March 9, 2025 • 40 mins
A full version of an interview with Adam and Dave about their new product.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The Pod News Weekly Review with Buzzsprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm very excited.
I've got two very specialguests on the show today.
It's Adam Currie and Dave Jones, known as the Podfather, the
Podsage, and they're going to betalking about the Holy App.
Welcome chaps.
Hello, adam Currie, co-inventorof podcasting, you've got a
brand new app out.
It's called the Godcaster.
What is the Godcaster and whydid you want to bring it out?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Sam, first of all, it's good to be here, a rare you
, me and Dave moment.
I love that a lot.
Godcaster came about over ayear ago.
Someone who had seen me speakat the Spark Media Conference in
Houston came to me and he saidyou know, I've got this thing.
It's not an app, it's a service.
It's for radio stations and I'mkind of in the middle of
(00:55):
determining whether I need to doa technology upgrade.
I hear all these cool thingsabout the podcast index and
about the new features that youhave.
Can you tell me about it?
So, as Dave and I always do,when it comes to podcast index
and 2.0, I'm happy to talk toanybody, particularly someone
who's developing against the APIthat we make available.
So I chatted with him and thenhe came back again.
(01:17):
He had some more questions andby the third or fourth time, his
name is Gordon Marcy.
By the third or fourth time, Ihad started to put together what
was going on, and he's been inthe radio business all of his
life at big, big networks likeSalem and, oh goodness,
ambassador.
There's a big content networkand these are all faith-based
(01:37):
broadcast organizations andstations and the solution he had
was a podcast player for radiostations and as I was talking
with him more and more, Ilearned that there's a real
conundrum with radio, not likewe didn't know it.
I mean, over 20 years ago wefigured that podcasting would
eventually disrupt radio, andthat moment has arrived.
(01:59):
And that arrived to me throughthe faith-based radio stations.
There's about 4,000 of them inthe United States alone and the
problem is they are literallyriding their over-the-air
listenership into heaven.
The average age is 74, andeveryone's already moving to
streaming online.
Most of the radio stations havea button that says listen live
(02:22):
and they're seeing more and moreof their audience go there.
But now here comes the secondissue with radio and this is not
just faith-based radio, it'sall radio Is that local
programming has gone away.
Most of this is naturallysyndicated content, which also
is available on a podcast.
So what radio stations weredoing is they're airing this
programming and it's not justpraise the Lord stuff.
(02:45):
I mean, glenn Beck isconsidered a faith-based
podcaster.
You know Dave Ramsey.
You know there's a lot ofdifferent content out there.
You know news and just maybe abiblical worldview in many
things, but it's a big varietyof content.
And so the station would sayyou know, here's this next
program.
It's a focus on the family, asan example.
(03:05):
And focus on the station wouldsay you know, here's this next
program, it's Focus on theFamily, as an example.
And Focus on the Family wouldsay you're seeing the Focus on
the Family on KCBH and go toFocusontheFamilycom and
subscribe to our podcast.
So the stations are literallysending their audience away to
places where they can getpodcasts and people are either
listening there on their website, they might be subscribing in
an app.
Many of the radio stations haveapps with not much more than a
(03:29):
listen live and support thestation.
This is an interesting part offaith-based radio in the United
States.
It's pretty much value forvalue.
The stations ask for supportand between the stations and the
content programming there'sbeen this issue for 40 years of
how do I know that someone waslistening to your program on my
(03:50):
radio station, gave you adonation, but I don't know about
it, and so we're supposed toshare revenue.
In some cases, the big contentproviders will buy the airtime
Again.
They need to know where did itcome from.
Buy the airtime Again, theyneed to know where did it come
from.
And it's been this big problemthat's been discussed even at
the National ReligiousBroadcasters Conference, where I
was last week, where 5,000people show up, it's been this
(04:13):
issue where they just can'tfigure out what they call
attribution.
So, as I was thinking about it,I'm like, wait a minute, this
can all be easily solved with alot of these 2.0 features that
we've developed over time.
And why don't we create abackend and a player and an API
for the inevitable apps so thatyou can have a live stream?
(04:36):
We know we have the lit tag,you can have as many podcasts, a
whole management interface andreally let these radio station
program directors and people whoknow how to package, market et
cetera, create a place for allof the programming and then have
the audience go to theirwebsite, support the show
(04:58):
through their website, whichwe're doing with the funding tag
.
It's incredible.
We'll get into it with Dave.
But the oh wow moment of allthese broadcasters who said,
wait a minute, now the stationknows that someone hit donate
and we know it as well.
Why, yes, oh, you've solved a40 year old problem Seems simple
to us.
Sometimes you just need somefresh thinking.
So, as we were designing theproduct and Dave will get into a
(05:20):
lot, he had so many geniusideas.
We really made this whole thingabout first party data,
understanding what people aredoing in the player, whether
it's in a podcast app, becauseyou can subscribe to the station
, basically, or whether it'stheir own app, you can really
see what's working.
And this is another thing.
Well, in podcasting in general,we've never really had that,
(05:42):
and the excitement came bothfrom the stations and from the
content producers who also werejust looking at download numbers
and they're saying wait a bit,now I can see how well my
program is performing in Phoenix, arizona, if someone dropped
out after eight minutes, butmeanwhile in Albuquerque, new
Mexico, it's doing much better.
So this all-encompassingsolution kind of came about and
(06:05):
we were just ideating on thisand then Dave Gordon and I
formed a partnership calledGodcaster at Godcasterfm and
we've put this into themarketplace and I think as of
yesterday, we now have, I wantto say, 249 stations who are
using Godcaster and also nowcontent providers like these big
(06:28):
ones, focus on the Family.
They're on thousands of stations.
They're tagging theirprogramming at the end with to
support Focus on the Family.
Go to KHCB, the KHCB website,or use the app and support us
there.
So we've really created abackend service with detailed
measurement and statistics ofwhat is actually happening, and
(06:51):
I was at NRB with Gordon thispast week at the National
Religious BroadcastersConference and we just got
nothing but incredible feedbackand new customers and it's
interesting that this came fromthis direction.
Any radio station could use it,obviously, but for Dave and I
it has the added advantage ofwe're doing this for Jesus, so
(07:13):
we're super happy about it.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Okay, look, I've got two questions before I go to
Dave.
First of all, adam, why can'tthey just drive traffic to the
website, or drive traffic to theusual suspects you know, the
Spotify's and the Apple's and dodynamic ad insertion and get
their money that way?
What's stopping them doing itin what we consider the
traditional 1.0 model ofpodcasting?
(07:36):
Why couldn't they just do itthat way?
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yeah, that's a good question.
Well, first of all, thesestations are not really doing it
for the money.
They need money to survive butthey're doing it to spread the
gospel.
That's their main mission.
The big part of this is everysingle radio station has a
relationship with a church ormultiple churches in their local
community.
(07:58):
So now they are starting to addlocal inserts.
You know, go listen to PastorJimmy's podcast on the KHCB
website.
So you want them, who understandthe radio stations are, you
know, they really understand thelocal market, packaging
marketing to that local market.
And while they still have thesebig megaphones, why not build
(08:20):
up that local property so thatthey can do a lot more localized
content, give people a feelingagain that that station digital
or otherwise, but really movingtowards digital is their
all-encompassing place.
And what they have seen is that50% of their users are moving
towards an app and not a podcastapp but towards an app of their
(08:40):
own, and there's a largeportion is just going to the
website and clicking play, andthis is something I've noticed
as well.
We've been talking about it onPodcasting 2.0, about kind of
the waning of the interest in atraditional inbox-based podcast
application.
So we want to give them thetools to what's being
(09:01):
highlighted and not just addinga feed but really having a
management system where they cansee what's working.
And the way we have it now isyou can literally see in the
live streaming stats you can seesomeone listening to that or a
hashed IP address, someonelistening to that, then hearing
a promo, going over to thestation app or the webpage and
(09:23):
listening to the podcast thatwas promoted, and so really
everybody wins in this model andagain it's all a value for
value based model.
So now they can work togetheron fundraising for both content
producers, for the localproducers, and I feel churches
are content factories andthey're not just doing a weekly
(09:44):
session on Sundays.
They've got men's breakfastministries, they've got youth
ministry, where I'm kind of incharge of our local Godcaster.
We've got the high school kids.
They're doing a podcast aboutthe Frederick's River Billies,
which is our women's basketballteam, who are doing well in the
nationals now no-transcript.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Nice, okay, so it's control, it's monetization tools
, it's administration, all thethings and some of the
podcasting 2.0 capabilities thatwe've all been working on.
Nice, dave, hello, how are you?
I'm good, sam.
Now, adam, you've known for howlong.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Oh gosh, 15 years years.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Okay, so Adam's come to you on several occasions to
say hey, I've got a great ideafor a business, how about you do
it with me?
The last one being the podcastindex, obviously.
So what did you think when hesaid I've got this great idea
for Godcaster?
And what did you think, yeah,let's do it.
Or, oh, my God, not again.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
There's a.
There's always a little anequal amount of both involved in
every in every one of those.
But my standard answer to Adamwhenever he says hey, let's do
so-and-so is yes, and then we'llfigure out actually how to do
it later.
So I just always answer yesfirst and then figure out later
if it's actually possible.
So yeah, the same same thinghere.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I love it that Jim Carrey film yes man when he says
yes to everything.
Yeah, exactly, exactly Okay.
So let's let's take a littlestep back.
How long is it taking you tobuild this platform and where
did you start?
I mean, you've got a blankpiece of paper.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
You're looking at it and you're going.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
How do I build this thing?
So what did you do?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah, what you know look at what what Adam said was
we sort of took over an existingproduct with with Gordon's
product that was calledGlorystone, and so I determined
early on that I was just goingto rebuild that thing from
scratch.
It was an older platform, Imean it still worked well.
It was an older platform thathad been sort of upgraded over
(11:59):
the years to have sort of moremodern features, but the core of
it was still sort of an oldLAMP-based application, php
MySQL that was just showing itsage.
So I just determined to buildfrom scratch and initially
replicate all the features thatwe thought that the current
customers couldn't live withoutand then at the same time, sort
of weave in the newer stuff thatwe knew we were going to be
(12:21):
needing to bring the product upto what we wanted it to be.
So it took I mean it was rapidlots of just you know late night
, early morning coding sessionsto get this thing up and running
in about five months.
So it went from zero to, youknow, launched in five months to
(12:42):
be ready for a discussion aboutit and selling it in RB for
people who would want it.
So that that was the timeframe.
You know we pretty much hiteverything we wanted to achieve
by then.
But that's, you know, to saythat it was a, you know, an
enjoyable build would not beentirely accurate, because it's
rush, rush, rush.
(13:02):
But at the same time, I thinkthe way me and Adam have always
worked has kind of been that waywe just go, go, go, go, go as
fast as possible and then tryingto hit a target, and then at
the end we kind of sit back andsay, okay, where are we at?
Let's go clean up the mess,let's go, you know polish things
up here and this kind of thing.
So that's, we're kind of usedto working that way.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
And we're really we were building it, you know,
building the airplane in flight,to be honest, you know, because
we had customers.
There were existing customerswho had migrated over, and it
would literally be the customerwould say hey, and it would
literally be the customer wouldsay, hey, you know, my window
popped out here, I'm about toget sucked out of the airplane
and we go, dave, we're losingpassengers, man.
So it is the way we've worked.
(13:43):
There's nothing more fantasticthan working with live customers
.
There's also nothing more scarywith working with live
customers, and I just want tosay I've worked with Dave on
many projects.
Some things have just been forus, some things have well,
podcast index, which is the mostsuccessful, but of course, we
have zero income from it, whichwas never the intent.
(14:04):
The things that Dave builds arerock solid, the systems stay up
and he's never really done auser interface.
He's done user experience, a UX, but really a beautiful UI is
something he's never done and,man, he knocked it out of the
park.
It really it's a beautiful,beautiful product.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, no.
Congratulations to you both.
Now.
So what is the platform?
Because it's not what I wouldhave thought you would have gone
for originally, which would bea native iOS app.
That's what we're all told todo Go and build for the app
stores.
You know Android, blah, blah,blah.
That's where podcasting is.
And actually, to be fair, whenyou look at the data from
companies like Buzzsprout or OP3, you know, and you look at
(14:50):
device and you look at platforms, generally mobile iOS.
So you haven't built the nativeapp yet.
So why did you make thedecision to go and build what
Adam has nicely called auniversal web app rather than a
progressive app?
Speaker 1 (15:04):
It's a little like with everything that we do.
It's a little hard to explain.
That's sort of a theme thatruns through almost every
product that Adam and I build is.
It takes a little bit ofthinking outside the box and
there's some overlap here.
The Venn diagram between thePodcast Index and Godcaster is
pretty, you know, prettyoverlappy.
(15:26):
So one thing is, when westarted the Podcast Index, we
started that to support podcastapps, to give them a back end,
and what we said at thebeginning was we're never going
to create a podcast app.
So that also comes into playhere.
This really isn't a podcast app.
This is something reallydifferent than that.
(15:50):
The thing about the linear todigital transformation for radio
is that if all you do is justtransfer that broadcast linear
audience to a website player,you've really done nothing.
The beauty of digital is thatit's available everywhere
through multiple channels.
So that's really the conceptthat we brought from the very
(16:13):
beginning.
The problem with Glorystone theold player was that it was
purely just a website player andit was no different than than a
podcast app.
But you just had to go to thisradio station's website to do it
.
So that's just as restrictiveas broadcast, maybe even more.
So you know.
And so what we did was we saidokay, you're going to have a web
(16:33):
player, because that's helpfulto the customer People, their
audience wants that.
We're going to build a webplayer that's installable on any
radio station's website andthey can plug in all the
different content, all thedifferent podcasts that they
play on air.
They'll plug that in to make anon what's essentially an on
demand guide in a player ontheir website, demand guide in a
(17:00):
player on their website.
But every player they buildalso spawns an RSS feed that has
all of those shows in it andthat RSS feed is branded to the
station.
So the station gets their ownRSS feed that will hold all of
the podcast content and getsessentially redistributed back
out to the podcast index andother directories so that now
these customers or listeners cansubscribe not to just focus on
(17:23):
the family.
They can subscribe to KHCBitself and by doing that they're
going to get focus on thefamily and all of KHCB's other
national content and KHCB'slocal content.
They're going to get all ofthis stuff in a single feed that
they can then subscribe to in anormal podcast app, something
(17:44):
like True Fans, apple Podcasts,overcast, podverse, podcast Guru
, all the 2.0 apps.
It's a standard podcast feedwith 2.0 namespace enhancements
in it.
So that's the thing that wetook to.
It is we, yes, our player,we're proud of it and we're glad
that it works well.
(18:04):
But we're just as happy forpeople to not even use our
player at all but instead tosubscribe to these radio
stations podcast feeds in theirown podcast app.
Because that's all you're doingis you're now you're allowing
your listener as a station.
You're allowing your listener tolisten to you, including your
(18:24):
live broadcast, because we usethe live item tag.
Now they can listen to you intheir most convenient,
preferable way, which is apodcast app.
And for the station side ofthings, they get stats on their
players.
They build out their player,their own demand guide and all
that kind of stuff, and thenthey install the player on their
website.
(18:45):
But they're getting stats forthe player itself plays you know
, listens and engagement, thatkind of thing but because it has
an RSS feed, they're alsogetting.
There's a separate section intheir stats dashboard that gives
them stats about podcast apps.
So they're getting stats ontheir feed too.
They're getting the traditional, you know downloads, where the
(19:05):
downloads are coming from, thatkind of thing so they can also
see the metrics that they'regetting from podcast apps as
well.
So it really doesn't matterwho's listening to your content
and where.
We want to accommodate all ofthat and then give them some
stats that will show them what'shappening.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
In addition to that, if I can just add, we also
expose an API for the increasingnumber of stations who just
have their own app.
They with you, sam.
They're like yes, we need anapp, not just iOS, but Android.
They're using multiple knowncompanies like Jcaps and
Subsplash, and Xperia, I think,is another one.
(19:46):
Some have a custom developerwho's doing stuff for them and
now they have a real piece offunctionality in there because
you can build your Godcasterplayer however you want it, with
native player elements andnative view elements, and I
think the Godcaster itself isthat we're the back end, so
(20:07):
we're just the plumbing.
We're letting you program yourlineup and do all of that stuff
and get your analytics on theback end.
You do it in one place once itgoes to wherever you want it to
go.
And so, as it turns out, theuniversal app, which I've coined
the term it used to beprogressive web app, but I call
it the universal app that reallyis a great stepping stone for a
(20:30):
lot of the stations and alsoincreasingly churches, who I
think are radio stations inthemselves, so they can just put
a web view in there and atleast have the Godcaster player
in there, even though it won'tfunction the way you'd like it
to on Android Auto and CarPlay.
But, as Dave points out, I meanI've been using my own
(20:50):
Godcaster station, even just tomanage my own podcast
subscriptions, and I love itbecause I use Podcast Guru as
kind of my daily driver and Ipop it right in, I've got my
Hello Fred feed and I can listento my live signal, I can listen
to any of the podcasts Isubscribe to and of course, all
of the value for value passesright through.
(21:11):
So you know all of that justworks.
So it's really anall-encompassing system which is
meant to replace a lot ofpieces of that linear broadcast
infrastructure winded emails.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
but it was to do with the publisher feed.
And again, when I look at how,with my CEO of True Fans hat on,
I get a feed for Hello Fred,for example, and it has multiple
radio stations within the samefeed, and then what I wanted to
do was actually I broke thatback out into a radio feed of a
publisher feed for want of abetter word and just demoed how
it could be presented as apublisher feed, an RSS
(22:00):
standalone feed that the podcastindex could ingest and apps
like Fountain support it andWeSupport it at TrueFans.
And then you'd still have theclean, single RSS feed for each
individual radio station so thatif I wanted to go and look at
previous episodes, I'm lookingback at their previous episodes.
So I'm keeping the showsindividually, but I'm creating
(22:22):
this aggregated feed using thepublisher feed technology that
we curated in podcasting 2.0 toactually then see the station as
a complete entity with all oftheir shows and look it's horses
for courses.
But that was one of the ideasthat I threw back at you and I
don't know if that's somethingthat resonated with you or that
was something like no, we're notgoing down that road because we
(22:44):
can't get it into Spotify.
We can't get it into Apple.
We can't get it into becausethey don't support publisher
feeds.
It makes no sense to createthat feed when we have to do it
in the traditional RSS feedstructure.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Well, you know, that's never stopped us at all,
sam is.
Is the fact that Spotify orApple or any of those guys don't
do something?
That's not.
I don't even think about it inthose terms, because they, they
will eventually.
They'll all start doing allthis stuff eventually because
they'll have to.
So that doesn't stop me at all.
Publisher feeds are definitelyon the roadmap, for sure.
(23:21):
This sort of sprint to just geta product going is one-tenth of
the actual roadmap of the stuffwe want to do.
We really haven't even gottento the cool stuff yet.
Cool, even gotten to the coolstuff yet, you know.
So that's, that's really yeah,because I mean, we support the
live tag, we support funding, uh, support the value tag, uh,
location chapters.
(23:41):
We pass all that stuff throughand then we add some of it as
well for, like, location tag.
But there's also stuff.
We also support pod ping, ofcourse, for for live broadcasts
and all that kind of thing,because if we're going to be
pumping out a feed to true fans,well, true fans needs to know
when that stuff goes live and weneed to be telling you know,
because one of the things youcan do on the player is a
(24:03):
listener can hit the followbutton and it just gives them a
list of podcast apps and so, ifthey choose you know true fans
or podcast guru or whatever youknow we need to be able to
provide that data.
So a lot of that stuff isinterdependent and we built it,
built that out.
But then we also have thisother huge list of things we
(24:24):
have to support and that's goingto be what comes next.
So we have, you know, we'regoing to be supporting
soundbites, transcripts,publisher feeds, all the value
time splits, just pretty muchall of this stuff is on the
to-do list.
And the publisher feed is greatbecause what we're allowing and
through various partnershipsthat we're still developing with
(24:47):
native app developers and livestream companies and that kind
of thing, through these variouspartnerships, we're going to be
able those relationships we'vebuilt over the last nearly five
(25:18):
years to help the radio stationsbuild up their own content
catalog, and then we'll be ableto put all that stuff into a
publisher feed, like you'retalking about.
Then the radio station hastheir own master feed that shows
their brand and everything, andthen, underneath that, all of
their content.
So, yeah, I think you're, Ithink you're just sort of
(25:39):
anticipating where we're headedas well.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Adding to what Dave said, I think that the very
positive for the the podcastnamespace, because when, when we
say subscribe to this radiostations feed so you get all the
show episodes, et cetera, weshow preference over the modern
podcast apps right now for themain reason that it has the lit
(26:01):
tag.
So I think it's going to be avery net positive.
You'll see, certainly Applewill have to look at the live
item tag because they're goingto be losing market share to
podcast apps that already havethis built in.
So I really see that as a hugenet positive for 2.0 in general,
(26:23):
but also for the apps.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, I think Apple definitely.
I mean I know this is not theprediction show, but I think
Apple will support the live itemtag within two years.
I mean, you know I'm givingmyself two years just because
they move slow, but we know thatthey watch the podcasting 2.0
project.
We know that they watch whatwe're doing and sometimes they
(26:48):
reach out and ask for things.
So we know that they areinvolved in their own special
Apple way, and so I I feel likewithin the next couple of years,
a live item tag support inApple podcast apps will
definitely be a thing.
You know right now, when youclick the follow button on a
station's player, your Applepodcast is at the bottom.
(27:11):
You know Spotify can't even beon there because they don't
allow that kind of interaction,so they're not even on the list.
But everything at the top, youknow, the order of preference is
the podcasting 2.0 apps atfirst and that support things
like Live At that.
We need that to be a completeexperience.
(27:32):
And then Apple is still onthere because they have such big
market share, but they're atthe bottom just because they
don't support live.
And the live experience for aradio station is gosh.
That's, 90% of the experienceis being able to listen live to
a podcast app.
So you know, but I think theywill do it for sure.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Yeah, I mean we talk about commentsivity, we talk
about the ability to do that ina live item.
I mean friday night is greatwith you two guys getting you
know all the boosts in and youknow and all the 777 harps and
all that stuff coming through.
Now one one thing we've had adiscussion on in the past is
Shoutcast, Icecast, HLS.
(28:10):
Are you going to be theprovider of the live item tag
service, the server as well asthe management?
Speaker 3 (28:21):
platform.
Let me just jump in here andaddress that and other things.
So the short answer is no,we're not interested in
providing hosting.
We're not interested inproviding streaming services.
We're not interested inproviding hosting.
We're not interested inproviding streaming services.
We're not interested inproviding app building services.
What this is doing.
I think this is a hugeopportunity for our hosting
partners.
A lot of these radio stationsand a lot of content providers
(28:44):
use Omni, and Omni is going tohave to catch up and I don't
know if that's even within theirDNA to do this.
So we exclusively want to workwith partners where we can, and
we are literally.
This is what we're good at.
We're good at the plumbing.
We do have a beautiful webplayer and it's perfect for what
it's intended for, but wereally see it as okay.
(29:08):
Here's your digital signal.
Where do you want it to go?
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Yeah, I mean, I can see, with the API you can even
do Alexa's and Podhomes andanything else.
It doesn't have to just be iOSand native Android apps.
So what's?
Speaker 1 (29:21):
next.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
What's next now?
You've got it out the frontdoor.
You've got this excitement,adam, do you see the funding tag
being the primary mechanism formonetization?
But do you see the funding tagbeing the primary mechanism for
monetization?
But do you envisage a timewhere people will naturally
understand what a wallet is,will understand what a
micropayment is, will understandwhat V4V actually means and
(29:42):
start to use that way ofmonetizing radio stations?
Speaker 3 (29:47):
So moving forward.
The most excitement right nowis about the funding tag.
That has just been mind-blowingfor this particular group
because of the attribution of adonation on both sides.
There's a lot of talk aboutintegrating.
Unlike traditional radio,there's really no competition.
(30:07):
Everybody wants to worktogether because if someone
donates then the tide rises allboats.
So the attribution is oneeveryone wants to see it tied
into CRM databases for theconversion.
At the same time, it's reallybeautiful to see that the
stations are just as excited toallow the content producers to
(30:30):
log in to see the station'sfirst party data for their
program not all of it, obviouslyso that they can really
understand how they'reperforming and moving forward.
For the products.
You know, there's a wholenother group which is, I think
I've said before, is churches.
They are, you know, ever sinceCOVID, every single church in
(30:51):
America, but probably worldwide,has become a real content
factory.
They've upgraded their gear,they've learned how to do
podcasts, and so we we don'twant to be necessarily in, you
know, in competition anywhere,but we'll just, we'll serve
anybody, even if you just have atop 40 radio station.
You know, we actually had aconversation about that we're
okay If, if, if, if you justhave a top 40 radio station we
actually had a conversationabout that we're okay.
(31:13):
If you're a top 40 station andyou want to use it or an all
talk that may be more secular.
Regarding value for value,there's one group who has a very
young chief innovation officer.
It's Hope Media, and if youlook at their offering and they
have many stations throughoutthe US he was the only one I
felt comfortable demonstratingvalue for value to and it just
(31:37):
blew his mind, and so I'mhopeful that we'll set up a
pilot project.
A lot of these stations alsowork very closely with artists
with different musicalrecordings with.
You know different musicalrecordings they are looking for
to.
You know they're lookingtowards creating a whole new
music genre.
That would be value for valueand it all comes down to
(31:57):
education, as we know, butthere's a lot of interest from
them.
I'm very excited about that and, in general, this group and
maybe it applies to radio acrossthe board.
There's really no farm team.
There's no next generation thathas been cultivated to do radio
, so they see these things as anopportunity to bring in a whole
(32:20):
new group who will understandconnecting your wallet to a
podcast app, connecting yourwallet to any kind of app who
will understand thatmicropayments is a very viable
way forward.
And the music industry,contemporary Christian music
artists.
They definitely are veryinterested.
There's some big names whowe've been in touch with.
(32:41):
They all would like to try itout.
Because you know the same withthe traditional secular music
industry no one's making anymoney.
Secular music industry no one'smaking any money.
So they they want to figure outhow how can I?
Speaker 1 (32:59):
continue to be producing records without only
doing it through merchandise,sales and concerts.
Yeah, every time that and when,when it comes to the you know
really, you know religioussector or spiritual sector or
whatever you want to, you know,however you want to categorize
that, I mean the value for valueis just in that DNA from the
very beginning.
I mean it's just the way it's,that the culture in that culture
it makes so much sense.
(33:20):
Everything's donation based,everything is please support us
if you're getting something.
I mean all of that content fromthe earliest days of Christian
radio or religious radio hasalways been a value for value
concept.
You give the product awaybecause you have this bigger
mission and then you just askpeople to support you and so it
(33:43):
all like that is the most easyfit to pull.
You know to bring that inbecause it makes sense to that
mindset from day one to pull,you know to bring that in,
because it makes sense to thatmindset from day one.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
So, with all of this now out in the open and you've
got a clear pathway forward veryquickly, you've got this other
project, you know, podcast Index2.0.
Where do you see that takingshape in 2025?
What's going on in your headsthat you think you know we're
healthy?
This is happening.
Where are your thoughts on it?
Speaker 1 (34:12):
currently, you know, I would say that I think we're.
I think we're in a good place.
You know, the podcast index andthe namespace have sort of hit
a.
They've hit a point wherethings are, people are
comfortable with the technology.
I think now and so you know, wejust had a big discussion this
week about the images tag andabout how to re-engineer that
(34:35):
thing to be good, and so nowwe're looking at unprocessing
things as how do we need to sortof shape the way we do tags and
the way we do namespace workgoing forward to sort of fit
this new model?
You know, in the beginning itwas nobody knew what we were
doing, nobody understood any ofthis stuff.
(34:56):
You know we're having to dealwith pent up demand for new
features for the, you know, for15 years worth of content.
So we were just going to, youknow, go, typical fashion, just
go, go, go, go, go as fast as wecan.
That really has changed, and sonow things are at a slower pace
and I think, you know, goingforward, I think we're probably
(35:17):
going to focus on just one ortwo things with each phase of
the podcast namespace, becausethere's still I mean there's
still dozens of apps out therethat don't even support a single
tag.
Still dozens of apps out therethat don't even support a single
tag, even though there's600,000 feeds out there that
support the Podcasting 2.0namespace.
There's maybe more than that.
(35:38):
I haven't counted in a while.
There's so much content that hasthe Podcasting 2.0 namespace
tags in it, but many, manypodcast apps just still don't
even support number one, thevery first one, something easy
like transcripts.
So I think there's no need tojust rush, rush, rush anymore,
(36:11):
but at the same time I think weneed.
It's good, because now we canjust slow down, have our focus
on one thing and then, with thenamespace, and then on the index
side, you know, I think we'reshifting focus to decentralizing
, because we don't want to justbecome another Apple with a
directory that everybody'sdependent on, even though we're,
you know it's, it's open.
So we want to decentralize thatas we can.
We, I think we're getting tothe point in the index and the
namespace where we we're we're amature technology and mature
technology and now our focusgets to shift to a sort of
(36:33):
mature, more important things.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
My job has always been to tell you what should be
happening now, and it usuallycomes true in 10 years and I
never make money on it.
So, I'm always the last of thetrough.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Join that club, Adam.
Yeah, I feel your pain, sam.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
So what Dave said about decentralizing the index,
you know we have kind of saidfrom the get go the podcast
index.
Our job is to eliminateourselves and that means you
know whether it's distributedhash space or however, we wind
up doing it.
And there's some amazing thingsbeing done.
I would love to see Podpingintegrated.
(37:08):
I did a presentation at NRB inthe ballroom and I showed the
tilespodpingorg and people justtheir minds were boggling.
Like, in a way, you're doingthis with TrueFans is to show
(37:35):
that you don't have to justcreate another podcast app.
You can create an experience oran interface or a service for a
group of people who want to usepodcast technology and
specifically Podcasting 2.0,since there's such a rich
environment.
I mean, even Ellen Beats is agreat version of that.
(37:58):
That is only for the music sideand for the music shows.
So this, I think, is where wecan have great success instead
of, as I lovingly call thepodcast industrial complex,
focusing on what share does thisapp have?
Well, that's going to remainkind of the same for a long,
long time, but meanwhile, aswe've proven, with value for
(38:19):
value in general you can make aliving, you can make your
product successful with asmaller demographic in this
highly connected world.
So certainly on the Podcasting2.0 podcast which is where the
name came from, although itbecame kind of its own beast is
to show more of that and as moreof these experiences are
(38:44):
developed, I think you'll seethe rest of the industry come
along with that.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Adam Curry.
Dave Jones, I could talk to youfor hours on this, but thank
you very much.
Now, where would anyone go,Adam, for getting more
information about the app itself?
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Well, this is godcasterfm.
Godcasterfm, and reallyappreciate the work that you do,
sam, and that James does.
Power, as we call it, power isone of you know is certainly one
of my weekly listens.
I wish we would havecoordinated better for this
interview when we all would havehad a glass of red wine to go
with it, because we know thatthat's usually how you're
(39:21):
listening to our show.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Absolutely the only way.
And, dave, anyone wanting tohelp get involved with it, maybe
give you some, you know getinvolved with the API.
Where would they go for any ofthat stuff?
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Just reach out to me and we can help them out on that
.
And you know, the thing aboutGodcaster is under the hood.
You know sort of double underthe hood, it's all podcast index
.
So anybody who is alreadyfamiliar with the index under
the hood it's all Podcast Index.
So anybody who is alreadyfamiliar with the index and the
way that works can help here too.
So we're sort of eating our owndog food in that way.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
And on behalf of the community, just for me, I'd like
to say thank you to you, bothpublicly, for all the work
you've done for the PodcastIndex.
It's massively appreciated.
You may not hear it all thetime, but just know that we do
appreciate what you do.
Thank you, sam.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Get updated every day .
Subscribe to our newsletter atpodnewsnet.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Tell your friends and grow the show and support us.
And support us the Pod.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
News Weekly Review will return next week.
Keep listening.
The Pod News Weekly Review with Buzzsprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
I'm very excited.
I've got two very specialguests on the show today.
It's Adam Currie and Dave Jones, known as the Podfather, the
Podsage, and they're going to betalking about the Holy App.
Welcome chaps.
Hello, adam Currie, co-inventorof podcasting, you've got a
brand new app out.
It's called the Godcaster.
What is the Godcaster and whydid you want to bring it out?
Speaker 3 (00:32):
Sam, first of all, it's good to be here, a rare you
, me and Dave moment.
I love that a lot.
Godcaster came about over ayear ago.
Someone who had seen me speakat the Spark Media Conference in
Houston came to me and he saidyou know, I've got this thing.
It's not an app, it's a service.
It's for radio stations and I'mkind of in the middle of
(00:55):
determining whether I need to doa technology upgrade.
I hear all these cool thingsabout the podcast index and
about the new features that youhave.
Can you tell me about it?
So, as Dave and I always do,when it comes to podcast index
and 2.0, I'm happy to talk toanybody, particularly someone
who's developing against the APIthat we make available.
So I chatted with him and thenhe came back again.
(01:17):
He had some more questions andby the third or fourth time, his
name is Gordon Marcy.
By the third or fourth time, Ihad started to put together what
was going on, and he's been inthe radio business all of his
life at big, big networks likeSalem and, oh goodness,
ambassador.
There's a big content networkand these are all faith-based
(01:37):
broadcast organizations andstations and the solution he had
was a podcast player for radiostations and as I was talking
with him more and more, Ilearned that there's a real
conundrum with radio, not likewe didn't know it.
I mean, over 20 years ago wefigured that podcasting would
eventually disrupt radio, andthat moment has arrived.
(01:59):
And that arrived to me throughthe faith-based radio stations.
There's about 4,000 of them inthe United States alone and the
problem is they are literallyriding their over-the-air
listenership into heaven.
The average age is 74, andeveryone's already moving to
streaming online.
Most of the radio stations havea button that says listen live
(02:22):
and they're seeing more and moreof their audience go there.
But now here comes the secondissue with radio and this is not
just faith-based radio, it'sall radio Is that local
programming has gone away.
Most of this is naturallysyndicated content, which also
is available on a podcast.
So what radio stations weredoing is they're airing this
programming and it's not justpraise the Lord stuff.
(02:45):
I mean, glenn Beck isconsidered a faith-based
podcaster.
You know Dave Ramsey.
You know there's a lot ofdifferent content out there.
You know news and just maybe abiblical worldview in many
things, but it's a big varietyof content.
And so the station would sayyou know, here's this next
program.
It's a focus on the family, asan example.
(03:05):
And focus on the station wouldsay you know, here's this next
program, it's Focus on theFamily, as an example.
And Focus on the Family wouldsay you're seeing the Focus on
the Family on KCBH and go toFocusontheFamilycom and
subscribe to our podcast.
So the stations are literallysending their audience away to
places where they can getpodcasts and people are either
listening there on their website, they might be subscribing in
an app.
Many of the radio stations haveapps with not much more than a
(03:29):
listen live and support thestation.
This is an interesting part offaith-based radio in the United
States.
It's pretty much value forvalue.
The stations ask for supportand between the stations and the
content programming there'sbeen this issue for 40 years of
how do I know that someone waslistening to your program on my
(03:50):
radio station, gave you adonation, but I don't know about
it, and so we're supposed toshare revenue.
In some cases, the big contentproviders will buy the airtime
Again.
They need to know where did itcome from.
Buy the airtime Again, theyneed to know where did it come
from.
And it's been this big problemthat's been discussed even at
the National ReligiousBroadcasters Conference, where I
was last week, where 5,000people show up, it's been this
(04:13):
issue where they just can'tfigure out what they call
attribution.
So, as I was thinking about it,I'm like, wait a minute, this
can all be easily solved with alot of these 2.0 features that
we've developed over time.
And why don't we create abackend and a player and an API
for the inevitable apps so thatyou can have a live stream?
(04:36):
We know we have the lit tag,you can have as many podcasts, a
whole management interface andreally let these radio station
program directors and people whoknow how to package, market et
cetera, create a place for allof the programming and then have
the audience go to theirwebsite, support the show
(04:58):
through their website, whichwe're doing with the funding tag
.
It's incredible.
We'll get into it with Dave.
But the oh wow moment of allthese broadcasters who said,
wait a minute, now the stationknows that someone hit donate
and we know it as well.
Why, yes, oh, you've solved a40 year old problem Seems simple
to us.
Sometimes you just need somefresh thinking.
So, as we were designing theproduct and Dave will get into a
(05:20):
lot, he had so many geniusideas.
We really made this whole thingabout first party data,
understanding what people aredoing in the player, whether
it's in a podcast app, becauseyou can subscribe to the station
, basically, or whether it'stheir own app, you can really
see what's working.
And this is another thing.
Well, in podcasting in general,we've never really had that,
(05:42):
and the excitement came bothfrom the stations and from the
content producers who also werejust looking at download numbers
and they're saying wait a bit,now I can see how well my
program is performing in Phoenix, arizona, if someone dropped
out after eight minutes, butmeanwhile in Albuquerque, new
Mexico, it's doing much better.
So this all-encompassingsolution kind of came about and
(06:05):
we were just ideating on thisand then Dave Gordon and I
formed a partnership calledGodcaster at Godcasterfm and
we've put this into themarketplace and I think as of
yesterday, we now have, I wantto say, 249 stations who are
using Godcaster and also nowcontent providers like these big
(06:28):
ones, focus on the Family.
They're on thousands of stations.
They're tagging theirprogramming at the end with to
support Focus on the Family.
Go to KHCB, the KHCB website,or use the app and support us
there.
So we've really created abackend service with detailed
measurement and statistics ofwhat is actually happening, and
(06:51):
I was at NRB with Gordon thispast week at the National
Religious BroadcastersConference and we just got
nothing but incredible feedbackand new customers and it's
interesting that this came fromthis direction.
Any radio station could use it,obviously, but for Dave and I
it has the added advantage ofwe're doing this for Jesus, so
(07:13):
we're super happy about it.
Speaker 2 (07:16):
Okay, look, I've got two questions before I go to
Dave.
First of all, adam, why can'tthey just drive traffic to the
website, or drive traffic to theusual suspects you know, the
Spotify's and the Apple's and dodynamic ad insertion and get
their money that way?
What's stopping them doing itin what we consider the
traditional 1.0 model ofpodcasting?
(07:36):
Why couldn't they just do itthat way?
Speaker 3 (07:38):
Yeah, that's a good question.
Well, first of all, thesestations are not really doing it
for the money.
They need money to survive butthey're doing it to spread the
gospel.
That's their main mission.
The big part of this is everysingle radio station has a
relationship with a church ormultiple churches in their local
community.
(07:58):
So now they are starting to addlocal inserts.
You know, go listen to PastorJimmy's podcast on the KHCB
website.
So you want them, who understandthe radio stations are, you
know, they really understand thelocal market, packaging
marketing to that local market.
And while they still have thesebig megaphones, why not build
(08:20):
up that local property so thatthey can do a lot more localized
content, give people a feelingagain that that station digital
or otherwise, but really movingtowards digital is their
all-encompassing place.
And what they have seen is that50% of their users are moving
towards an app and not a podcastapp but towards an app of their
(08:40):
own, and there's a largeportion is just going to the
website and clicking play, andthis is something I've noticed
as well.
We've been talking about it onPodcasting 2.0, about kind of
the waning of the interest in atraditional inbox-based podcast
application.
So we want to give them thetools to what's being
(09:01):
highlighted and not just addinga feed but really having a
management system where they cansee what's working.
And the way we have it now isyou can literally see in the
live streaming stats you can seesomeone listening to that or a
hashed IP address, someonelistening to that, then hearing
a promo, going over to thestation app or the webpage and
(09:23):
listening to the podcast thatwas promoted, and so really
everybody wins in this model andagain it's all a value for
value based model.
So now they can work togetheron fundraising for both content
producers, for the localproducers, and I feel churches
are content factories andthey're not just doing a weekly
(09:44):
session on Sundays.
They've got men's breakfastministries, they've got youth
ministry, where I'm kind of incharge of our local Godcaster.
We've got the high school kids.
They're doing a podcast aboutthe Frederick's River Billies,
which is our women's basketballteam, who are doing well in the
nationals now no-transcript.
Speaker 2 (10:11):
Nice, okay, so it's control, it's monetization tools
, it's administration, all thethings and some of the
podcasting 2.0 capabilities thatwe've all been working on.
Nice, dave, hello, how are you?
I'm good, sam.
Now, adam, you've known for howlong.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
Oh gosh, 15 years years.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Okay, so Adam's come to you on several occasions to
say hey, I've got a great ideafor a business, how about you do
it with me?
The last one being the podcastindex, obviously.
So what did you think when hesaid I've got this great idea
for Godcaster?
And what did you think, yeah,let's do it.
Or, oh, my God, not again.
Speaker 1 (10:51):
There's a.
There's always a little anequal amount of both involved in
every in every one of those.
But my standard answer to Adamwhenever he says hey, let's do
so-and-so is yes, and then we'llfigure out actually how to do
it later.
So I just always answer yesfirst and then figure out later
if it's actually possible.
So yeah, the same same thinghere.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I love it that Jim Carrey film yes man when he says
yes to everything.
Yeah, exactly, exactly Okay.
So let's let's take a littlestep back.
How long is it taking you tobuild this platform and where
did you start?
I mean, you've got a blankpiece of paper.
Speaker 1 (11:28):
You're looking at it and you're going.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
How do I build this thing?
So what did you do?
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Yeah, what you know look at what what Adam said was
we sort of took over an existingproduct with with Gordon's
product that was calledGlorystone, and so I determined
early on that I was just goingto rebuild that thing from
scratch.
It was an older platform, Imean it still worked well.
It was an older platform thathad been sort of upgraded over
(11:59):
the years to have sort of moremodern features, but the core of
it was still sort of an oldLAMP-based application, php
MySQL that was just showing itsage.
So I just determined to buildfrom scratch and initially
replicate all the features thatwe thought that the current
customers couldn't live withoutand then at the same time, sort
of weave in the newer stuff thatwe knew we were going to be
(12:21):
needing to bring the product upto what we wanted it to be.
So it took I mean it was rapidlots of just you know late night
, early morning coding sessionsto get this thing up and running
in about five months.
So it went from zero to, youknow, launched in five months to
(12:42):
be ready for a discussion aboutit and selling it in RB for
people who would want it.
So that that was the timeframe.
You know we pretty much hiteverything we wanted to achieve
by then.
But that's, you know, to saythat it was a, you know, an
enjoyable build would not beentirely accurate, because it's
rush, rush, rush.
(13:02):
But at the same time, I thinkthe way me and Adam have always
worked has kind of been that waywe just go, go, go, go, go as
fast as possible and then tryingto hit a target, and then at
the end we kind of sit back andsay, okay, where are we at?
Let's go clean up the mess,let's go, you know polish things
up here and this kind of thing.
So that's, we're kind of usedto working that way.
Speaker 3 (13:21):
And we're really we were building it, you know,
building the airplane in flight,to be honest, you know, because
we had customers.
There were existing customerswho had migrated over, and it
would literally be the customerwould say hey, and it would
literally be the customer wouldsay, hey, you know, my window
popped out here, I'm about toget sucked out of the airplane
and we go, dave, we're losingpassengers, man.
So it is the way we've worked.
(13:43):
There's nothing more fantasticthan working with live customers
.
There's also nothing more scarywith working with live
customers, and I just want tosay I've worked with Dave on
many projects.
Some things have just been forus, some things have well,
podcast index, which is the mostsuccessful, but of course, we
have zero income from it, whichwas never the intent.
(14:04):
The things that Dave builds arerock solid, the systems stay up
and he's never really done auser interface.
He's done user experience, a UX, but really a beautiful UI is
something he's never done and,man, he knocked it out of the
park.
It really it's a beautiful,beautiful product.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
Yeah, no.
Congratulations to you both.
Now.
So what is the platform?
Because it's not what I wouldhave thought you would have gone
for originally, which would bea native iOS app.
That's what we're all told todo Go and build for the app
stores.
You know Android, blah, blah,blah.
That's where podcasting is.
And actually, to be fair, whenyou look at the data from
companies like Buzzsprout or OP3, you know, and you look at
(14:50):
device and you look at platforms, generally mobile iOS.
So you haven't built the nativeapp yet.
So why did you make thedecision to go and build what
Adam has nicely called auniversal web app rather than a
progressive app?
Speaker 1 (15:04):
It's a little like with everything that we do.
It's a little hard to explain.
That's sort of a theme thatruns through almost every
product that Adam and I build is.
It takes a little bit ofthinking outside the box and
there's some overlap here.
The Venn diagram between thePodcast Index and Godcaster is
pretty, you know, prettyoverlappy.
(15:26):
So one thing is, when westarted the Podcast Index, we
started that to support podcastapps, to give them a back end,
and what we said at thebeginning was we're never going
to create a podcast app.
So that also comes into playhere.
This really isn't a podcast app.
This is something reallydifferent than that.
(15:50):
The thing about the linear todigital transformation for radio
is that if all you do is justtransfer that broadcast linear
audience to a website player,you've really done nothing.
The beauty of digital is thatit's available everywhere
through multiple channels.
So that's really the conceptthat we brought from the very
(16:13):
beginning.
The problem with Glorystone theold player was that it was
purely just a website player andit was no different than than a
podcast app.
But you just had to go to thisradio station's website to do it
.
So that's just as restrictiveas broadcast, maybe even more.
So you know.
And so what we did was we saidokay, you're going to have a web
(16:33):
player, because that's helpfulto the customer People, their
audience wants that.
We're going to build a webplayer that's installable on any
radio station's website andthey can plug in all the
different content, all thedifferent podcasts that they
play on air.
They'll plug that in to make anon what's essentially an on
demand guide in a player ontheir website, demand guide in a
(17:00):
player on their website.
But every player they buildalso spawns an RSS feed that has
all of those shows in it andthat RSS feed is branded to the
station.
So the station gets their ownRSS feed that will hold all of
the podcast content and getsessentially redistributed back
out to the podcast index andother directories so that now
these customers or listeners cansubscribe not to just focus on
(17:23):
the family.
They can subscribe to KHCBitself and by doing that they're
going to get focus on thefamily and all of KHCB's other
national content and KHCB'slocal content.
They're going to get all ofthis stuff in a single feed that
they can then subscribe to in anormal podcast app, something
(17:44):
like True Fans, apple Podcasts,overcast, podverse, podcast Guru
, all the 2.0 apps.
It's a standard podcast feedwith 2.0 namespace enhancements
in it.
So that's the thing that wetook to.
It is we, yes, our player,we're proud of it and we're glad
that it works well.
(18:04):
But we're just as happy forpeople to not even use our
player at all but instead tosubscribe to these radio
stations podcast feeds in theirown podcast app.
Because that's all you're doingis you're now you're allowing
your listener as a station.
You're allowing your listener tolisten to you, including your
(18:24):
live broadcast, because we usethe live item tag.
Now they can listen to you intheir most convenient,
preferable way, which is apodcast app.
And for the station side ofthings, they get stats on their
players.
They build out their player,their own demand guide and all
that kind of stuff, and thenthey install the player on their
website.
(18:45):
But they're getting stats forthe player itself plays you know
, listens and engagement, thatkind of thing but because it has
an RSS feed, they're alsogetting.
There's a separate section intheir stats dashboard that gives
them stats about podcast apps.
So they're getting stats ontheir feed too.
They're getting the traditional, you know downloads, where the
(19:05):
downloads are coming from, thatkind of thing so they can also
see the metrics that they'regetting from podcast apps as
well.
So it really doesn't matterwho's listening to your content
and where.
We want to accommodate all ofthat and then give them some
stats that will show them what'shappening.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
In addition to that, if I can just add, we also
expose an API for the increasingnumber of stations who just
have their own app.
They with you, sam.
They're like yes, we need anapp, not just iOS, but Android.
They're using multiple knowncompanies like Jcaps and
Subsplash, and Xperia, I think,is another one.
(19:46):
Some have a custom developerwho's doing stuff for them and
now they have a real piece offunctionality in there because
you can build your Godcasterplayer however you want it, with
native player elements andnative view elements, and I
think the Godcaster itself isthat we're the back end, so
(20:07):
we're just the plumbing.
We're letting you program yourlineup and do all of that stuff
and get your analytics on theback end.
You do it in one place once itgoes to wherever you want it to
go.
And so, as it turns out, theuniversal app, which I've coined
the term it used to beprogressive web app, but I call
it the universal app that reallyis a great stepping stone for a
(20:30):
lot of the stations and alsoincreasingly churches, who I
think are radio stations inthemselves, so they can just put
a web view in there and atleast have the Godcaster player
in there, even though it won'tfunction the way you'd like it
to on Android Auto and CarPlay.
But, as Dave points out, I meanI've been using my own
(20:50):
Godcaster station, even just tomanage my own podcast
subscriptions, and I love itbecause I use Podcast Guru as
kind of my daily driver and Ipop it right in, I've got my
Hello Fred feed and I can listento my live signal, I can listen
to any of the podcasts Isubscribe to and of course, all
of the value for value passesright through.
(21:11):
So you know all of that justworks.
So it's really anall-encompassing system which is
meant to replace a lot ofpieces of that linear broadcast
infrastructure winded emails.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
but it was to do with the publisher feed.
And again, when I look at how,with my CEO of True Fans hat on,
I get a feed for Hello Fred,for example, and it has multiple
radio stations within the samefeed, and then what I wanted to
do was actually I broke thatback out into a radio feed of a
publisher feed for want of abetter word and just demoed how
it could be presented as apublisher feed, an RSS
(22:00):
standalone feed that the podcastindex could ingest and apps
like Fountain support it andWeSupport it at TrueFans.
And then you'd still have theclean, single RSS feed for each
individual radio station so thatif I wanted to go and look at
previous episodes, I'm lookingback at their previous episodes.
So I'm keeping the showsindividually, but I'm creating
(22:22):
this aggregated feed using thepublisher feed technology that
we curated in podcasting 2.0 toactually then see the station as
a complete entity with all oftheir shows and look it's horses
for courses.
But that was one of the ideasthat I threw back at you and I
don't know if that's somethingthat resonated with you or that
was something like no, we're notgoing down that road because we
(22:44):
can't get it into Spotify.
We can't get it into Apple.
We can't get it into becausethey don't support publisher
feeds.
It makes no sense to createthat feed when we have to do it
in the traditional RSS feedstructure.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
Well, you know, that's never stopped us at all,
sam is.
Is the fact that Spotify orApple or any of those guys don't
do something?
That's not.
I don't even think about it inthose terms, because they, they
will eventually.
They'll all start doing allthis stuff eventually because
they'll have to.
So that doesn't stop me at all.
Publisher feeds are definitelyon the roadmap, for sure.
(23:21):
This sort of sprint to just geta product going is one-tenth of
the actual roadmap of the stuffwe want to do.
We really haven't even gottento the cool stuff yet.
Cool, even gotten to the coolstuff yet, you know.
So that's, that's really yeah,because I mean, we support the
live tag, we support funding, uh, support the value tag, uh,
location chapters.
(23:41):
We pass all that stuff throughand then we add some of it as
well for, like, location tag.
But there's also stuff.
We also support pod ping, ofcourse, for for live broadcasts
and all that kind of thing,because if we're going to be
pumping out a feed to true fans,well, true fans needs to know
when that stuff goes live and weneed to be telling you know,
because one of the things youcan do on the player is a
(24:03):
listener can hit the followbutton and it just gives them a
list of podcast apps and so, ifthey choose you know true fans
or podcast guru or whatever youknow we need to be able to
provide that data.
So a lot of that stuff isinterdependent and we built it,
built that out.
But then we also have thisother huge list of things we
(24:24):
have to support and that's goingto be what comes next.
So we have, you know, we'regoing to be supporting
soundbites, transcripts,publisher feeds, all the value
time splits, just pretty muchall of this stuff is on the
to-do list.
And the publisher feed is greatbecause what we're allowing and
through various partnershipsthat we're still developing with
(24:47):
native app developers and livestream companies and that kind
of thing, through these variouspartnerships, we're going to be
able those relationships we'vebuilt over the last nearly five
(25:18):
years to help the radio stationsbuild up their own content
catalog, and then we'll be ableto put all that stuff into a
publisher feed, like you'retalking about.
Then the radio station hastheir own master feed that shows
their brand and everything, andthen, underneath that, all of
their content.
So, yeah, I think you're, Ithink you're just sort of
(25:39):
anticipating where we're headedas well.
Speaker 3 (25:41):
Adding to what Dave said, I think that the very
positive for the the podcastnamespace, because when, when we
say subscribe to this radiostations feed so you get all the
show episodes, et cetera, weshow preference over the modern
podcast apps right now for themain reason that it has the lit
(26:01):
tag.
So I think it's going to be avery net positive.
You'll see, certainly Applewill have to look at the live
item tag because they're goingto be losing market share to
podcast apps that already havethis built in.
So I really see that as a hugenet positive for 2.0 in general,
(26:23):
but also for the apps.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
Yeah, I think Apple definitely.
I mean I know this is not theprediction show, but I think
Apple will support the live itemtag within two years.
I mean, you know I'm givingmyself two years just because
they move slow, but we know thatthey watch the podcasting 2.0
project.
We know that they watch whatwe're doing and sometimes they
(26:48):
reach out and ask for things.
So we know that they areinvolved in their own special
Apple way, and so I I feel likewithin the next couple of years,
a live item tag support inApple podcast apps will
definitely be a thing.
You know right now, when youclick the follow button on a
station's player, your Applepodcast is at the bottom.
(27:11):
You know Spotify can't even beon there because they don't
allow that kind of interaction,so they're not even on the list.
But everything at the top, youknow, the order of preference is
the podcasting 2.0 apps atfirst and that support things
like Live At that.
We need that to be a completeexperience.
(27:32):
And then Apple is still onthere because they have such big
market share, but they're atthe bottom just because they
don't support live.
And the live experience for aradio station is gosh.
That's, 90% of the experienceis being able to listen live to
a podcast app.
So you know, but I think theywill do it for sure.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:49):
Yeah, I mean we talk about commentsivity, we talk
about the ability to do that ina live item.
I mean friday night is greatwith you two guys getting you
know all the boosts in and youknow and all the 777 harps and
all that stuff coming through.
Now one one thing we've had adiscussion on in the past is
Shoutcast, Icecast, HLS.
(28:10):
Are you going to be theprovider of the live item tag
service, the server as well asthe management?
Speaker 3 (28:21):
platform.
Let me just jump in here andaddress that and other things.
So the short answer is no,we're not interested in
providing hosting.
We're not interested inproviding streaming services.
We're not interested inproviding hosting.
We're not interested inproviding streaming services.
We're not interested inproviding app building services.
What this is doing.
I think this is a hugeopportunity for our hosting
partners.
A lot of these radio stationsand a lot of content providers
(28:44):
use Omni, and Omni is going tohave to catch up and I don't
know if that's even within theirDNA to do this.
So we exclusively want to workwith partners where we can, and
we are literally.
This is what we're good at.
We're good at the plumbing.
We do have a beautiful webplayer and it's perfect for what
it's intended for, but wereally see it as okay.
(29:08):
Here's your digital signal.
Where do you want it to go?
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Yeah, I mean, I can see, with the API you can even
do Alexa's and Podhomes andanything else.
It doesn't have to just be iOSand native Android apps.
So what's?
Speaker 1 (29:21):
next.
Speaker 2 (29:22):
What's next now?
You've got it out the frontdoor.
You've got this excitement,adam, do you see the funding tag
being the primary mechanism formonetization?
But do you see the funding tagbeing the primary mechanism for
monetization?
But do you envisage a timewhere people will naturally
understand what a wallet is,will understand what a
micropayment is, will understandwhat V4V actually means and
(29:42):
start to use that way ofmonetizing radio stations?
Speaker 3 (29:47):
So moving forward.
The most excitement right nowis about the funding tag.
That has just been mind-blowingfor this particular group
because of the attribution of adonation on both sides.
There's a lot of talk aboutintegrating.
Unlike traditional radio,there's really no competition.
(30:07):
Everybody wants to worktogether because if someone
donates then the tide rises allboats.
So the attribution is oneeveryone wants to see it tied
into CRM databases for theconversion.
At the same time, it's reallybeautiful to see that the
stations are just as excited toallow the content producers to
(30:30):
log in to see the station'sfirst party data for their
program not all of it, obviouslyso that they can really
understand how they'reperforming and moving forward.
For the products.
You know, there's a wholenother group which is, I think
I've said before, is churches.
They are, you know, ever sinceCOVID, every single church in
(30:51):
America, but probably worldwide,has become a real content
factory.
They've upgraded their gear,they've learned how to do
podcasts, and so we we don'twant to be necessarily in, you
know, in competition anywhere,but we'll just, we'll serve
anybody, even if you just have atop 40 radio station.
You know, we actually had aconversation about that we're
okay If, if, if, if you justhave a top 40 radio station we
actually had a conversationabout that we're okay.
(31:13):
If you're a top 40 station andyou want to use it or an all
talk that may be more secular.
Regarding value for value,there's one group who has a very
young chief innovation officer.
It's Hope Media, and if youlook at their offering and they
have many stations throughoutthe US he was the only one I
felt comfortable demonstratingvalue for value to and it just
(31:37):
blew his mind, and so I'mhopeful that we'll set up a
pilot project.
A lot of these stations alsowork very closely with artists
with different musicalrecordings with.
You know different musicalrecordings they are looking for
to.
You know they're lookingtowards creating a whole new
music genre.
That would be value for valueand it all comes down to
(31:57):
education, as we know, butthere's a lot of interest from
them.
I'm very excited about that and, in general, this group and
maybe it applies to radio acrossthe board.
There's really no farm team.
There's no next generation thathas been cultivated to do radio
, so they see these things as anopportunity to bring in a whole
(32:20):
new group who will understandconnecting your wallet to a
podcast app, connecting yourwallet to any kind of app who
will understand thatmicropayments is a very viable
way forward.
And the music industry,contemporary Christian music
artists.
They definitely are veryinterested.
There's some big names whowe've been in touch with.
(32:41):
They all would like to try itout.
Because you know the same withthe traditional secular music
industry no one's making anymoney.
Secular music industry no one'smaking any money.
So they they want to figure outhow how can I?
Speaker 1 (32:59):
continue to be producing records without only
doing it through merchandise,sales and concerts.
Yeah, every time that and when,when it comes to the you know
really, you know religioussector or spiritual sector or
whatever you want to, you know,however you want to categorize
that, I mean the value for valueis just in that DNA from the
very beginning.
I mean it's just the way it's,that the culture in that culture
it makes so much sense.
(33:20):
Everything's donation based,everything is please support us
if you're getting something.
I mean all of that content fromthe earliest days of Christian
radio or religious radio hasalways been a value for value
concept.
You give the product awaybecause you have this bigger
mission and then you just askpeople to support you and so it
(33:43):
all like that is the most easyfit to pull.
You know to bring that inbecause it makes sense to that
mindset from day one to pull,you know to bring that in,
because it makes sense to thatmindset from day one.
Speaker 2 (33:52):
So, with all of this now out in the open and you've
got a clear pathway forward veryquickly, you've got this other
project, you know, podcast Index2.0.
Where do you see that takingshape in 2025?
What's going on in your headsthat you think you know we're
healthy?
This is happening.
Where are your thoughts on it?
Speaker 1 (34:12):
currently, you know, I would say that I think we're.
I think we're in a good place.
You know, the podcast index andthe namespace have sort of hit
a.
They've hit a point wherethings are, people are
comfortable with the technology.
I think now and so you know, wejust had a big discussion this
week about the images tag andabout how to re-engineer that
(34:35):
thing to be good, and so nowwe're looking at unprocessing
things as how do we need to sortof shape the way we do tags and
the way we do namespace workgoing forward to sort of fit
this new model?
You know, in the beginning itwas nobody knew what we were
doing, nobody understood any ofthis stuff.
(34:56):
You know we're having to dealwith pent up demand for new
features for the, you know, for15 years worth of content.
So we were just going to, youknow, go, typical fashion, just
go, go, go, go, go as fast as wecan.
That really has changed, and sonow things are at a slower pace
and I think, you know, goingforward, I think we're probably
(35:17):
going to focus on just one ortwo things with each phase of
the podcast namespace, becausethere's still I mean there's
still dozens of apps out therethat don't even support a single
tag.
Still dozens of apps out therethat don't even support a single
tag, even though there's600,000 feeds out there that
support the Podcasting 2.0namespace.
There's maybe more than that.
(35:38):
I haven't counted in a while.
There's so much content that hasthe Podcasting 2.0 namespace
tags in it, but many, manypodcast apps just still don't
even support number one, thevery first one, something easy
like transcripts.
So I think there's no need tojust rush, rush, rush anymore,
(36:11):
but at the same time I think weneed.
It's good, because now we canjust slow down, have our focus
on one thing and then, with thenamespace, and then on the index
side, you know, I think we'reshifting focus to decentralizing
, because we don't want to justbecome another Apple with a
directory that everybody'sdependent on, even though we're,
you know it's, it's open.
So we want to decentralize thatas we can.
We, I think we're getting tothe point in the index and the
namespace where we we're we're amature technology and mature
technology and now our focusgets to shift to a sort of
(36:33):
mature, more important things.
Speaker 3 (36:35):
My job has always been to tell you what should be
happening now, and it usuallycomes true in 10 years and I
never make money on it.
So, I'm always the last of thetrough.
Speaker 2 (36:45):
Join that club, Adam.
Yeah, I feel your pain, sam.
Speaker 3 (36:48):
So what Dave said about decentralizing the index,
you know we have kind of saidfrom the get go the podcast
index.
Our job is to eliminateourselves and that means you
know whether it's distributedhash space or however, we wind
up doing it.
And there's some amazing thingsbeing done.
I would love to see Podpingintegrated.
(37:08):
I did a presentation at NRB inthe ballroom and I showed the
tilespodpingorg and people justtheir minds were boggling.
Like, in a way, you're doingthis with TrueFans is to show
(37:35):
that you don't have to justcreate another podcast app.
You can create an experience oran interface or a service for a
group of people who want to usepodcast technology and
specifically Podcasting 2.0,since there's such a rich
environment.
I mean, even Ellen Beats is agreat version of that.
(37:58):
That is only for the music sideand for the music shows.
So this, I think, is where wecan have great success instead
of, as I lovingly call thepodcast industrial complex,
focusing on what share does thisapp have?
Well, that's going to remainkind of the same for a long,
long time, but meanwhile, aswe've proven, with value for
(38:19):
value in general you can make aliving, you can make your
product successful with asmaller demographic in this
highly connected world.
So certainly on the Podcasting2.0 podcast which is where the
name came from, although itbecame kind of its own beast is
to show more of that and as moreof these experiences are
(38:44):
developed, I think you'll seethe rest of the industry come
along with that.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
Adam Curry.
Dave Jones, I could talk to youfor hours on this, but thank
you very much.
Now, where would anyone go,Adam, for getting more
information about the app itself?
Speaker 3 (39:00):
Well, this is godcasterfm.
Godcasterfm, and reallyappreciate the work that you do,
sam, and that James does.
Power, as we call it, power isone of you know is certainly one
of my weekly listens.
I wish we would havecoordinated better for this
interview when we all would havehad a glass of red wine to go
with it, because we know thatthat's usually how you're
(39:21):
listening to our show.
Speaker 2 (39:23):
Absolutely the only way.
And, dave, anyone wanting tohelp get involved with it, maybe
give you some, you know getinvolved with the API.
Where would they go for any ofthat stuff?
Speaker 1 (39:38):
Just reach out to me and we can help them out on that
.
And you know, the thing aboutGodcaster is under the hood.
You know sort of double underthe hood, it's all podcast index
.
So anybody who is alreadyfamiliar with the index under
the hood it's all Podcast Index.
So anybody who is alreadyfamiliar with the index and the
way that works can help here too.
So we're sort of eating our owndog food in that way.
Speaker 2 (39:59):
And on behalf of the community, just for me, I'd like
to say thank you to you, bothpublicly, for all the work
you've done for the PodcastIndex.
It's massively appreciated.
You may not hear it all thetime, but just know that we do
appreciate what you do.
Thank you, sam.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
Get updated every day .
Subscribe to our newsletter atpodnewsnet.
Speaker 3 (40:19):
Tell your friends and grow the show and support us.
And support us the Pod.
Speaker 1 (40:23):
News Weekly Review will return next week.
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