Apple Adds AI Chapters And Timed Links; and an interview with DAX US

(This is an AI description from Buzzsprout's Cohost)

We test Netflix’s “video podcast” land grab, then show why Apple’s AI chapters and Timed Links are the practical upgrade creators needed. DAX’s Brian Conlan joins to explain why audio’s problem is ROAS, not downloads, and how better measurement unlocks bigger budgets.

• Netflix licensing moves and YouTube exclusivity trade-offs
• Why this is cheap TV, not podcasting, and why that matters
• Audio vs video consumption and where value really sits
• Apple AI chapters, Timed Links, and transcript expansion
• Chapters JSON, ID3, and episode notes pros and cons
• Does Apple make ad skipping easier or ads better
• DAX on attribution, ROAS, and harmonised standards
• Spotify’s earnings, video spin, and creator payouts
• Libsyn ends The Feed; Podcast 411 returns
• Fireside Chat closes; Fox acquires Meet Cute
• LN address vs keysend and easier listener payments
• HLS, listen-time data, and ad effectiveness
• New tools: Podcast Magic and Snipd for smarter notes

Start podcasting, keep podcasting with BuzzSprout.com

Chapters

• 1:22 Netflix wants more cheap TV
• 12:59 Apple Podcasts to add chapters for everyone
• 16:31 Sam likes "Thinking with Machines" by Vasant Dhar
• 24:27 Apple Podcasts on Mac
• 28:48 Interview: Brian Conlon, DAX US
• 44:03 The Podnews Daily podcast
• 44:25 Spotify's financials
• 53:45 Class action suit against Spotify
• 55:00 FOX buys Meet Cute
• 56:24 Aussie streamers local quota
• 58:11 The Feed goes quiet
• 1:02:30 podCast411 returns
• 1:05:13 Fireside Chat closes oh dear what a shame
• 1:06:56 The Tech Stuff
• 1:15:31 The inbox
• 1:24:37 Sam and James's week
• 1:25:40 Thinking with Machines again
• 1:26:08 NVIDIA shares

Transcript

Announcer: 0:01

The Pod news Weekly Review uses chapters. Mind you, so will everyone else soon. The last word in podcasting news. This is the Podnews Weekly Review with James Cridland and Sam Sethi.

James Cridland: 0:14

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod news.

Sam Sethi: 0:16

And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of Truefans.

Brian Conlon: 0:20

Audio is 30% of a consumer's day, but it's still 5 to 6% of the budget. We've talked about that for many years in a row, and we're still not figuring out how to change them.

James Cridland: 0:30

Brian Conlon from DAX US on what we need to do to keep growing. Plus, Apple Podcasts adds chapters. Spotify posts their financials, and Libsins the feed goes quiet. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout with the tools, support, and community to ensure you keep podcasting. Start podcasting, keep podcasting with Buzzsprout.com.

Announcer: 0:53

From your daily newsletter, the Pod news Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 0:58

Now, James, every time I put this show together, I start on a Monday and it evolves during the week. Basically, I listen to Pod news Daily and then it gets stories that I can fix. But some weeks I wonder whether we're going to have a show. It starts really slow. Yes. Jeez Louise, this week kicked off really well, didn't it? Yeah, it's been a week, hasn't it? Anyway, let's start off, James. Buckle up, everyone. Here we go. Story one Netflix is still chasing those exclusives. What are they doing, James?

James Cridland: 1:29

They are. So they've done this deal with Spotify, which will bring certain shows of Spotify's, like the Bill Simmons podcast, but not Joe Rogan, to Netflix next year. The big thing there is that they are removing them from YouTube. So the only place that you will be able to watch these things is on things that aren't YouTube. So Netflix, and if you've got a Samsung TV, you'll see them there and various other things to come as well. Ashley Carmen from Bloomberg, friend of the show, has ended up discovering that they are in talks with iHeartMedia about licensing some of their video podcasts, like, you know, how stuff works and that sort of thing. And of course, those full episodes would have to come off YouTube as well. They can keep clips on there, but not full episodes. That's kind of part of the deal. And we also discover that Netflix is also talking to SiriusXM about taking some of its video podcasts as well. And again, that would take those shows off YouTube as well. And everybody's very excited about this, and I don't really understand why.

Sam Sethi: 2:34

Well, I think it's because there's another platform. I mean, if you're one of those shows, you're moving to a platform potentially with a big audience. I think you said it quite nicely, though. I on one of the social media webs that I find you. It's exclusive, so you aren't going to have an audience. You're going to lose the audience on YouTube and you're going to gain an audience here. And is that the right thing? And we saw that with Spotify, with the exclusives. So many of the artists ended up losing their audiences because they couldn't find them everywhere. They could only find them on Spotify. And so I I put up a comment to Ashley, which was Did Netflix learn nothing from Spotify's wasted exclusivity deals? And here we go again. So is that what we're seeing? The war between YouTube, Netflix, and now possibly Spotify on who can have the most shows?

James Cridland: 3:28

I mean, I'm sure that that's part of the conversation which is going on. I think, you know, I mean, you could argue that Joe Rogan being an exclusive on Spotify for a number of years was pretty good for Spotify. Didn't seem to damage Joe Rogan that much because most people consume his shows through clips, which he was still able to do on YouTube. But yeah, I mean, I look at these though, and to me, this is not a podcasting story. I know that I kind of have to put it into Pod News because it mentions the word podcast, and everybody goes, oh, oh, this is very exciting. But it's not a podcasting story, is it? It's it's a cheap TV story. And it's a cheap TV story from a tiny number of publishers, about four different publishers that we're talking about at the moment. We're talking about a few shows from Spotify Studios, a few shows from iHeart and from Sirius. It's a story about cheap TV, which Netflix desperately wants. It it uh but it's a story about tiny, irrelevant, small, cheap TV shows that virtually nobody really watches. I mean, some of these have less than 50,000 views per episode, according to Spotify's own stats. So I don't really understand. And uh plus, they've got no dynamic podcast ads in them, they don't work on podcast apps. The ads money from from video podcasts comes from the YouTube or TV budget, it doesn't come from the podcasting budget. I I just don't understand why the world of podcasting is so excited about this. You you can even have a look at the stats. So this week, ACAST released Podcast Pulse, which is a really good set of stats. One of the pieces of stats says that audio podcasts only reach 46% of monthly consumers, video podcasts reach 57%. So you go, well, obviously the world is moving to video, except no, but in terms of people, yes, more people consume video podcasts than audio podcasts. But when you have a look at the actual consumption, which is the point that I've been making all the way along here, then the actual consumption is really clear. It's audio. Forty-five percent of podcast listeners mostly use audio, only 29% of podcast listeners mostly use video as well. So I do not understand why we want to turn our industry into another set of people who make cheap TV. It it just beggars belief. I I think we've all gone mad, personally.

Sam Sethi: 5:56

I think I think you hit the nail on the head with a couple of things. One, it says podcast, so A, you've got to cover it, B, it raises the flag for everybody. What's going on? And I think if you look back to the YouTube announcements when they first made it, we're all like, oh God, you know, YouTube, what are they doing? This will be awful, blah, blah, blah. Nothing's gonna happen. Then it was a slow burn, and then suddenly they've become a major player within the platform, certainly for content creators. And you think, why are Netflix dipping their toes in here? What's the strategy? Have they run out of content? I mean, Netflix is also, by the way, looking at acquiring some content from Warner Brothers, they're looking at acquiring content from Paramount. And that's just um that's TV, that is pure TV content, right?

James Cridland: 6:46

Yeah, but the but but I mean they've been doing that since they started. That that's Netflix's job, is to go out to talk to video publishers and say, Can we have some of your content, please? That that that's their job. They've been paying for content for goodness knows how long. There is no difference to me in them going to channel four and saying, Can we have that episode to can we have the IT crowd to show, please? There's no difference between that and them going to Goldhanger and saying, Can we have the rest is football, please?

Sam Sethi: 7:16

Yes, but but by the very nature that the rest is football was also a podcast, it just flags it up to everybody. It says, Hang on a minute, someone started off creating an audio podcast, then it became a video podcast. Now it's going to Netflix. And if the audience is having to then be removed off, let's say all the podcasting 2.0 apps as well, because it's only coming off the video side at the moment, that would be a bigger statement. I don't think they're gonna do that. So is this a competitive push against YouTube? Is this just an acquisition of more content for attention time? It's not clear what their strategy is. I think we just have to watch and learn. But it is interesting to observe from far right now when they're talking to Sirius, iHeart and others. Yeah, you know, you've got to you've got to give them the at least credence to say, what are you doing?

James Cridland: 8:08

Yes. Oh yeah. I mean, you know, but but I mean, surely the answer is obvious that they just want more cheap TV. I mean, sure, surely, surely that's it.

Sam Sethi: 8:16

They want more attention time.

James Cridland: 8:17

Yeah, they want they want more attention time, and they realise that there are people watching, you know, arguably watching Joe Rogan for two and a half hours a week, and so therefore, or for two and a half hours every three days. And so, therefore, can we have some of that on our platform, please? Yeah, I mean, I think it I I think it's that. I don't think it's anything to do with podcasts, and I think, you know, I I was doing an interview earlier today with somebody for their year-end review, and and I was saying the thing that it really excites me about podcasts is that you know, I can I can sit here in in my small home office in Brisbane, you can sit there in your in your i in the east wing of your palatial uh place in in uh you know, with uh I've had an offer from Andrew to meet it.

Sam Sethi: 9:03

Oh my god, yeah, he wants one of the wings.

James Cridland: 9:05

Yeah, so so we can do this show, right? And we are on the same platform as all of the big shows, as as the daily, as crime junkie, as Joe Rogan, and everything else. That doesn't happen on Netflix. It doesn't happen on pretty well any other platform, with the exception of YouTube, perhaps. That's what's exciting about podcasting to me is that it it's a level playing field that we can all get on and we can all be on lots of different apps. And you know, and again, these Netflix conversations, I'm you know, this show is never is never going to be on Netflix. Even if we bothered to do the video, this show would never be on Netflix, would it?

Sam Sethi: 9:46

No, no, no. I mean, the the three people on Netflix who'd watch it be my mum, your mum, and and and possibly the dogs.

James Cridland: 9:54

Yeah, and I don't think my mum would watch. So yeah, hello. I think I think that that's your mother know what you do even yet, still well. A funny story, I had written the Bod News newsletter for seven years. I was interviewed in podcast magazine in France, so it was a it was Benjamin Bellamy who who interviewed me. It was a French language interview. I got a copy of the magazine, I sent that to my mother, and she read it because she wanted to show off that she could read French. And and then she emails me and she says, Oh, I finally understood what you do now.

Sam Sethi: 10:31

Cheers. Thanks. Only took it to be in French before she got there, yes.

James Cridland: 10:36

Yeah, exactly, exactly. But anyway, so Netflix, very exciting, talking about more cheap TV. Can we move on?

Sam Sethi: 10:43

Well, one last one last thought is isn't the number that YouTube keeps putting out about big screen TVs having 13% of their coverage on YouTube on the big screen TV, are Netflix going the big screen in the lounge has been our domain, and we're now feeling challenged by YouTube. Therefore, we're going to remove content from YouTube that will bring that type of listener or watcher to us rather than them switching the big TV over to YouTube.

James Cridland: 11:15

Oh, yeah, I mean, absolutely. Nielsen has done a lot of research in terms of consumption, and uh YouTube has been winning that battle for a long, long time. Netflix is currently number three. YouTube is number one, these the these are June's figures, they've gone up slightly. YouTube is number one with 12.8% of all TV usage. 12.8% of all TV usage. Then you have Disney at 10%, and that by the way, includes some of Disney's you know TV channels as well. And then you've got Netflix at number three with 8.3%. So already YouTube is significantly bigger than Netflix. Obviously, that means that Netflix wants more cheap TV to fill their to fill their catalogue with, and ideally, cheap TV that comes out quite regularly because they want more time, you know, to be spent on the platform. So that that is absolutely the game here. I don't think it's anything to do with podcasting. I think it's just to do with cheap cheap TV. And if you have worked out a way of making two hours of cheap TV three times a week, and you call it the Joe Rogan experience, well, great. Netflix will happily take that off your hands and buy that and stick it onto their platform. But I I I just think it's just that. I don't think it's anything to do with podcasts, I don't think it's anything to do with our industry, and I think it's confusing to ad buyers, it's confusing to creators, it's confusing to pretty well everybody because we've we've allowed the word podcast to be put onto cheap TV, which which it's not. That's not what a podcast is.

Sam Sethi: 12:53

Okay, we'll come back to this, I'm pretty sure. Let's move on to better news. Apple. Back in September, early September, you wrote something about the Apple podcast including potentially Jason Chapters. It now looks like they've done it, James. What's happened?

James Cridland: 13:11

Yes, this was quite funny. So I we we spotted back in September, we spotted that Apple Podcasts had mistakenly, by the looks of things, added the podcast chapters RSS tag to their list of supported tags. And everybody went, Oh, this is very exciting. Apple Podcasts is going to support Podcasting 2.0 chapters, which yes and no, as we'll get on to. And anyway, that disappeared pretty fast after we ended up spotting it. Then I posted on my own personal blog a little guess. I literally I knew nothing. But I I said, here's a guess at what's going on. If you look at iOS 26, it's pretty clear that everyone at Apple has been told to use its AI tools wherever possible to add new features. Transcripts are produced automatically in Apple Podcasts by AI. And perhaps Apple plans to add chapters for every podcast using its AI technology, and perhaps it wants to offer podcast creators the option of opting out of AI-generated chapters by producing their own using either ID3 tags or JSON chapters to ensure that any podcaster can do that. Is this the reason? I wonder. We'll find out soon enough, of course. I wrote that in September, and here we are. Apple have added Virologist Day. There you go. And here we are. Apple have added AI-generated chapters for everyone. And the way that you opt out is you can either produce chapters in ID3 tags, you can produce chapters in chapters JSON, as they're calling the podcasting 2.0 thing, or by the way, episode notes as well. So you can do all three of those. And it's a brilliant move from Apple from my point of view. I think it will mean that uh people use chapters. It means that chapters will always be there in a consistent place in the UI. I think it's a really good plan, and I'm delighted to see I'm delighted to see Apple, you know, doing that. And yeah, I ended up writing a full FAQ earlier on in the week. I had a sneak preview from Apple, which I'm not allowed to tell you anything about, but the one thing I will say is that the demo that they gave me, and I'm sure that they gave other people other demos, but the demo that they gave me about how brilliant chapters were, they showed the Pod News Weekly Review this very show. And I thought, wow, that's uh that's a bit of personalization. Very smart. But anyway, there's a full FAQ on the Pod News website and various other things. And uh, yeah, I think the automated chapter stuff is really good, actually. Talk to me about this other thing they've added called Timed Links. So Timed Links is really interesting. So it's uh and I think this is copying a little bit of Spotify's playbook. As you uh do a podcast, and maybe you know, at some point, because you like doing this, you'll you'll tell us about some exciting book that you've been reading recently. Mwa. Petentious. Mwa. In order that everybody thinks you're really intelligent. Um, so you so when you read the book, the book title out, in fact, we we should we should do this so that it actually appears in Apple as we actually do this. So what is a book that you have been reading recently?

Sam Sethi: 16:28

I would say one of the books is Thinking with Machines, is the one I was going to mention later.

James Cridland: 16:35

Okay, Thinking with Machines, and who's that by?

Sam Sethi: 16:37

That's by Varsant Darr. If they get that right, good luck to them. Do you want me to spell it?

James Cridland: 16:43

Well, the benefit of a timed link is that, so firstly, it it should have automatically heard you say that, and that book will now appear as you're playing this particular podcast in Apple Podcasts, obviously. If it hasn't automatically realized, then when we come to add the chapters in, then as long as we add a link to that book in Apple Books, it will definitely appear. Right. Um, because the whole thing is it lets you automatically, if you just put a link in a chapter into another podcast or a book or a music track or a news story or stock information or pretty well anything else within the Apple ecosystem, then it it automatically pops up. And there's a nice video on the Pod News website of it working completely automatically during the the Pod News Daily show when I'm mentioning the titles of shows. So this is really smart, and this is typically Apple, right? Because Apple doesn't like advertising very much, very clearly. So you can't use it for third-party websites. You you can't even use it to link to apps, even though those are on the those are in the Apple ecosystem. But you can use it for Apple Podcasts, Apple Books, Apple Music, Apple News, and so on and so forth. So it's very, very Apple, but it's pretty impressive when it works.

Sam Sethi: 18:05

It's great. I mean, I I have to say, I mean, looking at what Daniel and Jay Lewis had talked about with super chapters, you know, having links and having pop-ups and all this, this is much along those lines. It's a shame that it isn't more open. But yeah, as you say, that is Apple to a T. But it is great, it I it does look good. And again, highly recommend people going to Apple Podcasts, going to Pod News Daily, uh, and just doing it and seeing what pops up. It's really clever.

James Cridland: 18:36

Yeah, it's really nicely done. And and I've worked out a way of having a permanent link, for example, to podcasts in the new podcasts feed that I produce, which you'll find in the in Apple Podcasts as new podcasts, that now has you know, has links in there to go straight to the podcast that you're listening to the trailer of and all of that kind of stuff. So it's a really smart thing. So I think three cheers for Apple on doing that. The nice thing, of course, is that they are using, they're still using ID3 tags, which they've supported for years and years and years, but they're also using the podcasting 2.0 standard, which they're calling Chapters JSON, and they're also using the YouTube and Spotify episode notes clutch, which they're calling episode notes. So they're using all three. I don't think that this is a success story for podcasting 2.0, I'm afraid. I think it's just a success story for that being one of the many ways that you can do chapters now, but I still think it's a great thing. So I think that, you know, I mean, there's been interestingly, you know, I mentioned this on LinkedIn. There were lots of people saying, Oh, at last, Apple have done nothing for the last 15 years. And you go back and you say, Well, yeah, apart from the apart from the automated transcripts, yeah, and apart from the you know, paid subscriptions, and apart from the and you can literally go back, and every 18 months has been a new feature. What's the Brahmin for us since forever? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, no, I think it's a good I think it's a good thing. John from Calaroga Shark Media was less than impressed. I think because he produces fiction stuff as well, and he would rather that people weren't skipping around. And there've been a few other people, particularly people in fiction, who don't really want chapters in their shows. The good news is you can just be in charge of that. So you can put two you can put a chapter thing in there that that literally just links to the end, or if you want to, you can turn chapters off. You can still do that as well. So so I think Apple are doing this the right way in comparison to Spotify, where it's tough, whatever Spotify's automatic system builds for you, you don't really have any control of, and it's not very good. And you you can't you certainly can't give it your own transcript or your own or your own, you know, other information. So yeah, I think it's a good stuff.

Sam Sethi: 21:04

So one of the other bits of feedback was is Apple making it easier to skip ads? Are they, James?

James Cridland: 21:11

I mean, maybe, but you uh uh uh but again, you can always put your own chapters in and you'll be in more in control where you put your ads and where you put your chapter markers. I mean, of course, my my view is you you you should just make your ads better so people won't skip them.

Sam Sethi: 21:25

People skip ads, James. I thought that didn't happen.

James Cridland: 21:29

Now, I know that you were going to say, Oh, yeah, of course, people don't actually skip ads. So, again, from the ACAS podcast pulse uh details.

Sam Sethi: 21:39

People who've got a vested interest in it, but go on, go.

James Cridland: 21:42

Yes, but put together by a separate company, 71% of people listen to the mid-rolls in podcasts half the time or more. And more than that, though, podcasting has the lowest ad avoidance. If you look at podcasting, YouTube, Facebook, radio, or streaming music, podcast has the lowest ad avoidance. I think that's pretty good, to be honest. I did see that, and that's good. Yes. I think that that's a uh pretty good thing. So, yes.

Sam Sethi: 22:11

Now, Alban Brooke, a friend of the show, also from Buzz Sprout, said only one thing I might add is the downside is episode note chapters. He said there's always static, so they're out of sync if you have dynamic ads or dynamic content. This format worked better on YouTube for videos because they are the player and the ones inserting the ads, but it's easy for hosts to update the Jason, Podlov, and MP3 chapters if we insert ads or dynamic content. So what's Alban saying? Basically, he doesn't like the new episode note chapters because they're going to mess up the dynamic ads?

James Cridland: 22:46

Yeah, so if you use that if you use that clutch, the Spotify clutch, if you like, of just putting a list of chapters at the bottom of your episode notes, then if Buzzsprout, for example, then sell an ad for us, because occasionally people buy ads in this show, then theoretically though that would be 30 seconds out because there will be an ad inserted at some point in the in the show. That's what Albin is saying. Now, to be fair, Chapters JSON also suffers from that, particularly when you're looking at dynamically inserted ads, because it's quite difficult to link the person who's downloading the audio with the the same data for the chapters JSON as well. So it's always been a known thing that chapters might get slightly out of sync if you've got variable length dynamic ads in there. And I think it's just something that you know we kind of have to have to deal with. ID3 tags are always the best, and our sponsor Buzzsprout, when we produce chapters for this show, we produce them using ID3 in the audio editor Hindenburg. We upload the show to to Buzzsprout, and Buzzsprout then takes over all of those chapters, rewrites them all into the chapters Jason, rewrites them all in various other places, and we can then edit those uh edit those chapters more as well. So it's actually a really nice way round all of that. So yeah, but I I totally take his point. Some of these chapter points aren't necessarily going to be exact.

Sam Sethi: 24:21

Moving on then. Well, congratulations first to Ted and his team. Let's just give them the uh applause they deserve. Now it seems Apple have not stopped there though, James. They've been adding stuff not only to iOS but to the macOS 26 as well. What have they done?

James Cridland: 24:35

Yeah, so if you're using the Apple Podcasts app, actually this came out in Mac OS 26 earlier on in the year in September. But uh, you know the read-along transcript experience that you get when you're listening to a show on on iPhone, you you get that on macOS now, something that they never announced at the time, and something that took me by surprise during their demo. And I thought, oh, okay, I'll find out more about that later. So that looks pretty good. They have now so they've got 13 languages that they're supporting for transcripts now. And my understanding is that they've done that, they've they've gone all the way through the back catalogue now, and every single show that wants one has an automated transcript now. So yeah, they've done a good job there.

Sam Sethi: 25:21

Now, one thing I found on earlier this week, Apple have made a web version of the App Store. You can find it at apps.apple.com. And not only is it just for your Mac OS apps, but you can also see your iPhone, you can see your Apple Watch, Apple TV. It's very cool actually. I'm not quite sure why they've done it. Is it because people can link to it from other third-party apps? Because if you might not have the app store for some reason, maybe if you're on an Android phone, it's a good way to discover what apps are available on the iPhone. Not quite sure, but it's there and it's very cool.

James Cridland: 25:59

Yeah, no, it does look, it does look nice. And yeah, it's you know, it's a useful thing to be able to go in and actually see what's available on iOS or on other versions of that um of that operating system as well. So yeah, no, it's a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 26:16

Now, Adam Curry, I've just got to address this very quickly. He said basically, I think I had a rant a couple of weeks ago. You did have a ranting two weeks ago. Yes, yes. Wow, yes, I did. Okay. Uh and uh Adam, but who said what we do here has failed? And I just wanted to add for the record, Adam, I I never said podcasting to has failed. I've spent three years of my life following what podcasting 2.0 does with all the micro payments. In fact, TrueFans adds all podcasting 2.0 tags. I don't think any other app does that yet. So I think I have valid reasons to criticize when I think there are issues that are outstanding. Ergo, phase eight not moving forward, the PSP ineffective, no podcast advertising standards. I could go on, I won't. You can listen to the old episode. The problem I've got is it's not that we're not doing stuff, I think we're not doing stuff smart, and I think we could be smarter at what we do. It's great that Apple's adopted some of the standards and and long may that last. We haven't cracked Spotify, we haven't cracked YouTube and and you know Netflix coming to the party. I'm just saying that you know, please be aware, we are working really hard to do this stuff, and if we do have criticism, it is valid criticism. It's not just me ranting.

James Cridland: 27:38

Yeah, exactly. And I would I would back you up on that, and I would also say, you know, we all want this to succeed. That's kind of that's kind of the point of it. And there are various ways that we think that anybody would think we we could be doing a better job. And don't and don't take that as everything's failed. Take that as, oh, maybe if we did that, then that then you know X would happen or Y would happen. You know, I think that that that's that's a really good that's a really good, you know, uh part of people that are excited about what the opportunities are. The worst thing that anybody wants is for people to have no view at all on podcasting 2.0. Because if people have no view on podcasting 2.0, then podcasting 2.0 has definitely failed. Because either nobody knows what it is or no one cares. And frankly, that's not where we are. And so I think we've done we've done you know pretty pretty well there. But uh, yeah, don't don't take all it it would be better if we did this as thinking that you know that that that that's a failure or anything because it really isn't.

Sam Sethi: 28:47

Yeah. Now, James, let's move on. There's a company out there called Dax that is uh really big in terms of audio advertising, but I've never really heard much about it. Others may know more about it. Uh it's owned by Global. What do you know about it?

James Cridland: 29:04

Yes, well, I actually don't know very much about it either, but Dax have been going for 11 years, quietly going for 11 years. They're actually having their biggest year ever this year. And they're quite the sleeping giant, it turns out. So I was interested to learn more. So I caught up with a president of Dax in the US, who's a nice man called Brian Conlan.

Brian Conlon: 29:24

I am Brian Conlan. I am president of Dax US. I run the day-to-day operations here for a US business. I was employee number one of Audio HQ 11 years ago when our founders, Matt Gatair and Jeff McCarthy, started the business. Now I am overseeing the next phase of DAX and kind of taking us into the future of programmatic audio and especially podcasting as an area of focus for us as we go forward.

James Cridland: 29:49

So you're part of Global, which owns radio stations and podcast companies, and out of home advertising and DAX. What's the elevator pitch for what DAX is and what DAX does?

Brian Conlon: 30:00

Dax is an audio SSP that connects supply with brands and makes curation of inventory easy for advertisers to activate campaigns and measure outcomes. I think would be the elevator pitch. The challenge we have is DAX US is slightly different than DAX UK because they operate with all of the owned and operated radio stations that Global owns. Here we are a reseller of inventory. So right now we partner with 20 different CurePlay partners and about 400 radio stations in the US market that are 100% exclusive to DAX. So the Dax US elevator pitch is we have access to over 40 million monthly uniques that are exclusive to the DAX US team, and that makes up about a fifth of the streaming audio marketplace. So by not buying DAX, you're missing out on a fifth of the potential consumers for your brand.

James Cridland: 30:49

Yeah, my notes tell me that Tadax reaches more listeners than Spotify or Pandora or iHeart. So where are those listeners?

Brian Conlon: 30:56

Those are subscribers that pay for the free version without the ads. And I think what we try and lean into is that DAX is an advertiser-first organization, not a subscriber-first organization. Pandora and Spotify are great platforms, right? There's no combating that statement. They are where brands want to be, but I think in reality, the actual ad-supported audience is much smaller than brands may perceive the platform to be in the overall landscape. One thing that we really lean into is if you look at Spotify, Pandora, and iHeart, they only account for about 55% of the digital audio ad spend currently. So there's a large proportion of consumers you're not reaching by only buying those three. So those three absolutely have a seat at the table. But what Dax looks to do is become that reach and efficiency advertiser or audiences at scale, essentially, is really what we try and do here and be that reach extension and efficiency play to bring in the overall buy and help them fill that untapped gap of audience.

James Cridland: 31:53

Dax is clearly a very big company in terms of the amount of audience that you are reaching and everything else. I I'm wondering why I've not written an awful lot about Dax, and I'm wondering why we haven't heard more. You know, it's almost like a sleeping giant, isn't it? Why why is that?

Brian Conlon: 32:10

I I think that's why we're talking today, to be honest. Is it my fault, Brian? No, is it my fault? I don't think it's your fault. I think when we first started the company at Audio HQ, we tried to do a lot of press releases talking about our exclusive partnerships post-COVID. We just kind of let the business run steady course, right? And I don't think we did a lot of news flashes post-acquisition. But now, in my my role, I think this is a big opportunity for us to lean in now and start to get some recognition in the marketplace because we do have a tremendous value prompt for advertisers. We've built a lot of loyal customers over 11 years in business. You're not going to succeed for 11 years if you're doing something wrong, right? I mean, we've we've built these relationships, we provide our life for advertisers. We've got a lot of these Fortune 500 brands that have come to us, we've gotten verbal approval, and then we go to the client phase and they're like, Who is that, right? It's to your point, it's we're a giant that's a little bit invisible. So I think what I'm trying to do is just get our message out there and let people know that we are here to help with monetization and then help brands find unique audience that's additive to their media plans.

James Cridland: 33:14

When we were setting up this interview, I was told that you would tell us why audio is broken today. And that sounds interesting. So, Brian, why is audio broken today?

Brian Conlon: 33:24

We don't get a proper seat at the table, right? I think there is a lack of measurement to get audio its proper recognition on a media plan. That's why I think it's broken. Something that I've spoken about, I think it last time was with Brian Barletta at the podcast movement, was around if you look at these media plans, it's very easy for audio to be the first one that gets thrown off the planet because it's just not performing in these MMM models within the industry holding companies. But for me, we know it provides tremendous value for brands. We know it provides reach, it's providing an ROI. It's just not being measured the same way CTV and display and search are holistically on these media plans. So there's no way for these agencies to kind of talk about the value prop and get brands to commit to it. So I think we've solved for measurement attribution, but it's still within our ecosystem with companies like Claritons and Pine Scribe providing great benefits to advertisers, but that's still in a siloed fashion, right? We're not talking about it holistically across the budgets, and how do we take budget from social and convert it to audio dollars? Like there's no way to really do that easily now. And that's why I feel like our industry is broken. One of the things that drives me personally, frustrates me personally, is the statement that we've heard for five or six years now, where audio is 30% of a consumer's day, but it's still five to six percent of the budgets. We've talked about that for many years in a row, and we're still not figuring out how to properly change that. So I think that's something that we need to holistically come together, competitors, frenemies in the space, and put our put our heads together about how do we actually drive impact and change to allow audio to get proper recognition, drive more dollars for everyone in the space.

James Cridland: 35:07

Yeah, there was uh a report recently from Oxford Road saying that podcasting is missing a billion dollars in ad revenue because it doesn't have good enough measurement. Do you wrote do you agree with Dan there?

Brian Conlon: 35:19

Yeah, I do. I I think they they definitely are onto something there, and I think one of the things we have to worry about as an industry is YouTube is this big great partner for a lot of people from a podcast reach standpoint. But what does that do for the audio strategy long term, right? We're we're leaning into video so much you're seeing Spotify and IR do these Netflix integrations. And there's a place for that from a reach extension standpoint. But if they're not providing the back-end measurement to holistically tell the story of the episode, is it really helping your audio budget grow, right? And the the perception of audio, it's really it's helping the video component of it grow, not the audio side. And I think podcasts is such an interesting medium because you're getting that one-to-one connection in your headphones with the host that you trust every single day. And I think the video component is because that's how consumption's shifting in the landscape. But again, audio is the the core of what a podcast really is.

James Cridland: 36:17

So I was in Norway about 10 years ago, and I remember going to one of the radio stations, and they were explaining how their research works, and they used exactly the same system, the same sort of you know, automatic pager thing as TV did. So the TV numbers and the radio numbers were identical. And that and that enabled advertisers to see total impressions and all of that stuff uh right across broadcast media, which I thought was an interesting model. Are we talking about measurement in terms of just measurement of actual audience, or or are we talking about the ROI part of that as well?

Brian Conlon: 36:55

The the ROI part of it for sure. I mean, I again I think years ago I was talking to some bigger brands that said we weren't providing ROAS on the audio channel based on DCM reporting, but that measurement is holistically tied to display banners, right? It's not tracking it off of audio. And I know there's been enhancements to that over the years, but still I think just it's holistically looking at their media plan in DCM and looking at ROAS as the here's the ROI, but they don't truly understand the challenges or limitations with those metrics for audio. And I think that's maybe something that we can be doing better as an industry is socializing what those challenges and limitations are so that way people are more educated. I again I don't know if we're gonna change agencies or advertisers' minds given the scale of the budgets on the other channels, but at least if they do understand the limitations going into it, it can help us a little bit just get a different look at the true ROI for audio as a channel.

James Cridland: 37:50

Yeah, I mean it certainly sounds as if working together is a good plan and working together with competitors right now is a good plan because actually, you know, a rising tide gathers all boats, as um somebody somebody said a long, long time ago. It's true though. Yeah, yeah, but but but that's absolutely right. And I think probably calling things the same name is also useful. One of the things that I has has, you know, after eight years of writing about this industry, it is fascinating seeing how different people who sell different bits of podcast advertising call what they sell different names. It's very true. It's very frustrating to work out. What is a sponsorship? What is a what is an ad read? Yeah. Yeah. So all of that, all of that is a little bit weird. Are there other mechanisms in place to help you work together with uh others?

Brian Conlon: 38:37

I think the IAB is doing a good job of trying to facilitate this, right? I again, I think it's just doing it more frequently and making sure you have the right people in the room to help facilitate that change. But I know that this has been a topic of conversation at some of the last few audio days, right? So I personally am going to try and get more involved in some of those those events to share my thoughts on it. But I think that's probably the the best way to do it right now. And I think trying to lean into what Brian's doing now with podcast movement and these new event schedules of just getting people in the room for dinner around these events when you have the right decision makers there and keep this conversation moving in the right direction because it's not gonna one day of a year is not gonna move this thing forward. It has to be consistent and and a combined effort.

James Cridland: 39:25

So, what's the one thing that you wish the industry could do now that would help grow the industry further?

Brian Conlon: 39:32

Collectively figuring out the measurement piece is what will grow us to a whole different level. I mean, again, the YouTube is the thing we talked about earlier today around the lack of measurement and attribution on YouTube. And Dan said it's a billion dollars sitting out there that we really can't measure, but you know that that audience is converting, so it's just really just happening behind the scenes without any recognition for the work that these creators are doing. So I think that's really the holistic solution I think would help grow everyone right now.

James Cridland: 40:00

And more events like podcast movement and others to to actually help get industry leaders like you together would certainly help as well, I guess.

Brian Conlon: 40:10

Yeah, and I think it's also about how do we get more brands into the room. And this is something we've talked to Brian about, right? It's like it's definitely a lot of the same supply partners, podcast creators that are showing up to these events, and it's great to do it two times a year, but how do we get the decision makers with the dollars that are controlling audio budgets to be in that room, whether it's tickets or having sponsors bring certain brands into the room? But we need to hear from them what the pain points are, not just what we think the pain points are, right? Because I think they're on the front lines every day talking to clients, putting together these media plans so they know where the challenges are and what what the opportunities are to scale budgets. So having them in the room and up on stage to present those findings and and and learnings is really impactful in my opinion.

James Cridland: 40:58

Brian, it's been great to talk. Thank you so much for your time.

Brian Conlon: 41:00

Yeah, nice to nice to speak with you as well, James.

James Cridland: 41:02

Brian Conlan. So one of the interesting things Brian said there, Sam, is the measurement problem. And I I hadn't properly understood this, you know, because we keep on hearing, oh, the measurement measurement's wrong in terms of podcasting, and this is why there's no money, and blah, blah, blah. And I was there thinking, well, the measurement problem is downloads and the consumption data. And it really isn't. Um, as Brian was saying, it's not downloads, it's not the whole choosing shows to advertise on and all of that. It's the other side of the measurement. It's the measurement of, well, as Brian called it, ROAS, which in case you're wondering stands for return on advertising spend. It's that measurement. It's the measurement of how successful the ads are being. And that there are loads of companies doing it: Magellan AI, Podscribe, and various others, and Spotify, of course, doing their own as well. I almost wonder whether there are too many companies, or potentially that some of the companies are actually not giving the same data as some of the other companies. So it's just massively confusing. So I think it was interesting hearing Brian talking about the the industry working together more, and perhaps that's one of the things that we need to do there is just to harmonise the very basic data that we give advertisers that shows how well podcast advertising works.

Sam Sethi: 42:21

I mean, this is the old adage, isn't it? I have my marketing spend, I just don't know which half works and which half doesn't, and where it's spent on. Nothing's changed in that model. I I again I I I have talked about it in the past. I think there is a model out there where we can accurately measure, just as we can measure listen time for the consumption of a podcast. I think we can and will measure the listen time of an advert. I think there is a model. I'm not going to go into detail now, but I do think that will help. A, the advert was played, B, this is how long the person listened to it, and C, did they take action? As in what was their result? That's what I think ROAS will need in order to give confidence to advertisers that that mid-roll was heard, that that end role was heard. At the moment, I don't think they have that confidence. It's more of a belief that they have to bel take on board, I think. But that's where I differ with you on that one.

James Cridland: 43:21

Yeah, I mean, I th I think I think to an extent, it's almost irrelevant whether or not the ad has been heard. It's more relevant whether the ad works, whether the ad drives traffic to a website or drives in-store traffic or or or you know, people buy stuff because of it, or whatever the ad is there to do. I think that's the relevant thing. And I think from the point of view of the measurement, that's where we don't have the measurement. Whether or not anybody's actually had to listen to the ad all the way through, all of the other stuff comes from that. So I think that that's probably the more relevant thing. But yeah, no, I th I find it I find it fascinating. So it was a good uh it was a good chat to have.

Announcer: 44:04

Pay you with the ears. If you like this podcast, why not get another one? Pod News Daily gives you a quick daily update of everything going on in podcasting. You can't find Pod News Daily on Netflix, but you can find Pod News Daily wherever you found this podcast. Or go to podnews.net slash listen. Now, back to these two idiots. We're sorry, but now it's time for more news about Spotify on the Pod News Weekly Review. Oh, good.

James Cridland: 44:34

Oh, good. Yes, it's Spotify quarter three earnings time, Sam Sethy.

Sam Sethi: 44:39

Oh, well, I can just see the invite to the private Spotify party cancel Mr. Cridlin, cancel Mr. Sethy.

James Cridland: 44:46

I was n I was never going anywhere. Yes, well, I snuck in once. No were you.

Sam Sethi: 44:49

No, I snuck in once, if you remember.

James Cridland: 44:52

Oh yes, no, you so so you did. Yes.

Sam Sethi: 44:54

Anyway, I must snuck into the Amazon one last year. That was good as well.

James Cridland: 44:58

Um the numbers from Spotify, let's move on quickly. Numbers, yes, focus, Mr.

Sam Sethi: 45:02

Sethy.

James Cridland: 45:03

Um both subscribers and total revenue both grew 12% year on year. Company now has 713 monthly active users. Uh that's what it said in the big glossy press release. You then open the shareholder deck and you discover that ah, ad revenue is down. Ad revenue is either down 6% year on year or 2% on the quarter at only half a billion dollars. But if you take currency conversions into account, then ad revenue is flat. Whatever the story there, uh, it's not great in terms of ad revenue. So the thing keeping Spotify afloat, and they are still in profit, by the way, is people paying for Spotify, not necessarily the ads. So that's a useful thing to at least understand. All of the data mentioning podcasts was all mentioning video podcasts, because of course it was, wasn't it? Alex Nostrom talking, giving some, in my view, very spurious stats about uh Spotify video podcast consumption.

Sam Sethi: 46:05

The numbers were off the Richter. I mean, I I I didn't I didn't equate those numbers at all.

James Cridland: 46:10

Yeah, I mean, so more than 390 million users have streamed a video podcast on Spotify, a 54% increase year over year. Okay, let's just have a look at that. And let's remember these are quarter three financial earnings. When did Spotify allow you to upload videos to Spotify if you weren't hosted on Spotify? Oh, July last year. So really what we're seeing here is oh, if you if you allow more people to upload videos, then more people will end up watching them. Oh, and by the way, that 390 million users who have streamed a video podcast on Spotify, it doesn't say for how long, it doesn't say how many times. It it's just, you know, I might have clicked on a Joe Rogan clip by mistake for two seconds. Well, I'm now part of the 390 million. And and so we could continue. I mean, all of these numbers, you know, I I asked the the the PR person, what does this 390 million users, you know, what's the time frame for that? Is that is that a month or is that ever or what is it? And they didn't come back to me. And then it says, and and this was interesting. So th there are two other numbers in here. Time spent with video podcasting has more than doubled year over year, driven mostly by video podcasts. So time spent has more than doubled year over year. It then says this consumption has increased by more than 80% since the launch of the Spotify partner program in January. So more than doubled year over year, except actually increased by over 80% since January. So what we're probably seeing there is that twenty percent of video content consumed on Spotify is uh is music videos. That's maybe. Well, there you go. So there's so there's a thing. And again, if that consumption has increased by more than 80% since the launch of the Spotify partner program in January, then we're only actually seeing we're only actually really seeing sort of six or seven months worth of video consumption here rather than a full year. So there's lots of real, you know, smoky figures here. I mean, smoky figures, of course, don't bother the the people in the stock market because they are all asses. Stock is apparently up 47% so far this year. So you know, so there we are. But I I mean I I do look at those at those numbers and uh I'm not sure what Spotify's trying to tell us. And I think it's quite telling that it's all to do with video podcasts. There's no mention of audio consumption there at all in here. Spotify has moved on from the audio podcasts conversation and is now just focusing on the video podcast conversation.

Sam Sethi: 49:00

That's because that's the sexy thing to do right now, to compete with YouTube. The thing that they didn't put in, or I've missed if they had put it in, is how much money have they actually paid to creators? If you remember back in January when they launched this partner programme, we kept asking Spotify, how much will you be paying from the subscription to the creator? And we never got an answer, and we still don't have an answer as far as I can see. And when you say 390 million people have watched a video, and then you say, Okay, Spotify, well, how much money have creators made from it? And it's crickets right now, I believe.

James Cridland: 49:35

Now that that there has been one number, I think. I think there was one number, and I think it was back in March, of how much money that they actually paid out to creators. But that has been it in terms of that. So yeah, I think it's uh yeah, I think it's really it it is really interesting, isn't it, that uh Spotify is very being very careful in terms of the numbers that they are giving us. And those numbers are, I mean, so woolly to be relatively useless. So it'll be yeah, interesting to interesting to end up uh end up seeing. I mean they claimed 120 million monthly podcast listeners in November. So 120 million people listening to podcasts a month. So where where where are we now on that? Why do we not have a new number 12 months on from that either? It's really interesting. So, you know, lots of positive stories about Spotify. When you have actually have a look at some of the consumption data that they're giving out, it's not quite as clear as it could be.

Sam Sethi: 50:48

Let me explain. So uh with uh Spotify, I don't believe it's the best podcasting app. I think if you took music away from Spotify, I wonder how many people would use Spotify. So their model is still licensed music, licensed audiobooks, which you can just buy if you have the money. But and so the subscription on the app works because they've got licensed content that people want. So that model is just consistently repeating because their subscriber numbers are going up. Everyone's going, yep, that's what we want. The numbers go up. Equally, with the ad revenue go down, they made the Spotify free platform, you know, which runs ads, but they're not seeing an increase in people using that clearly because if the ad revenue has gone down. So their business model into video, into podcasting, I don't know if that's succeeding, but their business is succeeding overall because it's repeating what it is good at. You know, they added Spotify to more clients, they've added it to more platforms. That's what I think Spotify is really good at doing. And the other thing that came across in the announcement was they've increased the price of Spotify subscriptions, and again, they keep doing that. This is the third time that they've done it this year. Ashley Carmen noted, though, that the price increases aren't impacting growth. So, and they also added in there that they are seeing user engagement at an all-time high, and they see that they are happy to keep doing this price increase as a strategy because there doesn't appear to be a snapping point yet in the price elasticity.

James Cridland: 52:31

Uh I mean I I mean what I would say is uh I mean, are we sure that it's not harming growth? Would growth have been much higher if they hadn't have put the price up?

Sam Sethi: 52:40

Ah, okay, yes. We don't know that, but if all it is is about can we get more people to subscribe, tick, we did that. Can we push the revenue number up, tick, can we increase the price, tick? All of those mac m metrics are working. And the stock market is going, well done, Spotify, 47% increase in stock value. So if they could have done better, I don't think the market is really worried about it at the moment.

James Cridland: 53:09

No, it's um it's a really interesting it's a really interesting bit. And of course, Apple Music is cheaper. YouTube music is obviously comes with ad-free YouTube as well, and so you've got uh a a bit of a different uh conversation going on there as well. And so yeah, I think it it is really interesting seeing what happens. By the way, those price increases increases going up in the UK and also increases going up, pricing going up uh here in uh Australia uh as well. So yeah, it's you know always always interesting diving in.

Sam Sethi: 53:47

Now, one thing that Spotify has had is a new class action lawsuit against it, alleging that the company has turned a blind eye to mass-scale fraudulent streaming. Uh in this case, it's fake streams of Drake, someone I don't really listen to particularly. And again, what the lawsuit is apply uh alleging is that this is affecting smaller music artists as well, because they get a smaller share of the revenue from what they call the stream share, which is like a pool of money. Uh again, in this model, according to the lawsuit, Spotify are not stopping fraudulent people who are copying or AI faking other artists.

James Cridland: 54:32

Yeah, it's I I think you'll always get some fraudulent behaviour on apps like this, particularly as big as uh Spotify is. So you know, clearly worthwhile keeping an eye on that. Uh and you know, you you're gonna get streaming fraud, you're gonna get AI people you know, putting AI slop on there and hoping that those end up uh appearing in the in the search results and so on and so forth. So yeah, there's a thing.

Sam Sethi: 54:58

Now, moving on, James, a little bit sort of related to what Netflix was doing with talking to CSXM and others. Fox is it's it seems acquiring podcasts at the moment. Who are they acquiring?

James Cridland: 55:12

Yeah, so they've acquired a company called Meet Cute, which is a company that makes romcom podcasts, and I've covered a bunch of their uh shows in the past. They've been bought by Fox Entertainment, and I'm trying to work out whether or not it's an aquire, i.e., they've acquired the people behind it, Naomi Shah, who's the CEO and founder, or whether or not they're actually interested in the romantic comedy podcast type of thing. So, I mean, it's it says that you know, now we have more firepower to grow faster, and our plan is to keep building our library of original shows, but then it says expand to new formats and genres and bring new voices to audiences wherever they are. So it'll be you know, not quite sure what the actual deal is there, but great to see Meet Cute moving on, because I know that they have been quite successful in what they've been doing.

Sam Sethi: 56:10

She's moving on to a more strategic role and has moved from New York to LA. So I'm not sure that they will be continuing to produce the rom-com content. I think you're right. I think that's more an aqua hire.

James Cridland: 56:22

Yeah, no, indeed. And talking about streaming companies like Netflix, we have a a new set of laws going on uh here in Australia. We are going to require streaming platforms to invest a minimum amount of money in homegrown content, according to Anthony Albanese's government. Great. Neighbours is coming back. Well, neighbours is a very good example of homegrown content that was very cheap and that did very well. But uh yes, and it says here platforms such as Netflix, Disney Plus, and Amazon Prime and any other streamers with over one million subscribers will have to contribute at least 10% of their local expenditure or 7% or 7.5% of revenue on Australian content. It turns out that only one platform is actually going to be uh eligible to pay this money. My suspicion is it's Netflix rather than any of the others. But yes, I mean you could question why that's important. I don't really want Netflix, an American company, making Australian stuff and telling Australian stories for us, because they're American and what do they know? So I I'm not sure that that's the best plan in the world. You can understand why broadcast television here has a percentage to hit in terms of Australian-made content, because it's public, you know, it's public uh radio spectrum, that's what a T T V channel is. But once you get on to streaming, I'm really not so sure why this is a thing and why we should uh why we should be doing this. But you know, if if if if Anthony Albanese, who who hasn't made any any mistaken uh uh ideas uh ever, if he wants to come up with that idea, then all power to him, I guess.

Sam Sethi: 58:12

Now here's a story that's a bit weird. The feed from Libsing is about to close. I apologize to everybody. I am struggling with my voice today. You may hear that. So why is the feed closing, James?

James Cridland: 58:27

Yeah, so the feed is the official LibSin podcast. It's been hosted by Elsie Escobar and Rob Walsh since July 2013. Here is the very first episode of The Feed.

Elsie Escobar: 58:41

Hi there. Thank you for listening to the Feed, the official Libsyn podcast.

James Cridland: 58:46

How has she kept her voice sounding like that? 23 years later. Elsie Escobar, who hosted that first episode with Rob appearing as a guest. The first episode, in case you're wondering, covering Windows Phone 8 podcast apps and stats for Stitcher. Ooh. Anyway, it was it was announced, interestingly, it was announced the closure of the feed was announced by Rob Walsh himself. Not on the feed, but on his own podcast, which is called Podcast 411, which has been going since December 2004 and which is now back. He announced, and this is the happy and joyful way that he announced that Libsin has closed the feed.

Rob Walch: 59:36

Let me read the official wording from Libson, mostly verbatim, with maybe one tweak or so in there. After more than a decade, the feed, the official Libson podcast is coming to a close. Since twenty thirteen, the feed has been a go to source for podcast education, insights, and inspiration. With two having awesome. Co-host and the best audience in podcasting. The show helped creators of all levels learn, grow, and connect. As Lipson looks ahead to 2026, we're excited to introduce new ways to support and celebrate our creator and advertiser community across all of our platforms. Stay tuned. More ways to learn, connect, and create are on the way.

James Cridland: 1:00:25

He read that very well, didn't he? Gosh.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:30

Does the word gritted teeth come to mind?

James Cridland: 1:00:32

Yeah, no, exactly. I do not know what Libsin are playing at. They're on their lowest share of new podcast episodes ever, according to the stats. They've been posting new record lows over the last four months. They've just been overtaken. Libsin, the first podcast hosting company in the world, have just been overtaken by RSS.com a couple of months ago and by Captivate as well. I mean, those are two new hungry little podcast hosting companies, overtaking the behemoth that Libsyn once was. And Libsyn, you know, a podcast company has decided it's not going to bother doing a podcast anymore. I just find that really weird. I went when I went to podcast movement in 2018, the first podcast meetup I went to was the Feed. Was the Feeds meetup, which was in the market in the next door. And Rob and Elsie were so nice to me and very gracious, very welcoming to the listeners, including me. And you know, I I just I just do not understand what a company who is involved in podcasting is doing stopping making a podcast. It just seems really weird. Have you got any idea what's going on there, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:01:54

No, I'm well, we we've talked about them becoming more of an advertising company and less of a podcast company. We've talked about Libsin 4 and Libsin 5 never being really fully rounded and completed. We've talked about, you know, the change at the top. I think, you know, this is just another nail in their coffin, maybe. I don't know if Elsie's going to still stay at Libsyn or whatever, 23 years with one company. Maybe she'll call it time. I don't know. I have no information on that, by the way.

James Cridland: 1:02:23

I mean, Elsie or Rob, I I've got no information about what those two folk are doing. I mean, I should say the the the really good news though is that Podcast 411, which is Rob's own show, is back. I have been missing, ever since we lost the new media show with the passing of Todd Cochrane, I've been missing somebody who says it like it is. And Rob, if Rob will do nothing else, he will say it as it is. And I loved so here's just a little clip from Podcast 411, his return episode, and he's covering some crappy stats that Listen Notes had that I don't even bother covering because they're rubbish. But anyway, Rob ended up seeing them. And I just, if this is indicative of what we're going to expect on the Podcast 411 podcast, I am very much looking forward to listening to this show every single week or every single fortnight. Here's a little clip.

Rob Walch: 1:03:22

Listen Notes put out some data on the number of active shows that is well not accurate to be nice. And I don't have to be nice because this is my show. So yeah, the Listen Notes puts this out. And I just like, come on, guys. They said we are at an all-time high for active shows. Well, if you go by the number of shows that published in the last 90 days, we are not close to the all-time high. Swing and amiss, better batter. Listen notes didn't even come close to hitting the ball on this one. I just wish Listen Notes did a better job on tracking this. Or at least copying from my slides at Podcast Movement or Podfest where I go over this each year.

James Cridland: 1:04:05

Wow. I am so looking forward to listening to more episodes of that. Yeah. That's gonna be great. So yeah.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:14

I think what you just said though about Todd, I think is so true. I miss the curmudgeon of Todd. Yes. I miss the, you know, ah, you know, and and that sort of, oh, this is just total crap. And yeah, I mean, if Rob's gonna come back and take that mantle, I know Rob and Todd are very close friends. Yeah.

James Cridland: 1:04:35

To be fair, I said to Rob Greenley, I said to Rob Greenley, you've found an ideal cranky old co-host for the new media show version two. And Rob said yes, although the chances of that coming back are almost zero. But wouldn't that be brilliant? I know that Rob and I haven't necessarily seen eye to eye, but nevertheless, really wish him the best with his uh show back again. I wish Elsie all the best as well. And the feed is going to be actually really missed. It was a great show. So yeah, it's a that's a real head scratcher from my point of view.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:12

Talking about things going away, James, the fire's gone out at Fireside Chat. Nicely done, James. What's gone on?

James Cridland: 1:05:20

Yeah, what a shame. Mark Cuban and Fallon Fatemi's Fireside Chat is to close. You might remember Mark Cuban and Fallon Fatemi. If you were at Podcast Movement in August 2021, where they went on the big stage and they told us that podcasting was old, tired, and beat up, and they said that the only way for us to make money was to lie to secure sponsorships. Fallon Fatemi then said that creators retain the IP in content posted on the platform, except Fireside's terms and conditions said the direct opposite, and said that no, actually, all of the IP goes to Fireside Chat Inc. But anyway, yes, they're they're closing. The company has filed an assignment for the benefit of creditors, which is apparently an alternative to chapter 7 bankruptcy. The only thing that I would say about all of this is that the company has three patents, which is interesting. And presumably there's some value to those three patents. They're to do with chatting, though, they're not necessarily to do with podcasting. But there's a certain amount of sharp of Schadenfreude in seeing somebody that was so rude about podcasting, so rude to podcasters in the big podcast conference, to for their for their you know, company to to fall over and and go bankrupt. So, you know, cheers, but you know, don't forget to close the door on your way out.

Sam Sethi: 1:06:47

Yeah, I mean, look, Mark Cuban won't even blink an eyelid, and the amount of money he put into that probably he slept out last night and made that. So uh yeah, not a big worry there.

Announcer: 1:06:56

The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:07:00

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:05

Well, it's something that was picked up on the Podcasting Tudor O podcast last week about this thing called Ellen Address. Now, without going into the deep darkest parts of the technology, there are methods in the way that payments are sent. One is called key send and the other one is called Ellen Address. And up until now, the podcast community has wrapped its head around key send. And it seems now that the the world in its dog is now moving to another format called Allen Address. And I I'll put it into email terms to make it easier. It's like people were using POP3 and now they're going to iMap4. And that still may be. Well, that makes it easier. Thanks, Sam. I was going, yeah. I was thinking as I said it, yeah, that made it clear as mud.

James Cridland: 1:07:56

Wow, there we are. Yeah, so we're so we're moving away from node addresses, which were 66 character hex IDs, which was just like the world's most complicated thing, and also hard-coded. So a bit like an IP address. We're moving to an email address. Yeah. So if you want to send me some money, then you can do that. JamesCridland at strike.me is how you would end up sending me money through lightning. And this is useful in both streaming payments, so streaming an amount of money per minute that you listen, and also useful in terms of boosts or super comments or whatever it is that you want to call them. So the the difficulty is that we've been stuck in the world of nodes for a long, long time, or key send, as the phrase is. We've been stuck in that world for a long, long time, and frankly, podcasting has been the only set of people still stuck in the world of nodes. We need to move over. I think the basic argument was in the podcasting 2.0 podcast last week. We need to move over to using LN address, those nice email-like things. And we need to kind of do that as soon as possible. Because right now we are holding things back by having a mix of a mix of key send node addresses as well as ln addresses. So yeah, so that's sort of basically where we are. Now, what was interesting is for this show we are all still keysend, we're all still nodes. For the pod news daily, we are using ln addresses as well as nodes. So I can actually see from the from the money which is sent to me on the pod news daily podcast, I can actually see how much of that is to an LN address and to the node. And so therefore, who supports both and who doesn't support LN address? And the answer is so far, everybody of the three podcast apps that I can actually see, everybody is supporting both LN address and nodes. Not necessarily supporting them as well, but nevertheless supporting them. So I'm still getting the money, which is the important thing. So basically we need to work as well. Well, you know, there are some people where you can very clearly see here's the message which has been sent in a boost or a super comment, for example, or here's the payment for this particular show. And then there are some other apps who aren't necessarily being quite as clear in terms of what this money is for or where this money is coming from. And I think, you know, and it's just a a case of getting all of that, all of that to work well. But yeah, it was a really good conversation in the podcasting 2.0 podcast. But what it but what it basically comes down to is if you have streaming SATS, streaming payments in your RSS feed, then you're probably best shifting to using LN address, i.e., something that looks like an email, rather than keeping your node address in there. And if you could do that as soon as possible, then that would be super good. One that we know, one app that we know works pretty well is Strike, if it's available in your current state or country. But of course, you can also sign up with TrueFans, you can sign up with Fountain, you can sign up with all kinds all kinds of other things. Have I kind of understood Yeah?

Sam Sethi: 1:11:14

I mean, the analogy I was going to finish off with is that if I want to send an email to you, James, you just tell me your email address. I don't need to know whether it was POP3 or IMAP4 underneath the hood. And in the same way, we should be able to say, I want to send you some money to your wallet. You give me the LN address, the email like address, and I should not need to know whether it's key send or LN address underneath the hood. And that's when I think the mainstream user will understand it because it's just like an email address. Here's my wallet, send me some money, boom, and it's done. So I think that's why I think we need to move across. I think the big concern was that some metadata would be lost.

James Cridland: 1:11:54

Yeah.

Sam Sethi: 1:11:55

Me and Oscar, by the way, are meeting in London next week to discuss this together.

James Cridland: 1:11:59

Well, there you go. So that's so that's a good thing. Other things going on, there's an app called Podcast Magic, which has just been launched. This I thought was pretty cool and pretty clever. All you do is you email them a screenshot of your podcast player playing a podcast. It then sends you back a little clip and a transcript back to you about what was being talked about. And it works with Apple Podcasts and it works with Spotify. Now, of course, one of the things that it didn't work particularly well with is if your show had chapters, because it couldn't see the episode title in the screenshot. And now all shows are gonna have chapters on Apple Podcasts. I'm not sure it's gonna work anymore. Right. Um, but uh it was quite a nice idea. I I I I just thought it was quite neat uh of a way where you basically just send a screenshot and it automatically comes back. I thought that was quite a nice, quite a nice trick. You can give it a go, test it for free, and if you want to use it going forward, then it's a one-off twenty dollars for unlimited insights, which is an interested plan. But yeah, that's one thing. Uh is there another is there another thing a bit like it?

Sam Sethi: 1:13:14

Yeah, well, the first point I was gonna say with podcast magic, I hope it's not an Indian in Bangladesh who's uh just looking at the podcast, and I hope it is AI. But moving on from that comment AWS, do you remember uh Amazon Go?

James Cridland: 1:13:28

Yes, exactly.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:28

Go right Snipped, which is a company I really like out of Switzerland, uh Kevin's company, they have a great tool that captures similarly as you're listening to the podcast, you can make notes, and and their AI does a lot of clever analysis as well. So I think you know, again, I think that's a really good company to look at as well. And look, I'm gonna spend more time with Podcast Magic, hopefully, and if I think it's worth it, we'll get them on the show. We have had Kevin before, it's probably time we got him back as well. So, yes, have a look at both Podcast Magic and Snipped.

James Cridland: 1:14:01

And finally, Xenomedia has deployed HLS for podcasting. The company has announced in a press release, or have they? Turns out they haven't. Turns out they've they've deployed HLS for many things, but they haven't deployed HLS in a podcast RSS feed quite yet. Right. I'm having conversations with their CTO and basically saying, okay, you will be using alternate enclosures, won't you? And also, you know, how long is your chunk length and what and what bit what bit rates are you doing and all of that kind of uh stuff. And I think he's I think he's looking at that and going, oh, this is all this is all a little bit strange. But uh yes, but it's great to see another company looking at HLS, even though I'm not necessarily sure that they're quite doing what other people are doing yet. And at some point I'm sure that we will see HLS growing. I'm still not very convinced about why it needs to be in audio podcasts, but certainly for video, you can see a great benefit in doing that.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:02

It does need to be an audio podcast because if you want to get listen time data, you can't do that based on a download.

James Cridland: 1:15:09

Well, there you go. That that'll be that'll be the reason why. It all comes down to that measurement thing and whether or not we actually need the listen time data.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:18

But uh, are you going back to this the advertising the yes I still think you need to measure? I still what if you can't measure it, it doesn't matter.

James Cridland: 1:15:29

Uh uh yes, well, yes, fair enough.

Announcer: 1:15:32

Booster grand, booster, boostergram, super comments, zaps, fan mail, fan mail, super chats, and email. Our favorite time of the week, it's the Pod News Weekly Review inbox.

James Cridland: 1:15:46

So many different ways to get in touch with us. Fan mail using the link in our show notes, super comments on true fans, boosts everywhere else, or email. And we share any money that we make as well. A nice uh fan mail that's come in through uh Buzz Sprout, our sponsor. This is somebody who lives in Alhambra in California. I've seen a pantomime there. And oh no, that was the Alhambra in Bradford. Yes, I'm sorry. It's behind you. It's behind you. Who controls the formal certifications in China? The state. Welcome to State Controlled Podcasts. Uh, this is a comment about a story that we covered last week about basically the Chinese government saying if you're going to talk about health or you're going to talk about finance, you better have a degree. Otherwise, you can't really talk about them. You're you're saying no, Sam.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:32

Well, I want to drive a car. State controlled. How dare you stop me driving my car? Yeah, it's called a driving license. The the governments of all countries have a right to put in place some sort of controls. Otherwise, it would be completely.

James Cridland: 1:16:51

I would tell you, so at the moment, again, Anthony Albanese, our Prime Minister here in Australia, can't do anything wrong, uh obviously. And at the moment, one of the brilliant ideas that he's come up with is that everyone in Australia is going to get free electricity for three hours a day. Well, and there's a good reason there's a good reason why everybody should get free electricity for three hours a day is that it's bloody sunny here, and a lot of us have solar panels, and frankly, the cost of electricity in the middle of the day is pretty well zero anyway. And so what the government is basically saying is everybody gets free electricity for three hours a day, and that will look really clever for us, and it'll look as if Anthony Albanese is the second messiah, and everybody will be very, very happy, and so on, and so forth. Uh and I heard somebody on Sky News, which is the equivalent of Fox News here in Australia, it's it's certainly not balanced at all, nor does it b nor does it pretend it's going to be. I heard somebody on on Sky News saying that this was that this was an affront against free speech and free behaviour, and it would force people, it would force people to use electricity at a certain time of day, and you're taking away our free will. And they're thinking, really, really, to offer free electricity for three hours a day, that is taking away people's free will. Really? Have you got nothing better to be whining on about?

Sam Sethi: 1:18:21

My goodness.

James Cridland: 1:18:25

My goodness, but yes, I think state controlled podcasts, yeah, I think that that's possibly going slightly too far. But I think But they're not state controlled. They're not. They are state uh I mean the only thing that the state is is trying to control in China is that if you're gonna hear something on a podcast about those specific things, then it's gonna be at least from someone with a qualification in that thing that they are talking about. And and again, I I I don't really have a problem.

Sam Sethi: 1:18:57

I don't really have a problem with some of the stuff that Stephen Bartlett has said or Joe Rogan would not be allowed, yes.

James Cridland: 1:19:05

Anyway, enough of that. Lots of super comments using true fans, a customatic, and two fountains. Lots of super uh of uh true fans though. Uh Neil Vellio, 607 sats, thank you. Saying uh Sam is off Adam Curry's Christmas list with his Booster Gram shade. Ha ha ha. What was that? It's Booster Gram Shade.

Sam Sethi: 1:19:30

What have you done about Can I just point out that you know they say never meet your heroes? Adam Curry is one of my heroes, right? So I I I I totally admire what he's achieved and done.

James Cridland: 1:19:45

But sometimes I did feel that there was a batch going on.

Sam Sethi: 1:19:51

And I I therefore know I'll never be invited on the show again. But yes, no, I don't know. I can't remember which bit of my rant I did, but uh yes, I'm sure that I am looking at it.

James Cridland: 1:20:02

Neil also says, talking about guests and a move away from guests, which we were mentioning last time. I've been discovering, I've been discouraging my clients from a guest format from uh for a couple of years now. The data speaks for itself, and I agree with Jack Davenport. Most just worry that they can't carry an audience themselves. So as soon as you alleviate that fear, they recognize the benefit of going solo. There you go. A row of ducks from Lyceum, happy Halloween, and lots of conversations between him and the late Bloomer actor, who are still fighting to become the super fan of the Pod News Daily, which is excellent. The more that you can keep up doing that, Sam, the better. So I'm I'm I'm just a big fan of that. Uh the late Bloomer actor saying, I feel Sam needs to update the superfan algorithm to include a calculation of time listened for fairness, perhaps. I think it should all be related to manipulation. That's what I think it should be. So yes, no, very good. Bruce, the ugly quacking duck, he says, let's not forget it's up to the listeners controlling the conversation or controlling who is saying it, back to China, is still control. The listeners need a brain to decide if it is garbage or not. Keep podcasting. Again, I would agree, but that's why you have the FCC. And the FCC has certain rules and regulations on what you can and can't say on broadcast television. I again, I I see no particular reason why those rules and things shouldn't necessarily apply, even if you're not on broadcast spectrum. But as Adam has said, we are both socialist European, you know, anti-democratic, you know, yes, communists.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:49

Can I just shout go Zorin Mandani?

James Cridland: 1:21:52

No, no. Then finally, Silas on Linux, 500 sats, YouTube banned in Australia for people under 16. Why? Spotify has a feature where you can directly message other users one-on-one since August, which YouTube doesn't even offer. How is that logical? And again, I would bow my head to the great Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, uh, Australia's best prime minister ever, for his very clever Are you up for some awards? We've only got the list of the social media platforms which are going to be banned in six weeks. We've only got the list today. One of those social media companies who are going to be banned is a company called Kik. Have you ever heard of Kik?

Sam Sethi: 1:22:43

Well, only because I wrote something in, but um, yes, it's now an Australian thing, but no.

James Cridland: 1:22:48

It's an online sort of streaming game thing, and they're insisting that Kik goes through, whereas there are some companies which are obviously social media, but they're no that but they're but they're absolutely just fine. It's just bizarre. None of it makes any sense whatsoever. So there we are. And and one final uh and I I I very much appreciate this one final super comment boost from comic strip blogger from CSB himself. 3,333 sats. I mean, that that deserves a that deserves one of these. Yes. I mean, I know it's nowhere near as high as what the podcasting 2.0 show gets, but e even so. Anyway, CSB says, Howdy, James, tell your audience to subscribe to youtube.com slash at sign CSB-music dash labs. Yo, CSB. Uh I hope I've done the Dave Jones voice there correctly. So yes, thank you, CSB. That's very kind of you.

Sam Sethi: 1:23:50

It's like he was in the room. It was like he was in the room.

James Cridland: 1:23:53

And thank you to the 23 power supporters for getting out your credit card. The internet's money and giving us some and giving us some of that every single month. It's been really, really useful. And it's been useful for us to be able to put money behind the bar. It's been useful to help fund Sam's development habit. You were wondering what I was going to say there. So uh so it's certainly been really, really helpful. So thank you to the many people who have been doing that, including David Marzell, Cy Jobling, Rachel Corbett, Dave Jackson, and Mike Hamilton. Thank you so much, all of you, for doing that. Uh, weekly.podnews.net uh is where you can sign up to be our 24th, and we will give you a big shout out if you do that. So, what's been happening for you this week, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:24:39

A couple of interesting things for me. I mean, I forgot about Hernan Lopez's streamonomics newsletter, and I came across it again, and I'm really enjoying it actually, some of his analysis of Netflix and Meta and things. I mean, weirdly, Meta's Reels is now nearly as big as all of US TV advertising. I mean, the advertising they they get just from Reels alone, and they reckon that by next year the Reels advertising on its own will be bigger than the whole of the US advertising TV market, which is crazy. And these are sorts of so I love I love some of the stats he's pulling out. So congratulations. I would love to get him on this show to talk about some of it, but we'll see. I don't know if you read Streamonomics at all, but yes, I read bits of it actually, and it's a really good thing.

James Cridland: 1:25:27

Allen Co. have also been uh sponsoring some very good uh research recently as well. So uh yeah, Hanan is uh Hanan is a good man, so uh yeah, that's a good thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:25:36

And now pretentious corner. Me pre-ordering the book Thinking with Machines, which is out on the 18th of November. It's uh an interesting book. I only do I got noted by it from uh Mikul Debichand, who's over at the New York Times Render's show, uh, who's going to be interviewing the author Vasad Dar. So yeah, I'm I'm looking forward to reading it. It's more about he's he's a NYU professor, and he has some interesting views on what he thinks this is all going and where it's going to go next. So yeah, looking forward to that book. The other thing that shocked me this week was uh Nvidia's numbers: five trillion dollars and 80%. The 80% is basically the number of employees now that are millionaires in NVIDIA.

James Cridland: 1:26:24

Wow. Wow, gosh. Imagine if you're working for a company where 80% of your employees were millionaires. Yes, exactly. Exactly. Gosh. How many people at TrueFans, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:26:41

Oh, yeah, yeah. Tons coming in the future. We'll be there.

James Cridland: 1:26:47

Yeah, there we go.

Sam Sethi: 1:26:48

There's a thing. Our pricing page is finally live, um, although one of the things that's still a wait list because we have moved over our first podcast from rss.com and BuzzSprout, which is really good and it all works super simple. So I was very pleased with that. Um, and we're not ready to go mainstream yet. We've got lots of work to do. We're working on the the way our model works is very different to everyone else. We are we are looking at streaming. We're using a technology that will allow us to chunk everything up into packets similar to HLS, but it's not using HLS. So we can use the standard MP3, MP4. We will do a monthly charge, so for example, $20 a month. But if you don't use your allocation of data, we will refund you the difference. So it's more of a maximum limit per month than an actual limit. So we won't keep your unused data. So we will send it back to you in either a rollover of data or a return of fees into your wallet.

James Cridland: 1:27:53

Well, there you go. I hope that's as clear as as clear as as clear as clear can be.

Sam Sethi: 1:28:00

Well, we I think when you see it and you go, it's at the moment the way that hosts work is it's a fixed fee, right? Ours is a variable fee. So there's a fixed fee. I will charge you so much a month, whether you use the data or you don't use the data, whether you have those many downloads or you don't. So all the numbers mean nothing. 30,000 downloads. I didn't get close to 30,000 downloads. So I can put any number in my marketing and it's an irrelevancy. We're gonna give you accurately how many plays you got, how long listen time you received, percent completed on average across all apps. And if you don't use the allocation that we've given you, we will give you your money back. And I think it's fair. That's cool, value. That sounds pretty good, to be honest. Yes, I mentioned that Oscar and I are meeting in London. We're gonna Oscar kindly reached out to me and said he's got a uh a really interesting idea that doesn't use Noster for L and address, and I'm really interested, so we're gonna meet up and also talk about L402 or premium RSS. We want to get it so that it works between both our apps, and then hopefully once it works with us too, we can then document that properly, and then others can jump on board as well.

James Cridland: 1:29:07

And so the only reason that Noster is being used is for the metadata that goes alongside the payments, right? So so you can use all kinds of other methods of getting the metadata in there, like just send a URL with a JSON file. But but uh so Noster isn't required for the payment, it's just required for the message that goes with that payment. Yes. Right. Well, there you go. That's nice and easy there.

Sam Sethi: 1:29:35

Yeah, and so I look, I'm just really pleased. Oscar and I do meet up from time to time where we do put our heads together. So hopefully we'll come up with something interesting. Well, there you go. I look forward to it. Uh, and then I'm going off to the City University next Tuesday for the evening of British Podcast Award winners. I'm looking forward to that. So, yes, it's free to go. It's on at 6 30 at City University. So if you're coming along to it, say Hi and look forward to meeting you there. Yeah, that'll be good fun. And go Zoran Mandani. That's all I will say. Now, James, what's happened for you?

James Cridland: 1:30:09

I have, of course, I've been spending money on Alibar because of course I have. No, on AliExpress. I've been spending money on AliExpress because of because of course I have. I have uh spent a whole 35 Australian dollars in buying a tiny little sort of USB powered board that has a radio transmitter on it, and it's uh a board that is called a mesh tastic board. I don't know if you are familiar with mesh tastic at all.

Sam Sethi: 1:30:37

Well, I know what mesh networks are, but no, not mesh tastic.

James Cridland: 1:30:41

Yeah, well, this is pretty well that. So it's a mesh network of lots of different people. So it's it uses radio frequencies to get data around. It's completely off-grid, it's completely open source, it can be secure, it doesn't need to be secure. And uh yeah, and so I plugged this little thing in. It's tiny, it's the size of a matchbox. If you're old enough to remember what a matchbox looks like, it's the size of a cigarette lighter. Oh no, damn. Uh anyway, uh, so you plug this thing in, you do some arcane setting up on the thing, and then it bursts into life and it listens to the particular frequency around you. And it just in in the Brisbane area, there are 122 other people who have done this, and there's all kinds of messages being sent around the place, and it's just really, really interesting. And they and uh yeah, so I can I can message somebody who's about 200 kilometers away and it'll hop through other people's other people's devices on the way. It's just really interesting. I've got absolutely no idea what it's going to be used for, absolutely no idea why it's it's interesting, but for $35, frankly, it was it was fine. So yeah, but that's what I've been doing. Uh, meshtastic.org is where to find out more information about all of this kind of uh stuff. But yeah, I just find it fascinating that there's this whole off-grid network which exists out there, which has nothing to do with the internet, and is quite interesting.

Sam Sethi: 1:32:19

So isn't that what threads are threads were supposed to be? That's the new protocol standard for IoT devices that the industry agreed on, which was for discovery of devices and the ability for them to self-install fundamentally and then talk to each other over a protocol that didn't need to talk back to the mothership.

James Cridland: 1:32:39

Yes, so threads is threads works on your own on your own home home Wi-Fi. And so therefore it only really reaches as far as your as your home Wi-Fi reaches. It doesn't need your home Wi-Fi, but it uses your home Wi-Fi in various in various ways. Whereas I mean, whereas this uses different frequencies and is deliberately built to travel quite far. And you can carry these little sort of you know, pager things which are connected to the to this service all all the time. And yeah, and it's just a really interesting, it ju it it just I I you know as I say, I've got no understanding of why I want this or why it would be useful. But I really like the idea of just sort of playing with technology and going, oh well, what can you do?

Sam Sethi: 1:33:27

Yeah, you understand why I have face Facebook glasses.

James Cridland: 1:33:31

Correct, correct, yes. So so that's the thing. And the other thing that I've been doing is fiddling around with podcast chapters and stuff like that, because obviously now that Apple supports them, I've been fiddling around to work out how to make the podcast that I personally put together more compatible with that. Still like to work out there, must-be a method of using Hindenburg's XML format that it produces for a podcast to then get the chapter marks automatically off there. So that's one probably going to be playing around with over the next couple of weeks or so. But yeah, so that's been that that's been fun as well. What's been quite frustrating in terms of that is both podcasting2.org and indeed the GitHub both have links to pages that don't actually exist sometimes in terms of what the spec is. So that's been a little bit frustrating, but hopeful hopefully we can fix all of that. But um, yeah, that's all been a thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:34:30

That podcasting2.org changed its URLs, didn't it? So we we broke all of our links to it. So we had to change things.

James Cridland: 1:34:37

Well, yes, yes, but yes, that's that's Daniel's thing, not mine. But anyway, that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories, of course, taken from the pod news daily newsletter at podnews.net.

Sam Sethi: 1:34:50

Well done for you if you're still listening to us at this point. Uh, you can support the show by streaming SATS. You can give us feedback using the Buzz Sprout fan mail link in our show notes, and you can send us a super comment or a boost. Become a power supporter like the 23andMe, Powersupporters at weekly.podnews.net.

James Cridland: 1:35:07

You don't know how much I've edited out. And our music is from TM Studios.

Sam Sethi: 1:35:11

I know I know how much you edit it out from the actual original script, so God knows what you're gonna edit.

James Cridland: 1:35:16

And we're hosted and sponsored by Buzz Sprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting.

Announcer: 1:35:21

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