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It's Friday , the 8th of March 2024

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.

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The last word in podcasting news

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. This is the Pod News

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Weekly Review with James Cridland

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and Sam Sethi .

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Yes , I'm James Cridland , the editor of Pod News

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, and I'm Sam Sethi , the CEO of True

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Funds . In the chapters today . Apple backtracks

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its EU decision and sees

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sense . Apple fined two

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billion euro and sees red

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. Apple launches transcripts

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and sees words . Youtube

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fires 50 staff and

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Spotify deletes someone's show

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, all their followers and all their money

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.

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Plus , I'm Greta Kohn , the CEO

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of Pushkin Industries and coming up

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on Pod News . Today I'll be talking about

0:45

a new season of revisionist history and so

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much more .

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And I'm Albin Brooke , head of marketing at Buzzsprout

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, and later I'll be talking about Buzzsprout for iOS

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.

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They will this podcast is sponsored

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by Buzzsprout . Podcast hosting

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made easy with easy and

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powerful tools , free learning materials

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, remarkable customer support and

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a new iOS app . From your daily

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newsletter , the Pod News Weekly

1:07

Review .

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So where should we start this week , james ? Hey , let's

1:11

start with my mates Apple they're

1:13

back on the Christmas list for a little bit . They

1:16

launched iOS 17.4 . You

1:18

and I have been testing it in beta , but you've

1:21

said you wouldn't talk about it until it was released

1:23

. So it's released , james , with

1:25

transcripts . Come on , what's your thoughts ?

1:28

Well , I think it's pretty good , in

1:30

fact . One thing that I noticed when I

1:32

was getting ready to talk to Albin is

1:34

I had a quick look through the transcripts

1:36

for this very show , and what

1:38

I have noticed in the transcripts for this show is

1:41

not only does it have our names

1:43

correct in there , so it's got proper

1:45

voice recognition . We're

1:47

producing our own transcripts and sending it to them . They

1:51

are also merging

1:53

the chapters in with the transcripts as well

1:55

, which is something that they never talked

1:57

about when they gave me the

1:59

press briefing for , but

2:02

it makes it really cool , because you can actually read

2:04

through the transcript but

2:06

actually see where all of the chapter points are

2:08

as well . So , yeah , I like that . Yeah

2:11

, which is smart .

2:12

I think we've had conversations in the past where I've gone why

2:15

have you got show notes , chapters and transcripts

2:18

? Because if you looked at a Word document

2:20

then fundamentally all

2:22

of that's merged into one document . So

2:25

I quite like the idea of having

2:27

chapter markers at the top of transcript

2:29

elements so that you know that you're moving

2:31

on to the next chapter .

2:32

That's really nice there have been a few people in some

2:34

of the groups that I've been in saying you

2:36

know , typical Apple doing

2:39

its own thing . But actually it's

2:41

kind of not really , because Apple

2:44

is taking an open standard , the podcast

2:46

transcript standard , part of podcasting2.org

2:49

, and it's

2:51

taking that and pulling in transcripts

2:54

where they exist and if they

2:56

don't exist then obviously it's making its own . But

2:58

I think it's a pretty good thing . I have had

3:01

checkered success

3:04

with the Pod News Daily , which

3:06

is the podcast , of course that I

3:08

completely self-host I'm not relying

3:11

on Buzzsprout to do that and

3:13

that's been interesting , trying to get transcripts to

3:16

kind of work the way that I would like them to

3:18

work . I'm still playing around with that , but

3:20

it does seem that

3:22

although Apple talks about wanting

3:24

VTT files , it

3:26

does seem that it works absolutely fine with SRT files and

3:29

if you look at what Buzzsprout are giving them , buzzsprout

3:31

are only giving them SRT files and it's working

3:34

absolutely fine . So I

3:36

don't know a little bit more playing around with

3:38

that , but yeah , I think it's all

3:40

pretty good really .

3:41

Yeah , I think you know , look , let's

3:43

you know I can poke the bear occasionally

3:46

over at Apple Towers , but

3:48

reality is they are a massive company

3:50

with great resources . The

3:53

way that they've actually done the word-by-word

3:55

transcription is actually very

3:58

accurate . I look at how we do it at

4:00

Truefans and

4:02

we are , I'd say , 99%

4:04

accurate in terms of where the words are being

4:06

highlighted . But sometimes that

4:09

doesn't actually highlight the right word and

4:11

then it has to play catch up and then it's right or

4:13

it'll be behind it . I

4:15

think with Apple , I noticed when I was just pushing

4:18

it a little bit and prodding it , it actually was very

4:20

good at jumping to the exact word and

4:22

starting there . So again , hats

4:25

off to Apple . Where they do good things , I will

4:27

praise them , and when they do bad things , I will certainly

4:29

tell them why have they done something bad ? Well

4:31

, they haven't done something bad , but they've lost two

4:33

billion dollars . Yeah

4:35

, the EU's just find them two billion dollars

4:37

because they're not very happy with what Apple

4:39

did in terms of the

4:42

Apple store and the way

4:44

that they implemented the DMA

4:46

rules . So , yes , so they went . You know what ? We'll

4:49

give you two billion dollar . Fine , that's a starter

4:51

. Are you going to play the ball ? We'll

4:53

see what happens next .

4:55

Yeah , it's really interesting , isn't it ? And it's something

4:58

particularly that Daniel Eck was

5:00

very much behind . Spotify

5:03

have made a lot of complaints

5:06

against Apple for various things

5:08

. He released a statement

5:11

once the EU had worked out that they

5:13

were going to find the company two billion

5:16

dollars . This is

5:18

why he has been

5:20

making all of the complaints that he's been making

5:22

.

5:22

The internet is at risk and , fundamentally

5:25

and principally , we at Spotify

5:27

believe an open internet is a much better

5:29

internet , and so that's why we're fighting

5:31

, because Apple has decided that

5:34

they want to close down the internet and make

5:36

it theirs , and they view every single person

5:38

using an iPhone to be their user

5:40

, and that they should be able to dictate what that

5:42

user experience should be , rather than that

5:45

the iOS platform

5:47

is a platform that accesses the

5:49

internet and that openness is good

5:51

.

5:51

So this is Daniel Eck , of course , the man

5:53

who tried to take Spotify

5:56

as being the only place where you

5:58

could get podcasts . Openness

6:00

is bad in that case . Spotify , of course

6:02

, don't support any of the open podcasting

6:04

2.0 tags . They do their

6:06

own things in terms of transcripts , they do their

6:08

own things in terms of chapters . They do their

6:10

own things in terms of lots of sense . But obviously

6:13

, open internet is very important . When you're talking

6:15

about Spotify versus Apple , I

6:17

think it's a little bit dubious , to be honest .

6:20

Yes , yeah , as I said

6:22

to Neil Vaclio , if you squint

6:24

hard enough , everyone's right , everyone's

6:26

correct . I mean , yes , he does

6:28

want an open internet where

6:30

basically , apple can't charge

6:32

30% on the

6:34

payments .

6:35

And , to be fair , to spot I wonder why .

6:38

But to be fair , I mean , you know , I was listening

6:40

to Scott Galloway on Pivot

6:43

and he was saying you know , like you know , Apple

6:45

don't charge Apple music 30%

6:48

on . You know their

6:50

payments . So you've got Apple

6:52

both being the infrastructure provider

6:55

of payments but also favoring their

6:57

own apps , and that's the problem . That's

6:59

where Apple falls down . I

7:01

mean , google fell down when it was favoring itself

7:03

in search results and

7:06

again Microsoft fell down in the past when it favored its

7:08

own browser over everyone else . And

7:10

I think I've gone on and said Apple

7:12

needs to either be much

7:15

more open in third-party support or

7:18

it needs to be broken up and have its apps

7:20

removed . You can't have your cake and eat it , and

7:23

that's what Apple does .

7:24

Yeah , I was quite interested in reading . There's

7:27

a bit of a tittle-tattle

7:29

today saying that if you download

7:31

an app through an app store which

7:33

isn't Apple's app store

7:35

in the EU which you'll be able to do from

7:37

here on in then that's absolutely fine . But

7:40

if you then go and , you know , spend

7:42

more than 90 days somewhere

7:46

else outside of the EU , then

7:48

Apple will stop that app from working , which is

7:50

just like genius

7:52

. Yeah , apple will basically go . It doesn't

7:54

look as if you live in the EU anymore

7:56

and I think , yeah , you shouldn't have

7:59

that app on your phone anymore , and so they're going

8:01

to get rid of it , which is brilliant , and

8:03

I think you know . Daniel Eck went on and said they

8:05

were a little bit skeptical that Apple

8:08

were actually going to play ball with all of this

8:10

.

8:10

Apple has a history of skirting these rules

8:12

. It's done so in many

8:15

territories around the world Japan , south

8:17

Korea , netherlands , just

8:19

to name a few where Apple's

8:21

lost similar cases , and it basically

8:24

decided to ignore it or just vaguely

8:26

comply , but not really comply with the spirit

8:28

of whatever the court decided needed

8:31

to happen . And they keep on

8:33

doing that . And so the cynic in

8:35

me would say that I think Apple might

8:38

behave in the way that it behaved in

8:40

the past , which is it's just going to ignore it . It's

8:42

going to keep on acting the way

8:44

it has been acting .

8:46

Yeah , and I think he might have a point there . I

8:48

think he does .

8:49

I mean , you know , we've

8:51

just talked about Apple's support for transcripts

8:53

and you and I have talked about the

8:56

Sirius XM case . You

8:58

know , Apple , conveniently , are bringing

9:00

out transcripts around the same time as its

9:02

legal judgment and throwing a

9:04

bone to the podcasting to the O community

9:06

. And I think it is throwing a bone . I don't think

9:08

it's . You know , they could have done this a

9:10

year ago . They didn't . I

9:13

think they will only do it when they're pushed into

9:15

a corner and forced to do it , and that's

9:17

sad From Apple's point of view .

9:19

They are basically saying Spotify's

9:21

been downloaded more than 119 billion

9:24

times on Apple devices . Their

9:26

engineers Apple's engineers have actually

9:28

flown to Stockholm to help

9:31

Spotify's coders

9:33

put new features

9:35

into the Spotify app and

9:37

they've not charged Spotify for any of

9:39

this . Spotify pays Apple

9:41

absolutely nothing for

9:44

anything and they managed

9:46

to get a decent spot on , you

9:48

know , on the App Store , and they managed to

9:50

, you know , benefit from

9:52

all of Apple's work

9:55

. So you know you can see

9:57

it on that side as well . But I'm

10:00

only really playing devil's advocate because

10:02

I feel that I kind of ought to .

10:04

Well , marguerite Vestegard

10:06

, the executive vice president in charge of competition

10:08

policies , said for a decade Apple

10:10

abused its dominant position in the market

10:12

for distribution of music streaming apps through

10:15

the App Store , and I think that's the problem

10:17

. You know , apple is trying

10:20

to be a good egg , on one hand supporting Spotify

10:22

, but on the other hand , this 30% is

10:24

just extortionate , and I think

10:26

maybe if Apple bring that down to a much

10:29

more reasonable charge for the services

10:31

they provide , people wouldn't complain . I

10:34

think it's now everyone's beginning to say hang on a

10:36

minute , apple . You've milked the cow long enough

10:38

Time to actually now let other people

10:40

have a little bit of the pie .

10:41

Yeah , and it's not just 30% , is it Because it does

10:43

go down once you're large enough ?

10:45

I thought yeah , it goes down to 15%

10:47

if you get significant traction and various

10:49

other things . But again , 90%

10:52

of apps within the App Store aren't gonna

10:54

hit that marker , so you know , you're

10:56

always gonna end up paying the 30% . And

10:59

again there's no way you

11:01

can use alternative payment

11:03

systems . So you're beholden . And

11:05

again . Later on in the show I'll be talking about

11:07

how we are going to implement

11:09

Apple Pay within Truefans and

11:12

how it can be done outside the App

11:14

Store , but again I still have

11:16

to pay the 30% tax . Irrelevant , because

11:18

you know , if you can't beat them , sadly

11:21

, you have to join them in some ways .

11:22

Hold on to your trousers , everybody . It's another Sam

11:24

Sethi rant on the way Um LAUGHTER

11:28

. But you know

11:30

. I mean you should be happy about Apple because they've reversed

11:32

their decision to remove PWA web

11:34

apps in the EU . You'll be able to use

11:37

progressive web apps in

11:39

the EU . Now , truefans is a progressive

11:42

web app and , yeah , you'll be able to

11:44

add that app to the home screen , just

11:46

the way that you can add a

11:48

variety of different things . I mean that's good news , isn't

11:50

it ?

11:50

It's amazing news because I mean , you know

11:52

, on the one hand they were taking it away from us and

11:55

I was going to have an absolute fit , and

11:57

on the other hand , they've just sort of handed it back , so

12:00

status quo restored . But you

12:02

know , look , why they did that ? I have

12:04

no idea why they threatened it . I have no idea

12:06

, I mean , why they put it back as

12:08

a feature . Suddenly , safari suddenly

12:10

safe again Amazing . How was it unsafe

12:13

and we had to remove it without doing

12:15

anything because I've not had an upgrade . It's

12:18

suddenly safe again , sir . God knows what that

12:20

one's about . But what I would

12:22

say is look , we as

12:24

the community talk about open standards

12:26

I mean , daniel talked about open standards

12:28

a minute ago and the open internet . We

12:31

talk about podcasting being open

12:33

, and then the first thing everyone does is they go

12:35

and build native iOS apps and Android apps

12:37

. I

12:39

have built a PWA . I'm not

12:41

hypocritical . I stick to the open

12:44

web standards . I do not go and build

12:46

proprietary platform standards

12:48

. I fought Microsoft when

12:50

I was at Netscape to stop them using ActiveX

12:52

and JScript proprietary Microsoft

12:55

tech that would have killed the web

12:57

. Here we are , fast forward 20

12:59

years , and we still are cow-towing

13:02

down to Apple's proprietary

13:04

standards . That's not open , it's

13:06

not a W3 standard . I don't know

13:08

why app developers aren't

13:10

sticking to open standards . We're all

13:12

going on about how wonderful RSS is being

13:15

open and yet on the same

13:17

breath , we go now download

13:19

my iOS app . It's totally

13:21

proprietary , but don't worry about it . I'm

13:23

like , okay , can you hear yourself ? Then

13:26

we hear everyone go master dawns , the future

13:28

, master dawns , the future Activity

13:30

pub . It's amazing . It's amazing the federated

13:33

web . But hey , remember

13:35

to go and get my Android app because that's

13:37

not proprietary . So all

13:39

I'd say is why don't we build PWAs

13:41

? Why don't we stick to the open web ? It's

13:44

a W3C standard and stop building

13:46

to close proprietary platforms . But

13:48

no , everyone's going to be hypocritical

13:51

from Daniel Eck down , and they will pretend

13:53

to be open when they're not really open .

13:55

Coming up later on the Pod News Weekly Review

13:57

. We talk to our sponsor , buzzsprout , about

13:59

their new iOS

14:04

app . Is that our exposter ? Let's

14:06

talk about Spotify first shall we ?

14:08

Yes , what's going on with Spotify ? Oh

14:10

, yes , a little bit more about them . Spotify

14:13

for podcasters has increased its lead

14:15

to 31.2%

14:18

of new episodes . Now we

14:21

have , over the years

14:23

since they launched this free version , pooh Poohed

14:25

Spotify for free . They've

14:28

had Joe Rogan , they've had

14:30

Diary Veseo and clearly they've

14:32

got a lot of people . It clearly

14:34

is a good strategy for Spotify . I

14:37

know a lot of other hosts offer free , but

14:40

they don't seem to attract the same upscale

14:44

that Spotify does . Why ?

14:45

I wonder whether or not the why

14:48

is that Megaphone couldn't get video

14:50

working until very recently . Joe

14:52

Rogan has switched from Spotify for podcasters

14:55

to Megaphone . Similarly

14:57

, diary Veseo , which also does video

14:59

, is now on Megaphone as well . I wonder

15:02

whether it's just purely that Megaphone who

15:04

, by the way , have said to various

15:06

people that they have no intention of supporting

15:08

the transcript tag at

15:10

all . It's not even on

15:13

the job list yet . I

15:15

wonder whether or not Megaphone have basically

15:17

gone . You know , it just takes us time

15:19

to do these complicated things . That's

15:21

why we've seen Joe Rogan and Diary Veseo

15:24

, because they wanted video on Spotify

15:26

using Spotify for

15:28

podcasters . But

15:31

yeah , I mean , it's now powering

15:33

31.2% of new episodes

15:36

, which is interesting . Spotify

15:39

for podcasters uses Amazon Cloudfront

15:41

under the hood and Amazon Cloudfront

15:44

has hit a new record . That now serves 55%

15:47

of all new episodes . So if Amazon

15:49

Cloudfront goes belly

15:51

up and falls over , then

15:53

half of all of the podcasts

15:55

on the internet will fall over , including the

15:58

pod news daily , but not including this , because Buzzsprout

16:00

, our sponsor , don't use Amazon Cloudfront

16:02

Interestingly . So , yeah

16:05

, so you know , I don't know . I

16:07

think that that's probably one of the reasons why

16:10

Spotify for podcasters , you know

16:12

, has been attracting a lot of people because

16:14

it's been the only way Spotify

16:17

open has been the only way

16:19

of getting video into the Spotify platform

16:21

.

16:22

Well , they've done something else

16:24

, though , in this week . James , that

16:26

isn't very cool . What have they

16:28

done ?

16:29

Yes , this is a story that we covered

16:31

yesterday in pod news and

16:33

it's a story about a podcast

16:36

called Evolving Prisons . Now that had

16:38

some pretty good figures . The

16:40

figures were growing . The show Kagan

16:44

Carey , who produces the show

16:46

, had even used Spotify's paid subscription

16:49

model , which I didn't really

16:51

think was a thing . But no , it turns out it is

16:53

, and she was earning money

16:56

from that . People were

16:58

paying , I think , £1.50

17:00

per month for bonus episodes $1.99

17:03

. Anyway . And then she heard that

17:06

she'd gained a nomination for Outstanding

17:09

Indie Podcast at the True Crime Awards . So everything

17:11

was going absolutely fine until Spotify deleted

17:14

her podcast . Oops , not

17:17

just did Spotify delete their

17:19

podcast , spotify gave

17:23

all of the money back to these

17:26

paid subscribers . Spotify

17:28

pulled the podcast

17:30

off Apple and various other places

17:32

as well . And

17:35

yeah , and so basically she has

17:37

to start all over again . And

17:39

she contacted me and she said you've

17:42

covered stories about anchor deleting

17:44

people's shows in the past

17:46

. Is this something that you might be able to help with ? And thankfully

17:49

, I did know somebody who can help

17:51

. And while Spotify

17:53

don't comment on specific incidents

17:56

, they say we are working closely with the creator

17:58

to quickly resolve this issue , and

18:01

my understanding is that they've at least been able to

18:03

restore the stats for the show . They've

18:05

emailed the former subscribers

18:07

asking them to resubscribe

18:09

and they've reimbursed some

18:11

of the lost revenue as well . It's a good step

18:14

, but obviously what Spotify can't do

18:16

is they can't get all of her subscribers

18:19

back on all of the other platforms as well . So

18:21

it's a bit of a mess , and the

18:23

reason why it was deleted

18:25

and then put back it was deleted because

18:27

the algorithm flagged

18:30

it because of suspicious payments activity

18:33

, apparently , and within

18:36

12 hours she got

18:38

another email saying after review , your podcast

18:40

account has been reinstated . However , based

18:42

on our internal flags , we recommend updating

18:45

your password , which looks

18:47

to me as if that's another one of the

18:50

many Spotify password

18:52

hacks which have been happening over

18:54

the last couple of years . So

18:57

yeah , just

18:59

goes to show . I think I mean I

19:01

said this in the article yesterday . I said perhaps

19:03

, if your podcasting has become a little more serious

19:06

, it's worth paying for podcast hosting

19:08

with a smaller company , for the personal

19:10

touch you get , even when things go wrong , and

19:14

I'm sure that Kagan will be finding somewhere

19:16

else . But yeah , that's a dodgy

19:18

old thing , isn't it ?

19:19

And if you think this is the only one , this

19:21

is the one that you're aware of I'm

19:23

sure there are many others that haven't come to

19:25

light because I can't believe

19:27

this is the one and only ever

19:30

incident .

19:31

Yeah , and , to be fair , Spotify have done much of

19:33

what they can , I mean

19:35

, apart from deleting the thing in the

19:38

first place . And , to be fair , we

19:40

will always hear more about this

19:42

going on on Spotify than anywhere

19:44

else , because Spotify is both the largest

19:46

company but also gives podcasts

19:49

away for free , so of course , we're going to hear

19:51

that , but even

19:54

so , that's not a good look , is

19:56

it ?

19:57

No . So , moving on to a friend

19:59

of the show or after my rant , maybe

20:01

not , but Buzzsprout

20:04

has a new iOS app and

20:06

I have downloaded it and I have played with

20:09

it and it is very lovely . But

20:11

, james , you caught up with Albin

20:13

Baruch , the marketing director at

20:15

Buzzsprout , didn't you ?

20:17

I did catch up with Albin and , yes , and had

20:19

a good chat with him , and the first question

20:22

as I always do , even though I think

20:24

that everybody knows is I asked

20:26

what ?

20:27

is Buzzsprout . Buzzsprout is a

20:29

technical solution that hosts this podcast

20:31

, so we help get your podcast online

20:33

and distributed out to the world . We're

20:36

proud supporters of the Pod News Weekly

20:38

Review and we host 120,000

20:42

other active podcasts , but those are incidental

20:44

to the work we do here .

20:47

Indeed , so you

20:49

have launched . Buzzsprout has launched a

20:52

new iOS app this week

20:54

to much critical acclaim

20:56

. Why have you done that then ?

20:58

Well , for years we , you know , using

21:00

apps ourselves . You

21:02

see lots of use cases

21:04

, things that we would really like to have a

21:07

mobile app , and over the years we

21:09

kind of added up more and we take screenshots

21:11

and say , oh , this is a useful thing . And

21:13

I think we got to four real reasons

21:16

that we wanted to have a mobile app and

21:18

that's when we started working on it . So those four

21:21

are real-time notifications

21:23

, simplified podcast management

21:25

, statistics and sharing

21:28

, and we can go more into each of

21:30

those if you'd like , but the whole point is

21:32

, you know , we have this device with us all

21:34

day , every day , indie podcasters , often

21:36

at a work computer or somewhere other

21:38

than their home , and it's nice to be able

21:41

to take these quick interactions with your

21:43

podcast , no matter where you are .

21:44

Yes , and one of the things

21:46

that it offers notifications . What

21:49

sort of notifications can we expect

21:51

from the Buzzsprout iOS app ?

21:53

Well , this is an area that phones

21:55

really excel , especially if it's done

21:58

well , if the app doesn't abuse

22:00

it , but it's a real-time notification

22:02

, is mostly very small amount

22:04

of text and it prompts you to

22:06

take an action . Write with something's ready

22:08

, so for us that means your episode's

22:10

done . Processing or co-host

22:12

. Ai has some suggestions for you

22:14

. We have your weekly statistics

22:17

. Maybe you have an ad

22:19

opportunity with Buzzsprout ads and

22:21

those are all things . We are sending emails , but

22:24

with email it may not be a few hours

22:26

till you see it . With a notification

22:28

on your phone , you can take action right away .

22:30

Yeah , and that's useful for all things , like when co-host

22:32

has finished processing

22:35

the podcast that you've just uploaded . Those

22:37

sorts of things Exactly .

22:39

So , instead of you having to check

22:41

in on your email or check in on

22:43

Buzzsprout to see if something's ready , now

22:45

you're getting a notification . You go okay . Great

22:48

, I like that title , let's publish it

22:50

and you can move on .

22:51

And then you can correct typos

22:54

and things like that just

22:56

from your phone , I guess .

22:58

So this is one of the things we talk about as

23:00

simplified podcast management

23:03

, and then , when it really turns into

23:05

, a lot of people are going oh , it's the typos . Yes

23:07

, but the way

23:10

I think about it is , sometimes

23:12

we're trying to balance quality

23:14

. You know , we want a lot of podcasters to

23:16

aspire to a high level of quality , but

23:19

without giving into perfectionism

23:21

and perfectionism to me can

23:23

be really bad when you're double and triple checking

23:25

. You're re-listening to the episode to make sure

23:28

you never made a mistake . But

23:30

what we can do , at least where Buzzsprout

23:32

can step in , is help you course

23:34

correct . Maybe you made a typo

23:37

, maybe you forgot a link ? Well

23:39

, your listeners are going to tell you that pretty quickly

23:41

and as soon as you hear that from one person

23:43

, as long as you can make that change

23:45

very quickly , you can still balance

23:47

quality without giving

23:50

into this overly

23:52

anxious management of your podcast

23:54

. So , update typos , update

23:56

a link , publish an episode , make a quick

23:58

change . It's just an easy way

24:00

to manage your podcast and you're always logged in to

24:02

your shows .

24:03

Yeah , it's very cool , and you can , of course , do

24:05

all of that while , in Dave

24:08

Jones' words , while you

24:10

are doing a warm server migration . If

24:14

you've heard the latest podcast , you'll

24:16

know exactly what he's talking about there , and if you've not , probably

24:18

best .

24:20

I'll have to go listen to this to catch

24:23

what Dave Jones is talking about .

24:25

Yeah , it's exactly what it sounds like

24:27

. One of the other

24:29

things that you can do with it is that you

24:31

can have a look at your paid subscriptions because

24:33

, of course , buzzsprout offers that

24:36

as well so you can see the people

24:38

who are supporting you . You

24:40

can manage dynamic content . I noticed

24:42

you can even manage the Buzzsprout ads , so

24:44

you can take a peek at who

24:47

wants to advertise on your podcast

24:49

and you can say hell , no or yes

24:51

. That's great .

24:52

Hopefully you're saying hell , yes , that's our goal . Yes

24:54

, of course .

24:56

Of course , yes , absolutely , apart

24:59

from that one podcast . So

25:02

, yeah , no , so it's a really useful

25:04

thing . One of the things that

25:07

, of course , a mobile phone is perfect for

25:09

is sharing Sharing

25:11

information over to social

25:13

media , which of course , many

25:15

people use mobile phones for , and

25:18

other things as well . There's

25:20

so much which is shareable from the app as well

25:22

, isn't ?

25:22

there . So this is something I kept

25:25

seeing on Instagram Instead of sharing

25:27

our achievements that we would send

25:29

to someone in an email , people would just share

25:32

screenshots , and I never was

25:34

understanding . And then I went oh , it's because they're

25:36

logging in on their phone , they're

25:39

on a browser to take a screenshot and

25:41

it's so easy to go from screenshot over

25:44

into the app . But it always hurt

25:46

a little bit because we did so much

25:48

work to try to make them a bit prettier than

25:50

a screenshot and yet the screenshots

25:52

were winning . And so this is an opportunity

25:55

for us to make it easy to share episodes

25:58

or podcasts or the tweets we

26:00

write you with cohost visual

26:03

sound bites , the achievements

26:05

or , if you want , you can now make

26:07

prettier screenshots of your stats

26:09

. But all those are really

26:11

easy because we're all used to doing

26:14

that from apps and then sharing things

26:16

over to social . It's a much more natural

26:18

way , I think , of sharing and interacting

26:20

with your audience .

26:22

Yeah , I think it makes a ton of sense . So

26:24

who built it ? Did you use

26:26

an external company and spend oodles

26:28

of money in getting it built ?

26:32

No , I think anytime you

26:34

try to pay somebody else to

26:36

build something for you , it doesn't turn

26:38

out to be the best quality product . So

26:41

we hired for this . We hired a wonderful

26:44

developer by the name of Dylan Ginsberg . He

26:46

built the iOS app for

26:49

Basecamp If you ever heard of Basecamp

26:51

, he was at 37 signals before this and

26:53

he's joined the Buzzsprout team and it's

26:56

really wonderful to have his expertise

26:58

, because he combines Ruby

27:01

on Rails knowledge , which we all have that's

27:03

what we build Buzzsprout in with how

27:06

to bring all of the work we're doing there

27:08

into an app . Make it easy

27:10

, make it seamless . Probably

27:13

the reason I mean this is , I

27:15

guess , illustrates why it's important for us

27:17

at least to build it in-house . The

27:19

day we launched , somebody sent

27:22

me a message and said oh , I tried

27:24

to reset my password on my phone

27:26

and when I did , I got some weird

27:29

page inside the app and

27:31

as soon as I saw that , I send it to Dylan and

27:33

I think 30 minutes later it's fixed and we've

27:36

corrected it because we hadn't caught it

27:38

before . But if we'd been using somebody

27:40

outside , I think that's one of those things that can turn

27:42

into a two-week process and

27:45

it's painful for tons of people . I hate

27:47

telling people oh , the workaround is

27:49

don't use the app . So now

27:52

the workaround is we can just fix these

27:54

problems very quickly . Cool , it's great to have the

27:56

team in-house .

27:57

That's really good . Obviously

27:59

, iPhone is popular

28:01

in the US , maybe not quite so popular

28:03

in many other countries . Is

28:06

there an Android version coming ?

28:08

There is an Android version on the way . The

28:10

way these things work , you have to pick one to

28:13

start with , and so we

28:15

started with iPhone , because that's where more of

28:17

our customers are . But we

28:19

have a list of everybody who's on

28:21

Android and says they're ready for the app . It's

28:23

growing rapidly and we're very excited

28:26

to bring it to you as soon as possible .

28:27

Yeah , it's looking very , very

28:29

smart . It's for free

28:31

. All you need is

28:34

a Buzzsprout login and

28:36

you'll find it in the Apple App Store . For

28:39

now , apple's

28:41

also launched transcripts this week . I

28:43

don't know if you've spotted this .

28:45

I have . I tweeted about it two

28:48

and a half years ago . We

28:51

was when we started all of our work with

28:53

transcripts . I think maybe

28:55

it's three and a half now . It's 2020

28:58

. The years go by quickly . I

29:01

was looking back at it and when we started

29:03

talking about transcripts , I

29:05

remember Kevin saying to me wouldn't

29:07

it be great if transcripts looked like

29:09

Apple Music lyric mode ? Now

29:12

I'm looking at transcripts in

29:14

Apple Podcasts and I'm like this looks like

29:17

Apple Music lyric mode

29:19

. It genuinely does .

29:20

It's a really great yeah , it's got

29:22

all of the same things , the little dots

29:24

while it's waiting for the instrumental

29:27

to finish or whatever . It's

29:29

using the same typeface . It's a

29:31

very , very smart thing

29:33

. In fact

29:36

, you and I , just before we

29:38

came on , we were talking

29:40

about actually , you know how nice

29:42

they look and the fact that it's pulling in

29:44

chapter you

29:46

know chapter titles into the transcripts

29:49

as well , so that the transcript just doesn't just

29:51

look like a great big block of text . Does

29:53

Buzzsprout support

29:55

the Apple transcripts ?

29:58

Buzzsprout does . We create

30:00

these transcripts for you . We can even pull them in

30:02

from Descript if you use Descript , or

30:04

we can transcribe them for you and

30:07

it looks like everything is working well . So

30:09

we send them over to Apple Podcasts

30:11

and they're showing up in

30:13

people's phones . Now there's

30:16

even you were the first

30:18

one to tell me about the chapter markers , that

30:20

you were seeing it for this show , and

30:22

so it's really exciting to hear that Buzzsprout

30:25

also supports the chapter markers inside

30:27

of iOS 17.4

30:29

transcripts . That's a news to me

30:31

and I'm very excited to hear it .

30:33

Yeah , no , it's looking really good . I'm

30:35

always slightly worried about saying have

30:37

a look in the Apple Podcast set right now

30:39

because typically this week

30:41

will be the week that I've messed

30:43

it all up and

30:45

it doesn't work properly , but

30:47

it works super well with the

30:50

transcripts that you get from Co-host . Try

30:54

and remember . I will try and remember this

30:56

week to change the

30:58

names of the voices

31:00

so that it doesn't just say voice number one

31:03

and voice number two , which I think it says last

31:05

week .

31:06

Voice number two is my favorite podcast

31:08

, yeah .

31:10

Well , voice number two is always Sheila Dee , who does

31:12

our little jingles . So

31:14

, yeah , she does a fantastic job

31:16

. So

31:19

, yeah , but it seems to work really

31:21

really nicely . So I'm looking forward to seeing

31:24

more of that and

31:28

you , your star , on your own weekly

31:30

podcast . All about the podcast industry aren't

31:33

you Buzzcast ?

31:35

We are still doing Buzzcast . I still

31:37

love it . I enjoy it every other

31:39

week with Kevin and Jordan , and

31:42

it's always a pleasure to find out the

31:44

people we respect and people we like are listening

31:47

to the show . So one

31:49

thing we've been experimenting lately with is

31:51

this idea of having people text

31:54

into the show , and it's been really

31:56

fun to get more and more engagement

31:58

on the podcast and we've been trying to

32:00

incorporate that more . So if anybody

32:03

listening to this is a Buzzcast listener , text

32:05

the show and let us know what you think . We'd

32:08

love to read your comments on the air .

32:09

Yeah , and of course I'm listening to that and

32:11

I'm going , oh , it's a blizzard of numbers . And

32:14

also I'm in Australia

32:16

and I'm thinking , oh

32:18

, I wonder if I can even text that particular

32:21

number . I should probably give it a go .

32:24

I need to add like a plus one to the

32:26

beginning of it . That's a good point .

32:28

I need to look into how that works for international numbers

32:30

, and plus one if you're outside of the

32:32

United States . Yeah , because

32:36

it's interesting , because I think we've

32:38

seen , obviously

32:40

, boosts and things like that as

32:43

being a really nice way of getting

32:45

feedback from the

32:47

people who listen , but there's

32:49

a certain amount of people that will send

32:51

a boost . There

32:53

is , of course , the holy grail of cross app comments

32:55

, which is a lovely thing . Somebody

32:58

left a message for this very podcast

33:00

on Spotify , because apparently you can leave

33:02

messages on Spotify , but

33:05

nobody has ever done that in the last three

33:07

years . But somebody has

33:09

ended up doing that as well . It

33:12

would be lovely , wouldn't it , if there's a way of

33:14

pulling in all of those comments and

33:17

making them appear really in an app

33:19

, and

33:21

I would love that to happen at some point , but

33:23

it seems to be even beyond

33:25

Adam and Dave's

33:29

brain power to have

33:31

actually achieved that .

33:33

Well , maybe the mastodon and Fediverse

33:36

and all of that stuff will come together

33:38

one day and we will get cross app

33:40

comments . It'd be wonderful to help

33:42

more things become like podcasting

33:44

, become like email , become like the web

33:46

that's open and free and everybody

33:49

can interact with who they want to

33:51

and not be beholden to the big tech giants

33:53

.

33:55

Yes , that would be a splendid thing . Well , almond

33:57

, thank you so much for what

34:00

you do and thank you for

34:02

the support that you give

34:04

us . It's very , very much

34:06

appreciated . So

34:09

thank you for that and , of course , thank you

34:11

to Buzzsprout . Where can people

34:13

go , as if they don't know , to

34:15

find out more about , to

34:17

find more about what you guys do ?

34:19

Well , you can go to buzzsproutcom

34:21

, but you can also now go to the Apple

34:23

App Store and you can download the Buzzsprout

34:26

app if you have a Buzzsprout account

34:28

. And you can always reach

34:30

out to me on Twitter at Albin

34:32

Brook . I love to chat and it's always great

34:34

to hear from people who listen to this show .

34:36

Very nicely done , Albin . Thank

34:38

you so much . Thank you , James .

34:41

Albin Brook , the wonderful marketing

34:43

director over at Buzzsprout , hoping to see him

34:45

over in LA for a beer .

34:48

Yes , you're not going to because he's not coming . Oh

34:50

.

34:50

Albin .

34:52

He fancies the humidity of the

34:54

Florida life instead , I'm afraid

34:57

. But we will see him in Washington

34:59

DC . If we're going there , I

35:01

will be certainly , so at least he'll be there . Okay

35:04

, is he coming to London ? Do we know ? Don't know

35:06

, actually Don't know . I didn't

35:08

bother asking .

35:09

I should have asked , I should have used that travel

35:12

budget album Now , yes , lovely

35:15

app , it works very well . Have

35:17

played with it and tried it Very

35:19

slick . They've got an Android app coming

35:22

soon . Both are

35:24

free . My one question to

35:26

Albin would be , and probably

35:28

to Kevin and Tom , is why

35:30

did you build a native iOS app when

35:33

you could have built a PWA ? Because I

35:35

looked at the features that you've used and there's

35:37

nothing that you are using

35:39

that is native to the phone itself , like

35:42

the camera or maybe something

35:44

else like that . So you

35:46

now have the problem of having to maintain three

35:48

code bases the Android app , the iOS

35:51

app and also the web app . So

35:54

that would be my only one question to them why did

35:56

you build a native app ?

35:57

Yeah .

35:57

Rather than build a PWA .

35:59

Yeah , and I didn't ask that question . But

36:02

, as we heard , it is built in-house

36:04

, which is a good thing , because

36:07

bad things happen when you subcontract

36:09

that sort of thing out . Just

36:12

playing devil's evica on PWAs

36:14

On an Android

36:17

phone . When you use a

36:19

website for a couple of times that has

36:21

a PWA in it , it will come

36:23

up and say would you like to install this as

36:25

an app ? And you press the button and

36:27

it installs it as an app . Does that happen

36:30

on iOS as

36:32

well ?

36:33

No , and that's one of the downfalls

36:35

of it . You have to prompt the user , so we

36:37

do . As to how to install

36:39

it as an app . You

36:42

can do and I think this is where , again

36:44

, apple are just being pedantic

36:48

, because they could make this work . When

36:52

you go to bussproutcom in

36:56

the web page , it will now prompt

36:58

you with a banner at the top saying hey , we've

37:00

got an iOS app . Would you like to install

37:02

it ? Which is a lovely way of doing

37:04

that . And , of course , the user goes

37:07

click bang and it installs from the app

37:09

store .

37:09

Yeah well , it's on podcasts as well , by the way .

37:11

Yeah , yes , and so that's a lovely

37:13

way of doing it , and Apple could make that an

37:15

open feature for any

37:17

anyone to use . They

37:20

choose not to . They

37:22

purposely want to hinder

37:25

PWAs as much as

37:27

they can . So , yes

37:29

, that is one advantage of building native

37:31

apps . You do actually get access

37:34

to some of the features that Apple disabled

37:36

for everyone else .

37:37

Yeah , it's a real shame , that isn't it ? Because

37:40

actually , it's just one button and

37:43

you know Android makes it easy and

37:45

simple and straightforward to

37:47

do . And it's a shame

37:49

that Apple you know it's pretty well hidden

37:51

under the you know the weird

37:54

non-standard share

37:56

icon that they use with

37:59

the arrow pointing out of a box . It's an arrow

38:01

pointing out of a box . So

38:04

, yes , it's a bit of a shame , and it just says add

38:06

to home screen . So it's not that obvious

38:08

what's actually going on there either . But still

38:10

, there you go .

38:12

Yeah , what was interesting though , this week , james

38:14

, is I found a really interesting website

38:16

called what PWA what

38:19

PWA can

38:21

dotoday . It's

38:23

a really good site . If you look at it , yes

38:26

, easy to say

38:29

. What you can see is what features

38:31

currently are available for PWA's

38:33

that are native iOS apps , and

38:36

what features are , and , surprisingly

38:38

, you can use Apple

38:40

Pay with a PWA . I just didn't

38:43

know this , so I don't have

38:45

to build a native iOS app

38:47

to have use

38:49

of the . Apple Pay . Yeah , and

38:51

this is a hat tip to Oscar from last

38:53

week's podcast index . He talked

38:55

about an app called Primal App , which is

38:57

a Nostra app , and what

38:59

they've done is they've worked out

39:02

cleverly well done to them that

39:04

you can use in-app purchases

39:06

within your app . So what they do is they

39:08

say , for $4.99

39:10

, you can get so many sats , click

39:12

the button , apple Pay pays it and

39:14

it's instant . There's no KYC

39:17

. No , your customers set your bank account

39:19

up da , da , da , da da . I

39:21

think this is the way forward , and

39:24

so we're looking at implementing exactly the

39:26

same feature with different

39:28

values . So by

39:30

this in-app purchase for $4.99

39:32

or $8.99 or $12.99 I don't know

39:34

the numbers we're going to use yet or

39:37

custom , and this is a great

39:39

way that you can actually get fear

39:42

to sat with one click using

39:44

Apple Pay . But because they

39:46

actually Apple support

39:48

it within the web , rather

39:50

than having to have a native iOS app , I

39:53

can actually build that in and we'll

39:55

have that available in the next couple of weeks .

39:57

And you can also buy classified

39:59

advertising on the Pod News website

40:02

using Apple Pay and Google Pay

40:04

. So there's a thing hurrah

40:06

. So yeah , now interesting

40:09

stuff . If only they made it easier for

40:11

normal people to work out how to

40:14

install these things . I think that will

40:16

be a good thing , but still , there we go .

40:19

That's not happening Now . Moving

40:21

on , you use a Sure-Mic

40:23

, don't you ?

40:24

I do sometimes . Yes , I

40:27

was using an ethos microphone from

40:29

Earthworks Audio for the last couple of weeks , which is

40:31

beautiful . But

40:33

yes , I'm back on the Sure-Mic right

40:36

now because something went wrong and I couldn't fix it the

40:38

other day and I thought I know what works

40:40

. So , yes

40:43

, but why do you ask ? Well

40:45

?

40:45

Sure's Unbounder moved a mic called

40:48

. It's the world's smallest

40:50

and best sounding wireless and laviest system

40:52

. Now you've got a small Sure-Mic

40:55

as well , haven't you ?

40:56

Yeah , but this is a proper . So this is one of those

40:58

ones that you would clip onto your

41:00

shirt and

41:02

it's a little clip on microphone that

41:04

is , you know , wireless works

41:06

fantastic . It's called the Move-Mic . It

41:09

looks really nice and what I think is

41:11

very interesting is

41:13

that RODE have these things

41:15

and they're small and square . You'll have seen them

41:17

on YouTube videos all over the place . They're

41:20

what ? The size of a kind

41:22

of half the size of a pack of cards , I guess

41:25

. And yeah

41:27

, and they are smallish , but they're still quite big

41:29

. And what Sure said

41:31

in their in their press release

41:33

is nobody wants a big bulky microphone

41:36

. Distracting from their next shot

41:38

, which I thought was

41:40

very much aimed at RODE and

41:43

their big bulky microphone , but

41:46

it does look very smart it's . They've

41:48

done they've done a very clever

41:50

job with the images . If you take a look at the image

41:53

on the Pod News website

41:55

that we posted earlier on in the week

41:57

, the image of it being worn

41:59

, most of the bulk of the microphone

42:02

is hidden behind the jacket

42:04

which is being worn , so all you can see is a

42:06

tiny little mic , but actually

42:08

it's still relatively bulk . It's about

42:10

half the size of the road one . It's

42:13

just that you can't see it because of the way

42:15

that it's built , but it's still pretty cool

42:17

, so I'm looking forward to seeing them . I

42:20

know that they were at the podcast

42:22

show in London in year one

42:24

, so if they're at the podcast show

42:27

in London in year three , then I

42:30

quite like to go and and see them . It'd

42:32

be a quite nice thing .

42:33

Yeah , maybe they'll link you one

42:35

, james , you never know , maybe

42:38

.

42:38

Now moving on Google

42:41

, they ended up firing 50

42:43

staff who were looking to unionize

42:45

. They all work out of Austin in Texas

42:47

and they were

42:49

in a meeting with Austin

42:52

City Council asking for

42:54

their help and their backing in working

42:57

for unionization , and

43:00

this happened .

43:01

There are less than 50 of us at YouTube Music

43:03

. So to be supported by the city of

43:05

Austin and also our allies in the

43:07

labor community , give us the motivation

43:09

to keep this fight going , but they just laid us

43:11

all off .

43:12

Oh yeah , they just laid us all

43:15

off . Our jobs are ended today effective

43:17

immediately .

43:19

Wow , I'm sorry , your time is expired

43:22

. I mean , wow , what an incredible

43:24

piece of audio Sorry , who was that ?

43:26

Sorry , your time's expired . I mean , that's a bit

43:28

harsh , wasn't it ?

43:29

Yeah , that's the guy from Austin City Council

43:31

who actually said I'm sorry your time's expired

43:33

, but we will be following this up

43:36

with you later . Google

43:38

, on their side , say that they weren't fired

43:40

, they were contractors , the contract had ended

43:43

Didn't sound very much like a contract

43:45

ending to me and that they needed to

43:47

negotiate with their employer , cognizant

43:50

. Except the National Labor Relations Board

43:52

has said twice that no , the workers are

43:54

jointly employed by both Cognizant

43:57

and Google , as the alphabet

43:59

workers union says that Google's action is

44:01

illegal . But to do it

44:03

in the middle of a meeting with

44:06

a council like

44:08

that is just astonishing

44:10

. So , yeah , really

44:13

bad , really bad

44:15

stuff from Google . However , they

44:17

want to paint it , that

44:20

does not come over well . So

44:22

I remember when Google was one

44:24

of those companies that I used to , I used to

44:26

admire , but I think every single week I

44:29

hear something else that I go oh

44:31

, really , is that really a thing ?

44:33

Didn't they have a motto called Don't Be Evil ?

44:35

Yeah , they didn't , and then they got

44:37

rid of it .

44:39

And then they're evil .

44:40

Yes , so yeah

44:42

, it's just , it's just no good at

44:44

all .

44:45

Now , one other company that has suffered

44:47

with redundancies in 2023

44:50

was Pushkin Industries . This

44:52

led to them having a new CEO

44:55

, greta Cohen , and a new exec team , and

44:57

I thought it'd be great , james , to catch

44:59

up with Greta and find out what's

45:01

happening at Pushkin Industries and

45:03

what are their plans for 2024? .

45:05

We are committed to making audio , in

45:08

any genre , any style , that

45:11

is high quality , that entertains

45:13

, that educates and that finds audience

45:16

. And we are committed , as we say

45:18

now , to good , smart . Fun is sort

45:20

of like our driving motto .

45:22

You've got a very extensive slate . I was very

45:24

excited when you got Paul McCartney

45:26

recently . Were you on board when

45:29

that deal happened .

45:31

I came into Pushkin in the summer of 2022

45:33

when Pushkin acquired my production company , transmitter

45:36

Media , so the McCartney project was

45:38

well underway . But my first

45:40

role at Pushkin was as SVP

45:43

of content , and so I dove right into

45:45

that project , and I have a background

45:47

as a musician . Some of my favorite content

45:49

to consume documentary

45:52

audio film series

45:54

is music , so that was one of the

45:56

first projects that I immediately sort of like , took

45:59

a shine to , and what was fascinating

46:01

about that show is that the team

46:03

had to work with archives

46:05

that were recorded a number

46:07

of years ago when Paul Muldoon was

46:09

preparing to write the book with Paul McCartney like

46:12

the lyrics , and they were not

46:14

intending to use any of that audio

46:16

material in any shape

46:18

or form , and so it was recorded

46:20

in a very sort of offhand way . They're

46:23

often eating lunch or eating

46:25

almonds or drinking tea or eating

46:27

something else , and so there were

46:30

certainly challenges for the production team

46:32

immediately coming into that project

46:34

in terms of making this sort of beautiful

46:37

, highly listenable , the addictive

46:39

series that we have today . But

46:41

they did a wonderful job that production team did

46:43

, and it's been fantastic working with Paul

46:45

McCartney's team and sort of collaborating

46:47

with them on the project as well .

46:50

So , looking at the extensive slate

46:52

you have , how do you push can

46:54

go about creating or deciding

46:57

on what they're going to add to that slate ? You

46:59

know what gets dropped off at one end , because everything

47:01

has a shelf life . What gets added

47:04

? How does that process go ?

47:06

Yeah . So I think we are very

47:08

lucky in that we have a very strong

47:10

network . As you and the

47:12

audience well know , launching

47:14

a show is one of the hardest things that we can do

47:16

Launching a brand new show and so when

47:19

we're thinking about adding something new to

47:21

our roster , we're really thinking about

47:23

does our audience , is our audience

47:25

going to enjoy ? Are they

47:27

going to learn from it ? Is it going to

47:29

maybe challenge them in interesting ways ? And

47:32

can we use our network to grow

47:34

an audience ? Because the last thing

47:36

and certainly Pushkin had its fair share

47:38

of experiments in the last couple of years where

47:40

we launch a show and it's really

47:42

tough to find audience and get that footing and

47:45

ultimately it's not going to be a

47:47

long-term experience for Pushkin , for the

47:49

hosts , because you know there

47:52

comes a point where , if you're not driving audience , what

47:54

are you doing ? So we're very committed

47:56

to using the full

47:58

power of our network to build and

48:00

launch new shows , new hosts , find audience

48:03

.

48:05

Now there has been a drive

48:07

in the industry for celebrity-led podcasting

48:10

, which is equally

48:12

seemingly coming off . We

48:14

thought with Spotify removing

48:16

the exclusives and then on the

48:18

back of that we saw Smartless do a $100

48:21

million deal . We've seen Go

48:24

Daddy I was going to say Go Daddy , it's not going to

48:26

call her . Daddy has basically started

48:28

touting her podcast

48:31

around the industry . We've seen others doing

48:33

the same . Where does Pushkin

48:35

stand on celebrity-driven

48:37

podcasting ?

48:39

Well , I think our celebrities

48:41

are more of the sort of bookish

48:44

folks who

48:46

are like sort of thought leaders

48:48

, thinkers , writers

48:50

. So we're not necessarily

48:52

capital C celebrity

48:54

. We're looking for people who

48:57

certainly , if we're launching something new

48:59

, have an audience right

49:01

, have that group

49:04

that is going to be interested in what they're going to be doing

49:06

in the medium . But it's

49:08

usually because they've written a very powerful

49:10

book or they have a really

49:12

different or interesting

49:14

perspective , right , like Michael Lewis

49:17

, like Laurie Santos , who is

49:19

a professor at Yale and has this whole happiness

49:21

course that she developed there . So

49:23

we are not so much working

49:26

in the capital C celebrity stream

49:28

.

49:30

Now I can see that Now , looking

49:33

at 2023 , it was a pretty

49:35

hard year . You weren't alone . I think

49:37

the industry saw mass cutbacks

49:40

. How did that affect Pushkin directly

49:42

?

49:42

Yeah , 2023 was a

49:45

really hard year , as you say

49:47

, for the industry . For Pushkin . We had

49:50

layoffs

49:53

, we had to

49:55

look at our network and

49:57

think about what is sustainable

49:59

for us to do going forward

50:02

, and so we had to make some hard

50:04

choices to ensure

50:06

that the network could remain

50:09

and become strong again . Part

50:14

of that was looking

50:16

at shows that were not profitable , looking

50:18

at shows that were not driving audience , and

50:21

making some hard decisions there . And

50:23

when you eliminate

50:26

shows from the roster , unfortunately

50:28

it also means that our staff

50:30

necessarily needed to write size

50:33

to accommodate that change . So

50:35

in October , as we

50:37

talked about , we had also not only some

50:39

downsizing , but we had a major restructure

50:42

of the company . So the leadership team changed

50:44

, and I think what we are

50:46

endeavoring to do with that change is

50:48

really to focus on sustainability . I'm

50:50

not sure that was a word that

50:52

was a driving factor . I don't think that

50:55

was necessarily the philosophy up until

50:57

that point , and it wasn't for most , and

50:59

so what we are now focused on is

51:01

really thinking about how

51:04

are we growing audience ? How are we

51:06

spending the right amount on making

51:08

a show ? How are we ensuring

51:10

that we're

51:12

able to recoup our costs and

51:15

then actually have rev shares with our

51:17

hosts , so that everyone is happy

51:19

. And that doesn't mean that

51:21

, well , I

51:23

was going to say that doesn't mean that we're not going to grow , but

51:25

we do want to grow . We want to grow

51:28

in terms of our network , and

51:30

then , once we're able to sustainably grow our network

51:32

, we can then think about growing our

51:35

staff size again .

51:37

Does profitability , as well as sustainability

51:40

, factor

51:42

in as one of the main words for 24 for ?

51:46

you , I would say sustainability , but yes

51:48

, also profitability . You're pointed

51:52

in that direction .

51:53

Okay , yeah , I was going to say , are you there

51:55

now ? But that tells me Okay

51:58

, and in terms of where Pushkin

52:01

is going , you've got another interesting

52:03

part to the business , not just podcasts , and

52:05

you've got a very strong audiobook business

52:07

. When did that form

52:09

and how do you separate between what

52:12

is fundamentally a podcast

52:14

and what is a chargeable audiobook ? How do you

52:16

make that decision ?

52:18

So an audiobook

52:21

takes a . It's

52:25

a much different sort of art

52:27

form than podcast . In many ways . A

52:30

time , certainly like a documentary

52:32

podcast , is something

52:34

that may take nine

52:37

months a year . Our

52:39

audiobooks team is really coming

52:41

from the publishing industry . Our VP of

52:43

audiobooks , carrie Colon , has had a

52:45

long and very decorated career

52:47

in publishing both

52:50

print and audiobooks , and so she

52:52

brings that very unique perspective

52:54

. She understands that

52:57

world deeply and , as

52:59

evidenced by our audience

53:01

that we received for Wild and Precious , and

53:04

so she works very closely with

53:06

audiobook authors to

53:08

generate ideas to write

53:10

manuscripts . I mean , this is

53:13

when we're making a podcast . We have

53:15

table reads , we have scripts , we have tape

53:18

and all of those good things that go into making

53:20

a podcast , but an audiobook really starts

53:22

with a manuscript , which is just a very different

53:24

process . Oftentimes , the folks

53:26

who are coming in to

53:29

be the narrator and voice of

53:31

these audiobooks have

53:34

a very specific POV and maybe it wouldn't

53:36

be appropriate for a podcast . We

53:40

are extremely dedicated to making

53:43

audiobooks that do something different than

53:46

your typical audiobook . Fair Early

53:48

in my career , I actually was a

53:50

director and engineer at Recorded Books

53:52

. While I was doing , you know

53:54

, I was freelancing as a podcast producer

53:56

and I was a director at an audiobooks company

53:58

. At that audiobooks company and go

54:01

into the room you press record . The

54:04

most that I had in front of me was a pronounce

54:06

list so that I would correct an

54:08

author when they were mispronouncing something . Your

54:11

audiobooks are just

54:13

like leaps beyond

54:15

, in the sense that they are truly

54:18

crafted in a beautiful , intentional

54:20

way .

54:22

So , in terms of , then

54:24

, where you're taking the

54:26

business , are you going to go

54:28

into any other genres like video ? We've

54:30

seen YouTube become , you

54:33

know , rss enabled allegedly

54:35

. Do you see taking

54:37

any of your podcasts into a visual medium

54:39

?

54:42

I think we are certainly interested in experimenting

54:45

with video and with expanding into

54:47

the visual realm . You know we are an audio

54:49

first company and so

54:51

that means that we don't necessarily

54:53

have the staff to who

54:56

are experts in that at the moment . And I think

54:58

, like , video and audio are very distinct

55:00

mediums and so when thinking

55:02

about working in visual and in video , we

55:04

want to be certain that we are doing

55:07

it in , you know , in a way

55:09

that serves the viewer

55:11

right . We don't want to just put something out that's

55:13

going to be like an afterthought . We

55:15

have been experimenting . Some of our shows

55:17

do capture some amount of video

55:19

. I think in our new series with

55:22

For a Visionist History , development Tell

55:24

, there are a couple of little clips that we're

55:26

collecting on video and they're wonderful to see . You

55:28

know , there is an element that's added when you

55:30

see someone telling the story visually

55:32

, that's just fantastic . But

55:35

you know some of our shows that I think could really

55:37

lend themselves to video or show like

55:39

broken record right Like this morning

55:42

I was listening to the interview that

55:44

Justin Richmond has done with PJ

55:46

Harvey and John Parish , huge

55:50

fan , would I like to be able to

55:52

watch that interview and see

55:54

PJ Harvey and with them in that way ? Definitely

55:57

yes . So it's something that we are definitely

55:59

exploring and is on our radar . Are

56:02

we there yet ? Not quite .

56:04

One of the other areas that a lot of production

56:07

companies are looking at are international

56:10

foreign language translations

56:13

, taking the existing

56:15

core element and then using

56:17

it . Now iHeart Media and

56:20

Wondry are looking at using AI

56:22

voice enabled voice

56:24

translations . Other companies don't

56:27

believe that's a good model , that you know

56:29

AI the technology is maybe not

56:31

there . But B they feel that you

56:33

can't get that local nuance unless

56:35

you've got an actual

56:37

language spoken person . Where

56:39

does Pushcon say are you looking to technology

56:42

to internationalize what you do

56:44

, or are you looking for native speakers

56:46

and then re-record ?

56:50

We are exploring . We

56:52

currently are . Yeah , we

56:55

are working on a Spanish translation

56:57

of the Happiness Lab . That

57:00

is Eric . Correct

57:02

me if I'm wrong here , but I'm fairly certain . That is using

57:04

native speakers who are

57:06

essentially like performing the

57:09

role of the voices

57:11

, doing , yeah , human narrator , native speaker with

57:14

Univision , and

57:16

that project is underway , super interesting

57:18

. Are we looking at the potential for

57:20

AI ? Certainly we are . We

57:23

would not

57:25

be doing our due diligence if we weren't like

57:27

trying to understand

57:29

how it might work . I think that there

57:32

is a lot of opportunity to

57:34

bring some of our most

57:36

popular shows to audiences

57:38

in their language . So we

57:40

are on that train . We are exploring

57:43

it from both , all directions . Yeah

57:45

, Cool .

57:47

So on this podcast , this week launched

57:49

iOS 17.4 with transcriptions

57:52

. Is this something that Pushkin

57:54

is going to be focusing on

57:56

adding transcriptions to all of their podcasts

57:59

?

58:01

Oh yeah , when I was at Hot Pod last week last

58:05

week yes , what is time I ran

58:07

into Jake Shapiro from Apple in the hallway

58:09

and he showed me one

58:11

of our shows , the Cautionary Tales and we

58:13

looked at the transcript together and I think

58:15

it's excellent . I think it's great

58:18

. I think accessibility is

58:20

really important Also , simply , if

58:22

you are a listener who wants

58:24

to return to an episode that you had heard

58:26

last year and you're looking

58:28

because you wanted to maybe find

58:30

out like , oh , what did PJ Harvey say about

58:33

cats and beef heart , you can then

58:35

search in the transcript . Yeah

58:37

, I think it's excellent . I'm

58:39

really glad it's here and I think we will be really

58:42

continuing

58:45

to ensure that we have transcripts

58:48

across our shows .

58:50

Now Pushkin has got something called Pushkin

58:52

Plus . So I think that's your subscription-based

58:55

model and obviously

58:57

you've got an advertising-driven model . Are

59:00

you looking at any other forms of monetization

59:03

or are they the only two Advertising

59:06

or subscription-based ?

59:09

Well , they're audiobooks . Our

59:11

audiobooks is , I would say , the third leg of the

59:13

stool . We've got our ads-based

59:15

our podcasts and our ads-based

59:18

monetization , as you say , our

59:22

subscription service , pushkin Plus , then

59:24

, yeah , audiobooks . It becomes a really

59:26

fantastic way that we can actually connect

59:28

directly with listeners . Oh

59:30

, did you freeze ? Oh

59:33

, there you

59:36

are . Ad audiobooks are a great way for us to

59:38

be working on content

59:41

that has its own type

59:43

of monetization that is free from the

59:46

ads , the ups and downs

59:48

of the ads market . That

59:50

is an area where we're going to be focused

59:52

on growth , for sure .

59:54

Cool Last question , looking

59:57

back on 2024, . What would success

59:59

look like for you ?

1:00:03

We'd love to launch a

1:00:05

few shows that make an impact

1:00:08

on audience . We

1:00:10

have a number of audiobooks

1:00:12

that we're releasing this year . We'd love

1:00:14

to see them also drive

1:00:16

audience . Coming out this spring

1:00:18

is the Art of Small Talk

1:00:21

, which I think is going to be a fantastic and

1:00:23

funny and informative book . Then

1:00:25

, of course , sustainability and Profitability . That

1:00:28

is just something that we are at . On

1:00:30

top of that because I actually haven't talked

1:00:33

yet about our wonderful staff at

1:00:35

Pushkin we're really

1:00:38

focused on a

1:00:40

healthy , happy workplace where

1:00:43

people can show up every day , feel

1:00:45

proud of the work they're doing , enjoy

1:00:48

working with their colleagues , feel supported

1:00:50

, have the resources that they need . You

1:00:52

know , I think , particularly coming out of what last year

1:00:54

was , that's a huge priority

1:00:56

for me and so at the end of 2024

1:00:59

, if I can say that I have a happy , healthy

1:01:02

staff and group

1:01:04

and community and group of

1:01:06

producers , marketers

1:01:08

, operations , folks that would

1:01:11

be a huge success .

1:01:14

Greta , thank you so much for your time . Congratulations

1:01:17

on your new role . Thank you for having me . And

1:01:19

all the success for 2024 .

1:01:21

Thanks so much , Sam .

1:01:22

Greta Cohen from Pochkin Industries

1:01:24

really interesting that Did you end

1:01:26

up talking ? Obviously she's been working

1:01:28

on audiobooks and micropayments

1:01:30

and all of that kind of stuff . Did you end up talking much

1:01:33

about podcasting 2.0 with her ?

1:01:35

I did and we did it after

1:01:37

the interview . I didn't feel it was fair to

1:01:39

put her in a position of having to publicly

1:01:42

talk about it as an official

1:01:44

spokesperson for Pochkin . And

1:01:47

sadly , what I would say and it's

1:01:49

quite common , I think , with

1:01:51

most of the interviews that I do with people

1:01:53

in , let's say , senior leadership

1:01:55

positions they're not aware of podcasting

1:01:58

2.0 , they're not aware of micropayments

1:02:00

. She certainly was not aware that there

1:02:02

was a new medium equals audiobooks , and

1:02:04

I demoed that for her . She

1:02:07

is interested in it and she wants

1:02:09

to understand more about it as a long-term thing

1:02:11

, but clearly in her head

1:02:13

audiobooks are a paid

1:02:15

for item and podcasts are an advertising

1:02:18

supported free item and she doesn't

1:02:20

want to have the two meet . So

1:02:23

when I was trying to explain that there are

1:02:25

ways to set a default

1:02:27

value for the audiobooks so

1:02:29

that you don't have to have V for V

1:02:31

where it's a zero , she

1:02:34

was interested but interested

1:02:36

as in curious but not interested

1:02:38

enough to actually probably implement anything anytime

1:02:40

soon .

1:02:41

Yes now , and I think the

1:02:44

podcasting 2.0 website

1:02:46

is a start . But actually

1:02:48

I think one

1:02:51

of the frustrating things I think for me was

1:02:54

in Dallas in Texas , when

1:02:56

Adam Curry was there , the

1:02:59

inventor of the podcast , and

1:03:02

he was there with

1:03:05

Dave Jones talking about podcasting

1:03:07

2.0 , and

1:03:10

now it might have been the time

1:03:13

that he was scheduled

1:03:15

, it might have been the room that he was scheduled

1:03:18

in , but he ended up having

1:03:21

, I would guess that the room it was probably

1:03:23

a third full and I'm probably being

1:03:25

a little bit complimentary there . It

1:03:30

was disappointing and I don't know

1:03:32

. I don't

1:03:34

know what we can do

1:03:36

to make people more

1:03:38

interested in it . It's

1:03:42

a difficult one , isn't it ?

1:03:43

Well , if Nielsen did a survey of

1:03:45

CEOs of all the big production companies

1:03:48

, have they heard of podcasting 2.0

1:03:50

and are they planning to support it

1:03:52

? I suspect the answer is no and no . Sadly

1:03:55

, I still think . As much as I

1:03:57

love it and I'm 100% supporter

1:03:59

of it , I'm building an app that relies on

1:04:01

it . So , money where mouth is

1:04:03

, I still think we talk

1:04:05

in a bubble and I still think we talk

1:04:08

to ourselves and we don't

1:04:10

focus on outbound marketing . And

1:04:12

if Adam will say , well , if people mention it at

1:04:15

the end of their show or during their show , and I'll go , yeah

1:04:17

, the half dozen shows they use it , great

1:04:19

, that's not gonna cause a rickter in

1:04:21

anyone's boardroom . So

1:04:24

I don't know what the answer is . I do think

1:04:27

, as I said earlier , though , what

1:04:29

Oscar's hinted at and I

1:04:31

don't know if Fountain are gonna implement this , but what

1:04:34

Primal have done , which fundamentally

1:04:36

allows you to have one click payment

1:04:38

to get your SATs , I think is

1:04:40

gonna be potentially a game changer , because it

1:04:43

goes back to your original point . James

1:04:45

, which is the user at the end

1:04:47

of the day doesn't need to know that SATs is a Bitcoin

1:04:49

micro payment system . They just need to know . It's funny

1:04:51

tokens that I use on this app .

1:04:53

Well , yes , exactly , exactly

1:04:56

, so , yeah , oh well . Well

1:04:58

, you know , it's one of those things that we should sort

1:05:00

of continue banging the drum at

1:05:03

. That said , of course , ads are still

1:05:05

earning money . Iheartmedia releasing its

1:05:07

quarter four financials podcast revenue

1:05:09

up 17% for the quarter

1:05:11

, up 14% for the whole of 2023

1:05:14

, and the company claims growing demand

1:05:17

for podcast advertising , which is probably a good

1:05:19

thing and also a good thing Serial

1:05:22

, which some say was the

1:05:24

podcast that led to this second

1:05:26

coming of podcasting .

1:05:29

It's 10 years since Serial started and this

1:05:31

month it's coming back for the fourth season

1:05:33

. It's out on March

1:05:35

, the 28th , on the New York

1:05:38

Times audio app and everywhere

1:05:40

. Podcast are it says here . So yeah . So

1:05:42

again , I've not listened to

1:05:44

Serial , should I what ? You've

1:05:46

not listened ?

1:05:47

to the original .

1:05:47

Serial . No

1:05:50

hey , I don't read books unless it's technical

1:05:52

. So why would I want to go and listen to a podcast

1:05:55

about some fictional story ? It doesn't

1:05:57

interest me .

1:05:58

It isn't a fictional story , it's a real story .

1:06:00

But yeah , Okay still .

1:06:01

Yeah , no , I mean , you

1:06:04

know I it's interesting because

1:06:06

I think that serial if serial , you

1:06:09

know , serial was one of those big

1:06:11

shows that you

1:06:13

know you are having conversations around

1:06:15

the water cooler about

1:06:18

oh where are you in serial and how have

1:06:20

you caught up , and everything else . And it was . It

1:06:22

was very interesting and I wonder whether serial

1:06:24

would work now and I'm pretty convinced it won't

1:06:27

From a point of view

1:06:29

of , well , would it be as big

1:06:31

as that ? But yes

1:06:33

, it's back With

1:06:35

the fourth season . It's a story about Guantanamo

1:06:38

through the personal stories of those on the

1:06:40

ground who know things the rest of us don't

1:06:42

, is all that it

1:06:44

says . I will be listening a doubtless I'll

1:06:47

be listening to a few of them and going , yeah , but

1:06:49

it's not as good as the original , and

1:06:51

moving on , but still , there we go

1:06:53

.

1:06:55

I might actually listen to that , because I

1:06:57

am so amazed that people can get away with

1:06:59

having Guantanamo Bay , but anyway

1:07:01

, the tech stuff . Tech stuff on the pod

1:07:04

news weekly review .

1:07:06

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

1:07:08

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

1:07:10

and here's where Sam talks technology . Sam

1:07:13

, what have you got for us ?

1:07:14

Well , a couple of interesting ones . New

1:07:16

dynamic feed drop technologies

1:07:18

been launched by Podroll . The

1:07:20

tool adds promotional episodes

1:07:23

directly into podcasts . As the second

1:07:25

most recent episode , what's it

1:07:27

doing ?

1:07:27

James . This is really cool , I think , in that

1:07:30

they have access to more than 30 different

1:07:32

podcast networks . They change

1:07:34

the RSS feeds dynamically

1:07:37

for these podcasts for

1:07:41

to chuck in a promotional

1:07:43

episode . So it's like a

1:07:46

feed drop , but it's a feed drop at scale . I think

1:07:48

it's quite a clever idea . And also quite

1:07:50

a clever idea sticking a trailer in as

1:07:53

the second most recent episode

1:07:55

in your RSS feed . You

1:07:58

might find that a daily podcast

1:08:00

is currently doing that for this very

1:08:02

show . So

1:08:05

, yeah , I thought that was a really clever plan . So

1:08:07

that's Podroll , which is worth

1:08:10

a peek at . Do a search in the pod

1:08:12

news website for that . Spreaker

1:08:15

is now supporting Podping , which is good news the

1:08:18

Podping , of course , being the way that you communicate

1:08:20

to podcast directors that you've published a new episode

1:08:23

. Loads of people support it already Buzzsprout

1:08:25

, blueberry Transistor , rsscom , captivate

1:08:27

Pod News and the

1:08:29

addition of Spreaker probably

1:08:33

at least doubles the amount of shows

1:08:37

which are being mentioned by Podping

1:08:39

, given that Spreaker is a very large

1:08:43

, has a free tier and everything else . So , yeah

1:08:46

, that's pretty good news , I think .

1:08:48

I'd love to know who isn't supporting Podping

1:08:50

anymore .

1:08:51

Oh , who isn't supporting ? I mean Libsyn

1:08:53

? Libsyn don't support anything . Yeah

1:08:56

, because it was invented since 2008

1:08:58

. So obviously they're

1:09:00

not supporting it . I

1:09:03

don't believe there are a few others

1:09:05

. I don't . I'm not sure

1:09:07

that OmniStudio is supporting it . I don't , I'm

1:09:10

not entirely confident

1:09:12

about that . I do know that Libsyn

1:09:14

certainly doesn't support it . And , of course , people

1:09:16

like the BBC , people like NPR

1:09:19

. They don't appear

1:09:21

to support Podping either

1:09:23

, and I think actually this

1:09:26

is where we should be . I mean , the

1:09:28

BBC's internal RSS

1:09:30

thing , and the ABCs as well , is so old

1:09:33

fashioned . It doesn't deal with trailers

1:09:35

you can't very easily change . You

1:09:38

know descriptions and everything

1:09:40

else . I mean , that's really where the low hanging fruit

1:09:42

is , Because there are a lot

1:09:44

of shows that use that too .

1:09:46

So , yeah , Now Wondercraft

1:09:49

, who we had on a few weeks

1:09:51

ago , the Canva for Audio , one

1:09:54

product of the day out product hunt

1:09:56

. So they're really pushing their marketing out now

1:09:58

as well .

1:09:58

Yes , descripts releasing version

1:10:00

84 . They've got a new AI action

1:10:03

. It's called Find All Highlights

1:10:05

and yes , so

1:10:07

it basically lets you find any highlights that

1:10:09

it thinks are worth sharing , which is good

1:10:11

, and our friends at RSScom

1:10:13

have released a new embeddable player

1:10:15

, and they've also released a new affiliate

1:10:17

program with Rewardful .

1:10:20

I was catching up with Alberto over

1:10:22

email , so that's really good . Excitingly

1:10:25

as well , they're planning on releasing support

1:10:28

for the Pod role in

1:10:30

April possibly . And also

1:10:32

we talked about how

1:10:34

RSScom were the first company

1:10:37

to doa lit live

1:10:39

conference over in Mexico the one that

1:10:41

you were at , james . Yeah Well , they're

1:10:43

now going to productise that . So their

1:10:45

lit version one is

1:10:47

hopefully also going to come out in April , and hopefully

1:10:49

when both those come out , we'll have

1:10:51

either Alberto or maybe we could

1:10:54

get Ben to speak on the microphone and

1:10:57

get him to tell us more about it

1:10:59

. But yes , we'll hear what

1:11:01

they have to say in .

1:11:02

April yes , no , absolutely . I'm sure

1:11:04

Ben will speak on a microphone . He's spoken

1:11:06

on a microphone for me in the past for the podcast

1:11:09

business journal , so I'm sure he'll do

1:11:11

that for us as well . Boostergram

1:11:14

Corner , corner , corner On

1:11:16

the Pod News Weekly Review . Yes

1:11:19

, it's our favourite time of the week . It's Boostergram Corner

1:11:21

and , yes , we've got some

1:11:24

lovely boosts in here . Just as

1:11:26

a reminder . Sam

1:11:28

and I share everything from this podcast

1:11:31

ourselves . It's actually nothing to do with

1:11:33

the Pod News Daily , other than it's

1:11:37

a trademark licence . So

1:11:40

there's a thing . So please hit

1:11:42

that boost button if you can . We've

1:11:45

got a row of ducks from Nathan Gathright

1:11:47

.

1:11:48

Yes , he said . When Sam said , what's that

1:11:50

purple logo which is last

1:11:52

week looking at a logo

1:11:55

in one of the Boostergrams , I think

1:11:57

he might have been referring to the generic

1:11:59

Boostergram icon which is displayed in

1:12:01

helipad as a fallback when no

1:12:03

app logo was available . I'm

1:12:05

jealous that I didn't think of a rocket like the

1:12:07

one in Truefans . Here's the original

1:12:09

thread . Yes , I thought , and

1:12:12

I can say I didn't come up with the idea of a rocket

1:12:15

either . I can't remember who did , but

1:12:17

I copied their idea . So , yes

1:12:19

, but we do use a rocket for

1:12:21

boosts in Truefans .

1:12:23

Indeed , which is a good thing . Gene

1:12:25

Bean , another row of ducks . Double

1:12:27

two , double two , Sam . Hope you feel better

1:12:29

soon . Sam , Do

1:12:32

you feel better ? You had COVID last week .

1:12:34

It's hard to tell . Maybe when my rants

1:12:36

are stocked , maybe that's when I'm better again

1:12:38

.

1:12:40

Yes , maybe it's that Gene

1:12:42

Bean also says I'm not sad at all to have influenced

1:12:44

James's use of home assistant

1:12:47

. So this

1:12:49

week I have managed to integrate

1:12:51

our

1:12:53

electricity bill in and

1:12:55

I've managed to yes , I've managed

1:12:57

to do a couple of other things with with

1:13:00

home assistants as well . Look what

1:13:02

you started . So

1:13:05

thank you for that . 1000 Satz from Andrew

1:13:07

Gromit Amen , brother Sam .

1:13:09

Yes , exactly , I

1:13:11

think it's one of my rants . I think

1:13:13

Andrew's agreeing with me and

1:13:15

I was thinking before the show , we should actually get Andrew

1:13:18

on at some point .

1:13:21

We should do . He was the person who

1:13:23

invented the first podcast app that I ever

1:13:25

used iPodder

1:13:27

or Juice Podder and

1:13:30

yeah , he goes back like years and years

1:13:32

and years . We should definitely do that . He's also sent

1:13:34

another 1000 Satz to the Pod News

1:13:36

Daily . This is where I read out

1:13:38

the boosts from the Pod News Daily as well . Love

1:13:40

the humour , and I went back and looked at that

1:13:42

particular episode podcasting's rural opportunity

1:13:45

. I could find no humour in it . So

1:13:47

, who knows , Maybe it was something I edited

1:13:50

out afterwards . But anyway , Andrew , thank you so

1:13:52

much for that .

1:13:53

And finally , a row of ducks as well

1:13:55

, from our friend Kieran at the Mere

1:13:57

Mortals . Thank you , that's

1:14:00

all he said . Thank you and thank you as well

1:14:02

. I don't know what he's thanking us for , but thank you

1:14:04

as well . Actually , I would say thank you to

1:14:06

Kieran because he's started series

1:14:08

four of the Valley for Valley podcast

1:14:10

, so I'm looking forward to that series

1:14:12

.

1:14:13

Well , yes indeed . So what's been

1:14:15

happening for you this week , sam ?

1:14:17

Well , still recovering . I feel like I've

1:14:19

got arthritis in every joint still , but hey

1:14:21

, that's just what I think everyone has

1:14:23

when they get Covid . So this is my first time

1:14:25

, so I'm not going to milk it for sympathy . We're

1:14:29

working on three new big features

1:14:31

for Truefans , so we are

1:14:33

going to implement offline support

1:14:35

. Probably early next week

1:14:38

that will be available , so you will

1:14:40

be able to take all

1:14:42

of your podcasts offline and

1:14:44

also stream sat while

1:14:46

offline . So that's

1:14:49

going to be working . That was one of our issues

1:14:51

about how do we do streaming

1:14:53

sats and record that while the

1:14:55

users offline , but we've worked that out . I

1:14:58

mentioned that we're going to integrate Apple Pay

1:15:00

and Google Pay so you can just simply top

1:15:03

up your wallet straight from one click

1:15:05

using Apple Pay or Google Pay

1:15:07

, so that I think will be hopefully

1:15:10

a game changer in terms of people being

1:15:12

able to say , yeah , I just want to use

1:15:15

$10 or I want to use five

1:15:17

quid or whatever it may be , and then they can

1:15:19

just quickly just double click and that's

1:15:21

straight into their wallet . So that's something

1:15:23

I think will be quite cool .

1:15:26

No , indeed , that all sounds excellent

1:15:28

. Mike Askwith has a new podcast , doesn't

1:15:30

he ? He does .

1:15:32

Mike Askwith podcast with

1:15:34

Danny Brown is

1:15:36

going to be called In and Around Podcasting

1:15:38

. Mark's been putting out some

1:15:40

very funny trailers for it , so if

1:15:43

you haven't heard the trailers , check them

1:15:45

out . I think it's the end of his podcast

1:15:47

accelerator for now and this is a new one

1:15:49

that him and Danny are going to do . And just a quick

1:15:51

thank you to Danny Brown for

1:15:54

sending over a whole load of

1:15:56

Roadcaster Pro 2 configuration

1:15:59

settings that I've used

1:16:01

, so thanks , danny , for those as well

1:16:03

.

1:16:05

Indeed , indeed , now , absolutely yeah

1:16:07

, the Roadcaster is a

1:16:10

. It's a bit of a complicated beast , isn't it ? It's

1:16:12

got lots of buttons and things

1:16:14

.

1:16:14

The problem is , if you get it wrong

1:16:16

, you can sound like Daffy Duck very

1:16:18

quickly . The

1:16:21

noise gates can be all set in the wrong

1:16:23

place and suddenly your big boost

1:16:25

and your oral boost , or whatever it's called , can

1:16:28

be all wrong . So having somebody who

1:16:30

knows exactly what they're doing and what right

1:16:32

settings to choose and use was

1:16:35

a godsend . So thank you , danny , for those . Yeah

1:16:37

indeed . Now , james , what's been happening

1:16:40

for you ?

1:16:41

I've been planning

1:16:44

some of the presentations that I'm giving

1:16:46

over the next few weeks

1:16:48

or so , so

1:16:51

I think the first one that I have to do weirdly

1:16:53

, is the last one that I'm doing , because

1:16:56

the first one that I have to do I actually have to get

1:16:58

my speech for

1:17:00

the Evolutions

1:17:02

by Podcast Movement over to

1:17:04

them relatively quickly . So I've got

1:17:06

to go through the report card

1:17:08

and take a peek through there . One

1:17:11

of the interesting things I think from that is we will

1:17:13

actually get some form of idea

1:17:15

of how many people know about

1:17:17

podcasting 2.0 and how many people

1:17:19

don't , because of the amount of answers

1:17:22

that we get for some of those questions . So

1:17:25

I'll go diving into that a little bit

1:17:27

more after our conversation today

1:17:29

. But also

1:17:32

we will have a special guest , or

1:17:34

I will have a special guest for that very

1:17:36

keynote

1:17:39

that nobody knows

1:17:41

about , not even the folks at Podcast

1:17:44

Movement , probably

1:17:46

not going to mention it to them either . So

1:17:50

there we go , but

1:17:53

that person has sent a very excellent video and

1:17:55

that's going to be part of it . So

1:17:57

I'm delighted about that too

1:18:00

. Yes , and just sort of playing around

1:18:02

with the other pieces

1:18:04

I'm doing are all on new interesting

1:18:06

tools from podcasting that radio stations

1:18:09

should be using , and I've discovered

1:18:11

it's just been fun playing around with some of these new

1:18:13

AI tools and

1:18:16

some of the new tools that are capable of

1:18:18

doing weird and wonderful things and working

1:18:20

out which I can reliably show

1:18:22

off in a live environment which

1:18:24

will be entertaining . Not quite so sure

1:18:27

about that , yes , but still .

1:18:29

Before you go also , we

1:18:32

will be hosting a small

1:18:34

drinks in LA . James

1:18:37

is like . I haven't a clue . What are we doing

1:18:39

here , Sam ?

1:18:41

Yes , so

1:18:43

whether I know I'm saying , I'm saying

1:18:46

I'm opening my calendar right now so

1:18:49

sticking it in . When are they ?

1:18:51

It's at the broken shaker . It's a rooftop

1:18:53

bar and James

1:18:55

and I will work out the exact day after

1:18:57

this show . So in next week's show we will reveal it , but

1:18:59

the location will be the broken

1:19:01

shaker . So we'll be sending out some

1:19:03

invites to people very shortly

1:19:05

. The broken shaker We'll have to rooftop

1:19:07

bar . Look it up right around the corner

1:19:10

from the marriot . Very nice .

1:19:12

Not the broken shaker in Canberra , though no

1:19:14

, not that I'm aware of . No , that would be far

1:19:17

too far . It's a portable

1:19:19

bar on a Canberra . So

1:19:22

, yes , but still . So we'll be going there

1:19:24

. No , it looks good , yes , it looks good

1:19:26

.

1:19:26

Yes , bring your budgie smugglers

1:19:28

. It has a pool at the top if you want as well , james

1:19:30

.

1:19:31

Yes , there will be no chance of that .

1:19:33

And also I'm

1:19:36

planning the London drinkups as well

1:19:38

very shortly . So again , greta

1:19:41

Cohen will be coming over to London , she said

1:19:43

, and she's already invited from Pushkin

1:19:45

Industries . So yeah , I'm very excited

1:19:47

for the London one as well .

1:19:48

Excellent . Well , yes , I'm looking

1:19:50

forward to . Oh , yes , so it's not too

1:19:52

far , it's a quick . What couple

1:19:55

of walks away ? It's a couple of blocks . Is that what they say

1:19:57

in America ? A couple of blocks away , it's

1:19:59

a James Beard award finalist . I'm

1:20:02

called James , I have a beard .

1:20:06

It's all fitting into place to

1:20:08

plan .

1:20:08

It's all fitting into place . Yes , well

1:20:10

, I'm looking forward to . I'm looking forward

1:20:13

to finding out what you've actually managed to book

1:20:15

, because that's always the important

1:20:17

thing , isn't it ? And

1:20:19

that's it for this week . Thank

1:20:21

you to Albon Brook and thank

1:20:24

you to Greta Cohen . You can also listen to the

1:20:26

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1:20:31

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1:21:00

The Pod News Weekly Review will

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