0:00

It's Friday , the 2nd of

0:02

February 2024 .

0:05

The last word in podcasting news

0:07

. This is the Pod News

0:09

Weekly Review with James Cridland

0:11

and Sam Sethi .

0:14

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

0:16

here in Australia .

0:17

And I'm Sam Sethi , the CEO of TrueFans

0:20

, and while you're listening to this , I'm currently

0:22

flying to Australia .

0:23

Very good . Not while you're recording

0:25

this , of course , because that would be no , that

0:27

would be super clever In the chapters today

0:29

. Apple Transcripts now supports the podcasting

0:32

2.0 transcript tag . Broccoli

0:34

is off the menu and Sony , see what

0:36

you did there . Sam Podcast

0:38

exclusives Are they a thing of

0:41

the past ? And ACAST blocks

0:43

YouTube and .

0:45

Hi everyone . I'm Oscar Surrender . I am the co-founder

0:48

of Wondercraft . I'm going to be on later

0:50

on the show with Sam to talk about our

0:52

new funding and the new audio

0:55

studio for creators . He will

0:57

.

0:58

This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout

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And we're sponsored by a new show called why your

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Podcast Isn't Growing , a

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show made to help you get more

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listeners . They've just posted how Adam

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Adams sold a podcast , started

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a new show , grew it to 30,000 monthly

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downloads and $30,000

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worth a listen . You can find why your

1:27

Podcast Isn't Growing wherever

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you got this podcast . From your daily

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newsletter , the Pod News Weekly

1:34

Review .

1:35

All right , james , let's kick off this week's show

1:37

. Last week , we covered a Libsyn's , robin

1:39

Elsie , talking about why they didn't

1:42

want to support podcasting 2.0

1:44

. Well , elsie did , but Rob certainly

1:46

didn't . Well , straight after the show

1:48

, though , apple decided to break the

1:50

news that they're going to support transcripts

1:53

, which was great news , and they were going

1:55

to support the podcasting 2.0

1:57

transcripts as well . So

1:59

, james , one week on , what are

2:01

your thoughts ?

2:02

Again . I just think if you're going to talk

2:05

about not innovating

2:07

in podcasting in the future , I think

2:09

that makes you look a little bit silly . But

2:12

once again , I completely agree with

2:14

Elsie . It's very difficult

2:16

to understand what podcasting 2.0

2:18

is , so we're

2:20

not sort of properly announcing it yet , but Daniel

2:23

Jay Lewis and I are working on a new

2:25

website which will do exactly that

2:27

. It will help people understand

2:29

what podcasting 2.0 is . It's got

2:31

a fantastic domain name and

2:34

I'm looking forward to talking about it when

2:36

the time is right .

2:37

Congratulations . Well done to the pair of you

2:40

, Jay . I think Danny and

2:42

I tried to get something off the ground last year

2:44

. It didn't happen because we were both too busy

2:46

building our own products , so

2:49

I'm genuinely looking forward to that .

2:51

I think we should be good because I think we've got

2:53

half of the work already done actually

2:55

. So , yeah , but just something

2:58

which is much more

3:00

clearer and for people like Elsie to

3:02

help explain , I think will be super

3:04

helpful .

3:05

Now let's have a look at quickly what actually

3:08

Apple did announce , Because , I mean , we

3:10

now know that they have transcripts . I

3:12

think you've done a really helpful

3:14

FAQ and workaround

3:17

in terms of a video to show people

3:19

how it works , haven't you ?

3:20

Yes , I have . Yeah , so you'll find that video

3:23

on the Pod News website . If

3:25

you go back to last Friday's

3:27

issue , then you can find

3:29

it there or in the articles section . But yeah

3:32

, I mean , basically Apple are

3:34

producing transcripts for absolutely

3:36

everybody . They're producing them in VTT

3:38

format and VTT turns out to

3:40

be really good . I didn't know much about VTT

3:43

I always thought that SRT was the thing but

3:45

VTT format transcripts

3:47

are really good in that you can mark

3:49

speaker names in there . You can do per

3:52

word timing if you really want to , but

3:54

you can do a bunch of other things . But Apple

3:56

is doing it actually really cleverly . So every

3:59

single podcast will have a transcript . But

4:01

if you want to and you are the creator

4:03

, you can override that using the podcasting

4:06

2.0 transcript tag , and that will

4:08

allow you to submit your

4:10

own transcripts , which Apple will

4:12

do . Nobody else who has announced

4:15

this is offering that . So

4:17

that's great news from Apple's

4:19

point of view . The

4:21

transcripts Apple is doing some clever things

4:23

with their

4:25

technology under the hood . So basically

4:27

, all of these transcripts will be matched word

4:29

by word . So it will look pretty cool

4:32

from that point of view . But what that

4:34

also means , I think , is

4:36

that it will be impossible to spam

4:38

transcripts . You won't be able to write things

4:40

in your transcript file that you didn't actually

4:43

say , which is

4:45

good news in terms of dynamic

4:47

ads , because that way you know it

4:49

won't be confusing you won't see a transcript

4:51

for one ad and hear a different one . But

4:54

also it means that you know you won't have

4:56

random you know people trying to flog

4:58

you cryptocurrency or something in the middle of a transcript

5:01

. So I think that's all pretty

5:03

good as well . Works

5:05

in English , french , german and Spanish Looks

5:08

really smart as well . The

5:10

Apple team when they showed me the thing

5:12

working , they were actually saying how much

5:15

they'd worked with the Apple Books people in

5:17

terms of making sure that it was the right font

5:19

face , making sure that it was the right size font

5:21

, making sure that the contrast

5:23

was done , all correctly and

5:25

everything else . So the whole thing , I think

5:27

, is all pretty good in

5:29

terms of Apple's support

5:32

for an open standard , but

5:34

also a backstop of . They'll

5:37

just make the you know the thing

5:39

for you anyway . So if you're just

5:41

an ordinary podcaster , you don't fiddle

5:43

around with transcripts or anything else . Don't

5:45

worry . You know Apple will still be producing

5:48

a very serviceable transcript

5:50

for your show , and the transcripts for

5:53

this show are pretty good , I have to

5:55

say , so I've been really impressed so

5:57

far .

5:58

Okay , so Dave Jones , the pod

6:00

sage , himself said in a blog post

6:02

with a single feature , apple podcast

6:04

have established themselves as an actual

6:06

advocate for RSS podcasting

6:08

, says Dave Jones , the pod sage . Now

6:10

, firstly , I'd like to just give

6:13

my thoughts on it very quickly . Yes , thank

6:15

you , apple , for the transcripts , but

6:17

what kept ? You Could have

6:19

done this sooner . But hey , better

6:22

late than never . Apple did

6:24

, if I'm right , james , add support for

6:26

the TXT tag last year

6:28

, didn't they ?

6:29

Well , they kind of did , but then not really

6:31

very officially and not really

6:33

very obviously either

6:36

. So I think this is the first support

6:38

for something that actually does

6:40

something which touches listeners

6:43

as well as creators , and

6:45

they've done it in a really good way . So

6:48

, yes , it's probably not Apple's

6:50

first podcasting 2.0 tag

6:53

, but it's the first one . I think that really

6:55

makes you know a change . So

6:57

yeah , so I think it's good from that point of view .

6:59

Now , I'm going to take the

7:02

cynical view and I know we

7:04

had a little exchange

7:06

on mast on where you said , like why do people

7:08

have to take this cynical view ? But

7:10

I am going to take that view . It's

7:13

because I think they've brought this out now

7:15

because of the EU legal challenges . We

7:17

know that they had to open up the app store , but

7:19

they did that reluctantly

7:21

and they did the

7:23

least they could do . You know , we talked about it last

7:26

week . They still have a 27%

7:28

store tax

7:30

in effect . You know it's not 30% well

7:32

done but it's only 27%

7:34

. And you know and I just think this

7:36

is also a little bit of backside

7:38

covering the EU

7:40

is looking at them fairly closely

7:43

. I mean , we're talking about

7:45

the app store . I think transcripts we'll

7:47

talk about a little bit later on as well with SiriusXM

7:49

and I just think this is Apple

7:52

doing what they had to do . I mean , they could

7:54

have supported the person tag . They could have made

7:56

that a link to transcripts

7:58

. I think this is the minimum they

8:00

could have done and I think it's the minimum

8:03

they could have done with the app store , and that's what they're up

8:05

to .

8:05

Yeah , I mean , you know some people have said that the

8:07

app store stuff is something

8:10

called malicious compliance , where

8:12

they are doing the bare minimum

8:14

that they actually have to do to get the EU

8:17

off their back , and I think that there's

8:20

certainly something to be said for that . I

8:22

have to say that the

8:24

podcast person tag that's

8:26

the tag where we say

8:29

that you know this podcast has James

8:31

and Sam in it I

8:33

have to say that that is too open

8:36

for spam to be used

8:38

by a company like Apple , and

8:40

Apple would end up you

8:43

know it's got no safeguards

8:47

against you just adding Joe Rogan in

8:49

there or adding Travis Kelsey

8:51

or whoever the number one podcaster is right

8:53

now . So from that point of view

8:55

, I kind of understand a little

8:58

bit why Apple have been

9:00

slow they're a slow company

9:02

but also why Apple has chosen this

9:04

particular one , because there's a fallback

9:06

, so they're

9:09

always going to be producing transcripts anyway

9:11

. But also the

9:14

system won't actually allow you to

9:17

spam anything because

9:19

of the way that it's associating

9:22

the audio with the text . So

9:24

I think you know it's a difficult

9:26

balancing act for Apple not to

9:29

basically open the floodgates to the bad

9:31

people who would just come into the

9:33

podcast apps and try

9:35

and spam as much as possible . If

9:37

you talk to Buzzsprout , you talk to rsscom

9:40

, you talk to any of the large podcaster

9:43

you know Blueberry as well any of the large

9:45

podcast hosting companies . They

9:47

have a terrible trouble with

9:50

spam and with

9:52

people trying to post all kinds

9:54

of stuff . You might remember a couple of years ago

9:56

I covered a story about Dubai

10:00

call girls advertising their telephone

10:02

numbers in podcast apps because

10:06

they worked out that it was a way of getting their information

10:09

in there . So

10:11

I think that Apple's a little bit hamstrung

10:14

in what it can support and what it can't . But

10:16

yeah , I think it's a positive thing

10:18

.

10:18

Okay , well , playing on the positive

10:20

side , then , I do think and

10:23

I've said this before when I was at Netscape

10:25

it might have invented and innovated

10:27

on the web with the browser , but

10:29

it was Microsoft , with its inclusion

10:32

into the operating system of IE , that took

10:35

the web to the masses . I

10:37

think maybe is Apple going

10:39

to be the company that takes

10:41

podcasting 2.0 to the masses , james

10:44

, will they support more tags

10:46

, do you think , and on that basis

10:48

, will they educate the mass market

10:50

about podcasting 2.0

10:52

and be that catalyst

10:55

, maybe ?

10:56

I mean , I would certainly hope that they do

10:58

put more focus on

11:00

new features like this . I think

11:02

it makes perfect sense for them to

11:04

do and

11:07

I think it's something that , frankly

11:10

, at the moment let's be blunt Apple

11:12

needs friends in the podcast industry

11:14

. Apple has managed , with

11:17

the little changes that it made for

11:19

auto downloads , has managed to wipe

11:21

about 20% of revenue

11:23

from every single podcast publisher

11:25

out there . They

11:27

really didn't handle

11:29

that very well , to be fair , and

11:32

I think that Apple really does need to make

11:34

friends with the podcast

11:36

industry , and this is one way of doing that

11:38

, and I think that it's a good thing

11:41

. We shouldn't forget that Apple

11:43

is actually the last large

11:45

company to announce support

11:48

for transcripts . Really , spotify

11:51

has announced support , amazon

11:54

has announced support , so

11:57

kind of what took Apple

11:59

so long ? The one thing

12:01

that I would say is that actually , apple have delivered

12:04

which is more than any of the other companies

12:06

have .

12:07

Yeah , you were saying that Spotify

12:09

announced time sync transcripts

12:11

for more podcasts on their platform at the end of

12:13

September . Podcasts

12:17

can't edit those transcripts or supply

12:19

their own , and there aren't very many anyway

12:21

. Amazon , it was limited

12:23

to Wondery , and now you think

12:25

you can't find them anywhere at all .

12:27

Yeah , I can't find any . I mean

12:29

, they announced transcripts in November

12:31

2021 . I can't find a single

12:33

one in there . I went to have a look at the big Wondery

12:36

shows , the big shows on the platform that Amazon

12:38

are promoting Can't find a single transcript

12:40

in there at all . So I suspect that that's been

12:43

. You know , yonked and

12:45

Sirius XM , of course , are

12:47

in court right now , taken

12:51

to court by the National Association of the

12:53

Deaf for a lack of transcripts

12:55

in their app . Now , I

12:58

suspect that that

13:01

court case has actually

13:03

meant that Apple has looked

13:05

a little bit more seriously in supporting

13:08

transcripts and that

13:10

legal action started in December

13:12

2021 . Well , here we are at

13:14

the beginning of 2024

13:16

with transcripts appearing in

13:19

the app . So you know , perhaps

13:21

the National Association of the Deaf's legal

13:25

action against Sirius XM has

13:27

actually kicked a little bit more of this off . But

13:30

yeah , I find it fascinating that you

13:32

know , in a typical way for Spotify

13:34

, certainly they've announced something that they haven't

13:37

actually delivered .

13:39

Yeah , hd music anyone . Now

13:41

one of the other things . Sorry

13:44

, couldn't help myself . Is there a better

13:47

way as well for people to make transcripts

13:49

?

13:49

I mean , there are a couple of other ways . If you want

13:52

a VTT transcript , which is the

13:54

version that Apple is

13:56

wanting , yes , it will

13:58

also go back to SRTs as well , but

14:00

if you want a VTT one , then

14:02

, firstly , whisper is a free download

14:05

. If you are technically advanced , that means

14:07

you can use a terminal window . There's

14:10

a brilliant blog post on the Castapod

14:12

website . If you just search

14:15

for Whisper and Castapod then you'll find

14:17

it . There are a number of free VTT

14:19

editor programs online as well , and

14:21

also there's Hindenburg Pro , which is

14:23

one of a number of audio editors which does transcripts

14:26

. But in this particular case , you can

14:28

export the edited transcript in

14:30

that format that Apple podcast wants , if

14:33

it supports uploaded VTT files

14:35

. So that's a good

14:37

thing as well . Just to take

14:40

a peek at Now , there are two

14:42

elephants in the room here that we should probably

14:44

declare . One of them is that

14:46

no one can actually make the podcast

14:49

transcript tag work with Apple podcasts

14:51

right now . But it's in beta

14:53

, and I think it's probably fair that we don't

14:55

jump up and down and say but it's not

14:57

working , apple , but it's not working because

14:59

it is in beta . And that's the whole point of a beta

15:01

is to make sure that it works . Apple's

15:05

VTT files are actually not compliant

15:07

with the VTT

15:09

standard either , but I'm sure that

15:11

they will be fixing that prior

15:14

to actual launch . A beta

15:17

means a beta , and it's not launched to the

15:19

public yet . So that's one

15:22

thing , and the other thing that I suppose

15:24

I ought to declare is as of

15:26

next week , I will be rocking an iPhone

15:28

15 . Oh

15:31

my God , I know

15:33

, I know Now

15:35

I haven't bought it . I

15:38

haven't bought it . I may have been lent it

15:40

by someone . I probably

15:42

shouldn't mention too much about

15:44

that , because then everybody will want one . But

15:48

yes , so I have a long term loan on

15:50

that . So I will be trying my very

15:53

best to be a good iOS

15:56

user and try

15:58

and understand all of the new tools and everything

16:01

else . So , yes , but

16:03

that will obviously color

16:05

what I'm going to say in the future

16:07

, because I will

16:09

actually have rather more experience . I was

16:11

actually working out the last time that I properly

16:14

used an iPhone . Yes , I've had a little

16:16

iPhone 8 on the desk , but

16:18

I've not been using it as a real phone for a while

16:20

. The last time I used an iPhone was my

16:22

iPhone 3G that

16:24

I owned in 2009

16:27

. Come on , granddad

16:29

. Get with the game and it turns out that it's changed

16:31

a bit since then , so I am

16:34

looking forward to having a good , proper play

16:36

. I'm a bit sad

16:38

about having to lose my fancy Google Pixel

16:40

watch , but anyway

16:42

, we'll see how all of that works

16:44

.

16:45

But yes , that's

16:47

where we are on that , so I

16:50

suppose Zach doesn't need what now he's playing

16:52

with Vision Pro .

16:53

Well you know , I mean Zach . Zach's

16:55

dead to me . Yes , he never did any

16:57

of that . So

16:59

yes , but yes

17:02

, but there we are . I do notice that

17:04

Zach , this is a former PR

17:06

person from Apple Podcasts

17:08

who is now looking after some toy toy

17:11

glasses . I

17:13

do notice that Zach is still very

17:15

excitedly tweeting about

17:17

podcasts , so

17:19

I have a feeling that he's missing it

17:21

, but still , but there we are . Has he got

17:23

?

17:23

any customers yet for Vision Pro . That's why

17:25

.

17:28

Anyway moving on

17:31

. Oh no , I meant to press , but

17:34

anyway moving on .

17:43

It's a new show called why your

17:45

Podcast Isn't Growing . James , tell me more .

17:48

Yeah , this is a pretty good podcast that I've been having

17:50

a listen to . It's

17:52

hosted by Anthony and

17:54

Tig I'm not quite

17:56

sure what sort of a name Tig is , but

17:58

I think I can allow them that . But

18:02

so , basically , it's a show

18:04

that comes out every week . Every other

18:06

Monday , you hear a really successful

18:08

podcaster talking about

18:10

how that podcast got

18:12

to be as successful as it got , which

18:15

is a really helpful thing . The other

18:17

Monday and this is something that

18:19

I'm kind of thinking do I put our

18:21

podcast forward for this ? And then I'm kind of thinking

18:23

, maybe not . Anthony

18:26

and Tig have a Roast the

18:28

Show session where they get one of their listeners on

18:30

the show . They give their podcast a live audit

18:32

. I can't think of anything

18:35

more scary for this

18:37

particular show . And there are also

18:39

weekly bite-size episodes every Wednesday and

18:41

Friday giving you up-to-date

18:43

growth and monetization strategies

18:46

. One that you might want to have a listen

18:48

to is episode number 80 , which is four

18:50

lessons . We've heard from podcasters

18:52

getting 10,000 or more

18:54

monthly downloads , so it's

18:56

a pretty good thing it's called

18:59

why your Podcast Isn't Growing , and

19:01

you can find it wherever .

19:02

You got this podcast Right

19:06

, james , moving on , I'm AI

19:09

, drink , drink . If you're going to

19:11

anytime , now's the time .

19:14

It feels .

19:14

it feels Now there's

19:17

a company podcast

19:19

called Dudzie , not one that I've heard of

19:21

. It's been sued by

19:23

George Carlin .

19:24

But yes , so it's been sued by George Carlin's

19:26

estate . What the Dudzie

19:29

podcast said that they had done is they had trained

19:31

an AI tool on five decades

19:33

of George Carlin's work . George was a

19:35

stand-up comedian , of course , and

19:38

it produced a podcast that imitated

19:40

his voice , cadence and attitude

19:43

. Turns out that it was all

19:45

a load of nonsense anyway , because it wasn't

19:47

written by AI . It

19:50

might have just been a cloned voice . That's not going

19:52

to stop the legal action , though , because obviously

19:54

George Carlin's estate is there saying well

19:56

, you've basically promoted

19:58

this as a George Carlin thing , and it clearly

20:00

isn't . So

20:03

that was an interesting story to take

20:05

a look at .

20:06

Yeah , AI has been in the naughty

20:08

step this week as well , because it's been putting out

20:11

naughty pictures of Taylor Swift , and

20:13

she's not very happy about it either .

20:15

There is a story going on at the

20:17

moment of a

20:19

Australian TV channel

20:21

who took a

20:23

photograph of an MP and

20:28

to put it onto the TV news you

20:31

know how you have pictures behind the

20:35

news anchor of

20:37

somebody who you're talking about and

20:39

they took a picture of

20:41

one of the MPs and

20:44

they made her breasts bigger and

20:46

changed her clothing so that

20:48

all of a sudden she had a bare midriff

20:51

, and they then

20:53

blamed it on the fact that

20:55

they automatically resized

20:57

these images using Adobe

21:00

Photoshop and there must

21:02

have been a problem with the AI

21:04

because

21:06

of an automation by Photoshop

21:08

, which is just

21:11

nonsense , which is utter

21:13

, utter nonsense .

21:15

I think they're going to be careful . Adobe's

21:17

lawyers might get hold of that and that's defamation

21:20

.

21:20

Well , adobe's lawyers have turned around

21:22

and said , no , this is nonsense . Edits

21:26

to the image in question would have required

21:28

human intervention and approval . Now

21:31

the ABC has done a full

21:33

look into this and it turns

21:35

out that Adobe Firefly , which is

21:37

Adobe's Photoshop thing , basically

21:40

has a thing that just makes up

21:42

bits of the image which are being cropped off

21:44

, and so

21:46

they've actually had a good look in and

21:48

worked out that might have been

21:51

the case , but it's very dodgy

21:53

the fact that they have

21:55

ended up doing that . So there's all kinds

21:57

of nonsense which is going on with

21:59

AI , but also all

22:01

kinds of relatively

22:04

good things which are going on with AI . So Zencaster

22:06

Clips , which is a product

22:08

which is clipping bits of podcasts

22:11

with AI , now works in

22:13

four additional languages French

22:15

, german , spanish and

22:17

Portuguese , which is very cool . It's

22:19

nice to see not just English language

22:21

getting the thing

22:23

. And then we got a news

22:27

story earlier on in the week from a company

22:29

called WonderCraft , which

22:31

looks like an incredible AI-powered

22:33

audio service . It's raised $3

22:36

million in funding . Stephen Bartlett

22:38

is one of the investors in

22:41

that , and the technology apparently

22:43

enables anyone to create studio quality

22:45

audio production in any language by

22:47

simply typing . Guess who's

22:49

involved , sam . Well , you know who's involved

22:52

the former COO of Acast

22:54

, oscar Saranda . How do

22:56

I know that you're involved ? Because

22:58

you ended up chatting to him , didn't you ?

23:00

I did . He's a super nice guy , very

23:03

smart , and yeah , we had

23:05

a chat about what is a WonderCraft

23:08

. I wanted to say in German it sounds like it should be

23:10

a German name , wundercraft , but

23:12

it isn't . And yeah , what

23:15

was the investment like and who else is behind

23:17

it ?

23:17

So WonderCraft is the audio

23:19

studio for creators , so basically it's the

23:22

easy and enjoyable way to create

23:24

professional studio quality audio

23:26

for all your projects , whether that's

23:28

podcasts , audio books , audio

23:31

ads or company communications

23:34

, or even a meditation anything

23:36

you want really and then also effortlessly

23:38

be able to translate that content into

23:41

any language for a global audience . And

23:43

it all happens in one place , which

23:45

right now is a web application

23:47

on wondercraftai .

23:50

So just so I've got it in my head very

23:52

clearly , I go into WonderCraft , I

23:54

type out what I want , and then it translates

23:57

that into a voice and a

23:59

foreign language , or do

24:01

I speak it and then have it dub

24:04

it over into a foreign ? Which element is

24:06

it ?

24:07

Well , we're starting out with the first one , so it really comes

24:09

in two kind of modules , if you will . If you

24:11

log in with your account , you have one

24:13

part of this content creation that really is

24:16

about empowering your original human work

24:18

and ideas and have them come alive

24:20

in audio that actually sounds good

24:23

and doesn't take that long . The whole idea

24:25

of that is really getting people more

24:27

excited to work in audio and lower

24:29

the threshold of entry . My career has been long

24:31

in this space . People

24:34

are always struggling to start out with audio , so

24:36

that's one part of it . But , yeah , you can either

24:39

generate a podcast script or

24:41

an ad copy or anything

24:43

from different inputs . It could be an image

24:45

that you received from an advertiser

24:47

, for instance , that haven't worked in audio

24:49

before . You can upload that image and it turns it into

24:52

a podcast host read . You can upload

24:54

creative brief PDF or

24:56

you can start a template that

24:58

lets you fill in all the messaging

25:01

points that you want for your ad , for instance . Or

25:04

you can link to a website to

25:06

start a podcast . Maybe you have a company

25:08

blog that's sitting around that no

25:10

one really pays much attention to , but

25:13

you can turn that into a podcast very easily

25:15

, but just linking to it and our script

25:17

writer would then turn that into a nice listening

25:19

experience and you can mix in music

25:21

beds and obviously choose your voice

25:23

or even clone your own so you can have

25:25

it in your own voice . So that's one part . The

25:28

second module is the translation and

25:30

dubbing , so you can take any of your projects

25:32

and localize those for a more

25:34

of a global audience . 80%

25:36

of the world doesn't speak English , so this is a fantastic

25:39

way to kind of grow your content

25:41

and , again , a big mission for us is to help

25:43

creators expand in

25:45

many ways . This is certainly one that is

25:47

coming now with full force with this technology

25:49

, so you can basically turn it into any

25:52

major language out there . But what's very unique

25:54

with WonderCraft is that we also use

25:57

AI for the cost and the speed

25:59

efficiency to really translate it . It

26:01

takes it up to 90% 95%

26:03

accuracy . As you know , if you work with

26:05

generative AI , it's not always perfect

26:08

when you translate it , but we'll take it . We use

26:10

different AI technologies to really get it as

26:12

far as we can , but then we also we

26:14

have over 100 translation

26:18

expert translators that we

26:20

have created a process where we basically

26:23

hire them for projects that are coming in and

26:26

then they sit in an interface to really fine

26:28

tune the translation to

26:30

make it really local . So if you are

26:32

in Mexico City , you want to make sure that your

26:35

British podcast that is dubbed

26:37

into Mexican Spanish really

26:40

resonates with that local

26:42

audience , and so forth . We're doing this in 15

26:44

languages now and we work with a lot

26:46

of big creators like Steven Bartlett , ali

26:48

Abdaal , who has 5 million subscribers

26:50

on YouTube , just

26:52

translating his book into six

26:55

languages , including Hindi and Arabic

26:57

, and it's all in his own voice

26:59

, which is also a great way

27:01

to have your brand

27:03

translated into many parts of the world

27:05

.

27:07

So let's try and unpack

27:09

a little bit of that . What's the AI

27:12

that you're using ? Is this OpenWhisper

27:15

or is this a in-house

27:17

built LLM that you've developed ? I

27:19

mean , what's the basis of the

27:21

AI ? Let's start with that first .

27:23

Yeah , we're actually using different technologies

27:26

for this , for the different parts of what

27:28

we're doing , so the transcription is

27:30

certainly one of them . That we use several AIs to

27:32

be able to find an average

27:35

best version of it , make sure we're not only

27:37

reliant on one of them . It's

27:39

also important for us in our future development that

27:41

we are in the forefront of whatever is best

27:44

to be able to kind of adopt to

27:46

those changes this space is happening

27:48

right now and it's developing

27:50

so quickly . But we do have a very

27:52

specific partnership with 11LAMP , so it's also

27:55

a strategic investor , as we announced yesterday

27:57

in our seed round , and

28:00

they are really in the forefront of voice AI

28:02

research and technology , and

28:05

so we're working closely with their developments

28:07

to make sure that the text-to-speech

28:09

component is as great as it can be

28:12

, and right now it sounds fantastic , but

28:14

it's still early in our days and I look forward to

28:16

talking about the future and where

28:18

the developments is really heading .

28:21

So you've mentioned two of the investors

28:24

. Let's talk about them 11LAMP's and

28:26

Stephen Bartlett . I mean , did

28:28

you approach them ? Did they approach

28:30

you ? How did that relationship occur ?

28:33

The relationship started with our

28:36

entry into dubbing and

28:38

really working with languages

28:41

for creators , and Stephen is very

28:43

much in the forefront of this . He is an

28:45

incredible innovator in his space

28:47

, so we're privileged to really work with

28:49

him early on , pioneering this and

28:52

making sure that the technology worked . Not

28:54

only that the technology worked and it sounded good

28:56

and his voice was intact and

28:58

it's a good listening experience but also

29:00

the workflow of it right . We really

29:02

want this to scale . We want to make this available

29:04

to any creator and podcaster At a

29:06

price point that actually works . This

29:09

professional translation and dubbing costs

29:11

thousands of dollars per hour if you

29:13

want to do it with an agency and

29:15

with technology . Now we're in a place where we

29:17

can get that down to just 100s

29:20

of dollars depending on the scope

29:22

of the project and length , et cetera . But

29:24

it's a very approachable way to it and Stephen

29:26

was very keen on that and obviously

29:28

had a tremendous growth

29:31

on his YouTube channel and his podcast

29:33

. I think it's one of the fastest growing in

29:35

the world and I think that speaks volume

29:38

for his ambition with that and how he's

29:40

looking at worldwide

29:42

distribution and not only looking at English

29:44

as one language . So

29:47

we're very happy with that and

29:50

that has opened up a lot of doors for us

29:52

to more creators . I mean

29:54

, we always share this . I think MrBeast

29:56

was quite early with

29:58

dubbing his content

30:00

into more languages and his subscriptions

30:03

skyrocketed for it , and I think that's

30:05

a great kind of case study here . But not everyone

30:08

has MrBeast funds to do it , so

30:12

this provides a more approachable

30:14

and accessible option for any

30:17

creator or publisher out there .

30:19

Yeah , I read Stephen Bartlett's girlfriend's Spanish

30:22

and when he had the podcast

30:24

dubbed into Spanish , he was super

30:26

happy because his I think

30:28

future in-laws could now hear

30:30

what he was doing , because they kept saying

30:32

to his girlfriend

30:34

what does Stephen do ? And well , this is

30:37

his podcast , but he didn't understand English and

30:39

when they got the Spanish version , they were very pleased

30:41

. So , yes , congratulations for that .

30:42

I mean tearing down those barriers . It

30:44

makes us understand each other more , right , and I

30:47

think , yeah , there's something I'm very

30:49

passionate about that part . I mean , everyone

30:51

in our company is bilingual , at least . We're

30:54

from various different backgrounds

30:56

. I was born and raised in Sweden and

30:58

if you didn't learn English , you only

31:00

had a population of 10 million to really

31:02

deal with . So

31:06

there's something about breaking down those language barriers

31:08

that makes it really interesting . I'll tell you what . We did a project

31:10

with a Dutch publisher , and I don't

31:12

speak Dutch . I can probably pick

31:14

up a word every 10 or so , but

31:17

really listening to and understanding what they're

31:19

talking about felt a little bit magical in

31:21

a way , and I think not

31:23

to be too aspirational

31:26

here , maybe , but I think that's really beautiful

31:28

and I think that will lead to us understanding

31:30

at each other a little bit more . We

31:33

did the same with an Arabic YouTuber

31:35

, and just hearing what they're actually talking

31:37

about is pretty amazing , and I think

31:39

that's maybe something that we need a little

31:42

bit more of than world especially right

31:44

now .

31:45

The Babelfish's time has come Now

31:47

. Look with what you're doing currently today

31:49

. Is this

31:51

something that takes a long time to

31:54

do the processing from , say

31:56

, english to another language or can

31:58

this be done on the fly ? So , for example

32:00

, could I eventually have an API

32:02

to Wandercraft in an app and then say right

32:04

, hey , I'm listening to this podcast , it's

32:06

in English , but I'm a German and I want to hear the

32:08

German version and click , I

32:10

hit it and Wandercraft can do it in real

32:13

time ? Or is this a no ? You have

32:15

to edit it and record it and

32:17

it gets translated and then published

32:19

. Where's the process today ?

32:22

I think it's certainly possible . We

32:25

are going for the quality angle first

32:27

, though , with the human component . That's really

32:30

our differentiation , as I mentioned before

32:32

, because right

32:34

now I think everyone

32:36

is very accustomed to

32:38

working in the generative AI now

32:40

I think , more so than just six months

32:42

ago , even a year but there

32:44

is always this quality assurance

32:47

that needs to happen and that's where we find

32:49

our sweet spot , and

32:52

I think you can do this now . I think

32:54

there are probably AI features that

32:56

translate quick , but

32:58

the margin for error there is going to be there

33:00

, and if you're a news

33:02

publisher , you can't really deal with

33:04

those risks of not having

33:06

the translation really turn out the way you want it

33:09

. So that's kind of what we're doing

33:11

In terms of how fast it goes . We're

33:14

really turning this into a process

33:16

that is easy to work with . On the

33:18

app , if you log in , there's a dubs

33:21

module where you basically drag and

33:23

drop your podcast . You

33:25

can do that with music or

33:27

AI or technology . You can recognize

33:29

what is music and kind of turn it out . You

33:31

get a little better quality

33:34

if you just do the voice

33:36

stems in your productions . Or

33:38

you can upload your YouTube video . Just

33:40

link that to the service that

33:43

the transcription goes quite fast and you can

33:45

get a dub done quite quickly , depending

33:47

on length obviously . But if it's a shorter

33:49

clip or if it's an hour , it just takes a couple of

33:51

minutes and then you're ready to go . It's in your

33:54

voice and it is just

33:56

that If you want the quality assurance

33:58

, it takes a little longer . We usually turn around

34:00

six to seven hours

34:02

right now for an hour of content to

34:04

make sure that our expert translators had really

34:07

worked on it and proved it

34:09

and listened to it in full to

34:11

be able to return it in the highest quality possible

34:13

. So that's kind of where we are right now with

34:15

100 translators we have . But in the future

34:17

we're definitely growing this out . The demand for

34:19

it is here , so we're excited to

34:22

kind of fine tune the process even more

34:24

and build on that technology . So

34:26

I think that's important for people who are publishing

34:29

maybe daily even to be able to turn

34:31

that around quite quickly . That's part of it . We

34:33

want to be part of that workflow to make it fast .

34:36

So I'd call this a white glove service . Basically

34:39

, you're holding the hand through the final process

34:41

. But just one quick

34:43

question In terms of training my voice how

34:46

long does that take in terms

34:48

of you getting an accurate

34:50

voice ? Ai of me

34:52

.

34:54

That also goes quite quickly In the app

34:56

. You can clone your voice . Now you need to

34:58

obviously follow terms of service here and acknowledge

35:01

that you have the rights to do this and you have

35:03

the IP , which is obviously something

35:06

that we're thinking a lot about how

35:08

to be as secure as possible

35:10

, and that's very clear in our terms

35:12

of service . But once you do that , once

35:14

you assure that this is your voice and you can use

35:16

it , it just takes a couple of minutes and

35:19

all you need is really a one

35:21

to two minute sound bite , preferably

35:23

with a good microphone such

35:25

as the one you have there , to

35:28

be able to make it right . And that's a quick and

35:30

easy way to do it . For

35:32

the creation model , when you want to voice your own

35:34

podcast creation , for instance , for

35:37

dubbing , it's already there . That's going to happen

35:39

when you go through the dubbing process .

35:41

And you've got a really good example podcast

35:44

called Hacking News Recap . Can

35:46

you talk me through first

35:49

of all , how you've created Hacking News

35:51

Recap and probably why did

35:53

you create it as well in some ways ?

35:56

I take no credit in this . This was Dimitri and

35:58

Yusuf and it was a fantastic

36:00

part of the first version

36:03

of what they created back in May last

36:05

year Coming out of Y Combinator

36:07

. Hacker News was obviously near and dear to

36:09

them and they used that as a

36:11

case study to create a listening

36:13

experience that really worked and it blew

36:15

up . It became a bit of a viral success

36:18

. We were happy now in December to

36:20

see on a lot of people posted their Spotify

36:22

wrapped and Hacker News recap

36:24

was there Basically what it does , and anyone

36:26

can do this using Wondercraft . You can

36:28

basically use one of our templates that's called a

36:30

daily news rundown . You

36:33

can select a couple of articles

36:35

that you want . In this case , we take

36:37

the 10 most red articles

36:39

on Hacker News every day and

36:41

that's it . Rai will then transform

36:44

that into a podcast show . You

36:46

can decide if it's one host or two

36:48

talking about it and

36:51

it just creates a lovely experience

36:53

where it's read through in a voice that you

36:55

don't want to turn off . That's where the technology

36:57

is now . It's really good . It's

37:02

been a great case study and a validation

37:04

of just the use of the listening experience

37:07

and I think that was very important when we got started

37:09

. If that isn't there , we're not going to

37:11

be able to do this . If you're interested

37:13

in going to Spotify or Apple or

37:16

wherever you listen to podcasts and search for

37:18

Hacker News recap .

37:19

Well , talking of Spotify , let's have a little bit

37:21

of a backtrack into your career

37:24

. I mean , you came out of Cara , but

37:26

you went to Spotify , then you went to iHeart

37:28

and then you went through a COO

37:30

of a cast , through an IPO . Wasn't

37:33

that enough ? Didn't you want to just put your feet up

37:35

and go to a beach , somewhere Most

37:37

people go ? Yeah , that's it , I'm done , I'm

37:39

out of here , wasn't that it

37:41

?

37:42

Oh funny , you say that that was actually what I was trying

37:46

to do when I left a cast . I'm like

37:48

, oh well , you know I'm going to take a long break . And

37:50

I said , well , I'm going to . Can I take a year

37:52

off ? And then after one week that turned into

37:54

six months . After four weeks I

37:56

was done . I'm not good at not working and

37:59

I started to miss it a lot . I started to miss what

38:02

I did at a cast . I started to miss what we're doing

38:04

with audio . So it's kind of it's been

38:06

part of my entire career . And then when I met my

38:09

co founders now it was kind of a

38:11

sign from above that I needed to

38:13

get into it . But yeah

38:15

, I've been in podcasting for a while , but back when

38:17

I was at an ad agency back in

38:19

2007 , eight podcasting

38:22

was not really a thing . I lived in Sweden . You

38:25

know . I wrote about this on LinkedIn yesterday because

38:27

it was kind of a blast from the past and I'll try to

38:29

explain how I how I ended up here

38:31

and I wrote something along the lines of

38:33

you know , back then it was just MP3s

38:36

and Pirate Bay and that was it

38:38

. And when

38:40

I was introduced to Spotify , that

38:42

was the first kind of jaw drop that I had in my career

38:45

. Like this is amazing . I can search

38:47

for any song and I was such a huge music fan

38:49

. It was just the best thing I've ever seen

38:51

in my entire life . So I that's when

38:53

I asked him for a job and I started there eventually

38:56

.

38:56

Oh I , good place to start , Not bad yeah

38:58

yeah , and it was .

38:59

I mean , it was small then , right , but they had the grand ambitions

39:02

. Daniel Eck is probably one of the most

39:04

inspirational founders I've ever worked with and

39:06

that sense he you know

39:08

, he has this 20 year , 25 year

39:10

vision . That is so rare

39:12

, but yeah , it was a fantastic

39:14

journey and we were just 60

39:16

people at that point , but anyway , that's how I also

39:18

ended up in in the US To

39:21

help help launch Spotify over here . It's kind of the

39:23

token suite that was that was sent

39:25

over to be sent

39:28

the Viking send one and yeah

39:31

, and then

39:33

then my story kind of continues . I've been in media

39:35

and technology for a long time . Audio

39:37

was , and it's kind of where this started

39:40

. When we moved over here to the US and even

39:42

in Sweden , audio was just radio and radio

39:44

wasn't , wasn't top of mind

39:46

for everyone . It was all about mobile and

39:48

, you know , video was starting to come

39:50

around and be really interesting . So

39:52

audio radio was always kind of like

39:55

the ugly duckling in a way . I was . I

39:58

didn't like that . I loved radio as

40:00

well . As a radio producer back in my student

40:02

days as well , I absolutely loved it . And

40:04

it was very hard

40:07

to work with brands who wanted really

40:09

to align with Spotify , so much they

40:11

really wanted to get in there , because how

40:13

could you not ? You want to be around people's favorite

40:15

music , right , but it was very hard for them to do

40:17

it with audio . Like , how do we do audio

40:20

? How's the Cardi we worked with ? Or Coca

40:22

Cola when we launched , like

40:24

I don't know what ? You know , this is hard , what

40:26

do we do ? So it wasn't really an easy

40:29

way for brands to explore audio

40:31

. And then podcasting obviously came around as

40:33

a big big next kind of big thing

40:35

in audio . We all know that story

40:37

and I was at I Heart

40:39

for a while where I discovered podcasting

40:41

. Really , they were just

40:43

dipping their toes in it . We're pushing that quite hard

40:46

on the kind of new business development side . I

40:49

had some great people at I Heart who was really working

40:51

on that and now they have fantastic

40:54

people are really spearheading that , andy Kelly

40:56

being one of them , and Connell , who are doing

40:58

a great job building that up with great content

41:00

and really have taken that to the next

41:02

level . Back then it wasn't it was still very

41:04

much a radio focused company . And then A-Cast

41:07

came along and I thought that was an amazing

41:09

mission to try to again break down

41:11

the barriers and try to make it more accessible

41:13

for smaller creators to get started

41:15

, but again , not in a production

41:17

kind of sense , but in the distribution and

41:20

how to make money from your creation

41:22

much better , and I love working for that mission

41:24

. It was really really satisfying to

41:27

finally kind of break through and onboard a lot

41:29

of smaller creators who could start making

41:31

money from their hobby basic thing . That's great

41:33

. Yeah , took that IPO in 2021

41:36

. And then 2022

41:38

was obviously pretty rough year for everyone

41:40

alive on this planet , also

41:43

for a tech company . It was public . So

41:46

it wasn't easy . But , yeah , really

41:48

great respect for everyone at A-Cast

41:50

and what they've done over there and what they continue

41:52

doing . But , yeah , it was my time to leave

41:54

and I was excited to get into something new . That was

41:56

a long backstory , sam , but this idea

41:59

really stuck with me for a long time and

42:01

when it came back up like this feels like an obvious

42:03

. I really want to make audio fun to work

42:05

with . It's never been easy . I always , you

42:08

know , I sit with Logic and I was a radio producer

42:10

. I didn't even know what we used back then , but it's not

42:12

easily accessible the way that , you

42:14

know , my mother can create a great Canva

42:17

invitation for her dinner party . It's

42:20

it's . It's quite different and that's what we want to change

42:22

.

42:23

So let's look forward to the

42:25

future , then , of Wondercraft . Where

42:29

do you see it going ? I mean , what you've

42:31

described so far is the creation

42:33

of audio . Would you go

42:36

as far as doing what Descript does and ingest

42:39

audio to allow you to edit it and then

42:41

promote it ? What is

42:43

the future for Wondercraft ?

42:45

We can . We can look ahead a couple of years here , but I

42:48

think now it's most important for us to really

42:50

invite more people into the process of working

42:52

with audio . I think that's the most important part

42:54

, and I think what we're hoping

42:57

to gain traction with is there's so many great

42:59

writers out there , so many great authors

43:03

who are so clever

43:06

in their language and I want them to discover

43:08

Wondercraft and start exploring audio

43:10

. And then a lot of people who don't want to buy

43:13

a microphone and do that right . Not everyone has

43:15

the podcast ambition , but they're probably

43:17

told you need to make a podcast

43:19

If you're a great blogger . I mean , you

43:21

probably heard that a million times . But

43:23

there's a lot of different use cases that we're really exciting

43:26

on on tackling and seeing how they can

43:28

come on board and discover the

43:30

benefits of what we're doing . You

43:33

know marketers in general it's kind

43:35

of a big , big area

43:37

, but turning your company blog into

43:39

a podcast I think more companies

43:41

should do that and work with audio . It creates

43:43

a much better experience

43:46

, I think , than just the normal

43:49

word vomit you do for SEO purposes

43:51

on your website .

43:54

Until . You know , my wife's the director on six

43:56

PLCs . The amount of board

43:58

papers she gets just in PDFs

44:00

. If you could convert any and all

44:03

of those to an audio so that

44:05

she can be down the gym listening to them rather than

44:07

sat in front of the screen reading them , she

44:09

would love you . I promise you that .

44:11

Yeah , and it's easy to do on the craft and

44:13

that's that's kind of the beautiful cases

44:16

that we're looking forward to . What I'm excited

44:18

about is what we're just starting out with is also

44:20

bigger enterprises . We're speaking to a lot

44:22

of big companies now that I feel

44:24

timing is perfect for it as well . Everyone's

44:27

looking for kind of more operational efficiencies

44:29

. I think dubbing into new languages

44:32

is a new exploration for publishers

44:34

to see if they can grow their content much

44:36

faster , find new audiences to then

44:38

turn on whatever monetization they're on

44:40

, subscriptions or advertising for ad

44:42

sales teams and brand partnerships Very excited

44:45

about that . We have built out a bunch of

44:47

different templates for just those

44:49

users . You can turn your like I

44:51

said before , if a client just sends you a billboard

44:53

ad , you can turn that into a podcast or

44:56

sorry , an audio ad where , if it's just of

44:58

the website that you have , either way , it's really

45:00

fun to create and I think you can do wonders

45:03

introducing audio to new

45:05

advertisers that is not doing

45:07

that already and it's a great

45:09

kind of way to invite them in into a

45:11

process . That's more fun than pitching

45:13

audio by showing slide decks

45:16

right , which most companies are doing , and

45:18

then talking to a lot of production studios

45:20

. Again , we're not here to take

45:24

anyone's job right . I think what

45:26

Canva did for design , for the design

45:28

design communities really elevate people's

45:30

understanding of design

45:32

principles , and we want to do the same for

45:34

audio , meaning appreciate

45:37

the craft . That is so hard to create a podcast

45:40

like you're doing . It is so hard

45:42

to edit it and make it right and to distribute

45:45

it and all that stuff right . But a lot of people miss that

45:47

. A lot of producers say I talked to an ad agencies

45:49

are really keen on this because they can start drafting

45:52

pilots and do more interesting things

45:54

in that creative field , which is great . And

45:56

then there's kind of the whatever you want to call

45:58

it the middle class creator out there . We have

46:01

amazing users . So

46:03

even before yesterday we've had

46:05

30,000 users on a platform since

46:07

the MVP . A lot of them

46:09

are newsletter writers who turn their newsletter

46:11

into a podcast very quickly , their bloggers

46:14

or writers and their authors . We

46:16

had a wonderful creator called Amy . She

46:19

published her own book on

46:21

Audible , all voiced

46:24

in her own voice and

46:26

it sounds amazing and it saved her hundreds

46:28

of hours to do that

46:30

and I think that's great and that's coming from

46:32

a freelance writer who is who

46:35

is really breaking out and doing something

46:37

cool . So yeah , what

46:39

was your question ? Again , the future , well , the future

46:42

.

46:42

I mean , I guess the point was

46:44

with the future is you know , do

46:47

you see the product going vertically , horizontally

46:49

? I think you've sort of talked about you know getting

46:51

into the production houses , getting into the mainstream

46:54

consumer space . One of the questions

46:56

I would have is , clearly , if

46:58

you're white-gloving the solution by

47:00

you know , adding that extra bit with the

47:02

translation team that you've got on top

47:04

, how do you scale that ? How do

47:06

you scale ? If you are super successful

47:09

and we hope you are then you're going to have every

47:11

man jacking their dog , knocking on the door

47:13

, going hey , oscar , I've got a podcast , I want it in

47:15

15 languages , and you're going . Great

47:17

, that's lovely , but I haven't got any staff

47:19

left to do this . Or it's now not overnight

47:22

turn round , we're now looking at three

47:24

weeks . I mean , that's

47:26

got to be the , I guess , the current barrier

47:28

that you might be facing . So

47:30

how do you scale it ?

47:32

Yeah , that's a good question that we have a wonderful

47:34

problem to have and we're getting close to

47:36

it . We're very confident in how we are recruiting

47:38

our translators . We spend some time training

47:41

them and making sure they're vetted and great

47:43

and what an amazing thing to do to

47:45

be able to offer job opportunities

47:47

to people who can basically sit at home and

47:49

do these proofing . So I'll be happier

47:52

than ever if we have thousands

47:54

of translators that we can

47:56

send these projects

47:58

out to . What an amazing thing . There's

48:00

not a lot of technical requirements

48:03

for them to be set up and if

48:06

we expand this into all

48:08

languages of the world , what an amazing thing . That

48:11

that's a dream for me and for us . The

48:13

process already there . We're fine tuning it , but

48:15

it's really creating a good technological

48:17

process , kind of like an Uber you're

48:19

picking up a driver or you're waiting for a driver

48:22

right , but it's kind of the same principle here

48:24

. You match your project with the

48:26

best available translator

48:28

that can help you get it just right and

48:30

you're going to know that it's proofed

48:32

and ready to go for a global audience

48:34

.

48:35

I like the Uber analogy . That's a good one . Now

48:38

, honestly , price point . What is the price

48:40

of Wandercraft ? If I wanted to sign up

48:42

today , where would I go ?

48:43

Yeah , so starting out is free

48:45

. You get a couple of credits , which means you

48:47

use credits to generate or produce

48:50

your final audio , so anyone

48:52

can go in and play around with it . It's free

48:54

to try . If you're more on the creator

48:56

level , you can sign up for $29

48:58

a month . If you pay annually , it's

49:01

34 , I think . Monthly , yeah , which

49:03

means you get 60 credits to spend . You

49:05

have more premium voices . You

49:08

also have access to a video editor , so any

49:10

project that you use you can turn into

49:12

a video for YouTube or

49:14

TikTok or LinkedIn , which is super

49:17

neat and you're able to

49:19

clone your own voice . Then we have a pro

49:21

plan that starts at $99

49:23

per month . That comes with more benefits

49:26

, branded share page etc

49:28

. And access to our dubbing

49:30

at that price point . And then , obviously , enterprise

49:33

plans . So if you're a publisher out there

49:35

or if you're a podcast network or ad sales

49:37

team , you can reach out to enterprise

49:39

at Wandercraftai and we'll

49:42

get you a demo and start it in

49:44

no time .

49:45

Oscar , thank you so much . Congratulations

49:47

on the new funding . I can't wait to

49:49

try Wandercraft myself now

49:51

. I know James has already tried it and

49:53

he loves it . So the last thing

49:55

to say is when will you

49:58

be coming to podcast

50:00

movement or coming to

50:02

the London podcast show ? When can we meet

50:04

you directly ?

50:05

Oh yeah , come meet me . I'm going to be in LA

50:07

for podcast movement Evolutions , albeit

50:10

South by Southwest as well , and

50:12

I'll definitely come to London . Podfest is awesome

50:15

, so definitely going to see everyone there , so

50:17

reach out . Anyone who's open to

50:19

reach out happy to say hi to everyone .

50:22

Well , we'll take you for a beer in LA .

50:24

I love that . Thank you so much , Sam . I'm a big fan of

50:26

the show . Thank you so much for having me .

50:28

Oscar Saranda from Wondercraft

50:30

. Wondercraftai is where to

50:32

go . Sam and I both have an account

50:34

so we can have a play , and I suspect

50:37

that there will be something in the pod news extra

50:39

podcast , maybe

50:41

next week with playing

50:43

around with that . It does look

50:45

, sam , as if you've got

50:48

a bit of the hots for Oscar .

50:50

I tell you what he's he looks

50:53

like Brad Pitt's younger brother . Move over

50:55

Zach Khan . I thought you were the hottest

50:57

looking guy in podcasting . But

50:59

no law , move over Oscar

51:01

. Yeah , he's a . He's

51:03

a bit , you know . He's rich . He's

51:05

young . Ladies , look out , or

51:07

he's coming to LA as well , james .

51:09

So wow , wow , superstar

51:12

moments . Let's move on , before you overheat

51:14

. I

51:17

thought we had seen an end to the ridiculous

51:19

amounts of money which had been spent in

51:22

podcasting , but oh no , we've seen . We've

51:25

seen some interesting moves

51:27

from Sirius XM , haven't we ?

51:30

Yeah , tony Leffield did on this one . It

51:33

actually Carmen from Bloomberg

51:35

put out in a scoop announcement

51:37

that smartness is

51:39

moving from Amazon to Sirius XM

51:42

in a hundred million dollar deal . It's

51:44

over three years but

51:46

oddly it's not going

51:48

to be exclusively on the

51:50

Sirius XM platform .

51:52

No , they've done something which they've done , which

51:54

they did last time with their previous deal

51:56

with Amazon's Wondery . It'll

51:58

publish a week early

52:01

. Well , it'll publish early on the on the platform

52:03

, and so

52:05

Amazon spent 80 million dollars on

52:08

this podcast in June 2021 . In

52:10

the middle of the madness , it

52:12

was a deal brokered by CAA , or

52:15

CAA very clever , because they've just managed to

52:17

sell the podcast again , this

52:19

time to Sirius XM for

52:21

a hundred million dollars over the next three

52:23

years , which is quite

52:25

a thing , and , yeah

52:28

, I mean . To me this

52:30

looks like the madness of

52:32

two years ago . Why Sirius

52:34

XM is still doing it , I really don't know , but

52:36

I guess it's one of the top . I

52:38

think it's one of the top five podcasts in the

52:40

world , and so , therefore , perhaps

52:43

it's an important thing for Sirius XM to do to

52:45

bolster their share price .

52:47

Well , you talked about Sirius

52:49

XM bringing out a new app , which

52:52

was rolling out in December 14th

52:55

2023 . And

52:57

also we've talked in the past

52:59

about James Corden , the former

53:02

Late Late show and Prochactor , who

53:04

signed a deal with Sirius XM and

53:07

his show will be coming out in March as

53:09

well .

53:09

So although thankfully , that show

53:12

will only be available for subscribers

53:14

to Sirius XM . So

53:16

so that's , that's all OK , but

53:20

yeah . But to me that's weird because you

53:22

see Sirius XM spending an awful lot of

53:24

money in this . They've just announced

53:27

that their media

53:29

sales arm , sxm media

53:31

, is quite sensibly changing its name to Sirius

53:34

XM media . Makes perfect sense

53:36

, congratulations for that . But

53:39

yeah , I mean , they are going

53:41

at it in a very different way

53:43

than you know , than pretty

53:45

well everybody else , including Spotify .

53:47

Yes , spotify , which

53:50

had been writing its huge exclusive

53:52

checks for everybody that wanted it . They've

53:55

just now announced that . Call her daddy , louis

53:57

Thiroux and perishing hell , just to name

53:59

three . And now going to be available

54:01

every chain , every word , james , why

54:05

, why have they gone down this different

54:07

road ? And yet Sirius XM look like

54:09

they're going down the other road .

54:11

Yeah , well , I guess I guess they're

54:13

both doing the same thing in that call

54:16

her daddy is now no

54:18

longer a Spotify exclusive . They

54:20

signed that deal in July 2021

54:22

. It was a deal worth 60 million dollars

54:24

. It's now available

54:27

on all platforms , but

54:29

the video remains exclusive

54:31

to Spotify . So if you want to watch it

54:33

, you've still got to use Spotify . So

54:36

, in the same way , I guess , as Sirius

54:38

XM is doing , what

54:40

Spotify is doing here is they now

54:42

have much more inventory to go out

54:44

and sell . They can now advertise

54:47

across Apple podcasts , across

54:49

, you know , castro , across all of the

54:51

other podcast apps that are available

54:53

and all of that . So that's all good , but

54:56

they still have a little

54:59

bit of secret source which is still exclusive

55:01

to their own platform in terms of the

55:03

video for call her daddy and

55:06

in terms of smart

55:08

list for early

55:10

access to shows and things . So

55:12

I guess that there's a little bit of that going on . But

55:15

I mean , very obviously , call her daddy

55:17

is no longer exclusives and

55:19

is all to do with . Yes , we've got

55:22

a bit of video on there , but it's all to do

55:24

with selling ads across all

55:26

of podcasting , which is probably good news

55:28

for podcasting at the end of the day . You

55:31

know , it's an open medium and Spotify

55:33

appears to be embracing

55:36

that now .

55:37

Well , I'm just looking at call her daddy

55:39

on true fans . And if you're telling

55:41

me that video doesn't come across , then

55:45

the latest episode says

55:47

sorry , he didn't pick you . Video

55:49

, dick appointment

55:52

disasters video Everyone's lying . I

55:54

won't read the next sentence . Video

55:57

, internet

55:59

trolls , kidnapping and nudes video . It's

56:01

all video practically . Yeah , yeah , oh

56:05

, one episode that doesn't have video so I can listen

56:07

to the audio , but everything's video . Oh , that's interesting .

56:11

So basically , it is basically

56:13

sitting there promoting itself as

56:15

video , even though actually

56:17

all you will hear is the audio version . Yes

56:20

, I can see that in the in the RSS feed , so

56:23

there are lots of things which are marked

56:25

as video . But yes , you're

56:27

right , you know you'll only get the audio

56:30

version , so doubtless you

56:32

will hear them very much promoting

56:34

the fact that you can watch the video of this . Yeah

56:37

, on

56:40

on on Spotify . Maybe

56:42

it's a clever piece of marketing , I don't

56:44

know .

56:45

Now , beyond the

56:48

Spotify getting its exclusives

56:50

out and about , it seems suddenly that some production

56:52

companies are going away . James

56:54

Broccoli is off the menu at Sony who's

56:57

broccoli productions ? So broccoli productions

56:59

they . They had six members of staff .

57:05

They ended up it's called broccoli because

57:07

it was stuff that was good for you to listen to , was

57:11

the , was the was the

57:13

basic thing . So

57:17

they may not have been making any very

57:19

large hits , but the stuff that you heard

57:21

was good for you to listen to . It

57:25

was a joint venture partnership with Sony Music

57:27

Entertainment , announced in October

57:29

2019 , and apparently Sony have ended that early . So

57:34

they say Sony has closed an earlier JV with

57:36

three uncanny four as

57:39

well , and they've made a number of redundancies

57:42

, so one would assume that it's cost

57:44

cutting from Sony's point of view . I

57:46

was talking to a large podcast producer

57:49

, though , who was saying it's very sad

57:51

to hear about broccoli productions , but they never made

57:53

any hits , did they ? And perhaps

57:55

, at the end of the day , the

57:58

the world of podcasting

58:00

can't just be there for

58:02

, you know , enjoyable side

58:05

projects that are good for you to

58:07

listen to . They also have to deliver

58:10

the numbers as well , and I can kind

58:12

of see a little bit of that . You know as

58:15

well too . Six

58:17

all female members of staff René Richardson

58:19

, very much around equality for

58:22

audio and and

58:24

all of that , and , in fact , was

58:27

the founder of the equality

58:29

and audio project , I think so

58:32

. You know it's sad seeing them

58:34

go . Also sad seeing

58:37

news from Odyssey in the

58:39

US . Unsurprisingly

58:41

, probably , for a company that has filed

58:44

for bankruptcy protection , they

58:46

have just announced that they are going

58:48

to be cutting about 12

58:50

roles at Pineapple Street Studios

58:53

, which is about 25%

58:55

of their staff . They previously

58:57

laid off 14 staff in Cadence

59:00

13 . So they're very

59:02

clearly looking at cost cutting throughout

59:04

all of their services . I actually

59:06

did cover Cadence 13 a while

59:08

back and said what's

59:10

going on with Cadence 13 , because the actual

59:12

brand simply wasn't being used anymore

59:15

. So you know

59:17

, literally everything that

59:19

was coming out of the Cadence 13 studio

59:21

just had an Odyssey logo on

59:23

there . So I wonder whether

59:25

that's happening at Pineapple Street as well . But

59:28

yeah , there's quite a lot of

59:31

movement there , which is , you

59:33

know , a shame to see and you

59:35

have to ask the question , I think

59:38

, is the 20%

59:40

down of

59:42

podcast downloads numbers

59:44

that we're seeing from the slightly

59:46

rejigged Apple Podcasts app . Is

59:49

that actually having this sort of effect

59:51

on larger podcast companies

59:53

? Again , I was talking to a large American

59:56

based podcast

59:58

publisher

1:00:00

last week who was saying very much

1:00:02

that you know there is a bit of

1:00:04

panic at the moment actually , as

1:00:07

it's really set in that

1:00:09

their numbers are 20% down

1:00:11

than where they thought that they were , and there's

1:00:14

an awful lot of make goods being made and

1:00:16

it's not good times . I don't think for

1:00:18

some of that .

1:00:20

Yeah , I think we talked about that . I think , out

1:00:23

of all these redundancies , I think there will be a silver

1:00:25

lining . I think you will see some smart

1:00:27

people starting their own things and

1:00:30

I think we will see , you know , Phoenix-like

1:00:33

new companies appearing . But you

1:00:35

know , let's wait and see .

1:00:37

We have a friendly listener called Larry who

1:00:39

told me that the word redundancies

1:00:42

is something that Americans simply

1:00:44

do not understand . So from

1:00:46

now on they are layoffs , as

1:00:48

I've been writing . So

1:00:50

yeah , apparently there is no such thing as a redundancy

1:00:52

.

1:00:53

Yes , there is , it's English .

1:00:54

Who knew ? Yeah , I know it's

1:00:56

proper English . Exactly

1:00:58

, there we are . Anyway , there is some

1:01:00

good news there , isn't there ?

1:01:02

Yes , Castro , who we said

1:01:04

was basically on its last legs , wasn't

1:01:06

answering support calls and probably was about

1:01:08

to die . Looks like it's been bought

1:01:10

. James . Who buy me ?

1:01:11

Yes a company called Bluck Apps

1:01:13

Bluck Dustin

1:01:15

Bluck who owns it . It's an independent

1:01:18

app studio and consulting agency based in

1:01:20

Brooklyn in New York . Now they already

1:01:22

own a podcast app . That podcast app

1:01:24

is called Aurelion , which I'd never heard

1:01:26

of . It's an Android podcast app , so I went to have a

1:01:28

play with it and it's quite

1:01:30

good . It's a quite a good replacement for Google

1:01:33

podcasts if you wanted one of those . Anyway

1:01:36

, aurelion will be moved under the Castro

1:01:38

umbrella . I would hope

1:01:40

that what Dustin does with

1:01:42

Aurelion is basically

1:01:44

not just brand it Castro but

1:01:46

add Castro's quite

1:01:50

nice sort of inbox view To

1:01:53

it as well . But yes , it's very

1:01:55

good . They haven't said how much they

1:01:57

bought Castro for or

1:02:00

any of that , but it

1:02:02

does say that Bluck Apps

1:02:04

is very committed to the open podcasting ecosystem

1:02:07

. They're very delighted to take

1:02:09

over such a well designed independent app

1:02:11

and I think that's good news . As of today

1:02:13

, the Castro logo is

1:02:15

now reappearing in pod

1:02:18

news podcast pages , because at

1:02:20

least we can see that there's a future for that particular

1:02:22

app . So yeah , I think that's very good news .

1:02:24

Yes , well done , dustin . Now

1:02:26

one other app , though , that isn't doing

1:02:29

so well is Radio Public Change . It's announced it's

1:02:31

closing .

1:02:32

Yes , so Radio Public is

1:02:34

going to close at the end of March . It's an app , but

1:02:36

it's also a website . It was offering

1:02:38

podcast websites . I mean , still is offering

1:02:41

podcast websites , I guess , but

1:02:44

more full you if you were using them , because

1:02:46

there won't be a podcast website for your

1:02:48

podcast by the end of March . It

1:02:50

actually launched in 2016 as a public benefit

1:02:53

corporation . They asked

1:02:55

podcasters in 2018 to support

1:02:57

an investment round . I invested

1:03:00

$100 into Radio

1:03:02

Public . I know big spender , wow

1:03:05

. I mean , I as well have taken that $100

1:03:07

to the pub , because that would have been more use

1:03:09

than investing it in

1:03:11

Radio Public . Radio Public

1:03:13

was bought by ACAST in February 2021

1:03:16

. And

1:03:18

yeah , and since then , what

1:03:20

ACAST have basically been doing is a

1:03:22

lying about the fact that it was still a public

1:03:24

benefit corporation . It wasn't . They

1:03:27

deleted the privacy policy off their

1:03:29

website . They didn't

1:03:31

tell Radio Public

1:03:33

users that it had been purchased , which

1:03:37

is against the privacy

1:03:39

policy that did exist . They

1:03:42

then went through the entire Radio Public

1:03:44

user list and sent all of those

1:03:46

spam telling them to move their

1:03:48

podcasts over to ACAST . Some

1:03:51

of those emails were illegal because

1:03:54

they didn't actually have the proper address on

1:03:57

there , and

1:03:59

yeah , and you know , and so on

1:04:01

and so forth . They never bothered doing anything

1:04:03

with the apps . They've now got

1:04:06

rid of the app from the Apple

1:04:08

Store already . They're going to be getting rid

1:04:10

of the app from the Android Store . It

1:04:12

is a absolute

1:04:15

poster child

1:04:17

of being taken over because

1:04:19

you just want to hire the people and

1:04:21

you don't care about the product . I

1:04:24

think it's just such a shame . Radio Public

1:04:27

was a pretty good thing and

1:04:29

they haven't even open sourced the code

1:04:31

and any of that . They're just going to press

1:04:34

the big delete button on the whole

1:04:36

thing . It's a real shame in

1:04:38

my book . But still , there you go .

1:04:40

Yeah , I did actually make one of my predictions

1:04:42

that ACAST would buy a podcast in 2.0

1:04:45

app and then go vertical in

1:04:47

a stack .

1:04:49

Maybe I'll have to review that one .

1:04:54

Now , moving on talking of ACAST

1:04:57

, they're going to be blocking YouTube

1:04:59

, James , why ?

1:05:01

This is . This is really interesting and

1:05:03

I am surprised that

1:05:05

more podcast hosting companies

1:05:07

haven't done that . If you try

1:05:10

and ingest your ACAST

1:05:12

hosted podcast into YouTube

1:05:14

using the standard YouTube RSS

1:05:17

tool , then YouTube complains

1:05:19

that it can't download any of the audio

1:05:21

. Why is that ? Because ACAST is blocking

1:05:24

them . Acast is sending

1:05:26

a slightly disingenuous

1:05:28

email to

1:05:30

their publishers who ask

1:05:33

and say here are some of the

1:05:35

reasons why YouTube is unable to

1:05:37

ingest your episodes . It's not

1:05:39

YouTube unable , acast has

1:05:41

blocked them . Let's be really clear

1:05:43

. But they are pointing out that YouTube

1:05:47

requires all submitted podcasts to be ad

1:05:49

free and they won't be . Creators

1:05:51

can't make any money from listeners on

1:05:53

YouTube and

1:05:56

they're also concerned that YouTube

1:05:58

will divert listeners away from podcast

1:06:00

platforms , and I think that that's a valid concern

1:06:03

. They also say that ACAST has exclusive

1:06:06

monetization rights to podcasts hosted

1:06:08

with them , which is the case in pretty well

1:06:10

all podcast apps

1:06:13

that exist , funded

1:06:15

by advertising

1:06:17

. I actually think that this is a

1:06:20

pretty sensible move from

1:06:22

ACAST's point of view . I totally

1:06:24

understand why they're doing it . I'm not sure it's

1:06:26

a particularly

1:06:29

creative , friendly thing to be doing

1:06:31

, but I do totally understand why they're doing

1:06:33

it and I am very surprised that

1:06:36

more podcast apps haven't

1:06:38

actually done that . But if you do want to

1:06:40

listen to ACAST hosted podcasts on the YouTube

1:06:43

Music app , then you can just

1:06:45

go to RSS , that's

1:06:49

RSS to ITMnet , and

1:06:51

you can find any

1:06:54

ACAST show and listen to it

1:06:56

through good old fashioned open

1:06:58

RSS and your ACAST podcaster

1:07:00

will still get the money .

1:07:03

When I first read this I was like , oh OK

1:07:05

, why would they do that ? And basically

1:07:08

I think I agree with ACAST . I

1:07:11

mean , youtube's trying to take ACAST's

1:07:13

business and kill it

1:07:15

, so why would you want to support it ? I

1:07:18

think we've said this for a long time , haven't we ?

1:07:20

Yeah , I mean , I stood on stage last year and

1:07:22

said if YouTube becomes a

1:07:25

market leader or even a number two

1:07:27

in the industry , our industry is

1:07:30

basically screwed . So

1:07:32

many people go out of business if that's

1:07:34

the case . And so

1:07:37

you know , I mean , I look at it and I think you

1:07:39

know it's

1:07:41

a slightly mendacious thing for ACAST to be doing

1:07:43

. But I also totally understand

1:07:46

why they're doing it that way . And if you don't want to

1:07:48

play in an ad funded

1:07:50

model which ACAST

1:07:52

is , then take your podcast

1:07:54

, move it to Buzzsprout or other podcast

1:07:57

hosts , because that would

1:07:59

be the correct way to do things and

1:08:01

then you have complete control over what

1:08:03

your podcast does . But being

1:08:05

with ACAST means that , yeah , absolutely

1:08:07

right . If it's a large company

1:08:10

like YouTube which is essentially

1:08:12

, if it succeeds , going to put ACAST out

1:08:14

of business , you can well see why ACAST

1:08:17

would turn around and say we're not going to help

1:08:19

that .

1:08:20

I wonder which other podcasting

1:08:23

hosts is going to block a YouTube

1:08:25

next ?

1:08:25

time . Well , yeah , exactly , I mean

1:08:28

would . Could you see Blueberry

1:08:30

doing that with their advertising ? I

1:08:32

mean Red Circle , you know Red Circle is the obvious

1:08:34

one from my point of view , because

1:08:38

that's Red Circle's you know business

1:08:40

model as well . I mean , and

1:08:42

arguably you could go so far as

1:08:44

to say that Megaphone and the other

1:08:46

you know very large hosting

1:08:48

companies Megaphone , audio Boom and

1:08:50

those sorts of people would block that

1:08:53

as well , and I think that'd be absolutely

1:08:55

perfectly , you

1:08:57

know , perfectly right to do that .

1:09:00

Is this a bit of the horses closing

1:09:02

the stable after the horses bolted James

1:09:04

? I mean , why do it now ?

1:09:07

Well , I mean , there's a little bit of that , but

1:09:10

YouTube music is still or indeed

1:09:12

YouTube as a whole still has very few

1:09:14

popular podcasts on there . So

1:09:17

, yeah , so I think that the timing

1:09:19

is probably about right there . I

1:09:21

mean , let's not forget that YouTube only

1:09:23

officially launched their RSS ingest

1:09:26

a couple of weeks ago , and it seems that

1:09:28

this came on a couple of weeks

1:09:30

ago . Interestingly , acast

1:09:32

used to have a direct

1:09:34

system which would

1:09:37

export your show onto YouTube

1:09:39

, so they did actually have a system

1:09:41

that would do all of this , and they have turned

1:09:43

that off and they've walked away from it

1:09:46

, primarily

1:09:48

because yeah , you know , as

1:09:50

they say , they can't make any money out of it . So

1:09:52

how does it benefit anyone really at

1:09:54

the end ?

1:09:54

of the day . Well , let's have a little whiz around the world

1:09:57

. James Acast has

1:09:59

entered into a strategic partnership

1:10:01

with a European digital advertising

1:10:03

platform Azerion . Who

1:10:05

are they ?

1:10:06

Yes , they are a well

1:10:08

, they're an ad platform where you buy

1:10:10

you know podcast ads from

1:10:12

and various other things . I think this

1:10:15

is quite a neat plan from Acast . Spain

1:10:18

, belgium , the Netherlands , italy and Greece is

1:10:20

where Azerion will be helping them , where

1:10:23

basically Acast isn't

1:10:26

really there . They're in

1:10:28

either very early stages or they don't

1:10:31

have a physical presence at all , and so

1:10:33

actually it makes sense for them to have sales

1:10:35

partner in those areas . So I think that that

1:10:37

makes sense . In

1:10:39

Canada , the CBC

1:10:41

has launched seven new local podcasts

1:10:44

from CBC News . Quite a clever strategy

1:10:46

in that some of them are daily

1:10:48

and they cover a big story

1:10:50

from you know Toronto or from

1:10:54

you know other places like that . Vancouver

1:10:57

Island , I think , is another one . But

1:10:59

what they have also done is they

1:11:01

have weekly podcasts for some of the

1:11:03

you know less newsworthy parts

1:11:06

of Canada as well , which I think one of

1:11:08

them is called Good Question , saskatchewan

1:11:10

, and another one is called

1:11:12

Good Question , prince

1:11:14

Edward Island and

1:11:17

all that kind of stuff . I think it's quite , it's

1:11:20

quite neat strategy , so worthwhile keeping

1:11:22

an eye on that . It's part of CBC's

1:11:24

plans to get a little bit more local

1:11:27

. What else is going on ESPN

1:11:29

, the latest television station to

1:11:31

put podcasts on the small screen . Every

1:11:34

single day , from two o'clock

1:11:36

Eastern time , you'll be able to watch

1:11:38

a video podcast on the TV

1:11:40

and something that , annoyingly , television

1:11:42

companies are calling visualised podcasts

1:11:44

, and I wish they would stop , because they're just TV shows

1:11:46

. And finally , triton Digital

1:11:49

has released a US podcast report 2023

1:11:53

, which is a fascinating podcast

1:11:55

report . Good news in that

1:11:57

we will have Darrell Batalya

1:11:59

from Triton Digital on

1:12:01

this very podcast next week to

1:12:04

talk about that .

1:12:05

Wow , now events

1:12:07

, events , events . James , what's going on ?

1:12:09

Events , lots of events going on . There's

1:12:12

a future of media exhibition in Saudi Arabia

1:12:14

, in Riyadh , which is going on in the middle

1:12:16

of next month . You're

1:12:18

not going , I'm not going , but our

1:12:21

friends at the International Radio Festival

1:12:24

are so interesting to watch

1:12:26

that there is also South

1:12:28

by Southwest and there's bits and bobs of

1:12:30

podcasting going on there

1:12:33

, but the big one , of course , is podcast

1:12:35

movement evolutions

1:12:37

between the 26th and the 29th

1:12:40

of March . It includes

1:12:42

a thing called PodFronts , which is a

1:12:44

upfront style event where publishers

1:12:47

will come together with brands , agencies and buyers

1:12:49

. That's not open to the likes of you and me , it's just

1:12:51

open to publishers and brands , but

1:12:54

it's exactly what podcast movement should be doing

1:12:56

. So I think that's a very good thing , and

1:13:00

I'm also speaking at Evolutions

1:13:02

by Podcast Movement as well Amy Poehler

1:13:04

, speaking just after me

1:13:07

, and I will be going through

1:13:09

this year's PodNews report card , which hopefully

1:13:12

today , friday , I will have launched

1:13:15

, suddenly realised that I haven't actually done the tech

1:13:17

for it yet , so hopefully I will

1:13:19

be launching it today

1:13:22

, friday , but we

1:13:24

will talk doubtless more about that

1:13:26

next week as well .

1:13:29

Doesn't the American Podcast Awards go

1:13:32

alongside this event as well ?

1:13:34

Oh , now , that's an interesting thing

1:13:36

the Ambiz

1:13:38

. Two years ago in

1:13:40

Los Angeles , they held them in a very

1:13:42

smart theatre , if you remember , down

1:13:45

the road , because we were both there down

1:13:47

the road from the JW Marriott

1:13:50

Hotel . This

1:13:53

year they will be held on March the 26th

1:13:55

at the JW Marriott , so

1:13:57

they're not hiring a theatre , it's

1:14:00

just purely going to be in a conference room

1:14:02

with a headache inducing

1:14:04

carpet . But

1:14:07

yeah , so that's where the 2024 Ambiz

1:14:09

are going to be , or as you call them , the American

1:14:11

Podcast Awards , which I think is very rude

1:14:13

. But yes , so it

1:14:15

does appear that they're just doing them in the

1:14:18

hotel this year . There you go . You've

1:14:20

heard it here first .

1:14:23

Well , I will call it the Ambiz when

1:14:25

an international winner is actually announced

1:14:27

.

1:14:27

But other than that . I mean , I think they had

1:14:29

some Canadians Nice .

1:14:30

Americans no , that doesn't count

1:14:33

.

1:14:34

Now there's one other event the New

1:14:36

.

1:14:36

Zealand Podcasting Summit 2024

1:14:39

in Auckland on May the 11th

1:14:41

. Again , you're going to be there , James .

1:14:44

I'm not . I was there last year . I'm not going to be there this year , but

1:14:46

yes , if you want to see

1:14:48

a bunch of podcasters from across Outer

1:14:51

Roa , then you can . All kinds

1:14:53

of people will be there . It's definitely

1:14:56

something that I would recommend . It's a

1:14:58

small event but well worth going to . So

1:15:00

you can get tickets by following the

1:15:02

links from podnewsnet

1:15:04

. And there are more events , both paid for and free

1:15:06

, at podnews Virtual events or events in a place

1:15:09

with people . It reminds me that Apple

1:15:11

Podcast is running a bunch of virtual events as

1:15:13

well , including ones in the correct

1:15:15

time zone for the UK and Australia

1:15:17

, but also ones in France and

1:15:20

in Germany and in

1:15:22

Mexico . So you'll find all

1:15:24

of those , too at podnews

1:15:26

, and if you're organising something , tell the world

1:15:28

about it . It's free to be listed . Podnewsnet

1:15:31

slash events . The

1:15:33

tech stuff on the Pad

1:15:35

News Weekly Review . Yes

1:15:38

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

1:15:40

the podnews newsletter . And here's where Sam

1:15:42

talks technology .

1:15:45

This is actually going to be the shortest tech

1:15:48

section we've ever done . Right , James

1:15:50

? It's excellent . You're

1:15:52

a happy boy . There's just two

1:15:54

stories to cover here . Last

1:15:56

week , on the podcasting to the O

1:15:59

show with Adam and Dave , they started talking

1:16:01

about using hashtags to

1:16:04

help basically discover podcasts

1:16:06

and to categorise them . It

1:16:09

was an interesting conversation . I'm not quite

1:16:11

sure where it's going . There is a

1:16:14

GitHub proposal so

1:16:16

you can go and have a look at it Again

1:16:19

, not because of any other

1:16:21

reason , but in Truefans we already do support

1:16:24

hashtags and we do support music

1:16:26

categories and we do support the

1:16:28

person tag with roles , and they're all indexed

1:16:31

and searchable through our search engine . So

1:16:33

I'm going to have a look at this proposal and see what's been

1:16:36

done differently , I think .

1:16:39

Well , I will tell you a lot about the

1:16:42

proposal , because I wrote the original

1:16:44

idea .

1:16:46

Hey , excellent , there we go .

1:16:48

Tell me more . I

1:16:50

mean essentially although I don't

1:16:53

think I quite wrote it in the proposal

1:16:55

but see what Flickr did with

1:16:57

hashtags way

1:17:00

back 15 years ago . So

1:17:03

you could just like basically make up a hashtag

1:17:05

. If

1:17:07

you made up a hashtag with , I don't know

1:17:09

, this is a photograph of sausages , so I'll put hashtag

1:17:12

sausages . Then you can click

1:17:14

on that hashtag and see lots of other photographs

1:17:16

of sausages Exactly

1:17:18

that , but for podcasting . So

1:17:21

we're not setting a

1:17:23

big category list down . We're

1:17:25

not doing any of that nonsense . We

1:17:27

are allowing people to

1:17:29

just make up categories

1:17:32

and keywords

1:17:34

for their shows and

1:17:36

that is all absolutely fine . The

1:17:39

Apple categories will continue , obviously

1:17:41

. So therefore , there is already a category

1:17:44

listing

1:17:46

, but this essentially means that if you really want to

1:17:48

and you are doing a

1:17:50

podcast for underwater knitting

1:17:53

, then you can actually just put you know

1:17:55

, hashtag underwater knitting , and

1:17:57

people can then find you and other

1:17:59

podcasts which are all about underwater knitting . So

1:18:03

that's basically how that works . Works particularly

1:18:05

well , I think , with Activity Pub because

1:18:07

you can follow hashtags . Unlike

1:18:09

Twitter , you can follow hashtags as if you

1:18:11

are following a person

1:18:14

. So that makes it really easy to find

1:18:16

new shows that you would be interested in . So

1:18:20

, yeah , I'm quite excited by it . So

1:18:22

even Alex Gates has said

1:18:24

that it's a good idea . So

1:18:27

, or rather he said I'm not opposed

1:18:29

to it , which I think is

1:18:31

high praise indeed .

1:18:33

Yes , yes

1:18:36

, that's what it is . So , yes , we

1:18:38

actually support most of what you've just

1:18:40

described them . But again , I'll

1:18:43

have a look at your proposal before I say

1:18:45

yes , we follow it completely , but

1:18:47

we do allow you to self tag both

1:18:50

as a person and as a podcast

1:18:52

, and it's all searchable . So , yeah

1:18:54

, we'll see how that works . You

1:18:56

talked about Apple's VTT

1:18:58

not being compliant fully yet

1:19:01

, but they've updated their documentation

1:19:03

, james .

1:19:03

Yes , they have . So they had a slightly weird

1:19:05

bits

1:19:08

of documentation around

1:19:11

transcript tags . They

1:19:13

have clarified which mine types

1:19:15

to use . So if you care

1:19:18

about such things , then

1:19:20

they support the correct mine type for VTT

1:19:23

files , which is text slash VTT

1:19:25

, and they also support the correct mine

1:19:27

type now for SRT

1:19:30

files , as well as the wrong one . The

1:19:32

right one is application slash X , dash

1:19:34

, sub rip and the

1:19:36

wrong one is application slash SRT

1:19:39

, and Apple is supporting both of those

1:19:41

. So that's all good . As

1:19:44

I say , it's , it's beta . This

1:19:47

is where things go to get broken and to get

1:19:49

fixed , so I think

1:19:51

it's great to see Apple moving very , very quickly

1:19:53

on that sort of thing , as well

1:19:55

, boostagram corner , corner , corner

1:19:58

on the pod news weekly review

1:20:00

. Oh , yes , it's our favorite

1:20:02

time of the week . It's boostagram corner

1:20:04

, with a ton of boosts actually , which is

1:20:06

really good and a special thing

1:20:09

from our friends at Buzzsprout . But

1:20:11

firstly , thank you , andrew grume , or grummit

1:20:13

, I'm

1:20:16

not quite sure how to pronounce , I'm going to say groom . May Andrew

1:20:19

grume , 1000

1:20:21

sat's appreciated your response

1:20:23

to the podcast 2.0 criticism . Yes

1:20:26

, well , thank you . Thank you . Yes

1:20:29

, that's all I'll say . Downloads . It'll get me into even

1:20:31

more trouble , but I think I've

1:20:33

been trouble enough , okay moving

1:20:36

on .

1:20:36

Then we got one , two , three , four

1:20:38

sats from a Kyron and mermortals

1:20:41

and people say podcasting to the O

1:20:43

isn't gaining adoption . It's already made

1:20:45

its way into the top tiers of English football

1:20:48

. I'm trying to think why , yeah

1:20:50

what day ?

1:20:50

Yes , because because of your Liverpool

1:20:53

, you know sats

1:20:55

.

1:20:55

Yes , yes , Anyway yeah , what

1:20:57

days are you coming down here , sam ? Yeah , well

1:20:59

, as I said , when you're listening to this

1:21:01

, I'm on my way down and flying down to Singapore

1:21:04

, then down to Australia and

1:21:06

I'm just waiting to find out . When James isn't

1:21:08

out , you know . So I don't want to ring the doorbell

1:21:10

and then find he's gone off to Walla

1:21:13

Maloo or somewhere . Crazy on

1:21:15

him , he's gone on an outback walk

1:21:17

.

1:21:17

I wouldn't be going to Walla Maloo . That's in Sydney

1:21:19

, oh , okay , wherever ?

1:21:22

It is rock to go .

1:21:23

That's in New South Wales as well . I'm not going down

1:21:25

there , but yes

1:21:27

, as Kyren says , we have

1:21:30

now got all of the rain out of the way . We have

1:21:32

had quite severe flooding in South East

1:21:34

Queensland , but the good news is

1:21:36

, none of that , it's all . It's

1:21:38

all burning away . So , yes , you'll

1:21:40

get the blazing sun . Instead

1:21:42

, we will chat . My plan

1:21:45

is , I think , when you're up

1:21:47

, because you're up for a night or something . So

1:21:49

I think my plan is that we will find

1:21:51

somewhere to have beers and

1:21:53

we will invite Kyren and you

1:21:55

know , and Satan's lawyer and a few other people

1:21:58

, and I think that that will be a good thing

1:22:00

to do .

1:22:01

Well , James , I was thinking that haven't you just

1:22:03

reported that there's a brand new

1:22:06

podcast ? Usually that's opened in and Brisfagus

1:22:08

.

1:22:09

I have . Yes , it's called the Pod . It's

1:22:11

open in West End in Brisbane and it

1:22:14

looks very , very fancy . So

1:22:17

, yes , I see what you're doing

1:22:19

there . We could actually host one

1:22:21

of the shows from there . Yes

1:22:24

, I mean , it's

1:22:26

$400 an hour .

1:22:29

No , look , james , use that , use that

1:22:32

power of persuasion that you

1:22:34

have . Yeah , tell him it's an

1:22:36

advertising sponsor opportunity

1:22:39

.

1:22:39

Yeah , we will see how that works , but

1:22:41

, yes , that would be a good thing . Well , we

1:22:43

should . We should talk offline about

1:22:46

, yes , what , when , when you're coming

1:22:48

up and whether or not you want to record a show , which I suppose

1:22:50

we ought to , and all of that . That would be

1:22:52

a good thing . You're away next week . I

1:22:54

still need to find a co-host site . I

1:22:56

suppose I better go and find one . 25,000

1:22:59

sats from Dave Jones Excellent show . Gentlemen

1:23:01

, thanks for showing up every week and putting in the hard

1:23:03

work . Sam , you're going to Australia . Question mark . We

1:23:06

just answered that .

1:23:07

Well , yeah , Thanks Dave for saying showing

1:23:09

up every week , and then I'm not showing up every week .

1:23:11

Yes , exactly

1:23:13

Exactly , gene

1:23:15

Bean 2,222 sats

1:23:18

a row of ducks , and

1:23:20

there appears to be icons now

1:23:23

for rows of ducks , which

1:23:25

is going on in Helipad . Who knows

1:23:27

what's doing there . Anyway , I'm interested to hear

1:23:29

your thoughts on the Scarlett 2i2

1:23:31

. As I'm a long term user

1:23:33

of one , I can give you my thoughts

1:23:36

on the Scarlett 2i2 . It's

1:23:38

quite nice and the big

1:23:40

difference is I listen to all of my music from

1:23:42

the computer . And the big difference is

1:23:44

I discover that if you put your

1:23:47

audio through an LG monitor

1:23:49

and then take it out of the LG monitors

1:23:51

headphone jack , it

1:23:53

doesn't sound quite as good as coming through a

1:23:55

premium piece of audio equipment . Who would

1:23:57

have thought so

1:24:00

? Yes , I'm enjoying playing my music at

1:24:02

high volume and doing

1:24:04

that . So thank you , gene Bean , for your row

1:24:07

of ducks . I appreciate it .

1:24:08

We've got another row of ducks 2,222,

1:24:12

. Sending a row of ducks from the lovely staff at

1:24:14

the Weach Heave in Crick .

1:24:17

Yes , this was the one that had

1:24:19

a dreadful photograph on Google

1:24:22

Maps and I and

1:24:24

I rather rashly said it's Si

1:24:27

Joblin's local and I

1:24:29

rather rashly said the week shift looks

1:24:31

rubbish , but it turns out it's

1:24:33

lovely . So there we are , so

1:24:35

hello to you .

1:24:37

Yeah , they sent sent us a voucher for two . I'm

1:24:40

loving that Going over the launch

1:24:42

.

1:24:42

Yes , I'm not sure that they have , have they

1:24:44

? No , but

1:24:47

no , I'm now , of course

1:24:49

, trying to find out , trying

1:24:52

to find out what beers that they

1:24:54

actually sell , just to see , if you know , if

1:24:56

I can dane to go in . Oh

1:24:59

, they do their own . They've got their own

1:25:01

, brewed

1:25:03

by Banksy's brewery . They've got their own

1:25:06

beer . It's called Sunshine Golden

1:25:08

Ale , and it looks , it looks

1:25:10

lovely and the outside

1:25:12

of the place looks lovely and we can stay there

1:25:15

. It's got a B&B , hooray

1:25:17

, yes , and it's got

1:25:19

a restaurant and

1:25:21

all of that . So , yes

1:25:23

, it looks , it looks fantastic , the more now

1:25:25

I've actually looked at the proper website rather

1:25:28

than , rather than the

1:25:30

bad photograph on Google Maps . It

1:25:32

looks really nice .

1:25:34

Excellent , there you go , mrs Cridland , and night

1:25:36

out for the bear of you .

1:25:37

Yes , I mean , it's a long way to go and we've

1:25:40

already we've already done our flight to the UK

1:25:42

. We're not going to do another one of those again as a family

1:25:44

. But still another

1:25:46

of ducks , sam .

1:25:48

Yes to to to from

1:25:50

Jean Bean . Sam's ramp was entertaining

1:25:52

as I listened to this after the podcasting

1:25:55

two to oh show where Adam responded . I

1:25:58

like the activity streams , ideas . Sam , keep

1:26:00

at it . Great overall show , as always

1:26:02

. Yes , I is the way forward . I believe

1:26:04

Adam and Dave keeps

1:26:06

threatening to have me on the show to explain

1:26:08

it , but they'd never , ever send out the invite

1:26:10

. So yeah , one day one day

1:26:13

.

1:26:13

I was going to go on just before Christmas , and

1:26:15

because I wasn't

1:26:18

available at the exact time , they

1:26:20

went for somebody else and I've not been

1:26:22

invited since . No

1:26:24

, that's it .

1:26:25

You're on the naughty step as well .

1:26:26

Also , jean Bean , I do note

1:26:29

great overall show

1:26:31

, as always . So you know I mean

1:26:33

it's great overall . There are some bits that aren't

1:26:35

, but you know I mean

1:26:37

it's great overall , but that's

1:26:39

okay . Yes , so I do note that

1:26:41

. And we also got an email from Kevin Finn

1:26:43

from Buzzsprout . Buzzsprout are our

1:26:45

sponsor . What have I done wrong now ? Well

1:26:48

, you know , you've been singing all of these jingles and I've

1:26:50

been mixing them together with the , with the TV

1:26:52

jingles from 1980s of , you know , yes

1:26:55

, doing the shake and vac and all

1:26:57

of that kind of stuff and whatever it was last week I

1:26:59

can't even remember now Milky Bar

1:27:01

kid oh , yes , the Milky Bar kid . And

1:27:04

I use the really old version of the Milky

1:27:06

Bar kid where they used to say nestles , because

1:27:09

people in the UK were too uncultured

1:27:12

to work out that it was actually pronounced nestle . Anyway

1:27:16

, he says he

1:27:18

just emailed five words

1:27:20

your audio jingles inspired

1:27:23

us and then sent this . Now

1:27:35

I'm hoping that you're going to learn

1:27:37

how that goes so that you'll sing

1:27:40

along to it next time .

1:27:50

It does sounds . If they spent some money on

1:27:52

that . I think we're going to have to do that live in LA

1:27:55

on the live show sponsored

1:27:58

by ZZSPORT .

1:28:01

I know it sounds really weird , zz . Yes

1:28:04

, I have to say our music

1:28:06

is made by a company called Studio

1:28:10

Dragonfly and that company is

1:28:12

a is owned by TM

1:28:14

Studio , which is a massive , great big jingle

1:28:16

company based in the US . You'll have heard all

1:28:19

of their stuff because they make all of the big jingles for

1:28:21

all of the big radio stations in the US . That's

1:28:25

where our music is made by

1:28:27

. They must be listening to that

1:28:29

. Chris , who owns the company

1:28:31

, or one of the owners , must be listening to that , shaking

1:28:34

his head going where

1:28:36

did that get made ? Anyway

1:28:40

, kevin , thank you so much . I'm

1:28:43

terrified now that Sam has said that we will

1:28:45

be singing that , but that

1:28:47

sounds fun to get that on stage .

1:28:49

I've got it . We'll get Albin to be

1:28:51

our guest on the live show and

1:28:53

Olbo can sing it . Yes , excellent

1:28:56

.

1:28:56

Yeah , good luck with that . Oh

1:28:59

, my word . So , apart from packing

1:29:01

and getting ready for your big long

1:29:03

haul flight to Australia

1:29:07

via Singapore , what else has been happening

1:29:09

for you , sam ?

1:29:11

Well , last week I was having

1:29:13

a look at why True Founds wasn't

1:29:15

listed in the OP3 list of apps

1:29:18

, and then it turns out because we're

1:29:20

a PWA , we were listed in the web

1:29:22

section . So the very nice

1:29:24

man that is John Spurlock kindly

1:29:27

added us to True Founds to

1:29:29

the OP3 app section . So , although

1:29:32

we don't really register much yet , thank

1:29:35

you , john for doing that .

1:29:35

So I'm sorry he put on , mastered On

1:29:38

. Recently he put a very

1:29:40

excited post of how

1:29:42

much Google shares were now worth , and

1:29:46

so I said time for a new yacht .

1:29:51

Yes , he papers the walls

1:29:53

with the spare shares that he doesn't need . That's

1:29:55

what he does .

1:29:57

I'm sure he does . You were our friends at City

1:29:59

University of London .

1:30:00

Yeah , I got asked by Sandy and

1:30:02

Brett to come along and give a presentation

1:30:05

on the future of podcasting , which was fun

1:30:07

to do . I hadn't done that in a while . I

1:30:10

did keep most of the people with me

1:30:12

until about probably 90% when

1:30:14

, I think , I started talking about various

1:30:16

things you could do with sats . I think I lost everyone at

1:30:18

that point , but it's OK , we

1:30:21

got through it . But , yeah , it was good

1:30:23

fun doing that , so that was great yeah

1:30:25

yes , I'm

1:30:27

looking forward to speaking at City University

1:30:30

in London in March .

1:30:32

We're just busy sorting out times

1:30:34

and dates for that , but that should be good

1:30:37

fun too .

1:30:39

And then again coming down to CU

1:30:41

. So we'll organise a time , yes , and

1:30:43

maybe do a show as well . Yes , that will

1:30:45

be good . So what's happened for

1:30:47

you , james ?

1:30:47

Well , two things have happened for me . We

1:30:50

hit 30,000 subscribers last

1:30:52

week and I was slightly concerned because

1:30:55

what normally happens over the weekend is we get some

1:30:57

unsubscribes , and so

1:30:59

I was slightly concerned about mentioning it last week

1:31:01

just in case we dipped below 30,000

1:31:04

again . But we didn't , so that's good

1:31:06

news . So I

1:31:08

mean , I know it's only a number , but

1:31:10

it's a nice number and it begins with a three now

1:31:12

. So yeah

1:31:15

, I'm super stoked about that

1:31:17

. That does mean that the

1:31:19

Pod News front page is being targeted by quite

1:31:22

a few robots who are signing email

1:31:24

addresses

1:31:27

up . So now I have to

1:31:29

sit and fiddle around with how to

1:31:31

make recaptures work and all

1:31:33

of this . But anyway , I suppose with

1:31:35

success comes a bit

1:31:37

of nuisance . But still Delighted

1:31:39

with 30,000 . And also really

1:31:42

pleased with an article which you

1:31:44

will find if you are in France and

1:31:46

you speak French . You'll find an article

1:31:48

in Podcast Magazine , which

1:31:50

is an excellent publication , which

1:31:53

is produced by a

1:31:55

man called Philippe Chappot

1:31:57

, or in English , philip Hatt

1:31:59

, and

1:32:02

it's a great magazine which you will be able to pick up

1:32:04

at the radio show in Paris if

1:32:06

you are there . But

1:32:08

also you'll find the interview

1:32:10

on the Castapod website as

1:32:12

well . Blogcastapodcom , benjamin

1:32:16

Bellamy ended up interviewing

1:32:19

me for it and was really good

1:32:21

and yeah , and there's pictures of you in

1:32:23

there and everything , sam , it's a good

1:32:25

thing , yeah .

1:32:28

Yeah , I read that when you sent it through . It was

1:32:30

a really nice article , so thank you

1:32:32

to everyone who put that one together . And the

1:32:34

other thing , james , was I did

1:32:36

ask all the students on the podcasting

1:32:39

MA course at City do they

1:32:41

read Pod News Daily Bar

1:32:44

one ? Everyone did so that one person may be

1:32:46

actually subscribing soon as well , but other

1:32:48

than that they all did Excellent .

1:32:49

You've got me a subscriber , sam . Yes

1:32:52

, finally , after three years .

1:32:55

Yeah , I haven't lost you any . That's the main thing

1:32:57

, that's the more worrying thing .

1:32:59

Well , well , well well , we don't know that . Yes , that's

1:33:01

true , and

1:33:03

on that bombshell , that's it for this week . Thank

1:33:06

you so much to Oscar for being

1:33:08

our guest what seems like four

1:33:10

years ago . You can also listen

1:33:12

to the Pod News Daily . You can subscribe to the Pod

1:33:14

News newsletter for more of these stories and

1:33:16

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1:33:18

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1:33:20

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1:33:29

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1:33:31

music is from Studio Dragonfly . Our

1:33:34

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1:33:36

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1:34:00

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That's quite catchy the third time you hear it .