James Cridland: It's Friday, the 31st of January 2025.
Announcer: The last word in podcasting news.
This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Cridland and
Sam Sethi.
Sam Sethi: I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News, and I'm
Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans.
Andreaa Coscai: I think there's just so much that we can learn
from one another.
James Cridland: Andrea Koskaj on Eurowaves and why it's a new
useful tool for podcasters everywhere, also in the chapters
.
Today has tuned in, tuned out of new podcasts.
Audio podcasts have 150% higher listen-through rate than video
podcasts.
Podx has bought someone else, and which podcast has won the
political podcast of the year?
This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout, our sponsor.
Sam Sethi: A little bit of a congratulations is due to them.
James Cridland: What have they done?
Yes, techradar have said, in a review of all of the best
podcast hosts, they reckon that Buzzsprout is the best podcast
hosting company.
Also in that list Podbean, libsyn, captivate and Transistor
, but Buzzsprout gets the number one overall, which is always
nice for our sponsors.
So hurrah, hurrah.
How do they measure that, though?
They measure that with lots of different things.
So basically they say so.
For example, you know, captivate is the best for
corporates, it says, and professionals.
Libsyn is best for no frills.
Let's not go there, but Buzzsprout Is that a euphemism?
Sorry, a euphemism for no features.
I think one of the downsides that they gave there was
complicated interface, I'll say.
But Buzzsprout was best overall .
And, yeah, they like the excellent customer support,
hurrah, they like the easy-to-use interface.
They don't like the fact that you get charged per podcast show
.
Well, it's one way of charging.
And they also don't like the idea that there's no private
podcasting.
Well, that's not what Buzzsprout's all about, but it
certainly is what some of the other ones are all about.
So, yeah, it's a nice release and everything else.
I should say that a few friends of the show have been in touch
and said why did you focus on that?
And their list hasn't actually changed in the last four years.
Well, that might be because Buzzsprout's still a pretty good
service.
So, yeah, but yeah, certainly useful at least.
Uh, seeing all of that excellent, well done buzzsprout.
Sam Sethi: Now there's some new figures out, james, for the
industry.
Some of it's good, some of it's bad.
James Cridland: Give me the highlights yeah, some of it is
good, some of it is bad.
This is um ad revenue um for the industry, the podcast
industrial complex, as uh, adam Curry calls it.
The IAB do a study of ad buyers and they say that, well,
podcast ad spend will still go up this year, but not by much.
Total advertising is set to grow by 7.3%.
Podcasting will just beat that at 7.4% growth this year and
that's likely to be less than it was last year.
And they are talking about its market share dropping, and this
was a surprise.
A company called S&P, global Market Intelligence, has said
that the US podcast industry, which you might remember, hit
$1.9 billion in 2023.
They have confidently said that it's not going to hit $2
billion in revenue until 2032, which is quite some time in the
future.
I think they've got it wrong personally, but it's always
interesting to see what these people are saying grew over the
last year by about 14%.
Then you can expect, therefore, us to hit the 2 billion revenue
when it's announced in May, but we'll see what S&P end up
saying.
Interesting little note from ACAST's Greg Glenday, who posted
something a little bit grumpy on LinkedIn about the IAB.
It's the IAB's 2025 Annual Leadership Meeting in Palm
Springs, good luck with meeting in there at the moment.
And it's $3,400.
If you want to go, by the way, and you're a member of the IAB,
well, if you're not a member, how much does it cost you then?
$4,400?
If you're to go, by the way, and you're a member of the IAB,
well, if you're not a member, how much does it cost you then?
$4,400?
If you're not a member, can you believe?
Sam Sethi: Won't be going for either reason.
James Cridland: No, I mean, I won't be going to either of
those, but anyway, so you know.
I mean that's a proper shindig, isn't it?
But Greg Glenday from ACcast said that he was disappointed
that podcasting barely registers a footnote, even in the shadow
of the podcast election, and he added this is one of the fastest
growing parts of the creator economy and it's still
undervalued and misunderstood.
Maybe this means that the podcast industry is waking up to
the fact that the IAB is not their friend and that they
should be moving away and doing something better not their
friend and that they should be moving away and doing something
better.
If it was up to me, we would all be funding our own podcast
advertising bureau and not leaving it to people who are
also selling video pre-rolls and also selling ad banners with
punching the monkey on it.
That would be my own personal view, but anyway, let's not stop
that.
Sam Sethi: Again, listeners, that is not a euphemism.
James Cridland: Oh, dear family show.
Let's not stop that Again.
Listeners, that is not a euphemism.
Yes, oh, dear Family show.
Sam Sethi: I'll rate it E this week, don't worry.
James Cridland: Having said that , though, there have been some
interesting bits of data and some good news for the industry
More listeners than ever to podcasts in the US.
According to the Triton Digital 2024 US podcast report, they
reckon that 44% of the US public listen to podcasts every month.
Sounds Profitable's numbers are a bit higher I seem to remember
53%, but in any case they've gone up and that's the important
thing.
Youtube, apparently, according to this, still continues to be
the most preferred platform for a third of all podcast listeners
.
Apple Podcasts still seems to be going down 12.2% for Apple
Podcasts.
I wonder what they could do to actually change that Release any
features.
Sam Sethi: Release the feature.
Apple Release the features.
James Cridland: I do hear that there is a feature being
released.
Wow, I'm not reporting on it because I suspect that whoever
has told me hasn't understood that there was an NDA.
Sam Sethi: But it's not a feature that you'll see in the
Apple Podcasts app.
We'll leave it at that.
It's uh, make life easier for us podcasters.
So basically, no new features for apple.
Look blink once.
Apple podcast team.
If you're still alive, just let us know so we're.
James Cridland: we will see.
I think that the change that they're going to make um is
going to be a good change because I think that that will
help move the industry forward a little bit, but it isn't
something that a listener will see, but even so, that I thought
was interesting.
A couple of other bits of data that might be useful.
A strong overlap who would have thought?
A strong overlap between newspaper readers and podcast
listeners.
According to a new study from the Media Audit, apparently, if
you read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times thought a
strong overlap between newspaper readers and podcast
listeners.
According to a new study from the Media Audit, apparently if
you read the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times or USA
Today, then you are almost twice as likely to listen to podcasts
as the US average, which I thought was interesting to see.
Also, in terms of data, there was a really interesting piece
of information from Acast.
All around commuters, podcast listeners who listen to and from
work super valuable anyway because they listen to a lot of
podcasts.
But also it turns out super valuable because they react to
advertising more 22% more focused, 10% more likely to
engage with ads, 15 percent more likely to consider podcast time
an essential part of their day.
So some nice data that has come out of that too.
Sam Sethi: Looks like CarPlay offline playlists might be
critical features for apps.
James Cridland: Yes, and I think particularly CarPlay.
That certainly, or indeed Android Auto is, I think,
certainly something that's worthwhile bearing in mind,
because there is an awful lot of audio listening in cars, for
obvious reasons.
And the other thing that I thought was interesting it's not
necessarily data, although there is a little bit of data in
there, but it's something that I thought this was interesting,
that it took the Germans to do it.
I thought this was interesting that it took the Germans to do
it.
The podcasters in the UK haven't bothered, the podcasters
in the US haven't bothered, but the podcasters in Germany have
put together a lovely presentation from both podcast
publishers and marketers about the benefits of audio-only
podcasts and basically saying they are much better than video
podcasts.
Focus on audio-only podcasts, because that is where the future
of the medium is.
Why it had to be the Germans doing this and not anybody else,
I really don't know, but nevertheless, it's a great white
paper.
Now, the first time I linked to it, the white paper was in
German, although the press release that I covered was in
English.
If you saw that and you thought well, I don't speak German,
well, that's absolutely fine.
Take a peek at Pod News on Thursday and you'll find it was
also linked in English as well, so you can now arm yourself with
all of the facts and the stats in there.
What did you think about that, sam?
Sam Sethi: Yeah, look, I think personally it's great to see
that, and once you see it in writing, actually you go obvious
.
Yes, isn't it obvious?
It's like everything in hindsight is obvious once you
know it.
And I think this is one of those moments where you go
clearly.
I understand it because that's what it reflects on my own
behaviour.
I don't watch, you know, videos to the end, it's just not
natural.
But I might watch them.
Why Because I'm in the car, why Because I'm at the gym, or why
Because I can't?
James Cridland: get to my phone.
Sam Sethi: No, I think that's great Good work.
James Cridland: Germans.
Why and you know the IAB would never do that.
Of course, because the IAB is there promoting video ads as
well as audio ads, because they are not our friend.
And if we had a podcast advertising bureau, maybe one of
the first things that they would be doing is actually
turning around and saying no, audio podcasts are amazingly
good for you advertisers.
No, audio podcasts are amazingly good for you
advertisers.
But no, all of the Americans and all of the Brits and all of
the Australians have just sat on our hands and gone.
Whatever you say, mr Spotify, whatever you say, mr YouTube,
and it's such a missed opportunity.
So I'm so delighted to see that the Germans have ended up doing
that.
Sam Sethi: Grab the English version of that slide deck and
use that to help you sell ads is what I would say for, um, how
do we do that?
Um, you know it's not going to magically happen, right?
The PSP, unfortunately.
Yeah, it's not going to make it happen, and I don't see
companies combining.
I don't see any of the big ad companies which would be in
their interest, like Triton, doing something or well, but,
but you know, this presentation from the Germansans shows it.
James Cridland: I mean, you know that that essentially was uh,
acast was in there, along with a company called 71 audio, axel
springer, which is a massive publisher in germany, uh, iq,
the audio alliance, and various other people, um, who I can't
pronounce um.
So they've certainly done that and I I think, if you look at
the UK, for example, there has been a consortium of podcast
publishers who have been making noises about the BBC and saying
that the BBC should stop thinking about advertising
within their podcasts in the UK.
So all of that kind of stuff is going.
We can see that podcast publishers will work together on
things like that.
So I think it's just another case of I mean, these podcast
publishers are working together on other things.
Why are they just letting the IB run this industry and own the
relationship between them and the advertiser?
To me it's just a weird old thing.
Sam Sethi: The other things that you pointed out there.
Okay, I've got a couple of questions.
One is why is YouTube still seen as the platform for
podcasting?
Is it because, look, it's a term I want to use for 25.
Is it a super app?
Is it a multifunction app?
And that's why people go to it?
They go to it to watch video, listen to podcasts, play music,
go to look at a film.
Maybe Is that why it's dominating, or is there another
reason?
James Cridland: The data says YouTube continues to be the most
preferred platform for 33% of all podcast listeners.
What's that?
What that isn't saying is that YouTube gets the most listeners,
or indeed that YouTube gets the most listens either.
All it's saying is that people who've used Apple and YouTube
and you know, you know whatever prefer to use YouTube.
So, and why might that be the case?
Well, because you know, I don't know, maybe it's a decent app,
but that doesn't say that the majority of podcasts consumed
are on the YouTube platform, and I think that's, you know,
something that we kind of forget about and it's probably
important just to bear in mind.
So that's sort of one side.
But yeah, I mean, why is YouTube continuing to do really well?
Why is Apple Podcasts slumping?
Is it truly because no new features, although there have
been a few new features in the last year, and you know, and
Spotify seems to be doing pretty well as well.
So, yeah, it's a curious one.
Maybe Apple Podcasts, the lack of video in Apple Podcasts?
I know it does it, but the lack of decent video in Apple
Podcasts is one of the reasons.
I don't know.
Sam Sethi: Well, I would say that may be one of them.
I think you know there's a dozen other reasons I could give
you that they don't do.
The other one, james, is we talked about the growth of users
, which is brilliant, but why, would anyone say because from
what you read it would sound to me like advertising is
flatlining we think it's not flatlining.
We think it's going to burst through the two billion?
Given the roganomics and the political advertising, the money
must be coming towards podcasting.
So why would S&P say that it's not going to go through the two
billion mark for another half a decade?
James Cridland: Well, yes, I mean, that's a good question
really.
They say that things are going to decline in 2025, primarily
since it's not an election year, it's not an Olympic year in the
US, and this is just purely US numbers, of course, and so you
know that is one thing, but it doesn't really say very much
more about the thinking behind that number.
Thinking behind that number it's expecting that podcasting
will triple in terms of ad share by 2034.
So at the moment, it's about 6% and they reckon it'll be about
16%, and so you know it should do a bit better.
But yeah, it's a curious one that I don't fully understand
why they seem to be marking podcasting down.
Sam Sethi: Let's move on, then, to your friend Richard Stern,
ceo of TuneIn.
What's he been?
James Cridland: after my friend, my friend who doesn't talk to
me, my friend, yes exactly.
Sam Sethi: Doesn't ring, doesn't call, doesn't send you an email
.
What's he?
James Cridland: up to no, indeed .
So, yes, he didn't talk to us.
Of course, you might remember I was doing some digging and
asking.
I just asked him one simple question Can you tell us when
we're going to be able to add podcasts to your platform?
And he sent me directly to their customer support people
who sent me back the copy and paste which they've been sending
back since February, and then blocked me on LinkedIn, which is
how I got in touch with him.
So I thought well, there you go .
Anyway, he ended up talking to iHeart's podcast News Daily,
which apparently is a thing that iCast do, and they carried a
full interview.
And they probably carried the full interview for two reasons
Firstly, because, of course, it was also carried in iHeart's
inside radio and so, therefore, was talking to lots of radio.
People Tune in hugely important to radio, and one of the things
that Richard Stern basically said is look, and one of the
things that Richard Stern basically said is look, 96% of
listening on TuneIn is to live audio.
There's no revenue in us adding a podcast, he said, and so
therefore, we're not really updating our podcast directory
for anything other than our partners' podcasts, and he's got
no plans to change that Absolutely no plans.
So it was interesting.
Absolutely no plans.
So it was interesting.
And, to give iHeart their due, they did ask him a few, you know
, difficult questions of you.
Know how are you?
You know how are you making money and why aren't you
supporting podcasts, and blah, blah blah.
The only podcasts that are being updated are partners'
podcasts, because they get a data feed directly from some of
those partners, and one of those partners, surprise, surprise,
is iHeart.
So that explains that one Don't expect a Christmas card.
Sam Sethi: That's all I'll say Now.
Is anyone else, James, do you think, going to start a
podcasting newsletter?
James Cridland: Well, I mean, I hope so.
I mean, there's somebody in Australia who stole most of my
work and has produced something which looks awful, but it's
still going, so I'm not quite sure what's going on there, but
anyway, ignoring him.
Yes, there are a number of interesting people, including
Katie Law from Pod the North, which is a newsletter all about
Canada, and also there's a new podcast newsletter covering
podcasting in Europe, which is a little bit different, isn't it?
You caught up with Andrea Koskaj?
Yeah, she's lovely.
Sam Sethi: She's worked with Lauren Purcell and Ariel
Nissenblatt over at Tinksh.
I say has is working with them still, but she's moved back to
Europe and she's started a new podcast newsletter called
Eurowaves.
So I thought I'd start off by asking her why she started it.
Andreaa Coscai: So Eurowaves is not to sound cliche, but it is
the first European podcasting newsletter and my goal for it is
to connect different European podcasting industries to see
what the connections are, what the missing links are and how we
can come together more.
Now I'm also very interested in the rest of the world, so not
only within Europe, but also connecting Europe and the US and
you know the UK specific industry and beyond that, canada
and Asia and Africa.
There's so much.
So this is just the beginning, but that is kind of my vision
for it and, yeah, it's been amazing right so far, everyone
has been so supportive, as people are in the podcasting
industry and, yeah, just trying to see how I can be helpful and
contribute to the growth.
Sam Sethi: Okay, we're at newsletter four.
When did you come up with the idea?
When did you suddenly go?
I want to do this, Mm-hmm you come up with the idea?
Andreaa Coscai: When did you suddenly go?
I want to do this.
So I would say it was about last fall, because I started
working with Tink Media, which we'll probably go more into a
little bit later, but I was very much involved in the US
podcasting space.
I was living there for five years and, just for context, I'm
originally from Romania and I have been back in Europe for
about a year and a half and what I've been doing since I came
back is trying to figure out how the Romanian podcasting
landscape is, what I can bring to it and what can be done
really from everything I'm learning from the US podcasting
space and it's pretty limited.
So that was disappointing, but at the same time, it's exciting
because there are a lot of opportunities and I said, okay,
let me not just stop at Romania, I want to go beyond that and I
want to see what's going on in Europe and, to my surprise,
there are so many amazing projects going on, so many
podcast production companies, even, you know, cross-border
collaborations, which is one of the things that I'm most excited
about cross-border collaborations, which is one of
the things that I'm most excited about.
So that's kind of how the idea came together.
I've spoken with a few people who were very supportive and
gave me some ideas.
Lauren was supportive from the get-go, lauren Passell, ariel
Nissenblad, who I also work with at Earbuds, yeah, and I said,
okay, let me give it a go.
Sam Sethi: Okay, let's cover them.
We've mentioned them enough times already.
So Lauren at Tink and Ariel, how did you meet them?
Andreaa Coscai: So okay to go back a little bit to where I was
when I met them.
So I was in the States for five years and I was kind of in
between gigs.
I was freelancing at that point in podcasting and I started out
freelancing in production, which I really miss, and then also
doing a bit of social media marketing, which, if you know
Tink and if you know our opinions about social media
marketing, it can be helpful to engage your audience, but it's
not necessarily going to be the best for audience growth, which
is what I also saw in my project .
And I was really looking to find a community of podcast
lovers, as I am, I just love listening to podcasts, not only
working in the industry, but I love the medium as a whole.
So I put out an announcement on listservs telling everyone that
you know I can be helpful with anything production, marketing,
social media, just all the skill sets I had production,
marketing, social media, just all the skill sets I had.
And Ariel reached out at the time actually and said they were
looking to add someone to the team.
We had a call.
We immediately had such a great energy and, as you know, they
are really amazing people and then it yeah, it moved on from
there.
Sam Sethi: So what was your role when you were there?
Were you helping produce the newsletter?
Were you helping produce?
What were you doing?
Andreaa Coscai: So, yeah, I'm still working with Tink Media
and basically have been doing a lot of PR and marketing, and
I've been loving it.
I learned so much about the industry.
I learned so much about what really builds an audience from
that perspective of a community and engaging with them, and how
impactful storytelling can be, which is what draws me to the
medium in the first place.
So, yeah, that's what I've been doing learning so much from
everyone and then also bringing in what I was previously doing
to Tink and this kind of multicultural, international
angle.
Sam Sethi: So what's your strategy for growth, then for
Eurowaves?
Andreaa Coscai: It's honestly, it's the same as podcast growth,
I would say, because podcast growth is all about making
podcast friends and that's the industry as a whole.
So my strategy for Eurowaves is continuing to build those
connections, which is like the vision of the newsletter itself.
So I feel like it's kind of self-fulfilling, almost.
And then, yeah, continuing to also support other newsletters
at the same time amplify them, amplify other creators, connect
them, and then it happens.
Sam Sethi: Is there going to be a podcast?
Andreaa Coscai: Oh, great question.
I had not thought of before, but that's how I want to think,
yes, I, I know I've been so wrapped up in, like, okay,
writing the issue, sending this email connecting with this
person, and like the little tasks that add up to a lot.
But, yeah, it was right there.
Well, I will think about it for sure now excellent 2025.
Sam Sethi: What do you see happening across the industry?
Given your years of experience in the US?
Now you're back in Europe.
What does Andrea see going to happen in 2025?
Andreaa Coscai: Well, my hopes are for that international
collaboration, because I think there's just so much that we can
learn from one another, as I'm meeting with more creators from
Europe and trying to compare with what I know from the US.
Even the monetization models are very different.
For example, europe is very much subscription based, so
that's something that could be more implemented in the US.
Obviously, the US industry is already at another level, but I
think there's always more room for growth and everyone's
looking to diversify their income stream.
So maybe paying closer attention to that and then, vice
versa, probably putting more, so an emphasis on narrative
podcasts in Europe as well, and this is a pretty, you know,
focused look I'm taking at podcasting right now.
It doesn't really talk about the so many other podcasting
industries, like in Africa and Asia and so many parts of the
world, but this is what I'm hyper focused on right now, so
that's why I'm talking about that.
But I would love to see more narrative podcasts in Europe as
well and a lot more play with multi-language.
I'm personally a language nerd, so I'm biased about that.
I think podcasts can be a great way to practice your language
skills, and AI is definitely helpful in that sense.
That's the hot topic in podcasting these years, but I
think it needs to be used carefully so that we still pay
attention to the cultural differences, the nuances and,
you know, any kind of references that would make sense for a
German listener would not make any sense for a Romanian
listener, so you cannot just translate directly.
And, yeah, there are definitely maybe some tools that can be
developed in that sense.
Sam Sethi: Yeah, one of the tools that we be developed in
that sense, yeah, one of the tools that we love is
WonderCraft.
They do a great job.
They use the technology from Eleven Labs to allow you to use
podcast translation of your voice, but in your tone.
So, james, has done a really good job of speaking Japanese
strangely, or suddenly speaking Italian, or whatever.
I think WonderCraft's done a really good job and I think AI
has done a good job.
So you talked about subscription.
How does Eurowaves make its money then?
Are you going to go subscription?
Are you going to stay open?
Andreaa Coscai: I will definitely stay open for the
most part.
I think that's part of my personal ethos as well, and it's
been a trend in all the work I've done so far.
I'm also the founder of Her Time Romania, which is an NGO in
Romania focused on leadership for young women and their
personal and professional development, and so we did have
some paid events and paid opportunities, but the main goal
was really making education accessible for everyone, so
that's definitely my goal for Eurowaves as well.
What I would love, though, is to partner up with some brands,
companies, you know, creators who would love to promote their
work, and, you know, as I mentioned, eurowaves is all
about amplifying what's in the podcast community.
Sam Sethi: And will we see you in Boston at Podcast Movement,
or will we see you in London at the London Podcast Show, or
where else?
Might we see you in Boston at Podcast Movement, or will we see
you in London at the London Podcast Show or where?
Andreaa Coscai: else, might we see you?
Yes, I am planning to come to the podcast show.
It is not 100% confirmed yet, as I assume it's for most people
, but I would love love to come to Podcast Movement as well,
also because that's where Tink Media folks gather up usually
and we need to meet more often face-to-face, because our energy
, just virtually, is already amazing.
I was also thinking of Radio Days Europe, which is another
amazing conference.
As you know, it's in Athens this year.
Yeah, there are a lot of great events I also share in my
newsletter for anyone listening who is in Europe or is visiting
Europe at whatever point of the year.
I do share different events happening in Lithuania, germany,
belgium, all over.
So if you happen to be taking a trip somewhere and you're a
podcaster, you might find an event and, yeah, it'll be
included in the newsletter.
Sam Sethi: Okay, Last question If you could have one interview
in the podcasting space, who would you interview?
Andreaa Coscai: Well, it'll have to be someone in the US space,
because I have to say, that's how I started out loving
podcasting.
I'm absolutely in love with Caitlin Press' work At the Heart
.
That was one of the first podcasts I listened to and I can
really see how it influenced just my podcast listening habits
, because they're always sound design heavy, so it would
probably be Caitlin Press.
And then, oh, I'm also very excited to be interviewing some
Romanian podcasters because I didn't get to touch on it but,
even though it's not as developed as I wish it would be,
there's so many independent creators doing narrative work
and really doing podcasts about social issues and it's amazing
and I would love to share that more with the world because I
think it needs to be more seen.
Sam Sethi: Andrea, tell everyone where they can go and get
subscribed to Eurowaves.
Andreaa Coscai: You can find Eurowaves on Substack and I post
every couple of weeks.
It's a bit of a longer newsletter, so don't worry,
you'll be happy.
It's every two weeks so you can catch up on it.
You can also find it on LinkedIn and you can find me on
LinkedIn.
I would love to connect and share more thoughts about where
the industry is headed and what we can do to grow the industry
as a whole.
And listenership that's a huge thing.
That's on my mind.
So, yeah, I'm excited to connect and thank you again so
much, sam.
Sam Sethi: Pleasure.
James and I really wanted to reach out and you know help, so
anything else we can do, just shout back.
We're always there.
Andreaa Coscai: Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Announcer: The Pub News Weekly Review.
With Buzzsprout Podcast hosting made easy Right.
Sam Sethi: Right Around the world, James.
Let's start off with India.
What's been happening over there, mate?
James Cridland: What has been happening over there.
Well, amazon Music held a big who Still going.
Actually, amazon Music is really big in India.
It is actually, I believe it's either the second or the third
biggest.
I think it's the second biggest podcast.
It is actually, um.
So, who knows, maybe maybe next year Amazon, maybe next year,
um, but uh, good to end up seeing that uh pod the North
ended up giving us uh, seven podcast recommendations for
Canadian listeners, um, to help keep them informed and connected
.
Not that anything's going on in Canada right now.
You know there's, no, there's nobody breathing down their neck
saying we would like to own you , um, you know they've got good,
strong leadership.
Uh, um, um, uh, breathing down their neck saying we would like
to own you.
You know they've got good, strong leadership.
Our friends at PodX seem to be doing a bunch of interesting
things.
They have their company, filt, has announced a reorganisation.
They've done a little bit of sort of merging with a company
that they own in Finland and they've launched across the
Nordics, which is good.
But they've also bought Arunda Studio, which is their second
acquisition in Latin America, their first in Mexico and, yeah,
it's a big podcast company there that they have bought.
So PodX is still on the go.
So many congratulations to them for their growth.
What else is going on, sam?
Sam Sethi: Talking about moving on.
Is anyone moving on?
Because let's talk about people in jobs.
Where are they off?
To James.
James Cridland: Yes, well, so there's a few new jobs.
Jonathan Pascoe, who's a jolly nice man, has joined UK
production company Listen as executive producer.
He's got a video background.
He used to work at MTV and Comedy Central Before that,
though, working on BBC Radio 2, on the Chris Evans Bradford Show
, I think, and on Heart with Jamie and Harriet, I think all
the way back then, perhaps.
Anyway, jonathan, now working at Listen, listen very excited
about what they call a visualised podcast, but given
that it's not available on podcast platforms, I don't call
it that.
I call it a TV show.
But many congratulations, listen.
What else has gone on?
Stephen TVO Holgren he's a very clever man.
I saw him at a podcast movement in Washington DC last year.
He was working as a part-time CTO, or as a fractional CTO, as
everybody calls part-time these days.
Anyway, he's now joined as a full-time chief technology
officer for the company.
So many congratulations to him.
Ryan Morrison, who's worthwhile following on the socials.
He used to be a BBC News tech journalist.
He's now working at a content editor at Eleven Labs, the voice
and AI company.
And some sad news out of the US .
Gary Krantz, who you may know as someone who was helping run
podcast radio in the US.
He also worked with me on our acquisition of the podcast
Business Journal.
He has died.
He had a long history of being in the radio business.
Obviously, our hearts go out to his family.
He was just 65.
In terms of other things, lots of layoffs at SiriusXM.
Sam.
Sam Sethi: Very serious.
I see what you did there.
Yes, I'll get my coat Right.
Why are they doing that, james?
Because it seems that they're doing fairly well.
I mean, alex Cooper we call her daddy's moved over there and
they seem to be acquiring podcasts.
I mean, they paid what was it?
Two hundred twenty five million to get her over.
So they've got the money.
So what is this?
Is this DEI?
James Cridland: They do seem to be going relatively well.
Having said that, sirius XM as a whole relatively well.
Having said that SiriusXM as a whole, you know, I mean it leans
a lot on its broadcast, because it does broadcast satellite
radio leans a lot on its in-car stuff.
That's where it earns a lot of its money and all of that bit
isn't working so well for them.
But I think it does point to the size of the company.
A hundred people have been laid off at SiriusXM, which is 2% of
the workforce, just 2% of the workforce.
They've got a lot of people working at that company.
So yeah, I mean, earwolf has been looking as if it's been
dying for a long time.
That's their comedy podcast network.
Amelia Chappellow, who was executive producer at Earwolf,
is one of those who's been laid off, and so I would expect the
Earwolf name to continue to slowly go away.
But yeah, they did make an interesting change though,
didn't they?
Over the week, apparently, they've pulled their video
versions of Call Her Daddy from Spotify.
So if you want to watch the video of Call Her Daddy, you can
watch it on YouTube now and the SiriusXM app, but if you're on
Spotify, you only get the audio version now, which is
interesting.
Sam Sethi: Ashley Cooper's got her own network called Unwell
Network, and she's also done that with other shows.
So Hot Mess and Pretty Lonesome , whatever shows that I clearly
have not watched and, yes, she's moved those all over to YouTube
.
So there, yeah, well, there you go.
Didn't like Spotify's exclusive anyway.
Didn't like Spotify too much.
James Cridland: Yeah, I wonder whether or not part of it is
that they've been earning quite a lot of money from the audio
version and, of course, as soon as you upload a video version
onto Spotify, that overwrites the audio, so it actually makes
it harder for them to to monetize.
Sam Sethi: I don't know, but, um , that might be one of one of
the reasons perhaps, but um still or the other reason being
they have no idea, like the whole of the industry, as to how
much you make with video.
Yet come on, spotify, release the numbers.
James Cridland: Well, yes, um, there is uh always that.
Well, uh, yes, it's possibly not for Spotify to release, but
I'm sure that one of the partners will release some of
that data in the next couple of months.
Sam Sethi: No, no no, I mean not how much have you been consumed
, how much you make?
Well, yes, is it all those questions we've had in a couple
of weeks, you know?
Is it 0.00001p per video?
0.00001p per video?
What are you making?
James Cridland: Well, and also SiriusXM has signed the Fantasy
Footballers.
Again, that's a set of individual podcasts.
Now, the Fantasy Footballers in 2020, they were with SiriusXM.
In 2021, they moved to Audioboom.
In 2022, they moved to Spotify and here we are, 2025, and
they're back at SiriusXM.
The show once had a live show on Spotify's Green Room, if you
can remember that far back.
But they're going to have a live show again on one of the
SiriusXM live channels.
But they're going to have a live show again on one of the
SiriusXM live channels.
So you know, siriusxm still doing the deals, which is always
interesting to end up seeing.
Is this where we announce our deal with SiriusXM or do we keep
that till next week?
We might keep that until, I mean, for somebody saying, spill
the beans of a deal that we've got Sam Sethi.
Ah, yes, I'm surprised.
Oh, moving on, moving on.
Announcer: The Tech Stuff.
Tech Stuff On the Pod News Weekly Review.
James Cridland: Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday
in the Pod News newsletter.
Here's where Sam talks technology, even more so than
he's been doing already.
Sam Sethi: Sam, what have you got?
No Spotify so far.
There we go.
Yes, yeah, feedback to everybody who's given us
critical feedback.
I was going to say criticism, critical feedback, saying yes,
now we're saving that for this bit, right at the end, so you
can tune out, use chapters, we have them Right.
Podcast Vibes is a piece of research from Yuri Vyshensky.
I'll go through that very fast so no one knows I got that wrong
.
He's using AI to extract subjects and emotions from
individual shows.
Tell me more, james.
James Cridland: I think this is really cool.
So he has basically worked out from my point of view, he has
worked out using AI, not just what someone is saying, but the
emotion that they have.
Is it sarcasm, is it laughter, is it humour, is it nervousness?
So he's worked out all of the emotion alongside the words that
have been said.
And I think if you were to have a look at brand suitability
scores, for example, actually using emotion is a hugely
important part of that, because if you can work out oh well,
actually, when that person said that they were being sarcastic,
for example, then that changes completely, can?
Sam Sethi: it work out, sarcasm.
James Cridland: Well, can it work out sarcasm, but it looked
pretty impressive, so yeah, so we linked to that.
This week.
We also linked to PodOps, which has added a product called AI
Blog, which is a new feature to turn audio into written articles
, just like you've had with Buzzsprout, our sponsor, for the
last year and a half.
So congratulations to PodOps for that.
Yes, that's one of the things that co-host allows you to do.
It will take the transcript of your show and it will write a
blog post, if you want that, which you can then copy and
paste onto your own blog.
So you can check that out, obviously, at buzzsproutcom.
String Bean Radio.
What's Stringbean Radio?
Sam Sethi: Sam, I'm not too sure , but when I looked at the link,
it was a website which basically uploads the audio,
reads the audio to try and find if you've been a guest on a show
, and it caught Lex Friedman on 104 shows and Marco Arment on 88
shows.
Gosh, that's what Marco does, right?
I wonder what he does it's amazing Right I haven't even
done 88 shows, I think no, anyway, but it looks very good,
except it's very light in data, because I looked for James
Gridland and there was not a lot there of James Gridland, which
I was quite surprised about.
And the UI is pretty cool.
What they're trying to do is find where you've been a guest
or where you've been not obviously a host.
And this is very similar to what Russell Harrow did at Pod 2
, which was to come up with a product he called Pod ID.
He's in the process of completing that.
Now he's bought a new NVIDIA card.
They're helping with transcripts , so, um, we'll see if that
helps.
But yeah, again, I think it's quite good for discovery if you
can find out where people it's a bit like a human pod role,
that's the best I can describe it um, where's james been on
which shows as a guest?
Because I like james cridland and I therefore want to find out
what else he says on other people's shows.
Now, that's not easy to do.
So these types of services Stringbean Radio, which I don't
know why it's called that, and PodID are examples of looking at
the transcripts, finding the names, aggregating that together
in some sort of UI, which then I can then follow that
individual and then get alerted when the next time you're a
guest on another show that I wasn't aware of yes.
James Cridland: So yeah, I know it's um.
Yeah, I mean, you can achieve quite a lot of this with the um,
with the podcast people tag, uh , of course.
But the podcast people tag has a problem that you don't
necessarily know that the James Cridland who was on this
particular show is the same James Cridland as the James
Cridland that was on that particular show.
I mean, in my case it probably will be because of my relatively
unusual name.
But if you're called Dave Jones , no chance, you know so that's.
Sam Sethi: But having said that, buzzsprout updated the person
tag for us as a hosting company, you can now tag guests in
episodes correctly as a guest using the person tag.
And again, hello podcast industry.
Where's everyone else doing it?
Why aren't we having those things done?
They're super simple to implement.
Why can't we do it?
James Cridland: Well, yes, indeed, talking about podcast
hosting companies, rsscom, which I'm an advisor to they've
launched it says here a set of tweaks and updates, including a
web player that now has iOS Dynamic Island Support, which is
very exciting.
I instantly looked at that and I thought Dynamic Island Support
, that looks amazing.
I should make sure that I'm doing that for the PodNews
website as well, but I think I'm already doing it.
I think that for the PodNews website as well, but I think I'm
already doing it.
I think that's the media.
Isn't that just the media API?
I'm not sure.
Sam Sethi: I think it's that little black thing at the top of
your fancy iPhone that plays what's going on.
James Cridland: Yes, and I think as long as you support the
media web API, then I think that it supports that automatically
free, but I'd like to learn a little bit more about that.
So that's good.
They also have what they call improved Podroll support.
I have no idea how it's been improved, but nevertheless,
support for Podroll is a brilliant thing.
If there's one thing I would like everybody to be doing by
the end of the year, it's Podroll, because it's super
simple, super easy and it will grow the industry.
Sam Sethi: I mean, it's a super obvious thing They'd be giving
up on trying to rename it to recommend now.
James Cridland: I well have I cared about that in the past.
Sam Sethi: I don't know.
I think a few people have They've gone.
Oh, I don't like the name Podroll.
It doesn't mean anything, I mean.
James Cridland: I think the name Podroll is awful and it should
never exist in UX at all.
But yeah, but I'm not so sure about that.
Anyway, that's what's going on.
Excitement with Descript and with Riverside and all of these
things.
What's going on with those?
Sam Sethi: Well, Descript have announced that they've extended
their language dubbing to 20 languages now.
So if you've got a video and you want to then put it into a
different language and you don't ask your guest to redo anything
, you can now put your guest into a Danish or Greek or Hindi
or whatever you want and push that out.
So it's quite a nice little feature.
It's very simple to use within the video element of Descript.
So congratulations.
If you want to see it working, they have a live session on
February the 4th.
You can sign up on Descript and they're going to do a demo of
that.
Now Riverside, I found I was just hunting around and I hadn't
noticed that Riverside had fundamentally morphed into
StreamYard, or StreamYard's been swallowed by Riverside.
I don't know which way you want to look at it, but they've
basically added live broadcasting to Riverside.
Now we used to use Riverside and it was great.
It does 4K.
It's very similar to Squadcast.
So you know, pick your, pick your um various platform.
But now you can do things like live broadcasting to facebook or
twitch or youtube or linkedin, which is what I meant by uh
streamyard.
It's taken all that functionality one click straight
into any of those platforms and , of course, they use uh rtmp
real-time media player protocol, sorry, and that means that you
might be able to take a URL and put it into the live item tags.
I'm going to try and test that and see if that works.
Good news I reached out to Kendall, who is their community
manager at Riverside, and she'll be on the show next week to
talk all about what they've actually done.
So you don't have to listen to me surmise.
And also good news they're going to be a sponsor for
PodCamp 2.0, the event I'm running in London, and we will
be using Riverside to broadcast live to all those platforms as
well as podcasting 2.0 apps.
James Cridland: So that's what we're planning to do Very cool,
very cool.
So tell us about PodCamp 2.0.
Last week, I seem to remember that you dangled a big
announcement that you weren't quite able to make in front of
us last week.
Is that still?
Sam Sethi: the case.
Yeah, God, I can send you the email which was from the people
concerned.
We'll let you know on Monday.
Where were we now?
Yeah, Monday's gone.
Hello, Can't announce things, Can't announce it.
But yes, hopefully I pray that one or both of them can make it.
James Cridland: It would be wonderful if they can, some
exciting things planned there.
So podcamplive, is that where you?
Sam Sethi: go yeah, podcamplive.
And it's on the 2.0 day, 20th of May, Very good.
James Cridland: Looking forward to seeing you there.
I have sorted out flights and everything over the last week,
so that's good too.
Yes, now we haven't talked enough about Spotify yet.
I don't think I can see that there's going to be some people
complaining why hasn't Sam talked about Spotify yet?
I'm imagining that one of Spotify's 47 different PR
companies will be going.
Oh, you know what's going on here.
Is there any information at all that you can share with us in
terms of Spotify?
No, what?
What's going on here, um is, is there any, any information at
all that you can share with us in terms of spotify?
Sam Sethi: let's move on um, no, they look, uh, spotify for for
everything that we, as we say, are proprietary, they actually
execute hello, apple, hello.
Um, we would talk about apple and amazon if they actually did
something, but they don't.
Now, uh, spotify've added gamification and badges, so
they've introduced the creator milestone award, which is a way
of saying people who do what 500 million all-time streams, or
maybe, uh, 250 million or 100 million, which is their bronze
bronze level.
So who's qualifying for these all-time awards then?
James?
James Cridland: I mean, it's the YouTube thing, isn't it?
You get sent a nice plaque from YouTube if you hit a certain
number.
And now guess what?
You get sent a nice plaque from Spotify because Spotify want to
be the next YouTube.
So you know why not, not?
But in terms of that, yeah.
So in terms of gold, obviously, joe Rogan, crime junkie,
armchair expert last podcast on the left, but interestingly, two
German podcasts have also been awarded the gold thing.
That's 500 million plus lifetime streams, and I looked at one of
those, gemichteshack, which has 285 episodes, which therefore
means that if you do the math, then either they've taken an
awful lot of episodes out, which might be true, or each one of
those episodes has been played an average of 1.7 million times
just on Spotify.
Played an average of 1.7 million times just on Spotify.
And those are all in German.
There are only 120 million native German speakers in the
world.
That is an incredible podcast.
Now, they were exclusive on Spotify for quite some time and
may even still be exclusive.
I don't think they are anymore, but I know thatify does still
have exclusives in other countries, not just in the us,
um, but uh, yeah, that's a big old show 1.7 million plays, um
yeah, no, that is a lot.
Sam Sethi: I mean we're close, but that is a lot, we're close.
James Cridland: Uh, dear listener, you Close.
Dear listener, you can go and have a look at our numbers if
you wish, on the OP3 platform, yes, and it's interesting as
well that on the bronze one, which has 83 people who've won
awards so far, that's for 100 million lifetime streams.
Lifetime streams except if you're in an emerging market,
whatever one of those is when you get bronze after just 50
million lifetime streams, which I think is actually rather a
good idea.
I've no idea what classifies as an emerging market, but I think
that they're doing a good job here.
Sam Sethi: Yeah, what's interesting they also put out,
though, when you compare it to some of the biggest music
artists, like Taylor Swift, which is at 26.6 billion streams
.
James Cridland: Yeah.
Sam Sethi: Yeah, we have a long way to go still.
James Cridland: Oh, yes, no, absolutely, absolutely.
So, yes, that's all going on.
What else is Spotify doing then ?
Sam Sethi: Yeah, this is a weird one Some new UI spots that
we've found Download to other devices.
I don't know what other devices would be, but they've added a
new download to this device.
Download to other devices.
So can I now share my spotify podcast, audio books and music
tracks to you, james, or is it just within my family family
network?
James Cridland: I think this is um.
If I wanted to looking at the um, at the UX, um, I would guess
that I really like the idea of this podcast.
I'm here surfing on my iPad in the house, Um, but I actually
want my car to download that, please, so that when I next jump
in the car, um, it's already downloaded.
I bet no one uses it at all.
Sam Sethi: Well, like jam, they're jam sessions, yeah.
James Cridland: Well, yeah, I mean.
So I have used this sort of thing on YouTube, because on
YouTube, what you can do is you can ask for a playlist to be
downloaded automatically if you pay for YouTube, and so I've
asked it to automatically download my playlist.
What's the playlist?
Called?
Watchlist or you know, yeah, whatever it's called, the one
that basically the standard playlist that you have for
something that you want to watch at some point, but you don't
want to watch it quite yet.
So I now, when I'm using YouTube , there are often shows that are
about 40 minutes long that I really want to watch, but I
don't have the time to watch them right now.
So I will add them to my watch list and I know that my iPad at
the moment and it'll be my phone very shortly will automatically
download those, so that I know that when I then jump on an
aeroplane, I've got a bunch of shows to watch and I don't have
to sit there, you know, the day before I fly and work out what
it is that I'm going to actually download.
So that's quite useful, I think .
So, yeah, I can see that being useful, but it's a very niche
thing.
I mean, certainly I wouldn't have coded it that way.
I'd have just coded it.
As you know, if you want to download a particular show to a
device, we'll just have a playlist that automatically
downloads.
That would be the way of doing it, but yeah.
Sam Sethi: The other thing they've done.
They've created a new explore feature.
I call it Tinder for music is the best way I can describe it
Obviously very niche, but what you can do is listen to samples
of music literally not even 30 seconds and then you can share
it.
So what's nice about it?
It is like Tinder.
You swipe up and down to get to the next track, and it's a good
way of discovery really.
You a quick feel.
You can do it by hashtags, you can do it by, uh, music artists,
um, so I think it's quite a nice little way.
Again, what they're trying to do is find a new way to help
people discover new music.
Um, and this is one interesting ui.
I don't know if it'll survive, whether it's experimental, but
you can go and play with it.
It's live now and you just scroll up, scroll down.
Yeah, very Tinder for music.
James Cridland: Cool, cool.
And they've done something in terms of episode notifications
as well, where they've made those look a little bit prettier
at least on iOS they have.
So one of the things I didn't realise is that from the
notifications you can actually ask for that particular episode
to be downloaded or played or whatever, which is quite nice.
Announcer: Boostergrams, boostergrams, boostergrams and
fan mail.
Fan mail On the Pod News Weekly Review.
James Cridland: Yes, it's our favourite time of the week.
It's Boostergram Corner, or Super Comments Corner if you're
on True Fans.
Yes, and backed by other people .
Sam Sethi: People are agreeing with me, so yes, Anyway there we
are.
James Cridland: So yes, if you have a boost button or a super
comment button in your podcast app, then hit that and send us a
message and some sats as well.
That would be a kind thing.
Kyren, Kyren lives.
He sent us a row of ducks.
Double two, double two sats.
He says Podcam 2 sounds awesome .
I'll actually be in Europe around that time.
Andreaa Coscai: So I'll come over and say hi.
Sam Sethi: Amazing.
James Cridland: There you go.
Well, that'll be fantastic.
I look forward to welcoming you to my birth city, karin.
That would be a good thing.
What are you going to do with him?
I'll give him some flat, boring beer.
The last time I showed an Australian, a proper Australian,
I took him to a pub and he says so, what should I have?
I was thinking about a lager.
And I said, no, I'll get you a London Pride.
And so I went to buy him a London Pride and he came to me a
couple of minutes later and he said James, I don't think this
London Pride's.
I think there's something wrong with it.
It's kind of it's much warmer than I was expecting and it's
really flat.
No, that's that's that's what makes it great.
Yes, um, thank you to seth s3th .
Uh, 100 sats for the pod news daily, which is very nice.
Great show, says seth.
You'll never hear this, but anyway it's nice to see that on
True Fans as well.
Andreaa Coscai: Look there you go, we're alive someone uses it,
we're alive we're alive.
James Cridland: Silas on Linux 1000 sats.
Another grumpy message from Silas on Linux.
Good that you two are keeping the money to yourself.
What's the fun in hiring people if you can't underpay and take
all the money yourself?
Sam Sethi: yes, what's the fun in hiring people?
James Cridland: if you can't underpay and take all the money
yourself.
Yes, exactly, yes, um.
And uh, neil velio from podnos, uh 500 sats, uh 10 out of 10 on
the new production porn.
At the start of the episode straight in with the what?
What's that with them?
What's in it for me?
oh, what's in it for me straight in what with the what's in it
for me at the beginning to with slick, engaging structure.
It's almost like you know what you're doing.
It's uh, I'm not sure I know what I'm reading.
As for spotify's latest attempt to own podcasts, it's like they
learned nothing from anchor what becoming the biggest
podcast hosting company in the world.
What is there not to learn from that?
Sam Sethi: What did Spotify ever do for us?
James Cridland: as the writer said, yes, I've got no idea what
that's all about.
Leo Velio, thank you so much for that.
He is, of course, one of our stupendous 16 power supporters.
You can become his power supporter if you like,
weeklypodnewsnet.
Go there armed with your credit card and give us a small amount
of money or a large amount of money, if you like every single
month.
That would be a lovely thing.
Neil is doing that through.
Pod knows his company also.
David John Clark, james Burt, john McDermott, claire
Waiteite-Brown, Ms Eileen Smith, rocky Thomas, jim James, david
Marzell, si Jobling, Rachel Corbett, dave Jackson, mike
Hamilton, matt Medeiros, marshall Brown and Cameron Moll.
Those are all the stupendous 16 .
We're wondering who the sweet 17 is going to be.
If you would like to be that person, weeklypodnewsnet, that
would be super excellent.
So what's happened for?
Sam Sethi: you this week, Sam?
Well, you know nothing.
Quiet week, another quiet week on the trail.
No, we added transcribefm to TruFans.
So Nathan Gathwright's company.
But what's unique about it?
Well, first of all, let's explain.
You can now now, as a creator, if your host doesn't actually
give you a transcription, you don't have to move to another
platform.
You can stay where you are and then just press a buy transcript
button and go and buy your transcript.
And what's unique about it is we're using the technology we've
termed secure RSS, but it's the protocol L402 or F402.
And the idea is that the confirmation of the payment is
first sent, then approved.
Nathan will then do the transcription and send that back
after.
So it's just a way of making a secure payment across any API
using L402.
But Nathan's implemented it for Transcribefm and we've added it
to TrueFans.
James Cridland: Yeah, Very good.
Yes, it's always good to see more different ways of paying
and supporting people, so that's nice to end up seeing You've
also added currency support for New Zealand dollars, for
Japanese yen and for Canadian dollars which is a nice thing.
What's your creator portal?
Sam Sethi: customisation.
Well, this goes back to the thing that Adam mentioned, the
Rachel Maddow problem, as we call it now.
How can we turn podcast pages in TrueFans from what they look
like as very similar to everyone else's page into a more
customizable way?
So little things that we're starting to add so we can now
hide comments, which is one of the features I think is already
on YouTube or other platforms, so it's not unique to us, but
the idea is very simple.
You might want to hide comments for the whole of your podcast,
or you might want to hide comments for an episode.
Simple thing to do.
But the critical is we're now adding the first customization
so you can now reorder the tabs within your podcast page.
So the default currently is your episode page.
So I land on Pod News Daily and , of course, I want to see all
your latest episodes.
But, for example, we do events, we do blogs, we do merch, so
you might have an event coming up and so you want your event
page to be the landing page, or you might have I don't know
something to do with a new t-shirt that you're launching.
So you can reorder those tabs to be what is the tab you want,
or you can hide tabs.
So that's a feature that we've added.
So yeah, first part of our customisation to create a portal
.
James Cridland: Very good.
Are you working on anything exciting in terms of TV?
Sam Sethi: Yes, Basically, I was just playing around with the
Fire TV stick that we have and I worked out it has an Amazon
Silk browser.
I've known that for ages and no one in the world uses it, but
anyway it's on the Fire TV stick and I thought, oh well, go on,
we're a universal web app, so let's go and try it.
So I put in the URL for truefansfm and boom, it worked
and it's sized correctly.
And I was like, oh, this is pretty cool.
And then I went well, how do you create an app?
Because it's got an app store on the Fire TV stick and it's
pretty simple.
Actually, it's using HTML and JavaScript.
You put a Chromium wrapper around it and then you submit it
to Amazon and then it will appear on your Amazon Fire TV
stick.
So that's what we're doing.
We'll be pushing that live this week and you'll be able to then
go to the amazon fire tv whenever they make it available.
So don't try it this week if you're going.
Where is it?
Um, it's not our fault, we'll submit it.
We just don't know how long it takes for it to populate.
James Cridland: but yes, but it works and it's good.
Well, that's interesting, isn't it?
Because, uh, yeah, because you, you can imagine.
I mean, if it works for fire tv , it should work on google tv as
well, which is rather a lot larger.
So, yeah, that would be interesting to see how much
traffic you get from TV users, and I'm imagining that you know
there will be TV users who might be interested in seeing the
video versions.
Sam Sethi: Yes, exactly, yeah, very good.
The video versions yes, exactly , yeah, very good.
And then the last bit, just on a personal note I'm doing my
next leg of the River Thames walk, that I'm doing so Richmond
to Chertsey.
Anyone I should say hello to James, that you might know along
the way.
James Cridland: Oh gosh, not off the top of my head, no, but yes
gosh.
Well, that'll be nice.
Yes, you'll be walking past Eel Island if you're going down
that way.
Sam Sethi: Is that?
James Cridland: where I can get eels, or is that just why is it
called Eel Island?
I think it's called Eel Island because you know London in the
1400s, but it will be.
But there's a number of different companies on that
island and you have to.
If you run a company on that island, um, and you have to, um,
if you run a company on that Island, uh, then, uh, you get a,
uh, you get a key to actually get onto the Island and, uh and
do stuff.
Yeah, it's this, this tiny little little Island in the
middle of the Thames, but, um, yeah, and one of the companies
who is there, uh, is now owned by Dolby Um, it's a large
company that makes data stuff for in-car entertainment.
So, yeah, there's a thing.
There's a thing.
Sam Sethi: So, James, come on.
What's been happening for you?
Have you bought your swastika?
James Cridland: I have not got any of these.
That's going to get us demonetised, if nothing else is.
I have not got a Tesla.
No, I did buy a Chinese electric car, which I got
delivered today.
Well, I went in and got it and, yes, so that was exciting.
It came with a little bow on it .
Yes, from the dealership Red Red.
It's a white car because Australia and it's very hot.
Sam Sethi: But the bow was red.
No, I meant, was the bow red?
Yes, the bow was red.
Yes, you see, china, it's always got to be red.
Here we go, here we go.
James Cridland: Anyway, a few interesting things about that.
The operating system in it is Android.
It is, if you can imagine, the worst operating system, the most
badly coded thing you've ever seen, then it's that it's really
not particularly great.
But you know, I've sort of played around with it and done a
few things with it.
It's kind of OK.
Around with it and done a few things with it, it's kind of
okay.
One of the things that I enjoyed was it's got its own navigation
system.
Can't quite work out what it's using because it doesn't quite
look like Google Maps, but I'm not quite sure what it is.
But anyway, clearly its GPS can't deal with anything because
it put me in the middle of a field as I was driving to pick
my daughter up from school today , so not quite sure what's going
on there.
But it also comes with Amazon Music, so you can sign into
Amazon Music on the device and it will then give you access
through the SIM card that it's got, which I'm not paying for.
It will give you access to the entire Amazon Music catalogue,
which is quite interesting.
So yeah, so I thought that was a bit weird.
Does it have Google Maps in your car?
I do have Google Maps and Apple Maps in my car through my phone
.
Sam Sethi: Yes, Right, can you do me a favour?
When you're in it, can you check if the gulf of america's
in there now.
James Cridland: Now, uh, I google have changed it,
capitulating they have, but only in the us.
um, so they've put, they've put the us into a list of countries.
Um, uh, they I think they call it their unstable country list,
which is a bit of a mistake, but it's their it's.
But it's their finickety countries that insist on calling
different things different names.
Hello, derry, london Derry.
So, yes, so that's what they've done.
So if you are American and you are logged into Google Maps,
then at some point in the next few weeks you will see it being
called the Gulf of America, but if you are from Mexico, it will
still be the Gulf of Mexico.
So, yes, which I have to say, I think is probably the right
choice.
Similarly, you know, if you are in India, there are bits of
some countries near you that you think are in India, but they
think are not, and so it just depends on what you know, what
account you're logged in to, depends on what the map actually
says, and I think that's probably the right thing.
Sam Sethi: Washington's been renamed as well, hasn't it Go on
Trumpton, washington's been renamed as well.
James Cridland: Hasn't it go on trumpton?
There's a joke for people who remember uh uk television of the
19th barnaby grew but cuff, boot, dibble and grub.
Sam Sethi: Yes, right, anyway, that'll be cut.
James Cridland: That'll never make the edit anyway moving on
to, uh, slightly more interesting things I set up.
So I've got an apps server, which is a very cheap little box
that I hire from Amazon, which has, you know, a SQL viewer on
it and various other things that I use, and I thought to myself,
brilliant, what I can do is because I got to rebuild that
box, as it was running an old version of Amazon Linux.
So I thought, right, well, what I'll do is I'll build this so
that it's an IPv6 only box, because I need to access it and
I've got IPv6.
So therefore, I don't need to rent for a dollar a month, an
IPv4 address for it.
I can just deal with IPv6.
So IPv6 is up and running and that worked absolutely fine.
But it turns out that in order for it to connect to my database
server, which is also in Amazon , it needs an IPv4 address
anyway.
So, brilliant, well done.
Another Amazon web services triumph.
But I quite liked the idea of just using IPv6 for that.
So, who knows, might come back to that later.
It's only 30 years that they said IPv4 would be gone, had
some really interesting conversation with a man called
Bill Shillett.
Now no one will know who Bill is, but he was one of the
co-founders of Google Listen and , again, no one will know what
Google Listen was.
It was Google's first ever podcast app and it came out in,
I think, 2011 or so.
No, it didn't, it came out in 2009.
It was one of the first things that you could get basically on
an Android phone and really fascinating Talking to him he
shared a few of the internal documents about how that app
came up and really interesting talking with him about how it
all works and how the system.
Yeah, you know what the idea of the system was.
Here's an interesting thing Google Listen started as kind of
a podcast app.
It then morphed onto on the Google TV platform into well,
frankly, we would call it today, we would call it YouTube and
the idea of being able to watch TV shows through your box,
because I think at the time, google didn't own YouTube and so
this was one way of, you know, helping them go into that.
So I thought that was fascinating and Bill has just
shared with me.
Of course, google Notebook LM is now doing what Google Listen
was initially supposed to be doing, which was to produce, you
know, automated digests of news for you to, and I'm writing up
a sort of a history as part of the history of podcasting thing,
a history of Google Listen, which was an app that really,
you know, never really got anywhere, but was tremendous In
fact.
He even shared with me the numbers that they were getting
in terms of downloads and things , because the numbers that they
were actually getting in terms of usage was really high for,
you know, for the android platform in in 2011, which
hardly anybody was using, but they had half a million people
using that every day, you know it was incredible, so um yeah
very nice, so I'm looking forward to
writing that up.
So that will be coming up at some uh, some point in the next
week or so, uh, into the pod news newsletter, and this time
next week I will be coming up at some uh, some point in the next
uh week or so, uh, into the pod news newsletter, and this time
next week I will be speaking to you from switzerland.
Um, which will be a thrill, um, so, uh, yes, it'll be also very
much colder than it is here, uh , but there we are.
Reveal the beans, spill the beans.
What you're doing there.
Oh, oh, it's a conference Climbing the Matterhorn, it's a
conference for French language broadcasters there.
So I am doing the opening keynote, all about the future of
radio.
Run, run away is not what I'll be saying.
Sam Sethi: Can you just end it?
The future of radio is podcasting.
See what happens.
Go on do it.
James Cridland: Interestingly, I said you know, and obviously
I'll be talking about podcasts, and the person that's running
the conference has said I wouldn't mention podcasts too
much if I were you.
Nobody listens to them and they're impossible to earn any
money out of.
So I thought, well, that's interesting.
Oh, wow so anyway, yes, so I'm looking forward to going there.
Neuchatel is the place in Switzerland where I'm going and,
yes, and I think I've got I think I've got most of a free
day there, so I'm looking for if we've got any listeners in.
No, no, okay, so there we are, so that should be fun.
Sam Sethi: I'll look up on my analytics on Buzzsprout, we'll
see.
Yes, the other thing I was going to say, talking of Google,
have you seen they're still recommending Google Podcasts in
Google search results Are they really?
Yeah, I'll send you the screenshot.
It was posted on Mastodon yesterday.
Somebody was asking about the best way to listen to podcasts
on Android, and it comes up with Google Podcasts oh you are
absolutely right.
James Cridland: Yes, because, of course, Gemini, of course, is
stuck in a world where Google Podcasts still exists In 2024,
it would still work oh my.
So they're still recommending it.
Yeah, the good thing about Kargi which is, or Kargi, I believe
it's now pronounced which is the web browser, the search engine
that I use, is we are now able to share searches with other
people, which is really great, because if you want to show
somebody how much better it is because it doesn't use any of
this stupid AI stuff, now I can share those links with people,
which is rather a fine thing.
So, yeah, maybe I should do a little bit more of that.
Anyway, anywho, that's it for this week.
All of our stories, of course, taken from the pod news daily
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You can also give us a review in your podcast app and, by all
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Sam Sethi: You can give us feedback using the buzzsprout
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James Cridland: Our music is from Studio Dragonfly.
Our voiceover is Arizona's Sheila D.
We use clean feed for our audio , Hinterberg to edit it, and
we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout.
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