Spotify’s consumption data; Canadaland; Wavlake

Interviews with Canadaland and Wavlake. Details about Spotify’s new consumption data. An exclusive of Canadaland’s new podcast brand. Boosts, fan mail and more. 

Transcript

James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 17th of May 2024.

Jingle: 0:04

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

James Cridland: 0:14

Yes, I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans. In the chapters. Today, Spotify adds listen time to its podcast dashboard and automated transcripts and chapters. We'll talk about those. Edison Research has published its top 50 podcasts in the US and only one week to go for the London podcast show.

Julie Shapiro: 0:35

Plus, this is Julie Shapiro and I'm executive producing a few shows with Canada Land.

Jesse Brown: 0:41

I'm Jesse Brown. I'm the publisher of Canada Land, and later we'll be talking about Canada Land.

Sam Means: 0:46

I'm Jesse Brown. I'm the publisher of Canada Land, and later we'll be talking about Canada Land. Hi, this is Sam Means, co-founder of Wavelake, and I'm going to be on the show later to talk about a bunch of new stuff. We've been working on our mobile app, ticketing a fun concert in Nashville and some other stuff.

James Cridland: 0:56

They will. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy with easy and powerful AI tools, free learning materials, remarkable customer support and now with fan mail. From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:20

Right, james, let's kick off then. Spotify has added something called Consumption Hours to its data dashboard. Consumption Hours James explain.

James Cridland: 1:24

Well, I think and this was spotted by Dan Meisner off of Bumper, who will be at the podcast show in London next week, and he has spotted that listen time, which is a very important stat, is essentially being now reported by Spotify within episode views in the Spotify for Podcasters dashboards. If you go in there, you can have a look at a typical episode and it'll say something like 12,000 hours of this episode have been listened to and that's a useful figure. If you are, for example, making a branded podcast and you want to show your client what a jolly good job you're doing and everything else, then that's a very good number to give a client there. And it's a good number just to see how you're doing, because of course it's. It catches whether people are skipping away from your show midway through or it'll capture how long people are having a listen, so it's a good number to have a look at, I think people are having a listen, so it's a good number to have a look at.

Sam Sethi: 2:26

I think, yeah. The report that Bumper put out as well was that listen time might be the most important, in fact, metric that we should have. The idea is simple. According to Bumper, audiences vote with their time and attention, and podcasters should pay attention to this metric. Now you were on a show with Jonas Voost this week. You were on Bubble Trouble with Richard Kramer and Will Page. What was the synopsis, I guess, of the show, because it was a really good show. I was retweeting it out. And what do we do on Mastodon Tooting? Is that still a thing on Mastodon?

James Cridland: 3:03

Toon, I think you're posting now, I think with the new version of Mastodon, but, yes, yeah, no, the Bubble Trouble podcast is a great podcast to have a listen to. They listen to us as well, which is always good, and, yes, I was on there along with Jonas Wust talking about all kinds of things. One of the things that I was saying is that I wish we were focusing on total listen time with podcasts rather more, because, of course, you know the way that you make money out of shows is the time spent listened to one, particularly if you're selling advertising in there. So the more people that you have listening to advertising, but also the longer that they're listening to that particular show, the more ads you can actually go out and sell. So that's a really important number that we don't probably measure as much as we should, and it's probably because it's a bit hard to measure.

Sam Sethi: 3:59

Why is it hard to measure, james? I mean, I listened to that show. You and Jones were saying very clearly Apple has the data, spotify now has the data, youtube has the data. So why is it difficult to measure?

James Cridland: 4:12

Well, yes, apple does have the data, as do Spotify and YouTube, and they have the data, and none of those with the exception of YouTube, none of those has an API which will actually allow you to pull that data out, and the same goes for Spotify as well. So that's a bit of a you know issue. Really, apple has a private API which they've allowed one company to use, which is that company that does you know links for your podcast, linkfire, and that's the only company that Apple have allowed to use those stats, and those are particular stats that don't even show total listens to that particular show. Apart from that, that's it. And Spotify and Apple don't have the API, for most of us, at least, into you know, into their numbers, and I kind of wish that they would, because that would be really helpful, I think.

Sam Sethi: 5:11

Yeah, well, it means that OP3 can't get it, hosts can't get it, I assume. So, look, let's say I've got my listen time and I've aggregated it all together and I go what do I do with my listen time? Do I go back to my client and say, oh look, I've got X number of hours of listen time and they'll just come back to me and I guarantee they'll come back to me and go yeah, but how many downloads have you got? Because they won't know. That's just going to be what happens, right.

James Cridland: 5:39

Well, we have to. I mean, you know, back in the early days of the internet, you, Back in the early days of the internet, you or I were talking about hits to a website and of course, a hit is a completely useless number, but we were talking about hits and we ended up communicating to people that actually page impressions were a rather more useful figure than a hit, and, in the same way, I think us being able to communicate to clients that you really shouldn't be looking at downloads anymore. You should really be looking at time spent listening and, indeed, listeners. Those are the two numbers that really matter, rather than just a download number. I think the more that we can do that, the better.

Sam Sethi: 6:17

You and I have talked about listening time for probably more than two years, I think, if I think back, and one of the things that we added as an interesting additional metric was percent completed, especially for something like Pod News Daily, because if you took Pod News Daily and went to somebody and said, yes, I've got 12 minutes of listen time, and then somebody came along and went.

Sam Sethi: 6:43

I've got four hours of listen time. It would sound like the four hour show was much better than yours, but actually if the percent completed on your shows was 100% and the percent completed was only 15% on the other shows, then clearly that's a better metric. So I think we have to complement listen time with percent completed.

James Cridland: 7:03

Yes, no, I would agree, and I think you know I mean. There are a lot of stats out there. The difficulty, of course, with all of these are that these stats, these more advanced stats, are baked into the podcast apps and some podcast apps won't ever give us those numbers. Some podcast apps might be keeping those numbers, some podcast apps aren't, and I think that that's the difficulty of all of this. But I would love to see more overall numbers for just the same as we have in the radio world of total hours listened to the radio, I would love to see total hours listened to podcasting as a total.

James Cridland: 7:41

We're reaching a point, I think, where the amount of people listening to podcasts is only going to slow down. Now we're about 45% or so. That's not going to grow particularly fast anymore, but the thing that we should be focusing on is time spent listening, and that isn't a number that is easy to come by. There are some people producing those types of numbers. Edison Research's Infinite Dial is doing some of that In the UK. Ray Jarre's MIDAS survey is doing some of that. There's just been some data here in Australia as well. But I think it would be a much more useful number to be fixated on, rather than just having a look at a raw number of people tuning into a podcast Now last week we talked about this and I don't think we've got an answer.

Sam Sethi: 8:30

So we interviewed Mark Asquith a couple of weeks ago and one of the conversation pieces that me and Mark talked about was how could they get the data which Apple is sitting on and doing nothing with. Could they give any host that supports delegated delivery, so a partner of Apple, some of this data, like they give LinkFire? That would be a good first step. But the other thing, james, is hosts can't understand or know about listen time percent completed. So they will continue to promote downloads because that's the only metric they can do and therefore, if they can't get any other data, that's the only analytics in their dashboard. It's like what app did you use, where, what country was it and how many downloads? So hosts dominate the industry and therefore they're going to perpetuate downloads as a metric because they have no other metric.

James Cridland: 9:27

Yeah, indeed, and while that's the case, then the only thing that hosts will end up showing you is downloads and devices and all of that kind of information.

James Cridland: 9:36

Now, you know, we shouldn't underestimate that these types of stats are really important for the industry, because actually one of the problems that the industry Because actually one of the problems that the industry has is people get bored of making a podcast and then they go away, and showing them stats is a really good way to keep people with making a show and keep people with that particular podcast host, and I think stats is good. Cross app comments proper cross app comments would also be really good as well of actually seeing people listening to your show and then having an opinion on it. And I'm surprised that hosting companies aren't spending more time trying to work with podcasting 2.0 to try and understand how to do decent cross app comments. I think it's interesting that you know Buzzsprout has done its fan mail thing and that's a really good plan, but I think cross app comments that can be seen by other people as well is a really useful tool and, yeah, I'm surprised that hosts aren't doing more of that.

Sam Sethi: 10:43

Yeah, I mean with podcasting 2.0, and it's probably my last point on this we have a third metric called value paid. So it'll be listen time, percent completed and value paid, and that combined with the activity stream, which is the user-generated feed of what they're doing. So what podcast did they listen to? Who did they follow? Who did they follow? What boost did they make? That when it's published to, let's say, an activity pub endpoint, or it could be to LinkedIn, or it could be to Twitter there is no decision that it has to be only to an activity pub point. That data could be shared back to hosts if the podcasting 2.0 apps want to do that. So again, it will be in the hand of apps, not in the hand of hosts for this data.

James Cridland: 11:32

Yeah, indeed, and you know, perhaps there's something to be said, for I don't know, if you're hosted on Buzzsprout, then maybe the comments that come in to your podcast are also hosted by Buzzsprout as well, so they've got another reason why you would like to stay with that particular podcast host, because they've got all of your old comments and stuff like that. I don't know, but I think that there's something in comments, particularly for podcast hosting companies, and I'm not sure that they've fully grasped yet how important a tool that is for customer retention, because customer retention is so much better than the cost of acquiring new customers. If you've just got a customer who's already paying you money, then keeping hold of them would seem to be, you know, a sensible thing.

Sam Sethi: 12:26

Can we officially now say rest in peace downloads. Is it dead, 2024? Can we kill it now?

James Cridland: 12:33

No, I would imagine that it'll still be a thing for many years to come, because it's the easiest number for anybody to get hold of.

Sam Sethi: 12:41

unfortunately, Right, well, look, spotify announced something else as well. They announced automated transcripts and automated chapters. James, what are they doing?

James Cridland: 12:53

Yes, well, in fact, they haven't really announced it. It's just that, in fact, kevin Finn from Buzzsprout saw that the Accidental Tech podcast on Spotify has an automated transcript which is in the Spotify app, also has potentially automated chapters, or certainly chapters that are appearing in the app. That Marco wouldn't have done, especially for Spotify. So, yeah, so that was interesting.

James Cridland: 13:22

So I asked Spotify what's going on and they said, oh, we're doing some tests, we're doing tests around transcription, we're doing tests around chapters and in fact, if you go into Spotify's Podcaster dashboard, there is a transcript setting which you can't turn on yet, but there is a transcript setting basically saying Spotify will make an automated transcript of this if you turn it on, will make an automated transcript of this if you turn it on A. I think that's the wrong way around, but also because it should be on all the time, and perhaps it will be on all the time and you can maybe turn it off if you hate people, but I think that's kind of one thing, but I think also what they should be doing is, of course, pulling in the SRT file or the VTT file, if they're capable of doing that, so that you know, so that there's a proper creator-led transcript, and it would be a shame if they didn't end up doing that. But we know what Spotify is like, don't we?

Sam Sethi: 14:17

I'm going to give you your 50p in a Tim Tam bet. Now I bet you it's not a podcasting 2.0 transcript or chapter Can bet now, I bet you it's not a podcasting 2.0 transcript or chapter.

James Cridland: 14:34

I bet you it isn't either. No, I mean it would be lovely if it was and to an extent there may be a legal reason why they should be showing that, and that might be an interesting conversation to have. But no, I'm absolutely positive that they won't be using any of the new Podcasting 2.0 tools for that.

Sam Sethi: 14:49

Well, I would do my best to get past Spotify security, through the labyrinth of people blocking you, to get to them and see if I can find someone from Spotify to talk about it at the London Podcast Show, but I wouldn't hold your breath Now, james. Moving on then. Canada Land Over in Canada, the podcast producer Canada Land has announced a new show this week, james. What is it?

James Cridland: 15:13

Yes, it's called Pretendians. It focuses on indigenous people who aren't actually indigenous, who basically have been lying about it, which is a fascinating show. It's part of a new chapter for Canada Land, Sorry sorry pretendians, I feel like I'm one of those pretendians.

James Cridland: 15:32

Well, yes, but that's a little bit different. I think it's really interesting. I think the company is really interesting. They're doing some interesting things with audience support. They've been taking money from audiences for quite some time and they've been taking money from audiences for quite some time and they've been sort of really broadening what they've been doing, away from just focusing on Canada there's nothing wrong with that but obviously focusing on other things as well. So I thought I'd catch up with Jesse Brown from Canada Land, but also Julie Shapiro, who's been doing some work with them, and I asked Jesse what Canada Land is.

Jesse Brown: 16:10

Canada Land is the first podcast network in Canada and the largest independent podcast network in Canada. We have built up a stable of podcasts focused on Canadian media, Canadian news, Canadian politics, but along the way and we're well into our 10th year we have also expanded into things like serialized investigative shows. We did a food show, we did a branded podcast. We've sort of been here from the start of podcasting more or less, and as such we've sort of been forced to become kind of like a Swiss army knife of podcasting. We've kind of taken part in all of the different formats and we are a listener supported network as well. Our main revenue source are direct monthly payments from our listeners.

James Cridland: 16:57

Yeah, well, we'll dive into that in a second. You're joined by Julie Shapiro. Julie, we know you from PRX and Radiotopia. You've also been involved down here in this part of the world working with the Australian ABC. What are you doing with Canada Land?

Julie Shapiro: 17:11

I started working with Canada Land about a year ago when Alan Black reached out and said, hey, would you ever be interested in helping us expand the vision for what content from Canada Land might sound like? And I had a talk with him and Jesse and was really interested in what they were interested in doing, which was opening up to receiving some pitches from all over the place and trying to identify a few shows that we could work on together and support some outside producers in creating a new expansive slate of shows that would build on the Canada land reputation and intention but also stretch the company to new places in content making.

James Cridland: 17:52

So you're taking and shaping pitches and developing new ideas. What sort of pitches and ideas are you looking for, Julie?

Julie Shapiro: 17:59

Well, we put the call out last summer and we were pretty broad in content desires. We wanted to hear from people with solid stories. They didn't have to relate to Canada. If they did, that was interesting too. But generally we're looking for alignment in tone and merit and impact. So there wasn't a specific content mandate, but we were looking for, you know, great storytelling, original ideas, people with chops that could make these shows and something that would help put Canada Land even more on the map for supporting interesting, important content.

James Cridland: 18:36

Well, perhaps part of that is the new slate for 2024, which, jesse, you announced earlier on in the year. The first show is called Pretendians, which came out earlier this week. What's Pretendians all about if people haven't heard it yet?

Jesse Brown: 18:50

It's about people who pretend to be indigenous, which is going to be a new concept for a lot of people, but it's actually a widespread phenomenon and it's not simply a matter of almost always white people falsely assuming a native identity, but the people who do this are incredibly successful at it. Here in Canada we had a very preeminent indigenous novelist who was probably the most famous indigenous novelist in Canada. We had a filmmaker who was the most famous Indigenous filmmaker in Canada, and then we had a songwriter who you know, of course Buffy St Marie was one of the top songwriters in Canada and certainly maybe the best known Indigenous songwriter in Canada. And in the course of a few years all three were revealed to not actually be Indigenous. And we have two Indigenous co-hosts, robert Jago and Angel Ellis, who are incredible researchers and journalists, and, as luck has it, our editor-in-chief, karen Pugliese, is Algonquin and has the expertise to kind of edit and oversee these investigations. So this is like it's just a fascinating show from an indigenous perspective.

Jesse Brown: 20:06

Who are these interlopers? Why do they pretend? Why are they so successful at it? How is it that they're able to go so far? And also, who are they hurting? Because when they take jobs and you know, positions in universities or awards that were intended for indigenous people. There's an actual indigenous person out there who isn't getting that opportunity, so it's a really interesting topic, and one that we're. You know, the Canada land approach to things has always been to give people the most compelling, entertaining podcasts about things that really matter, and there's this intense interest in scam stories right now and we thought that that's a perfect opportunity for us to open up awareness of this topic to a much broader audience.

James Cridland: 20:50

And it's interesting that you talk about indigenous people for this particular show. I'm talking to you from Turbul and Jagera land here in Australia and clearly we have some of these issues as well. This isn't just a Canadian issue is it?

Jesse Brown: 21:07

No, and that's why we feel this is a show that's going to be of interest all around the world. You know, robert Jago is a Stolo and he's based out in the Pacific Northwest and in British Columbia, but his co-host, angel Ellis, is from Oklahoma and she's on reserve there, and they've certainly seen this phenomenon in the States, throughout their the academy, throughout universities, and in Hollywood. We've even found pretendians in prison. People go to jail and they pretend to be indigenous in order to get access to these special programs that are set aside for indigenous prisoners. So even in prison, you've got a bunch of like Hell's Angels, biker gang members who are pretending to be native.

James Cridland: 21:54

Julie, Canada land is full of stories about Canada, but you're not Canadian and I wonder whether the word Canada helps or hinders any ambitions for Canada land to be more globally used. What are your thoughts around that?

Julie Shapiro: 22:10

Well, I know that putting out the call really caught interest from colleagues of mine all over the world, and I think it was simply at a time where there were very few podcast companies anywhere saying we're interested in pitches, send us ideas, saying we're interested in pitches, send us ideas. So I think, just by virtue of stepping up into that space, a lot of people understood and we made a point to say you know, we are looking for stories that will resonate all over the world, whether they originate in Canada, whether they have a sliver of Canadiana in them or whether they don't. We just are wanting to tell these compelling, entertaining stories, as Jesse said. So I think it maybe creates an expectation that we're quickly, I think, starting to dissolve a bit and people are just should be turning to the network for really high quality, top notch storytelling and podcasting.

James Cridland: 23:01

Is the name Canada Land. Is there an argument, jesse to? I mean, it's your company, so is there an argument to say that there might be a different brand for some of the more globally accessible stories that you're covering?

Jesse Brown: 23:16

Yeah, there's an argument and it's a good one and it's taken me a long time to come around to it. You know it made my heart sing to hear Julie say that, because for many years I just felt like. You know it made my heart sing to hear Julie say that because for many years I just felt like, come on, people are not that provincial, that uh oh I. I won't listen to that podcast because it has Canada in the company's title. I won't listen to that because it has Ireland or Australia. I mean, in Canada we listen to things from the BBC, from from NPR. You know, we were, we listened to things from all over the world and they don't have to be about that part of the world.

Jesse Brown: 23:47

And for a long time I had a dream that maybe Canada Land could be a brand that's synonymous not with a country that people find boring but with great podcasts, and I think that for our listenership it is that.

Jesse Brown: 24:00

And we've had some success with shows like Thunder Bay that have received millions of downloads in the States. But ultimately the argument was made to me and maybe it's one that you're pointing towards like why fight with one hand tied behind your back? Like there is a significant portion of potential listeners out there who are going to see Canada Land and then they're not going to try it out because they just think it's not going to be relevant to them. And I want to sit them down and explain to every one of them that that's a silly prejudice, but I'd rather just get people listening to our stuff. So a couple of our new shows are going to be released under an imprint called Double Double Podcasts and I think, for whatever it's worth, you've got an exclusive here, james, because we haven't talked about this yet but we're going to roll that out and test that against a couple of other new shows we're putting out in which we're staying true to the Canada land brand.

James Cridland: 24:55

Well, you heard it here first. I mean talking about Canada, jesse. We've seen a lot of talk about how hard it's been over the last few years in podcasting, but that talk, so far as I can work out, has mostly been from the US. Has the Canadian podcast industry been a little bit different in terms of how the last couple of years have fared?

Jesse Brown: 25:18

The Canadian podcasting industry is different in that it doesn't really exist. Industry is different in that it doesn't really exist. I'll explain what I mean. That's a bold statement If we imagine an industry as like I don't know, a series of companies that are off in search of profitable, sustainable models. That's not something we've had here.

Jesse Brown: 25:46

What we've had in Canada has been a proud tradition of public broadcasting and in the early years of podcasting, the podcast charts were dominated by CBC radio shows that were just offered as podcasts. There was no one pursuing podcasting as a sustainable commercial enterprise, except for us. This is not a boast, this is just a fact. The early years, as we saw the model prove out in the States that somebody's podcast could do so well that they could get a sponsor and start reading. You know promo codes for discounts and they could start to build businesses and the. You know the low cost of making these shows and then the incredible audience size that you can reach when you're in America, which has 10 times the population of Canada, created an economy. That created an industry and you know it grew into something else that was speculative and you had other things like branded podcasts that were not necessarily just selling. You know, ad impressions against, you know, audience against ads. That was never possible in Canada because of our population size, unless you were making podcasts in Canada that were reaching, you know, international audiences, which wasn't happening either. So what we did see and what we've always seen in Canada, has been well, they're doing this in the States, so let's do it too. And so the major media companies that make their money off of things, like you know, offering internet service, like Bell Canada or Rogers Canada, and they have media arms they launched podcasting wings that were not ever expected to turn a profit. They were just sort of like let's put a toe in this podcasting thing. And then we had successful. You know one in particular Pacific Content, a successful branded company, but we did not see the proliferation of independent studios that were actually sustainable.

Jesse Brown: 27:41

So it put us in a strange position and that forced, you know, canada land. As I said earlier, we had to basically do everything. You know this question of should you have a serialized show with a limited run season or should you be always on? Our answer was both. Should you do advertising or should you do direct listener support? Our answer was both, and we were one of the first podcasts ever to turn to our audience for direct financial support through Patreon in, I think, 2014. So I'm being a bit long winded here, but what happened when the bottom fell out in the United States? It's had a strange effect in Canada because we weren't necessarily relying on those dynamics.

Jesse Brown: 28:28

Anyhow, canada land never fully moved out of the direct advertising relationships. We never moved to automated ads. We never.

Jesse Brown: 28:34

Uh, you know we do a little bit of that for our remnant inventory, but we're still reading promo codes and I'm I'm still endorsing the products myself as our other hosts, and we didn't see a downturn in advertising because our ads convert and it's not based on, you know, the industry. Cpm rate changing doesn't really affect us that much and then having monthly recurring revenue through our paid supporter base, that's only grown as well. So the same trends that I had FOMO when I saw all of these other podcast companies getting wild valuations and capital investments and sometimes acquired for ridiculous sums, and you know I was jealous, but ultimately I don't think that's been good for the industry or for those companies and we sort of sat the whole thing out and we're in a relatively safe position. And now we have some of these American players coming to us asking for advice on how they could build out a subscription offer. You know we started with a subscription offer and then moved into advertising, and they're kind of doing it the other way around.

James Cridland: 29:34

Yeah, and certainly paid subscriptions is a very helpful thing when it comes to podcasting, particularly, you know, since and drink because I'm just about to use the word intimate particularly, you know, since and drink because I'm just about to use the word intimate but particularly since we have such an intimate relationship with the podcast that we listen to, that paid subscriptions really work. From that point of view, and I know that you've been you know, really pioneering that it's kind of you to say.

Jesse Brown: 30:01

we feel that that's true and I think you hit the that's the right word is intimacy. I think the intimacy is why paid subscription could work when it works. I think it works a lot better when people support a podcast because they just love it and they believe in what it's doing, more so than that they want some extra bonus thing. That's behind the paywall, I think it's.

Jesse Brown: 30:20

I know that we could call ourselves pioneers, but really we're just doing what NPR and you know, Radiotopia and others have done for a very long time asking people to pay for something that's free so that everybody can get it for free.

James Cridland: 30:32

Have you got coins?

Jesse Brown: 30:35

We had an offer to do NFTs and to do our own cryptocurrency.

Jesse Brown: 30:41

And that was not an avenue that we pursued. And then the intimacy is also. I think we have to be careful in the industry not to lose the intimacy of our advertising because it can start to sound like kind of just bad commercial radio if it's just all of these pre-recorded ads at different volume settings. You know, interrupting the feeds, I think it. I love this about podcasting. It's like 1920s television, it's like you know well, we'll find out what Gracie's up to after this message from Lucky Strike, you know yes yes, no, indeed.

James Cridland: 31:09

Well, our sponsor, buzzsprout, would be very delighted to hear you say that, julie. Many shows, as Jesse was saying, are going always on rather than seasonal, and I was talking to I think it was KCRW a couple of months ago about some of their shows which used to be seasonal shows and they're now doing those shows as always on. How easy is that from a production point of view to actually keep a show which has been a seasonal show and to make that an always-on show?

Julie Shapiro: 31:45

It's not easy. One thing I really appreciate about this first round of shows in our slate is that Jesse and Alan and the Candleland folks were open to trying these ideas out before we commit to creating ongoing forever shows out of them. But I have seen a real slip of standard in these aspirations to make shows always on, and I've been very, very lucky to have been involved with shows that are really steeped in production, craft storytelling and haven't had to be pushed to a point where they have to make more efficient productions so they can turn out more episodes per year. If you can do it and you've got the resources and the stamina, all the power to you. I'm not throwing shade on any of the very many always-on shows that I listen to, but I think in terms of that transition it's a very difficult one to do without losing your mind.

James Cridland: 32:47

So what else is coming up from Canada? Land later in the slate.

Julie Shapiro: 32:51

We have a limited series called A Field Guide to Gay Animals, launching in June that I'm working very closely with a wonderful team from New Orleans on, and I'm also very proud to be helping a show called the Worst Podcast come to life and it has been a delight to work on actually, I've been on that.

James Cridland: 33:15

Oh yes, we all have.

Julie Shapiro: 33:16

We've all worked on them too, but this is going to take the cake, I promise.

James Cridland: 33:22

Jessie, just one other question, since I'm always curious about this. Regulation in Canada is always interesting. Last year the CRTC, the media regulator there, said it would start regulating podcasts, kind of. Except it wasn't except it is.

Jesse Brown: 33:45

Is it any clearer what they're doing now? It's about as clear as mud. I think that, like all things, they have good intentions. There is some idea that there is a CanCon system, a Canadian content system that podcasts might benefit from, but the whole concept of the CanCon system is that you have to pay into it to get money out of it and, as it's been applied in film and television and music, it's always been a bit of a clown show. What is considered Canadian and these hilarious government metrics that they have for you know? Is this Canadian enough? How do we know if?

James Cridland: 34:21

it's Canadian. Was there a Canadian producer? Was the bass player Canadian? Does it now count? Yeah?

Jesse Brown: 34:26

Yeah, there's very funny stories of some of the most Canadian musicians out there creating music that is not considered Canadian because you know they were working with. You know we're, we're, we're international people and we like to work with the. You know, sometimes you'd have a I don't know Brian Adams doing rock music as a Canadian and sometimes about Canada, but the band wasn't Canadian so it didn't apply. So everyone is wondering is that what's going to happen to podcasting For me? You know I come from public radio and from more mainstream media backgrounds and podcasts.

Jesse Brown: 34:59

Equal liberty for me, and freedom and the notion that anybody can put up a podcast and theoretically have just as much opportunity to be listened to around the world as anybody else. You don't need any special status or license or government. That's an important ethic for me. To kind of shine some kind of light through the haze of this proposed regulatory scheme, it seems to me that who they have their sights on are not individual podcasters or even relatively small companies like Canada land. I think that they are looking to regulate the platforms, the apples and Spotify's. Maybe when you get into the scale of podcasting, if we do see some big networks I don't know if there's some, you know monetary or download based. You know if you reach some sort of near monopolistic or you know there's some level at which they want to start regulating.

James Cridland: 35:57

Yeah, I mean, it seems to me as if it's. They want a certain amount of Canadian shows on the front page of Apple podcasts, similar for Spotify, similar probably for Radio Player Canada and for a couple of those other apps, and that's probably it. Would that be about right?

Jesse Brown: 36:13

That's my best guess. They have not ruled out going directly to publishers, and they've said something about how they have the platforms in mind, but those platforms are also publishers. Spotify is a publisher and actually Apple is as well. So it's a little bit murky, but I think you're right. I think the irony is that those platforms already prioritize Canadians. You know, canadian stuff gets a lot of. We've never had trouble getting promotional attention. My biggest complaint about this so far is that the confusion this creates is bad for the industry it's. I wouldn't want to be in a position of being, you know, trying to raise capital for a new Canadian podcast company right now, because when the regulatory environment is unknown then that adds risk to any investments.

James Cridland: 37:01

Yeah, no, I think that that makes a bunch of sense. And Facebook obviously in Canada no longer links to news publishers. Can I share a link to Canada Land on Facebook in Canada? You?

Jesse Brown: 37:15

cannot.

James Cridland: 37:17

How much does that hurt it?

Jesse Brown: 37:19

hurts but it doesn't hurt tremendously, and we maintained a pretty vibrant Facebook page and we had tens of thousands of followers and it was definitely a traffic source for our written articles and our podcasts. But I don't think that Facebook ever was serious about podcasting and the you know, the conversion, you know, like the on-ramp of a Facebook ad or post to people actually listening to a podcast was, you know, a sliver of our traffic, but not super meaningful when it's a meaningful. Problem for us is that we are a little engine that could when it comes to breaking stories as a news company that have had national relevance. We've broken scandals that have run on the front pages of every major newspaper day after day, and Facebook was definitely part of the picture when it came to those stories reaching wide, wide audiences. And that's gone now. Ironically, what you can still get on Facebook is misinformation, fake news, bad information, garbage information. There's no problem with that, but any news content cannot be on Canadian Facebook. You cannot share news. There's a rule against true information from news organizations.

James Cridland: 38:41

Julie, one last question to you, and it's a bit cheeky because it's nothing to do with Canada land. You've just finished your open call for Circuit 3 of AudioFlux. What is AudioFlux?

Julie Shapiro: 38:53

I'm happy you asked. Audioflux is a new home for independent audio and new voices and big ideas in podcasting. Basically, we invite people to make short stories three minutes in length that follow a set of rules, and we have just finished our first open call for the Third Circuit and we will be debuting those pieces that came from that open call very soon next month live, and then we'll put them in a podcast eventually, so it all wraps up into a podcast. So not, you know, still a relevant thing to ask about.

James Cridland: 39:26

Jesse Julie. Thank you both so much for your time. Thanks so much, James.

Jesse Brown: 39:30

Thank you James.

Jingle: 39:31

The Pub News Weekly Review. With Buzz Sprout Podcast hosting made easy.

Sam Sethi: 39:39

Let's whiz around the world a little bit. Edison Research has published its top 50 podcasts in the US. Any change James? It's just, isn't it the same old, same old.

James Cridland: 39:48

Yeah, it's mostly the same old, same same old. There is a new entry at number four new heights with Jason and Travis Kelsey. They were in the top 50 last time around, but they weren't in the top 10, so it's kind of a new entry at number four, which is the well, yes, exactly. And what happens when, um, taylor Swift inevitably breaks up with whichever of the Kelsey brothers? It's a new album she's going out, happens, yeah, well, yeah, I mean, have you heard her new one, which came out only?

Sam Sethi: 40:13

a couple of weeks ago. No, that's a dirge.

James Cridland: 40:15

Haven't heard her old ones, haven't heard her new ones.

James Cridland: 40:17

Oh, that's a proper dirge, that is, it's all really miserable songs. Anyway, I thought she was happy. I thought she was happy too, but clearly, but clearly, her, her, her new album is not anyway. Uh, yes, so that came out. I noted that 22 of the top 50 are hosted by megaphone um, and you'll find a full list, including links to each, on the pod news website. So that is a thing. Uh, also, the trident digital podcast ranker is out for australia.

James Cridland: 40:50

One of the clever things that the ABC has done down here is that they've added ABC News Top Stories to the Ranker. Now that is the podcast that you get if you ask a smart speaker to play the latest news and it plays this slightly soporific news show which is about three and a half minutes long show which is about three and a half minutes long. And, weirdly enough, as soon as you add that to a ranker as Fox has found out in the US, as Sky News Australia has found out here then you get very high in the ranker because quite a lot of people are doing that. So there they are, brand new at number three in the Australian podcast ranker. Everybody's a winner in that. By the way, arn's number one publisher, listener, is number one sales representative. The ABC is number one for total downloads, so everybody gets to send me a press release saying that they're number one and I ignore every single one of them.

Sam Sethi: 41:44

As I like to say, the hot chocolate awards everyone's a winner, baby, everybody's a winner.

James Cridland: 41:48

Yes, exactly, and Podscribe have announced some international things as well, which is good that PodScribe have realised that there is life beyond the US. They've now got insights into the top 600 shows in Germany, mexico, france, the UK, australia and Canada as well.

Sam Sethi: 42:06

I haven't looked at the data but I was wondering are we getting homogenous podcasts like we have homogenous music? I mean, you can go onto Spotify. They do have an actually interesting site to Spotify where you can go and type out top 10 in the UK, australia, germany, france, wherever, and guess what? It's normally the same people who are top in every country. We don't have much cultural difference anymore in music. Are we getting to the same point with podcasting?

James Cridland: 42:34

Well, now Will Page, who's a friend of the show, will deeply disagree with you there saying that local has never been more important in terms of music, and obviously we have both just suffered the Eurovision Song Contest and clearly there's a fair amount of stuff going on there as well. In terms of podcast shows, no, I mean it's very much. You know, language is very important, of course, for podcasts, and so there is that. But also, I mean, even just looking into the UK numbers versus the US numbers, there's very little overlap. I think I saw you know something like two or three shows in the top 30 that are top in both the UK and the US. So no, I think it's a very, it's a very nicely you know, local thing really. So I can well understand why the Podscribe team are now looking into the top 600 shows in each of those places.

Sam Sethi: 43:37

Your old employers are getting a little bit feisty. The BBC are looking still to put ads into podcasts and, let's be honest, a lot of people are very, very angry about it. What are they saying, james?

James Cridland: 43:49

of people are very, very angry about it. What are they saying, james? Yeah, so just to put this in context, the BBC doesn't have any ads on anything that it does in the UK at all. It does, of course, for the rest of the world, but it doesn't in the UK. And what they've said that they would like to do is to put ads on their podcasts, if you're listening to them on the Apple Podcasts app or in Spotify or in other places, and presumably they will be sold by Acast, I'm guessing, because they sell them everywhere else.

James Cridland: 44:20

Anyway, the rest of the industry is up in arms. Weirdly, not Acast, but the rest of the industry is up in arms about the BBC doing this. They reckon it's the thin end of the wedge. They reckon that it could be disastrous for the industry and 20 companies have sent an open letter which got a good amount of PR earlier on in the week. Really interesting to watch what happens there. You know, I really don't think that it's a thing that the BBC ought to be doing within the UK, because that's what the you know, the government mandated license fee is there for, and you know, and I think that's where it should get its money. You could argue that they resell some of their programs for other TV channels in the UK and those have ads around them and everything else. But that's not quite the same as what's going on here. So, yeah, it's going to be interesting to see how that pans out and whether or not they do actually go ahead and do that.

Sam Sethi: 45:20

You know you're on the wrong side of it when Gary Lineker says it's disastrous.

James Cridland: 45:24

Well, this is Gary Lineker, the BBC's biggest employment cost. He earns about 1.6 million, I think, every year from the BBC. He took a pay cut from 2 million. Yeah, some ridiculous figure. But his goal hanger has basically said no, don't, whatever you do, do this, and so, of course, that's the thing that the UK papers have picked up on.

Sam Sethi: 45:51

Nice story in Sweden. Storyteller, swedish audiobook and publishing company, is to add 6,000 Swedish language podcasts to its service.

James Cridland: 46:00

Yes, which will be a nice thing. Very clever for them to add podcasts onto an audiobook service. In Australia, southern Cross Astereo, was going to be taken over by ARN. They're basically the two big radio and podcast companies here but somebody pulled out of that deal. A partner for ARN pulled out of that deal. The partner was called Anchorage Capital and they pulled out because they've suddenly realised, oh, maybe it's not quite as easy to earn money out of TV, weirdly, as we thought that it was, because the deal includes some TV channels as well. Anyway, so it looks basically now as if that whole takeover is off. It's been rumbled for the last three months here. I know that it's been very taxing for all of the people involved in those radio companies because they've had to do all kinds of due diligence and everything else, and then all of a sudden it sounds as if everything has fallen through. So that's fun. So we'll wait and see what happens there.

Sam Sethi: 47:04

Yeah the lawyers are happy. They'll keep it going for another three months, you'll be fine.

James Cridland: 47:08

Oh, I'm sure they will. I'm sure they will. I mean, the interesting thing was around the podcast apps and what was going to happen there. Sca owns their own podcast app and their own code base called Listener, whereas ARN uses iHeart. And everybody, all of the you know silly financial people have been saying, well, obviously they would go with Listener. You know the code base that is owned by one of those companies and I'm not sure that that's so obvious anymore Because actually, thinking about it, iheart is everywhere. Iheart is on all kinds of surfaces, from hotel TVs to, you know, cars, to all kinds of other places. Iheart is in, obviously, in the US, where iHeart media is, but it's also in places like Canada and Brazil and Mexico and New Zealand and other places as well. So actually, iheart is probably a better bet because they've already done an awful lot of integrations with third-party companies. Seems like it's quite a sensible thing rather than build your own, but I'm sure that the dim stock market people will think otherwise. But anyway, it all doesn't matter anymore because it's all fallen through.

Sam Sethi: 48:30

Just a last story that I I I saw uh, tucker carlson's podcast is now going to be recalled tucker carlson's show and also john stewart is going to launch a weekly show, uh, which is actually a podcast. So, yes, either they're taking your advice and decided to not use podcast in the name of the title of their shows, or they just don't want it to be a bit weird if they got I don't know Carriage on a TV network with the Tucker Carlson podcast.

James Cridland: 49:02

That would look a bit strange, so they've just renamed it as Tucker Carlson Show. The artwork still says Tucker Carlson podcast, by the way. So, yeah, maybe it's a step in the multi-platform world that we're in to not call anything a podcast, but, as you so rightly say, in my mind you shouldn't be calling things podcasts anyway. People News on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 49:40

Yes. So let's take a look at some People News. Julie McNamara is well reported to be leaving Spotify. She's left Spotify, although Spotify declined to comment. She is head of studios. She joined in September 2021, in the middle of all of the Dawn Ostroff stuff. So, yes, another one bites the dust in terms of Spotify. And Katie Law has joined Bumper as a podcast growth specialist. If you've seen Katie's name before, she writes Pod the North, a newsletter on Canadian podcasting, and in just a couple of weeks time, the Power Up Podcast Summit in Toronto, which I will be at, also has Katie speaking on one of the panels there as well, which should be worthwhile going to. Tickets are still available for that. They're about $99 Canadian, so that's about $2.50. No, I'm joking. So that should be good. And, in events, the Webby Awards took place this week. As you'll know, sam, if you win an award, you have to give a five-word speech, wouldn't know?

Sam Sethi: 50:47

that James never won an award.

James Cridland: 50:49

No, oh yes, oh yes, oh yes, it's just me that's won two of them the same year. Yes, so Julia Louis-Dreyfus ended up giving a five-word speech, the first four words of which were listen to old women. I won't give you the last one. So that's nice. And the Independent Podcast Awards are coming up. You've three weeks to enter them. They close at the end of the month and the awards are in London in October, and I've got my speech ready now for the Webby Awards in the future.

Sam Sethi: 51:24

Oh yes, Go on. Thank you to James Cridland.

James Cridland: 51:30

Excellent, very nice, very nice. Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review. The podcast show, of course, is next week. I have some brand new data in my opening keynote, which I've nearly finished I'm slightly late for that so that is good. The UK is leading the world in one podcast metric, Sam.

Sam Sethi: 51:55

Bet you can't guess what that podcast metric is. I've had various thoughts, but no, I won't share.

James Cridland: 51:59

Now you're speaking as well aren't you?

Sam Sethi: 52:01

Yes, I'm doing a slightly controversial one. I'm speaking on why paying listeners is the future of podcast advertising, excellent. So, yes, no one's going to be turning up to that one, because you know it's four o'clock, but hey so you're on on four o'clock on the 22nd of may and, um, we, I'm doing various things.

James Cridland: 52:21

Um, one thing, one thing I'm looking forward to um uh doing, which is, uh, hosting a panel about monetisation with a bunch of American podcasters, and they all want a conference call about that, and the only time, of course, is at midnight my time. So that's going to be good, and I may or may not have been to the bar earlier, so we'll see how that meeting goes. But anyway, very much looking forward to all of that and also looking forward to doing this very show live on stage, which is one of the last sessions of the two days. So if you are there and you want to come to that, then that will be a good thing just to take to take part in um a pod news, weekly review live from the event. I say live, it won't be live from the event, but we're recording it live because that's how these things work, uh, so, yes, so all of that should be good. You're also doing an aussie presentation, aren't you?

James Cridland: 53:25

yes, there's a australian panel um which um I'm doing looking at the australian uh podcast market, which, um, three people and a dog will come to, three people and a dingo will come to, so that'll be fun. I'm also doing my great tools from podcasting that you should be all using, and these are lots of different tools, some of them powered by AI, some of them not on the creator stage, which involves lots of live demos and everything is probably going to go wrong. So if you want to watch a man doing some live demos and everything going wrong, then come and watch me doing that too. So, yes, I'm doing a bunch of these things.

Sam Sethi: 54:04

Some of the other events going on. Crosswires will be in Sheffield on May, the 31st. That's Dino Sophos from Persephoneca and James O'Hara. I'll be going up there for that, so that'll be an interesting trip up north. There's also James. You're in Toronto, aren't you? You talked about that earlier.

James Cridland: 54:24

I am. I'm in Toronto, june the 2nd. The podcast Power Up Summit which should be good Unipodfest has been announced at Birmingham City University. Are you going to that In Birmingham? Are you going to?

Sam Sethi: 54:36

that, yeah, I will. No, I won't. After that impersonation I'll be shot on the way. No, I'll be going up there my daughter's at Birmingham University, not City University, and so I'll go and meet up with my daughter and we'll both go over and watch George the Poet Excellent and the podcast Landers Project and the Podcast Academy are planning a series of webinars.

James Cridland: 54:58

Are you doing these?

Sam Sethi: 55:00

I am indeed, yes, with Michelle Cobb, and we'll be putting out a press release very shortly, but the dates for those are the 21st of June, the 16th of July and the 7th of September.

James Cridland: 55:10

Excellent, very nice. And there are more events, both paid for and free, at Pod News Virtual events or events in a place with people. If you're organising something, it's free. Podnewsnet slash events. The Tech Stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review. Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. What have we got this week, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 55:33

It's the sigh at the end of that.

James Cridland: 55:37

Here's where Sam talks technology. What have we got? This week Sam. Here we go Buckle up, buckle up. Here we are, lightning wallets Lightning wallets.

Sam Sethi: 55:47

Publisher feeds Mobile apps here we go wallets, lightning wallets, publisher feeds, mobile apps here we go. Uh, now wave lake, uh the, the podcasting music website that uh it started a couple years ago, um, by sam means and michael array. Um, we talked about them last week about some of the new stuff they've got going on lightning wallets, publisher feeds, uh, their new mobile app and much, much more. So I pinged sam and said look, do you fancy coming on the show to tell us more about it? So I started off by asking sam quickly remind us who is wavelake and then tell us what's new wavelake's a lot of things.

Sam Means: 56:22

most importantly it's we're trying to come up with a new um on-ramp for artists to distribute music in a different way distribute Distribute music over RSS, distribute music over Nostr to be able to use all of these, some new interesting technologies, to take control of their life as an artist and as a creative person. Typically that's been very difficult to do, at least in any type of way that's going to make you money. So we're trying to help in that capacity for independent artists that are just getting started or have been around for a long time and they're just looking for new ideas and want to, you know, try some stuff out.

Sam Sethi: 57:01

So, as a new independent artist, I come to Wavelake, I sign up, you create my RSS feed for me because you just asked me to fill in some forms, but that in the background is creating my RSS feed for me because you just asked me to fill in some forms, but that in the background is creating my RSS. I get listed and then things have changed since we last spoke. You've now added a lightning wallet capability, so independent artists can now have a wallet and get paid directly from fans. So when did that happen and how's the uptake been?

Sam Means: 57:29

Yeah, the lightning wallet integration happened not too long ago. So, yeah, I mean, when we started this out, you know this more than most. We've been able to do this kind of stuff for a while. When I started getting into this, there wasn't a super easy way to do it, so that was the initial idea. It's like let's just get this to a point where a simple user, someone who hasn't really heard about this, can just try it. I don't need to be super educated about it, I don't have to get super techie, I can just sign up. I have a lightning wallet, my music is up there and that process is very similar to what they may experience on Bandcamp or something like that.

Sam Means: 57:59

I think we're pushing 700 artists have uploaded directly through Wavelake and some of them have their own lightning wallets and they want that money to just go straight to there. We never wanted to really hold on to anybody's money. It just is sort of a necessity to be kind of a custodian to some extent for people, for early educational purposes. Like people just have no idea how to do that. So, yeah, we added that, I guess probably about a month ago now, and it's cool. People are using it. I'm using it. It's great. It's going to be really great for people.

Sam Sethi: 58:33

We wanted to do it because we just want people to know what a lightning address is because it's so useful in so many other places, especially on nostre. Yeah, you keep talking about nostre. So one of the features you've added support for the albie wallet. That's the primary wallet that you're supporting.

Sam Sethi: 58:44

But you added a feature from albie called nostre wallet connect, or I prefer to call it New Wallet Connect, because although it's using Nosta and that really sort of turns some people off and other people it turns them on, depending on which side of the fence you are with Nosta. But I prefer to call it New Wallet Connect because fundamentally, if you want to use your Strike wallet or your Coinbase wallet or another wallet, you can just bring that wallet to Wavelake rather than just have to have an Albi wallet. So I think the first thing you've done is implemented the NWC let's use that word. Are you seeing people using other wallets now as well as the Albi wallet?

Sam Means: 59:24

We are. Yeah, I mean there are other options. I'm really excited about that because, yeah, it's a very manual process. If you're using a Nostra client, our mobile app is a Nostra client. We'll talk about that in a second. But if you're using a Nostra client, it doesn't have a wallet built in so you can attach a Lightning address to it. People can pay you, but if you want to pay somebody in return, typically I have to click a button and then it's going to open that other app on your phone or on your desktop and you're going to have to do a bunch of different things.

Sam Means: 59:51

And NWC is really cool because, yeah, you can just use it. You connect it through a little string. It's a little techie. I'm sure it'll get much easier as time goes on, but once you do it it's really cool because then it's just really seamless. So if you're using a client that uses NWC, then you can just zap content immediately without ever having to leave your screen. It just happens in real time right there, which is cool. So it sort of acts as a custodial wallet inside of these other clients, which is NWC is really cool because you can use it in many different places, so you can have one wallet that you're using sort of universally everywhere, and then on the other side of that, wavelakecom is also an NWC wallet. So if you wanted to use your balance on, Wavelakecom is also an NWC wallet. So if you wanted to use your balance on Wavelake for some other site, you could do that as well. So it works both ways Very neat.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:36

Oh, I didn't realize that. That's really cool. Now you talked about the mobile app Again. Since we last spoke, you didn't have a mobile app. A tell us a little bit more about the mobile app, and is it both iOSos?

Sam Means: 1:00:49

and android. Yeah, it is. It's still very much in beta. That's on test flight. If you go to appwavelightcom you can download it if you know how to use test flight or you know how to use the. I'm not an android user, so I don't know the proper terminology the google testing thing the sideload

Sam Means: 1:01:04

yeah, so you can do all that. It's beautiful. We built it, we released it in november. We've been working on it quite a bit since then in between other stuff. But we really just built the mobile app as a showcase, just to show what we think needs to be out there and also to just develop features that we would like to see happen and just use that as a showcase for other clients to use it. So it's like, hey, maybe Fountain doesn't have this and we think it's really cool, let's build it and show how it works and how it interacts, and then maybe fountain will see that and they'll build that into their app that type of thing.

Sam Means: 1:01:35

So we never really much intended on doing a mobile app, at least not as quickly as we did. But everything just started growing and it just became a necessity to do it, and especially once Nostra came along. I feel like I'm N nostri poster boy right now, talking about it every five seconds. But it's exciting because, whatever side of the fence you're on, it's fun for development and that's what we're using it for. It's like a playground to try out some of these new ideas and, uh, see what we can do with them, and these are ideas that we didn't think we'd be able to get to for a long time, so it's cool to be able to do them now in a very easy way I think fountain is safe to say.

Sam Sethi: 1:02:09

They are a nosta fan like yourselves. They created a radio app recently and that used nosta as well as a payment mechanism. So I can see oscar embracing what you guys are doing. I can see that is a very good synergy. Now, with the app and with the hosting, are you becoming a vertical platform? Is that the idea?

Sam Means: 1:02:36

I mean we're just trying to put stuff out there. Really, we're just putting whatever out there that we can and we're not necessarily trying to do anything other than have fun with this and see if we can change some things. The greater idea, I mean. I think a lot of people might think we're trying to get all these things into one box, but it's all open. It's all completely open. So if you use Wavelake as a host, it goes out everywhere else just like any other host does.

Sam Means: 1:02:56

And I don't know, maybe there's some stuff with the feeds that the purists might not agree with, but most of this stuff comes down to just ease of use and things we're trying to do to handhold a new artist getting into this, because I've you know, a couple of years ago I was uploading my music on RSS feeds and it wasn't easy and things were breaking and it was kind of complicated and there wasn't much client support at all. It was very clunky. So I'm just happy to be participating in this at all and I'm happy to be. It does certainly seem the last year and a half like there's been a lot of push towards music in the podcasting space, which I absolutely love because that's all I want to see happen Because I just think it is a powerful medium for music and I think it has the potential to really change a lot of things.

Sam Means: 1:03:40

So, yeah, I think if we're all just kind of working on stuff on our own and then come together when things start working for one person or the other, then I think ultimately the community there will establish a really strong, just overall experience for artists, whether they're using Wavelake or they're using True Fans or they're using Ellen Beats, they're using any of these other things out there. That's the cool thing about it is they have options and we're all sort of working towards the same goal Maybe not exactly towards the same goal, maybe we're not all working on the exact same thing, but we're definitely working on the same goal.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:09

I think we're all on the same page and I think what I said to James when we did our prediction show back in January was that we'll all be doing it at different paces and some will implement certain features first and some will implement other features, but by the end of the year we'll probably all be on a very similar trajectory.

Sam Means: 1:04:26

Yeah, and that's the cool thing about having so many people working on different ideas is we're all pretty limited in capacity. I know we are there's. It all works very well now and all the monetization, the v4v, all working nicely now.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:37

one of the things that you and I had a conversation about with michael probably three months ago maybe, maybe a little longer ago. We talked about music didn't have categories. If you look at the apple category list, it's only music or music chat show or some. I think there's a couple of other minor subcategories, but if I want to label an artist, soul or rock or punk or whatever it would be, there was no category list. And I know julie costello ain't a costello's mum gave me true fans a list of I think about 30 categories music categories and that was great. It was a good start and we I shared that with rss, blue and a few others and then you came up with what I think is pretty much an extensible list is very good and, um, we've adopted your wave lake music genre list. So when did you come up with that and why did you come up with it as well?

Sam Means: 1:05:57

I mean, yeah, I'm a musician and putting a title on a musician is tough, so I've always been slightly outside of the genre camp. But as somebody who's now working on a mobile app and hosting a podcast, where I need to find music and putting together playlists and things it's helpful. It's definitely helpful to have these categories. The musician in me says like I'm not really putting these people in a box, but you kind of have to put them somewhere, because if you want to find country music, you got to find the closest thing to it, and I guess the cool thing about this is, in this situation, people are actually determining what they want to call themselves. So they got to pick something. The list came from. I can't remember. Michael found the list somewhere. I think it was just an open list of categories and subcategories somewhere and we adopted that and we put it on GitHub and we encourage people to just go and add whatever they like to it and we'll accept it. It just was like a starting point, but yeah, it is incredibly helpful, especially in the future, I think it will be for this idea of radio broadcasting.

Sam Means: 1:06:50

You may see more apps like the Fountain Jukebox or more traditional broadcasting style apps using RSS or pulling in music over the relays. It's a necessary. I don't want to call it evil, that seems a little too overdramatic. But, like I said, that was the problem.

Sam Means: 1:07:03

A lot of clients weren't really supporting music and so, even if you did upload your music and you can see it on Fountain or you can see it on Sphinx or one of these other clients that you know kind of in the early stages of this, we're pulling in 2.0 stuff and enabling the monetization of it. They were still kind of clunky for music, so now we're having to go back, I think, a little bit and reverse engineer some of these clients that exist to fit music as well as podcasts. And I know Fountain's going to be doing audiobooks and some other things, and that's that's cool. As you know, realizing like this is all just media at the end of the day, it supports video live streaming. I've watched some really cool live streams and some of these apps too now. So, um, that's the cool thing about it.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:44

Yeah, we just have to kind of start somewhere and yeah, I mean, if another list pops up that seems like it's better, we'll use that one as you said, it's a great place to start and I think it's a really comprehensive list and I hope all the other apps and hosts, who who support music, take it on board. I mean, we have a true fans, so when we see medium equals music, we then switch to your list and then we look in the rss feed for the category and then we can then label it whatever the artist has chosen yeah, it would certainly make it easier to unify some of this stuff, for sure okay.

Sam Sethi: 1:08:18

So let's move on. One of the other interesting things that has been ratified within the podcasting 2.0 space recently are called publisher feeds or artist feeds now as well. So that started off again with rss blue and fountain coming up with an idea of how to aggregate, I suppose, in a discography and artists music albums. Because what was happening was some people were starting on, then they had a bit on rss blue, then they had a bit somewhere elseSS Blue, then they had a bit somewhere else and it was all over the place and people were like, oh, how do we aggregate this all under one artist view rather than a podcast up view? So most people were going to, let's say, one page with an artist and then going, well, how do I find out what else that artist does? And there wasn't a natural mechanism. So this publisher feed came out. It's now part of phase seven.

Sam Means: 1:09:24

I think it's just about to be green lit by Adam and Dave, so the publisher feed is now something that I believe, when I spoke to Michael anyway, that Wavelake is also going to be pushing out shortly or has pushed out. I don't a ton of sense to me. That was one of those things where we've been hearing about that for a while through Oscar and it's just like finding the time to do it. It just was one of those things where this makes so much sense. We just need the right moment where we can catch a breath and get something else pushed in here and make sure that it's going to happen.

Sam Means: 1:09:43

Plus, with these things, they do take time because you're wanting to get everybody on board and make sure it's going to be something that's actually going to go through, because, as you know, on some of these things, there can be a lot of back and forth with it. I'm excited to see that go through. That's going to make things incredibly easy and I think that there's some cool use cases for that down the road as well Just being able to put all that stuff in one place. I mean things like that for record labels, and yeah, there's all kinds of good things that can be sprouted off of that.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:10

I think when people get their heads around it, then people are going to really begin to extend it quite a lot. Moving on to one of the other things that you're working on which I think is really interesting as well is something called TicketBot, which is a ticketing system. Tell me more.

Sam Means: 1:10:25

Yeah, so that's just a proof of concept, we have a show that we're doing in Nashville at the Bitcoin Conference on July 25th, the industry day of the Bitcoin conference. It's the first day leading up to the two main days, but yeah, I mean, we would simply found out the show was going to be in Nashville right after the last conference. We're like we got to do a show so we started thinking about it. And more recently, in the last couple of months, we were like wouldn't it be fun if we could do the RSVPs in the app? That'd be really cool, cause that's another one of those things where and it's another really great use case of Nostor it's like we could do this over Nostor. This is something that we've been talking about doing for a long time, but a year ago we did the mobile app. We did a little hackathon thing. It was about a week or two and it was called Waveman and it was just sort of our proof of concept for what ultimately ended up becoming the mobile app. So, in honor of that and starting a new tradition for Wave Lake, ticketbot became our sort of hackathon proof of concept thing to work on for April of this year and it would just perfectly coincide with the fact that we have a concert in July. You know, michael would be much better at describing the technical side of that and our show, waveform. We talked about it a little bit more in depth in the last episode that we did.

Sam Means: 1:11:36

But yeah, I mean, it's very simple right now. It's basically just if you go in the Wave Lake app, we have ticket capability. If you buy the ticket, you sign it with your input, without getting too nerdy. You sign it with your Nostra profile and it's a pay what you want situation for this. We just set it at a minimum of one sat and when you buy the ticket, it gives you a QR code and then the Nostrobot spits the information back out in your DMS. It's very simple. There's not much to it down the road. I mean we put it out there. It's also open source. We're hoping some people like this idea and they want to jump in and start messing around with it and inspiring us to do some more stuff with it.

Sam Means: 1:12:12

But yeah, I think ultimately it's going to be great for just having events. I mean it uses the Nostr calendar, nip, whatever that is. So we put the event out there and we already saw some clients that are just already reading calendar events are displaying this, and so you're starting to see how much, like RSS, these things can exist in other places without any permission. They're just like there, I don't know. I think there's a lot of really cool potential to it. In the meantime, we're just going to be testing it out, like if somebody like Joe Martin goes on tour and wants to try it out, we can try it out for him, but we're hoping it's something that works. Maybe it'll be used for live streams. There's many other use cases for for ticketing. Maybe it'll just be used for meetups or whatever. It really could be anything. It just might be another use case. Or maybe somebody will just take this and build a standalone app for ticketing.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:01

I think that would be a really powerful thing, yeah there's a really cool company in london called podlife events that are working on a ticketing system for podcasting which I think is worth looking at, and I think also I've been working with them on a publisher feed for events. So, using the same remote item structure that you have in publisher feeds, so in an artist feed which would have all of their music and their tracks and the links to their existing other podcast feeds um, you can actually do a, an event feed let's call it that, for want of a better word, and with that event feed you can have start time, end time, location.

Sam Sethi: 1:13:40

All of that can be within a feed and then you can have a remote item point to it, so you can have an artist cool with multiple tour dates and tickets and then you can say, ah, here's your event feed, that's as part of your rss, which can be read by apps, and then they can present that on the same page. So in wavelet you could have the artist, their discography, then you can have their event page and with all the dates, and then you can have a ticket button, click the button, buy the button, etc. Etc. And then you know that leads into, eventually, I guess, two things I want to ask you at the end are you going to be looking at uh video as another format that you'll support?

Sam Means: 1:14:19

yeah, I mean, live streaming and merch are the two sort of obvious things. They'll either end up being a hackathon type thing, too, or just something that we do when we get time, but ultimately, I mean, I've been in the music business most of my life and I just you know the things that are important and merch to me merch and live streaming, I think, are important. Just to highlight. I don't know how far down that rabbit hole we'll get for a while, but I do think it'd be cool to try, you know, just to have a little fun with that kind of stuff, like if somebody wanted to. Just, you know, with the live streaming thing, I just envision someone working on a song and getting instant feedback within wave. Like that just seems like a really cool thing I'd like to see happen.

Sam Means: 1:14:59

So, yeah, I think you know we're at the point now where we just want to start building out more studio features in the back end for the band. That's probably where we'll be putting most of the focus, that and getting the mobile app to an actual public release, and we have a couple other things to wrap up before we push that out. But yeah, I mean, hopefully by the end of the focus that and getting the mobile app to an actual public release, and we have a couple other things to wrap up before we push that out. But yeah, I mean, hopefully by the end of the year we'll have a new feature or two and this mobile app will be out publicly to the world and we'll really start making our push at that point yeah, and when you talk about studio, do you mean the back end, the stuff that the artist can do?

Sam Means: 1:15:31

yeah, that's internal lingo, yeah, so we call it basically like the upload section, the back section that an artist would be using. We call that studio right now, okay. So right now, that's pretty simple. It's just really. You can upload your music and you can see your stats. You can upload a podcast if you want to there, but soon enough, being able to go live from there to be able to add your tickets and your events from there, to be able to sell merchandise from there connected to your merch store or something there's, um, there's a lot of cool stuff we can do with that.

Sam Sethi: 1:15:58

So that's a lot that you've been working on. I mean, just as a refresh, the noster wallet connect, the music genre, the mobile app publisher feeds the ticket bot event that you're coming up with, and second half of the year hasn't even started busy, busy dudes two, two last questions are you funded? I mean, is this self-funded? How are you sustaining this?

Sam Means: 1:16:19

yeah, we did a small funding round about a year and a half ago and that's been getting us through. We're keeping a low profile, just trying to make it stick. I mean we're gonna just keep doing this no matter what, but it was definitely helpful yeah, um helpful to get a little help from some early stage people who really believed in what we were doing. So it's always unexpected when you just have an idea and people are like that's a good idea, here's some money.

Sam Sethi: 1:16:46

And fast forward six months. What do you think the industry will look like for you in the music world?

Sam Means: 1:16:54

I mean I really don't know. It's like the world is such a weird place right now. The music industry is starting is really. I mean, it's been so weird, but it's like really boiling over at this point. People are starting to just call things out just everyday. People are starting to call things out. It used to just be the artist and people would be like whatever, and it just no one really wanted to fight for it. But I mean, I think the main reason is just there wasn't a solution. The solution is here now. It's just good timing.

Sam Means: 1:17:22

I really don't know how it's going to play out. I suspect it might take a little bit longer than we, than we hope it will, cause you know it is here, so you do want to be like come over here. This is great, it's the answer is here, but we still have a lot. I mean, all of this stuff is podcasting isn't new, but this idea is new.

Sam Means: 1:17:41

Like I was, less than three years ago, screaming on twitter for someone to do something with music and podcasting and there just wasn't much there. Dave and adam were like, yeah, that's a good idea, somebody should do, but people weren't doing it. It was difficult to get anybody to do anything. I was literally begging people. It is moving fast, technology moves fast. I'm very stoked that there are a lot of podcasters out there now very interested in music. So you know I am hopeful that it's it is going to happen quick. I six months, I don't know. I mean I think we're all just working really hard and I think we're going to see some really cool new features in the next six months. As far as adoption goes, I think we still have a long way to go because this stuff is also new.

Sam Sethi: 1:18:21

Yeah, it is very new, Sam. Thank you so much, my friend. Great catching up on what Wavelength's doing. Just quick one, if someone wants to go and get tickets for the event A, what's the date of the event, who's performing and how do I get tickets?

Sam Means: 1:18:37

Yes, thank you for asking that I should have shilled that concert a little bit harder. This event is in Nashville. If you're going to be at the Bitcoin conference or you're in the radius of Nashville on July 25th, you should go. It's at a place called the Vinyl Lounge which is attached to a really cool vinyl production plant called the Vinyl Lab. Some familiar names Joe Martin's playing, ainsley Costello's playing, just Loud is playing, the Higher Low is playing.

Sam Means: 1:19:01

There's going to be this really fun sort of live kind of karaoke thing where if you know how to play guitar to Smells Like Teen Spirit, you say you want to do that song and three other people see it on the list and they know how to play drums and they know how to play bass. Then you just get up and play it. It's kind of a fun thing. So that'd be cool right now.

Sam Means: 1:19:18

If you go to wavelakecom and scroll down a little bit, you'll see a couple little app icons and you can test out the mobile app and in there you can rsvp for this event. If you rsvp in the wavelake app, I will be making a nice little gift and giving it to you at the door, because I also have a little merch thing that I do. So you'll get a free little fun gift with the ticket and, most importantly, like I said, it's a one sat minimum to RSVP and if you want to pay 10,000 sats for the ticket, we're going to give all that to the bands. So whatever comes in through the Wavelength RSVP, we'll just go straight to them. The bands.

Sam Sethi: 1:19:52

So whatever comes in through the Wavelength RSVP will just go straight to them, will it be?

Sam Means: 1:19:55

broadcast live. Sorry, I missed that. Oh yeah, so we're doing it with Toonster. I don't know if you're familiar with Toonster at all, but Open Mic will be setting up a live stream and that's going to be broadcasted live as well, so be on the lookout. July 25th, 7pm Central Time.

Sam Sethi: 1:20:09

Excellent Thanks, Sam. Have a great one. Speak to you soon.

Sam Means: 1:20:13

Thank you, Sam.

Jingle: 1:20:14

The Pub News Weekly Review. With Buzzsprout Podcast hosting made easy.

Sam Sethi: 1:20:22

So there we go. Sam Means, now James. One of the interesting things I thought about the interview with Sam himself was they are heavily moving towards the Nosta camp. The new mobile app is going to be a Nosta relay app, so that's one part. The ticketing bot that they've been playing with the way you get a ticket is you zap across the price of the ticket and again they are using something called the Nosta Wallet Connect. Now that doesn't mean it's only for Nosta, but it uses the Nosta relay system as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:21:01

I feel like Wavelake are very heavily embracing Nosta as their directional path. I know Fountain is a big advocate of Nosta. They did a very cool radio app. They use Zaps, and Albi themselves even, which produces the Nosta Wallet Connect, is a big advocate of Nosta. So that's one thing. I'm quite surprised that they're going down that road. I'll be clear with my true fan CEO hat on here, I can 100% say we will be spending zero developer cycles on Nostra. I don't like or want to go down that road. We built TrueFans as an activity stream platform. It's at its core. That's what it does. You know we talked about cross-app comments earlier and we talked about, you know, activity going back to hosts. Um, we built that at its core. We aren't going to be supporting nostal, we are going to be a full activity pub client and I think this is the first time, james, I think we're seeing a friction. No, a fissure. Is that the right word?

James Cridland: 1:22:08

a fissure, that's it, fissure a break a split in the direction of yes split's easy, isn't it? Yes, yes, no, I agree, I agree, and I think I mean Nosta. The one thing that Nosta has going for it is everyone who is on Nosta thinks that it's brilliant. And there seems to be less of that from you know that, I see, from you know the podcast, the podcasting 2.0, sort of world and Activity Pub and everything else. Everybody who is in Nosta thinks it's the best thing ever. And yeah, and I wonder whether there's something that we can learn from that. And yeah, and I wonder whether there's something that we can learn from that. But yeah, whenever I've gone into Nosta, it's just like lots of tech bros who are super excited about everything but actually think very critically about nothing. And yeah, it's not for me either.

Sam Sethi: 1:23:05

And, dare I say it, it's a younger generation who are embracing Nosta.

James Cridland: 1:23:11

And it's also so insecure. It's such a bad piece of technology anyway as NOSTA that actually you know I can't guess how you change your password in NOSTA. Oh, you don't, because you can't. So if somebody gets, if somebody gets the you know the Nostra key that you use, your private key, which you have to type into apps to allow you to post and to allow you to take part in Nostra. If somebody gets that key, then guess what? You have to start all over again. You can't just change that key, you have to stop and start all over again. It's a fatally flawed thing and I really don't understand why the Nostabros are so excited by it. If you believe different, then send us a boost using lightning. Send us a boost, and that will be a lovely thing to find out, but to me none of it makes any sense.

Sam Sethi: 1:24:11

Outside of that, I think Wavelake is doing some really interesting things. So I do like the fact that they've got publisher feeds, I do like the fact that they are, you know, looking at this new music genre category. So again, hats off to Wavelake for pushing the boat out. As a fellow developer, I just say I'm going down a different path. We'll see which one's the right path eventually. Indeed, indeed, so as a fellow developer.

James Cridland: 1:24:35

I just say I'm going down a different path. We'll see which one's the right path eventually. Indeed, indeed, right. Well, let's dive on with other things. Mumbler says that they are going to be supporting transcripts. They're a podcast hosting and monetization platform. Interestingly, they're making transcripts available in 85 languages and, yes, it is podcasting 2.0 compatible.

James Cridland: 1:24:53

Also in terms of transcripts, the new owner of Castro says that transcripts are coming to the Castro podcast app, which is a good and big one for the iOS community, and the company's Android app, which is called Aurelian, is now using Castro for trending and search, and so my suspicion is that that app will slowly but surely turn into Castro for Android as well, which is very nice. Also, support for transcripts are coming to Antenapod, which has done a load of code restructuring work. If you want to learn how complicated it is to make a mobile app, then take a read of the post that Antenapod has just put up about all of the work that they've had to end up doing. More than 200 people have worked on the app since its launch 13 years ago, which is pretty impressive, I think.

Sam Sethi: 1:25:44

Yeah, very Now Headliner has added free captioning for full length episodes. And I just wanted to ask you, james, because I don't really know I say the words but I don't really know, what's the difference between a transcript and a caption? Can't transcripts be used for captions, or do you have to have a different format?

James Cridland: 1:26:03

Captions are the things that appear if you are making a. You know, if you're watching TV, for example, those are captions that you see on the screen. If you are reading just a page, a web page, that is a transcript, and so a caption is a transcript with timing. That's basically how it works. So if you've got a caption file, like a VTT file or an SRT file, then you can use that to make transcripts, but not the other way around. You can't just take a random text file and hope to get some timing information out of that. It doesn't work that way.

Sam Sethi: 1:26:43

James talks technology. There you go. Now I understand there you go.

James Cridland: 1:26:46

Now Speak Up.

Sam Sethi: 1:26:48

AI, a tool that takes textual articles and produces podcasts with your cloned voices, raised $500,000. That sounds good, but yesterday your favourite company, James Eleven Labs, launched their iOS app, and that does exactly the same.

James Cridland: 1:27:05

Yes, a bunch of these people doing exactly the same thing. So, yeah, completely agree, exactly the same thing. So, uh, yeah, completely agree. So it's weird seeing companies earning all of this money, raising all of this money um for um, something that, frankly, isn't that different anymore. Um, uh, I mean, you know 11 labs will do the same thing. Uh, wondercraft will do the same thing. You know, um, you know that that man who you quite fancy, all of that.

Sam Sethi: 1:27:34

My bro, yes, my bro.

James Cridland: 1:27:37

Oscar, yeah, oscar, so yes, so yes, it's just a bit weird, but you know, I mean, if you're a company called Speak Up AI, then I assume as soon as you've added the word AI, then you can earn some more money out of it word AI, then you can earn some more money out of it. In just the same way that Google IO earlier on this week was just full of AI stuff from Google that nobody cared about. Really, yeah, google's going to do the Googling for you now.

Sam Sethi: 1:28:03

Yes.

James Cridland: 1:28:04

Well, and what I love now is that Google now has a special new option in Google Search, which is called Web Search, where you can actually search the web without any of the other stuff that Google puts around your searches. It's just brilliant the fact that they've even launched that. It's actually a product. The fact that they've actually launched that shows how much Google have lost the plot?

Sam Sethi: 1:28:30

Are you sure? Because since yesterday it's probably been killed.

James Cridland: 1:28:32

Well, yeah, quite possibly, quite possibly, ivo Terra wrote an interesting thing, hasn't he recently he did.

Sam Sethi: 1:28:39

He wrote a guide for looking at what the best fiction podcast app, and I actually had a Mastodon conversation with Ivo about what makes a good fiction podcast app, what should we do, and he rightly pointed out to me that if you don't support the serial tag as opposed to episodic, correctly, then the order of the podcast is going to be wrong.

Sam Sethi: 1:29:08

And also, he had a whole bunch of other little metrics that he thought you know, if you're going to do a podcast that focus on fiction not audio books, but fiction and what's interesting is we've got this thing called medium equals audio books in the podcasting 2.0 namespace, and that is, you know, great. And we have podcasts that are tagging themselves specifically as audiobooks, but there are podcasts that are still tagged as podcasts Medium Equals Podcasts that are fiction, that don't want to be an audiobook. And I said what's the difference then? What's the difference between a fiction that's not an audiobook and there is a minor technical difference, one to the way it's narrated, I think, and one specifically designed as an audiobook. But outside of that, yeah, no, it was a very good piece and I highly recommend anyone who is building apps to read it, because you need to be compliant.

James Cridland: 1:30:03

Yeah, exactly, and it's just focusing on. There are different user experiences required for different types of content, whether that's fiction, podcasting, whether that's audio books, whether that's music and so on and so forth, and the Clever app is an app which deals with all of those different ways of UX which is required. So, yes, I thought that that was really interesting.

Sam Sethi: 1:30:27

Yeah, I worked with Barry from Podhome this week on Medium Equals Courses and again, very much like audiobooks and fiction, you have to set the tag to serial so that the courses appear in the right order. Oh, yes, and the final course first. Let's do that. No, that doesn't work. So again, there are little nuances. The other interesting thing that came out this week was Dovidas from RSS. Blue has released a test RSS feed where you can test whether your live streaming for value time splits works. This is critical. Most apps aren't supporting live value time splits. Truefans, for example, doesn't support live value time splits. We support value time splits or wallet switching in the post-recording. That's fine, that's easy to do, but live was.

James Cridland: 1:31:25

It was some weird web socket, much more complicated.

Sam Sethi: 1:31:29

So, thanks to Dovidas, there is now a way of doing that and we are working with it.

James Cridland: 1:31:35

It's a podcast tag called Podcast Conan Live Value and it uses a web socket, so we will try it If there is someone listening to this podcast that thinks I'd really like to help the podcast community, but I don't know what to do. To help the podcast community, one thing to do is to put a one page together of all of the test podcast feeds that exist, because there are a bunch of them. John Spurlock, for example, has one that will read back the user agent of your podcast app for you. So there's a bunch of these test feeds and I think it would be worthwhile doing that and to chuck that onto the Podcasting 2.0 website, which is going to become easier so I hear to produce work, for Daniel is busy looking at ways to make that easier to edit, so that would be a really helpful thing.

James Cridland: 1:32:33

Talking about test RSS feeds, I've actually got rid of one this week, the PodClock podcast. Yes, my favourite thing. But I've got rid of that this week partially because I realised it was costing me $25 in Amazon Polly every single month and I was there going you know what? I want to cut that bill down and I'm not going to pay for Amazon Polly anymore. So, yes, so that was one thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:33:01

I suspect that was Mrs Cridland who said you're going to cut the bill down. I don't think it was. I think it was me.

James Cridland: 1:33:09

She doesn't know that I think it was me, and yes, and one final thing is Sonos. If you have a fancy Sonos speaker, apparently you have a new app which is there for you, and in that new app, they've managed to break virtually all of the integrations that they had with podcast apps, pocket Casts, for example, and various other things, and some people are very, very upset about it, and so it's a good job that I haven't spent any money on those expensive Sonos speakers, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 1:33:42

I didn't think they were still going. Well, well done to keep going.

Jingle: 1:33:45

Boostergrams, boostergrams, boostergrams and fan mail. Fan mail On the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 1:33:51

Yes, it's our favourite time of the week. It's boost grams and fan mail. You can send us a boost through your modern podcast app If it's got a boost button. You can send us a fan mail by clicking that link in our description thing. We like boosts better, but fan mails are also good. What have we had this week so far, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:34:12

So a couple of fan mails came in from first one, from Alban Brook over in Jacksonville, florida. Betting on YouTube over Apple Podcasts to be the most important podcasting app is bold. Apple has supported podcasting for 20 plus years, while Google has shifted their podcasting strategy every few years. How likely is it that YouTube podcasts will exist in 2029? I'm just going to preface this on. You put out a tweet which was lol. Do you remember Google Podcasts?

James Cridland: 1:34:46

Yes, yes, I did. Yes, I completely agree. So this was on the back of a piece of research last week where I think it was Chris Peterson asked what the most important podcast app is going to be in the next five years and lots of dumb podcast executives said it's going to be YouTube. Said it's going to be YouTube. I'm trying to work out how rude I can be in my opening keynote for the podcast show next week about YouTube and the BBC.

Sam Sethi: 1:35:17

They won't be there. It's nine in the morning, come on.

James Cridland: 1:35:21

And yes, completely agree with you, Albin. So yes, correct.

Sam Sethi: 1:35:26

Si Jobling from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

James Cridland: 1:35:30

Yes, 12 points to Wyoming.

Sam Sethi: 1:35:35

How about trying Buzzsprout fan mail for audience participation at your live show? We can do that. Would be quite an interesting one, james, to try. It's frictionless and convenient if the push notifications are quick enough. We don't know how quick they come through actually.

James Cridland: 1:35:49

Yes, we can be, Although this would be a bunch of people in the UK and we would all be asking them to text American text numbers which may or may not be free in the UK. So I'm not so sure about that, but it's a good idea. Si, even easier is just to put your hand up and then we'll get a microphone over to you. That's the way that I'm planning on doing it. So, yes, there we are 5,150 sats from Dave Jones using Castomatic. Thank you, dave. Does anyone receive money with these fan mails, or does it just cost everybody money? Winky face, correct, dave. No one earns money in terms of the fan mail messages, which is why we prefer.

James Cridland: 1:36:33

Well, yes, I mean Twilio gets some money, but that's it. So, yes, completely agree. So thank you for your 5,150 sats, which is some kind of boost. And yes, point well made, I think. What do you think, sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:36:50

Yeah, I think look, I think fan mail was really fun. Uh, I think boosts are fun, so anything that makes interactivity uh works. No one's making money out of this, so the amounts that we make are micro, so I think you and I can afford to buy a beer out of our boost. This year.

James Cridland: 1:37:09

We were okay oh no, I think I think we've earned more than that, have we? Yes, I think we've definitely earned more than that.

Sam Sethi: 1:37:15

No, because I think I've given away hundreds of thousands, if you ever listen to the podcast show on a Friday night.

James Cridland: 1:37:21

Well, that may be slightly different. That may be slightly different.

James Cridland: 1:37:23

Yes, Right, let's move on. 10,000 snaps from Adam Curry, who's sent us a boost using Podcast Guru, by the looks of things. Anyway, he says female dreams for all daily shows, please. I think he was listening to a show that I did earlier on this week where I put my voice through this thing and turned into a female, and the quick answer is Adam no, no female dreams for all daily shows, or indeed for this show either. But thanks for the boost anyway, much appreciated.

Sam Sethi: 1:38:00

Jemima Cridland.

James Cridland: 1:38:04

I know, I know, weirdly, that voice is called Charlotte, which is the name of my daughter. So, yes, I mean, even Angie doesn't know anything like that.

Sam Sethi: 1:38:14

Moving on then Right 1,000 sats from CreativityFound. Thanks for the little mention for CreativityFound with regards to pod roles. A fine example of how podcasting 2.0 features can be used to aid discovery. Look forward to seeing you both at the podcast show in London and at Sam's online 2.0 event. Yes, discovery, look forward to seeing you both at the podcast show in london and at sam's online 2.0 event. Yes, look forward to seeing you there as well uh, row of ducks from cole mccormick.

James Cridland: 1:38:39

I'm about to spam your texting number with star wars quotes. Long live george lucas. Uh cole, thank you, um, I think didn't he sell it to?

Sam Sethi: 1:38:48

disney, he doesn't he yeah, yes, he did.

James Cridland: 1:38:51

Lucas sold it to Disney. So, yes, along with Doctor who now and all kinds of other things as well. Brian Entsminger, 1701 sats. Regarding transcripts in Apple podcasts, I've had good acceptance of transcripts made with Mac Whisper, lightly cleaned up and delivered in SRT format, unless I include speaker labels. Well, yes, because you can't really include speaker labels in SRT format. Anyway, you should be using VTT for that. I think we made a mistake by saying that SRT was a thing. I think we should be using WebVTT from here on in. To be honest, it's the only one that I support these days. So, yes, I would agree. Yeah, we're switching over.

James Cridland: 1:39:33

Brian is also in the Hindenburg group in Facebook, and one of the things that Hindenburg has just announced is much better transcripts, and actually one of the problems that I had editing this show in Hindenburg was if you did the transcripts first, it was really slow because it was 90 minutes plus of matching words with WAV files and, yes, it was incredibly slow. And they fixed all of that as of the new build which came out this week. So if you are using Hindenburg, do a quick update. One of the very nice things that they've done is if you do a transcript now and maybe you've got a couple of different tracks, so maybe you've got one, maybe you've got two tracks that are 90 minutes long. The old Hindenburg Pro would have transcribed those separately and that would have ended up being three hours worth of your transcript time gone. The new version which you download this week will only take 90 minutes out of your transcript time and we'll do a much better job of doing that. So hurrah for them is what I say.

James Cridland: 1:40:45

And we've got one final boost here from Andrew Gromit. It's a row of ducks boost and it just says cheers. Well, cheers, andrew, cheers, cheers. So what's been happening for you?

Sam Sethi: 1:40:57

this week, sam, there was a couple of things really. One I just got a sense or a feeling this week that something's changed. There's so many announcements this week about universities and schools joining the Fediverse and it just felt very took me back to the early days of the web. Really, it feels like the web's being reborn slowly, one server at a time or one instance at a time, and I posted that out and got a lot of positive reactions.

Sam Sethi: 1:41:31

I think when I look at the time I spend online with social media, when I look at the time I spend online with social media, I spend now nearly 80% of my time in the Fediverse either on Flipboard Threads or Mastodon or one of the activity pub clients that I use. I spend less than 5% of my time on X very, very little. I get zero engagement there. I'm on X very, very little. I get zero engagement there. Particularly now. I'm 1%. I don't even go to Facebook or Instagram. It just feels very different, james, and yeah, I just thought I'd say I think I'm watching. The web reborn is what I feel like.

James Cridland: 1:42:07

Yes, I certainly find much more pleasure out of the whole experience on the Fediverse, on Mastodon and those sorts of things, and I'm certainly getting you know there's a bunch of very useful things that you can follow. One of the things that I particularly like is you can follow hashtags, which is very different to Twitter, where you can't follow a hashtag. You can follow a hashtag on Mastodon or similar and that essentially means that if you want to follow the podcasting hashtag, then you can do that and you get whatever anyone is saying about that and that's a nice thing. So it's worthwhile having a peek at and there are a few things that you can do to make sure that, if you're running a very small server, there are a few things you can do to basically pull in those hashtags from everywhere using other relays and things. But yeah, it's definitely a nice thing.

Sam Sethi: 1:43:02

Definitely, I care less about my follower numbers than you know 10, 15 years ago and it's really nice I can repick the people I want to follow. Yeah, it's good, I like it, um, as a big paul weller fan, you know, I saw paul weller at the sydney opera house when I was down your way, james. Um, the fan podcast is out on the 17th of may and his new album. So just on a paul weller fanboy note, I'm looking forward to that, um. And the other thing we did, um, in true fans, we enabled the og audio that you gave the nice little hint out, so that worked. We tested that. That's all working in the messenger client now, um, and we're looking to support og music and og video now, james, to see if that makes any difference at all.

Sam Sethi: 1:43:51

Well, there you go. There's the thing. Now. The big thing we did do this week was we started enabling you to buy books, audio books or music albums with fiat currency. So with our Stripe integration, you can buy the audio book with Aussie dollars or dollars or euros. You can buy the audio book with Aussie dollars or dollars or euros, but we convert that payment to the author back into SATs so that we can honour the splits in their wallet. So you so a user. Oh, that's nice.

Sam Sethi: 1:44:24

Yeah, so the user can buy it in whatever currency they want, or they can buy it in SATs. They don't have to buy it in the fiat currency. They get a choice. But what we then do is we do the conversion in the back end and then we look at the wallet splits and then we just distribute the sats based on the wallet. Very cool, yeah, thank you very much. What's been happening for you, james?

James Cridland: 1:44:45

so I've been on two different podcasts this week um bubble trouble, which we mentioned earlier, which looks at the financial world of podcasting, and also Tony Doe's podcast, which is called Into the Podverse, which is a really interesting thing to get interviewed for because essentially Tony sent through an email with a bunch of questions and said record your answers to this and send me the MP3 file file. So he calls it asynchronous interviewing and um yeah, and so I ended up doing that and he's um made a decent sounding show out of it, which I thought was a very clever way of doing a, of doing a show.

Sam Sethi: 1:45:21

I love to go to this, the bubble trouble one I I, as I said earlier, I highly recommend everyone going to listen to that show it was. It was very uh, I thought right on the money in terms of where we are today in the metrics around podcasting. So yeah, no good show.

James Cridland: 1:45:38

And that's it for this week. Thank you to Sam, to Julie and to Jesse for being our guests this week. You can listen to the Pod News Daily in your podcast app and you can subscribe to the Pod News newsletter. The podcast is good. The newsletter is better for more of those stories and much, much more too.

Sam Sethi: 1:45:54

You can support this show by streaming sats. You can give us feedback using fan mail or with the Boostergram. We like both. If you're still using an old legacy Podcast 1.0 app like Apple, spotify or YouTube, what are you doing Instead? Grab a new Podcasting 2.0 app at podcasting2.org. Forward slash apps and we look forward to seeing you if you're at the london podcast show at our live recording next week indeed, our music is from studio dragonfly.

James Cridland: 1:46:21

We use clean feed for the way that we record this show. Our voiceover is sheila d and we are hosted and sponsored by buzzsprout podcast. Podcast hosting made easy. Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

Jesse Brown: 1:46:38

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