed? What we're doing here kind of into the, the lit tag.

25:57

Is that something that would've to be manually added in the publishing process of that RSS feed?

26:05

- James, you want me to answer or do you want - Yes.

26:08

I'm, I'm looking at you, Sam. I know you can't tell <laugh> - You guys, - It's been very strange.

26:13

'cause normally we have no video. So it's, it's, uh, it's a new experience for all of us.

26:17

- <laugh> - Yes. - So, um, yeah,

26:20

me at six o'clock in the morning is not what James needs to see.

26:22

Right. Um, so, so fundamentally with Stream,

26:26

'cause I've used it before, um, you've got A-A-U-R-L that you've sent out, right?

26:29

And that's a, a live URL

26:32

- Yeah. To all of these streaming platforms, right? Yeah.

26:35

- So you would take that same URL, put it in the

26:38

enclosure tag of the live item tag,

26:41

you would then do pod ping a battle alert, Hey, we're live.

26:44

And that would be the stream that I would see

26:47

through my podcasting app as a video feed or an audio feed.

26:52

So it would be fine to do that. You don't have to do much.

26:56

What would Streamy do to make it automated?

26:59

In the same way that you can have broadcast channels,

27:03

which is what you've got set up, Facebook, Twitter,

27:06

whatever, you could have an extra one, which is Live Item Tag as a channel.

27:10

Right. Got it. Or you could have certain apps,

27:13

but it doesn't have to be apps. It'd just be RSS as a live item tag, where you fill in

27:18

that same URL link that you are sending out, right.

27:21

To Twitter, Facebook - That would go out.

27:23

So that would be sent out to the podcast host platform like a Lipson or, or a pod

27:29

- Or something else. And they would get a pod pinging from there that says, Hey,

27:32

something's changed in the RSS feed and the out to go, oh, something's changed.

27:36

What have they changed? They've changed a live item tag. It's gone from pending to live, which is literally

27:40

what Streamy Yard do Mm-Hmm. When you click the broadcast now

27:44

and suddenly all those apps. So it's not a lot of work for Streamy Yard to do

27:48

to actually integrate podcasting as another channel

27:52

alongside Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn,

27:54

and whatever else they do these days. Yeah. - Yeah. I mean, no, guess

27:58

- I, I guess they would need to work together with podcast hosting companies.

28:02

Um, and I know that there are, uh, a number,

28:05

a number watching, uh, hello Mark from, uh, captivate.

28:08

Um, and so, you know, there would need to be a little bit

28:11

of, um, of APIs, uh, there, but,

28:13

but perhaps the UX within Streamy Yard might say, go live

28:16

with Captivate or Go live with Libsyn, um,

28:20

or, you know, go live WW with any other,

28:22

uh, any other hosts. So, um, you know, rss.com, other hosts are available.

28:27

Um, so, uh, yeah, I think that, that, that would be worthwhile having a look at.

28:31

- Yeah. I mean, the Streamy Yard platform currently has

28:34

today a way to input AH uh, what's it, uh, um,

28:39

what's, I'm drawing a blank on it. It's the, uh, it's an HDM

28:42

or something like that stream, um, what

28:46

- They call it Hs Stream - Hhl s Right, right.

28:49

- Yeah. There you go. Yeah. - And so that could be plugged in into this,

28:54

I suppose. Yeah, yeah, - Yeah. No, absolutely.

28:57

- But somehow it needs to get into the R Ss feed. Right.

29:00

And then, yeah. And then really kind of, I think - That's where it gets, gets a little bit more.

29:05

I think that's where it gets a little bit more complicated, because you do have to have some kind of implement, um,

29:09

integration with your podcast hosting company.

29:12

Right. And those who've been doing this, um,

29:15

in the past have been doing this, um,

29:17

because they roll their own podcast, um, RSS feed.

29:21

And so therefore it's sort of relatively easy for them.

29:24

Um, whereas I think we would need some of the podcast hosts

29:27

to basically go, okay, here's, here's the API

29:30

for our live item tag. And that podcast host would of course also need

29:34

to support pod pinging as well. I would've thought so. You know, so,

29:38

so there's a bit of work to be done. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> on both sides,

29:41

but I'm sure that, you know, the more, the more enterprising podcast hosting company would be, uh,

29:47

you know, would be very happy to do that little piece of,

29:49

um, of, uh, work. It is of course, chicken and egg

29:52

because it requires, um,

29:54

stream Yard to do some work as well. It also requires, uh, the live item tag to be supported

30:00

by more and more podcast, um, apps as well.

30:03

So it's available in, uh, pod verse, it's available in, uh,

30:06

fountain, uh, of course pod fans fm, uh, it's available in,

30:11

uh, you know, uh, those, uh, particular apps.

30:13

But, um, as more and more people are producing content for it mm-Hmm.

30:18

You would expect that more and more, uh, apps would also, um,

30:21

put the live item tag supported in, in there as well.

30:25

- Yeah, I guess it depends on, you know, if you think about Apple, um,

30:28

Apple's had video podcasts forever. Um, you know, I guess they would have to decide, um,

30:35

if they wanted to support live in the podcast

30:38

experience on Yeah. On Apple. And they may to be able to keep up

30:44

with the competition in the market too. And so,

30:47

- Rob, so, so you understand HLS stands

30:50

for H TTP Live streaming, right?

30:52

Exactly. And it isn't Apple Standard, it comes from Apple <laugh>.

30:57

So, you know, if anyone, there

30:59

- You go. It should be easy, right? - Yeah. They might actually do it.

31:03

The one thing, um, you might feed back to Stream Yard is Streamy Yard,

31:06

unlike squad cast in Riverside, doesn't have a permanent URL,

31:09

and that's one of its weaknesses. So every time you generate a new show Mm-Hmm.

31:14

<affirmative>, you have to generate a new URL. And because you're doing that, you can't have a sticky URL

31:20

for your show for every week. So that would be something

31:24

that they would also wanna change. So that in my feed, yeah, I could have that same URL so

31:28

that all I had to do was put it into my RSS

31:31

and then Podding alert change the status

31:34

Podding alert job done. Um, I think it could be a lot simpler with

31:39

what they're doing if they just make one change.

31:42

- Yeah. I think you'd have to like, do a, do a simultaneous publish of a item in your RSS feed Right.

31:49

To, to make this episode available.

31:53

Not unlike what happens at YouTube today when I set up

31:57

or schedule a live show, it, it schedules it in

32:01

in YouTube and it displays, you know,

32:04

will be live at such and such time. That could be the opportunity that would be a available

32:10

to the podcast host too. And then, and then, uh, I guess at that point,

32:15

it would have, I think those hosts would have the option of

32:19

what, whether or not they wanted to cache the,

32:21

the video episode somehow, or that could be published through a separate process

32:25

as an on-demand version. Right.

32:28

- Yeah. I mean, talking to several hosts, uh,

32:32

they're not keen on doing the video because of the cost of the bandwidth.

32:35

Um, that is one of the reasons that you haven't seen. Yeah.

32:39

- I mean, a lot of them don't support, uh, the video,

32:41

but three of the, of the earliest host podcast hosting

32:45

platforms do like ellips in Podbean, and I think Blueberry are the only three

32:48

that currently support, um, video podcasting per se.

32:52

Right. But live is something different. Right. So they wouldn't have to store that.

32:57

- No, I mean, it, it's, yeah, you, you, you wouldn't have

33:00

to, but you could do so, for example, yeah.

33:03

The, the way that the live item works is you have a pending

33:06

status with a time, which is what we show to people

33:09

who subscribe to your show in pod fans.

33:12

So they will know Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the minute that that show's gone live,

33:15

they'll get a notification, push notification saying Show live.

33:18

Right? Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> what Rob, um,

33:20

what Todd is doing, I'll get the names right eventually tonight, <laugh>,

33:24

what Todd is doing is he's changing the pending

33:27

status to live status. That's what he's doing. That then alerts the host.

33:33

The host then does a pod pinging alert, which the apps are listening for.

33:36

So all Todd is doing is changing the, the status

33:39

of the live show from pending to live.

33:42

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> that then does a, an alert pod pinging a bat signal up to the apps

33:46

and the apps, then say, right, we've updated the RSS,

33:50

so we do a refresh of the RSS and it has a live status

33:54

that then is then broadcast out at the end of the show.

33:57

What we do is we take the

34:00

recorded audio from your next episode, so the live one,

34:04

but now becomes your next episode. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. And then we do a refresh

34:07

of the RSS soon as you've done it, and it just becomes an episode.

34:11

Now, again, as I said, when we just showed it,

34:15

you support the alternative, uh,

34:17

enclosure in the live item tag,

34:19

but you don't support it in the episode item tag.

34:22

Right. And that's just a thing that I keep asking Todd,

34:25

just do it, give the people the option to have in a

34:30

non-live, but post recording show episode, the option

34:35

and Bluebridge you said, supports both audio and video.

34:38

So of all the hosts out there right now, Todd,

34:42

and you should be the first one slamming this door down,

34:45

because A, you are, you are doing it live as a podcaster,

34:49

and b, you are a host that supports both live and audio.

34:53

You are the perfect example of people who should be doing this <laugh>.

34:57

And I just don't get why Todd

35:00

is digging his size 12 feet in

35:03

and saying, no, not, I, not I,

35:07

- Well, I think he's probably, probably more willing

35:09

to do it than maybe others at this, right.

35:12

At this stage. So I think I, yeah,

35:15

I think it's gonna be easy to convince him, <laugh>, I think,

35:18

- I, I think from my understanding, he is seeing this

35:21

as being a UX issue, not necessarily a tech issue.

35:24

It's, it's a UX issue of, oh my goodness, we've got to

35:27

tell podcasters now that they need

35:29

to put alternate links into things,

35:32

and it's just gonna be a, it's just gonna be hard and everything else.

35:35

And I think that that is an absolutely fair thing.

35:38

Um, you know, there may well be reasons why he doesn't want

35:42

to roll it out to all of Blueberry, um, on, on all

35:46

of Blueberry's customers. Um, that's not, not, not going to be a fund supporting,

35:51

you know, fund, uh, user experience.

35:53

Um, so I can, I can well understand that

35:56

and, uh, you know, so don't Eat me Todd Cochrane

35:59

<laugh> very good. Very, very good reasons why he might want to end up,

36:04

uh, uh, doing that. But I think, you know, the, the, the,

36:07

the interesting thing about, um, about this is there are actually very few podcast hosting

36:14

companies who have right at the top a podcaster, um,

36:18

you know, um, market, um, at, uh, captivate is one of those.

36:23

Todd at Blueberry is one of those. And, um, well, you know, and, and, and Justin at Transistor,

36:28

and there aren't really too many more.

36:30

Um, and I think that's one of the real differences that, um,

36:35

Todd has that, uh, really helps, is

36:39

that he's doing it every single day. Um, and so he can talk with a, uh, a, a measure

36:44

of real authority over, you know, what works, what doesn't

36:48

because he, he's there making two different podcasts, uh,

36:51

every single, uh, every single week. And that's, uh, and that's always a worthwhile thing.

36:55

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, just to bear in mind as well. - Yeah. I think that those days of the podcasters, um,

37:02

actually starting companies and, and,

37:05

and creating platforms for podcasters is kind of a,

37:09

has been fading away a little bit, hasn't it?

37:11

<laugh> Yeah. - Just a bit. - Just a bit. Yeah.

37:15

And I actually, you know, I, I can definitely associate

37:17

with that, as you might imagine. So I've worked for a lot of podcast companies,

37:21

and then a lot of those companies had, most of their staff weren't podcasters, so, yeah.

37:25

Right. Yeah. Totally. Yeah.

37:28

- Many, many, many folks in radio aren't radio

37:30

listeners either, which is, - Uh, yeah.

37:32

Well, that's a whole nother co conversation.

37:35

Do podcasters listen to podcasts? That's a whole nother another conversation, right? Yeah,

37:39

- No, - Indeed. Indeed. Yeah. So, so anyway, um, I think this was a kind

37:45

of a fascinating conversation. And I, I hope, um,

37:49

that this conversation continues in the medium and,

37:52

and hopefully we can kind of gather some momentum around this.

37:55

'cause I think it is something that many

37:57

of us in the podcasting space have been thinking about for many years, and it's exciting to see it start to develop

38:02

and, and have a pathway, um, here that is, you know,

38:06

it right here available to us. It's just w whether or not we as an industry want to grab

38:11

that opportunity and, um, and,

38:13

and run with it right now Mm-Hmm. And, and take advantage

38:16

of the infrastructure that already exists.

38:19

And I'm, I'm definitely wanting to em embrace it

38:23

and support it and, and push for greater adoption if we can get a, a Spotify

38:28

and a, and a Streamy yard

38:31

and the hosting platforms to embrace it. I, I think bringing this industry together and,

38:35

and trying to come up with a pathway here is

38:38

definitely well worth the effort. - Yeah, no, indeed.

38:40

And, and, uh, if you're watching the video version of this,

38:43

uh, the Dave Mansueto, who of course appeared on the screen just a second

38:47

ago saying, that's right. Gotta eat the dog food. Um, uh, Dave, of course,

38:51

co-founder of Libsyn. So, uh, you know, he's, he, he's somebody that ought

38:55

to know <laugh>, so, uh, yeah,

38:59

absolutely. Absolutely. Right. - Yeah. And he's, uh, I've known Dave since, back,

39:05

back in those days, so back when Lipson started.

39:08

And, uh, he's a terrific technologist, you know, himself.

39:12

So, so he's, he's currently working on a,

39:16

on a recording app and things like that. He is been working on for many years. So, Dave. Mm-Hmm.

39:20

<affirmative>, Thanks for joining us. Yeah, indeed.

39:23

And then, well, I don't know, um, let's let, let's move on

39:27

and talk about another topic here.

39:29

I know we, we could probably go a full hour talking about

39:32

this integration of this, but I think that there, there's a few other topics

39:35

that we might wanna talk about. And one of them is this, uh, research that came out, um,

39:42

from the Edison Research and NPR about, uh, the audience size for podcasting,

39:48

um, has kind of, kind of exploded.

39:51

I know, James, you covered this in your newsletter, and,

39:54

and I think it's, uh, it's just evidence to me that there's,

39:58

um, podcasting's growth in all areas has been

40:03

gradual <laugh>. - Yeah, no, indeed. So this is, um, this is data

40:08

around spoken word, so it's not necessarily just podcasting,

40:12

it's spoken word in all of its, uh,

40:14

in all of its, uh, forms. Um, but, um, some great data from, uh, from Edison Research,

40:20

and they're saying that, um, half of people, uh, in the us,

40:23

uh, listen to some type of spoken word, um,

40:27

every single day, which is up. But also listening time is also increasing.

40:32

And I'm, uh, always with all of this less interested in, um,

40:36

total amount of listeners, always more interested in listening time. Yeah.

40:41

- How much people are listening to, right. Yeah. Makes sense.

40:44

- Yeah, exactly. And you can see that, uh, listeners in the,

40:48

uh, in the us, um, are spending far,

40:52

far longer than they were nine years or so ago.

40:56

Uh, 55% you can see at the top of the screen there.

40:58

So you can see that there's some real growth in terms

41:01

of spoken word content, and clearly a lot of that is podcasting.

41:06

Um, there are other reasons why spoken word might be, uh,

41:09

very successful in terms of radio stations as well.

41:11

But, um, this is really being driven by podcasting

41:15

and for first time ever, um,

41:17

being consumed through mobile as well. So I think, you know, you, you know,

41:20

it's a really interesting time to actually see, you know,

41:24

some really good numbers coming out

41:26

of the spoken word, word report. Um, and, um, that of course, you know, um, uh, has, has, um,

41:33

uh, information in there in terms of, um, you know, well,

41:36

why are people listening to more spoken word?

41:38

I'm sure that a lot of that is to do with, uh, news

41:42

and, uh, the type of news which is going on.

41:44

But I think also it's, it's just that there's much more spoken word now with, with, uh,

41:49

podcasting, you know, SiriusXM, all of those types of, um,

41:53

of, of, uh, services. So actually there's more likely to be spoken word

41:58

that people feel that they want to go away and, um, and,

42:01

and, and, uh, have a listen to you. You are a, you are a spoken word radio presenter

42:06

a long, long time ago, Rob. Um, do you, do you sort of, uh, see, see that as being,

42:11

you know, a good, a good change? - Yeah, I think so. I mean, I, I do think that the,

42:17

the movement, and I think one of the interesting things

42:20

that came out of this was is that o oftentimes people think

42:23

of the podcasting medium as, as like a hockey stick kind

42:28

of growth, uh, situation.

42:31

And this, this research kind of follows a pattern

42:34

that we've been seeing for many years that a lot of people don't fully comprehend, is that

42:39

we've been growing on the audience side, um, between two

42:43

and 4% every year for almost every year of this medium.

42:48

So you have to have a lot of patience. You know, I was very patient in this medium <laugh> many

42:52

years ago when, when a lot of people didn't have a lot of,

42:56

um, confidence in the medium, um,

42:58

because it was growing so slowly. Um, but there is this perception that this is like, um,

43:03

you know, this the golden age of podcasting

43:06

and somehow, you know, it's a hockey stick kind of growth

43:09

situation, but it look, looks like here over the last year,

43:12

it's grown what I, I believe 2% is

43:14

what it was on the listening side. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Now granted it the scale that,

43:17

that podcasting reaches, you know, 2% as significant, uh,

43:21

it's just not as fast as some people perceive it as growing.

43:25

Uh, and then I also, I don't know if it was in this research, but,

43:28

but it was in something I saw is that the,

43:33

the older demographic tends to listen

43:38

to more, I guess, longer duration podcast than the younger generation,

43:43

which I thought was Oh, - Okay. Well that's interesting.

43:46

- I saw that one as well. Yeah. Yeah. Because there's, I'd say older people have got more

43:50

time. Uh, that would be one thing. - Could be <laugh>. Yeah. That could, or

43:54

- That be one of the reasons, um, - Or more patients for longer form content, maybe. Maybe,

43:59

- Uh, maybe 'cause they're not the, maybe they - Can't get up to turn - It off.

44:02

- <laugh>. Yeah, exactly. Martha reach the phone.

44:06

But I think the other one is also when I look at my,

44:08

my teenage children who are now early twenties as well, um,

44:11

they don't listen to radio at all at zero

44:15

because the music they want isn't on the radio.

44:18

The music they want has swear words and it has rude words in it,

44:21

and it's just not where they can listen to their music.

44:24

So they're a YouTuber. They're a, they're a Spotify, they are not a radio listener.

44:29

And so what radio is losing out on is

44:33

habitual motion. The minute my daughter gets in the car,

44:36

the first thing she does in her mini is plugs in her phone,

44:39

goes onto CarPlay, and she's often running, listening

44:41

to whatever she wants to listen to. And she might even have a YouTube video playing,

44:46

but just have listening to the audio as it's, she's driving.

44:50

She has no interest in radio at all.

44:53

- Yeah. No, I think it's a generational thing.

44:56

I dunno, James, uh, you're more plugged into this

44:59

convergence with, with radio, but what do you see with radio over like the,

45:04

maybe the next five to 10 years? It, is it gonna continue to decline and is its reach?

45:11

- Oh, well, I think I, I mean, I think radio is, um,

45:15

is particularly radio in the us which is, um,

45:17

in a very different place to radio elsewhere.

45:20

But radio in the US appears to be working out

45:22

how many things it can cut on the air, um, to

45:27

automate as much as possible. There's now AI powered radio stations, um,

45:31

where they don't even have to pay any human being

45:34

to present anything. Um, and, uh,

45:37

and I think what that I, I, I inevitably means is

45:39

that there's no real reason to listen to a radio station when you can just use your Spotify

45:44

or your YouTube music, uh, collection instead if you want music

45:48

or podcasts, if you want, if you want, you know, a spoken word.

45:51

So I think that, um, you know, if, if radio wants

45:55

to kill the medium, it's doing a very good job

45:57

of doing that right now. Um, understanding what the difference is in terms of radio

46:01

and understanding why people tune into the radio is,

46:04

is a really important thing. And I'm not necessarily sure that, um,

46:07

particularly in the US that people, um, you know, fully, uh,

46:11

grasp, uh, uh, that it's, it's a bit

46:14

of a different world, uh, elsewhere. And certainly when you have a look into Europe, um,

46:19

you know, where there's a lot, an awful lot of government funded broadcasting, um,

46:24

but you can see that they're focusing much more

46:26

on younger audiences. And there's, you know, a bit

46:28

of a different conversation going on there. I think.

46:32

- I know. Sam, uh, what's your thoughts on, on radio?

46:36

- Well, - I, I think it goes back to what James said earlier.

46:39

You know, radio needs to adopt. Um, a lot of radio talk shows that I listen to

46:45

the show happens and then it's gone. It's like no one's thought about recording it,

46:50

repurposing it, reusing it, right? Mm-Hmm. It's just gone. And you go, are you mentally,

46:55

you've just spent how much on that presenter with the guest done it all,

47:00

and you're just not thinking about it now? You know, again, as I said, when I ran a radio station,

47:04

we used ska, so we took the live feed, put it to Ska Mm-Hmm.

47:07

<affirmative> Ska turned it into a podcast. So we had reusability straight away.

47:11

And that is something that I find radio stations haven't

47:14

got their heads around yet. I mean, I struggle as well.

47:18

One of the biggest podcasts in the UK is, is from, uh,

47:21

it's called the News Agent. It's a, uh, news politics show. Mm-Hmm.

47:25

But Global are the company who produce it global, are the,

47:29

who make it, and yet Global do not live feed it.

47:34

It's not a live show anywhere. So it, they're not, they're not using their mediums at all.

47:39

They've got a podcast that goes out, reaches 10 million downloads, but that's not reused live.

47:44

Then they have a video version of it,

47:46

but that's not in the podcast version, that's on AUI mean,

47:50

it's just scatter gun. And I think radio stations are really their worst enemies.

47:57

- Yeah. I think that the convergence between radio

48:00

and podcasting can be difficult for some of these radio stations, um, to try and grapple with

48:06

and deal with, because radio is a different format.

48:09

I mean, sure, it's both audio, but it has different kind of structure to the content, and,

48:15

and it doesn't always work that great for podcasting.

48:18

And, and oftentimes, you know, I see, you know, these,

48:21

these radio stations maybe don't have full rights to,

48:25

to distribute the commercials, but,

48:27

but I do know that there are, um, there are platforms

48:30

that will filter those commercials out,

48:33

and they've been using that for many years with their,

48:36

their, their live streams that they've been doing.

48:39

Um, so, you know, it's just a matter of plugging in another capability to be able to get

48:43

that audio out minus the ads. And then maybe taking those same breaks

48:48

and putting in podcast ads or something like that might be an option. Um,

48:52

- Yeah. One, one of the, I mean, uh, you know,

48:55

there are a couple of things going on. It's in interesting to read Jeff Mian, um, autobiography.

49:00

He was the person that ran, um, uh, Emes.

49:03

You are smiling, Rob, you clearly have, uh, long, long,

49:07

uh, memories of Jeff. What a nice man, uh, he is. But, um, yeah, I did

49:11

- An interview, uh, with him once, right? Yeah.

49:14

- Oh, right. Okay. Well, that, that would've been, that would've been interesting.

49:17

Um, well, he, it's still up.

49:19

He says <laugh>, he says in that book that he, um, he thinks

49:23

that, uh, podcasting, um, uh,

49:26

will never make radio stations any money. Um, and it was very,

49:29

very down on the whole podcasting thing. Um, iHeart Media released its, um,

49:34

quarter 3 23 financial results last week.

49:36

And podcast, uh, podcast revenue,

49:40

just podcast revenue is 10.7% of the entire company.

49:44

And they own thousands of radio stations.

49:46

They own all kinds of other things as well. They run events and everything else.

49:49

Podcasting, little pucky, podcasting, 10.7%

49:52

of the company's revenue and podcast revenue itself up

49:56

12.5% year on year.

49:58

Um, I think there are quite a lot of people, you know,

50:02

like Jeff, who are probably eating their words a little bit

50:05

in terms of, um, you know, their, their, uh, guesses of

50:08

where the future is actually going. And part of that was, he's also, you know,

50:12

Jeff was also deliciously rude about Bob Pittman from

50:16

iHeart, uh, in that book as well.

50:18

It's a wonderful - Book.

50:21

You are you surprised James? Are you surprised? - Well, he's so positive.

50:23

He's so positive about everybody else. Oh, I know.

50:25

And then, and then whenever he talks about

50:28

Bob, it's kind of, - Oh - Dear.

50:31

But, uh, yeah, so, you know, interesting to have a look at that.

50:33

You know, I mean, similarly, Odyssey released their financial results last week.

50:37

They used to be called Intercom. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, the second biggest broadcaster.

50:40

And, you know, again, um, although their total revenue is down as, um,

50:45

as iHeart Medias is, to be fair, um,

50:48

they're on their digital revenue, which includes podcasting,

50:52

uh, was up 3.3%. So it's clearly still, you know, a place of growth

50:57

for radio companies while their big old fashioned am

51:01

transmitters, uh, slowly, uh, you know,

51:03

slowly dying. Yeah, yeah. - Indeed. <laugh>. Yeah.

51:07

I I would imagine that the radio side would die for

51:10

between three and 10% growth <laugh>.

51:12

- Oh yeah. They would be, they would be absolutely delighted with that. Right.

51:16

- <laugh>. So, yeah. So clearly that's, that's the direction, I guess,

51:20

but probably the fact that it's only 10%

51:24

of their overall revenue kind of doesn't Yeah.

51:27

Raise its priority very much. Does it

51:29

- <laugh>? No, but it's, you know, I, I, I think it's certainly a star,

51:32

an interesting seeing yesterday, um, uh, today, uh,

51:35

in your world, um, where, uh, global, which is, uh,

51:39

the largest, uh, radio broadcaster in the UK has signed a

51:42

deal to sell advertising into iHeart podcasts in the uk.

51:47

And the other way around iHeart is selling

51:50

advertising into global podcasts, uh, in the us um,

51:54

two large broadcast companies,

51:56

but are selling each other's, um, uh, you know,

52:00

ad slots in podcasting. Yeah, that's interesting. Um, I, I did take a peek.

52:04

Um, the FCC, uh, was approached a couple of years ago.

52:07

Global was thinking about buying as much of iHeart media as it possibly could.

52:11

It owns 15% of iHeart media. It turns out. I didn't

52:15

- Realize that. Um, - That's interesting. Yeah. So it's a, it's a, uh, you, there are various laws on

52:21

foreign ownership of, uh, radio companies in the US

52:24

and, um, global had to get special permission to buy a bunch

52:28

of, um, of, uh, shares. So that, that is probably driving

52:32

that sort of, uh, side of it. And maybe Global's plan is to be a bit more global.

52:37

They're not very global actually, in terms of what they do.

52:41

Um, they do have Dax, which is a podcast sales house in the us Mm-Hmm.

52:45

<affirmative>. So this obviously asks, begs, begs a question

52:47

what the deal, uh, is there, but, um, yeah, I think it's, uh, uh, you know,

52:52

interesting seeing, um, you know, yet more consolidation in the radio business, which

52:57

of course is just what we need. - Right. Well, I think that the,

53:01

what you've seen the radio industry do is they've,

53:05

they're acquiring or have acquired podcasting companies.

53:09

'cause guess what? They can't really do it themselves internally.

53:12

Right. And I think that's a real sign of what the,

53:16

the core issue is with radio embracing podcasting is

53:19

that they, they have their processes, they have their staff

53:22

that knows radio, but they just don't know how to translate

53:26

that to podcasting. So they, they've often, you know, I mean,

53:30

you look at all these big, big, uh, uh, radio networks

53:33

and they've all acquired podcasting companies.

53:36

Mm. Right. So that just tells you everything you need to know.

53:40

I think about, you know, kind of their skillset Mm-Hmm.

53:44

<affirmative> and what they, what they're good at and what they're not good at.

53:47

And, and I guess I have to praise them to say

53:50

that they recognize that and Mm-Hmm.

53:52

<affirmative> bring in a company that does, you know,

53:56

understand podcasting. And, and I think that overall, if you look at a lot

54:01

of those deals that, that those radio companies have done,

54:04

I think they've turned out to be pretty good, um, choices

54:07

by the, by the radio industry. Right.

54:10

- Yeah. I think that that's certainly, that, that's certainly, uh, going on.

54:14

I think one, one thing, uh, um, uh, if you don't mind, Rob,

54:17

that I spotted the other day, which is probably worthwhile

54:20

for the audience here just mentioning is the amount of, um,

54:24

scams going on on Facebook at the moment. Yeah. And podcasters being very specifically targeted.

54:30

Um, so there's a company which is, um, there's a, yeah.

54:34

And you've, um, um, there, there's a, a story from, uh,

54:37

a guy called Johnny Jet, I'm sure that's not his real name.

54:40

Anyway, he's a travel blogger. Um, and he was offered 3000 pounds to appear on a podcast,

54:46

um, which already sounds a little bit suspicious, but anyway, um, who wouldn't turn down

54:50

3000 pounds and all that. The, the guy wanted was, oh, we need to set up live,

54:56

live streaming from your Facebook account.

54:58

Um, can I spend a couple of minutes

55:00

with you on a screen share to set up that live streaming?

55:04

And what he was actually doing is he was grabbing access

55:07

to this guy's Facebook page and is then filling his Facebook page with, you know,

55:11

selling cryptocurrency and everything else. Um, which is, uh, you know, which is no good.

55:16

And this isn't just one story. Um, I have now had, uh, three other

55:23

large podcasters, very large podcasters, you, you know, uh,

55:26

household names who've told me that they have, um,

55:30

either been very close to being suckered for the same sort

55:33

of thing Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, um, or, or that they've been, um,

55:36

or that they've actually had had exactly this, um, this,

55:39

uh, you know, happening. So either people offer you a guest fee of three grand,

55:44

or, um, another one that I spoke to was offered $2,000

55:48

to speak at a conference remotely.

55:51

Uh, I'm speaking at a conference remotely in Spain.

55:53

I'm not being earned, uh, uh, tomorrow. I'm not being earned $3,000 <laugh> for it.

55:57

But anyway, um, so, you know, if, if there are these, um,

56:02

if you do get these emails, uh, who want to fiddle around

56:05

with your Facebook page, just say no. Um, but, uh, they seem to be, uh, really targeting

56:11

podcasters, um, possibly

56:14

because they've worked out what makes us tick. Um, so just a warning there, I guess.

56:19

- So this, this guy, um, uh, paid $3,000 to this

56:24

- No scam. It's the other way around. Was - The way around. He

56:27

- Was Okay. Yeah. He was, he was offered $3,000.

56:30

If, if only he'll turn up, um, and be a guest on a show.

56:34

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Um, so of course, - Obviously he never got the $3,000, right? He,

56:39

- He didn't see the $3,000. Of course. Yeah. But,

56:42

but you know, I mean, obviously you're gonna turn around and, and, and you're gonna say, well, yes,

56:46

I'll be a guest on your show. And yes, absolutely.

56:48

If you've got $3,000 as a budget, then yes, absolutely.

56:51

And once that you want to fiddle around with my Facebook,

56:53

uh, uh, you know, account just to, um, turn that on.

56:56

Well, great. Let's, let's do that. So, um, yeah.

57:01

So I thought that that was, you know, just worthwhile

57:03

for the people that are watching this, if people come to you

57:06

and they offer you vast sums of money, um,

57:09

then a send it my way, but also, b just be really, really careful if they want

57:13

to start fiddling around with your Facebook, um, account

57:16

or your Streamy yard account or anything else. Um, else just say no.

57:21

- Yes. I, I would agree. And in the, the stuff typically happens

57:25

during tough economic times. There's a lot of scammers out there now that are trying

57:29

to take advantage of people. 'cause maybe they're desperate

57:32

or they think that other people are desperate <laugh>

57:35

and they're, they're willing to take risks like this.

57:38

But, you know, I think it's interesting, um,

57:41

that this stuff is, is happening.

57:43

Uh, you also shared with me, I guess, uh,

57:48

you launched a new r assess feed of sorts.

57:50

And I, I want you to tell me a little bit about that.

57:53

- So, so this is a, so this is a website and,

57:56

and I, I can almost hear, um, I can almost hear Todd, uh,

58:01

and indeed Adam Curry both shouting at me already.

58:04

Um, it's, it's a very simple,

58:07

straightforward website called R ss two YouTube music,

58:10

R ss two YTM. And what it allows you to do is it allows you

58:13

to find the RSS feed for any podcast

58:16

and plug it into the YouTube music app,

58:18

because the YouTube music app plays, uh, podcasts.

58:21

It plays, um, podcasts via RSS feeds. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>.

58:25

Um, but of course, um, it's very difficult

58:27

to find the RSS feed of a podcast that you actually have.

58:31

So, you know, um, so if you were

58:33

to visit RSS number two YTMR ss to ytm.net, um,

58:38

then you'll see, um, it basically asks you, uh,

58:41

what podcast you want to listen to, and you can type in a podcast, uh, there,

58:44

you can type in the new media show or whatever. Um, and, uh, it will then, um, show you, um,

58:50

what the RSS feed, uh, is for

58:54

that particular, uh, show. Um, uh, and, uh, we'll give you, uh, the option

59:00

to actually help you, um, uh,

59:02

plug it into your YouTube music app.

59:05

So, um, if you were to choose, um, the new,

59:08

the new media show, right at the top of that, uh, list, um,

59:12

and click on there, then it shows you what the RSS feed is,

59:16

and then it lets you paste it into YouTube

59:18

music in the right place. So it's a super easy way if you want to use, um,

59:23

maybe you don't want to use YouTube music as a podcast app,

59:26

but it's a super <laugh> useful way for other people, um,

59:30

to get their favorite shows, uh, into YouTube music.

59:33

I don't suppose, Sam, you'll be using YouTube music anytime soon.

59:36

You use, um, you use, uh, Spotify, don't you, for your,

59:40

your, uh, music? - I, I, I do. Um, and that's only

59:44

because also my kids wouldn't use the YouTube music part.

59:47

I don't, I don't know if it was well supported in the time

59:51

when Spotify was one of the things that Spotify does really well

59:53

that we should actually praise it for it is everywhere, right?

59:57

Whether it's on your watch, whether it's on your car,

1:00:00

whether it's on a device. Somehow Spotify has made their client available everywhere,

1:00:05

you know, Alexa devices. And I think that's one of the smartest things

1:00:08

that they did when Apple

1:00:11

and other platforms that had music like Amazon were just

1:00:14

single platform solutions. - Mm-Hmm mm-Hmm. Yeah.

1:00:20

No, it's, um, it's, yeah, it's, it's gonna,

1:00:22

it's gonna be really interesting to watch what happens with YouTube music.

1:00:25

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> and, uh, whether or not this YouTube, whether

1:00:27

or not this RSS uh, ingestion, um,

1:00:31

that they have in their music app,

1:00:33

but not, of course, in, in the, in the main YouTube, um,

1:00:37

it actually takes off or whether or not we'll see anything else going on there.

1:00:41

So, um, yeah, but I just thought, Hmm.

1:00:44

Yeah, take a bet graveyard. I'm sure that Google Graveyard.

1:00:47

Yeah, Google. Google will close it all down in a,

1:00:49

in a year's, uh, in a years time. - It's Google graveyard in the Making <laugh>.

1:00:53

- So, so I've got up on the screen, the current experience

1:00:58

for, for the new media show in YouTube music right now.

1:01:01

Mm. And I was curious, um, if I were

1:01:05

to add the R rss s feed, uh, the audio RSS feed, um, Mm-Hmm,

1:01:09

<affirmative>, how would this experience James, as far as you understand?

1:01:12

Um, how would it be different? Would it be a separate entire listing? Yes.

1:01:17

- The - Audio version, - It would, it would appear as a different listing.

1:01:21

Um, but, um, but it appears just as if it's a standard podcast.

1:01:26

Um, so if you go, if you go back one, um, in your, uh,

1:01:30

this makes for a very good audio podcast, doesn't it? But if you go

1:01:33

- Back Yes. Well, I mean, if we wanted, wanna

1:01:36

describe it maybe? Yeah. That, - So, so there's a, so there's a button in,

1:01:39

in this particular area of the YouTube music app,

1:01:42

there's a button there which says, add podcast, and it's got a big plus button on there.

1:01:45

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Um, and when you press that, you can see two different things.

1:01:49

You can either see, find a podcast on YouTube

1:01:51

or underneath it, it's a little button that says add RSS feed.

1:01:54

Right. Once you press that add RS feed, you just cut

1:01:58

and paste it on there, button it, then it then allows you

1:02:00

to just punch in an an RSS feed, um,

1:02:02

uh, you know, URL in there. So you could, um, you, you could, um, you know, type in, uh,

1:02:09

any RSS feed that you wanted to press the okay button.

1:02:12

Um, and it then goes off, grabs that RSS feed ingests it.

1:02:16

Um, and it's available within your YouTube music app,

1:02:19

whether or not you're using YouTube music on the web, um,

1:02:23

or whether or not, or whether you are using YouTube music

1:02:25

on, uh, Android or iOS.

1:02:27

It works in all of those. Um, so it's,

1:02:30

- Do you happen to know James? Does it, uh, sense that there's programmatic advertising

1:02:36

and somehow block that?

1:02:39

- No. So in this, if you listen to a podcast via RSS,

1:02:43

it comes complete with the ads, and that's all fine.

1:02:46

Um, so YouTube don't want ads in podcasts, um,

1:02:51

if they're hosting them, um, if you are uploading the, the,

1:02:54

the, the files to them. Um, but, um, if it's, uh,

1:02:59

but this works just the same as a typical podcast app,

1:03:02

so there's no ingestion going on. It's passed through. Um,

1:03:05

it'll appear in your podcast hosting, uh,

1:03:08

numbers if your podcast hosting company has updated

1:03:11

their user agents. Um, and, um, yeah.

1:03:15

And it basically allows, you know, it's a proper inverse

1:03:18

of commerce, um, podcast player in that It,

1:03:21

it's using RSS just the same as everything else is,

1:03:24

- But it's, it's caching and, and delivering the media file right. Separately.

1:03:29

- No, it's not, it's not. It's actually playing, yeah.

1:03:31

It's playing the audio directly from, um, you know, it's,

1:03:34

it's exactly the same way as any other podcast hosting, uh,

1:03:37

a podcast podcast platform does. Okay. So, and that, and that's probably the difference.

1:03:42

This is the bit that actually I think podcasters really

1:03:45

like, I I, is that this is the way

1:03:47

- It YouTube music a past. - Yeah, yeah. It's absolutely.

1:03:51

- So it is playing pure audio. It's not converting it to a video, which I,

1:03:56

I had the impression that's what they were doing. - Yeah. So they're doing,

1:03:59

and this is where it gets hugely complicated, but they're doing two different things.

1:04:03

So if you want to be, if you are a creator and you want to be in YouTube, um, overall,

1:04:08

then you can submit your RSS feed to them,

1:04:11

and they will ingest that, and they will make videos out of it.

1:04:14

And it'll be available in the main YouTube product as well.

1:04:17

So if you've got YouTube on your tele, you can listen

1:04:20

to a specific show. Um, but if you, um, uh, if you just want to listen

1:04:26

to your favorite, um, uh, podcasts,

1:04:30

then you can also plug the RSS feed of your favorite podcast

1:04:34

into YouTube music and YouTube music only, um, will, um, end up, um, uh,

1:04:41

having that podcast in there. But it's complete pass through.

1:04:44

So it contains the advertising. Um, a play in YouTube music will mean a play appears in your

1:04:50

podcast hosting company. Okay. Um, but there's this sort of,

1:04:54

so YouTube music is actually playing podcasts in

1:04:57

two completely different ways. So you can imagine how simple

1:05:00

and straightforward this is going to be <laugh> for everybody to

1:05:02

- Understand, just to be clear about this. So it's a pass through within YouTube music,

1:05:08

but it's, it's gonna be cached and re-encode

1:05:11

as a video file if it plays in the proper

1:05:14

YouTube experience. Right? - Yeah. It'll never appear in YouTube at all.

1:05:18

If you add a podcast this way, it only appears for you.

1:05:21

It won't appear to be searchable. Um, um, so it won't appear, it will

1:05:27

- <crosstalk>. Oh, it's only gonna be visible to me 'cause I put it in my collection. Because

1:05:31

- You've put it in your collection. Yeah, absolutely.

1:05:34

And they're marked, um, they're marked if you,

1:05:37

if you add a podcast, uh, through RSS, they're marked

1:05:41

as this is a podcast, which has been added through an RSS feed.

1:05:44

Um, and you can see the, you know, and you can see all of that.

1:05:48

Now, of course, it doesn't support any podcasting 2.0, um,

1:05:52

tags that we found so far, but, you know, who knows?

1:05:55

Um, but, um, the user agents are now in the, uh, in the big,

1:05:59

um, OPO GLIs that John s Spurlock looks after.

1:06:02

Um, and if you're running a podcast host, which, um,

1:06:05

you know, which looks after that, then that seems to work quite nicely, I think.

1:06:09

- So I can add a podcast in the,

1:06:15

the YouTube studio experience, correct?

1:06:18

- Yeah. So if you are a creator, you can add a podcast, um,

1:06:22

in, into YouTube studio. Um, but it that, that you are adding your podcast in there,

1:06:27

and that's the full ingestion, and you're not allowed any ads in there and all of that.

1:06:32

Right. Um, so that's the other way.

1:06:34

So if you're a creator, that's the way of getting a podcast into YouTube

1:06:37

if you really want to do that. Um, but if you are, if you are just a listener

1:06:42

and you really wish that, that this American life was available, um,

1:06:46

in your YouTube music app, um, then you can do that, uh,

1:06:51

straight from this, from this, uh, uh, tool.

1:06:54

Sam, do you think this is a, um, do you think that this is,

1:06:57

um, um, uh, a good, a good plan for audiences?

1:07:01

Or is this just massively confusing? <laugh>?

1:07:03

- Uh, well, <laugh>, I think, I thought I understood it

1:07:07

until about 30 seconds ago, and then now I'm totally confused.

1:07:09

- So, - <laugh>, well, I think that's,

1:07:12

that's been a, an issue here.

1:07:14

I'm not sure that the YouTube team has done a good job

1:07:17

of really communicating this.

1:07:20

No. Um, I don't, I mean, what's your thought on that, James?

1:07:23

I know you're more plugged into what they've been communicating or not, but

1:07:27

- Yeah, I think communication is a difficult thing for, um,

1:07:30

for, for the Google team. And I think, um, if you were to look at the difference

1:07:35

between Google and Apple, Apple's team has a PR person, um,

1:07:40

connected to podcasting at all times. He's a young eager man called Zach,

1:07:43

who's just about to leave. Um, but they're gonna have

1:07:46

- Another Oh, oh, he's about to leave, is that what - You're saying?

1:07:49

He's about to leave, yeah. Yeah. So he's, uh, something we said James, Zach is <laugh>,

1:07:54

Zach Khan, who has been PR for the last, uh,

1:07:57

three years for Apple Podcasts. Um, right. He's been, I didn't know, been promoted.

1:08:01

He's been promoted Rob, promoted - To exciting Zach. Yeah.

1:08:06

- To, to PR for Apple Vision Pro,

1:08:08

or as I call them, those toy glasses. Oh,

1:08:12

- It's a lateral move to a new product that needs help. Right.

1:08:15

- Oh, oh, no, I'm sure it's a promotion. Uh,

1:08:17

- Well, well, course it's - Promot. It's to be, it's, it's to be the PR for those

1:08:22

toy glasses, but yes. Um, so, but, uh, the good news is serious product

1:08:27

<laugh>, we, we do get it. I mean, it's a great product. I'm,

1:08:29

I'm just, I'm just joking. And Zach has my home address, so I'm looking forward

1:08:34

- To it. Oh, okay. There you - Go.

1:08:36

Um, but, um, but I do understand though,

1:08:38

that Apple Podcasts will be getting a new PR

1:08:41

person next month. Um, so, uh, it's early December when Zach makes that move.

1:08:47

Um, and, uh, you know, so hopefully, um,

1:08:51

that will still be a, um, a dedicated PR person

1:08:55

for Apple Podcasts. And that's the big difference between Apple and Google.

1:08:59

So Apple has a PR person who looks after Apple Podcasts.

1:09:03

Spotify has 427 PR people who, who look after podcasts

1:09:09

and Google, um, and Google, YouTube music as far as I can work out,

1:09:14

don't have a PR person, uh, at all.

1:09:17

I was in touch with a PR person from YouTube,

1:09:20

um, uh, a while back. He seems to have vanished off the face of the earth, um,

1:09:25

stopped answering any of my emails, <laugh> and, uh,

1:09:28

and, you know, has run away. Um, so I, I think that that being fair, I think

1:09:33

that that's what's going on. They haven't, you know, it's a very small thing

1:09:37

for YouTube in, in general, and they just haven't got, um, you know, enough people

1:09:42

who are, um, uh, enough resources, um,

1:09:46

to actually afford a proper pr, uh, person.

1:09:48

And I would agree that that's probably harming, you know,

1:09:50

where they, where they're going PR is very difficult,

1:09:53

particularly if you've got a very complicated product as this is.

1:09:57

- Yeah, well, that's what it's important to have, kind of,

1:10:00

I'm like a spokesperson out there that's, uh, going on a bunch of podcasts and explaining it to 'em.

1:10:04

That's exactly what I did when I worked at Microsoft

1:10:07

on the Zoom platform for, for the seven years

1:10:10

that I worked on that product, is that I was kind

1:10:12

of the external communication for my platform <laugh>.

1:10:15

Mm-Hmm. And it's probably difficult for a, uh,

1:10:19

a company like Google to embrace something like that, but,

1:10:22

but I know that they're not as locked down, uh, supposedly.

1:10:26

Maybe they are as like an Apple or something like that.

1:10:28

No, Apple's kind of struggled with this o over the years as well.

1:10:32

Hmm. Um, so it's, but I just found where that, that research that I found,

1:10:39

it was Spotify's megaphone that was talking about, uh,

1:10:42

I guess their podcast trends of 2023, talking about

1:10:46

how people, uh, 55 to 64 are listening to twice

1:10:51

as long a content as last year.

1:10:54

So I don't know what's changed between last year and this year.

1:10:58

- Yeah. So they're listening. So the total amount of podcasts listening, uh, yeah.

1:11:03

Has, has gone up. It's gone up by 50%. Um, yeah.

1:11:06

But, um, for, for 55 to 64, it's gone up by 49%

1:11:10

for those over 65, which is a nice, a nice, uh, uh, number.

1:11:14

But this is, I think, what we want, um, to see.

1:11:18

We want many of the older audiences

1:11:20

to be listening more to podcasts. I mean, weirdly in Italy, it seems

1:11:24

to have more than doubled, which I don't fully understand.

1:11:28

Um, Australia, it's gone up by two thirds. Um, yeah.

1:11:32

You know, that's interesting. For older, for older

1:11:35

audiences, um, you know, uh,

1:11:38

the US it's also gone up as well. So I'm, I'm wondering what's going on there.

1:11:42

And, and I'm wondering, you know, um, whether

1:11:44

or not it's got something to do with the amount

1:11:46

of content which is available, um, whether there are more shows which are now interesting

1:11:51

to people, um, age 65 and older.

1:11:55

Um, uh, Sam isn't age 65 or older,

1:11:58

but do you have any sort of thoughts as to why this might be the, um, why this might be the thing?

1:12:04

- Sadly, I'm gonna get there before you James. That's what worries me, <laugh>.

1:12:07

Well, you are, um, no, I, I, I also think,

1:12:12

I think again, uh, complexity has felt simplicity.

1:12:15

I think a lot of people are now being able to find podcasts

1:12:19

through, whether it's Spotify, YouTube, apple, you know,

1:12:21

the mainstream maps that they use. They, they're, they're now becoming much more obvious.

1:12:25

I mean, Spotify has taken a couple of years

1:12:27

to get it onto the platform. Uh, people are probably listening

1:12:30

to music stumbling across it. Um, and again, I think, uh,

1:12:34

music itself doesn't appeal on the radio to people.

1:12:37

And they are seeing talk radio, but their favorite talk radio shows

1:12:41

are probably one hour, two hours. And then they're going, Ooh, what else can I listen to now?

1:12:46

<laugh> nothing else on the radio. And then trying to find, and we all know the thing

1:12:50

with podcasting is it's behavioral. So when you find one or two

1:12:54

or three favorite podcasts, you really do then enjoy listening to 'em.

1:12:58

To shove one of those podcasts off your listening behavior then

1:13:02

becomes doubly hard. Um, so I think, you know, again, we've seen, uh,

1:13:07

lots more political, uh, podcasts appearing certainly here in the uk.

1:13:12

Um, I think, uh, the rest is politics announced today

1:13:16

that they've just hit the 10 million downloads, uh, per month.

1:13:19

I mean, so you, I think we are beginning to see people a,

1:13:23

understanding this medium is interesting.

1:13:25

B as James said, finding content as well that they, they,

1:13:30

uh, find sticky and want to listen to.

1:13:32

And then I think, you know, we're seeing more dailies.

1:13:35

James is a, you know, is a daily podcast, but we're seeing more daily political shows as well.

1:13:39

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>, and I think couple of years ago,

1:13:42

James, you probably didn't have that many daily shows of,

1:13:46

um, news or sport or whatever.

1:13:49

- Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm sure that that's got something

1:13:52

to end up doing with it. And I'm, and as you say, you know, just the amount of shows

1:13:57

out there, I mean, I was just, I was just having a look

1:13:59

through all of the different shows that I listen to.

1:14:02

I'm thinking, my goodness, there's, there's, there's

1:14:04

so many shows. Um, all of which, by the way, have big, um, uh, uh,

1:14:09

signs on them saying there's a new episode to go

1:14:12

and have a listen to <laugh> - <laugh>.

1:14:14

Really, really, James, that's all you're gonna do today, is just

1:14:17

- Really, - Really behind with everything that I actually have.

1:14:19

- Right, - Right. - Um, but, but yeah. You know, so, but, so perhaps you're right.

1:14:24

Um, Sam, you know, I mean, I, if, if I was, um, you know,

1:14:27

I mean, I, I've been, um,

1:14:31

involved in podcasting since 2005, so not as long as

1:14:35

as you rob, but, um, my pretty darn close.

1:14:38

My mother, my mother la uh, last month, uh, my mother,

1:14:43

after I appeared on, uh, national, uh, ABC television, uh,

1:14:47

in this country, my mother, um, uh, was very proud

1:14:51

that I'd managed to get onto the TV here, <laugh>.

1:14:53

And she, and she said how proud she was in an email,

1:14:56

and then she added, tell me, what is a podcast? <laugh>

1:15:00

- <laugh>. Yeah. Fill me in. I wanna know. Yeah. <laugh>.

1:15:04

- Yeah. - After five years of writing a daily newsletter

1:15:08

- About podcasting. Thanks mum. Um, but, um,

1:15:11

but the fact that she is now interested in

1:15:13

what a podcast is, uh, I think says a lot in terms of, um,

1:15:17

you know, reaching all of those older people

1:15:19

who historically, you know, as you know, Rob, have not listened to this sort of thing.

1:15:24

So, um, there may be some great, great growth there,

1:15:28

- Though. I've always said that what's, what,

1:15:31

what's great about podcast listeners is

1:15:33

that they always get older. Um, so if you kind of inverse that to realize

1:15:38

that maybe many of these folks were like maybe

1:15:42

35 years old, um, yeah.

1:15:44

Wow. When they started listening the podcast, - ATT is Younger <laugh>. Right,

1:15:47

- Right. Um, or in that age range, if I think about

1:15:51

what the research showed of the most pop, uh, the age demo

1:15:54

that was most popular back in the earlier years

1:15:57

of podcast listening, it was in that 30 to 35

1:16:00

and 40 age range. Mm mm So what we could see is just those were the hardcore

1:16:06

listeners for many years.

1:16:08

Yeah. And they're just getting more serious, and they're increasingly replacing their, um,

1:16:13

media consumption patterns away from mainstream media

1:16:16

towards podcasting increasingly.

1:16:19

Um, I don't know. I mean, that's kind of how I look at it.

1:16:22

I mean, I'm kind of in that age demo too.

1:16:24

When I fully embrace podcasting, I was in my mid thirties as well.

1:16:28

And so that I, I can totally, you know, associate

1:16:32

with what's going on here in the patterns that, that we're seeing.

1:16:35

And I do am, as you know, this is a 90 minute show,

1:16:39

so I <laugh> I do believe in long form content

1:16:43

in podcasting, because I do think that, uh,

1:16:45

short form content is difficult to get a lot

1:16:48

of value out of in audio. Yeah. Yeah. Though it is easier in video. But I wonder,

1:16:52

- I wonder how much of this is being driven by the fact

1:16:55

that it's now much easier to get podcasts in your car than you've ever

1:16:59

been able to get? Oh, - I agree with you.

1:17:02

- You know, I mean, Sam Sam drives this massive great big,

1:17:05

uh, uh, uh, car. No, you, you know, you, you, you drive a new car since I

1:17:08

last, uh, I last actually saw you. Yes, yes. But you've,

1:17:11

but you've got, you know, apple CarPlay and you've got Spotify and everything else in

1:17:14

your, in your car as well. Yeah. Um, do you, do you listen to that

1:17:18

or do you listen to the radio? I bet you listen to Radio four, uh,

1:17:22

every morning, don't you, <laugh>? - I, I do listen to Radio four, uh, the Today Show,

1:17:26

and I do listen to Sports Talk Sport, which is a,

1:17:30

a sports show, but, Mm-Hmm. I, I, I do listen less and less even myself now to radio.

1:17:35

Um, I don't listen to radio one, two, or three mm-Hmm. Um,

1:17:39

- Which is, but are you listening to Spotify instead? - Listening to, uh, pod fans, actually, but yes. No, um,

1:17:45

- <laugh>, but of course, sorry. Yes. My mistake. Obviously <laugh>

1:17:50

- Get that plug in. Um, but no, uh, with music. Yeah.

1:17:53

But I think as you get older as well, you listen to less new music.

1:17:57

We are more nostalgic about the music we

1:17:59

listen to, so Mm-Hmm. It's more Paul Weller than it is

1:18:02

Dua Lipa, let's put it that way. Yeah. And, but I do, I actually, when I get in the car,

1:18:08

it is podcast after podcast, I'm literally have got my,

1:18:11

um, playlist ready to go. And if I'm driving somewhere, then I've go through my five

1:18:16

or six different podcasts I listen to. And that's, that's what it is. And I don't have 20 hours in

1:18:21

the day to listen to podcasts or music or radio.

1:18:24

So the walking the dog driving somewhere

1:18:26

or, uh, whatever. That's my time. Mm-Hmm.

1:18:28

- Yeah. And Rob, do you, in your, in your Elon Musk mobile,

1:18:32

do you, uh, listen to a bunch of, uh, podcasts in there?

1:18:36

- I, I do on occasion, but I also listen to some streaming music in there too.

1:18:40

So it was, it's a little bit a mix of both.

1:18:42

It just kind of feel, you know, just whatever my mood is at the moment.

1:18:46

Mm-Hmm. And if I want to catch up on an episode somewhere, I can do that.

1:18:50

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> in the car, and, and it's, uh, it, it streams directly to the head unit

1:18:56

of the car itself. 'cause the car has a continuous internet connection, so.

1:19:00

Right. It's, it's all, you know, it's pulling from the, the,

1:19:04

um, the mobile networks Right.

1:19:07

Are Mm-Hmm. <affirmative> are, are supplying that connection.

1:19:09

So, so all of the data connectivity goes directly to the car.

1:19:12

It doesn't have to pass through my phone, but, but, um, yeah, I think

1:19:16

- How, how are those shares going for you? - They're going Okay. I'm not good. I'm not disappointed.

1:19:21

I bought it a long time ago. You did? So it's all upside on.

1:19:25

You did on mine. Did. Yeah. It's never gonna dip down to the price

1:19:28

that I paid for it. <laugh>. Yeah. - It's impressive. That was an impressive, um, uh, uh,

1:19:33

tip of where the future was. Was going to buy a bunch

1:19:36

of Tesla shares all the way back when, so, uh, yeah.

1:19:40

- Yeah. I was all into, into electric cars a long time ago.

1:19:43

I, I bought my first electric car in 2011, so that's

1:19:47

how far back I go with it. I bought, bought a Nissan Leaf,

1:19:50

- So, okay. Yeah. - So I was one of the first 2000 owners of a Nissan Leaf. So

1:19:55

- They, they don't do too well in this, in this, uh,

1:19:58

in this state because, uh, this state is really hot.

1:20:01

Um, the Nissan Leaf doesn't really understand how to Cool.

1:20:04

Its batteries down <laugh>. No, - It doesn't.

1:20:07

It doesn't. And yeah, so, uh, if you thought what one

1:20:09

of those, like in Arizona or or other places Yeah.

1:20:12

That are really hot, it, it, it's probably gonna burn the batteries out.

1:20:16

I, I agree with you. Yeah. - I'm trying to, I'm trying to buy an electric car,

1:20:19

hence why, um, I, I'm interested in all of this, um,

1:20:22

but I won't buy an Elon Musk car because it's Elon Musk.

1:20:26

Um, really? So I don't wanna go. Interesting. Yeah. So I don't, I I don't wanna go.

1:20:29

Can you imagine the shame, uh, of driving

1:20:32

around in <laugh> in a car made by Elon Musk

1:20:36

<laugh>, actually.

1:20:40

Um, so I'm busy trying to find a, a decent, uh, a decent,

1:20:44

uh, electric car, um, which is quite difficult.

1:20:47

Um, I, I mean, to be fair, the Teslas do look very nice,

1:20:51

but, uh, you, you, you, you drive a massive great gas guzzling Range

1:20:55

Rover, I think, Sam, don't you? - Uh, it's an electric hybrid.

1:20:58

Thank you very much, James. Is - It, it's easy.

1:21:00

I did not know that. Yeah, there - You go.

1:21:02

There you go. Yes, <laugh>. So, uh, I get, it gets plugged in at night

1:21:06

and we do an electric drive on all local,

1:21:09

and I haven't filled up with petroleum for three months.

1:21:12

- Wow. Wow. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. - That's awesome. - So I could not,

1:21:17

I could not have a fully electric car. Jesus. I'm, I get stressed when my phone's on 5%

1:21:23

and I'm on a train <laugh>, 5% battery on the motorway would

1:21:28

absolutely send me to the hospital. I think - Range anxiety is what they call that.

1:21:33

- Well, mine's called a Range Rover, and it would have a range anxiety <laugh>.

1:21:39

- So one last question for both of you guys.

1:21:42

Um, we've seen the fluctuation in, uh, the amount

1:21:46

of podcasts that are in the medium today.

1:21:49

I, I think, you know, there's over 4 million that have Mm-Hmm.

1:21:52

<affirmative> that are active in the podcast index and,

1:21:55

and what, two and a half million in Apple Podcasts.

1:21:57

But as you guys look out, a couple years I've been,

1:22:02

I've just been wondering about this whole thing,

1:22:04

or, I mean, we're totally seeing kind of a reset

1:22:07

that's going on around, um, shows out there

1:22:11

and there's this little bit of fluctuation going on

1:22:15

with new episodes being published. You know, I see it in pod news every day.

1:22:19

One, one day it's up 0.2, the next day it's down 2%,

1:22:23

or, you know, it's bouncing around. But as we think about the next couple years, I guess,

1:22:29

you know, this is probably really indicative of the economy, right?

1:22:32

Is is kind of what we're seeing having a big influence here,

1:22:36

or do you think that it's not the economy and somehow we're seeing kind of like a, like a reset of,

1:22:43

of podcasts and a shift maybe towards larger podcasts

1:22:47

and the smaller ones are kind of not getting the attention

1:22:50

and, and fading away because they're not picking up audience too fast?

1:22:55

I know it's a complicated question, but I just wanted to just throw it out to you guys.

1:22:59

What do you see James and Sam in the market?

1:23:03

Are we seeing a shift towards, um, a consolidation towards larger shows, uh,

1:23:09

and less of an opportunity for smaller shows?

1:23:11

Or what direction do you see this going? - Hmm. Sam, do you wanna take that <laugh>,

1:23:16

- James, you didn't - Want Thanks. Thanks, James.

1:23:19

- I mean, I, - I I'm perfectly happy to No, no, jump

1:23:22

- In. No, I, I know you are. - I've done a lot of talking. - Yeah.

1:23:25

Um, so I, I'd say this look, um,

1:23:28

advertising is a crap model for monetization

1:23:32

of the long tail of podcasts.

1:23:34

Right? The reason being that they don't get

1:23:37

- Hard to argue with that actually, <laugh>. Yeah. - And so Pod fade, pod fade is very quick.

1:23:42

And, and, and yeah, the bigger apps, like the Apples

1:23:44

or Spotifys do not help the smaller

1:23:47

podcasters get discovered. They do not do anything.

1:23:50

So I think the tools are really bad for discovery.

1:23:52

I think the monetization's really bad. And of course, you just get very bored talking

1:23:56

to yourself if you're at the long tail, because it's just not fun.

1:23:59

A lot of hard work, not a lot of return. And I think what we will see is with the new podcasting apps

1:24:06

that are adding better discovery tools, better interactivity tools,

1:24:10

better monetization capabilities, Mm-Hmm.

1:24:12

<affirmative> that we are going, I said it

1:24:14

to Mark <inaudible> to Captivate, when interviewed me,

1:24:16

I said, look, we're going through the web 1.0

1:24:19

to the Web 2.0 model. So the web 1.0 was stupid, crazy valuations.

1:24:25

Everyone was paying stupid money for pets are us, right?

1:24:28

And blah, blah, blah. And then the market just crashed

1:24:30

and burned, and somebody was going round running, okay, oh, well that's it.

1:24:33

The sky's falling in. The internet's over the web's done.

1:24:36

Let's go back to client server. That's it.

1:24:39

And I get the same feeling that we're seeing the same

1:24:42

with podcasting, Joe Rogan.

1:24:44

Oh, all the big exclusives have gone, oh,

1:24:47

the market's dead, advertising's dying.

1:24:49

It's all going, and numbers are falling. And then we're just gonna see some really smart technologies

1:24:54

and businesses and people come back. And the second growth of podcasting will come.

1:25:00

And on the back of that, I think people will then find

1:25:03

that their time and attention, the value that they have

1:25:05

to put into creating podcasts has a return.

1:25:08

And with that return will become, uh, I think more

1:25:11

and more people saying, yeah, this medium now has growth

1:25:14

that I can get to and I can see a return on.

1:25:17

As opposed to, it's Joe Rogan with 300 million

1:25:20

and it's Prince Harry and Meghan getting 85 million

1:25:23

and no one else getting any of the money. So I think we're just seeing a 1.0

1:25:26

to 2.0 web web crash to web growth.

1:25:29

And I think we are seeing a podcasting, whatever you want

1:25:33

to call it, 1.0 to 2.0, I dunno

1:25:35

what we're calling podcasting in this, this medium.

1:25:37

Anyway, I'll leave that to James to name, but that's my opinion.

1:25:40

I think, I think we're seeing, uh, the lull

1:25:43

before the next storm. - Yeah. I, and I think, you know, I, I look at the numbers

1:25:49

and, you know, and I, I sort of pull the numbers apart on,

1:25:53

uh, the podcast business journal. Um, and I actually wonder whether

1:25:58

or not the data that we have is right.

1:26:02

Um, because you are talking about, um, shows.

1:26:06

So, you know, um, uh, only 207,000 podcasts were actually updated last week.

1:26:13

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So you are looking at, um, actually not that many.

1:26:16

It's not, uh, you're not, uh, 4, 4 4 0.2 million.

1:26:20

Um, you know, there aren't 4.2 million

1:26:22

shows out there, really. There are only 207,000 shows which

1:26:25

are being updated right now. So that's - <crosstalk> Weekly, right? Weekly, yeah.

1:26:29

- Right, yeah. On a weekly basis. Yeah. Um, so I think that that's, you know,

1:26:33

an important thing just to bear in mind. But I think also the, the, the numbers we,

1:26:38

we keep on seeing these large scare stories about the

1:26:43

amount of new podcasts being created

1:26:46

is going down and down and down. Well, one of the reasons for that is

1:26:51

that podcasters are being more canny in when they launch a

1:26:54

new podcast, reusing an old RSS feed, so

1:26:58

that they all automatically inherit the old audience

1:27:01

of that old show. Um, and then they start a show with, you know,

1:27:06

with guaranteed audience, um, that won't appear in any stats

1:27:10

as a new podcast, even though it is a new podcast.

1:27:12

It's a brand new piece of, piece of, um, of, of editorial.

1:27:16

But they're using an old show's RSS feed to do it.

1:27:20

So I think, you know, the, some of the data that we see,

1:27:23

particularly from this notes, but also from the, the, the podcast index as well,

1:27:28

isn't necessarily telling the entire story in terms

1:27:31

of what's going on in the podcasting, uh, world.

1:27:36

There's a little, um, chart that I, um,

1:27:39

produce on the podcast business journal website,

1:27:42

podcast business journal.com/data. Um, and that shows the active podcast trends.

1:27:47

So the amount of shows which have been updated in the last

1:27:50

30 days, and, and that chart, um, uh, from, uh,

1:27:55

August has looked really good. Um, there's been a nice increase in the amount

1:27:59

of shows updated over the last month, uh, from

1:28:03

around 325,000 to around 350,000.

1:28:07

So there's a good amount of growth there, but I think, you know, it, it's

1:28:10

what are we actually measuring here? Um, and I would much rather look at total time spent

1:28:17

listening to podcasts. 'cause that to me is much more interesting.

1:28:21

Um, and the actual, you know, podcast creation trends.

1:28:25

I'm, I'm kind of, you know, still a little bit sort of,

1:28:27

I'm not quite so sure where we're going there.

1:28:31

- Yeah. So I wanted to pull up that page, James,

1:28:34

and you could kinda show us. So if

1:28:39

- We were yes, if you, if you, if you just click into podcast creation on that, uh, on that page, podcast

1:28:44

business journal.com/data, and then scroll right to the bottom.

1:28:47

You should see hopefully a beautiful, uh, graph there.

1:28:51

Um, which, um, yeah, which is showing, um,

1:28:55

podcasts updated over the last 30 days.

1:28:58

And you can see big, big jump in September,

1:29:01

and I suspect that the reason why it went up

1:29:05

so high in September is the end

1:29:07

of the summer holidays in the Northern Hemisphere.

1:29:10

Um, and so therefore, lots of shows that were on hiatus

1:29:14

during the summer holidays, um, coming back again.

1:29:17

And perhaps that had something to do with it.

1:29:19

But, um, you know, some nice figures, I think, you know,

1:29:22

in terms of the amount of, um, creation,

1:29:25

which is actually happening there. My favorite sta from that page, uh, over on,

1:29:29

on average last month, there was a new podcast episode posted every

1:29:33

Naugh 0.8 seconds - <laugh>.

1:29:37

That is a good, good sound. I'm not quite sure how to relate to

1:29:40

that necessarily too much <laugh>. Yes. But, so this, this active podcast trend chart is,

1:29:46

it says, um, this graph shows total podcasts

1:29:49

that have been updated in the past 30 days, right?

1:29:53

Yeah. But what you have on the Daily is,

1:29:57

or the Daily Newsletter is podcasts

1:29:59

that were updated in the last, uh, week, right? Is that

1:30:03

- Correct? Yes. I think, I think Pod News shows, uh,

1:30:06

total podcasts updated in the last week, which is on this page as well.

1:30:09

- Yeah. Yeah. It's here, right? It's - Just at the top there.

1:30:12

Um, yeah, the reason why I look at, um,

1:30:15

a podcast updated in the last 30 days for that graph is

1:30:18

that it makes it a much easier graph to read.

1:30:20

It's, there's much less bouncing up and down. Um, so it's just purely, it's just purely making it easy

1:30:26

and simple to look at a graph and go, okay, what's the, what's the trend here?

1:30:30

Um, so that's why I use the last 30 days in this

1:30:33

particular, um, uh, graph. But this is just a little script that sits there

1:30:37

and updates every single day from the podcast Index grabs

1:30:41

this, you know, information and, you know,

1:30:44

and hopefully it helps us understand whether

1:30:47

or not things are going up or down. Um, and, um, you know, and whether

1:30:52

or not we should be scared, but I don't think from any of the numbers

1:30:55

that we actually have here that we should worry too much about, um, the, the trends

1:31:00

and where, where this industry's going. - I mean, clearly, if you contrast these numbers

1:31:06

to even four years ago, these are,

1:31:10

these numbers are dramatically higher than,

1:31:13

than this Medium had even four years ago.

1:31:16

Um, I think so, you know, oh yeah,

1:31:20

- Absolutely. Yeah, - Absolutely. And if you go back even further than that, it's, it,

1:31:24

the numbers were probably half of what it was four years ago.

1:31:28

- So, Rob, I, I would add one thing. James is the person who said it to me many years ago. I see.

1:31:33

I do listen to what you say, James. Um, like a library, certain,

1:31:38

certain podcasts may not be included in this

1:31:41

because they're not updated, but they are complete.

1:31:44

So let's take Serial, there is not a new episode of Serial,

1:31:48

but Serial will be listened to by new podcast listeners.

1:31:53

And so that podcast is not included in the weekly update

1:31:57

because there is no new update. That doesn't mean that that podcast has no value anymore.

1:32:04

- Yeah. I, I, I completely agree.

1:32:06

And in fact, um, uh, a friend of the show, Evo Terra,

1:32:10

are we allowed to use friend of the show on this show? I don't know. But anyway, of course you can Evo

1:32:14

Evo for years and - Years.

1:32:16

He's a great guy. He's in the Hall of Fame and everything, so we - Certainly is.

1:32:19

And, um, his, his job, uh, uh, right now is writing a, uh,

1:32:23

weekly newsletter called The End. You'll Find it at the end, fyi.

1:32:28

And that is a podcast just about audio fiction podcasts,

1:32:32

which have finished. So it's only for complete audio fiction podcasts.

1:32:37

Now, if you look at, um, all of the numbers

1:32:39

that we've just been talking about here, um, we we're kind

1:32:44

of saying that the, these don't matter 'cause they're finished.

1:32:46

But actually for audio fiction, hugely, uh, important

1:32:49

that you can go back and binge on an entire

1:32:53

complete audio fiction, um, you know, uh, uh, series.

1:32:57

So, you know, there is definitely something for, um,

1:33:01

the fact that, uh, there are completed podcasts out there.

1:33:04

Um, the End FYIs is a super, uh, great, um, you know,

1:33:09

um, newsletter to get, if you are interested in that sort

1:33:12

of, um, in that sort of, uh, of, uh, thing an audio fiction.

1:33:16

It's not my bag, but it is quite a lot of other people's bags.

1:33:20

- Yeah, no, I agree. I mean, the, the whole kind of audio books

1:33:24

and audio fiction stuff is Mm-Hmm. Is really taken off, or, or less probably Mm-hmm.

1:33:30

Six, seven years, what, whatever. But this is the,

1:33:33

this is the current number off the podcast index, uh,

1:33:35

4.269 million podcasts that are in the index.

1:33:41

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Um, I think I talked to, to

1:33:44

Dave about this at one point, and he told me that, you know, you see Apple with like two

1:33:49

and a half million, right? But you see the podcast index with, um, you know,

1:33:53

4.2 million and what's the delta there?

1:33:57

I know Apple's gone through and kind of sifted out, um, feeds,

1:34:02

but I also heard from Dave that,

1:34:04

that they've done the same thing here. They've sifted out the feeds. So what's the delta?

1:34:08

What's the difference between these two numbers?

1:34:11

- Yeah, I'm not, - And I think it's fees I'm not,

1:34:14

that are not submitted to Apple is a big

1:34:17

- Oh, okay. Yeah. That, that could be some, some of it, I have to say,

1:34:21

um, uh, again, friend of the show, Daniel J. Lewis Daniel,

1:34:24

um, he produces some, um, podcast industry data as well,

1:34:28

which I can never quite remember where they are. Um, <laugh>, uh, 'cause

1:34:32

because they always move podcast industry insights.com.

1:34:36

There you go. Um, but that, that number is the number as, as I understand it,

1:34:41

that number is the number from, um, from Apple Podcasts

1:34:44

and, um, the number that Daniel J. Lewis, uh, tracks.

1:34:48

And it's remarkably close now to the number where Yeah.

1:34:53

Where the podcast index is. Oh, well, that's good.

1:34:56

So yeah, so there seems to be, um,

1:34:58

so what's he saying at the moment? Oh, no, no, hang on.

1:35:01

No, no, you're, no, you're absolutely right. Uh, I've made a mistake. It doesn't happen very often.

1:35:06

That never happens to me. Two, I'm shocked, but you're absolutely right. Yes.

1:35:10

So Daniel j Lewis' stuff podcast industry insights.com, uh,

1:35:14

it says 2.6 million valid podcasts are in the Apple

1:35:18

Podcasts, uh, chart, uh, sorry,

1:35:21

in the Apple Podcasts database. Yeah. Yeah, you're absolutely right.

1:35:24

So he also pulls in podcast, um,

1:35:27

podcast index, uh, data as well.

1:35:30

Um, but again, that figure is going up and that figure has been going up, um,

1:35:34

it was 2.5 million November of last year.

1:35:38

It looks, um, it looks as, it'll be

1:35:40

as if it'll be about 2.7 million for November this year.

1:35:43

So that's another 200,000 that we didn't have,

1:35:46

uh, uh, last year. So there's some quite nice, um, quite nice numbers there.

1:35:50

But yeah, if you, if you wanna really dig, dig into the data, um, then Daniel's, um, uh, site is, um,

1:35:57

is really good at, um, being able to, um,

1:36:00

you know, end up doing that. Um, so podcast industry insights.com, um, I believe, well,

1:36:06

he says, um, he's been saying on this, uh, site for a while

1:36:10

that he was going to focus on the, um, uh,

1:36:13

on the Google Podcasts data as well. But, uh, I, I noticed that he's now dropped that <laugh>

1:36:19

not much point of focusing on the Google Podcasts data

1:36:21

now, <laugh>, right, right. <laugh>, that's

1:36:24

- True. Rob. I, yeah, Rob, I'd say for, for somebody like Pod fans,

1:36:28

we look at this as well very closely. We are pulling our, our goal is to pull in about 350

1:36:35

to 400,000 podcasts only. We don't think that there are 4.2 million podcasts

1:36:42

that are gonna be updating or that are gonna drive an audience.

1:36:46

And, um, you know, we've built in such a way that we,

1:36:50

we pull from the podcast index, we pull the active podcast,

1:36:53

we pull the music podcast, which is another, again,

1:36:56

another piece of that index. And then we will pull in what we think are the, uh,

1:37:01

volume podcast, the ones that are getting, you know,

1:37:04

plus 100 users or listeners.

1:37:06

Um, after that, on the long tail, we've got a way where we,

1:37:10

the listener on pod fans can in through gamification,

1:37:14

actually suggest a new podcast, and we'll grow our index that way.

1:37:19

We've gone from the, let's not take everything and add it,

1:37:21

and then use it to the, let's take the most successful,

1:37:26

the majority, and then add as we move forward.

1:37:29

And I think that's the way forward. James, the quick question.

1:37:32

Did the podcast Complete Tag ever get completed

1:37:36

- <laugh>? Oh, yes. Uh, the podcast Complete Tag,

1:37:39

which is actually Apple's, um, yes, it's part of the,

1:37:42

it's part of Apple's Spec. Apple don't do a very good job of, of actually documenting,

1:37:46

supporting their own tags, <laugh>, well, supporting their own tags,

1:37:48

but also documenting them for, for other people.

1:37:51

I've got a bit of a beef with the trailers tag at the moment.

1:37:54

Um, but yeah, so that, that is actually there.

1:37:56

So the complete tag is being used by a number of,

1:38:00

um, by a number of shows. In fact, if you, uh, take a look at, uh,

1:38:03

the Trade Secrets podcast, um, which of course,

1:38:07

if you remember was Dave Weiner and Adam Curry's original podcast back in 2004 or so.

1:38:13

Um, that show has a complete, um, tag in it, um,

1:38:17

because of course it's complete <laugh>, it's not been updated in, um, you know, 19 years.

1:38:23

Um, so, um, yeah, so that's, that's certainly there.

1:38:26

But, um, you know, I guess there's concerns about

1:38:30

what happens when you do tick that button. Can you still add more, more shows to it?

1:38:36

You know, what, what happens there? Um, so, you know, it's, it's something that, um,

1:38:41

I think I think Apple could do a better job with, um, uh,

1:38:44

with actually writing proper specification

1:38:47

documents rather than flowery, um, you know, nicely, um,

1:38:52

laid out with a beautiful font, um, uh, you know, articles.

1:38:55

I think some proper documentation around, uh,

1:38:59

the Apple Podcasts, iTunes specs would be quite helpful as well.

1:39:03

- Yeah. Yeah. So I wanted to just kind of, um, make sure

1:39:08

that everybody kind of has a little bit of a clear picture

1:39:11

of why these numbers are so wildly different between Apple

1:39:15

and the Podcast Index. And, and, and of

1:39:17

- Course, Spotify's number is even higher, - Right?

1:39:21

So, you know, there's, there is,

1:39:24

and this is what, this is what Dave pointed out to me too,

1:39:26

and I talked to him about it, is that, is that there are lots of shows out there

1:39:30

that are self-hosting, right?

1:39:33

Mm-Hmm. So they're, they're hosting their own podcasts on

1:39:36

their own, um, dot com or, um, I know this plays into Todd's conversation, but,

1:39:42

but they never submit to Apple, you know, and, and,

1:39:46

and Adam Curry's a good example of this too.

1:39:48

His, his podcast as far as I know,

1:39:51

isn't submitted to Apple either. So, so, but it's available on other platforms, um,

1:39:57

but not, you know, in in Apple or Spotify

1:40:00

or any of those bigger platforms. 'cause he, you know, he doesn't wanna support those folks.

1:40:05

Actually, at the end of the day, I think. Um, but that is a big reason why

1:40:11

there's a discrepancy between these two that's so broad.

1:40:15

I mean, that's a lot of shows. - Yeah. There's a massive, a massive difference.

1:40:18

And, you know, Spotify, I think, uh,

1:40:21

Spotify's number is actually going down, um,

1:40:24

and occasionally they release a new number, but it was some, something like five, 5.3 million.

1:40:29

Um, but of course, Spotify is full of an awful lot

1:40:32

of shows which aren't necessarily, um,

1:40:35

- Publicly distributed. - Well, yeah, so there's some which don't have RS feeds,

1:40:40

but, but also if you, if you go on any of these services

1:40:44

and you search for the word test, the amount of shows

1:40:47

that you find, <laugh> - Is - Really, really high.

1:40:50

- Even Apple Podcast, I've, it, I've it, yeah, - Yeah.

1:40:53

Even, even Apple Podcasts. So I think, um, you know, the, the, you know, look at,

1:40:59

at the end of the day is, is something that might be interesting when the, the,

1:41:03

so Pod News has podcast pages, right?

1:41:05

So it's got a page for every single podcast out there.

1:41:09

Um, and those pages contain all kinds

1:41:12

of information about a particular podcast. Now, that's what I tell people, it's not actually true.

1:41:18

What Pod News has is it's got pages for every podcast

1:41:21

that someone has searched for and clicked on.

1:41:25

So, um, you can see all 4.2 million podcasts in the

1:41:31

search in pod news. But that doesn't mean that I've made 4.2 million pages.

1:41:35

I've only made a page. If somebody clicked on the actual podcast name,

1:41:40

that's when it gets into the database. I only have half a million shows in my database, so I've,

1:41:47

I've given everybody, um, 5 million shows

1:41:49

that they can search through, or four, 4 million shows that they can, that they can search

1:41:53

through, but only fi uh, 500,000

1:41:57

of those shows have actually been clicked on.

1:42:00

Um, and that's the only time when it's actually, you know,

1:42:02

been added, been added in there. So, um, yeah, there is,

1:42:05

I think Sam is doing things absolutely right in the pod fans

1:42:09

app by making sure that, um, he's only importing shows

1:42:13

that people actually wants to go and have a listen to.

1:42:16

Um, I would certainly agree with that. Pod fans fm, by the way. It's very good.

1:42:20

- Yeah. Thank you, James. Well, let's, let's, uh,

1:42:23

wrap up the show once you guys both share your contact

1:42:26

information and how, how people can reach out to you

1:42:29

and take advantages of the things that you're bringing to the market. So, James, go ahead.

1:42:35

- Oh, I was, I was gonna throw to Sam. Okay.

1:42:37

Um, uh, please, uh, uh, GTZ Pod News, it's, uh,

1:42:40

free newsletter pod news.net.

1:42:43

Uh, it's very good. Uh, there is, uh, another, uh,

1:42:45

another podcast that you might want to get, which is called New Podcast Trailers.

1:42:50

And, uh, all it's got in it is podcast trailers from

1:42:54

all kinds of different shows. It updates every single day.

1:42:56

So if you're looking for something new to listen to, new podcast trailers,

1:42:59

you'll find it in your favorite podcast app and also in Spotify.

1:43:03

Um, and, uh, if you want to get in touch with me,

1:43:06

I'm James at Cridland, uh, is my email address.

1:43:09

That's James at Cridland. Sam,

1:43:13

- Go ahead, Sam. Yeah. Uh, well, James and I do a podcast weekly, uh, together, so Pod News Weekly,

1:43:19

uh, so get that wherever you get your podcasts.

1:43:22

And, uh, I do Pod Vans,

1:43:24

which is this brand new podcasting 2.0 app

1:43:27

that I'm building and releasing. Uh, so yeah, um, the doors open,

1:43:32

the wait lists removed at the end of this month. So yeah, happy days.

1:43:36

- Awesome. That's exciting. Yeah, I'm, I'm excited to get in there

1:43:40

and start using it more, so yeah. That's

1:43:43

- Awesome. Yeah, by then we'll have the 350,000 podcasts

1:43:47

that we think are worth having. And, uh, yeah, so we've been adding the,

1:43:51

there's a big bugbear of mine with the hosts in this industry of ours at the moment,

1:43:55

which is, uh, garbage out.

1:43:58

Um, they are not verifying the data in,

1:44:00

and we are finding a lot of RSS that is just garbage out.

1:44:05

Um, and I just don't understand it. I, I, I keep asking, I had a word

1:44:08

with Tom Rossi at Buzzsprout, and I've had words with, uh, RSS Blue, why you, you, you,

1:44:14

you use Magic mastering, you do all these great audio things

1:44:17

and blah, blah, blah, and you're AI and everything.

1:44:20

Why can't you just do simple field validation? I into

1:44:23

- Trouble with Buzz Brow <laugh> shit, they

1:44:26

- Don't listen to us anyway. - <laugh> <laugh>. - Oh, well, yeah.

1:44:31

Well, Yeah, who knows? That could be possible, right?

1:44:36

Um, yeah, exactly. Whoops. Well, thanks guys.

1:44:39

Um, I, I'm Rob Greenley and you can certainly reach me online too, um, at Twitter.

1:44:44

I have my own website, rob greenley.com

1:44:47

and obviously go to new media show.com to catch, uh,

1:44:50

all the archives on this show. We've had, um, plenty, I think we're over

1:44:55

566 episodes or something like that.

1:44:59

And, and if you wanna send me an email,

1:45:01

you can certainly send it to Rob dot Greenley,

1:45:05

G-R-E-E-N-L-E [email protected].

1:45:09

We'd love to hear from you and I'm sure Todd will be back, um, soon at some point.

1:45:14

But in the meantime, I'm going to keep, keep the lights on

1:45:17

and the, the stream going here on this, the show.

1:45:20

So thank you for being with us today.

1:45:23

And, and I think we had some steady listeners that went, uh,

1:45:27

the full duration here. So I guess there are some folks, they're probably

1:45:32

on the older end of the spectrum, probably if they stayed

1:45:34

with us this long <laugh>. So, so thank you so much everybody,

1:45:38

and we'll be back, uh, I dunno if we'll be back next week or not.

1:45:42

I think it's, that's um, Thanksgiving timeframe, so I don't think so.

1:45:45

So, but anyway, um, have a great time.

1:45:48

Thank you both James and Sam for uh, taking time out.

1:45:53

I know it's really early in the morning for you, James. I appreciate it. Go back to bed or something.

1:45:57

But anyway, <laugh>. Alright, bye everybody. Thank you. See

1:46:02

- You. Take care.