Steve Pratt's Insights on Attention Marketing, plus Buzzsprout's new websites

James Cridland and Sam Sethi discuss various topics related to podcasting, including new features from Buzzsprout, the importance of attention in the digital age, and the shift towards video content. The episode also includes an interview with Steve Pratt, author of the book "Earn It: Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers." Pratt discusses the importance of creating valuable content to earn attention and provides examples of companies that have successfully done so. The hosts also discuss the challenges and opportunities presented by the increasing use of video in podcasting.

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Chapters

• 1:01 Buzzsprout's iOS widgets and websites
• 5:27 Interview: Steve Pratt
• 21:07 Steve Goldstein's session at PM
• 31:44 New in iOS 18
• 36:49 Streamyard's pricing
• 40:49 Round the world
• 46:06 Events
• 48:02 The Tech Stuff
• 1:00:16 Boostagram Corner

Transcript

James Cridland: 0:00

It's Friday, the 13th of September 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: 0:14

I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News here in Brisbane in Australia, and I'm Sam I'm not even sure who I am.

Sam Sethi: 0:21

I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of True Fans, and I'm not sure where I am either. But there we go.

James Cridland: 0:25

That's fine. We'll edit all of that out. It'll be absolutely fine In the chapters. Today, buzzsprout has some new fancy websites. A generational shift to video. Is that what we're seeing?

Steve Pratt: 0:37

StreamYard puts its prices up and Hi, I'm Steve Pratt, author of the new book earn it unconventional strategies for brave marketers. I'll be on later in the show to talk all about the attention economy and why a lot of us are getting it all wrong he will.

James Cridland: 0:52

This podcast is sponsored by buzzsprout, with the tools, support and community. To make sure you keep podcasting, start podcasting, keep podcasting with buzzsproutcom from your daily newsletter the pod news weekly review.

Speaker 2: 1:04

James well, our sponsors buzzsproutcom From your daily newsletter the Pod News Weekly Review.

Sam Sethi: 1:07

James. Well, our sponsors Buzzsprout have been busy, busy busy. They've been creating widgets and websites. What have they been doing?

James Cridland: 1:14

Yes, widgets and websites. Firstly, widgets. If you really like stress in your life and you really want your iPhone to constantly tell you how many downloads you have or haven't on your lock screen, then today is your lucky day because you can get an iOS widget. The Buzzsprout app has just been upgraded and you can now get widgets to put on your home screen rather more usefully. Actually, it also shows not just your downloads, if you want, but it'll also show things like how close you are to your next milestone and that sort of thing. It sounds like hell on earth to me, but I'm sure it's a good plan for lots of people who love checking their stats every single day. Will you be adding it? I'm imagining you've already added it onto your iPhone.

Sam Sethi: 2:04

I don't think I'll be looking for the dopamine hit daily of new people downloading.

James Cridland: 2:09

Yes, I think daily is slightly over the top, but I think you know, certainly, seeing how close you are to you know your next 50 episodes, or you know, or your next two million downloads, or whatever it might be, I can see that being a good thing. So that's one thing that Buzzsprout has done. The other thing that Buzzsprout has done and we are a good example is that they've rolled out redesigned podcast websites and those give podcasters a professional site without the hassle. So they say there's a ton of new features in there. If you go to weeklypodnewsnet, that's a very good little website, which is our Buzzsprout website, and it's a really nice example. There's some, you know, really smart things in there, including contributor biographies, so not just hosts, but guests as well, as you can now put fan mail messages public as well, which is a very good thing and all other sorts of things there. So, yeah, I thought it was pretty smart. You've had a look at our beautiful new website, haven't?

Sam Sethi: 3:14

you. Yeah, no, I think this is really good. And they've even added pod roles, offer premium content. I think they've spent a good bit of time looking at this. We have criticised podcast hosts for the blandness of websites that they offer their users, comparative to something like Podpage, right, so you know, I think this is a really good example of one host coming back with a very strong message, saying, yeah, okay, we understand that and here's a really good website. Oh God, sorry, james.

James Cridland: 3:49

Tell them to leave it at the door, sam. So yes, absolutely Very impressive looking thing. Thank you very much to Buzzsprout for launching their redesigned podcast websites in the same month that Podpage is titled sponsor of Podnews. That's really good. Thanks for that. If you're not with Buzzsprout, obviously, and you want more features, then our friends at Podpage power over 25,000 podcast websites. I should just point out.

Sam Sethi: 4:17

Including Dignation.

James Cridland: 4:19

Including Dignation. Yes, exactly, phew, I think we've covered that there, but no, I think it's really smart. I think when you have a look at, I don't think there was much wrong with the previous websites that were produced by Buzzsprout. And certainly when you have a look at Captivate, they do very good podcast websites, transistor, they do very good podcast websites and that is it. I've really not seen any other decent podcast websites from any of the other large hosts and I think you know it does make an awful lot of sense to make these things smart. Apart from anything else, it keeps podcasters with your particular podcast host if they've got some really nice images and stuff like that. So, yeah, I think it's a smart thing. I think we've said it before.

Sam Sethi: 5:08

I wonder who will acquire Podpage. I know we're not doing the show about predictions, but one of my predictions will be who will acquire Podpage? I think it won't stay standalone for long.

James Cridland: 5:22

Yes, I'm sure that someone will want to grab that. It'll be interesting to find out who.

Sam Sethi: 5:27

Moving on, james. Now. A few weeks ago, we interviewed the wonderful Dan Meisner from Bumper. He was talking about creating dashboards attention dashboards, as I've termed it. He never called it that it was grabbing first party data from Apple, spotify and YouTube for their clients to create a view, or an aggregated view of listen time and percent completed, which I think is a way forward. Well, in the same time frame, steve Pratt, who co-founded Pacific Content, the world's first leading brand agency, has written his new book. You've had a little read of it as well, haven't you, james?

James Cridland: 6:04

Yes, I have. It's a very good book. It's called Earn it Unconventional Strategies for Brave Marketers, and it looks unconventional, it reads unconventionally. It's got adverts in it, but not real adverts, but they're super, super good. It's a super good book to read. It's available for pre-orders now in all of the usual places, all of the good bookshops and also on Amazon as well, and Steve has even made an audiobook too. We will have, in the Pod News newsletter coming up to its launch on the 1st of October, we will have a free chapter for you to read and, if you can't be bothered reading it, a free chapter from the audio book as well. So I'm looking forward to doing that. But you ended up catching up with Steve Pratt, didn't you? Yeah?

Sam Sethi: 6:52

Steve and I have been talking on and off for a couple of years about the attention economy. It's something that I have a deep interest in. So when Steve said he's got his book coming out, I was really excited. And yeah, steve and I spoke, and I started off by asking him tell me about the premise of this book, what is Earn it?

Steve Pratt: 7:12

It is a book about how to earn attention in an era where people are protecting their attention more fiercely than they ever have before, and kind of an acknowledgement that a lot of the ways that we've been thinking about interacting with audiences don't work anymore, that interrupting people or making mediocre things or cranking out a lot of high volume of things that are not of exceptional quality are actually not the best way to earn people's attention, and so it's a mindset shift and it's also a guide for how to do it.

Sam Sethi: 7:45

Why is attention so important in this digital age? We're all flip-flopping. We've got what they call goldfish memories. We can't last more than 30 seconds.

Steve Pratt: 7:53

I think it's the most valuable resource on the planet right now. You know, if you don't have any attention, you literally have nothing. If you're a podcaster and people listen to one second of your podcast and leave because it's not very good, you have nothing. You have no listeners, you have no completion rates. Your advertisers get no impressions. No one subscribes.

Steve Pratt: 8:13

You apply this to any medium can create unique value that can only come from you for that audience. You begin to outperform other people because you're earning lots and lots of attention by creating value for them. And I think it does require a mindset shift for a lot of people to think about. If you start with earning attention, you're starting audience first. You're starting off with the understanding that it isn't just like a relationship. You don't just instantly on your first date, propose to somebody and say let's get into a long-term relationship. You have to earn it. You have to build trust by creating value and get into a relationship and then hopefully, over time, somebody becomes a subscriber or a customer or whatever your end business goal might be in that route.

Sam Sethi: 9:07

But okay, so most corporate entities are conservative with a small C they don't want to take the risk. So is there a good example of companies who have grabbed attention by taking something different, doing it new or doing it slightly surprisingly?

Steve Pratt: 9:26

Well, it's funny. I'll take an example from the book, like from somebody that I haven't worked with before. There's an oat milk company called Oatly and I can't think of, in some ways, a more boring category to think about. How can we get people excited about oat milk? And yet they've totally done it Like the courage and bravery that they have shown, with the creativity.

Steve Pratt: 9:49

I'm literally talking about an oat milk company on your podcast right now because it's so good. I will read their product packaging Like there's tons and tons of words on their cartons and I will read it all because it's entertaining. They have really strong values. They know exactly who they are and they have like a manifesto on their website called what we believe and it is not for everybody, but it's like I know exactly what this oat milk company believes and they're fun and interesting and I know their personality and they're doing some just entertaining stuff that I will always give my attention to it, as long as they keep delivering surprising things that do not seem like they should be coming from an oat milk company but are bang on with their strategy, where I just know who they are and what they stand for, and I'm happy to tell lots of other people about it because they've taken those risks.

Sam Sethi: 10:41

I guess when the commodity is so vanilla, I mean milk, is milk right? I'm sure they'll say that's not the case. But you talk about in the book, about Red Bull soft fizzy drink. Fundamentally it's the same old, same old right. And how do you get above the budgets of Coke and Pepsi? So they do crazy stunts like jumping out of an air balloon at God knows how high.

Steve Pratt: 11:06

Yeah, the edge of space. Yeah yeah, that was a huge one. I think that was maybe the biggest, most exciting marketing event in my life. That is what inspired me to start.

Steve Pratt: 11:16

Pacific Content was seeing Red Bull act like a media company and make things that were not about energy drinks, but that strategically like.

Steve Pratt: 11:26

What do you feel when you see somebody I don't know jumping from outer space or doing a mountain bike ride through a canyon, you know like, over these massive gulfs or insane snowboarding courses? It gives you an adrenaline rush and that's what they want, mapped to Red Bull. But they're just not interrupting you. They're creating action sports that are among the best things on the entire planet and people voluntarily spend lots and lots of time watching it because it's just great stuff and it's a perfect fit for their brand and their values and what you want to think about Red Bull as a result of watching it. Amazing example I think there's more and more companies that could figure out who are we and what are our values and what's our voice and what do we stand for and what are the things that we could create where people would line up and spend lots and lots of time with us because we're creating value, the same way that Red Bull does. What's our flavor of that?

Sam Sethi: 12:21

Is that what Pacific Content was there to do? Was your goal with Pacific content to get brands to come to you and say, Steve and team, can you step us above that noise bar? Is that what you were trying to achieve?

Steve Pratt: 12:35

Yeah, very much. It was an acknowledgement that you don't need a broadcast license anymore to reach a lot of people. You just have to make really good things and if you make good things, word will travel and a lot of people. You just have to make really good things and if you make good things, word will travel and a lot of brands have really big channels to be able to promote shows that they make that are good, that people pay attention to, and there's an idea that you don't have to rent other people's audiences. You can build your own and, much like any podcast creator, the most valuable thing you own as a creator are the people who've opted in and say I'd like to hear more from you all the time, and encouraging brands to think more like that was the kind of the foundational concept of Pacific Content.

Sam Sethi: 13:17

This book is aimed at marketeers to try and get them to change their mindset, to try and open their eyes we talked about. The majority of corporate employees are really myopic, spreadsheet driven, budget driven, risk averse. Generally, that's what you find most corporate people are, because it's not their company, it's not really their job to do too much, to risk their own job. How do you get people? Because what you were talking about was attention champions. But how do you get people within corporates to be those attention champions? Who was the guy at Red Bull who said you know what? We've got this brown fizzy drink. I know what? We'll go and do some crazy stunts, because that's going to be the way that we differentiate, and can I have a budget of a couple of million pounds going to do it? How do you get those mavericks, those people who would want to do this differently, to gain a new way of marketing? How do you find them? How do you incentivize them? How do you make them come forward?

Steve Pratt: 14:21

Well, I've written an entire book for them. It's part one.

Sam Sethi: 14:25

Excellent, there we go.

Steve Pratt: 14:26

Yeah, earn it, available October 1st. In the subtitle of the book it is unconventional strategies for brave marketers. It is very much a book targeted at brave marketers and I think as secondary audiences are people who are creating content. When you think about a marketer, there's somebody who is putting something out into the world, who's hoping to get a business result out of it. I think almost every creator is in the same boat and so a lot of the same stuff applies there. For me.

Steve Pratt: 14:55

A lot of it is thinking about well, let's actually have a look and see whether the numbers make sense with what we're doing, and is it a good use of our time and is there a better way if we think differently about these things and the way.

Steve Pratt: 15:09

Honestly, when I was in kind of business development or strategy meetings with a big new client at Pacific Content, a lot of what we would do is we would just talk about what other companies were doing and use the most brave examples we could about, like this is how Mozilla is making a podcast, this is how Slack is making a podcast, this is how Dell technologies is making a podcast and this is how they're using all their strengths to market these things, and it kind of creates this table stakes level that is very high. That is like, if you're going to do this, do it right. And actually we were very invested when we had a new client. We wanted them to be successful, and so there was a piece of us that just had to kind of be a little bit more aggressive than we were comfortable with in advocating for them to have success in this new space, because we genuinely wanted them to have success and using all the real world examples of the champions who are already doing it was a very good way of getting buy-in.

Sam Sethi: 16:07

So Steve Pratt, he's done Pacific content, he's written the book. What happens next?

Steve Pratt: 16:13

It's interesting, like I. You know, in some ways I'm kind of curious to see myself with the book coming out. This is the first time I've put out a book. I've done all sorts of other media related things in my career, like I worked in television and radio and streaming and you know for in the music industry and then this podcast industry.

Steve Pratt: 16:30

The book has been like this really amazing creative project and I'm having to do all the stuff in the book with the book. So there's this really fun meta layer of going out and trying to talk about the book in unconventional ways and market in unconventional ways. I think I'm just honestly open to any opportunities that come up as a result of putting this out in the world to try and keep shifting the way people think about how they approach interacting with audiences and whether that's as a marketer or as a creator. Um, my goal in doing all of it is to get people to think differently and to embrace new approaches that are kind of an audience first piece that is actually going to deliver you more value in the long run. So you know, whether that is, I'm doing some speaking, I'm doing some corporate workshops, I'm kind of leaning into all of it and saying yes and seeing where I can have the biggest traction and the most fun.

Sam Sethi: 17:19

So earn it out first of October. Where can I get it and who's doing the audio book?

Steve Pratt: 17:25

So I'm. I regrettably if you've suffered through this podcast with my voice for this long. There's more of it in the audio book, but I honestly I had so much fun doing it because I worked with a couple of former Pacific content people Pedro Mendez uh and Gaetan Harris, who directed and sound designed it, and it sounds a lot more like a podcast than an audio book. And Pedro used to produce audio books for a big publishing house and I remember when we started he was like we're going to do everything that I've always wanted to do with an audio book that they would never let us do. So we genuinely had a really fun time making the book and I hope everybody enjoys listening to it. There's a ton of places you can buy the book. If you go to steveprattcom, slash book or just steveprattcom, you can see all the different places you could get it.

Sam Sethi: 18:09

Brilliant.

Steve Pratt: 18:10

Take care, Steve. Hey, thanks, Sam. Always a treat talking to you.

James Cridland: 18:13

The very excellent Steve Pratt, a man who I first met when he was running a radio station in Vancouver a long, long time ago, and his book is full of stories about podcasting, about radio, about TV where he's worked, as well as his new world too, and in the Pod News Extra podcast you can listen to a 30-minute version of that interview, including talking to Sam about the attention economy and true fans, of course, as you might expect, and all kinds of other things too.

Sam Sethi: 18:43

I love how he starts off with this story about felix barham gartner who, in 2012, jumped out of a helium balloon, but it was sponsored by red bull, and, strangely, today, a billionaire called jared isaacman is taken off in a spacex falcon 9 and his goal is to walk on the moon first private individual to walk on the moon. I tell you, billionaires should stop trying to do these stupid things. I think the last one, the last billionaire who tried to do something stupid, drowned, didn't he? In the space hubble that went down to see the Titanic.

James Cridland: 19:17

Oh, yes, I remember that because of course you also had Richard Branson, who ended up flying a balloon and then crashing the balloon and all of that kind of stuff. That was all a little bit mental. And then you've had people going up to space, what they consider to be space, and then back again, and all of that kind of thing. So, yes, there's a very strange lots of mad billionaires out there.

Sam Sethi: 19:41

Yeah, and I think what's interesting.

Sam Sethi: 19:42

Interesting, though, is that when we go back to what steve was talking about, you know he's talking about how you have to raise above the hubbub to get your attention.

Sam Sethi: 19:53

You can't be doing the same old, same old, and I think that's really interesting, um, how people are going to do it. I think the book does give some explanation of how to do that, but I think what we're seeing with Bumper and I'm just putting my True Fans hat on for two seconds is we're building the tools that allow you to capture and share and measure that attention. So I think it's a new thing. Look, people are not going to jump on board what Bumper are doing, what True Fans are doing or even what Steve's doing or saying. I think it's early days for the podcast industry, and I think they'll stick very much in the download measurement market model, and I think you know the IAB way. I think that's not going to change for a couple of years, but I think we're seeing the beginning of that change, and early people getting on board with what's going on will certainly be ahead of the game.

James Cridland: 20:42

Yeah, indeed, and I think that micropayments is an integral part of that, because a micropayment, particularly in terms of podcasting what you're paying you know sometimes per minute when you listen that is a very direct link between attention and some sort of reward for that attention, and I think that that's a very, very interesting thing. So, yeah, no, it's a fascinating world.

Sam Sethi: 21:07

Now moving on. Steve Goldstein did a wonderful session at Podcast Movement. It's the only session. Actually, I had FOMO for not going to this year's Podcast Movement. It was called A View from the Top. James, did you go to that session?

James Cridland: 21:22

I didn't go to the session, but I again I do hear that it was very good. Steve has written up a full thing about it and, of course, you can listen to the audio if you want to, if you want to Both. If you were there at Podcast Movement you may have got, depending on your ticket type, you may have got a link to all of the audio or you can buy the audio from the Podcast Movement website. It's well worth a listen, but Steve has written up quite a lot of different things, particularly around video, which I thought was interesting.

Sam Sethi: 21:54

Yeah, the guests on the panel were some of the friends of our show Dan Meisner again. Andrew Mason from Descript, elsie Escobar Ross Adams. Elsie was very interesting. She was saying it's a generational shift in podcast audiences.

Elsie Escobar: 22:09

Something that I've noticed a lot is you know, we have a lot of legacy audience members who have stepped into understanding and consuming podcasts via their ears, through podcast apps, that have been listening to podcasts for over a decade Now. Those folks are getting older. There's a lot of audience like my children that are coming into the space and their legacy is through video. They're consuming media in a different way and all of the legacy listeners are going to age out and those famous podcasts out there some of them that have been around for a long time have a very solid audience and reach, but they're not gaining the new people.

Sam Sethi: 22:57

She says the shift requires podcasts to diversify their content across multiple platforms. She's talking about using youtube and tiktok, because the younger listeners are very much more visually orientated. What did you think is this? You know, just two old farts like me and you sorry to call you an old fart there, james, but you know you know, a younger old fart than you, a younger, younger old fart. Is it us going? Harumph, harumph video, harumph, harumph and just not really understanding that there is a change going on.

James Cridland: 23:30

Well, look, I think that there's two things here. I think there's one thing if you look at video in terms of the podcast industry, then video adds a whole heap of additional problems. It adds a heap of additional problems in terms of downloads, in terms of how that works in a podcast app. It adds a whole heap of problems in terms of making stuff, in terms of making shows that end up. You know, you end up having to worry about lighting and about video and about camera angles and all of this kind of stuff that you don't have to worry about if you're just making an audio podcast. So you've kind of got that side of it, but you've also got the very real understanding, and I think you know both Elsie and Fareed Haji from the Roost podcast network, who's also speaking, basically saying look, you know, audiences are now using video first platforms to listen to podcasts.

Farid Haji: 24:25

Recently. I've been having a conversation in the last few weeks Do you put the clips on the same channel that the entire episode is on? Should you have a separate channel for clips? Someone was saying that for the aesthetic of it, it looks jumbled. You can't really see what's what. I think it's not an either or, but it's a both. Even now, if you look at it, there's another thing on your YouTube channel, which is the community post, where you can put the community post on there. So wait up, don't go to Substack, don't go anywhere else. Use it here and even now in the last few months, put your RSS here as well. So I think it's about learning to use the tool based on your reality and what you're also getting from your audience. If you have a clips channel with the clips going on, great. And then if you want to invite the audience to also say, hey, if you want the full episode, it's right here, I think, also great.

James Cridland: 25:16

That's how they're now consuming a ton of content. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're watching the screen, but you've got a screen on all of the devices now that you are consuming podcasts on, so why not add video in there? Why not add some form of visual accompaniment? You know, and I think there is certainly something to be said for that, and I think you know Ross Adams said it's not RSS. You know they look at things like TikTok and other things. It all works in a different way he says.

Ross Adams: 25:52

I mean for us. You know we rely on RSS for a lot of our technologies and how we deliver advertising and we have basically two formats within RSS, which is kind of a pre-made ad, or an injected sponsorship, which is a host read ad, right. Then you kind of delve into video long form, short form reels, you know. Longer form on YouTube, you know you look at TikTok as a really big platform for promotion to gain audience and pull them across to video and to audio. You've got to find different formats that work there. Now, delivering ads into that dynamically it's not rss, it works a different way.

Ross Adams: 26:26

But I think you know that's the kind of the basic ways you can obviously bake in the sponsorships within those platforms is easy. But then it's about content creation beyond that. You know how do you interpret a brief and translate it via the influencer to their audience and create content that you can distribute in different platforms. And you know, if we look at um, what was a youtuber back in the day? Like, no one really says they're a youtuber, they're just a content creator. And they use hundreds of platforms, from pinterest to put their reels on, as well as tiktok, youtube, instagram, etc. And they engage in different ways. So you've got to evolve the way that you translate formats and advertising formats to engage with that audience a lot of YouTube consumption.

Stephen Goldstein: 27:24

I mean, if you're Saturday Night Live, more people are watching the YouTube clips that are watching SNL. So they have to figure out how to take the audience and, I guess, almost put it in a pile and figure out how to monetize it. Does that feel like where we're going?

Ross Adams: 27:37

Yeah, it does, and I think you know what you would understand is that you know you might have more audiences engaging in short form content, because people are. You know, time does change. People are time precious. They want to consume things in different ways. But I think you've got to figure out is that audience less valuable to an advertiser if you want to commercialize it, but also you don't want to interrupt the experience too much? So you've got to really think about that format and how that engages with that audience. So you know there's lots of kind of areas we need to look at.

James Cridland: 28:06

But he does basically, you know, again agree that actually lots of different people want to consume media in different ways, and I don't think it's that, you know, Todd versus Rob, conversation of video good or video bad, it's just, video is kind of extra and we all need to think about how we want to do that.

Sam Sethi: 28:28

I'm not convinced video is the way forward for somebody like you or I. I think you know it would be hard for us to. Well, I don't think it'd be hard. I think it'd just be not very interesting just to watch me and you do this show. I don't think it'd be adding any value.

Sam Sethi: 28:45

I think there was another report I was reading from somebody down in Australia as well, joan of Westenberg's blog post. It was called the Hidden Cost of Free Content and the True Price of the Attention Economy. Now I read it because it was an interesting view on the attention economy. But one thing she does talk about is how ways that people are getting rewarded for content is. Now, you know she calls it the buzzfeedification. You know the clickbait, the headlines, the digestible small content. How long form content and long form podcasting is probably not the way forward if you want to be rewarded quickly. And it's that tiktokification, I guess, of content. Um, she says over time this builds in a kind of an attention arms race where more extreme or sensational content is needed to break through the noise. And she said what content creators are doing are adapting their output to meet the new demands, ie creating shorter form content or video.

Sam Sethi: 29:45

So yeah, maybe that's we're creating the model that reinforces the need for video, because that's what TikTok and Reels and everything else is doing there.

James Cridland: 29:54

Yeah, and I think that there's definitely something to be said for that.

James Cridland: 29:58

I mean, I think you know, when you look at some of the more popular shows, which are very long, things like Diary of a CEO, things like Joe Rogan and many others as well, frankly, this show, much though I try and cut it down, I think that what you see is that there are, you know, there are different use cases there.

James Cridland: 30:19

There are different reasons why people listen to those particular shows, and some of them are listened to specifically because they're short and they get a lot of information over very, very quickly the Pod News Daily being a good example of that, I would hope. And then you've got the longer versions, which is something to basically keep you company over a long journey or over while you're doing other things, and I think that they are two different listening modes, if you like. I think people listen to the Pod News Daily leaning forward, listening, learning what they can, and people have this show on, or Podcasting 2.0, or Diary of a CEO as a bit more background, turning up the volume when they hear something that might be of interest, and I suspect that there's just a different mode of listening and that's probably not a bad thing either.

Sam Sethi: 31:13

Well, ashley Carman from Bloomberg had a report last week about why people are making longer form podcasts, and I've reached out to Jack Sylvester, who's the executive director at Flight Studio, who are the producers of the Diary of a CEO, and he'll be on next week to talk about both the Diary of a CEO but also why they're making longer form content in the Diary of a CEO.

James Cridland: 31:38

Yeah, that should be really interesting, so looking forward to that next week on the Pod News Weekly Review.

Speaker 2: 31:44

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

Sam Sethi: 31:51

James, apple had a big announcement this week. Apple talked about their new phones, they talked about their new watches, their new earbuds and they released actually to developers last night night iOS 18 and macOS Sequoia, which is due for public release next week. Have you downloaded it yet?

James Cridland: 32:12

I've downloaded iOS 18. I've been on the beta for that for quite some time. I haven't yet dared get the new macOS. I will wait until that goes gold next week, which should be nice.

James Cridland: 32:26

But in terms of iOS 18, one new thing in Apple podcasts that you should be aware of I mean, you know they've added colour coordinated desktop widgets if you care. But the thing that is actually important is that chapters get even more visible in the new iOS 18. If you hold down that play button bar, you can scrub forwards and back and now you can see where the chapter points are, what the chapter points are called and all of that kind of stuff. So it's a very much more useful way of skipping through a particular show, particular shows like this, which have chapters in them. You know, it's a real addition to the user experience.

James Cridland: 33:11

So if you are making a show, if your show is longer than five minutes, it should have chapters in it and you should get those chapters in it ideally this week, so that when everybody starts upgrading next week chapters in it, ideally this week, so that when everybody starts upgrading next week, then everybody will actually see these chapters appear in Apple Podcasts. Now you can either use podcast hosts, like our sponsor Buzzsprout, which has full support for chapters, or you can use tools like Forecast, which is from Marco Arment or from Hindenburg, to add those as well. Have you played with iOS 18? Yeah, I have, I mean.

Sam Sethi: 33:46

I have to say there's generally not a lot new. I mean, obviously the podcasting stuff's quite interesting and I'm glad they've added chapters and chapter titles, but generally all of the Apple intelligence stuff that was due is not coming out till 2025, so don't hold your breath.

James Cridland: 34:03

Maybe of more interest to those who are in the podcasting world is new headphones, because Apple has actually done quite a lot in terms of those new headphones, airpods 4, which are the new AirPods the world's best selling Bluetooth headphones. I've just made that up, but I think it's true, and they've made two different versions of that. So firstly, they've got a slightly different shape, which apparently is a better shape, and blah, blah, blah, but they've got a version of that which has noise cancellation. Not quite sure how well that noise cancellation is going to work because these are the headphones without the rubber tips to them, so I'm not quite sure how well that noise cancellation will work, but maybe it'll have an effect it's worthwhile having a look at. There's AirPods Max has got USB-C charging. That's exciting.

James Cridland: 34:57

And AirPods Pro 2, this, I think, is really interesting and it's pretty hidden away. It wasn't even in the press release that Apple sent me, because I get the Australian press releases from Apple for some reason, but in the American press releases it was talking about the fact that AirPods Pro 2, which are the expensive in-ear headphones, will include a hearing test and a way for those headphones to act as clinical hearing aids so proper hearing aids to fix any issues that you have with your hearing, and I think that that's fascinating because if you look at the world of hearing aids, that has been a really moribund industry for 20 years now. There's been no real new features that have happened in the hearing aid industry at all. They cost thousands of dollars for you to buy a pair of hearing aids. Sudden, you've got Apple coming along with their AirPods Pro, which I think is, you know, somewhere in the region of $300 or something like that, and they will work as hearing aids, which I think is a really big deal.

James Cridland: 36:11

And apparently it's all Joe Biden, because apparently Joe Biden changed the rules in the US to allow hearing aids to be made by anyone, not just people who were licensed to make hearing aids in the first place. So all of a sudden, somebody like Apple can actually go to the FDA and say we've got these things, we think that they are good for hearing aids, we've followed all of the rules, can you approve them please? And the FDA can now turn around and say yes, whereas they never were able to in the past. So hooray, joe Biden. Apparently.

Sam Sethi: 36:49

Moving on James StreamYard, a product I really like, actually A product that I've used in the past quite extensively. I know Rob Greenlee was very big into using StreamYard. It was acquired recently by Bending Spoons out of Italy. They've done something very naughty, though, haven't they? What have they done?

James Cridland: 37:09

Yes, they have a brand new owner, a company called Bending Spoons. Now, bending Spoons is the company that also owns Evernote, and it owns who else does it own? Meetup Meetup as well? Yes, exactly right, and yes, and so they ended up buying StreamYard earlier on in the year. This is the man who's now in charge of it.

Sam Sethi: 37:35

Hi everyone, I am Davide, product manager at Benny Spoons, the company that recently acquired StreamYard. Okay, so what is next for StreamYard? What can you expect?

James Cridland: 37:44

Well, what can you expect? I'll tell you what you can expect. You can expect to pay 80% more than what you are paying now. That's an incredible increase. Not just that, not just increasing their monthly pricing by 80%. Everyone who is currently a StreamYard monthly customer will all have to pay that from next month. So they're changing pricing of their cheaper plan from $25 to $45 a month. The company interestingly removed the pricing for StreamYard from the public website in July, so you actually have to log in, or, in my case, I actually had to go and sign up for it so that I could actually see what the pricing was. I mean, there's something dodgy there.

James Cridland: 38:30

So, yes, and it turns out that the original co-founders of StreamYard actually left the business when it was sold to Bending Spoons. They both said we tried to buy back StreamYard ourselves, but unfortunately it didn't work out, which is quite a shame If you look at what else bending spoons have done. They were the people that doubled the price of Evernote and basically made there be hardly any free Evernote anymore. If you remember, evernote used to be a massive thing in terms of keeping notes and things. All of that went away. And Meetup they took the subscription price of Meetup and tripled it. So they're clearly a company that goes in, buys things that it thinks are too cheap, puts the prices up and sees if they can make a more profitable business that way. But, yes, quite a thing. So yeah, so Riverside is available, clean Feed is available, a bunch of other tools are available and, of course, descript has the whole thing built in. Now, if you're a current StreamYard customer, I know that they don't quite offer the same thing, but nearly do, so worthwhile taking a look at that.

James Cridland: 39:46

You used to use StreamYard, didn't you?

Sam Sethi: 39:48

Yeah, I used it for the podcast festivals. I did, and I really love it because I think some of the tools they built for you know, branding around your video was so simple and quick to use. I mean I was sad when it was first bought by Hopin. I used Hopin for some of the online festivals and then I was really excited when they first bought StreamYard. But they did nothing with it and it just languished. And then again, this acquisition really just turns me off. I've cancelled my StreamYard subscription. I used to be on an Evernote subscription. I've cancelled that. I used to use Skitch, which was part of Evernote, for screen grabbing. Yeah, just not the sort of way that I wanted StreamYard to go. I really did hope somebody would have bought it. I mean, yes, we saw Descript by Squadcast, but I was hoping somebody like that would have bought StreamYard and kept it within the platform and the founders would have stayed.

James Cridland: 40:46

But they never did so it's a sad day for me. Let's go around the world News from the UK, sam, to do with football, your type of football. So therefore this is definitely a Sam story.

Sam Sethi: 41:02

Can I just point out American football, they don't actually kick it, apart from once. They throw it around a lot. Why is it called football? Then handball would make more sense. American handball would be sensible. It's not football. Stop nicking our stuff, right back to it soccer, so they understand what we're talking about. Yes, uh, sports social has scored three more official football clubs. Um, which is great, and I hadn't realized how much they'd been doing in the background. Yeah, um, quietly. They've now got over 500 podcasts on their network yes, they're doing, uh, very well.

James Cridland: 41:40

they've announced um, an exclusive partnership with um under the kosh, which is a big football podcast which is regularly in the top 10. And also, they've signed up Stoke City, wolverhampton Wanderers, wolverhampton Wanderers and Aston Villa. The Midlands have been sucked in. So, yes, so Wolves Villa. And who is the Stoke City? Who are they? The Potters presumably, but anyway, they've been signed up. So, yes, they appear to be, you know, focusing on a niche and really getting into that niche. So, congratulations, sports Social.

Sam Sethi: 42:16

Worthwhile taking a peek at the one, thing that I did was I looked at that because when I was going 500 podcasts, my God. And then I was going to try and aggregate those into a publisher feed in True Fans and I gave up because 500 is just too long to do. But publisher feeds this is a perfect example of why you need a publisher feed. Because Sports Social could aggregate, with remote items all of their feeds into one single publisher feed. Because sports social could aggregate with remote items all of their feeds into one single publisher feed and then apps like true fans could then suck it in and create a single page for them, which would then allow people to do discovery. So if somebody was looking at the wolves podcast, they could see, oh, there's a publisher called sports social. I wonder what else they actually produce? Click bang and then suddenly they get the full gamut of the other 500 podcasts. But yeah, shame no one's really picking up on publisher feeds right now.

James Cridland: 43:13

No, apart from, of course, apple Podcasts, who offer channels which kind of do the same thing but kind of don't. So, yes, there's a thing In the US. Good news for LAist, who of course make a ton of podcasts as well as run a radio station in Los Angeles, or rather a number of different radio stations They've been awarded a grant of $2.4 million for local journalism, which sounds a lot but it isn't really. But it is part of $15 million worth of funding from the LA Local News Initiative. Maybe that's where the future for local podcasting is. It's from grants from large foundations that want to help local journalism. Who knows? In Canada it's really interesting watching a ton of different companies grabbing the rights for individual shows. So Rogers Sports and Media, the big broadcaster in Canada, they are now selling Wondery shows in the country. The network was with DAX and Global, so that's a nice thing. And I've just got some breaking news from PodX, who've bought something else. Can you believe?

Sam Sethi: 44:28

Oh, my word who have they got now?

James Cridland: 44:30

So you may remember, we covered PodX an awful lot. They have bought a company called Perfect Day Media. You might be wondering who they are. They are one of the Nordic's largest and most successful podcast studios. Well, that makes sense, doesn't it, for PodX to end up buying, because they already own a bunch of companies Filt and Swoman Podcast Media in the Nordic, so there's one more.

Stephen Goldstein: 44:56

So gosh they keep on going, don't they? Yeah, don't they just.

James Cridland: 45:01

And in Australia the Australian podcast ranker for August was released. I wish that Trident Digital would release this ranker based on a four-week timescale, not based on a calendar month, because calendar months you can't compare. So, as one example, if you look at total downloads for the top 200 shows, they were down 3.5%. So you look at that and you go does that mean that podcasting is down in Australia? Well, no, it doesn't, Because if you have a look at weekdays, August has four and a half percent fewer weekdays than July. So you could argue that total downloads for the top 200 shows should be down by four and a half percent because most downloads happen on a weekday. But it's very difficult to compare. So I wish they would produce four weekly rankers in Australia, as they do in many other countries. It's a bit frustrating in Australia, as they do in many other countries. It's a bit frustrating. Anyway, the highest new entry it's them again. Wanderers Hysterical was at number 73. So some good stuff there.

James Cridland: 46:07

Events are happening all over the world. The Podcast Hall of Fame is back at Podfest on January, the 17th next year. It's just been announced Also coming up, the British Podcast Awards, which have announced the final shortlist the New York Festival's 2025 Radio Awards now open for entry, the Amby's open for entry and if you act quick, you can still get in at the cheaper price. There is also Pod Summit, YYC 2024, which, if you know your airport is in Calgary in Alberta in Canada. That event happening next week with speakers from across the industry, live podcasts too, and I think Danny Brown, friend of the show, will be there as well and something called PodCamp happening in May in London. What's PodCamp, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 46:55

Yeah, and this is an idea that I picked up on from Daniel J Lewis and Dave Jackson from their own podcast, future of Podcasting. Look, I've tried for a number of years with the big events the London Podcast Show and Podcast Movement to get a podcasting 2.0 track. So I thought, actually, why don't we do a PodC camp and we'll do it at the same time in parallel to the London podcast show? I'm talking to the guys at City University about using their campus. But what I was really pleasantly surprised about was I posted up on LinkedIn and, oh my god, of all my posts this year, that was the one that got the biggest feedback, the biggest um likes, the most comments.

Sam Sethi: 47:40

My dms went mental with people saying I want to be there, how can I speak? And you look at it and it felt like there was this pent-up demand for something different. And so, yeah, hopefully, um, we can get this all going. But yeah, I'm going to be doing a podCamp London 21st, 22nd of May and, yeah, it'll be exciting. I hope All sounds very good. The Tech Stuff on the PodNews Weekly Review.

James Cridland: 48:07

Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday on the PodNews newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. We've got a bunch of stuff to get through today haven't we?

Sam Sethi: 48:15

We have. Well, let's start off with Spotify. It's rolling out trackable sharing links. So the guys at Bump have spotted this tool which appears to be rolling out. I don't know if you've seen it yourself yet, james, but what it's doing is taking links that seem functionally identical to the standard Spotify share links, but they have one important difference they're trackable. James links.

James Cridland: 48:39

But they have one important difference they're trackable, James, yeah, trackable. So you can work out if you promote your show on LinkedIn and you promote your show on X, then you can see where you got the most amount of listeners from not just clicks, because everybody can do that, but actually listeners, and that's a very important, very useful thing. So you can actually do that with Apple Podcasts if you use LinkFire. But now you can do that with Spotify as well, and the clever folks at Bumper have worked out a way where you can do both so you can offer people both Apple and Spotify and still be able to measure that Worthwhile. Taking a peek, there's a link in the newsletter to that bumper piece earlier on in the week. Activity Pub is a thing that you are leaning into, Sam, and True Fans has properly integrated with Activity Pub by the looks of things.

Sam Sethi: 49:33

Yeah, again, this is something I guess I've been working on for about two years, so that's the background to it. Everything we did in TrueFans was about tracking users' attention and their activity and creating an activity stream for them which they could then look at, they could filter and they could do various things and then obviously, aggregating that for podcast creators and musicians. But one of the things I wanted to do was federate that content out with the user's permission and it's been an absolute pain in the backside. I was going to say something else and because the ActivityPub documentation is just so poorly done, but last Friday night, just in the middle of the podcasting 2.0 show, I managed to put a comment on the show within True Fans and it was federated out to Adam and Dave, who saw the comment and it worked, extended that now to what you play, whether you become a fan of a show, whether you have a like of a show, so a boost, or if you leave a comment and playlists, and we've got lots of other things we're going to be doing. But yeah, it's been a long journey but we got there. I'm very excited.

Sam Sethi: 50:53

It's still not completely finished as a feature, but yes, we found a few bugs within Mastodon. But overall, we can now share your activity with your social network if people want to follow you to find out. So if somebody wanted to follow you, James, see what shows you were listening to how long you listened to them. So listen time, percent completed and value paid. How long you listen to them. So listen time, percent completed and value paid. You can now publish that content to your social media across the ActivityPub clients. And, yeah, it all works.

James Cridland: 51:26

Hmm, yeah, it's all very exciting and I think certainly using, you know, using the Fediverse in this way means that you can all of a sudden build some very interesting and exciting things through the Fediverse, which essentially means that you can build all kinds of sort of things around what Sam is listening to, what Sam is taking photographs of, blah, blah, and it can be this whole stream of what people are talking about. I think when people look at the Fediverse, they only think of Mastodon, they only think of comments or notes. If we're going to be strictly accurate, and actually it's so much more than that, and I like the idea of being able to publish a listen event. I have listened to this particular show, even if that doesn't appear in Mastodon, great fine, because Mastodon isn't for that. Mastodon is for comments, and so having a listen verb that gets picked up by something else where people can go and have a look at this type of things that I listen to, that's quite interesting and exciting, I think.

Sam Sethi: 52:35

Moving on James. Now I haven't heard of this one because I don't use an RSS reader anymore since Google killed it, but a popular Mac OS RSS reader called Reader, with double E, now fully supports podcasts. I haven't tried it, have you?

James Cridland: 52:50

Yeah, Reader is interesting. Reader is sort of turning from being an RSS reader to being a reader of all kinds of things across the internet including, by the way, the Fediverse so you can plug in people who you want to follow on the Fediverse and it will do that. It will also now properly follow podcasts and you can play podcasts back through it and it just acts and works just like a normal podcast app. It's a very interesting model worthwhile taking a peek at. It's a brand new rewrite and redesign of the RSS reader that it used to be, and, in fact, so much of a new redesign it is. They've actually kept the old version, so Reader Classic is available, but also this new Reader is now available as well. It's a very interesting model and I think it's worthwhile sort of taking a peek at. It's kind of an RSS reader without the RSS, which is a worthwhile thing. Also, op3.dev, which is our favourite open podcast analytics service, that is now measuring over 2, 2000 monthly active podcasts. Congratulations to John Spurlock for that. That is still looking for sponsors. So if you are a company or if you are a rich benefactor who would like to help OP3 continue, then that would be a super good thing. Pod News is one of those, so please come and join us. Op3.dev is worthwhile taking a peek at.

James Cridland: 54:26

Some lovely hardware coming up. There's a new gaming microphone from Shure called the MV6, which is kind of the MV7's little baby brother. It doesn't contain some of the clever things that the MV7 does, like compression and various other things, but it is rather a lot cheaper. Usb-c its software offers auto level and a kind of popper stopper type thing. Anyway, it's worthwhile taking a peek at.

James Cridland: 54:54

Definitely worthwhile taking a peek at is this thing called an RM1 from DHD Audio. Now, this looks like a Focusrite Scarlett USB interface Just looks like that. And so you wonder well, what's so exciting about it? Well, if you've got a web browser and that might be on an iPad, it might be on your laptop, it might be on whatever you can connect your web browser to it. And all of a sudden it looks and works like a roadcaster. It's got faders, it's got all kinds of other controls, it's got compression for every single channel that can get into it, it's got Bluetooth, it's got all kinds of stuff. It looks really, really cool and it's busy being shown off at IBC.

James Cridland: 55:47

I don't know whether the pricing for it has been announced quite yet. I would like the pricing for it to be announced, but it doesn't look as if it has been quite yet. But what an amazing looking tool. It looks very, very smart, so worthwhile keeping an eye on that. I'm always a fan of anything that has, you know, plug in ethernet on the back of it, because you know that it's going to be a properly good piece of equipment. But, yes, worthwhile taking a peek at that. So the RM1 from DHD Audio you'll find more information on the website, which is rm1.audio. That's a good website address.

Sam Sethi: 56:29

James, I can just sense your excitement.

James Cridland: 56:32

I'm excited by that. Can you tell it's like?

James Cridland: 56:34

hardware porn for you this I have a friend of mine who works for the company, but he works for the company on a very sort of part-time basis and he is very excited about it. He was going to show it to me at a podcast show in London earlier on in the year but unfortunately it wasn't quite ready enough to be shown. But yes, if he's been involved with it then I suspect it's going to be a very, very smart thing, so worth a peek at. Also Spreaker. So if you remember, Spotify for podcasters under its previous guise of Anchor had all kinds of features in its app which allowed you to record and edit shows. Spotify took all of that away earlier on in the year. Spreaker is going to add all of those features to its app.

James Cridland: 57:28

Spreaker Create. It's a way to create a podcast directly from the Spreaker app. The company has just opened beta testing for that, which I think is very interesting. I think the more things that we can make it to be easy to start podcasting, I think, the better. So interesting seeing that from Spreaker, which is easily the number two podcast host in the world Now.

Sam Sethi: 57:51

James, you've been busy with a little bit of tech stuff on your own website. What have you been?

James Cridland: 57:55

up to yes. Well, apart from trying to make it stop falling over all the time, which is still work in progress, but I now support full credits using the podcast person tag, and I should point out, by the way, that Buzzsprout supports full credits. I didn't appreciate that if you add somebody as a guest in the Buzzsprout dashboard, then they appear as a guest in the podcast person tag, which is very nice, so hurrah to them. But yes, I now support proper full credits using the podcasting 2.0 tag, which is nice. Also, I am also supporting the podcast funding tag rather more obviously. Now. It's a great big green button after some feedback that I had on Mastodon a couple of weeks ago to make that far more obvious.

James Cridland: 58:47

And two sort of little changes. Firstly, I've got rid of web mentions. Does anybody care? No, thought not. Secondly, I've changed. I used to list any show that did streaming sats as value for value, but actually people have got very confused with what value for value is, and value for value is not streaming sats. It can be streaming sats, it's not streaming sats. So therefore, I've changed its name to streaming payments. So if your podcast is value for value enabled or value enabled or streaming sats enabled or micropayments enabled. However on earth we talk about all of this, then I've just gone for something that isn't value for value, because value for value can happen in other ways and instead calling it streaming payments. I don't know whether that's the right thing. Streaming sats maybe, but streaming payments probably works as well. What would you?

Sam Sethi: 59:36

call it, yeah, I'd stick with streaming payments. Probably works as well. What would you call it? Yeah, I'd stick with streaming payments. I think, um, you've told me, and we need to do it which is to dumb down the tech and the, the wording you know. So, instead of calling them activity verbs in true fans, let's call them just activities. Instead of calling them, yeah, microments with sats over the lightning network, which means nothing to anyone other than a few geeks. So, yeah, no streaming payments is great because people will understand the payment. They might not understand the element of streaming to begin with, but at least it's easier to understand than lightning payments or value payments or any other connotation.

Speaker 2: 1:00:17

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

James Cridland: 1:00:22

Yes, it's our favourite time of the week, it's Boostergram Corner, and we've got some fan mail as well, some of which you can see on our sparkly brand new Buzzsprout podcast website, weeklypodnewsnet. Yes, some nice fan mail.

Sam Sethi: 1:00:48

What's this first one from Bob Cartwright, sam. It says Hi, james and Sam, am I correct that the intention is others in your social circle will be able to see what you are listening to and therefore act as a way to share podcasts of interest. You are correct there, bob. He says it's a great idea. However, let's say everything is good in your life and you forget you have it on. Everything is good in your life and you forget you have it on.

Sam Sethi: 1:01:00

Then, sometime later, things change and perhaps you start listening to office stress, divorce, menopause, suicidal erectile function, self-help podcast, basically, and then you forget you've shared that with your associates and it could be embarrassing. How do you plan to keep that content private? Well, actually, bob, thank you for actually seeing this as a problem, and we didn't. We've added a feature now, so on every individual podcast, you can now turn off sharing. So even if you've got general sharing to the Fediverse turned on in your user settings, you can do individual podcasts where we will not share any content from that podcast, whether it's a play comment or any other thing that you may have done with that podcast. So thanks for the feature suggestion. We've taken it on board. Hopefully that fixes the issue that you might think our new feature for sharing to the third diverse causes.

James Cridland: 1:01:52

Yes, very nice. Jim James sends us a message, both from the UK, bob and Jim. He says how many active shows are there? You called out around 300,000. Rephonic has the same, but Listen Notes suggests a bounce back to 600,000 in 2024. What's going on? That's Jim from the Unnoticed Entrepreneur. Well, I'll tell you what's going on.

James Cridland: 1:02:19

Let's firstly have a look at what Listen Notes is actually saying. What's Listen Notes actually saying? They are saying active podcasts by year, 600,000 in the year so far. So there are 602,000 podcasts which are active this year so far, 2,000 podcasts which are active this year so far. That's what that says. Now I have been quoting 350,000 roughly, and that number is I think it's either 60-day or 90-day active shows Should probably find out, shouldn't I? That would probably be helpful. But it's one of those two and so, of course, the numbers are going to be slightly different in terms of that. But yes, there are lots of different ways of working out whether something is an active show or not, and that's obviously, you know, one of those. You know one of those things. Those things, I'll tell you at the moment that if you look at the last 30 days, it's 316,000, according to the podcast index. So the last 30 days is very different, obviously, to the last eight months, which is the Listen Notes number, so glad we fixed that one too.

Sam Sethi: 1:03:34

Yes, Everyone's got a different number number like everyone's ranked number one, correct I?

James Cridland: 1:03:39

think correct, and and and I should uh also announce that we are once more, uh, a top three technology podcast in good pods. Uh, who'd have thought it? Um, uh, right, a ton of boosts, um, uh, one from fountain. 1,225 sats from rw nash thank very much. Name and shame the podcatcher developers. Gents, this was me talking about some weird podcatcher action last week, some very strange download things going on. Yes, two particular large podcatchers which I'm not going to name yet because I'm still sort of digging away there and seeing what I can actually find. And you know, I mean it would be nice if those emails weren't being ignored. So we will do that and then I will come back with some more details once I've got those details. Two exciting, very small amounts of sats here Sam, from somebody called Dave.

Sam Sethi: 1:04:39

Yeah, he was on his show podcasting 2.0 live last Friday when I announced that we support the Fediverse. So he said, right, trying again after refollowing. So he logged in, refollowed himself, in effect, and then he sent himself a boost or a like and so, yes, he saw it all up here and so it works. Yes, um, so that was very exciting for me as well that he did that live on the show yes, I believe you were dancing around the kitchen.

James Cridland: 1:05:09

I was because I.

Sam Sethi: 1:05:11

I genuinely say look, many people think that you know, all of us podcasting 2.0 apps are funded. We're not. Many of us think we might have big teams like Apple or Spotify. We don't. We don't have deep pockets and we are probably one or two man bands trying to fight really hard to get attention, trying to get people to use our platforms. And you know, when you see something that you've worked for for, as I said, two years as an end point, yeah, it is very exciting. You have to take the wins because there are a lot of knocks in this game. And so, yeah, I was very excited. So, yeah, dancing around my kitchenats from Adam Curry Thank you, adam, thanks for the birthday shout-out, he says which is very kind.

James Cridland: 1:06:01

We, of course, gave a birthday shout-out both on this show and also on the Pod News Daily as well. The Pod News Daily contained a birthday shout-out in Dutch, just for a little bit of fun. And thank you also to our power supporters, the Magnificent Seven as they currently are. You can stop me from saying the Magnificent Seven by going to weeklypodnewsnet, tapping in your credit card and giving us something like $5, which is what these fine people are Cy Jobling, Rachel Corbett, Dave Jackson, Mike Hamilton, Matt Medeiros, Marshall Brown and Cameron Moll Cameron Moll, of course, being one of the brains behind the new, beautiful looking weeklypodnewsnet, which is worthwhile taking a peek at. So what's happened for you this week, Sam?

Sam Sethi: 1:06:48

Well, I presented at Feddy Forum last night and that was very exciting. So I did a live demo of True Fans. So I listened to a podcast and then became a fan and then they saw it automatically published that activity to the photo verse. So that worked very well. So very excited. You know, we talked a little bit about Ainsley's interview on a show called Radio Detox for her new album called Exeless, interview on a show called Radio Detox for her new album called X-Less, and it's this structure of putting interviews with trailers and tracks, then using the podcasting 2.0 technology, so pod ping, to update the trailers to full tracks. Micro payments, so streaming payments.

Sam Sethi: 1:07:32

Um, one of the other things I'm doing is working with Julie now on an idea that I've had for a while, which is she's going to create a micro fund for that actual podcast, so a million sats, which is about $500. And she's going to allow people to listen to the trailer, but if they listen to the trailer, instead of them paying to listen, they will get paid to listen. So're reversing the strat sats flow, and so this is the first test of us doing it and the idea is that hopefully for the I don't know one two minutes you'll earn 30, 40, 50 sats, let's say so. Not massive amounts, but enough to reward your time and attention. And maybe you'll then go and tell your friends through word of mouth about the album, or you'll subscribe to the full album and maybe buy the album when it comes out. So again, a lovely little test of podcasting 2.0 technology. Very nice, Nice.

James Cridland: 1:08:29

James. So what's happened for you? Well, I've been mostly trying to work out why the PodNews website keeps on falling over. Now, if you go to the PodNews website, you'll never see it falling over, because everything's cached and there's CloudFront in front of that and everything else. But if you try and, you know, do anything that might make me some money, so follow a link to a classified ad, for example, or you know any of that kind of stuff then that didn't work because for some reason, for some reason, the website keeps on falling over and I'm trying to work out why that might be.

James Cridland: 1:09:07

I did work out yesterday, for example, that we made more than 8,500 calls to Apple's iTunes API, which is one every 10 seconds, which I'm kind of trying to work out whether that's a lot or whether that's hardly anything, and I think it's probably somewhere in the middle, isn't it? Yes, but yes, but still, there we go, but at least I'm caching all of those now. So, yeah, so it's been basically a very tedious couple of days of just sitting there reading through log files, watching the tail of the access logs and the error logs and stuff like that, trying to work out why the available memory on the server is jumping from between 200, well, two gig down to one gig and then back up again and trying to work out whether or not that's a bad thing or not and all of this kind of thing. It's been a very tedious, tedious week. So I'm looking forward to avoiding the tediousness next week when hopefully I'll have fixed all of this. Wow.

Sam Sethi: 1:10:14

Sitting there watching logs. That has got to be the height of um boredom, hasn't it better than watching paint drive?

James Cridland: 1:10:21

but just about I mean, I mean I have worked out now a way of watching logs, um, which is very fancy, in the uh, watching, you know, live logs in the browser, um, you know, and all of that. So it's, uh, less, less tedious than it was, but even so, my goodness, I mean the amount of little things that I have found, the amount of because I used to run a different website using the PodNews code and so I put lots of code to deal with all of that and I'm still scraping all of that stuff out and it's just a little bit tedious. But there I am looking at the equivalent. If I was to use Beehive or somebody, or MailChimp, then I would be spending literally thousands of dollars a month running just the newsletter part. So the fact that I can manage to run pretty well everything for about 300 US dollars a month is pretty good, but even so, it's just beginning to annoy me a bit, sam, it's beginning to annoy me a bit.

James Cridland: 1:11:28

So, yes, but apart from that, that's all good. And, yes, enjoyed, it's nice to be home again. And enjoyed it's nice to be home again and shaking my fist at the pool, which has already turned green because it got too warm. So anyway, I'm sure that we'll fix it. Anyway, that's it for this week, if you've enjoyed this podcast. The newsletter has got more news and stories. You can find it at podnewsnet and the podnews daily, wherever you get your podcasts, and there are longer interviews in the podnewsnet and the Pod News Daily, wherever you get your podcasts. And there are longer interviews in the Pod News Extra podcast as well.

Sam Sethi: 1:12:00

You can support this show by streaming sats. You can give us feedback by using the Buzzsprout fan mail link in our show notes and you can send us a boostogram or become a power supporter at weeklypodnewsnet, which is our new website as well Nice, shiny, brand new one.

James Cridland: 1:12:18

Our music is from Studio Dragonfly. We use Clean Feed to record this audio. Our voiceover is Sheila Dee, and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting, keep podcasting, get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnewsnet.

Stephen Goldstein: 1:12:34

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