Pacific Content closes; interviews with Pocket Casts and Platform Media

We interview Ellie from Pocket Casts on the future direction of the podcast app; Matthew from Platform Media on why the company was acquired by PodX; and talk about the closure of Pacific Content.

We're trying something new this week: trying to bring down the duration of this podcast to 45 minutes. Haven't quite succeeded yet, but we're on the way; that means shorter edits of interviews, and a more focused story selection. Please give feedback to us (fanmail, boosts, email) with your thoughts on the format and how we can improve.

If you like the interviews and want to hear the full conversation, head to the Podnews Extra podcast.

Transcript

James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 31st of May 2024.

Speaker 2: 0:04

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

James Cridland: 0:13

In Florida. I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News.

Sam Sethi: 0:17

And I'm Sam Sethi, awake and alive. It's not seven in the morning when we record this, so yes, and he's CEO of True Fans in the chapters.

James Cridland: 0:25

Today, spotify adds exclusive episodes for paid subscribers. They also have taken a leap into live events. Just Cast ships a Spotify integration to sell private podcasts and Pacific content is to close Plus.

Matthew Sherry: 0:42

Hi, I'm Matthew Sherry, the co-founder of Platform Media, and I'll be on later to talk about our products acquisition.

Ellie Rubenstein: 0:49

I'm Ellie and I'm the head of PocketCast at Automatic. I'll be later on to talk about PocketCast, podcasting 2.0, and what we've been doing recently.

James Cridland: 1:00

They will. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy with easy and powerful AI tools, free learning materials and remarkable customer support.

Speaker 2: 1:10

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:15

James, we start off with some sad news this week that Pacific Content is to close. It's one of the largest branded podcast companies in North America and the company, which was founded in 2014, was bought by Rogers in 2019. And Rogers said with economic challenges in this market over the past few years, we've decided to focus on our core audio business. Why are they closing it?

James Cridland: 1:37

James. Well, why are they closing it? I'm not sure that anybody knows. So Pacific Content used to make branded content for brands who wanted to tell stories. They really hated being called a branded podcast company, but that's kind of what they did. We are told I believe something like nine or 10 staff are going. Most of those are based in Vancouver and, yeah, it's just a bit of a shame. And I think Rogers, you know, I mean it's no surprise that the broadcast media is currently in a bit of economic problems and I think that Rogers are busy there going. How can we save as much money as we possibly can? But it seems a bit of a shame and, to be honest, a bit short-sighted for them to be focusing on that.

Sam Sethi: 2:29

Yeah, I did reach out to Steve Pratt, the co-founder of Pacific Content, who's no longer there, and he said Pacific Content has a phenomenal team of podcasting talent and a great client roster. I hope they all find new homes. I think, speaking to Steve and reading between the lines, they were a very close family. But you know, we've seen the brain drain out of Pacific Content. Steve left, we've seen Jonas Wust and Dan Meisen leave to form Bumper. We've seen other people leave. I think you know, once you've sold your business, you have no control over it, and I think the brain drain on the back of it probably has heightened or accelerated this closure.

James Cridland: 3:05

Yeah, and I don't think it was necessarily brain drain just from Pacific content. I think it was also the brain drain from Rogers, julie Adam, who used to be in charge of Rogers Radio, who did the deal with Steve. She ended up leaving and it does sound as if Rogers has been pretty sort of. You know, it's been a turbulent couple of years in that company. I mean, they're a huge, huge company. They have clearly found it quite difficult over the last couple of years and there's been, I know, an awful lot of internal you know politics and sabre rattling and everything else and that has spilled out into the papers as well.

James Cridland: 3:46

So yeah, I think it was just a loss of focus and a loss of understanding of what Pacific content was actually there for. I personally would suggest that. You know Roger's saying we decided to focus on our own core audio business creating meaningful content for Canadian audiences and advertisers. I would suggest to you that the future of that business is companies like Pacific Content making branded content for Canadian audiences and advertisers. But clearly Rogers don't see it that way.

Sam Sethi: 4:21

Moving on, a friend of the show, chris Messina, sent me this Spotify's rolled out exclusive episodes for paid subscribers. I was like what's that? So he sent me a screenshot and I checked it on my own Spotify and it's live. So you can now have paid subscriptions for single episodes, which again seems interesting. Have you seen this at all yet?

James Cridland: 4:43

Yeah, I mean they've been doing this for a while. Actually, it's part of the integration with Supporting Cast and with other similar, you know, third-party companies that will give you access to paid episodes. But yeah, I mean they're certainly pushing it a bit more now and there's certainly quite a lot more content available in that way.

Sam Sethi: 5:09

Now other companies that are using supporting cast include, in New Zealand, the Stuff Group that has launched its first paid podcast subscription for the Lost Boy, a true crime show. So I went and had a look and it's a dedicated website and it all works great. And it says you know, buy, buy the series, new supporting cast. So then what I did, james, was I went to the podcast index and I just took the rss feed for the subscript for the lost boys, added it to true fans and guess what? No supporting cast required. I can listen to it for free. So how can, how can they prevent literally people doing what I did, which is just adding the RSS into another app and just bypassing the supporting cast?

James Cridland: 5:51

Yeah, no. So the Lost Boy, for example, is an RSS feed, which is a standard podcast that you can get everywhere, and that'll be what's in the podcast index. Now you can get additional paid-for stuff, and additional paid-for stuff they give you a RSS feed that only really works for you and that super-secret RSS feed won't be in the podcast index.

Sam Sethi: 6:20

Oh, okay, got it.

James Cridland: 6:22

Right, and so the way that they do that is they police that in terms of making sure that you don't share that RSS feed with anyone. You know that's their sort of plan there. But yeah, it's a pretty good system and you know it's a bit of a clutch, because you know all these things are, because the idea is that it's supposed to play on your favourite podcast app and in this case, they've actually jumped in with Spotify and done some OAuth cleverness, which essentially means that Spotify also can play these individual episodes as well, but it's a fairly clever thing. Another company using it is the Podcast Show, where you can buy access to all of the sessions, including the ones that you're in and the ones that I was in, and you can buy all of that for £79, I think, at the moment, and that, again, is a supporting cast thing.

Sam Sethi: 7:24

So, yeah, not not a bad thing really so it sort of works well when you've got a large payment. I mean, it's the opposite to a micro payment, so it's paying up front rather than pay as you go.

James Cridland: 7:35

Right, that's what it is yeah, indeed, indeed, and you know, um, 99 or 79 pounds sounds a lot, because it is Most of these things are, you know, £2.99, £3.99 a month and those sorts of things. But, yes, so you're paying up front. It doesn't do the whole micropayments thing because, as we've seen, the whole micropayments thing is really hard unless you start using, you know, and and that sort of thing.

Sam Sethi: 8:03

So, um, yeah, Well, uh, I reached out to David Stern, the CEO of Supporting Cast, and good news is he'll be on the show next week to tell us more about what Supporting Cast do and how it works.

James Cridland: 8:16

Excellent, and I think I saw him at the podcast show as well, so, um, yeah.

Sam Sethi: 8:19

Couple of things. Closing down, uh at Libsyn and spotify. Libsyn studio uh, the company's online recording tool, has suddenly closed, and also spotify for podcasters. I think you reported this a couple of weeks ago. James has also closed its tools down as well yes.

James Cridland: 8:38

So, um, uh, spotify for podcasters has always had tools. Where you can, you can add jingles and stuff like that. It's a hangover from the anchor days and they're finally getting rid of that. Too much consternation, I should say, in many of the podcasting groups. So there is an opportunity there for somebody that wants to jump in, although there are quite a lot of people who are already doing that sort of thing Podcastle. Alitu Riverside kind of does bits of that as well.

James Cridland: 9:14

There was a new product that I reported on this week called PodOps Studio, which does similar. So that is going away. But the weird one is the Libsyn Studio product, which was originally called Auxbus. Auxbus was then bought by Libsyn. Libsyn then decided that they would make a free podcast host with that called it Libsyn Studio, and that free podcast host lasted six months and then they closed it. Then they integrated Libsyn Studio into their platform in December 2022. And now Libsyn Studio is going away completely. So yes, it's been a very strange purchase and product cycle there, but again, I wonder whether it's just that there's nobody left at the company that actually understands how to maintain that and product cycle there. But again, I wonder whether it's just that there's nobody left at the company that actually understands how to maintain that particular product and they're just having to make cuts like that to keep them. You know, going.

Sam Sethi: 10:16

I don't know, I use Squadcast and Descript for all the interviews that I do and for the editing. I'm still waiting for them to deliver a new, fully integrated version. Since the acquisition and it looks like that's going to come out on the 4th of June Descript's making a big announcement. I assume that's what it will be the new version that's got the new UI and the tighter integration. I mean, if it's not, then well, it's probably just going to be an AI announcement, but I'm hoping it's actually something more useful, like a better, deeper, seamless integration.

James Cridland: 10:48

Yeah, I don't know about that. I do know that it will include more collaboration tools. I have heard from some people that it may be something that changes that Descript are making that they're announcing on June the 4th may be something that we will turn around and say, hmm, is Descript still a podcasting app or is it changing into something else? So yes, so we have to sort of wait and see on that. Don't really know what the change is going to be, so we will both find out together on June the 4th.

Sam Sethi: 11:23

Just as an aside, James already probably knows. He just doesn't tell anyone else? Including me, just so you know. Right back to the show. Spotify is also closing down. It's a short-lived car thing. Yeah, what is this? What is this thing? It's a car thing. Okay, yes, whoever thought that one up.

James Cridland: 11:45

This is. I mean, this is tech companies. The problem with tech companies to a T. This is they made this very nice little device which you would put in your car, which would give you access to Spotify and a really nice user interface. It had a knob on it. It had a nice colour screen. You know all of that. It talked to your mobile phone. It was really nice.

James Cridland: 12:09

They sold it for $90 in February 2022. That's when it went on sale. They've been selling it since. I think they were still selling it in the middle of last year for $50. And then, all of a sudden, they've decided not just that they're going to stop selling it, but they're going to stop that device working. It's not going to work at all after the end of this year, so less than three years after purchase, that will just be a device that won't do anything. They won't offer any refunds, they won't offer any credits, and quite a lot of people have been saying, well, could you at least open source that device, Because it's quite a nice piece of hardware so we can do something with it? And they said, no, we're not going to do that either. I just think it's a mistake on Spotify's part, to be honest. Yeah, well, I mean to be honest.

Sam Sethi: 13:01

Yeah, well, I mean the open company. Hey, what can you do? Now, talking of things closing, Todd Cochran's New Media Productions is hunting for a new studio space after his lease was terminated by a new building owner. So Geek News Central and the New Media Show have come from the studio in Coldwater, Michigan, USA, since 2019, July 2019. And it cost Todd $25,000 to convert the studio space. So he's looking. I did have a thing. Twit Studios is free, Todd, you never know.

James Cridland: 13:34

Yeah, well, Twit Studios are free, but unfortunately they're in Petaluma in California and Todd is not a California person, is he?

Sam Sethi: 13:43

He can get a suntan over there whatever, yeah, yeah, well, we'll see.

James Cridland: 13:47

We'll see. But, yes, todd has very graciously said on Facebook that he has been talking for the last 10 years buyyourowncom don't rely on other people. Own the work that you do. Don't buy your house on rented land. And don't buy your house on rented land. Don't buy a studio on rented land either, because, yeah, it was a brand new building. Owner who turned his lease from being year on year to month on month, from being year on year to month on month, and then has decided that, no, he wants Todd out so that the weed shop next door can grow bigger, probably. And so, yeah, todd is, you know, understandably fuming about it, but there's not very much that he can do there. I think he may have learnt his lesson in terms of don't build your house on rented land.

Sam Sethi: 14:44

Oh dear, ok, sorry't build your house on rented land, oh dear. Okay, sorry, todd. Moving on then We've had a little time to recover. Well, I have. It took me three days to recover. Actually, I don't know what you're like. You got on a plane, the podcast show 10,000 people eventually called into. Jason Carter went through the door.

James Cridland: 15:02

Yes, so they say 10,000 people across the festival, which does include some of the live podcasts that were going on as well, not just the conference itself. But yeah, it was pretty good, wasn't it? I felt it was a very positive feel there were a couple of things that I thought didn't quite work, feel there were a couple of things that I thought didn't quite work, but I think, pretty well, as you know, a really good podcast event. I think that the podcast show is, you know, up there in the, you know in the top three.

Sam Sethi: 15:38

Yeah, no, it went really well and I think you know what I love about it is everyone getting together and networking and seeing people that you talk to, you know online, so that all works well. I don't really know what else they can do. I mean, make it bigger. I mean what? What would you do for next year?

James Cridland: 15:55

well, the thing is I mean, you know they're sort of the benefit but also the drawback is that venue and the venue is a lovely venue and it's a really good space, but clearly you're not going to be able to make that much bigger. They are using as much of that space as they can now and so I think that the trick that they have, they could make it longer, they could turn it into a three-day event rather than a two-day event, and that would help a little bit. But I think the trick that they've got to do is to make sure that they are attracting both the industry and the advertisers and there weren't enough advertisers this year and the creators, and there's been a little bit of sort of chat on LinkedIn saying it's disappointing that the creators were kept so separate from the industry people. I'm not sure that I saw any of that, to be honest, and I think that they did a much better job this year of catering for the creators.

James Cridland: 16:58

You know, in terms of that, I think you know, the only one negative thing that I would say about the event was Spotify's walled garden.

James Cridland: 17:09

So you walk into the event and there is this beautiful looking Spotify stand, which is lovely and empty and it has a barista in there and it has lots of seating and blah, blah, blah. And you try and go in and they say, oh no, you're not allowed in. And you try and go in and they say, oh no, you're not allowed in. This is for people with meetings only, I'm afraid, which is a really negative thing to have, you know, to actually have as the big you know booth as you walk into the event, that sort of exclusionary walled garden thing. And I did hear a delicious rumour and so far as I can work out, there is an element of truth to it that stand was too big. Spotify ignored the specifications. Spotify, ignoring the specifications, spotify ignored the specifications on how to make on the size of that stand made it too big, with the result that four other companies were shunted off somewhere else because Spotify was there and Spotify had already started building their particular stand. And doesn't that say everything about Spotify? It does.

Sam Sethi: 18:26

It's such a metaphor closed, non-standard and pushing others out.

James Cridland: 18:31

I mean, it's a walled garden that you can't get into and sort of elbowing other companies out of the way, Really really interesting. So yeah, I found the whole thing, that whole thing, fascinating. I mean, it's not the only time that Spotify have done that. They've done their you know, we're not going to talk to the general public at all act for a number of years. I think it's a bit tedious, I think it's a bit poor form and I think it does some immeasurable damage and I don't understand why they do it. But you know, there we are.

Sam Sethi: 19:08

Yeah, a couple of other things I forgot to mention. On last week's show, we did the first All India panel, so that was very good, as I said, for those watching in black and white. This panel was in colour. It was the first time that this panel had been put together. So you had Sangeeta Payal from Soul Sutras and the Podcast Academy, gotham, who we had on a few weeks ago from Hub Hopper, and Nina, who's got her big event up in Birmingham, coming up. It was yeah, it was 70 people turned up. It was quite nice.

Sam Sethi: 19:42

It was a very impromptu last minute. I'm not really sure what we do with it next. By the way, what's the next thing to do with that, now that you've just done a panel? That said there is an issue. I'm not sure what the solution is, but anyway, it was good to do. That's what I would say. And, yeah, we had a PSP meeting as well there, the podcast standard script meeting, and all I'll say, james, is watch this space. Some hopefully big announcements coming next week on this show about what we're going to be doing at Podcast Movement.

James Cridland: 20:11

Well, that's all very exciting. You did meet with a ton of interesting people, including Ellie from Pocket Casts.

Sam Sethi: 20:19

Yeah, ellie's lovely. She's the head of Pocket Casts and you know they're a bigger player in the market of Pocket Cast and you know they're a bigger player in the market and Pocket Cast, which is part of Automatic, have started to embrace podcasting 2.0. So I asked Ellie, you know, tell me more about Pocket Cast and your plans for podcasting 2.0. Pocket.

Ellie Rubenstein: 20:36

Cast was created by the Australian company Shifty Jelly, founded by Philip Simpson, who's still on the team, and Russell Ivanovich. They launched the app back in 2010. And then, in 2018, publicast was acquired by a group of public radio stations and organizations and about three years later, it was acquired by Automatic, the parent company of WordPresscom, tumblr, woocommerce, jetpack and so much more. I joined the team a year later, in July 2022, when Russell decided to move on and I stepped in to replace him as the head of Pocket Casts. As the head of podcast, I feel really passionate about podcasting and this whole world and how it what it can do to improve people's lives, and when the opportunity came, I thought it was just a perfect fit for me.

Sam Sethi: 21:35

Yeah, your background also. I looked at was in iOS development as well, so very apt. How big is the team?

Ellie Rubenstein: 21:42

The team is quite small. We do have developers for each platform, so we have developers for iOS, developers for Android. The web developers also are responsible for the desktop apps. Overall we're quite small. We're about 14 people. It's challenging to support this many clients in. Our backend team is also quite small.

Sam Sethi: 22:07

Now Pocket Cast is one of the odder apps for me, because it's an app that people pay for right Pocket.

Ellie Rubenstein: 22:14

Cast is completely free. Okay, I thought I'd give you the platform to tell me off.

Ellie Rubenstein: 22:19

Now go on Ellie In a previous episode of Pod News Weekly, sam mentioned that Pocket Cast is under a paywall. It is not. It is completely free. We have all the beautiful and extensive customization options that people love us for for free. We do have a subscription tier. We have two subscription tiers One is Plus and the other is Patron, and with those tiers you get extra features. So everything we develop, we work on, we invest in, we spend money on, spend time on and energy and all things that are costly are in that subscription.

Ellie Rubenstein: 23:00

So you get fabulous features like folders or bookmarks. You get more storage space, you get the desktop apps. You get the desktop apps. You get the more watch support and we're continuing to add more features there. Our Patron tier is really meant for people that just want to support us, that want to be there for us, and we do need that. So that gives you a little bit more flair. You get early access to better features. You get some sparkly icons and colors and yeah, that's really just to show support for Pocket App. That told me, but the app is free.

Sam Sethi: 23:38

That told me. Now, one of the things that I love that you guys have done is recently you've embraced podcasting 2.0. How far back did you and the teams have that discussion?

Ellie Rubenstein: 23:50

I think we had those discussions since I joined the team, so that's about two years ago, and I've I think I joined the podcast standard project that we're both part of also about maybe one and a half years ago, so sometime. It just was a matter of prioritizing what we have in the backlog and our user requests bug fixes versus new features, things that we needed to get off the pipeline and we finally got to do that and we're really happy about it.

Sam Sethi: 24:24

So which tags have you implemented already?

Sam Sethi: 24:27

we implemented chapters, we implemented popping and we're working on some good stuff how do you think, given your user base, that we can transition people to understand this space? I mean, is it going to just be a consistent noise machine of repeating all the things? This is how you do it. This is what the value is. This is why you want to do it. Would you think? Somebody as big as pocket casting you are the big beast in the independent podcast apps I think, if you implement it, I think that moves the needle much more than some of the smaller apps, because our user bases are much, much, much smaller than yours.

Ellie Rubenstein: 25:08

I think it's a matter of getting everyone on board. It's really the whole industry hosts, podcasters, apps alike. We need everyone to adopt these type of features, whether it's a V4V or whether it's. We need more adoption, more support for those features, so we can all serve users better and we can all see the fruits of it. So I think it's more than apps, more than just a podcast or true fans. It's all of us and I think that the work that we've been doing on the podcast standard project is meaningful. Yes, and it's part of that is is advocating for that. The work that you've been doing is meaningful.

Sam Sethi: 25:49

So thank you, ali. What comes next for pocket cars then?

Ellie Rubenstein: 25:54

let's see. There are so many good things in our pipeline, um. First up is clip sharing, which is coming really soon. So with clip sharing, users can share their favorite moments from your podcast with their friends and followers over social media, and on top of that, we're revamping the entire sharing experience to make it more intuitive and engaging. So we're excited to see how this feature can help podcasters spread the word about their shows.

Ellie Rubenstein: 26:27

Another exciting feature is transcripts. Last year, we adopted support for transcripts on the backend, and now we're tailoring the UI and overall experience to make sure that it feels natural and intuitive within Podcast. In addition to transcript, we're planning to improve our recommendations. We want to take it a step further and introduce more personalized recommendations that will be based on user preferences and listening habits. We also want to introduce and include podcasters' recommendations by adopting the support for PodRoll. I think that's a great feature. Additionally, we're going to allow users to rate shows and episodes on Podcasts. Right now, we only show ratings that are aggregated from other sources, but we want to enable users to rate on our platform.

Ellie Rubenstein: 27:28

We're continuously updating and improving our booking system, blaze blazepocketcastcom. Since its launch last year, blaze has been performing exceptionally well, and now we're introducing even more inventory and even some low-cost ad spots, so even more podcasters can benefit from the phenomenal engagement that we see on podcast. Not a lot of people know that, but our user engagement is well above the industry benchmark. Over 50% of our monthly active users are active on a daily basis, which means that our ads reach a highly engaged audience, and advertisers notice this. So we're doing a lot there, and this is just a gist of what's coming next. There's so much more If you want to keep updated.

Ellie Rubenstein: 28:25

I don't know if you know that, but we always keep our blog updated. We have blogpockettestcom. We always introduce new features there or on our socials obviously X and Instagram or in our newsletter. So we have a newsletter that is dedicated to users where we share new features did you knows, and meet the team and kind of like all of that good stuff. But we also have a dedicated newsletter for partners where we share insights and stats and curation opportunities and advertisement discounts. So if anyone wants to join that, that will be pocketguestcom. Slash partner hyphen subscribe.

Sam Sethi: 29:05

Now, you mentioned that right at the beginning. You're a member of the Automatic family and part of that, obviously, is WordPress. Happy birthday, wordpress 21. Today, over a third of the internet is driven by WordPress. Final question 2024. Has it been a good year? Is it the year that you're expecting Is overall podcasting your opinion on the up, on the down, I mean. So where do you see the podcast industry overall from a Pocket Cast point of view?

Ellie Rubenstein: 29:35

Well for Pocket Cast 124 so far has been pretty great, but partly that's because of Google Podcasts shutting down and we see an influx of users coming, especially on Android. So now we're experiencing some tremendous user growth and that's really great to see. Overall, I've been following your show and James's reports and Edison's research. I love data so I keep track of all of that. I think there's a lot of good things coming to this industry, especially after the weekend that we had, or after last week the podcast show you come out of that you feel so energized, you feel like this industry is going somewhere. There are a lot of good souls involved and good intentions and I think it's going to be exciting.

Sam Sethi: 30:28

Ali Rubenstein. Thank you so much, Head of Pocket Cast. It's been great to finally get you on to Pod News, so thank you so much.

Ellie Rubenstein: 30:33

Thank you so much.

Speaker 2: 30:35

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

James Cridland: 30:41

And there's more to hear from that interview in the Pod News Extra podcast, including a deep dive into the podcasting 2.0 roadmap for them, which is all very nice. Also, if you're a fan of widgets and things, Pocket Casts on Android has three new widgets for you, which is all very exciting, and they've also built a browser extension in the last week to make it easier to subscribe to podcasts while browsing the web. It says here so well done to them.

Sam Sethi: 31:13

Now, one of the other stories you wrote about, james, was PodX, the company out of the Nordics that's been buying lots of podcast companies, podcast production companies, and they bought a company called Platform Media and I was like, oh, that sounds interesting. It was the biggest acquisition they've had. So I reached out to Matthew Sherry, the CEO of Platform Media, and I asked him who is Platform Media.

Matthew Sherry: 31:32

Platform Media is a business that does production, distribution, monetization all under one roof, and it's been quite a journey to get to the simplicity of saying it like that, with celebrities coming to you now going, yes, we want another show, how do you determine that actually, no, you're not going to be in our slate?

Matthew Sherry: 31:52

the answer right now for us is that we see ourselves as a commercially driven business. So so the commercial team, in unison with the editorial team, will dictate that and it will be both. We turn down some amazing opportunities editorially if we don't think that they can work commercially. That's just the nature of who we are as a business, and it's frustrating at times because we've all heard and seen amazing editorial where we think, my God, more people should be engaging with this but more brands should be. But there's certain sectors where that's just complicated, like even you know. I mean I absolutely love the guys at goldhanger. I've got a great relationship with them. I think what they do is amazing. We've built parallel totally different businesses that perform on a very similar level across certain ways. But history and politics, as an example, is not something we particularly focus on because we don't think the commercial landscape is there. But for us it has to be a perfect marriage between commercial and editorial ultimately.

Sam Sethi: 32:47

When you look at Jack Davenport and the rest is politics and the rest is history and the rest is whatever entertainment. They have created a synergistic slate. Do you think yours is also a synergistic slate, or is everything in your slate actually just an individual editorial and production that you've just commercialized?

Matthew Sherry: 33:07

Primarily the latter. I mean I see every certainly the big ones I see every individual shows as its own business. In terms of sectors, we're open to looking at any of them. We'll particularly lean heavily in sport and entertainment, I think. I mean we've tried to emulate Goldhanger at certain times with some of the content that we make. We're all a little bit copycat in this, but we think our need is building full brands around headline talent and shows, and that's what we're going to try and do more.

Sam Sethi: 33:31

Let's get on to the meat of this story, ponex. We know Stefan and Russell really well, a lovely team working over there. They came out a few years ago with this idea, this strategy to acquire companies, and they've said about doing it, who approached who? I assume they approached you right. So how did it come about?

Matthew Sherry: 33:50

yeah, they did approach us. It was a year ago, basically to the day for the acquisition. We met them in our studio for the first time on the week of the podcast show. They flew in early. So at that point we had started to field interest in m&a more from kind of broadcasters and you, you know those types of companies. But they got in touch with us, we presented to them and then it went quiet. I mean, we honestly last year was such a whirlwind on this stuff and the thing I'd say because I assume there'll be people listening who, as much as anything, are in a similar seat to me it's quite a distracting process. I think that's the biggest thing I'd say people need to be wary of is in all of this. It went really quiet and then we met them again late summer and at that point we had moved down the line with a couple of other opportunities and then we went to Stockholm just after Halloween last year and that's where the momentum really picked up. They were just right for us in every way.

Matthew Sherry: 34:46

We are a very entrepreneurial business. We have pivoted so many times in the last three to four years and we'll continue to do so. We're not a traditional, we're just not. If we see opportunities, we go after opportunities and we'll be quite happy to move in different directions. So the idea for me of executing this deal well first of all for me, executing this deal well first of all for me, this deal isn't an exit. This is a strategic partner on the next phase of our journey to help us achieve our next set of ambitions. There are certainly other deals that we looked at that would have been more of an exit where you might get folded into a bigger company and things like that. That's not really our mission. Our mission is to build the company that we've built. So that was the big part for me. I mean the team there, particularly Pat Rick, who I'm sure you've met. They're very entrepreneurial. They've executed this in the past in TV.

Matthew Sherry: 35:37

I agree with the general hypothesis that there isn't going to be that many major exits in Europe because it's a different market to America. If I'm honest, the first time we met them I didn't think it would be the right fit, because we are not a production business and they were built very much at the outset, from what I could tell, around the idea of acquiring production businesses, long-tail IP and all those kinds of things, and the first time we met them, particularly in Sweden, we explained how different a business we are. But I think that difference of business is what makes this such a good partnership, because ultimately, you know, we expect to play a huge part in their other businesses and can we create ways for them to better monetize content. We, as a vehicle now are potentially to run acquisitions through, can do that as well.

Matthew Sherry: 36:27

I think the modern podcast group needs to think way beyond production, and I think they realize that as well. So that kind of for me, that ability to get into a larger group but set an agenda within that group and have a broader support system to build what we've already built at a much bigger scale, was, whilst being given the freedom and flexibility to be entrepreneurial, and something that would be really good for all of our staff as well. I mean, they are you've said it yourself, they are wonderful people, and that went a long way for us yeah, you've said a lot of things in that section there that I want to unpack.

Sam Sethi: 37:06

So what is the pitch? What's their selling when they come to you first? Right is it? We're going to run all your admin for you. We're going to save you money. We're going to help you scale.

Matthew Sherry: 37:17

We're going to I mean, the primary pitch into us was kind of what I've just said, which is as a start for 10, carleboard, their pairing company, have very deep pockets. So ultimately you're in a position immediately like my world today is totally different to two weeks ago already, in that the conversations I'm having with them are about things like M&A from our own perspective in terms of acquiring businesses, things like a US expansion. They have the capital there for us, for you, to think a lot bigger as a business. So that's really important. There is absolutely part of it. That is, there's some infrastructural support as well. Slightly different with us because I think we're a bigger business to the others. I think for smaller businesses in particular, that they'll tap into that, but we'll tap into different elements of their structure. So they've got a brilliant M&A guy who ultimately did the deal with us. We're talking to him quite a lot at the moment because we might be thinking about M&A within our business. They've covered off the centralized functions of everything for businesses to be able to tap into. So that is it's a huge part of the pitch. They have in-house legal, they have in-house finance, like those things can be challenges for entrepreneurs, like those are the things that at times you don't think about. So there's absolutely that centralized support structure.

Matthew Sherry: 38:32

I think some really senior people stefan and patrick who have been there and done it in different industries, which to me is the most exciting part. Patrick is an example in his background in tv and his relationships in the us. When we start crafting the US strategy now, it's going to be invaluable to us. And Stefan's obviously got an amazing track record, got a really senior position in Bauer, understands the audio industry really well. So having people who understand the industry that you're in and the experience is hugely important. But for us I'm not going to lie when I say a big part of it is access to capital for the next phase of our growth as well. They bring both. But you know and it is an investment fund that it's derived from but it doesn't feel like some of the other VCs I've met. There's a much more familial feel to it.

Sam Sethi: 39:17

I think one of the things, as an entrepreneur as well, that you will appreciate having done the deal you've done is that you can now sleep at night, because that is one of the things that every entrepreneur worries about how do we meet payroll? Have I got imposter syndrome? Am I doing this right? So I think that part of it as well must help.

Matthew Sherry: 39:36

Honestly, that is huge, and we've lived that, I mean honestly, last year at times was. It's so funny because, like you, you've seen where we were at the end of last year and the position was absolutely incredible. But everything I've described to you about this business and the challenge of it in the first three years is we built to scale from the start, which meant that we had overheads that were bigger than other businesses right from the start as well, and the challenge of that in a market where literally everything takes twice as long to sign off as you expected to, sometimes longer than that it is enormous. I mean, I wouldn't wish those kind of stresses on anybody. It's hard work that. So that is a big part of it as well, and we were able to do what we did because, like the people from the 21-6 group who supported us to this point, they put everything on the line to get us to this point, and that's a huge amount of pressure.

Matthew Sherry: 40:27

It's a huge amount of pressure for me to deal with in terms of I've met people who've been very successful in their lives, who absolutely didn't have to get involved in any of this, and they put everything on the line for it because they believed in it, and I've got an eternal debt of gratitude to them.

Matthew Sherry: 40:46

But nothing gives me greater pleasure now than knowing that not only have they had an investment repaid but they're well up on that investment already and there's more to come down the line. So, yeah, honestly, that's the hardest part. And if I was having an honest conversation with anybody about trying to do something on their own like this, I've learned so much in the last four years. As I say, it was made happen by accident, so on their own like this, I've learned so much in the last four years, as I say, with me, it happened by accident, so I've just had to learn as I've gone. But the stresses and pressures at times of running a business without that kind of backing and support system, it can be horrendous, but it can also be amazing when you get to the other side of it as well. So it's a double edged sword. But yeah, removing all of that is very of this as well.

Sam Sethi: 41:21

Matthew, congratulations on the PodX acquisition and good luck for everything you're planning on doing. It sounds like you've got a three-year exciting journey that you're about to step onto.

Matthew Sherry: 41:31

Thanks very much. I appreciate it and, yeah, thanks for having me on.

Speaker 2: 41:34

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 41:38

And there's plenty more to that, including how Platform Media got started and their plans to expand globally, in the Pod News Extra podcast.

Speaker 2: 41:46

The tech stuff on the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 41:51

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, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 41:57

There's a blogging platform called Micro Adult Blog that's launched an audio narration service which they say there's no substitute for the human voice. It looks like they're going to be ingesting RSS feeds for podcasting Audio Narration Service, which they say there's no substitute for the human voice.

James Cridland: 42:10

It looks like they're going to be ingesting RSS feeds for podcasting yes, and it looks quite interesting in terms of so they're producing RSS feeds for podcasting, essentially so you can blog and then you can record you reading that blog and make that available in there as well. Microblog is interesting in that it's a blogging platform, yes, but it's also activity pub enabled and all of that kind of stuff, so all of that is in there, so there's some interesting things going on there. It is a paid-for service, though, and I've not played with it that much, because you know why build a house on rented land? Oh, indeed, buzzsprout. Our sponsors have launched this is quite neat, it's quite niche, but it's also quite neat an audio backup feature. So if you ever wanted to download all of your audio and artwork as a big zip file, now you can. You'll find that in your Buzzsprout dashboard.

Sam Sethi: 43:02

RSS Blue Dovidas has improved their Cupid music engine. They've improved the way that it looks for search, gains insights into tracks and artists and creates super chapters. So yeah, if you want to look at a updated and improved version of the Cupid music engine, head over to.

James Cridland: 43:21

RSS Blue. Very nice, blueberry has enhanced their podcast audio player a little bit more with chapters and upgraded closed captions, which is a smart thing.

Sam Sethi: 43:30

Finally, goodpods put something out and I got excited for a nanosecond. They said new feature alert our GoodPods profile page. You can now create a shareable list of your favourite shows. And I thought, oh, it's a pod roll, excellent. So I pinged them and said is that a pod roll? And they said no, no, no, no, it's not a pod roll, it's just a proprietary feature that we've built. So there you go.

James Cridland: 43:50

Yes, unfortunately, that's what GoodPods is very good at doing is building their own stuff.

Sam Sethi: 43:58

And then they wonder why virtually nobody uses them. Stephen Bartlett, the Dire Over CEO, is now available on Samsung TV+. Samsung TV Plus.

James Cridland: 44:03

Samsung TV Plus is actually relatively interesting.

James Cridland: 44:06

If you've got a Samsung telly, then instead of the you know you have a look at all of the channels on there and instead of your channels finishing at you know whatever, it is channel 120, it keeps on going up with lots of channels which are delivered over the internet and you can get quite a few decent channels on there, and now you can get Diary of a CEO on there as well. The thing that I found interesting wasn't that Stephen Bartlett has put his show onto this platform, because, you know, Wondery has put their shows onto Amazon Prime and there are other of these services out there. It's the terms of the deal that Stephen Bartlett has done, because he has basically done this as an exclusive, so it's exclusive. This 24-hour, seven-day-a-week TV channel is exclusive to Samsung TV Plus, but also he's tied up an exclusivity the other way around, so that no other podcast will be able to go onto Samsung TV Plus for this year.

James Cridland: 45:18

So you know, if you're sitting there, you know you may be Jordan Harbinger. You may have nearly a thousand shows in video that you could make a TV channel out of. Well, that's great, but you're not going to get on Samsung TV Plus this year. So I thought that was an interesting, you know, interesting that Stephen Butler was doing it, but also interesting just in terms of those terms of that contract.

Sam Sethi: 45:42

I also think when we did the interview with Flight Studio, with Georgia Holt and CB. When they talk about they're going to be a video first production company, I wonder whether, on the back of Diary of a CEO, some of their other content from Flight Studio might be pushed through that channel as well.

James Cridland: 45:58

No, indeed Indeed. Who knows?

Speaker 2: 46:00

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

James Cridland: 46:06

Yes, it's time for our favourite time of the week. It's Boostergrams and Fanmail, or, as it is today, boostergrams. It's Boostergram Corner Sam. That's what's going on. Yes, interesting looking at Fanmail and looking at the initial flurry of fanmails. Looking at the initial flurry of fan mails A fan mail, of course, is if you follow that link that you'll find in the podcast description, you can send us a text message, and that's a lovely thing. We haven't had any this week and we didn't have any last week either. So I have a feeling that we may be digging out the Boostergram corner jingle again from next week. But we will see, for we have had two Boostergrams, which is very lovely that's a comment with a payment attached. Who have we got? We've got.

Sam Sethi: 46:55

Brian from relaxedmalecom and he just simply said what? No female James. And he sent us 10,000 sats. Yes, yeah, don't worry, brian, jemima Cridland will make a return, I'm sure.

James Cridland: 47:07

No female James particularly live at the podcast show last week. That was not going to happen, and anonymous podcast guru user that's a good name you've got there says hooray for podcasting 2.0 and sent 10,000 sats as well, which is very kind and generous of you. Sam and I share the proceeds of this show ourselves. It's a separate business from the rest of the Pod News empire, and so any help that you can give us yes, any help that you can give us is always gratefully received.

James Cridland: 47:40

You can go to weeklybuzzsproutcom and help us there with your credit card, or you can spend some money through the Boostergram button in your podcast app, and if you don't have one, you should get a new one. So what's happened for you this week, sam Well?

Sam Sethi: 47:58

after three days of entertaining, drinking and networking at the podcast London Show, I thought wouldn't it be nice just to be quiet and sit at home and relax?

Sam Sethi: 48:08

No, no, the wife took me to the Chelsea Flower Show with 20,000 people looking at flowers and that was very nice but very knackering. So that was yeah, yeah, I needed the weekend with nobody around me, but that was fine. One of the things that I put out and I got some interesting feedback on. I remember many months ago, james, I said to you we have a podcast host table that shows new podcast episodes that have been updated onto True Fans. Yes, and at the same time in the background we also show the fails, the number of ones that didn't meet our validation.

Sam Sethi: 48:46

I published that table fails last week on mastodon. I removed the names. I was very kind. Um, I bet everyone pretty much quickly guessed, because I've got a couple of emails in from people. Um, the question was, I said you know, shall I publish who they are and I won't? I don't think that's fair. I'll work one-on-one with those companies directly, but I am frustrated still that they don't validate their fields. They just don't and I don't get why they don't. It's a simple thing to do. You're the host, you know the fields that you support in podcasting 2.0 and other fields. Put a validator. If it's garbage in the field, don't let it be published.

James Cridland: 49:24

Is there a validator out there which you can use through an API?

Sam Sethi: 49:30

Maybe John Spurlock's, mine isn't yet.

James Cridland: 49:33

Yeah, john Spurlock's isn't, because it runs in the browser, so that much, I do know.

James Cridland: 49:38

I wonder whether or not there's a product idea. I'm not quite sure how it would work in terms of in terms of money, but yeah, you would have thought that there is a an opportunity there for an API to check whether or not a podcast RSS feed is actually valid. Go for it, john Spurlock. Off you go. I'm not quite sure, not quite sure how you would end up charging for it. John Spurlock, off you go. I'm not quite sure how you would end up charging for that, but I'm sure that it's a chargeable thing, right, so you know, it should be worthwhile the whole concept is.

Sam Sethi: 50:14

It shouldn't be that difficult, though, right Even if you don't have a validator API, and I think it would just benefit the rest of us. So, anyway, please do it host. That's all I'm asking. I'm would just benefit the rest of us. So, anyway, please do it host. That's all I'm asking. Um, I'm working with a audio translation company uh, you'll probably work out which, but I can't say yet to use the alternative enclosure for different language versions. So I hopefully will be able to demo that very shortly. Uh, so if you want to see in the alternative enclosure a french, german or italian version of the podcast and then pull in the transcript automatically as a JSON file, we will be demoing that. So I'm very excited.

Sam Sethi: 50:52

I reached out to the Gutenberg Project, james. They've got thousands of audio books for free. They also have RSS in there, but they don't really have a simple way to ingest it into the podcast index at the moment and they certainly don't support podcasting 2.0. So I'm working with them to see if they will do some changes. But that was a little project. I'm working with them. Well, there you go.

Sam Sethi: 51:15

And the last one you'll be glad to know, especially, our Spotify announced they're going to be doing live ticketing and we announced a few weeks back that Ticketbot, which was from Wavelength, is a ticketing platform that they're working on. I've been working with a company in the UK called Podlife Events and we've come up with a new medium equals events which we're going to put on to GitHub and it uses the publish feed standard and we are going to be working with the Cheerful Earful festival to actually use that as a festival to show how that publisher feed would work for events and sell tickets directly off true fans but also directly off the pod life events oh very nice, so hopefully that will go live friday today very cool, yes, yeah, very cool.

Sam Sethi: 52:03

What's been happening for you, james? What's been happening?

James Cridland: 52:06

I've been on more more planes and trains and things um. I was in new york on monday um had a really good chat with, uh, lauren purcell and ariel nissenblatt. Uh, we went to a fancy chinese restaurant um and uh, that was. That was very good. How was?

Sam Sethi: 52:24

your £5.40 coffee.

James Cridland: 52:29

Well, new York. Actually, I have to say I rather liked it this time around. I haven't been since March of 2020. And March of 2020, you know, it was just, you know, new York, new York, whatever. 2020, you know, it was just, you know, new York, new York, whatever. But now, having a look around, I really enjoyed it. I think it was because I was staying in the financial district rather than in Midtown and it's just a bit more sort of old and you know, and the architecture is nicer and and all of that, but it was a very, it was a very pleasant place. So that was nice, and now I'm in Florida. Anyway, and that's it for this week. If you enjoyed the podcast, the newsletter's better Find it at podnewsnet and the podcast daily wherever you get your podcasts, and there are longer interviews in the Pod News Extra podcast too.

Sam Sethi: 53:22

You can support the show by streaming sats and you can give us feedback using fan mail or with a boostagram. If you're still using your old legacy podcast 1.0 app, like Apple, spotify, youtube, what are you doing? Grab a new podcasting 2.0 app from podcasting2.org forward slash apps.

James Cridland: 53:39

Yes, our music is from Studio Dragonfly, our voiceover is Sheila D. We use clean feet to record this show and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy Get updated every day.

Speaker 2: 53:52

Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

James Cridland: 53:56

Tell your friends and grow the show and support us, and support us. The Pod News.

Speaker 2: 54:00

Weekly Review will return next week. Keep listening.