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Send James & Sam some fanmail, via Buzzsprout
From an airport lounge in New York, we hear about Descript's new version, and rumours in the industry...
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It's Friday, the 7th of June 2024.
Speaker 2:The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Cridland and Sam Sethi.
James Cridland:I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News, in a lounge here in JFK Airport in New York.
Sam Sethi:And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans, just back from the UniPodFest in Birmingham.
James Cridland:Yes, you are absolutely just back In the chapters today. How many ads is too many ads? And Spotify is back with the IAB Plus.
Laura:Hi, I'm Laura Burkhauser, the VP of product for Descript, and I'll be on a little later to tell you about all of the amazing new features in season six.
James Cridland:She will. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy with easy and powerful tools, free learning materials and remarkable customer support.
Speaker 2:From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.
Sam Sethi:Now, James, not that I like rumours or gossip Well, actually, I do like rumours and gossip, if I'm honest. But there is rumours flying around the industry, James, that some host might have had a little all-hands meeting. What do you think's?
James Cridland:going on. Well, yes, so I published this on, I think, tuesday, saying which large podcast hosting company has an all-hands meeting this morning. We hear rumours that the company has found a buyer. Now I actually spoke to that company on Mondayay and I said, just as a heads up, we're publishing this on tuesday. Um, if you've got anything to let us know, then that's absolutely cool. And they came back and they said we have no comment to make at this time, at this time now, we have no comment to make at this time is not no, absolutely this is not happening. It is we have no comment to make at this time. So I'm still relatively comfortable about the story. I've heard it from a couple of different people. I'm not going to mention the name of the podcast host because I don't think that that's particularly fair on anyone.
Sam Sethi:But listener, if you go back to episode at the beginning of the year where James made a prediction, you'll know the answer.
James Cridland:Well, that would be interesting, wouldn't it? I'm not just doing this for the end of year scorecard. Yes, you are. Anyway, there's been no big announcement so far. Yes, you are. Anyway, there's been no big announcement so far. You know. I mean, as I said in Wednesday's newsletter, you know, I mean very clearly. The company hasn't given us a denial. They've just said we're saying nothing, but deals aren't done until they're done. And there may well have been a last minute thing, and who knows, by the time this goes out, maybe there will be something. So, yes, that was all interesting, wasn't it?
Sam Sethi:Well, we'll wait and see. I mean hopefully by Friday, who knows? Now also, I was listening to In and Around Podcasting, which is Mark Asquith's new podcast. The CEO of Captivate yes, and he's got some gossip as well's pretty adamant that uh riverside will be going to spotify james and d script will be buying a host yes, that's um.
James Cridland:That's an interesting concept. I mean, d scripts, of course, bought squadcast last year, so they've now got a remote recording tool. Um, does it make sense for them to buy a host as well? I mean, mark seems to know who it is, which is more than we do. Yes, but yes, that's a fascinating thing. Would you really want to buy a host, can't you just? I mean, it's relatively easy to make a podcast hosting company isn't it?
Sam Sethi:You know, fundamentally it's a commoditized product now with price differentiation very limited. Yeah, yes, they're adding some AI tools and a few bits and pieces here and there, and some of them are doing more with podcasting 2.0 than others, but fundamentally to the consumer they're much of a muchness. And I was listening to you know again Mark Asquith saying you know Spotify for podcasts or Anchor being free? You know Spotify for podcasts or Anchor being free, and I'm going well, actually, diary of a CEO ran on Anchor for ages before it was moved over to Megaphone and no one complained about the quality. No one said it didn't have the reach. Yeah, and it was still the number one or two podcast in the UK and potentially in the top 10. Yeah, so what is it that you know your special hosting source did that Spotify's free hosting source couldn't do?
James Cridland:Yeah, I would agree with that, and I think that it's very easy to turn around and say, well, there are no big hits on Anchor, but there clearly were. There were a bunch of big hits on Anchor, so from that point of view, that was very interesting to end up seeing. So from that point of view, that was very interesting to end up seeing. But clearly, you know, you can look at Spotify's megaphone and go, well, that's the enterprise podcast host, it deals with vast, it deals with, you know, lots of stuff that ad tech people want, whereas Anchor doesn't do that, and perhaps that's the differentiator there.
Sam Sethi:Now talking of M&A&a d script, as we were bought squadcast last year um, and that's the editing tools that I use and yesterday they released a new version called season six. That's that's how they launched their new versions. It's a new tool called the underlord, and I couldn't work out why it was called Underlord until Andrew Mason, the CEO, said because AI is the new overlord. And I went oh, got it. Okay, Underlord. Yes, but they also stated very clearly in this new version there is no improvement to the integration between Squadcast and Descript. That will be coming in the next few months. But I thought I'd reach out to Laura Burkhhauser, who's head of product at Descript, and ask her to tell us more what's going on with season six and what new features can we expect?
Laura:Season six. If I had to explain it in one word, I would say Underlord, a word I say about 5,000 times in the launch video I actually made a remix of all the times I say Underlord.000 times in the launch video I actually made a remix of all of the times I say Underlord. It's such a strange word, but Underlord is our new AI assistant and basically brings all of the existing AI actions that Descript has had in it for a while All of the things that help you simplify your workflow and just spend less time in the tedious editing stages post-recording and then also introduces you to a couple of just like really killer new AI features. And so Underlord is, I think, like the star of season six, but for folks like you who are used to working in Descript, there are dozens of quality of life and usability improvements that don't necessarily turn eyes on social but I think will really be appreciated by folks who have been using Descript for a long time.
Sam Sethi:Now let's go through some of the new AI features and give me some of the ones off the top of the bat. What can people expect when they get season six?
Laura:Some of the ones that I really like are first of all, just edit for clarity is so nice and we're actually going to continue to improve on it, but I think it builds on the popularity of filler word removal, which has long been like such a favorite feature of people's. It turns out there are a lot of other vocal disfluencies that can't necessarily be classified as filler words but are not. You know, we don't speak the language very well, fluent as we may be, and so Edit for Clarity kind of takes out all of those little small mistakes that you make, and I think in the next month or so will also be. If you've enabled overdub, we'll actually like let your voice come in and say the right thing automatically. So you can look forward to that. That's a little Easter egg. I'll give you a little hint into our roadmap. So edit for clarity is one.
Laura:Another one that I think is just like already huge. It's only been live for a couple of days and we're just seeing huge uptake is automatic clip creation. So it's always been easy to just copy and paste to create clips within Descript, but it's so nice to just be able to let Underlord take the first pass at identifying. Like nice clips for your podcast and then we've made a kind of flow, include choosing a template like it gets it into vertical, if that's how you like to share your clips, or it'll put it into square or kind of like whatever the right formatting is, it'll apply your templates automatically. You can center your face and then, boom, it has like multi-cam templates as well. So it's just really nice to, in a couple of clicks, turn your podcast interview into like some short 30 second clips that make people want to go and listen to the whole thing and then I think, like a nascent one.
Laura:I'm excited to see where this goes is translation, so launching. Yesterday we had translate captions so that you can take those clips and immediately translate the captions into any number of languages. But coming soon, as in coming this month, you'll also be able to auto-dub, so either into your own voice clone or into whatever the stock voice you want to use for French Laura or French Sam, so that you can start to really reach global markets.
Sam Sethi:I want to be French, Laura. I've decided.
Laura:Okay, I might let you have access to the french laura excellent well, james has got jemima cridland, I want french laura.
Sam Sethi:Right, there you go. One of the things that worries me and I've been a long time user of d script and I love the product but one of the things that worries me is when people get hold of d script or tools like d script that they over edit. What I find is somebody will go oh, I know, Descript's got this remover and then it comes up with 15 other things that you could remove. I mean it sounded like two robots talking eventually and it lost that human element. I worry that newbies I mean again, studio sound sounds amazing when you apply it, but you can over apply it. And how do you think, in terms of the lessons and learnings I guess you've had from all of the editing that you've seen and the transcripts and the usage of these tools, Are you now pulling back or how are you helping the newbie understand that over-editing is equally bad as under-editing?
Laura:That's such a great question and it gets at a number of things that I suppose I want to touch on. But I guess the most important thing is that's a great example of what I was talking about, where I say that there's like a mechanical way that Underlord can work where you're using like a very generic kind of prompt, and then there is like a much more nuanced way that Underlord can learn and work to not just take dumb rules like every time there's any kind of an um, cut it immediately. So I think that sort of gets to that first point I was making about how Underlord will become a bit more competent. I think the second thing, which is like a different feature, and it's one we're considering, I'd love to hear where you land on. It is like when you think about how it ends up sounding like two robots. Is that? Because, like, the edit is actually kind of jumpy.
Sam Sethi:No, I think some of the smoothing elements have worked really well in versions of Descript. What I mean by that is we will naturally go um. Now let me think about this, Laura, for a minute.
Laura:Thinking sounds are sounds we make. Yeah.
Sam Sethi:But if you take that out, then all you'll get is let me think about that, laura. Technically that is very right, but actually in terms of editing that is very poor, because you've lost that element of the nuance of the actual podcast. And so that's all I'm saying. I think what worries me is that, not just with Descript, but with a lot of AI tools, people are going, oh, just press the button, ai will do whatever, and then the end result is not as good as when some people go just ease off a little bit on that, just take less of a full-on blown edit and you actually get a better end product sometimes.
Laura:I totally agree with you, and when you think about why people listen to podcasts, it's certainly not because I would like the most efficient as possible way to digest information, because, like, often reading a bunch of bullet points is going to be a more efficient way to digest information, and part of what you're doing is listening to humans interact. I think about the number of people that I think like listen to podcasts at night while they fall asleep. Maybe you're listening to my voice right now at night as you fall asleep, and part of what you're listening to is just that comforting sound of two humans interacting with each other. So I totally agree with you there.
Sam Sethi:Now look one of the things that people have said about Descript rightly or wrongly. But one of the things they have said is that it started off as a podcast editing audio app and it's gone very strongly into the video editing side of it.
Laura:Yeah, so I think clip making and translation and some of our AI actions work really well for audio makers. We also have a much more powerful timeline. It's so much more usable. It does things like smartly stick layers together and help you really make sure your layers all align in the right way, and so I think like there is something for everyone there.
Sam Sethi:Season six looks like it's a fully packed new version. If I wanted to go and play with it. If I didn't already have it, where would I go and get season six?
Laura:You can just go to Descriptcom and we have a free starter package so you could just sign up and use it for free. And just a reminder to folks and this is another part of season six that we've been a little bit quieter about but we have a web experience and so I think a lot of people still think about Descript as being an app. But we are on web and we've been in beta for a long time, but we are no longer in web beta, we are in web GA and we think we are for all but kind of the largest and most complicated of our files. We are actually like more performant in web and so I'd encourage folks who are trying us out to you don't even have to download an app.
Sam Sethi:And if I want to watch videos in terms of tutorials, where would I?
Laura:go. Oh well, we have a new section on our app or website called Learn Descript, and I think that's a really great place for beginners to go, and it has all kinds of new content, including like a curation of the problem with so YouTube. There's like a ton of amazing stuff out there. The problem is, when you update the UI in a huge way which we've recently done with season six you're like wait, what I'm seeing in this YouTube tutorial doesn't match what I'm seeing on my screen, and so learn Descript within the app or the website itself, will have all of the most up-to-date screens for you. And then we've also updated the help center already, so anything on the Descript's official help center should now be a hundred percent up-to-date.
Sam Sethi:And I understand if you want to. There is a webinar coming up very shortly of all of season six. Where would I go and get onto that?
Laura:Yes, Ariel and Christiana are lead community at Descript. They are fantastic and they do regular webinars where they'll walk you through Descript for beginners and are definitely doing some season six ones. So please tune in and meet two of the best people you've ever met.
Sam Sethi:Laura, thank you so much. Congratulations on the launch of season six. I won't ask when season seven is coming out. That's just not the thing to do. But good luck with Laura. Thank you so much, head of product. Congratulations on everything. I can't wait to get my hands on it and play with it. So speak to you soon.
Laura:Amazing. Thank you so much for having me, sam, talk to you soon. The.
Speaker 2:Pod News Weekly Review. With Buzzsprout, podcast hosting made easy.
James Cridland:And there's a full version of that interview in the Pod News Extra podcast if you want to go and take a listen to that Now we've been talking about Spotify and rumour control.
Sam Sethi:Maybe they'll buy Riverside, maybe they won't, who knows? But Megaphone, james, we talked about it a few weeks ago that they had lapsed or forgotten, or whatever word you want to pick to rectify their IAB or recertify their IAB. Podcast measurement Looks like they're going to be doing it, james. How or what's going on?
James Cridland:Yes, and I think this is really good news and it's a very welcome change from Spotify. So Spotify pulled out of the IAB completely at the beginning of this year. They didn't tell anybody for three months, but they pulled out of the IAB completely and that essentially meant that Megaphone and Chartable and Spotify for podcasters the artists formerly known as Anchor were all taken off the IAB compliant list and that caused quite a lot of advertisers some severe angst in terms of missing out on the, you know, on having an IAB verified podcast host. And it seems as though they've listened to us, at least for Megaphone, and Megaphone now says that they've maintained compliance with the IAB guidelines. They remain committed to IAB's mission and they are currently working with the IAB on version 2.2 certification of the Megaphone platform it was only on version 2.0, so that's a good step forward and that should mean that Megaphone becomes certified in the next month, month and a half or so on, and I think that that's really good news for those people that have been relying on that hosting platform.
Sam Sethi:Now tell me, because I don't really understand this IAB is this just a certification on the number of downloads that they are validating, that the number of downloads you give to the advertiser is a true number? Is that all the certification does? What?
James Cridland:they basically do is they have four different certifications. There's download numbers, there's listener numbers, and the certification is given to you if you are calculating these figures to the correct way, as defined by the podcast measurement guidelines that IRB TechLab have put together. Now, that doesn't mean that you will have exactly the same numbers as another podcast host, but it does mean that you are calculating them as correctly as you possibly can. But there are also two other measurements which are the important ones for advertisers. There's ad delivery.
James Cridland:So ad delivery is the, you know, is the important one in terms of selling advertising. How many ads have been delivered? So therefore, how much you should be charging the advertiser, and so that's what they end up doing. It's ad delivery is one. The other one is client-confirmed ad play, again a very useful thing for advertisers to actually know. So for things that individual companies can get certified for, audion is the latest who have just been certified for version 2.1 of the guidelines, and that happened in the middle of May, and so it'll be nice to see Spotify doing that Well how long does it take to get certified?
James Cridland:Is it a fairly quick thing? I mean it can be a fairly quick thing. It really depends. So, you know, somebody from the IB comes along and checks your code, you know, reads through your code, makes sure that your code is actually doing it correctly. So there's quite a lot of checking. I know that Todd was saying that you know the IAB took years. You know, took months and months when he was doing it for the first time. But I think that was also the IAB's first time and I think it's been considerably quicker since. But I think probably, you know, maybe it'll take a couple of months. So you know it won't be an instant thing, but hopefully there shouldn't have been too much code changed since Spotify ended up doing it last.
Sam Sethi:Okay, well, look, let's move on with Spotify. Some analytics out for the month Spotify for podcasters remains the number one podcast. So, as we said, free might not be, you know all bells and whistles, but it seems it's working for Spotify, if they're still number one. James.
James Cridland:Yeah, it does, and you know they're doing very, very good numbers. Megaphone has actually been falling in share since August of last year, but they saw a little increase, according to Livewire, for their hosting platform as well. So, yeah, I mean you know Spotify doing pretty well there in terms of that. Also, coming out of that data from John Spurlock, podtrack now measuring over 11% of all new podcast episodes, including 60% of all of the Spreaker ones, which is quite a thing, and I calculated I don't know whether this is totally accurate, but I calculated that OP3 measured 342,000 new episodes in May. So OP3 is getting you know, a pretty decently sized service.
Sam Sethi:Now talking back to Spotify again, for some reason we have I don't know why we go back there, but let's go back there. They've increased their price. I don't think. I think there's been a lot of noise about oh my God, spotify's increased its premium price in the USA and then it's like $1. And I'm like well, so's Twitch, so's Netflix. Spotify's increased its premium price in the USA and then it's like $1. And I'm like well, so's Twitch, so's Netflix, so's Disney Plus. I don't get it. I don't get why everyone, but there was so much coverage this week across the web.
James Cridland:Well, I'll tell you why because it's the first time that Spotify has put their price up in a long, long time, but also they are now more expensive than Apple Music, and that's a big deal. Will Apple Music stick at £10.99? Or will Apple Music copy Spotify and go up to £11.99 for the bass cost? That's what I'm really interested in finding out, and that's probably the thing that people are interested and excited about, you know, because if you've got something which is cheaper and, frankly, offers the same thing, then why would you pay a little bit more? What's that going to do for Spotify? Blah, blah, blah.
Sam Sethi:So yeah, I saw a really good counter-argument to that. So even if Apple did keep its price low and Amazon Music kept their price low, and even if Spotify went up another dollar, there's going to be very little churn. In fact, there's very little churn. Currently, I think it's less than 2%. There will be a point at which is the breaking point price at which people say, oh, screw it, I'll just redo my playlist again. Is it two, three, four, five pounds or dollars more before?
James Cridland:that breaks? Yes, and that's an interesting question, because I did see somebody else that was very upset that if you leave Apple Music and you decide to go back in three months' time, apple Music wipes all of your information, which is probably the way that it should. But of course, that makes it harder for you to switch away from apple music and then switch back to it, um, so I thought that that was interesting too, but, yeah, there were. There was something saying that, um, spotify was very, um was very sticky and that, um, you know, you're very unlikely to ever, ever cancel, because, of course, spotify has so much information about your listening habits and so, therefore, it's got much better at doing all of that. Nobody wants the hassle of resetting all of their playlists and things.
Sam Sethi:I can't imagine my children ever thanking me if I said we're going to cancel the Spotify family plan. No Christmas cards for father would be off the list. Now we talked about Riverside a little bit. They've released a new video dub feature. I saw the video you put on Pod News Daily.
James Cridland:It's the ability for you to auto-change or for you to change and correct the transcript and it generates the correct words audio, and it looks really cool, james, it does look really cool.
James Cridland:One person has spotted that um, that actually the video um seems to have, uh, the person speaking, steven, seems to have his, his arm in a different place as well, and it, oh, yeah, and I'm not entirely convinced. I need to go back and take a look at it, but I'm not. Yeah, I mean, if that's the case, then that's hmm, not quite sure what's going on there, but if the technology is there, then that would be very clever, wouldn't it? So if you said 16 when you meant to say 24, then it will reclone your voice to make you say 24, but it will also change your lip sync, change the shape of your mouth, so that it looks as if you're saying 24 as well. That's very cool. That's very, very clever and also quite scary. The company does say that it'll only work on your own recordings, it'll only work on stuff, that stuff that you have um control over, um, but uh, yeah, very, very clever indeed, and I think d script does this as well.
Sam Sethi:I'm pretty sure they do this. They also have that really weird eye correcting technology. Have you seen that one as well? So you can then say, tell, tell myself in the video to look straight and not look where I was reading. Yes, and then it changes your eyes to look forward.
James Cridland:Yes, that's very scary as well, which is very scary but very clever and makes a bunch of sense. So, yeah, it's. I mean, you know, things are going very, very quickly in terms of these types of tools. I mean, I was giving a presentation a couple of days ago in Canada, which is my. Here are lots of tools from podcasting that you should be using to radio companies, and I did exactly the same presentation there last year. So I was a little bit worried about how much new stuff I would need to find, because I didn't want to show anything that I had shown the previous year, and it turned out that everything was brand new in that presentation. You know, because everything has changed so fast that actually I was able to get another, another 45 minutes worth of new tools that had been launched in the last year that I could actually show off. So, yeah, very, very fast, fast moving times, did Jemima?
Sam Sethi:Cridland, come out to play.
James Cridland:Yeah, I think she did, I think she did.
Sam Sethi:Australia's got talent. Here we come, yes or not? Now here's a question for you, james. How many ads are too many ads in a podcast?
James Cridland:Well, and there is a question, and I don't know the answer to that. I also don't know how much ad skipping actually happens, but the good news is we might find out next week, which should be fun. There's a piece of research that Tom Webster has been doing. He's revealing that on June, the 12th, next week, in a webinar that you can go to. It's completely free. There's a link in Pod News this week and, yeah, it's called Ad Nauseam, which I rather like as a title. I think that's quite funny. It is very funny.
James Cridland:I mean, he has shared a little bit of data prior to that. So if you have a look at the pod news daily uh today. Or indeed podcast business journal uh today there's a bunch of data which says that, um, 17 percent of people don't mind ads at all in podcasts and in total, the amount of people who say they enjoy or don't mind them is 48%. So 48% is a pretty high number, I would have thought. And that's kind of surprising because you kind of expect oh well, you know podcasting nobody likes the ads, everybody skips through them. Well, if 48% are either enjoying them or don't mind them, then perhaps that's a good news story, or can't reach their pockets because they've got little hands and get the phone out, or can't reach their pockets because they've got little hands.
James Cridland:Enough about the President of the United States. I'm sitting here. They might still deport me.
Sam Sethi:That's true, Cool. We'll talk about it next week when we see the results. Now around the world, talking about you in New York, but let's go to Dubai. The Dubai Press Club has launched the Arab Podcast Programme. James, what's the scoop?
James Cridland:Yes, I don't know much about the Dubai Press Club, but they appear to be a government organisation which is there to promote the creator economy, and that's part of their thing. So the Arab Podcast Programme is there to drive the development of the media industry and build the podcasting capabilities of audio content creators and media professionals. They've also released a report on podcasting in the arab world as well, which is an interesting read too. So always good to see that type of data appearing, podcasting, seemingly doing very, very well in the. In the there's a big Cathay Pacific plane just about to take off outside, which is very exciting.
James Cridland:Also in Canada a big announcement actually at the conference that I was at the government has announced in Canada that it will require qualifying online streaming services Spotify, netflix, etc. To pay 5% of domestic revenue as a creative levy to fund local broadcasters. So yeah, so 5% of all of the revenue that large companies are making will go into local broadcasters. Now you might think, well, that's not very fair, is it? Well, local broadcasters have had this 5% levy for some time. So this is just making things easy and understandable for everybody and to include companies like Netflix and Spotify. But that was quite a welcome thing, certainly in the conference that I was in.
Sam Sethi:Weren't they just pass on the price right to consumers?
James Cridland:I'm sure that they will. I'm sure that that's exactly what's going to happen, in the same way as I believe that there's a. So who wins? I believe that there's a tax. Well, I mean, who wins? It's the local broadcasters very much, and so, theoretically, that means that there'll be less erosion of local media in Canada and so, theoretically, canadians win. But yes, I agree, I mean everything will cost more. I mean, there used to be a tax I think there still is a tax in Canada on blank CDs, because they realized very early on that people were using them to rip CDs, to rip other people's music, and so yeah, and so there was a. I think they whacked 10% on there just to then siphon that money off to the record companies. So, yeah, but you know, I mean fascinating to hear them announce that. And, of course, all of the musicians in the conference that I was at it was a music conference as well as a radio conference were all absolutely thrilled and thought that this was a great idea.
Sam Sethi:So does Australia have this? Because I know Australia has a levy on companies like Facebook and social media and Google, don't they? I thought they brought that in in Canada, where newspapers get paid now.
James Cridland:Yeah, they're trying to aim for a little bit of that. So when Google links to a website, if it's a news website, then Google will pay, which to me makes no sense whatsoever. But I believe that Canada have tried doing that, and so, of course, as a result, Facebook just turned around and said we're not going to allow any links to news services from Facebook because we're not going to pay, and so that's basically how that works. Australia doesn't have that, and Australia doesn't yet have any of these creative levies that have been part of Canadian life for a long, long time. But Australia still does have things like for example, if you run a top 40 radio station in Australia, you have to pay 25% of Australian artists as one thing. So you know, there's still those sorts of things going on there too.
Sam Sethi:Now back here in the UK, a brand new advertiser comes to podcasting. This week it's Colgate the toothpaste. It's launched its first ever podcast advertising campaign in the UK with Diary of a CEO, stephen himself yes.
James Cridland:So congratulations Wavemaker UK and Adelicious, who made that particular deal Interesting to see a very large brand that apparently had never advertised, certainly in the UK, on a podcast.
Sam Sethi:So well done to them and let's hope Tom Webster doesn't say anyone skipped it.
Speaker 2:Anyway, moving on, Podcast events on the Pod News Weekly Review.
James Cridland:Well, there's the first annual Women in Podcasting Awards, which has been announced even until the 1st of August to enter, and it's worthwhile taking a peek at that. Pod News is a sponsor of that, the Independent Podcast Awards. You can still just enter for those. The deadline closes on June, the 14th, and I believe that we will hear a little bit more about the Independent Podcast Awards on this very show when we get closer to October, when those awards are.
Sam Sethi:In the UK. Here I was at it today. The UniPodFest was at Birmingham City University. You had George the poet there. You had several other very good speakers there. Well done to Nina Robinson. This is the second annual event that she's done there. It was very well attended, very well organised. So, yeah, very well worthwhile my time.
James Cridland:Very good. There was also, I think last week there was Crossed Wires, a big podcast festival in Sheffield there was.
Sam Sethi:I couldn't get up to it eventually, yeah, but I hear some very good things from people who did go, and so congratulations to Dino Sofus from.
James Cridland:Persephoneca, indeed, dino and the rest of the team, I think, did a very good job, and it's a wonderful thing for that not to have been in London, for that to have been somewhere else in the UK. That's to have been in London, for that to have been somewhere else in the UK, that's a good thing. I'm busy putting the finishing touches to Podcast Day Asia, which is happening in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia, in September. And, yeah, tickets are just £99, but there is a Dollars Dollars, I know it's close. Dollars, yes, $99. Well, you know, I mean, you know the british used to run malaysia. That was that. That was where I was there anyway. Um, you're not old enough. Yeah, I'm not, um, and so, uh, there is a code for you to save money on that, which, um, I can't remember right now, but it's in the pod news newsletter, so that's always worth taking a peek at. Um, what do you think is going to happen at and at apple's wwdc? Uh, next week. Well, I'm going to happen at Apple's WWDC next week.
Sam Sethi:Well, I'm going to be very drunk because I'm playing a game where every time Tim Cook mentions AI, I'm going to drink. So I just think it's just going to be oh, look at this, ios 18, ai, siri, ai, siri. So, yeah, I think it's Well.
James Cridland:I mean, I hope that it's not going to be as bad as Microsoft's new thing. Have you been following Microsoft's what? Recall, recall, yeah, yeah, yes, stalkerville, yeah, and it just takes copies of everything that you're doing and leaves it on a folder on your computer that anybody else can access. I mean, it's a very dodgy old thing. And there are more events, both paid for and free, at PodNews Virtual events or events in a place with people. Podnewsnet slash events is the place to go.
Speaker 2:The tech stuff on the PodNews Weekly Review.
James Cridland:Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where we do all of the tech talk. Here's where Sam talks technology. What have you got for us?
Sam Sethi:Sam Well, last Friday you wrote about Podcast Guru, which is a podcast app as well. Cross-platform. Added three new features smart playlists, which automatically track and update a group of podcasts as new content becomes available Very nice. And they now added new pre-podcast silence tripping. I know that's a feature you love, james, as well, yes, silence trimming is always good.
James Cridland:So, yes, no, they've been doing some really nice stuff. It's great to see more improvement in terms of Podcast Guru. It's a pretty looking app as well. It's an app that you get if you like something that looks really decent, so that's a nice thing. Transistor very good news coming out of Transistor. They've added pod roll support, which, of course, is a method of recommending other shows that your audiences might like. We support it. True Fan supports it. It's supported all over the place, so great to see Transistor now adding that. I should also mention that our sponsor, buzzsprout, also supports it too. So that's a nice thing You've been reading a book, haven't you?
Sam Sethi:this week I have one that I've highly anticipated. Evan Prodomo, who was a guest on this show a few months ago. Evan Prodomo, who was a guest on this show a few months ago, the inventor of Activity Pub, has finally put his manuscript to bed. It's at O'Reilly Media and you can go and read the final e-book for free right now. If you sign up to O'Reilly, you get 10 days free access to the book, and so you can go and have a look at the early preview release. It's still going through some editor checks. It is a book that I think all of those are all of us who are involved in activity streams activity pub looking at ways that podcasting can use it should read this book, and it's meant to be very detailed for developers.
James Cridland:So, yeah, looking forward to it. Indeed, and on that, there's a new version of the WordPress Activity Pub plugin, which does include some support for podcasts in there. I'm not quite sure what that means. I'm not quite sure what information is there, but nevertheless it's there. If you go and update your WordPress installs, you'll find more information there.
Sam Sethi:Yeah, and Benjamin Bellamy from CasterPod. Him and myself are working very closely right now on putting together a new namespace for podcasting so that everyone can review it, but also to demo how interoperability will work between podcasting apps using ActivityPub.
James Cridland:Very nice. It'll be well worth doing that. Dave Weiner has been posting a ton of quite nice blog posts at the moment and he said a couple of things. Firstly, he said that it's a badge of honour to say wherever you get your podcasts. If a podcaster can say that, then it's a podcast. If a podcaster says you can only get it from Spotify or from YouTube or wherever it might be, then it's not a podcast, and I, think, heartily agree with that.
James Cridland:And he also wrote another blog post fairly recently talking about how it's actually really good for podcasts not to sound very professional, not to sound very polished. And he was talking about his podcast called Morning Coffee Notes. That was his original podcast back from 2004, 2005. And it reminded me that if you want to go and listen to that, then I actually put that back on the internet with an RSS feed and everything else. You'll find that in your favourite podcast app, but not in Spotify in that particular case. So, yeah, so it's very interesting reading some of what Dave has to say. He seems to be on a roll at the moment. He does.
Speaker 2:Boostergrams, boostergrams, boostergrams and fan mail. Fan mail On the Pod News Weekly Review.
James Cridland:Our favourite time of the week, James it is, and we've had a number of all of those. Adam Curry 10,000 sats boosting, because I always get value from this show and that's how it works. If you're getting value from this show right now, then you can support us with your time, talent or treasure, Treasure, really meaning hit that boost button, Send us something that would be lovely and both Sam and I share that. Thank you, Adam, Much appreciated. Also, a thousand sats from John McDermott Rented land full stop Savage. That's us talking about Todd's studio problems last week, Adam. By the way, I was listening to the Podcasting 2.0 podcast last week and Adam didn't know what a 32768 boost was. He just said well, that's a funny number. It's not a funny number, it's 32K, Adam, and in fact if you were to poke 32768,64, If you were to poke 32768,64, then you would put whatever the ASCII code 64 is on the top left-hand corner of your Commodore PET screen. I'll have you know.
Sam Sethi:Adam, I'm with you. I have no idea what he's talking about right now, jeez.
James Cridland:Louise, have we had any fan mail?
Sam Sethi:Not after that. We won't?
James Cridland:It's been a long week.
Sam Sethi:Yeah, we've had it out in Jacksonville, florida. We're finding the amount of fan mail goes way up when you ask specific questions. Podcast listening is a pretty passive activity. So yes, that was from Kevin over at Buzzsprout, I believe.
James Cridland:Yes, I think it was either Kevin or Tom. It's been a little bit cut off in our view that we're looking at here Also one from Ottawa in sunny Canada. This is York from Welcome to Earth Stories. Audio fiction podcast is a unique genre that breaks the rules of traditional podcasting. Agree, and I think that's one of the things that we need to bear in mind when we're building user interfaces for it. Um, because I think that would be a good uh thing to remember. Um, and something from goshen in indiana uh, andy. Host of podcast answers. Hello, andy.
James Cridland:Hey, sam and james, thought I would send you some fan mail since you didn't have any this, uh, this time last week, correct, but we do this week. So thank you for that. Thank you also to our power supporters as well. You can become a supporter with your credit card, with your lovely fiat money at weeklypodnewsnet Dave Jackson, mike Hamilton, matt Medeiros, marshall Brown and Cameron Mole all of whom, nearly all of whom are giving us $5 a month. That's very kind of you. Thank you so much. That gets split between Sam and I and goes to Sam's you know large wine fund Collection. I think that's possibly what it is.
Sam Sethi:I'm teetotal at the moment. It's killing me, gosh, why would you do that? Fat boy Sam was getting too fat.
James Cridland:so uh, oh yeah, and hey, the wife's got to say, I'm in an airport lounge, I have unlimited access to free alcohol and I am here drinking a alcohol-free beer because, um, because you know that's a thing, and also I'm in this lounge for seven hours, so that will be another reason why you wait.
Sam Sethi:You wait till after this show. He'll be like oh that, oh that's it done now Finally right, where's that red light?
James Cridland:Get me on it. Yeah, indeed. So what else has happened for you, Sam, this week?
Sam Sethi:My Meta sunglasses turned up, which I'm very, very impressed with yes, oh yes.
James Cridland:you're very excited about your toy glasses, aren't you oh?
Sam Sethi:no, these are great. No, look, I've got transition glasses, so they're clear inside and then they're shaded outside. But what's really cool is the AI. The Meta AI is multimodal now so I can ask a question and what? So I can say, hey, Meta, tell me what I can see, and it takes a photo and then it'll tell me of the object it sees. It's a glass of wine, Sam. Yes, exactly, Again yes, but no, they're very good. They just look like normal sunglasses Ray-Bans Most people couldn't tell. They're very lightweight. The sound quality is great. The video quality is good. I'm really, really impressed. I think it's an arrow of direction. I don't think Facebook slash Meta is going to be the glasses of choice. I don't think Facebook slash Meta is going to be the glasses of choice. I think Google demoed their version of it or hinted at it. I think Apple, with Vision Pro, will look at what Meta's doing and I think who knows what they'll announce next week, but I suspect that Apple's glasses can't be far off either.
James Cridland:No, no, apple's glasses can't be far off either. No, no. Well, if Apple are making some normal glasses that you can just slot some lenses in, then if only I knew somebody who was working at Apple on those glasses.
Sam Sethi:I genuinely think you would like them. I think they are prescription if you want them. But I think also one of the things I worked out talking to Chris Messina online and I was just saying look, you know, the glasses now are a YouTube interface to Facebook, instagram and WhatsApp. Threads will come and then threads are going to enable UK and non-US citizens to federate. Threads could become my federated client and actually my glasses could actually then become a first-person point of view image that I want to take and post if I wanted to do that. So I think there's lots of interesting things in terms of technology to play with them. They may not be perfect, but I certainly think they're really interesting and worth having a play with.
James Cridland:Yeah, no well, you know I will keep an eye and see what happens yeah.
Sam Sethi:Now what's happened for you, james? You've been around the world. Phileas Fogg, where have you been?
James Cridland:Yes, I've been to, as another flight is called. I've been from the UK up to Canada.
Sam Sethi:Mr Cridland, you are holding the flight up.
James Cridland:Via Orlando. I went to a Christian radio conference, which was very good, although I felt very, very British and very reserved and I didn't quite know what was going on. And, yes, and up into sunny Canada, which was all very pleasant. So, yes, it's been a busy, busy week. Anyway, that's it for this week. If you enjoy the podcast I wonder what flight this is then the newsletter's better. You can find it at podnewsnet. The Pod News Daily is also wherever you get your podcasts, and there are longer interviews as well in the Pod News Extra podcast too. Please give us your feedback as to whether that's a good thing or not through any of the ways of contacting us.
Sam Sethi:You can support this show by streaming sats. You can give us feedback, as James said, using fan mail or with Boostergrams. And, hey, maybe grab a new Podcasting 2.0 app from podcasting2.org. Forward slash apps.
James Cridland:Our music is from Studio Dragonfly, our voiceover is Sheila Dee and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting made easy.
Speaker 2:Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.
Sam Sethi:Tell your friends and grow the show and support us. The Pod News Weekly Review will return next week. Keep listening, tell your friends and grow the show and support us and support us.
Speaker 2:The pod news weekly review will return next week. Keep listening.