Acast is 10: interview with Ross Adams; plus, podcast guesting, and Spotify's IAB exit

We chat with Kathryn Musilek from Shark Party Media about podcast guesting; with Acast's CEO, Ross Adams, about Acast's tenth birthday, and wonder whether Spotify's exist from the IAB (and IAB certification) is a mistake.

What do you like or not like about this episode? We'd love to hear from you. weekly@podnews.net will find us both, or if you're using a modern podcast app, hit that boost button.

Transcript

James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, April the 26th, 2024.

Jingle: 0:04

The last word in podcasting news. This is the Podnews Weekly Review with James Cridland and Sam Sethi.

James Cridland: 0:12

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Podn ews, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of TrueFans In the chapters today. Happy 10th birthday to Acast. Happy 18th birthday to Spotify, but are they still a member of the IAB? No, Goodbye, Google Podcasts. We now have a date for that for the rest of the world, and Spotify makes a billion dollars and is profitable Plus.

Kathryn Musilek: 0:34

I'm Katherine Musilek from Shark Party Media, and later we'll talk about podcast guesting.

James Cridland: 0:41

And we'll also hear from Acast CEO Ross Adams on the 10th anniversary of the company. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout podcast hosting, made easy with easy and powerful tools, free learning materials, remarkable customer support and a new iOS app. From your daily newsletter, the Podn ews Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:02

So, james, let's start off with $1 billion. Now, that's a lovely number. Is that what we got for our new sponsorship package? Is that what we have?

James Cridland: 1:13

Oh yeah, that would be nice, wouldn't it? That would be very nice.

Sam Sethi: 1:17

No, it looks like Spotify's got a birthday present. It turned 18 and it just turned over $1 billion in the last quarter. They're profitable, James. Sounds all very good to them.

James Cridland: 1:27

Yes, they are profitable, and real profit as well. So that's making over €1 billion, but also €1 billion gross profit for the first time in their history. Last quarter, they also returned €197 million of net income. Net income is what I would call profit, and indeed I spent a long time sitting there Richard Craven will be having a listen to this laughing but I spent a long time trying to work out whether net income was actually profit, and it kind of is. It is yeah, so that was good, that was good fun. So, yes, they seem to have posted some very good figures, which is nice, I mean. Obviously, you know they've posted a very good increase in their gross margin, worthwhile pointing out that one of the ways of increasing that gross margin is by firing over 2,300 people and by raising their prices, so we shouldn't sort of overlook that. But, yeah, they're doing very well in terms of ad revenue as well and everything else.

Sam Sethi: 2:29

Yeah, the market liked it. It was up 16% their stock. Considering two years ago, the stock was at its lowest ever level. That's not bad, but I don't think. Going back to what you just said, I don't think they can reduce costs further. Maybe they can a few more people, but I don't think to the extent of 2,000 plus people. And I think also they've got to worry that they can't put the price up a lot more. The price elasticity of the subscription is going to actually snap at some point. You can't keep putting it up and continue to add more MAUs. So monthly active users so something somewhere, I think, along the line has got to give them more revenue. Could it be audiobooks, Could it be, I don't know, another subscription model somewhere? What could they do, James?

James Cridland: 3:17

Yeah, I mean it could be audiobooks. It could, of course, be podcast advertising. They are already the largest in the world in terms of audio advertising overall, so it could be that too. The monthly active users that I saw they actually underperformed. That was one part where they didn't do as well as they thought that they were going to. They only grew 19% year on year. I mean that's still a pretty good growth, but they only grew 19% year on year. Yeah, to 615 million users, and that's monthly active users. But paid subscribers should follow the same path. You would assume. If monthly active users have grown 19%, you would expect paid subscribers to grow 19% as well. But no, paid subscribers only grew by 14% to 239 million. So just you know, worthwhile looking at those figures and going. Well, actually, you know, is Spotify turning away from being a premium paid product and turning into something which is actually far more ad funded than it's been in the past, and that may be part of the change, the overall change that we're seeing in Spotify.

Sam Sethi: 4:39

One of the things in the report that I read was that the Activist Investor Value Act, which took a stake in the company a year ago, has doubled the value of its investment. So it's got a 0.5% stake in Spotify, but it's valued its stake at 280 million, which was again, as I said, double what it had last year. So they must be very happy. But I think they're one of the agitators who went for profit, profit, profit, Mr Spotify, by cutting and increasing prices. Agitated investors or activist investors are annoying to boards I know that my wife has to deal with many of them and they only go on there for one reason, that's to take money out of the company as fast as they can through profitisation.

James Cridland: 5:26

Yeah, no, I mean I think that there's certainly been a lot of disquiet, both from this particular set of company but also from investment analysts. You know as well Richard Kramer. You know Arete Investments analyst has been very down on Spotify. You know and down on the business and you know one would assume that he is feeling a little bit happier about Spotify today after this quarter's results. So yeah, I think there has been a lot of concern over Spotify's. You know trajectory in this industry and nice to see, you know, some good news coming out of that organisation, although, as you say, at what cost?

Sam Sethi: 6:20

Anyway, moving on, let's see if they can repeat the act in the next quarter. Moving on, um spotify seems to have left the building, james, or at least they've left the iab yes, spotify leaving the iab is a big deal.

James Cridland: 6:34

Um and um. They were very quiet about it. It took um three months for anybody to notice. Um and uh, I ended up um, I ended up spotting a little bit of this because I was there going oh, that's interesting. On the IAB's technical working group page, Spotify's contact was somebody that no longer works for Spotify. So I thought, well, that's interesting, I can at least find out a little bit more about that. So, working with them, trying to understand what was going on, they were very cagey and it turned out that Spotify probably left the IAB at the beginning of this year. So if you look at Spotify's Megaphone Chartable and the artist formerly known as Anka Spotify for podcasters, none of those companies are now IAB certified. They claim that they're compliant still, but they're not properly IAB certified. So therefore, those numbers that Spotify are actually giving out there are actually, you know, not certified and you just have to take them on trust, which is a big change.

Sam Sethi: 7:46

I think what you're telling me. Iab have got some uncertified numbers, Wow.

James Cridland: 7:52

I mean the IAB hasn't. And I think this is part of the problem that the IAB is used in the industry as we're IAB compliant. Well, iab compliant means absolutely nothing. The only thing that IAB compliant means is that we've looked at the IAB's rules. As a company, we've looked at the IAB's rules and we think that we're doing the right thing, but the IAB certainly hasn't checked them. So you know there's a big difference between IAB compliant and IAB certified. I wrote a opinion piece which I hid a little bit this week, but my opinion piece was essentially saying to the IAB you have passing off laws on your side. You have trademark laws on your side to stop people saying that they're IAB compliant. Say that you're compliant, by all means. Say that you're compliant to the podcast measurement guidelines Absolutely. That's absolutely fine. Don't use the IAB in that to deliberately in some cases confuse the market. Don't do that. Just call yourself compliant, that's fine. And I'm really surprised why the IAB isn't doing that. Isn't policing the use of its name a little bit more? But I think you know.

James Cridland: 9:06

Coming back to the thing around Spotify's IAB, you know work. I think you know the IAB. We all know that the IAB certifies numbers for downloads and for total listeners. So those are the two big numbers that the IAB certifies for. But the IAB also certifies for two additional numbers. One of them is ad delivery and one of them is client-confirmed ad play. So ad delivery is if an ad was actually delivered to a listener. So say, you've got an IAB download, you've already downloaded a minute of the audio, that's fine, but the ad is only 30 minutes into the show. That ad may not be delivered to a listener and it's up to a Spotify or you know other people to actually send that signal back to the person that bought the ad that the ad was actually delivered and indeed played. So you end up with this thing. You know those numbers are basically how advertisers charge. So you end up with ads delivery no longer being certified by the IAB. So we just have to trust Spotify's numbers in terms of ad delivery and I think that's a much bigger deal than whether or not their download figures or their listener metrics are going to be important. So really interesting.

James Cridland: 10:38

And what I also found interesting was, as I understand it, virtually every company that hosts with Megaphone particularly because Megaphone is the big enterprise podcast host virtually every single company had no idea that Spotify had come out of the IAB and that the platform that they are on that they were paying for is no longer certified, which says quite a lot, I think paying for is no longer certified, which says quite a lot, I think, about what's going on with that. Do you know what my new theory is around why Spotify have no longer doing this? I mean, I think partially, it's quite expensive to be a member of the IAB if you're the size of Spotify, but I think also, on the other side, spotify have fired so many people. I actually wonder whether or not anybody in senior management at Spotify understood what the IAB was doing there. Anyway.

James Cridland: 11:34

There was a point a couple of years ago you might remember, where Megaphone actually forgot to renew a certificate that they used for their website Literally forgot, and it pulled everything down for 12 hours as somebody in IT scrabbled to turn everything off and turn everything back on again, and similarly, megaphone, of course, used to be called Panoply and panoplyfm. Spotify let that domain name lapse and it's now owned by I think it's owned by a scam company and pornographers and various other weird and wonderful things. I just wonder whether it's another one of those mistakes where they've actually fired too much company knowledge to be able to go. Oh, we should really be spending the it's only you know, it's only $9,000 for them to renew it. We should be spending the $9,000 to renew Megaphone in terms of a certificate, but walking away from IB membership I just find really weird.

Sam Sethi: 12:40

Well, somebody who hasn't walked away is Libsyn. They're recertified. Captivate and Buzzsprout were last certified under version 2 in 2020, but both companies say they're in the process of recertification have got rid of.

James Cridland: 13:09

well, the IAB ended up saying to me that the only people now listed in the certification page on the IAB website are companies who have recertified or companies who are in the process of. So neither Captivate or our sponsors, Buzzsprout, have actually told us that that's the case, but they appear to be there, but they appear to be still there. So therefore you can assume from that that they have made a decision, and probably the right one, to recertify. So yeah, just to be crystal clear, because I don't want to put words into either Mark or Kevin's mouth Exactly.

Sam Sethi: 13:42

That would be a mistake. Yes, one thing that did come out from the IAB yesterday was the UK digital ad spend report for 2023, and spend on podcasts, they say, grew 23% to 83 million in the UK, james.

James Cridland: 14:00

Yes, and that number came out now. The weird thing about the IAB is that the IAB UK has actually very little to do about the IAB. Is that the IAB UK is actually very little to do with the IAB US and, in fact, iab certification? Certainly, when I was talking to the IAB UK a number of years ago, when podcast measurement guidelines first came out, the IAB UK actually had different guidelines. Can you believe it? So the IAB in Australia have agreed with the IAB US's podcast measurement guidelines. But yes, they're all different organisations. They don't necessarily talk to each other, which I find fascinating. But yeah, so what they say is that podcast advertising in the company grew 23% year on year. £83 million is US 103 million US dollars. I worked out, given that we also know the IRB US's numbers as well, for internet audio. We don't know podcasting yet, but for internet audio that tells me that the UK market if you adjust it for population, the UK market is seven times smaller is earning seven times less money than the US market, which is quite a thing, isn't?

Sam Sethi: 15:14

it Is the IAB, you know. Has its time come and gone? Is it time to put it down? You know kindly.

James Cridland: 15:22

I mean, I think there's two things to this. One thing is what would happen if iHeart was to take a cue from Spotify and come out of the IAB tomorrow? There's absolutely no suggestion that they will, but what would happen to the IAB if that was the case? I would suggest to you that that would be the thing that killed the IAB in terms of podcast measurement. So I think you've got sort of one side on that. You know, I've been arguing for a long time that the IAB shouldn't be doing this. It should be a podcast, a set of podcasting people. That could be the Podcast Standards Project, sam Sethi, or it could be somebody else oh thanks, just chuck more on my plate or it could be the Podcast Advertising Bureau and a set of people that don't exist yet. Right, and I would suggest that that might be a good plan to have a look at something which is more, which works at podcast speed, because the IAB most certainly does not work at podcast speed. So I would argue that that would be a good idea.

James Cridland: 16:32

One thing that struck me is, of course, spotify. The app has never been certified under the IAB, because apps aren't certified under the IAB. The only people who are certified are the podcast hosting companies, and it occurred to me that actually, what we should be doing, perhaps, is certifying podcast players, as well as being, you know, good people. They're not producing spurious downloads. You know spurious sets of automatic downloads that aren't clearly, you know, marked as such, and blah, blah, blah, and I wonder whether actually that's something that a podcast advertising bureau could do, so that you actually end up with the entire ecosystem having a careful eye. You know, put on them both certification for podcast downloads, but also certification for the apps that are actually playing them. What do you think?

Sam Sethi: 17:30

of that now. I think that would be good, because I think um are we, are we saying that the movement is from downloads anyway to a different metric that we think is going to be a better measurement, which is listen time, in which case, then, the apps had better start getting certified, because that's where the data's held for listen time.

James Cridland: 17:48

Yeah, and I mean, if that's the case, that would be interesting. I mean, my kind of argument with all of that is that we already have listen time from the two big companies, from Spotify and from Apple. So I'm not sure that we need it. But on the other hand, I can well see that that would be a great place to start doing. You know certification of an existing thing, but we shouldn't forget that you know quite a lot of podcast apps out there are put together by folk who just quite enjoy it and they're not really there to get paid by the podcast industry. You know they're there to make a little app that works for them. So yeah, I think it's a hard job, but I think it would be really interesting to basically go around and you know and do a little bit of work on some of these apps and actually work out whether some of these apps are actually doing the right thing for us.

Sam Sethi: 18:49

Sloppy shoulders there on that one mate.

James Cridland: 18:50

Yeah, exactly, I don't know who would do that, but yes don't look at me. Run away? Yes, not on this one Right.

Sam Sethi: 19:02

I feel like we should be singing happy birthday both to Spotify, because, also, ACAST has turned 10. It feels like somewhere in Sweden the winter broke and out of that came, in an April month, Acast and Spotify. Acast is 10, which is, you know, a grand old age in podcasting terms. They IPO'd back in 2021. And I guess they're most famous for inventing is that the right word? Or pioneering dynamic ad insertion. So, yes, I think you know Acast is doing very well. They've paid more than $300 million into podcast creators' pockets from basically hosting, distributing and monetising content. They seem to be doing very well, James.

James Cridland: 19:49

Yes, I think they're doing, you know really well. They're in profit in inverted commas for the first time according to their quarter 423 financial results. At any time now we'll get their quarter 124 numbers, which should be even better. And in terms of rankers, of course, pod track just released their rankers for march, which included a cast in there for the first time, and they are the number one number one for podcasts on a global basis. So I think that they're doing you know very well in terms of that. What I rather liked is that their celebrations, which were yesterday for being 10 years old, they got a few little video clips from some of the people who they have on their platform, and this is a little clip of Scroobius Pip, who is one of their podcasters, and I just thought it was really interesting what he was saying about podcasting no longer being quite as corporate as it once was.

Scroobius Pip: 20:55

Hello, I'm Scroobius Pip, host of the Distraction Pieces podcast, and I've been with Acast for like over nine years, so almost the full decade decade. I think I was basically lingering outside their front door when they opened it for the first time and that links to my highlight of the past decade. Really it's been watching that family grow and grow like egotistically. It's been lovely hearing people like Adam Buxton and Blind Boy and Richard Herrod, like some of my favourite podcasters, thank me on their podcast for my help, and all my help really was was introducing them to Acast or saying yeah, no, I've been with them a while. They're good, I really like them.

Scroobius Pip: 21:34

I like their outlook on the podcasting industry and that's kind of what I looked forward to going forward as well. I think there was a period where it looked like podcasting might get a bit too commercial and kind of behind paywalls and so on and so forth, and I like that. That seems to be falling away again and it feels like a community where we can all be excited about each other, shouting about the voices, the podcast that we're excited to shout about, and all yeah, share this space and this beautiful community. What a decade.

James Cridland: 22:07

So, you know, really interesting, you can see that full clip on the Pod News website. But, yeah, many congratulations to them. You know, what would be really good, sam, is if we could actually have a chat with the CEO, and if by magic, james, I did have a chat with Ross Adams, the CEO of ACAST, back in 2021,.

Sam Sethi: 22:27

ACAST did their IPO, but it was well-funded before that. But you've now just turned the corner, become profitable. So talk to me a little bit about your profitability.

Ross Adams: 22:37

Yeah, I mean that's been a big goal for us, I think early on. Obviously, venture-backed business focused on growth, like a lot of kind of startups were, and whilst profitability was always the plan, it wasn't necessarily something we focused on as early. Then, of course, the craziness happened in the macro. Profitability became the in-trend thing, believe it or not, to build a sustainable business, and something that we had always planned, like I said. So we pulled that forward and it's been a core focus for us, and so it was great last quarter to hit profitability, to really prove that model. I mean, we've proven it many times before. In individual markets, we made UK profitable and the likes of Sweden profitable on its own, but actually, because we're expanding in lots of markets, that takes a lot of investment and therefore, as a whole, it's something that we have to do and that's our aim this year. To be profitable as a whole is something that we have to do and that's our aim this year to be profitable as a whole.

Sam Sethi: 23:26

So, talking about investments, we interviewed Greg Glenday about his role within the US and, looking at some numbers that we saw. The US is now one of your biggest markets, but you're also growing in other markets as well. So where are you these days?

Ross Adams: 23:41

I think it's 15 markets We've actually got people on the ground, but we exist in 200 and whatever markets there are, we can monetize that through multiple different ways, programmatically, and we see demand from international advertisers all over the place, but a core focus for us, if you look at our larger markets, it's US, it's UK, it's Sweden, australia, france, germany, australia, France, germany. More recently, we've been launching in the likes of Spain. We've launched in Italy and we've launched in the Netherlands and then, as well as Singapore, we've now got someone on the ground there as well. So you know, starting to look at our feet on the ground over in Asia.

Sam Sethi: 24:18

Yeah, you have a true crime show called One Minute Remaining, which is now for Spanish speakers. You've partnered with Wondercraft. Is this something that you're going to be doing more and more, moving into foreign language podcasting?

Ross Adams: 24:32

Yeah, I mean, innovation for us is at the core of what we do, and I think this is a great example of innovation that we need to try out and see what demand we get from that. We see demand from a commercial side for Spanish speaking content. We do do have a lot of Spanish-speaking content. We have feet on the ground in Mexico, and so for us this is a great way of growing the show's audience in another language and introducing new listeners to new content by translation. So we're trialing that out and seeing how that works and we'll be reporting back in the coming months.

Sam Sethi: 25:03

So for those who don't know acast, you know at one point you did have an app, but fundamentally you're a host, distribution and monetization platform. I think it's fair to say you pioneered dynamic ad insertion. Is that the core technology that's driven acast to the profitability that we see today?

Ross Adams: 25:22

yeah, definitely. I mean we when we first looked at the space and I met with the founders and they talked about what they want to do within the space. Inherently, podcasting was still a 10-year-old medium then, but it was very analog. There were no digital metrics applied to it and no one was really commercializing I think America was in a baked-in fashion, but that hadn't scaled to the major brands that are spending in the space. So, for us, we wanted to digitize this industry and if we're going to start to pitch for digital ad budgets, we need to professionalize, and so dynamic ad insertion was born. Now, dynamically inserting ads into digital content isn't new at all, but doing it with an RSS and with an audio was brand new. So we had to build all of this technology from scratch. That's why a country like Sweden, who has the top engineers in the world, managed to create that, and that is kind of what's driven our success and the kind of base from everything that we've built off from here on in.

Sam Sethi: 26:18

Yeah, I read a report back in 2014 when you launched Dynamic Ad Insertion. You said since then, you've paid more than $300 million directly into the pockets of creators worldwide, which is great. That's a lot of chunk of change going back to real creators, right?

Ross Adams: 26:35

Yeah, definitely. That is one of my definite highlights of the last 10 years. I think that's why we have built this company with creators in mind and being fair in how we remunerate. So $300 million is incredible, so I'm very proud of the team for that. And iMacad insertion has enabled brands to access audiences within podcasting, and I think that's a testament to the revenue we start to drive.

Sam Sethi: 27:01

I think another milestone was recent. Podtrack released its rankers for March and for the first time, ACAST was the number one publisher globally with 405 million downloads. That must have been a good day as well.

Ross Adams: 27:12

Yeah, it's great. I mean, we've always had a huge reach and we're a bit unknown, especially over in the States, and I think finally getting onto that chart and having our reach and scale there highlights exactly what we've done these past 10 years. And I think I'm even more proud of how we've done it. And if you think about the competitive set that we've gone against and the investment that others have put into the space, to still be number one and to still be as big as we are and continue to grow is no mean feat. So, yeah, very proud of the team on that.

Sam Sethi: 27:41

Back here in the UK in Q423 as well. Another nice milestone Edison Research said that ACAST hosts the most shows in its UK list. The other player that dominated that list, though, was Megaphone. Is Megaphone your biggest competitor, would you say I?

Ross Adams: 27:58

think we've got multiple competitors in multiple markets. I think Megaphone had done a very good job of becoming an enterprise tool. So the likes of ESPN, even the likes of iHeart, use it, or used to use it, as their hosting platform when they'd pay a SaaS fee and monetize it themselves. So it was a different approach. It wasn't necessarily. Their main core business was about SaaS. Now it's obviously flipped. Now it's into Spotify's hands and their focus is on that Spotify audience network and building that out. So they are one of the competitors we compete with over here, and then in Europe you have different local competitors as well that we compete with. So we have a list of competitors is what I'm trying to say. So okay.

Sam Sethi: 28:37

One of the other big announcements you made back in 2022 was your partnership with Amazon. I thought that was a really good one. They bought all the advertising space for thousands of ACARs podcasts so that people could have ad-free shows. Is that an ongoing deal or is that now lapsed?

Ross Adams: 28:53

No, that's an ongoing deal. It works well for Amazon. I think their approach here was they were relatively late to the podcast game in terms of a podcast listening app and for them they wanted to see how they could grow as quick as they could, and this is one of the tactics they've used. So they seem to be very happy about it and, yeah, this is an ongoing partnership.

Sam Sethi: 29:13

So, coming up to date now, you've just won some Webby Awards. The highlight must be Michelle Obama the Light Podcast, which won the best series Again. How did that deal come about, and is this the way that you're going having these big celebrity type podcasts, or is it going to be spread across the board high to low?

Ross Adams: 29:34

Yeah, I think it's definitely going to be spread across the board. We have over a hundred thousand podcasts, thousands joining us every single month, so we have a long tail of podcasts. But beyond those, podcasts are, of course, an audience which advertisers want to reach, and an audience shouldn't be more valuable in a celebrity show versus a long tail show. And it's how you build the technologies to make sure you are able to access them and identify the audiences. I think partnerships will do with the likes of celebrities.

Ross Adams: 30:00

I think if you look at the higher ground partnership, that's one again that I'm very proud of, a highlight of the last 10 years. It's not necessarily a core focus for us to be just celebrity podcasts, but you always have to have a certain level of podcasts that kind of attract that revenue and then you can start to look at how you can spread that through the audiences, through the long tail as well. So it's almost like you use these podcasts as a way to highlight a large audience by. Brands want to also associate with certain celebrities too, and this is an easy way to do it with a mass audience. High Grounds producing some fantastic content. Winning a Webby Award is testament to that. So, yeah, that was a great partnership that we formed a couple of years ago.

Sam Sethi: 30:41

Talking of partnerships, you've just signed up Exhibit A, which is Abbey Clancy. That's going to be a new network with her husband, Peter Crouch, called Marvelous Media. The ACAST will be monetising both audio and video. Can you give me any more details on that?

Ross Adams: 30:57

Yeah, so I think that's again a fantastic deal. We've had a relationship with Crouchy for a long time now with his football show and we've monetized that incredibly well and I think, highlighting what we can do there and the therapy Crouch show they have, we've monetized very well. So it's a natural partnership that has been formed for them. Podcasting works incredibly well with their lifestyle. They can record it from their studio in their house. It really fits around their family. First approach and, yeah, we've got a fantastic relationship.

Ross Adams: 31:27

But I think the idea there is podcasting now, as you know, is beyond just audio and beyond just RSS. We've been monetizing the likes of video in multiple different ways for a long time now. I think Peter Cratch is a great example. We did a partnership with BrewDog, the brewery, and there's a lot of content that's put out across YouTube, across TikTok, across lots of different video platforms as well as, obviously, audio. And as a brand, it wants to involve itself in reaching his audience wherever they are. So how do we approach branded content to try and reach those audiences and monetize as much content and as many audiences as we can? So multimedia is definitely a focus for us in the future.

Sam Sethi: 32:11

That's cool. I mean two questions around video. One is there was an email from ACAST's support team that said ACAST is blocking YouTube from ingesting ACAST podcasts. That's mainly because YouTube don't do pass-through visiting Acast podcast. That's mainly because YouTube don't do pass-through. So has that been resolved with Acast and YouTube, or is that still an ongoing issue?

Ross Adams: 32:30

I mean, as you know, for us we are big proponents of the open ecosystem and RSS and YouTube have decided not to support RSS and that's how our entire business model works. Also, the way they remunerate creators and you have to be a certain size to be remunerated and they also want clean content, clear of ads, and if you are converting an MP3 with ads that are dynamically inserted and then you re-record that, you're going to have ads stitched in, so we would be against their terms of service. So that's why we stopped that and we're working with YouTube to try and help encourage them to see the values of RSS.

Sam Sethi: 33:07

One of your other Ulm and I just recently started their own new agency called Flight Studio, with Stephen Bartlett, that's Georgie Holt and CB, and their focus is video first. Given that you're now monetizing video, can we expect to see a deal between the two of you?

Ross Adams: 33:40

I mean I think this again highlights you look at what Oscar's doing and you look at what Georgie and CB are doing. We obviously wish them the best of luck in their endeavors and it highlights the kind of talent that we produce through ACAST. So I'm kind of proud of what they're up to and naturally, partnerships will be formed. We're working with Oscar but, yeah, I can't really comment on Georgie and CB, but I think that they're going to do some great things in the space and we really value what they're up to.

Sam Sethi: 34:05

Cool. So what are you going to do now to celebrate 10 years? What is ACOS going to do?

Ross Adams: 34:10

We're doing multiple things in multiple markets. Actually, we've got a whole kind of day takeover and most of our markets are doing kind of individual celebrations and then we're doing a big all hands to celebrate 10 years, with some surprises in there as well. We've created a lot of merch and unique merch for everyone and I can't reveal too many surprises, but there's a lot going on in the company. But it's all about celebrating the past 10 years and thanking everyone for their input into our success.

Sam Sethi: 34:37

What comes next? What's the next 10 years? Look like Ross.

Ross Adams: 34:41

That's a good question. I think for us we've had a core focus on profitability. That is a key thing, that's in the near future and that's something that we are focused on, as we mentioned earlier in the show. But I think a big core focus for us is the US. I'm now living over here and this is something we really need to focus on and have been focusing on.

Ross Adams: 35:00

It is the opportunity the biggest podcast market in the world right now and we need to be number one. We're number one globally. We're probably in terms of audience. On PodTrack chart, we're number two, but there's a couple of people who omitted from that chart as well. But for us we need to be number one. And then I think we need to be making sure that the media agencies who are starting to spend in the space treat us as that number one player.

Ross Adams: 35:26

Our competitive set have the likes of music streaming radio, satellite radio that they can bolt on with podcasting. So a larger reach, opportunity. But growing that reach and scale for us is inherently a core focus to become that number one player. So, yeah, that's a big focus and I think in 10 years time I want to make sure that we maintain the culture of the company. That has always been my number one priority. I talk quite publicly about that, and we've got a fantastic culture and an amazing bunch of people. But expansion is probably on the cards at some stage as well. But I think for me it's more seeing the next three years than the next 10, but either way, it's going to be a successful 10 years, so I'm looking forward to that.

Sam Sethi: 36:00

Just on that, the ACAST founders the original founders have got a new company called Sesame. Sesame seems to be doing amazingly well. It's a really interesting mobile peer-to-peer payment system. That's certainly big in Sweden and the Nordics and I believe now, through a raise they've done, coming to the UK. It's a pay-per-podcast model. It's a different model to advertising or subscription. Is that something maybe in the next 10 years that you guys might look at?

Ross Adams: 36:31

Yeah, I mean for us we've got Acast Access and Acast Plus, so we have kind of technologies that do slightly similar things to that. Our focus is really on the advertising side and how we match advertisers with creators' audiences and how we grow a creator's audience, so that's not necessarily a focus for us. But yeah, they're doing great things over there. So again, wish them well them well.

Sam Sethi: 36:57

The other last question in this area we're beginning to see RSS broaden from just being a podcast delivery mechanism to doing music. You talked about video. There's certainly audio books. Would ACAST expand beyond just doing podcasting?

Ross Adams: 37:10

It's a good question. I mean for us, we need to become number one in podcasting. We are number one in most markets, america we're not, and we need to. So for us that is the core focus and I think until we do that we can't really consider other mediums that will be brought into the space. But you know, it's interesting what other competitors are doing around audiobooks as well as music. But music also on that side, is very messy in terms of licensing. So I think we're going to stay in our podcast lane. It's a lot nicer space.

Sam Sethi: 37:38

Probably wise. Now. We're going to see you at the London podcast show. You've got a big presence there. We've got the Acast Arms. That's the 22nd and 23rd of May. What will you be doing there yourself?

Ross Adams: 37:53

I'll be doing lots of things. I've got a keynote with Dan Fireman at Higher Ground, so that's. I believe that's on the Thursday. Like you said, we've got the eight cast arms there. We have multiple keynotes going on. I'm also featuring on a few podcasts while I'm there live from the show as well. I love the podcast show. It's such a brilliant event, a two day event, so we'll be everywhere. We're pretty much involved in everything there. So, yeah, looking forward to it.

Sam Sethi: 38:16

All I've got to say is 10 years seems so flown by, but in that time, look, you've got profitability, you've got global growth. Everything's going upward. Congratulations to you, Thank you. Thanks very much, Sam.

James Cridland: 38:28

Ross Adams, the CEO of Acast? Was he wearing a hat when you interviewed him, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 38:34

He always wears a hat. Yes, yes, very good, but we will see him at the London podcast show. They've got the Acast Arms. Looking forward to having a little pint there at the Acast Arms. I don't know who's playing the role of Barbara Windsor from EastEnders, but we'll see LP. Lp could do that.

Sam Sethi: 38:58

I was thinking I'm not going to say LP, say I'm not gonna say LP. And then you went there. I had to go there, yes, yes. Um, for the Americans who won't understand it, it was a soap opera. And uh, yes, you have to look it up.

James Cridland: 39:08

It is a soap opera. You have to leave it out.

Sam Sethi: 39:11

Leave it out all right, james, let's move on a little bit. Podcast guesting is a very effective way of promoting your shows and of getting your name out there.

James Cridland: 39:20

Yeah, that's right. I mean it is. It's a great way of getting your name out there. It's a great way of doing that, and I think what was interesting at Podcast Movement Evolutions is that quite a lot of people were saying you know, podcast guesting it's really good, but it's also an awful lot of hard work as well. So I thought I'd catch up with Shark Party Media, which is a company that does podcast guesting, and I reckoned it would be a good idea to talk with the founder, Catherine Muslick, about podcast guesting and how to do it well, and I started by asking what Shark Party Media is.

Kathryn Musilek: 40:02

Shark Party Media is a PR firm based out of Brooklyn, new York, that I founded in 2007. We started working with comedians in 2012, which is how we found the podcast world, sort of orient around us.

James Cridland: 40:17

Right. Why the name Shark Party Media?

Kathryn Musilek: 40:19

Well, because you have to sink or swim. That's kind of the deal, and you may as well have fun while doing it.

James Cridland: 40:27

Yes, and not jump, I would guess not jump the shark, that's right. That's a very different thing. You have been saying for a while now that the best way to grow a podcast's audience is through guesting on other shows. Is that a common view, do you think, in the industry?

Kathryn Musilek: 40:47

It is a common view in the industry. Every marketing exec that I speak to sort of has a sense that they understand that to be the truth and that they see it with their own numbers. When one of their hosts guests on another podcast, usually of similar size and comparable listenership, they'll see spikes in their own show's listenership and an actual growth. So yeah, so yeah, it is. It is kind of a known thing and when I was, I was just at the evolutions, the podcast movement evolutions, and I met a number of podcast marketers and podcasters and they would ask what I do and I would say I'm in podcast guesting, which is what brings me to the conference, and I'd say, you know, it's the best way to grow an audience. And they would just be like, yeah, it is like, they just are, they all kind of like it is, but like. They'd kind of like throw up their arms a little and shrug and be like, if only it were possible to do that kind of work. You know, that is the work that I do.

James Cridland: 41:55

So what's, what's the problem with that work? I mean, what sort of thing does Shark Party Media do for me that I couldn't do for myself?

Kathryn Musilek: 42:03

Well, because we've been in the podcast space with our clientele, offering our clients to podcasts and working with podcasters for so long, we have a really hearty, really trustworthy database. So basically we have all of the contacts and we have a lot of relationships and it's also podcast. Guesting is in the PR space. I think sometimes there's sort of a confusion about where it goes. Like, is this marketing? Is this promotion?

Kathryn Musilek: 42:41

I fully, I'm kind of a dinosaur PR that still believes in journalism and all of that. So I also believe that podcasting is squarely in the journalistic space, for the most part the media space, and that PR is the best way to approach guesting, meaning that it's about relationships. It's about, you know, deeper relationships. It's about really treating people like humans. It's not about, you know, I'll get erroneous pitches for podcast guests. Like people will be offering guests to me for one of my clients and sometimes there'll be sort of mentions of you know, we think it'd be really beneficial to my client to be on your show or you know, like all these kind of things that are like that are just like um, that's not really the idea. Like our true drive in PR and in podcast guesting is to offer guests that will help the show we're offering, so that the show that we're offering, so that the show that we're offering to understands that we're on their side as well and we're helping everyone.

James Cridland: 43:41

Basically how do you find shows for your clients to guest on?

Kathryn Musilek: 43:47

a lot of it is, um, you know, we, we really, we really keep our eye on podcast newsletters. We keep our eye on. We have a few sort of database subscriptions that we can look to for ideas, but we're always listening to new shows. We're always just kind of searching the web and making sure, whenever we bring on a new podcast client for guesting, that we understand everything that they are interested in talking about. We do a really extensive questionnaire process so we understand, you know, maybe their show is about, you know, culinary oddities, but maybe they also skydive. Who knows? Who knows what they want to talk about?

Kathryn Musilek: 44:40

What's the story to actually tell yeah exactly so most of it is just being consumers of podcasts. We find podcasts, but the other bit of it is that we just have a massive podcast database full of all the producers and hosts and friends and so we kind of start there. We just start with people we know.

James Cridland: 45:01

And you say you pay for a couple of databases. Are those databases tools like Podchaser or Rephonic, those sorts of tools?

Kathryn Musilek: 45:11

Yes, exactly yes.

James Cridland: 45:13

Yeah, yeah.

Kathryn Musilek: 45:14

And those are not the best by way of the actual contacts that they provide, but they're nice for exploration and discovery.

James Cridland: 45:22

Yeah, yeah. Is there anything that the industry could do to help you find shows for your guests?

Kathryn Musilek: 45:30

I'm actually really keen on your trailer feed that you just I don't know if you just started that or if I just discovered it, but didn't you just start a feed that's like podcast trailers?

James Cridland: 45:40

Yeah, yeah.

Kathryn Musilek: 45:42

I think that's so fun.

James Cridland: 45:44

I normally say yes to every show that I have time to be on, but are there shows that you would recommend that I didn't go on?

Kathryn Musilek: 45:53

Oh boy, uh, yes, I mean this is a little bit client by client and it really depends on um the personality of you and your show and your listenership. There are there are sort of political areas that can be minefields or not a fit. I did have one person I had a client once who wanted to go onto a really incendiary show because she wanted to kind of show them and sort of argue.

Kathryn Musilek: 46:34

Oh, yes, argue and um and yeah, and I, I really uh, discouraged it, but she insisted and went and it actually ended up being um a situation where she was trolled by the bad guys for like a really long time. So I really suggest, I highly suggest, going where it's warm and where the audience is already an intuitive fit for you or your product or your message.

James Cridland: 47:02

Yeah, going where it's warm.

Kathryn Musilek: 47:04

That's a great phrase.

James Cridland: 47:06

Is there a way to measure ROI on being a podcast guest.

Kathryn Musilek: 47:10

Not exactly. No, I mean, as you might know, the numbers on podcasts can be very tricky to pin down due to all of the different platforms that everyone is checking out. Also, there isn't usually, you know, you can't really do. I mean, in my industry we don't do affiliate links or anything like that anyway way. And so again, like PR, it's a little bit ethereal. You can see spikes in listenership on your own show. That's sort of the most direct sort of response or return. But by way of just like monetizing ROI, like that, I haven't seen it done.

James Cridland: 47:55

So two other questions. Firstly, how do I be a better podcast guest? Are there tips and tricks that you would recommend that I follow?

Kathryn Musilek: 48:06

Yes, I would recommend that you listen to one to three episodes of the show you're guesting on, if you're not already really familiar episodes of the show you're guesting on. If you're not already really familiar, Um, and that you know your podcast guesting expert who's hooking you up with the uh guesting op. That they just make sure to give you all of the information about what's going to happen on the interview, if there's any sort of prep involved, Um, and I guess that's that's the main tip is just to be really familiar, be really nice, you know, be relaxed and be yourself and try not to say like and um very often, which I'm sure I already have a million times with you, you can take it out of the print version, that's fine.

James Cridland: 48:57

I can take it out of the audio version as well the magic of audio editing.

James Cridland: 49:02

Love it, and I suppose I mean so some of the companies that I have worked with in the past the CEO or whoever it is that puts themselves up for interview. I've had real success in actually getting them a little bit of media training. I've actually sitting down with a proper journalist and that journalist explains how to get a point over and how to really land the point that you want to make, and I think quite a lot of this is not necessarily answering the questions that you've been asked, but using the questions that you've been asked to actually say what you wanted to say. Anyway, do you do that sort of training, or are there companies that you recommend to do that sort of media training, or is that not really a thing for this area?

Kathryn Musilek: 49:53

Well, a lot of the podcasters that we're working with are more in the entertainment space, so a lot of what we're doing is sort of a lot of what we're doing is placing entertainers on other entertaining shows. So many times we aren't. We don't need to media train them into hitting points home. Besides making sure that there's some discussion of their show, their comedy special, like whatever it is that we're publicizing, we make sure with the host that there's some discussion of that uh, beforehand. But, um, we don't do as much of that. I do a bit bit of it. There are times where I have worked with um directly, with comedy production companies or podcast company execs, et cetera, and I have helped to sort of at least get talking points in front of them, but it's not usually as strict of a journalistic media training process.

James Cridland: 51:03

Yeah, Super fascinating. Where do we go to find out more about Shark Party Media?

Kathryn Musilek: 51:08

You can go to sharkpartymediacom and hit us up with any questions. All good, Catherine. Thank you so much for any questions.

James Cridland: 51:15

All good, Catherine. Thank you so much for your time.

Kathryn Musilek: 51:18

Thank you, it's been fun. From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 51:24

Now, james branded podcasts. It seems that they're very popular 86% of branded podcasts increase a brand's affinity with listeners. That sounds good. Should we have a branded podcast? Yes, if we can find out a brand, we'll listeners. That sounds good. Should we have a branded podcast?

James Cridland: 51:37

Yes, if we can find out a brand, who'll pay for it? But yes, you know, branded podcasts also help with brand recall. Apparently, there's a 2024 branded podcasts benchmark report released today from the good folks at Signal Hill Insights, who have done a bunch of data about this. A lot of it is very brand marketing language, so increasing a brand's affinity is one of my favourites. Trying to explain what that actually means is always fun, but it's really well worth a read and there is a lot of money in branded podcasts right now, because you've had that and I think you have been enjoying the Brand Podcast Summit, haven't you?

Sam Sethi: 52:22

Yeah, it's an online virtual event Harry Morton from Lower Street organised. I went and had a look at it yesterday. You had Jonas Wust and Ariel Nissenblatt some people from the BBC. Yeah, it's a lovely, well-organised event online. It was over two days. So congratulations to Harry Morton. Yeah, and it was all about creating branded podcasts. So, yeah, I learnt a lot, thank you.

James Cridland: 52:49

Yeah, live from Harry Morton's garden shed, which is where his studio is. The things that you learn on LinkedIn, I'll tell you.

Sam Sethi: 52:58

With a strategic guitar in the background. Nice one, harry. Indeed, yes. Now moving on, you know what this week, james? I feel like we should have some Stevie Wonder happy birthday and maybe some Queen. Another one bites the dust. Yes, well, it looks like Inside Podcasting may have bitten the dust. Tell me more.

James Cridland: 53:22

Yes, well, it looks like most of Inside, which is a company, I think, majorly owned by Jason Calacanis, most of Inside, which was a set of newsletters, has shuttered. They've laid off a majority of the editorial staff at the company, including the writer for Inside Podcasting, so that hasn't published an issue since March the 21st. I have DM'd Jason Calacanis because he follows me and I thought I would abuse that, and I said is there a chance that I can buy some advertising on your old Inside podcasting feed? Funnily enough, he has not responded. But you would have thought. You would have thought if you've closed it down, you'd have thought well, that's a quick way of making a bob or two, he doesn't need to make a bob or two?

Sam Sethi: 54:13

No, he's okay.

James Cridland: 54:14

Well, I mean, clearly Insidecom does. So you've got that. But also we talked about the Hot Pod hiatus, which seems to be a bit longer than we thought because all of the subscribers to Hot Pod have had their paid subscriptions refunded. Vox Media won't let me advertise on the Hot pod list. Can't think why that might be. We of course had Pod Pod, which closed last year. Sky Pillsbury's the Squeeze is not quite on hiatus but it's on very. You know, it's only coming out every so often because Sky has other things in her life as well. So actually, you know, I mean you say another one bites the dust. I was thinking of that song from Team America of. You know we're so lonely. It does appear that for us, for a daily newsletter about podcasting, such as the Pod News newsletter is, it does appear that we're kind of all of a sudden being the only ones. It's a little bit scary.

Sam Sethi: 55:30

I don't think that's bad news, James.

James Cridland: 55:32

Where am I going to get my news from now? Oh right, sorry, yes, ai.

Sam Sethi: 55:36

Ask AI. Ask the AI again yes, so there is that.

James Cridland: 55:41

I mean there's obviously Podbible, which is a UK printed magazine, which is very good. There's a printed magazine in France called Podcast Magazine magazine. That weird podcast magazine in the US is up and running again and will be producing issues from June time or something like that. So I understand. So there are, of course, you know, other places. There's also the Noisegate, which is more creator focused, made by the good folks at Podcast Movement. So there's a bunch of these newsletters, but you know, in terms of general podcast newsletters, I'm a little bit worried that you know you can see all of these people running out and I'm there going. Why are you all leaving the industry that I'm in? Is there something you know that I don't? They?

Sam Sethi: 56:38

just can't compete with you, james, that's what it? Is Well, maybe God is he still doing it.

James Cridland: 56:44

Well, maybe that's it. I do know a number of good writers about podcasting that I can't pay for, and I would love to, so if there are people out there who are thinking about producing a competitor, then, firstly, please don't. But secondly, if you are going to, I know some good, good writers who I could actually help you with.

Sam Sethi: 57:10

Righty. Well, let's make sure that you stick around for a bit longer. Anyway, that's the main thing.

James Cridland: 57:16

Now, yeah, that would be kind of handy. Shall we go around the world? Well, let's do.

Sam Sethi: 57:22

Wondery has launched Wondery Plus. I thought they had Wondery Plus ages ago. Am I losing my mind? They do.

James Cridland: 57:28

They've had Wondery Plus for a long, long time, but they can't spell the word colour or indeed the word monetise, because Wondery Plus was an American thing. They've now produced a UK, curated version of that for UK podcast listeners. Wondery produces an awful lot of UK content actually, and so, yes, and so you'll get a localised spelt with I-S-E-D at the end localised and curated experience for UK audiences, which is very neat. They are doing a big thing at the podcast show in London next month Adelicious, who sells advertising in the UK on podcasting. Their CEO, andrew Goldsmith, has pointed out that UK elections are bad things for podcast advertising and indeed all forms of advertising, because of the very tight election law that exists in the UK. Essentially, there's an awful lot of advertising from UK government for things like you know, don't walk across the road without checking either side, charlie says, and you know, and don't forget to take your flu jab, and all this kind of stuff, and all of that is illegal as soon as a election is called. So we may be in a position where for two or three months, one of the largest advertisers in UK media is unable to advertise, and I know that in previous elections that's really harmed commercial radio.

James Cridland: 59:05

I think this will be the first election where it will really harm UK podcasting as well. So just worthwhile keeping that in mind, and clearly Ross Adams will have to keep that in mind as well. So just worthwhile keeping that in mind, and clearly Ross Adams will have to keep that in mind as well. Around the rules, they're called the Perda rules, which is all very fascinating. So anyway, that's all going on. And still in the UK, audio Lab has been launched by AdWanted UK. Adwanted UK produces a thing called Jet, which is how you buy commercial radio in the UK, and they're now producing this thing, which is a cross-platform audio measurement solution, which is all very exciting.

Sam Sethi: 59:45

Yeah, I wanted to ask you from that. There was two things I read in that report that made no sense. One was called the listener through rate LTR. What is that?

James Cridland: 59:55

Well, I'm glad you asked, Sam. I'll tell you what listen through rate is. It's the ratio between the number of ads listened through to the end to the total number of impressions recorded for a campaign. So it's basically how many people are skipping ads? Okay, that's what that is. Yes, skipping ads. Okay, um, that's what that is. Uh, yes, so 90 percent of um, um, 90 percent of podcast ads apparently are not skips, which I know that you won't agree with, because I've seen you on linkedin, um saying that we all skip ads, but in fact, 90 percent of that.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:31

I just say when you ask people rather than you have a company whose job it is to sell advertising.

James Cridland: 1:00:38

Yes, so that was LTR. What was the other one that you were asking?

Sam Sethi: 1:00:42

about Vast, vast technology. I mean, I keep hearing about it and everyone talking about it, but I haven't really looked it up. What is Vast?

James Cridland: 1:00:48

Right. Vast is, you know, iframes on websites. Yes, you know iframes on websites. So, yeah, so you put a little bit of code in your website and that pulls a bit of code, a bit of a page, from another website. Vast is essentially that, but for video and indeed audio. So vast is a little tag that you put when you are making a podcast and that tag goes off and says hey, I've got a commercial here, can you give me some audio for a commercial? And the system then fills that with a commercial for that particular user. So that's what a VAST tag is. It's very, you know. It's used in quite a few places by companies selling dynamically, you know, inserted advertising.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:38

Okay, now I'm more informed.

James Cridland: 1:01:41

Yes, so there we are. I'm glad you asked. Can I just say that the word purdah is from Hindi.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:48

Its original meaning refers to a curtain or a veil. No idea how that relates to how you described Adelicious there earlier.

James Cridland: 1:01:56

Oh well, there you go, yes, perda. And finally, looking around the world Moving on, iheartmedia has launched the Women's Sports Audio Network. It calls it the first ever audio platform dedicated to women's sports. If that's the case, then many congratulations. That's such an then many congratulations. That's such an obvious thing to do and that makes a ton of sense. Apparently, this year, elite women's sports are expected to become a $1 billion industry. That's a 300% increase in just the last three years. I would guess that that's mostly to do with the Australian football team, the Matildas, who are very, very good. Clearly it's got all to do with that and nothing to do with anything else.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:47

Okay, well, I think this is all around the sheet economy, isn't it?

James Cridland: 1:03:08

This is this growing focus around women's sports and women's content for political currency, which is Dino Sophos' big show. Ed Balls and George Osborne two former chancellors well, one former chancellor and one former shadow chancellor and also in the UK City University of London is looking for a podcaster in residence. I couldn't necessarily see very much around salary I don't think there is one but I think that there is an awful lot of very useful experience and knowledge that you'll gain from being a podcaster in residence. You get to work in decent studios and meet decent people and everything else, and the university is also offering scholarships and bursaries to UK-based students. Spotify and Goldhanger are paying for those as well. More details again in the Pod News newsletter.

James Cridland: 1:03:57

And Novel has a new CEO. Novel is a big podcast producer in the UK and the US. The new CEO is Craig Strachan, who used to be the boss of podcasts at Amazon Music. He was global head of podcast industry complex, so he's done very well there and now being the new CEO of Novel, so well done to him. I have a feeling that I worked with Craig Strachan once. I thought it was either at the BBC or at Virgin Radio, but his LinkedIn doesn't mention the BBC or Virgin Radio once, so maybe I didn't, but anyway, there we are. Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:04:42

What is coming up with events? Well, the Webby Awards have just announced all of their winners. Good news for Lemonada Media, because Wiser Than Me ended up winning the Webby Podcast of their winners. Good news for Lemonada Media, because Wiser Than Me ended up winning the Webby podcast of the year. They will be doing a fancy awards show a little bit later on. This year. The Peabody Awards has also announced some nominees in terms of their awards. But, of course, the big events coming up include the podcast show in London, where you and I will be, and the pod news weekly review will be live on stage. For that, which should be good, there is somebody that wants to launch something on the pod news weekly review, which I'm very confused by, and he said and he said I'd love to talk to you about it, but please sign this NDA to which to you about it.

James Cridland: 1:05:33

But please sign this NDA, to which I've replied I don't sign NDAs, I'm a journalist. We don't do that, so we won't be launching that. I don't suppose. But still, there we are. What else is going on? Crossed Wires will be in Sheffield, which is a podcast festival which is worthwhile doing a quick Google for, for as is the unipod fest at birmingham city university. It's all uk, this isn't it.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:56

And uh, berlin podcast other people can organize events just not really happening around the world other people can.

James Cridland: 1:06:02

Yes, uh, and indeed, of course uh podcast movement um is happening in august in washington dc. The murder capital of uh, the united states, is it still the murder capital of the united states I. Is it still the murder capital of the United States? I'm not sure it is anymore, god knows, but still anyway. Yes, and there are more events, of course, both paid for and free, at Pod News. If you're organising something you should tell the world about, it's free to be listed at podnewsnet slash events. The Tech Stuff On the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:06:33

Alright, I've got 15 minutes left, but here comes the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:41

News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology very quickly, very quickly, okay. Strike, the Bitcoin wallet has now come to Europe, so you can download it from the iOS app store if you want. Again, that's just great.

James Cridland: 1:06:53

If you want to use micropayments and fiat currencies and exchange between the two, yeah, yeah, and I was having a chat, I spotted a recognisable name on a Twitter space the other day and so I went in and had a listen and they were talking about Bitcoin and wouldn't it be really good if we could work out some way of changing the music industry using Bitcoin and the blockchain and everything else? And I put my hand up and I said, you know, I'd quite like to speak, and spoke for about three minutes about the Booster Ground Ball and about Value for Value and Lightning Payments. And they were so excited and they hadn't heard Payments. And they were so excited and they hadn't heard anything about this. And they were there going oh my God, this is amazing, this is amazing. And I said you know Adam Curry's involved. And one person said I bet you didn't know that Adam Curry was one of the first podcasters in the world, to which my reply was well, yes, because he invented it, so that was entertaining. Anyway, yes, so that was very good. So good to see Strike coming to Europe.

James Cridland: 1:08:02

Google has set a date for Google podcasts to be switched off mid to late June 2024 is when it's going to be turned off in all countries outside of the US. Hooray, good for us, so that's a complete thrill. Captivate has added support for chapters, json chapters, super chapters, call them what you will. In its embedded player as well, spotify also supports chapters, but they support Podloves chapters, which is very strange. I'd like to play along a little bit more with that and see what the deal is there and see whether actually there's a really easy way for Spotify to support JSON chapters as well, because if they're supporting Podloves chapters, it should be one line of code to do a regex on those and make them work as well. So, yeah, so who knows what's going on there? You say Spotify's HiFi Lossless is in beta.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:58

It is yeah, oh, that's exciting yeah exactly.

James Cridland: 1:09:02

And what's this? Google have delayed the cookie apocalypse again.

Sam Sethi: 1:09:08

Yes, cookie crumble is not going to happen. Yes, they've delayed it again for the third time. It's now moved over to early 2025.

James Cridland: 1:09:17

They're mad, aren't they? Wow, google Scared, actually, I think, rather mad, yeah, no, I think so. Op3 has done some little changes with its API. It's got a brand new API and various things, which is nice, and you'll find a ton of OP3 data at the podcast business journal, podcastbusinessjournalcom slash data. It's a super, super good system. You know, here we are talking about IAB and the potential decline of the IAB. Decline of the IAB. I would suggest that also, measuring your podcast using OP3 is a really good system for completely comparable numbers with everybody else who's using them around 2000 other shows in there. So definitely worthwhile a peek on that. And yeah, I noticed that there are lots of people using the brand new podcasting 2.0 logo, which is all very nice, adam appears to be using it on his well, I am too.

James Cridland: 1:10:24

Yeah, you're absolutely right as well as Adam using it on his fancy podcastindexsocial thing, and it's also on the podcasting2.org website as we speak, which is very nice. Daniel has added it to there. It's quite small, could be bigger. Feedback what do I know? Feedback what do I know? I'm not a web designer, so yeah, so that's all really good news as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:56

Yeah, and I think Guy Martin who came up with the logo. I've been talking to him about putting a podcast in 2.0 merch shop. I think it's going to be off the website that you've created with Daniel James. So, yeah, hopefully that'll be up soon as well.

James Cridland: 1:11:11

Yeah, so that'll be interesting. So that will add a whole world of complication, but it should be nice. But yes, there he is in our show notes. There he is wearing a Podcasting 2.0 hoodie, I think yeah, and hat and hat, which looks Hoodie and a hat.

Jingle: 1:11:31

That's crazy Boostergram, boostergram. Corner on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:11:43

Yes, it's our favourite time of the week. It's Boostergram Corner and, just as a reminder, sam and I share all of the boosts for this podcast in between us, which is a super helpful thing. Do we have any boosts this week, sam? I happen to be in Melbourne, not in my us, which is a super helpful thing. Do we have any boosts this week, sam? I happen to be in Melbourne, not in my house, so therefore, I've got no idea.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:57

We've got a couple, I think yeah. Guy Martin, who we just talked about, who came up with the Podcasting 2.0 logo, said negative sats is such a fantastic idea, the potential is massive, and he sent us 2,468 sats.

James Cridland: 1:12:11

Who do we appreciate that's? Very good Kyrene at the Mere Mortals podcast. Let's go, mo. Cheers to the developer. Oh, that's your developer. Cheers to the developers who make all the fancy stuff work and sent a row of Richards to you, yes.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:28

He also sent another one which I didn't quite understand but it's.

James Cridland: 1:12:53

I bought one kilogram of Tim Tams with me to Brazil. They've been a hit. Was going to bring Vegemite as well, but decided there is enough suffering in the world without me adding to it. Yes, he's. He's Ky, because I'm doing a session at the podcast show in London. We're talking about Australian podcasting and I would like, as a little bit of a gimmick, to leave a chocolate Tim Tam on every single chair. But I have no idea where to buy individually wrapped Tim Tams. If anyone knows, I thought Officeworks did, but I couldn't find any in Officeworks.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:13

Just get some penguins, James. It's the same thing.

James Cridland: 1:13:16

If anybody knows? No, that's not the point. So if anybody knows. Editor at podnewsnet, dave Jackson, 1,500 sats. Thank you, Dave. He says. I too, like John C Dvorak. What's your beef, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:13:30

Well, I just used to listen to John C Dvorak when he was working with Leo Laporte and I'd just say our politics are very different and unless he's changed. I just think hmm, I have nothing personal against John, I just don't like his politics.

James Cridland: 1:13:47

Well. Well, there you go. I've got no idea what his politics are and I don't care. No, sumquack, there's new names, new names, sumquack, shouting, audiobooks, boost, all in capitals. Thank you for a short row of Richards. Tankwater says how about calling them listener sats? This is your reverse sat idea. Um, yes, maybe, uh, pod home. Yeah, this must be barry, thanks for listening to. About podcasting and a smile. Um, great show with sam. Yes, um, I uh spotted this on the LinkedIn thing as well this week, him talking to you about all kinds of stuff. So it's available on a website allthewsaboutpodcastingshow allthewsaboutpodcastingshow for you to have a listen. 10,000 sats from Barry. So thank you for that.

Sam Sethi: 1:14:50

Just ignore the next one. I'm not sure that's just me actually sending out yes I know you've.

James Cridland: 1:14:54

You've sent us a boost. Thanks very much. That's very kind of you. And then, finally, 20 000 sats from kevin bay. Somehow, some way 1.2 million sats passed through my little v for v, music, podcast sats and sounds since started. I'm absolutely baffled by it all. I'll spend my portion on activity, pub education, kevin Bay. Thank you so much. I think that gives you a big baller jingle, which I don't have with me, but if I did, I would play it right now. So very kind. What's happened for you this week, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:15:29

Well, a couple of things. I don't know if you've read it yet, but the W3C have put out a new document called the Vision for the Web, which, again, I highly recommend everyone having a look at. It's very good. I guested with Adam and Dave last Friday, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Oh, thank you very much. Yeah, no, I thoroughly enjoyed that. And I listened to Mike McHugh from Flipboard. He's got a podcast called Dot Social and he interviewed Rachel Lambert and Peter Cottle, who are the people behind Threads, and they talked about federation of Threads and how it works with other activity pub clients, and they are fully committed to doing that. So that's really exciting. Sadly, you can't get Federation with Threads unless you're in the US, canada or Japan right now, so I can't test it. But I did enable my Flipboard to work with Fediverse clients, so now I can read all my Mastodon, or all my messages I used to read in Mastodon, now in my Flipboard, which is quite nice.

James Cridland: 1:16:30

Yeah, well, there's a thing. There's a thing I noticed you got a nice write-up in the city university of london alumni magazine, which I linked to earlier on in uh the week, um, talking about uh, what you're working on, which is very cool yeah, that was hannah.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:47

Very nice of her to do that. She's uh, yes, she's very good at doing that. I was going to tell you, tell you something she's doing, but I realized I can't, so I will move on. I was about to let the cat out the bag and I went yes, you're not allowed to say that's it, yeah. So, um, yes. And then I uh the last thing might be the most interesting thing actually, james, and we may have to talk about it next week.

Sam Sethi: 1:17:10

Um, I had a little rant about the lack of Podcasting 2.0 support from Podcast Movement Evolutions and the London Podcast Show. They basically have got nothing to say on Podcasting 2.0 that I can see. That's publicly available. So I just put a little rant up on Mastodon and Adam responded well, why don't we run our own conference? And he said I'll gladly promote and attend it anywhere in the world and thought so we started talking about should it be in Dallas? Should it be in Amsterdam? Where should it be? Blah, blah, blah. And then I remembered, james, I did a podcast festival back in 2019, which you were a part of. Indeed, I thought hang on a minute, why didn't we just do a virtual podcasting 2.0 conference using all the tools and technologies that we now have value for, value sats, live item tag and we can have a. You keynote it from the beginning. Adam coming in later from America means we can get any speaker anywhere in the world, as we did with the podcast festival, and just run a festival for 24 hours.

James Cridland: 1:18:12

So I'm looking at that now. Yes, that would be a very interesting plan, and if the only way of listening is through a podcasting 2.0 app, well, that would be even more exciting. And maybe that is the entrance fee. So, yeah, no, that sounds like a good plan. It means that nobody needs to travel anywhere. So, yes, roll on that as an idea. I'd say.

Kathryn Musilek: 1:18:38

Good luck with it.

Sam Sethi: 1:18:39

I'll leave you to it. Oh, thanks, mate. And the last one is I've agreed with the Podcast Academy to do a series of podcasting 2.0 events, talking about it from the PSP side. The first one is on the 21st of June. I'll have more details later. Very nice, very nice. So what's happened for you, james? Why are you in sunny Melbourne?

James Cridland: 1:19:05

Well, I'm in sunny Melbourne because I've got a few meetings tomorrow with some movers and shakers of the podcast world. That's what I'm telling my accountant. It has nothing to do with the fact that I'm also seeing a gig as well while I'm down here, but yes, I'm looking forward to that, so that should be good fun. What else has happened for me this week? Now here's the thing If you send, if you go onto the PodNews website and you send a link from one of the PodNews you know update pages, one of the normal pages that we do you send a link through iMessage, then you will notice that when you send a link through iMessage, there is a little play button and it plays you the audio right in I in iMessage or Messages or whatever the thing is called on iPhone, and it turns out that Messages uses the Open Graph audio tag, which I have gone mad and enabled for absolutely everything on the website now.

James Cridland: 1:20:08

So if you share our front page, then it will share a promo piece of audio for the Pod News newsletter. If you go and share this show, the Pod News Weekly Review, if you share this show's page from Pod News, then it will automatically share the trailer audio for that. So, yeah, I think I've hit on something here, wow, yeah, and you'll find that a number of different podcast hosting companies who I may have told about this have also turned this on as well. So, yeah, it turns out that messages is a surprisingly good method of, you know, giving you a little bit of audio to have listened to. So, yeah, that was an interesting discovery.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:01

You discovered the email one as well, didn't you?

James Cridland: 1:21:03

Yeah, yeah. So who knows? Who knows what's going on. What else are you?

Sam Sethi: 1:21:07

going to discover what else?

James Cridland: 1:21:10

am I going to discover and who else is going to put it into play? Who knows, and do you know what? The Messages app comes up as in your stats. No. It comes up as Apple Core Media. Another triumph, apple. And on that bombshell. That's it for this week. Thank you so much to Ross and to Catherine for being our guests. You can also listen to the Pod News Daily, of course, at podnewsnet.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:39

You can give feedback to James and I by sending this show a Boostergram. If your podcast app doesn't support Boost, then grab a new app from podcasting2.org. Forward slash apps.

James Cridland: 1:21:49

Our music is from studio Dragonfly. Our voiceover is Sheila D. We use Clean Feed for this excellent sound, even in a hotel room, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout Podcast. Hosting made easy. Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

Kathryn Musilek: 1:22:07

Tell your friends and grow the show and support us, and support us. The Pod News. Weekly Review will return next week. Keep listening.