Podcasting in Africa; plus, Spotify's video uploading

We speak with Kevin Y Brown and Jon Savage about the podcast landscape in Africa. Those interviews are in full in the Podnews Extra feed. Also, Spotify's video ambitions, and Alby's removal of support for users in the US causes some concern for the future of streaming sats.

Transcript

James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 14th of June 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

Yes, I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News. Finally back in Australia.

Sam Sethi: 0:18

And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans on the road in sunny Chelmsford.

James Cridland: 0:22

Yes, it's your turn now In the chapters. Today, Spotify rolls out video for all podcasts kind of Fewer. People skip ads than you might think. Plus, How's it?

Jon Savage: 0:32

That's a South African greeting. This is John Savage, the CEO of the Africa Podcast Network, and I'm looking forward to coming on later to talk more about podcasting in the African landscape and a little bit about Amt Studios.

Kevin Y Brown: 0:44

Hi, this is Kevin Y Brown, chief Content Officer and Head of Strategy at AfriPrize, and I'll be on Pod News later to talk about our amazing platform and the work that we're doing in Africa and throughout the diaspora.

James Cridland: 0:55

They 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: 1:05

From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:10

OK, James, let's kick off. I think this is a fairly big story. Spotify rolls out video for all podcasts, so it's allowing you now to upload videos that you have in your podcast directly to Spotify and then it plays it back as a video. But you found out something in your testing, James that they don't use RSS.

James Cridland: 1:32

No, so they're not using RSS because Spotify don't support. Well, I think for two reasons Firstly, because Spotify would like to, I think, support both audio and video, and although the alternate enclosure offers that, nobody yet is actually doing that from a podcast hosting point of view. But the other thing is I uploaded. In fact, if you listen to this show on Spotify and you go back a couple of weeks, then you will find one of the episodes, which is the episode called Pacific Content Closes, that I've uploaded a video version of that. Don't worry, there's no pictures of Sam or I on there, it's just what we upload onto YouTube.

Sam Sethi: 2:17

Thank, God, Thanks for deleting those Dad.

James Cridland: 2:22

But I edited the audio just before I uploaded, uploaded it so that, uh, in the jingle at the beginning, uh, I I've just put me on the top of it saying this is the video audio, because I was just curious as to what would happen if I was to listen on spotify to the um audio of that show but not look at the video anyway, it seems that that is impossible, because the video always plays, and even if you turn the video off in your download settings, it still uses the audio from the video, if you see what I mean.

James Cridland: 2:55

So once you upload a video version into Spotify which you need to do manually but once you do that, it essentially replaces the audio with the audio from the video and that's what you get. And so, therefore, I don't think you'll get well, in fact, you definitely won't get any stats back to your podcast host. So you'll need to come and look at Spotify's Spotify for podcasters for that. And yeah, it just replaces the entire audio with the audio from the video, which isn't really what I was expecting and certainly doesn't necessarily seem to be what Spotify's documentation actually means either.

Sam Sethi: 3:36

Now, Danny Brown from Captivate has done an easy YouTube step-by-step guide called how to upload video podcasts on spotify with any hosting company, if you want to see it. Obviously james has done a piece as well for pod news daily. But, james, when we upload this episode through the rss feed, do or will spotify update the whole rss feed and therefore the video that we uploaded will be overwritten? Or are they going to just now tag that episode always as video now?

James Cridland: 4:09

I think that once you upload as video over the top of a audio episode, I think that the video will stick. So, yes, so from that point of view, if we make any changes, if we delete an episode, for example, then we'll need to go into Spotify separately and change that. I mean, I was surprised I saw. Actually it was Buzzsprout I think it was either Tom or Kevin last week mentioning this on Twitter saying Spotify now allows you to upload videos, and I thought, well, that's something I reported on in June last year. Why is this all of a sudden a story? And it turns out it's a story because, in typical Spotify fashion, they'd ended up launching something, sticking out a big press release but not actually turning it on for anyone. But it's only now that it's been turned on on some shows and not on all shows. So it's been turned on for this show, the Pod News Weekly Review. It hasn't been turned on for the Pod News Daily. So I found that a little bit strange as well.

James Cridland: 5:15

Don't they know who you are, james. I mean, come on, don't they? But I mean, you know, from my point of view, I think that the Spotify stroke YouTube plan of having one place to go for a podcast which might include video, it might not, is the right plan. I don't think that there should be, as you have with Twit or as you have with the new media show, two separate listings for two separate shows, one of them saying video version and one of them saying audio version. That's rubbish. That's a really bad workaround for something that, frankly, you should be able just to look for a podcast, find the podcast in there and if it's available in video, then press the video button and you can watch the video version. If it's available in video, then press the video button and you can watch the video version. To me, that kind of makes sense, but no one is doing that yet, with the exception, oddly, of well, kind of youtube music. But there again, youtube music. Also you need to upload the video separately.

Sam Sethi: 6:19

So I don't think anybody is properly sorted this year I have been banging on about the alternative enclosure I think for two years since it first came out. I've asked todd would he support it and then put his videos into that same alternative enclosure so you could do exactly that. Um, when you go on to the podcast index, uh, I hate to say it but yes, true, fans does support the old terms of enclosure and so does pod friend. Nobody else in the hosting world does, and I and I heard buzzcast this week with kevin talking about this feature in spotify. I'm fundamentally putting his hands up and saying we're never doing video, that's it. We're never doing. It's too expensive, we're never doing, it can't afford it, we're not going down that road. And I just went well, you've just seeded the whole of video then to YouTube earlier, now Spotify, and how long? You know? We know Apple has video support. So how long before Apple turned around and go? Oh yeah, no problem.

James Cridland: 7:27

Then just upload it straight to us, no problem. Yes, and I don't understand why Apple hasn't jumped on this and made a lot of the fact that Apple Podcasts supports video. I am confused at seeing people like Danny and people like Buzzsprout, our sponsor, talking up this as if it's a great thing, because essentially, it's just ceding control of video and ceding control of a large proportion of podcasting to the likes of Spotify and YouTube, who do not care about us. So I'm really quite surprised to see, you know, so many people jumping up and down and saying, oh, this is brilliant, this is exactly what we need. Excellent video, video, video. Because at the end of it, you know, is that really what we want for the industry? I don't know.

Sam Sethi: 8:07

Yeah, I mean, when I was in Birmingham at the UniPodFest, everybody on stage was going oh and you need to be on YouTube. Upload your podcast to YouTube, and I can see them saying the same. Now, if I you know, fast forward a week. Yeah, get your video straight to Spotify.

James Cridland: 8:29

Upload it direct. You know it's coming. And then we'll be terrified that nobody's making podcasts anymore because all of a sudden we've made it far more complicated, because we have to have lighting and video editing and you know, and all of that, and jump cuts and goodness knows what else, and all of a sudden the industry will be going hang on a minute, where's everybody gone? You know, the whole video thing is, you know, I think, a bit madness.

Sam Sethi: 8:54

Thank God we've got faces for radio. That's all I'd say. Speak for yourself. Moving swiftly on, then, Tom Webster did a online seminar yesterday, the day before actually talking about ad skipping, he called the event Ad Nauseam, which again very clever use of words there. Tom James, what's this one about?

James Cridland: 9:16

Yes, this was quite a lot of. It was about ad skipping and whether or not we have a problem in terms of podcasting with ad skipping. You are one of these people.

Sam Sethi: 9:31

Sam, I know who claims that everybody skips the ads. Well, I don't claim it. I ask the audience and everyone put their hand up. That's a very good way of finding out personally.

James Cridland: 9:36

Yes, well, yes, it's a very good way of finding out from a very small sample. What's nice about this particular sample that Tom ended up doing is that this is proper research, because Tom is a proper researcher, oh that's true, that's true.

James Cridland: 9:51

And he has found that actually, yeah, 68% of people listened to some or all of the podcast ads in the last episode, which is nice Only 17% of people say that they skipped all of the ads in the podcasts that they listened to, so that is a very low figure. Now, if you ask, do you always skip the ads on podcasts, then 46% of people say that they do. But actually, if you drill down into the detail a little bit more, you discover that that's not quite true anyway, and you know, I think it's interesting seeing that there really isn't as much of a problem as we thought that there might be with ad skipping in terms of shows. What I would be interested in is and there's a bunch of data in this research I would be interested in learning do people skip pre-rolls? I bet they do because the phone is still in their hand.

James Cridland: 10:58

Do people skip mid-rolls? I bet they don't because the phone is in their pocket or on the counter or something, and they've got to actually do some work to skip the ads in the middle of a show, and so those are probably more likely not to be skipped, is my thinking. And then post-roll the ads that appear after a show has finished. I can't imagine that anybody has listened to any of those, so I think you know some more research will be really interesting, but it's a great start. So it's good to see that quite a lot of people aren't skipping ads.

Sam Sethi: 11:32

Yeah, I mean I listened to the whole seminar with Tom. I think there were some good assumptions in there. I think there was some assumptions he made. I think, ok, I'll let them go. I'm still not convinced, but that's fine. The data says otherwise. So I'll stick with the data for now. But I'm still not convinced personally from anecdotal evidence. Ok, I'll say it's anecdotal, so we have to go with what Tom's done, because that's research. But there is nothing in still that is allowing podcasts to report back on who listened to what ad, how long they listened. None of that's there. I saw something about vast four being promoted soon. Um, we just don't have the data coming back now.

James Cridland: 12:21

Well, as a guy, we've got we've got a lot of data showing that podcast advertising works, um and that's, and that's the most important thing is that because people are paying for it?

Sam Sethi: 12:30

but, but they're paying for it blindly no, um, we're seeing that a lot.

James Cridland: 12:34

We're seeing a lot of data from um, the attribution data that we have um showing you know what happened when you put a podcast campaign together how many people bought stuff, what was the brand lift, how did it work? And the figures seem to show very positive stories about advertising working in shows.

Sam Sethi: 12:57

I'm not saying advertising doesn't work. I'm saying that we're not getting the right reporting. We still don't, and you and I agree on one thing, which is, you know, the first party data is held by apps. Listen time is the metric we need, um, and that's not going to change. I mean, I've been bombarded by several podcast hosts asking can they get first party data from us. I've got another host wanting to put in something similar to NPR's RAD called podcast performance and injecting stuff in I don't know I think it's Spotify again, I'm afraid to say and YouTube with first-party data that can take that data back to advertisers and give them better metrics. At the moment, we're not winning that battle.

James Cridland: 13:42

I would also suggest on the other side that actually the data of how many people have heard an ad is much less important than how well has this ad worked for you, Mr Client. That to me is far, far more important and at the end of the day, I think we're chasing this kind of data because we get it with those flashing punch the monkey ad banners Clearly.

Kevin Y Brown: 14:10

I skipped that one.

James Cridland: 14:11

That's an old reference. We get that data from that. But actually, you know, the really important thing is did this work for you? Did you get more people as a result buying your product or talking about your brand or you know, whatever it is that your business plan was? Was it a benefit to you? And I think we've got plenty of you know plenty of examples showing us that podcast advertising works. Does it actually matter how many? We're never going to get 100% data of how many people have actually heard the ads, you know, and particularly in terms of demographics. So actually, you know why are we chasing data like that? That doesn't really mean much Talking about data.

Sam Sethi: 14:59

PodTrack released its rankers for May and the global publisher in March was Acast, but it's now no longer what's going on. It seems to be falling off.

James Cridland: 15:08

Well, now no longer. And then they came back again. There have been questions asked about how PodTrack actually works and Acast are now comfortable with it. So Acast are back in and they are the number two global podcast company. Global podcast company, iheart is number one and Acast is number two.

James Cridland: 15:26

Interestingly, acast does not use the PodTrack redirect, so PodTrack normally measures using a redirect. So you put just like OP3, so you put an OP3 redirect or a PodTrack redirect and then OP3 or PodTrack can actually see your data. That does not happen with ACAST. I asked both ACAST and PodTrack well how do you actually measure then? And it turns out that ACAST gives their site logs to PodTrack and PodTrack then go through their site logs to come up with the numbers again. So that is not the same as a redirect. So you do not get the same data from site logs, from server logs, than you do from redirects. So I find that a little bit interesting that they have put both of those in the data there in that ranker, because you're measuring different things. So that's a peculiar one. Not sure whether to make that into a big story Probably isn't one but nevertheless it's probably worthwhile bearing in mind Dig James Keep digging.

James Cridland: 16:40

Keep digging. But the interesting thing was from the ranker, from May, total RSS traffic was down 3% month on month. Youtube views up 11% and the way that PodTrack works out YouTube views is it's YouTube views of a podcast which is existing in RSS, so they actually match up. You know individual shows and I thought that that was an interesting thing. Just to point out that YouTube appears to be growing.

Sam Sethi: 17:11

I thought that was the standout figure from that report as well. So let's see what it is next time round. Hey, let's see what it is next time round.

Speaker 2: 17:20

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

Sam Sethi: 17:27

Let's whiz around the world very quickly, James. In the UK, Edison Research released the top 25 podcasts in the UK. Anything different from that of the US, Australia, Canada.

James Cridland: 17:38

Well, I mean lots of different shows, lots of UK shows, very few shows from the rest of the world, but the top five Saving Grace at four. The Rest is Politics at three, shag Married Annoyed, the Diary of a CEO with Stephen Barlett at two, and the Joe Rogan Experience is number one. Acast, the Biggest Pub, biggest publisher, which I thought was interesting as well. Edison Research about to unveil the UK podcast consumer 2024 on June, the 25th, and that's the first time that that research has been undertaken in the UK. So that'll be interesting to have a look. Who was at the door, sam? Was it anybody exciting? Who was at the door, sam? Was anybody exciting?

Sam Sethi: 18:25

No.

James Cridland: 18:27

It's so painful. Let's have a look at Italy and ACAST was talking about Italy and, frankly, how little money podcasting gets in Italy. It's got a severe problem in Italy in terms of being very undervalued. So an interesting blog post from them that you'll find in the Pod News newsletter this week, Also a newsletter in Italian that we discovered Questioni D'Orecchio Beautifully said James.

James Cridland: 18:56

Yes which I think means something like questions of the ears. Anyway, it's a nice read if you speak Italian, so that's nice. Podcast advertising is a thing in China, according's a nice read if you speak Italian, so that's nice. Podcast advertising is a thing in China, according to a website called Dow, which has looked at some examples of how brands have used podcast advertising there. And the New York Times has added a listen tab to its main app, which is nice. Articles read by a automated voice in the app, if you like that sort of thing. They clearly wouldn't have done it if they didn't think that there was an audience for that sort of thing. I noticed that the Guardian, which I subscribe to, has had that for a long, long time. I've never once pressed the button, because I quite like reading for myself. Thank you very much. So all of that is going on. And then, of course, you have been talking to lots of people in Africa.

Sam Sethi: 19:51

Yeah, well, you know, again, I think about three months ago we did a wonderful chat with Gautam Anand from Hubhopper in India and I just learned so much about what's going on in South Asia and podcasting. So I thought I'd try and reach out to a couple of people in Africa because, again, I hear information through third party information, you know, but I never hear it first party. So I reached out to Kevin Y Brown from AfriPodcast and I asked him about what's going on in Africa, what's going on with AfriPods.

Kevin Y Brown: 20:24

So AfriPods is a pan-African podcast hosting and distribution platform. I focused on the African creator with the goal of creating the largest library of African stories on the planet. And how long has it been going? Afripods has been around since 2017. I've been working with the company or at the company since 2021. So I'm about three years and some change in.

Sam Sethi: 20:47

You've got an American accent. You were based out in the US, so what's the biggest difference you can see between podcasting over in the US and podcasting in Africa?

Kevin Y Brown: 20:57

Yes, I'm African-American from California. The biggest difference that I see in the industries are podcasting in Africa is in its infancy. I think it's podcasting America circa 2015, 2016, like still early days. You have some very avant-garde or you know what I mean some podcasters who are leading the pack, but the industry as a whole hasn't caught on yet. So I think there's a lot of opportunity for the industry to become sustainable and also to become a big pillar of media here on the continent for sure.

Sam Sethi: 21:29

And in terms of audience size, I mean, what are we looking at? A couple million, couple hundred thousand? I mean, what's the audience size, do you think for podcasting in Africa?

Kevin Y Brown: 21:42

That becomes very interesting because the data is not so well represented currently, but we are definitely talking about the millions in terms of listeners, probably the hundred thousands in terms of creators. But again, what we are seeing is the trend like and I think the next 10 to 20 years, africa will be the youngest continent in the world, and so you have this youth who are creative and the creative economy is growing in all different 54 countries, and so when you're seeing that there's going to be more creators and there's going to be more podcasters and even just with sharing in the awareness of the medium, we're seeing an uptick in creators and we're also seeing some really interesting behaviors. Africa has the tendency to leapfrog and to innovate in ways differently than you might see in the West, and so, like we're seeing podcasters sell out live events in ways that we didn't see so early in the West, and so there's opportunities for guys and gals and creators to innovate and do things differently than what we've seen before, and that's actually really exciting.

Sam Sethi: 22:46

That is the opportunity you can see what's been done and then not replicate it, but actually innovate for yourselves. How do you see monetization of podcasting within the AfriPod market?

Kevin Y Brown: 22:58

Sure, in the Africa podcast market, we've seen some traditional ways of advertising with just regular show sponsorship or underwriting and things like that. But we've also seen that guys are willing to donate and then again the live event space is something that is happening. We're seeing podcasters actually go on tour and some of them are being sponsored by airlines or by gas companies and things like that to go out and spread the message. So those are some of the ways in which we've seen it, things like that to go out and spread the message. So those are some of the ways in which we've seen it. And even us, as a platform, we've actively going out and pitching to advertising networks and agencies in order for them to understand the opportunity and the brilliance and resilience and retention of podcasting so that they can get in on this amazing medium where these creators have an active, captivated audience.

Sam Sethi: 23:44

Now, one of the unique things that AfriPods does that I looked on your website is they have a feature called Broadcast to Podcast. What is that?

Kevin Y Brown: 23:53

Sure, b2p. So what we understood here at AfriPods is and this was my initiative, so something I'm very proud of is that we understood that radio was king in Africa and across multiple countries, and so what we did is we created a technology that allows broadcasters to take their one-time use content and turn it into multi-use and then be able to increase their revenue streams by making their content evergreen. And so what Broadcaster Podcast does is it catches the live stream, records it into the creator dashboard. We also have an audio editor in the AfriPod's dashboard, and so the creator or the publisher can go in and actually edit their episode and then click publish all in one place. So we created this all in one solution, and so B2P is something that we're proud of. We have over 160 radio stations over eight different countries on our platform.

Sam Sethi: 24:44

I like that over 160 radio stations over eight different countries on our platform. I like that, as we were talking off air my previous guys in my own radio station we were doing that with a company called Wooshka, so really excited to see you doing that. What else is on the roadmap, then, for AfriPods? Where do you see yourselves going and growing?

Kevin Y Brown: 24:59

Absolutely. Thank you for asking that question. So one of the big things for us at AfriPods is to make sure that creators take up as much and get paid for the work in which they're doing. So. Something that we're really focusing on tackling right now is payouts. So you may or may not be aware of this, but a challenge that's taking place on the continent right now is being able to pay out different creators in different markets, and so we're really working to solve for that, so that our creators can be paid. And then we have some AI aspects of our platform that we are really looking forward to implementing and being able to innovate with.

Kevin Y Brown: 25:36

I think my experience is one that's unique, because I went from being talent to being on the business side of production and now being on the tech side.

Kevin Y Brown: 25:45

So when we're in our strategic meetings and we're planning our roadmaps, being able to see things from these three different perspectives helps us to have a very holistic approach to how we want to execute and be of service for the creators, and one of the other things that I think that we do really well is we are very involved with the community of podcasters across the continent of Africa. We're definitely going to continue to build the community of African podcasters, both in North Africa, sub-saharan, as well as throughout the diaspora and Southern Africa, and so by building that community and essentially having a village, I think we'll see more innovative things throughout our roadmap. And another thing that we do again going back to community is that we make sure to ask our creators and our users what it is that they need and what they want from a platform, and so we're always trying to make sure that we're making something that serves the African creator on the ground and throughout the diaspora by building what it is that they need. So it's a for us, by us, type of platform and model.

Sam Sethi: 26:50

Interesting. You mentioned the diaspora. I mean I know when I was talking to Gotham and Antrim, hub Hopper, about the Indian diaspora, which is quite extensive. I mean the Afro diaspora must be fairly extensive. So how much of the audience do you believe comes from outside of your immediate African continental audience and what do you think it is? Is it 10%, 20%? Where do you think it lies right now?

Kevin Y Brown: 27:16

To be honest with you, I would be being irresponsible if I spoke to an exact number, but what I can say is that those who are living outside of their home countries definitely want to hear the news and want to hear the vernacular and the latest slang and things like that that are happening at home.

Kevin Y Brown: 27:32

So there is an engaging audience that is not on the continent, that is still tapped in and really consuming local content, and it's actually really cool, because one of the other things that we really promote at AfriPi is, like we know that the majority of podcasts in the world are in English, et cetera, et cetera, but there is a huge rise of vernacular, native language podcasts, and creators are becoming more and more comfortable with being able to tap in and have these conversations in their language.

Kevin Y Brown: 28:02

Right, because I think what becomes interesting, too, is that number one. The majority of people who live in Africa do not live in the major metropolitan cities, and so if you're speaking English, then you know a lot of those people who don't live in a major metropolitan cities may not be able to understand what it is that you're saying, and so if that's the case, then that means you're missing out on an entirely big audience, and so we have these micro influencers and micro podcasters who have these huge followings and their shows or their music is not in English, and so we have to acknowledge that and encourage their creation. Right, and the spreading of these positive and innovative messages and timely messages as well. Right, because these messages are keeping up with what's happening in today's day. The rise of Vernacular has been amazing and continues to be something that we're in awe of and that we encourage as a platform and as people. Right, because we are people working at a platform to serve the African creator.

Sam Sethi: 28:59

You and I have been talking offline about working together on some of the podcasting 2.0 stuff and some of the micropayment stuff. So I'm very excited to looking at radio, looking at events. So there's a lot to come from. Hopefully, another follow-up conversation, kevin, that we will have as an ongoing one about how AfriPods can work with that. But if somebody wanted to get hold of AfriPods today, where would they go?

Kevin Y Brown: 29:23

AfriPods Africa. So that's A-F-R-I-P-O-D-S dot A-F-R-I-C-A, and then we're at AfriPods on all platforms and then, if you're looking for me in particular, I'm on LinkedIn Kevin Y as in yellow brown, and then also on all social media platforms at Kevin Y Brown. So I look forward to connecting and continuing the conversation Always.

Kevin Y Brown: 29:46

The thing that I love about the podcast industry, sam, and even about meeting you, having conversations with James and so many other people, is that our industry actually is authentic, genuine and approachable. It's amazing to be able to just talk to people, ask questions and, like when we were at the podcast show, I literally asked Ross Adams, ceo of ACAST, big time guy. I asked him some questions about leadership and his experience and how he's been able to navigate things, and I mean that type of access or being able to walk up to someone and be approachable. These are not things that in every industry you can do, you know, and I think the other thing is that we are not a cutthroat industry. I think that we're more communal and I really just appreciate that, and I appreciate you as well for having me here.

Sam Sethi: 30:34

Kevin, thank you so much for your time. Look forward to our longer chats. Thank you so much, Sam.

James Cridland: 30:39

So, Kevin Y Brown from Afropods, you also chatted, as I did this week to John Savage of the Africa Podcast Network. I had a good long chat with him down in Cape Town.

Jon Savage: 31:17

I had a good long chat with him down in Cape Town. He seems to be doing all. We're really trying to solve the problem of podcasters, which is all the same. It's monetization, so we're very aggressively in the monetization space. And then we also represent some of the big networks like Sirius and, I think now Amazon coming up, and a few of the other like Acast. We represent them for Africa as well through our relationship with AdSwizz. On the ground. It helps us with our programmatic tech stuff. Right, it's the simple way to put it.

Sam Sethi: 31:43

So what are some of your big shows that we might be able to listen to and find?

Jon Savage: 31:47

One of our biggest shows is called Is Vusi Tembe Kwayo Ideas that Matter. It's time to take your seat at the table. Find out how with Vusi Tembe Gwayo, as we discuss Ideas that Matter a catalyst for bold action. He's also known as the voice of Africa. He is a beast of a human being who really is like African diaspora inspiration for business. So because in Africa, like the hustle is such a big thing, like we have a hustlers mentality. It's like deep in the culture throughout the continent. He is teaching kids. Really when I say kids, I mean you know, I'm old man, so like I mean you know, like the 18 or 16 to 18 years, quite a young audience, but he's really giving them practical. He's hardcore, he doesn't hold his tongue and a very, very, very powerful podcast doing crazy numbers across the continent. On the female side, we represent the biggest female podcast around called Mpumi Ledwaba, who has a podcast called Wisdom and Wellness.

Speaker 2: 32:49

Welcome to the Wisdom and Wellness podcast. I'm Mpumi Ledw to the Wisdom and Wellness podcast. I'm Pumila Dwaba, the founder and your host.

Jon Savage: 32:54

And it really is like also inspirational, really cool stuff for young women. She's absolutely killing it. We've just signed Kasta Semenya, who's one of the global I don't know if you know who that is. She's one of the biggest athletes on the planet. We haven't started her podcast launching out yet, but this was a really big coup for us. You know she's friends with LeBron James, she's besties with Serena Williams and her whole podcast is about if you're a very high performing person, what do you do on the other side and what do you do with those skills and that drive to be the best once your sort of physical career is done, and I think that's going to be super interesting. Dj Fresh is an iconic radio DJ who has one of the fastest growing entertainment podcasts on the continent and many more.

Sam Sethi: 33:38

How do you go about defining what you're going to do as a podcast, right? What do you commission them? Do people come to you or is it first of all, what can we monetize? I mean, what's your thinking process around creating the next podcast?

Jon Savage: 33:50

So we've gone through a whole 360 arc and I guess this is the reality and the non-sexy part of the business. There's two parts of our business. There's the development part and that's Amped what we found as APN and the brutal reality is there is not much value of having a great podcast that doesn't have a sellable audience, and so we really work inside our AMP community. The whole thing is about developing people into saleability.

Jon Savage: 34:18

Apn is really representing podcasters that have the potential and that is a big, significant you know even the biggest podcasters. They're living off sort of YouTube programmatic revenue. So this is a way to double triple your revenue by having a strategy and a team behind you. A way to double triple your revenue by having a strategy and a team behind you. So that's really the differentiator. And the other thing that we have learned brand safety is a really important thing and I know it sounds like a buzzword, but we've represented the biggest podcasters like on the planet, from Africa, and even though those numbers are a lot bigger than you can imagine, it actually doesn't make it saleable, doesn't actually add the value you think it does. So we're looking for saleable podcasts that have an established audience and doesn't mean big. Even a niche audience is highly saleable, but an established audience in a saleable market, and then APN is a very strong friend.

Sam Sethi: 35:05

So looking at the continent of Africa. What is the average age of the audience, what are the type of devices they use, and is data still an expensive download cost?

Jon Savage: 35:20

You're going big. Okay, that's huge questions. The market varies. We're quite late to this market. You've got to remember Spotify only came here like two years ago, was it? They were really late coming here and podcasting wasn't really a thing here until quite recently. But if you look at any of the data, we're the fifth biggest market in the world. We're fastest growing, like.

Jon Savage: 35:41

One of the things about Africa is we're completely mobile. This continent never went to PCs because they couldn't afford them, so we bypassed it straight into mobile, which is why we're like the leading the world in innovations in mobile, bypassed it straight into mobile, which is why we're like the leading the world in innovations in mobile. The reality is that we're like 96% Android penetration and when you're designing apps and projects for Africa, you've got to design for the dumbest of the smartphones and across the board, because data is. Everybody has phones. That's a big thing. Mobile data is an extremely big problem still, but there's a lot of assumptions that come with the cost of data that people perceive as obstacles. That might not be. There's a lot of data to show that, even though the problem with the cost of data is significantly prohibitive, it's not as deep as you think it is, and there are a lot of solutions coming, and it's really problematic that we can't get Starlink on. It would change the game if we could turn Starlink on in South Africa, for example.

Sam Sethi: 36:34

Just remind me again who's the richest African in the world.

Jon Savage: 36:39

Elon Musk. Thank you yeah.

Sam Sethi: 36:41

And isn't he from South Africa originally?

Jon Savage: 36:44

He's from South Africa, but I don't think he's proudly South African. Whatever you want to say about him, I'm a big fan of his brain and his strategy, but I don't think he had a particularly good experience down here. He grew up in a really tough part of South Africa. Trevor Noah different story. He also had a tough time. But, elon, we can't claim him the way we'll claim Trevor Noah.

Sam Sethi: 37:04

Yeah, no, I just thought come on Elon Starlink, you know, not just in South Africa, the whole of Africa would benefit from it, wouldn't it?

Jon Savage: 37:12

And Steve Bartlett is born in Botswana. Yeah, so he is purely African. So training to be from Africa.

Sam Sethi: 37:17

So looping back onto it, so we've got a really vibrant market. We obviously see Android penetration very much similar to the Indian market. Apple with no penetration in this space, really. Hey, they don't have an Android app for podcasting. You know, james has been calling for one for a bazillion years In India. Apple and Spotify are not the number one platforms for content consumption. In fact, there are quite a few local platforms, like GeoSav in being one. Is that the same in Africa or in South Africa itself, or is it just dominated by Spotify? Now they're there.

Jon Savage: 37:55

Nope, remember, everything in Africa has to happen backwards. We're dominated by YouTube. We have been for a long time Africa's preferred big companies like Netflix have struggled here. Amazon Prime, like I said, they've also kind of struggled here. Spotify is big. We have some local players from Africa, like Audio Mac, that are doing well, but YouTube is for music listening.

Jon Savage: 38:18

We have a brand of music this will give you some insight called Amapiano, and if you know what that means, you know it's the biggest global export from Africa. It's music that has changed the world. That the biggest artists. I was telling you. I work with a guy who writes a lot of songs for Drake. That's because of Amapiano. Amapiano is massive and these Amapiano artists were making tracks, putting them on YouTube with no video, not even an image, and getting 10 million, 50 million, 100 million views across Africa. Right, youtube is the preferred destination and audio is of quite a distant second. And even when we talk about podcasting, we've always spoken about YouTube as a part of it. Now the rest of the world, youtube is becoming important in podcasting here. It started that way, so that is the dominant player here.

Sam Sethi: 39:06

What's holding back, in your opinion, further growth? What needs to change in Africa now to see a further explosion in podcast adoption?

Jon Savage: 39:16

We, in terms of the audience side, the audience part, we're doing really well. Like I said, we're late to the market. We're growing really fast. And there's something you know, I believe, that in Africa we have some of the best podcasts in the world and a little bit of it is and this is a bit philosophical, you know in most of the world people say, oh, I've got an idea for a podcast, Let me start one.

Jon Savage: 39:37

In Africa it's like life or death, Like people are starting this as from with nothing to build a career. But you've got to understand that at the core of what's happening here, it's why, like there's a podcasting revolution here there's so much passion. People are fighting. Nobody misses a release. People are fighting for equity in the space. So I think we have a really healthy space. I look forward to maybe some international interests or taking some of our podcasts, like Vusi, maybe into the global space, and that's something we're in negotiations with a big US podcaster about a swap to show. But from our side, from the real growth sides, I mean, there's one thing that matters in this economy and that's the dollar, and so it's really about brands believing in the space and understanding the scale and the power of space and not being too afraid. You know the podcasters are unregulated, they swear, they say things that aren't always great and it's getting brands to relax into that, which is a big challenge, but it's just time. I think we're on a really great wicket. It's exciting space and yeah.

Sam Sethi: 40:36

Amazing John Savage, CEO of the Africa Podcast Network. Thank you so much.

Jon Savage: 40:40

What a pleasure. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 40:45

The Tech Stuff on the Pod.

James Cridland: 40:46

News Weekly Review. 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, Sam. What have you got for us this week, Tons?

Sam Sethi: 40:54

actually, james, it's a busy, busy tech stuff. Friends of the show, rsscom, hot on the heels of adding live podcasting, have just launched Podrolls. So last week we heard about Transistor doing it and now, thankfully, rsscom's done it as well.

James Cridland: 41:12

Yes, I'm really surprised that there aren't apps using Podroll. Yet Podroll is I mean, it's being supported by Buzzsprout it's a pretty big thing Transistor and now RSScom. I do not understand why large podcast apps are not supporting it. It seems a really obvious way to get more people listening to more shows, so really don't fully understand why any of that isn't actually happening. So it'd be nice if it was Lots of AI-powered podcast apps out there. Podmob is one which is quite neat. It generates AI-generated summaries of individual podcasts and emails them to you automatically every single week. That's free for your first two shows. It's worth a play. And there's another one called Cupa, which Cooper Q-U-P-A which, as you listen, automatically looks stuff up about the stuff that you are hearing about.

James Cridland: 42:17

It's quite neat, isn't it?

Sam Sethi: 42:18

I thought this was very cool. I saw the demo. I mean, I've signed up the wait list. I thought this is a great use of I don't know if it's AI. I mean, everything's been labelled AI, no-transcript. This is a dynamic way of doing it. I thought it was very nice no, it is.

James Cridland: 43:04

It's a very smart thing, so, so it's worth a peek. There's a video on their website which explains how the whole thing works moving on then.

Sam Sethi: 43:12

Uh some monetization, uh updates, uh plink. A podcast link service that I haven't used myself is selling podcast ads on top of its free link pages. Um, the monthly price is 199 dollars. Seems very expensive, and then you get ads as well.

James Cridland: 43:28

So so it's, uh, so it's $199 for you to buy the ads um on there so if we wanted to.

James Cridland: 43:36

I believe that, that he only sells three a month and I believe that, uh, if we wanted to buy an ad for this show, for example, then it would appear on all Plink pages for a month, and so that could theoretically generate quite a lot of traffic. On the other hand, the point of a podcast link service is to link to your podcast, not to link to somebody else's. So it'll be interesting to see how many people actually are comfortable with that idea. There is Episodes.

Sam Sethi: 44:11

FM is what I would say.

James Cridland: 44:11

Yeah, exactly, episodes FM is probably a nicer plan there. There is a new monetization option for podcasters from down here, from down under, called Lenny, which is an interesting idea. You basically sign up using Stripe $4 a month $4 US a month to support your four favourite podcasts. The way that it works, as I understand it, is that if one of your podcasts doesn't post any episodes, it doesn't get a share of that money, and so therefore, your four podcasts might be three one week. One month might be two. One month you can sign up as a creator or as a listener.

James Cridland: 44:58

Now, I'm not such a big fan. I understand the $4 for four favourite podcasts thing. It's quite nice from a marketing point of view, but at the end of the day, you know what's to stop me from just saying I'd prefer to share $40 with my four favourite podcasts or I'd prefer to share $50 with my seven favourite podcasts. There's been plenty of playing around with this in the past Swoot, podhero and other services and I. You know I wish Courtney well, who's put this together, but I'm not entirely convinced that it's a thing. He seems very excited by the whole thing. I can't really see it taking off, to be honest, but you know it's a nice idea, nonetheless, I suppose.

Sam Sethi: 45:47

I think maybe it's just like version 0.1. Maybe they'll extend it. You know, it's a nice idea. Nonetheless, I suppose I think maybe it's just like version 0.1. Maybe they'll extend it. You know, it's always difficult when you're building something new to go full gung-ho in. So I had a look at it, you know, and I put all the four shows that we have and I put my $4 in. Yeah, as you said, I'd like to have done more, but we can't. Yeah, as you said, I'd like to have done more, but we can't. But you know what it was. It uses Stripe again. It's going away from sats and micropayments back to fiat currency. So you know, there is a feeling at the moment that I'm getting that people are looking more towards fiat right now and this may be one way of supporting. It's just another way.

James Cridland: 46:25

Yes, I mean, it would certainly be of wider interest than streaming Sats and that sort of thing, particularly. Basically, albi, much like many of these other lightning services, is throwing in the towel in terms of the US, which, from my point of view, is going to kill this whole thing stone dead. I don't know whether you I mean you clearly have quite a lot to lose if that actually happens. So where do you? Where do you?

Sam Sethi: 47:09

um, I have been on the phone with albie quite a bit in the last let's say two weeks.

Sam Sethi: 47:15

Let me put it that way there is a solution, okay. So last week I think I was close to suicidal two years of work and I was like, right, screw this, I'm done. I literally was that close because everything we've worked for was just thrown up in the air. You know, whether it was value time splits, whether it's micro payments per second, whether it was any of the things we've done, it was all based around that model and and it was a belief system that we would get there. You know, eventually, the, the, we would jump the shark and and people in the mainstream will begin to get it. And then, when, when the US government which is the issue have said that you need certain licenses to do what Albi want to do, albi have pulled back and they still support the European capability. So if you're an app, any of the apps like True Fans, podverse, podcast, guru, the ones that use it then yeah, we can still onboard European users through a managed Albi account, but what Albi are trying to do is get us all to become our own hub, in effect.

Sam Sethi: 48:21

So I've set up a TrueFans hub and it goes back to something you said, maybe even 18 months ago, james why don't we just issue tokens? Call them sats if we want, call them truefound tokens, I don't care and we track usage. So you, very similar to Lenny, I suppose you put in an amount in I want £10 a month or $10 a month as my podcast fund and the app then tracks your usage. Now we still use sats underlying it, because that's still a better micro. We don't have to use sats per se, but we we track a per second usage and then we go oh yeah, you've now, uh, used up your ten dollars. Would you like to top it up? Um, or conversely, you have spent so much with podcaster x, therefore we can give them their money now.

Sam Sethi: 49:15

The problem lies in two things. One is we can onboard people quicker now because we don't have to go through the olby hoop of setting up an account. In effect, true fans now becomes the wallet issuer and we become the node. So Albi are offloading that responsibility down to the apps. That's what they're currently doing. They're saying you manage it, you do the holding of monies and transferring of monies and everything else. It's all held in one cold wallet in the cloud, which is the Albi Hub, and then locally in the app.

Sam Sethi: 49:50

We're just running virtual ledgers. That's great for all new users. But if you've got a Lightning wallet address, we still have to manage you as we do today, and then we still have to look at your RSS feed. If you're a podcast creator, have you got a wallet? Have you got a Lightning address? But, looking forward, it looks like the vast majority of podcasters won't have a lightning address because they haven't signed up yet, and most of those will be in the US. There are alternatives. We're looking at green light, breeze, sdk, we're looking at other models as well.

James Cridland: 50:21

So, um, we are refactoring the whole of true fans right now, and it is an absolute frigging nightmare is all I will tell you well, uh, interesting times um, but uh, certainly um, quite a lot of concern there in terms of streaming sets and how all of that might work boostergrams.

Speaker 2: 50:40

Boostergrams and fan mail on the pod news weekly review it's our favorite time of the week.

James Cridland: 50:47

Uh, it's Boostergrams and fan mail and, yes, a ton of boosts. Thank you so much, Guy Martin. He has sent. Do you know what type of boost this is? Sam 65 536?.

Sam Sethi: 51:02

Very well written. No, what is this one?

James Cridland: 51:04

It's a 64K boost, see 64K, 65, 536. Anyway, so firstly Guy gets one of these and he says I like the new, shorter format.

Speaker 2: 51:20

This is going to be fun for this show.

James Cridland: 51:23

Where are we now?

James Cridland: 51:24

Two hours 26 minutes 63 minutes plus the interviews. Anyway, Guy says I like the new shorter format with extended interviews in the extras. It means I actually don't skip and listen to the whole episode, but can get a deeper dive on topics or interviews that are interesting. Your banter is always fun. Though I don't boost every week, I still get value every week. I appreciate you both have opinions and stand by them. You've spotted that, Even if I sometimes disagree. Thank you for being informative and educational and I look forward to meeting someday. Thank you, Guy Martin. That's very kind. He's the man behind the Podcasting 2.0 logo. He is indeed so hurrah for him.

Sam Sethi: 52:04

Dave Jones sent us a 2.1.1.2. Is that a rush boost? I think it's a rush boost, isn't it? Yes, thanks for the chat time this week, sam. Yeah, dave. Uh, nicest guy in the industry. Really want to have a beer with this man. And uh, yeah, we had a good long chat about micro payments. I won't go into what we talked about, but yes, we had a long chat.

James Cridland: 52:25

Yes, it's the fourth studio album by canadian rock band rush, released in march 1976. I have listened to it. It's it's just dreadful, horrible you know, dad rock, um, but I'm glad.

James Cridland: 52:35

I'm glad that it makes people happy. There's a thing I have to say um, I am, uh, hopefully looking forward to being in the same room with uh d and Adam Curry again. We did that at Podcast Movement in Dallas not so long ago, and one of my regrets is not going for dinner with them and actually getting to know them a little bit more. So I'm rather hoping that that might happen at some conference at some point in the future. I know that Adam says he doesn't do conferences anymore, but I'm sure that we can change that. So thank you, dave, for that.

James Cridland: 53:13

1,000 sats from RW Nash, just some sats for your airport lounge recording. Why, thank you? That was fun to do. A row of ducks from Andrew Grumet, who was on the Podcasting 2.0 show last week. Thank you, andrew. No message, but that's very kind of you. And Pestmerk whoever you are, pestmerk, you're a fountain user sent a massive 100 sats through to comment on a Pod News Daily podcast and his comment, or her comment is bro, wtf, unintelligible, to which I have to say you've just spent a hundred sats to send me that. So thanks very much. Also thank you to our power supporters Dave Jackson, mike Hamilton, matt Medeiros, marshall Brown and Moll, who are sending us a nice amount of fiat money every single month. You can do that at weeklypodnewsnet. We super appreciate you. So what's happened for you this week, sam?

Sam Sethi: 54:18

Well, I'm sure you did as well, and half the world Watch the Apple AI event at WWDC. I've installed the Mac OS Sequoia. You're mad, I know, I know, but everything works. Guess which app didn't work, james? Which app? Apple Podcasts, the only app that doesn't work on Sequoia.

James Cridland: 54:40

That's brilliant, excellent. It's a classic. Everything else works.

Sam Sethi: 54:45

Descript works, everything else works, nothing but and I can't get apple podcast. It just crashes every time.

James Cridland: 54:52

that's funny yes, I'm not going anywhere near the mac os, um, but I have installed ios uh 18 on my ipad, um because, um, because my ipad. I frankly don't care if, if bits of that don't work. I have not touched it, it with the iPhone yet, because I want to make sure that that keeps on working.

Sam Sethi: 55:14

Yeah, one of the big disappointments you probably found out on the iPad is that all those lovely demos that they did about the Mac Mail and AI and writing, nothing's in there. Yet None of that's in there. Yet None of that's in there yet.

James Cridland: 55:26

Albin Brooke said something interesting about Apple's phone call recording. Now I wonder whether this is going to be a US-only thing, because there are all kinds of rules about phone call recording in many other countries. But anyway, you'll be able to do all kinds of things with FaceTime audio, with nice sort of AI-treated audio, with nice sort of AI treated audio, full transcription. It produces a summary automatically, and Albin says that could be huge for podcasting, and he may well be correct there. So yes, I thought that was very good. Yes, I'm sort of relatively excited about Apple intelligence. It sounds nice. Of course, there has been a predictable amount of blog posts from people with Android phones saying here are all of the new tools that Apple has just announced that Android already has. You know, imagine being able to move icons on your home screen. Imagine that. Imagine the excitement we're all going to have. But yes, I thought that was all entertaining, but still, there we go.

Sam Sethi: 56:38

Now what's happened for you, james? You've been doing some fun stuff.

James Cridland: 56:41

What have I been doing this week? I have been making the Pod News newsletter. The email that we send out look a little bit nicer, there's a little bit more understanding of layout and there's an embedded font in there which works on most things. Google, I have to tell you, is really holding emails back in that Google doesn't support its own WebP image format in Gmail. Google doesn't support web fonts. There's many other things. Google doesn't support SVG images. There are many other things that Google doesn't support. It's one of the worst email services out there for just support of the open web. Who would have thought it from Google Used to be that we would moan about Outlook, and Outlook is still dreadful in terms of email. But yeah, gmail is still pretty bad, so boo for them so far as I'm concerned. But still, there we are, and that's it for this week. If you enjoy the podcast, the newsletter's better, find it at podnewsnet, the podnews daily as well, wherever you get your podcasts, and there are longer interviews in the podnews extra podcast as well.

Sam Sethi: 58:01

You can support this show by streaming sats and you can give us feedback using fan mail or with a boostogram, while you still can, while you can just about. If you're still using an old legacy Podcast Oneorg app, then what are you doing Instead, grab a new one from podcasting2.org. Forward slash apps.

James Cridland: 58:18

Yes, our music is from Studio Dragonfly. We use Clean Feed for this excellent audio quality that you're listening to right now. Our voiceover is Sheila Dee and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout podcast. Hosting made easy.