Riverside's AI tools; and why do video podcasting?

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
James Cridland (00:00):
It's Friday, the 7th of February 2025.

Jingle (00:04):
The last word in podcasting news.
This is the Pod News WeeklyReview with James Cridland and
Sam Sethi.

Sam Sethi (00:13):
I'm James Cridland, the editor of Pod News in
Switzerland, and I'm Sam Sethi,the CEO of True Fans in cold,
very cold Marlow.

David Bodycombe (00:21):
When Tom started he said we'll just
completely edit the shows insuch a way that audio and video
are going to be in lockstep.
Now that we're on Spotify,that's actually been a very good
decision for us.

Kendall Breitman (00:33):
David Boddickham will be on later with
more about why you should bedoing video and We've created a
place where you can not onlyrecord your content, like you
always have been able to onRiverside, but you can also
stream it and really get it infront of as many people as
possible.

Kendall Brightman from Riverside on the
company's new features.
Plus in the chapters.
Today are Spotify nowprofitable, the podcasts
charging their guests but nottelling you about it, and the
White House Briefing Room learnsabout podcasts.
This podcast is sponsored byBuzzsprout, with the tools,
support and community to ensureyou keep podcasting.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting with buzzsproutcom.

Jingle (01:12):
From your daily newsletter, the Pod News Weekly
Review.

Sam Sethi (01:16):
So, James, let's kick this show off.
Are you going to kick?

this show off with Spotify Sam.

Sam Sethi (01:26):
Well, we have had a leave Spotify to the the end.
But you know what, we supportchapters and if your podcast app
supports chapters, you can skipthis bit if you don't like it.
But you know, and better still,if your podcast app doesn't
support chapters, upgrade.

Yes, stay in the dark, get a get a better one,
although apple podcasts is isabsolutely fine for that sort of
thing, why are we going tomention Sam?

Sam Sethi (01:45):
Well, it's their first full year of profitability
.
Finally, they are profitable.
So they've just released theirQ4 figures for 2024 and it looks
like they've gone into theblack.
Tell me more about it, James.

Yes, they have.
They're doing very well.
Actually, it's their first everyear of profitability.
Last year they posted netprofit of $1.18 billion.
Posted it in euro, of course,because they would do that sort
of thing, but revenue also grew16% year on year to $4.3 billion

(02:20):
, so they're doing pretty well.
They made a loss of half abillion euro, which is about
half a billion US dollars in2023.
So all of a sudden reallylurching into profitability,
which is quite a good thing, Ithink, yeah, their share price
hit an all-time high of $630.

Sam Sethi (02:40):
Their market cap's $125 billion.
Their market cap's $125 billion, and the stock has demonstrated
this year alone or in 2024, aremarkable 178% return on the
past year.
I mean, they are just knockingit out of the park.
And what's more interesting,though, is when you look at the
analysts.
They're saying you know, if yousay the stock price is

(03:01):
currently 630, they'repredicting 720 or higher.
So they're seeing the strategyis working and they're liking it
a lot Great figures for Spotify, my goodness.

They've had a long run of trying to make
profit, so it's nice to see themfinally doing that.
But yeah, I mean, you know,I've been using Spotify for the
last couple of months and it's avery good product.

Sam Sethi (03:29):
They're very clearly still talking up the benefits of
video, but yes, you know, froma point of view of a really
successful company, that isdefinitely one of the things I
noticed in the analyst reportwas they highlighted the video
podcast and the growingaudiobook consumption as the
reasons why they think they'rebullish on Spotify.

(03:50):
But they also noted that theythink that in 2025, the rate of
growth will slow compared to2024.
Don't know why, but they thinkthey will slow the rate of
growth.
Now, Chris Peterson, youpointed out an article that he
had posted on LinkedIn about it.
What did he have to say?

Yeah, I mean, he said lots of very positive
things.
So Chris, if you don't know, isan investor in this space, used
to work for iHeart and is nowflashing his cash investing in
the future of audio.
He says so, he took a peek andhe basically says look, spotify
strategy is is obvious.
Spotify isn't competing inaudio anymore.

(04:29):
They're going after YouTube,they're going after TikTok.
Now, um, gustav Söderström uh,ended up saying that, um, I
think podcasts are becomingvideo.
This is very important to us,and you know.
And Chris Peterson just sayslook, this is what people are
doing.
Spotify has already won theaudio platform war and now it's

(04:52):
a video thing.
And they couldn't.
What he said is they couldn'teven discuss podcasts without
bringing up video.
He's not a particular fan ofthat, but you can understand why
Spotify ends up doing that.
He did have a wonderful quote,though, sam, did he?
Yes, this is a wonderful quoteright at the bottom.
I'll read the quote first andthen I'll tell you who it was,

(05:15):
because it's more fun that way.
The quote says consumers spendroughly the same amount of time
on video as they do on audio,but video is about a trillion
dollar budget and the music andradio industry is only worth
about a hundred billion dollars.
I always come back to the samequestion Are our eyes really
worth 10 times more than ourears?

(05:36):
What a brilliant quote.
Do you know who said that?

Sam Sethi (05:41):
If this was a university challenge, I'd be
buzzing in now going yes, DanielEk.

Daniel Ek, you're exactly right In 2019,
he's changed his tune, hasn't he?

Sam Sethi (05:52):
So, yes, it's a wonderful, what a billionaire.
Changing their tune.
When do?

they ever do that.
A wonderful spot from ChrisPeterson there.

Sam Sethi (06:00):
I'm going to rain on the parade now a little bit.
I think there's a big issuegoing to come and hit them in
2025, which is why I think theanalysts are saying there's
going to be a slowdown in growthbecause price elasticity is
going to kick in very shortly.
You cannot continue to increasethe subscription price
infinitum and expect to increasegrowth.
You may get more growth fromthe existing user base.

(06:24):
There may be an audience youknow, of our generation, let's
say James who can afford to pay£20, maybe £30.
I don't know.
£40, what would you do?
£50, what would you do?
Where is your break point?
I guess?

Yes, you're absolutely right.
There will be a point wherepeople say, no, I'm not going to
pay that money.
But having said that, Spotifyit's a massive old company now
and the amount of people who areusing Spotify continues to grow
35 million new monthly activeusers, 11 million new paid

(07:01):
subscribers.
So, to an extent, actually, thebenefit there is in the scale.
They can keep their prices downbecause the scale is there to
help them move forward.

Sam Sethi (07:13):
Now, YouTube being the other player in the market.
Now, how are they?

doing.
Yeah.
So YouTube?
Actually much the same sort ofstory.
Their ad revenue has risen13.8% in quarter four to $10.5
billion.
We don't actually know.
I don't think.
The ad revenue has risen 13.8%in quarter four to $10.5 billion
.
We don't actually know.
I don't think.
The ad revenue for Spotifythat's a little bit more hidden
in their figures.
But yeah, the interesting thingjust to note in YouTube's

(07:41):
results which of course, wereGoogle's results as well is that
they actually mentionedpodcasts for the first time in
their release.
So they've never mentionedpodcasts before.
But I guess if you are going tobe, you know, if all of this
research keeps on telling youthat you're number one, you
might as well end up using that.

Sam Sethi (08:02):
Edison pointed out that YouTube is now bigger for
podcasts than Spotify and Apple,and they're specifically saying
podcasts.
They're not saying digitalbroadcast video media.
They're saying podcasts.

Yes, and again, the stat is, if I can quote it,
31% of weekly podcast listenerschoose YouTube as the service
they use most to listen topodcasts.
So that's not based on data,that's based on a survey of
asking people what apps you use,and it's not based on downloads

(08:38):
.
It's based on you know we usethis service most.
But even so, that is higherthan Spotify, which got 27% in
that number, and significantlyhigher than Apple Podcasts,
which is now just 15% in thatnumber.
So, yeah, I mean you knowYouTube, clearly, as a way of
getting people consuming stuff,is doing really well as a way of

(09:03):
people consuming, uh, thatparticular podcast every single
week.
I I'm I'm still not entirelyconvinced.
Um, but, um, you know, butwe'll see.

Sam Sethi (09:13):
Now, as I said, I'm I'm I'm trying to prick the
bubble of Spotify's happiness alittle bit.
Um, and one of the thingsthat's going to do that is a
lawsuit.
It's from the National MusicPublishers publishers
association, which are not happywith the fact that spotify is
allowing music uh, that theyhave copyright over in podcasts.
Now, I know that spotify'spolicy is not to allow you to

(09:37):
upload music into podcasts, butwhy are the nmpa so worked up
with Spotify and why are theyasking, as of this week,
february the 4th, for them toremove thousands of unlicensed
uses of music in podcasts?

Well, it's 2,500 , so it's not that many
thousands.
It's as little thousands as youcan get away with with having
an S on the end of the wordthousand.
They have been the NationalMusic Publishers Association
have been banging on the end ofthe word thousand.
They have been the NationalMusic Publishers Association
have been banging on the door ofSpotify for a number of years.
They're one of these companiesthat will take any opportunity
to say that Spotify is a bad,bad thing.

(10:16):
Spotify have said that the NMPAhaven't actually given them any
information about theseparticular shows, which
apparently have unlicensed songsin them, so we don't actually
know anything about that.
I look at this and I think well,I mean, you know, it's a nice
shot across the bows, but it'sjust the NMPA doing what the

(10:39):
NMPA will always do.
They ended up having legalaction last year, for example,
around whether or not Spotifywas allowed to call itself a
bundling service anymore,because it offers audio books as
well as music and so thereforeit can lower the royalties paid
out to music rights holders.
They lost that one.
Spotify have succeeded in beingable to convince people that

(11:01):
they are a bundle now.
So you know, I think it's justthe NMPA going oh, they just
published Profit.
We should jump on the bandwagonand see if we get some money
out of them from my point ofview, lovely impersonation.

Sam Sethi (11:14):
I remember him well.

Yes, but if you're a music artist, you'll
doubtless feel different.
The one big change in terms ofpodcasting on Spotify in
comparison to everywhere else isI can get a licence.
It's very expensive to do andvery complicated, but I can get
a licence for music and I canrun that on this show everywhere

(11:37):
other than Spotify.
Spotify do not care even if Ihave a valid license for a music
track.
If I go away and license ACDC,spotify will still take me off,
because Spotify say very, veryclearly that they do not accept

(11:57):
any music tracks in podcasts.
You know, licensed or not, andso that's just a bit of a
difference and I can totallyunderstand why they end up doing
that, I think the issue, though, is, as you said right at the
beginning, the bundling issue.

Sam Sethi (12:13):
So, as you said, the NMPA are throwing their toys out
the pram, saying, okay, ifwe've lost that, we're going to
get you to do some removal ofour content, but realistically,
they wouldn't have cared before.
It's the fact they're loweringthe royalties paid out which
raises the question again, james, when will we ever find out
about the royalty payments forvideo, because it's coming out

(12:33):
of that same pot?
Now, if Spotify can say they'rea bundling platform, then
actually they can lower themusic right holders payments
again if they have to, becausethey're going to take payments
for video podcasters.

Yeah, yeah, I mean, and I I don't know how the
intricacies of the spotifypayment system works.
I know that it's a percentageof of incoming revenue, but
that's about as much as I know.
Um, so yeah, so I don't knowabout that bit.
I'm imagining that Spotify isright now beginning to write the

(13:09):
checks for the first month ofthe Spotify Partner Programme,
so it'll be interesting watchingto see whether anybody actually
has anything that they areallowed to say about their
earnings.
Youtube, you know, you canalways say how much money you
earned, but Spotify, I don'tknow whether there's an NDA in

(13:32):
that earning thing.
I don't really know how thatworks, so it'll be.
You know, it should be helpfuljust to watch some of the
creators and whether or not theyare open about the amount of
money that they're earning outof Spotify.

Sam Sethi (13:47):
Well, they'll be small to begin with, so they
probably won't say anythinguntil they've got a few months
under their belt, I guess.
But the NMPA basically is anunlicensing issue, and Tom
Webster basically saidpodcasting would have a massive
music discussion if labels andpodcasting can set aside
differences and sit down at atable and figure out licensing.

(14:07):
That's never going to happen,though, is it, James?

Well, I mean, I think labels can and should talk
about licensing.
The difficulty is that musiclicensing is spread across a
number of different companiesand spread across geographical
locations as well.
So I can get a music licencequite easily in Australia, for

(14:31):
example, but that music licenceonly covers me in Australia for
a start, so that's no good.
Secondly, it only covers me forthe writer's work, so I can
perform a Coldplay song, but Ican't play the recording of
Coldplay because that's adifferent license.
And so you end up with all ofthis complication because it is

(14:52):
just hugely difficult to workout how that would work.
But there's no reason why therecord companies couldn't come
together and work out some formof licensing.
And certainly you know,wouldn't it be amazing?
I think Tom's point, which isan absolutely correct point, is
wouldn't it be amazing if wecould have more music shows as

(15:12):
podcasts, where you can actuallyplay a full track and you can
actually talk about it and doall of that?
At the moment we're not allowedto under the terms of the large
record companies.
It's only if you own all ofyour own uh, copyright um, that
you're actually able to get yoursongs played on a podcast now.

Sam Sethi (15:36):
Uh, one of my predictions in our show was for
an increased use of live, andnow I think 2025 and live is
going to be substantial.
Actually, we'll see at the endof the year how wrong I was, but
given that I still believe thatit's the beginning of the year,
we're seeing things coming outfrom the US that radio numbers

(15:59):
are basically going more digital, and now we've got the live
item tag in Podcasting 2.0 andwe're having this whole
discussion about should it be anIcecast Shoutcast server,
basically going more digital,and now we've got the live item
tag in podcasting 2.0 and we'rehaving this whole discussion
about it.
Should it be an IcecastShoutcast server?
Is it HLS?
We're not seeing again.
Sadly, I'm not host bashing, butit feels like I am, but we're
not seeing them implement anysort of hosting capability for
users to time slice livepodcasting.

(16:21):
It's I don't know nothing'sgoing on there, but I did notice
that Riverside had made aconcerted effort.
As I said last week, I thinkthey it feels like they've
sucked up StreamYard because itlooks exactly the same.
The UI is very slick.
You just say where your endpoints are and you simply then
go live and you can evenschedule it.

(16:42):
I wanted to find out more aboutwhat Riverside's doing with
live and what's their focus.
So I reached out to KendallBrightman, the community manager
, and said tell me more aboutwhat Riverside's doing with live
.

Yeah, we've been really leaning into live
and making a lot of improvementsand putting a lot of new
features out there when it comesto live streaming.
So there's a lot to go through.
But basically an overview of itis that Riverside now has
multi-streaming.
So you can go live on YouTube,linkedin, instagram through
custom RTMP, you can go throughTwitch and also you can schedule

(17:18):
your live streams.
So the other day I scheduled myYouTube live stream.
We did a live stream marathonfor five and a half hours.
It was a lot of streaming, nobreaks.
So we have that multi-streaming.
You can also use an audiencelink so you can go right into
the Riverside studio and have anaudience there.
But we also introduced Omnichatso from all of those streaming

(17:41):
destinations, you can see all ofyour chats in one place.
You could even kind of bringthem onto screen a feature I
call sticky comments and be ableto bring those chats on screen
and display them.
You can also go live in 1080pso your live streams can look
amazing and you're able to alsoput lower thirds on the bottom

(18:04):
of them so you can make themreally engaging.
We just added layouts so youcan have people be full screen,
switch over to picture inpicture, all kind of operated
through shortcuts.
The list keeps going on.
I don't want to just spew allof the improvements that they
were making, but just to giveyou an idea of all the things
that we've introduced.
We've basically created a placewhere you can not only record

(18:28):
your content, like you alwayshave been able to on Riverside,
but you can also stream it andreally get it in front of as
many people as possible andinteract directly with as many
people as possible, with what'simportant to us as an engaging
stream.
So those switching layouts,those comments on screen, the
lower thirds being able to bringpeople on stage and backstage,

(18:52):
just basically whatever we canto make it so that the work
you're doing and the livestreams that you're making are
seen by as many people and lookas great as possible.

Sam Sethi (19:01):
Looking forward to 2025, what else have you been
working on?
What's coming down the track?
What's new with Riverside?

So we've introduced a few things lately
that our goal is always to makeit as easy as possible for you
to create pro-level content.
So that's baseline, always whatit's been and always what it's
going to continue to be, and howwe're seeing that recently has
been to create ways that itworks as easily as it can into

(19:30):
your workflow.
And so what do I mean by that?
For example, two of the thingsthat we've introduced lately one
it's called workflows.
Basically, we have those magicclips, those AI clips AI
generated based on the mostengaging parts of your
conversation.
But maybe I want all of mymagic clips to be nine by 16,
and maybe I want them all to be60 seconds, and so before we

(19:54):
didn't really have that kind ofcontrol over that.
Maybe I want all my clips toinclude an intro or an outro
slide.
Now you're able to really setthose with this new workflow
feature, that you're able toreally set those with this new
workflow feature, that you'reable to really set those, so
that every time that yougenerate those magic clips, it's
exactly as you want them.
You can like set thoseparameters.

(20:15):
And another example of that iswe introduced this brand kit,
and so maybe every time and I,for most people who are creating
podcasts.
Every time that I create a clip, I want it to be in my brand
colors, I want it to have acertain font, I want it to have
my logo in the same place.
So we've made it so that youcan set all of that stuff

(20:35):
beforehand.
You could set a differentsetting for 16 by 9, because I
don't really maybe want animatedcaptions on my YouTube video.
I want it on my YouTube longform, but I do want it on my
clips.
You can set it per format andthen every time you just go into
your studio, you click yourbrand kit, you pick, apply and

(20:59):
it's all in there for you.
So you're going to continue tosee more of those solutions that
are built to make it as fast aspossible, because what I think
is cool about the AI that we'redoing at Riverside is that, at
the end of the day, this is yourcreation.
We're all doing this becausewe're trying to have some sort

(21:19):
of creative flow.
We want AI to make it easierfor you, but I don't want it to
be set in stone.
I want to be able to go in andstill make it exactly what we
want AI to make it easier foryou.
But I don't want it to be setin stone Like.
I want to be able to go in andstill make it exactly what I
want it to be and make it mycreation.
So I can still kind of setthose parameters I can change.
Maybe if they deleted a pause,if the AI did, I can go and put
that back in.
So still giving you thatfreedom while cutting out some

(21:42):
of the tedious parts of theworkflow.

Sam Sethi (21:45):
I call AI assisted intelligence and therefore it
sits very nicely.
If you call it that, it makessense.
It's there to help, not tohinder.

Exactly.
I saw a post online that waslike I want AI to do my dishes.
I don't want AI to speed up mycreative workflow so that I have
time to do the dishes.
I want AI to do the dishes sothat I have more time to do the
things I love, like my creativework, and I just like I really
connect to that.
Yeah.

Sam Sethi (22:11):
Yeah.
What else is coming down thetrack then from Riverside?
What else can we look forwardto this year?

We added multi-track editing and I think
they're going to continue to seethe improvements that we have
with multi-track editing.
So, for example, multi-trackediting you're able to, when you
hear that you're like, okay,you're able to go into each
audio track and isolate thosetracks, maybe mute some
background noise or somecrosstalk, and we do have that.

(22:40):
It kind of building on itselfis something like SmartScene
that we introduced recently, soyou can click a button and it
basically creates like hundredsof cuts in your video.
So sometimes we'll be side byside.
Sometimes I'll be full screen.
I'm not just saying thisbecause I work at Riverside, but
like whenever I'm editing video, I'm like, wow, that was really

(23:02):
on point.
Like, even if there's a pointwhere I'm smiling and nodding
but the other person was fullscreen, it'll cut back to that
grid and have it side by side soyou could see my reaction.
So it's pretty impressive inthat way.
But that's part of multitrackediting for us, that's being
able to take your two differentvideo feeds and be able to cut

(23:24):
to different scenes and createsomething that's more engaging
and keeps people watching forlonger.
And a little hack that I loveabout it is that, like you can
do the transcript editing.
I can delete a big chunk of mytext, but when you're actually
watching the video back, there'sthat jump cut and it doesn't
look.
It doesn't look so good to havethat, and I think we're more

(23:47):
forgiving on that right now withsocial media.
But as a former televisionproducer, I'm just not a jump
cut gal.
So now, with the smart scenesand just creating individual,
you can create them yourself too.
You don't have to use the AI.
If I cut out a big chunk, I'lljust, in the next part, go full
screen and so you don't see thatjump as often.

(24:08):
So it helps you really justlike smooth out your edits, and
that's really where we're going.
Another place is mobile mobileediting.
Yes, really beefing up thatmobile editor, trying to put as
many capabilities that we haveright now on the browser on
mobile, and that's like creatingon the go.
But I think that what relatesto me and possibly a lot of

(24:32):
other podcasters, is that I'mcreating content for mobile,
like I'm creating something forInstagram.
So being able to create it onmy phone, save it to my phone,
put it onto Instagram.
So being able to create it onmy phone, save it to my phone,
put it onto Instagram see it allfrom my phone is an experience
that is great and kind of flowsin that way.

(24:52):
We were talking about workflowsbefore, so really leaning into
what can you do on mobile issomething to be looking out for.

Sam Sethi (25:01):
Nice.
Now are we going to see you atPodcast Movement in Chicago.
Are we going to see you at theLondon Podcast Show?
Where can we find Riversidenext?

Yes, we will be at Podcast Movement.
We will be at the Podcast Show,I believe.
So you're going to see us thereand I will say that if you do
go to any of these, like, reallystop by the booth.
I go to podcast show.
I've been going to podcast showevery year and it's been really
incredible to actually get tomeet people.
But also I will like I'll speakfor Riverside, like we always.

(25:34):
We always bring some some funones out to out to these
conferences.
So it's just fun to haveconversations with you all, but
it's great for you to also makea connection with us and I get
to see what Riverside's allabout.
So if you're coming, come tothe booth.

Sam Sethi (25:49):
Indeed, and if they want to come to your website,
where would they go?

Go to riversidefm and we also have
community groups.
So if you are a podcaster,if'll say to somebody like I
love your mic, and they'll belike, oh my gosh, I'll send you

(26:20):
a link.
Like hell I'll.
I'll send it to you myself,I'll send you mine.
So if you want to, I love yourmind, oh yeah.
Yeah, you'll see in the mailboxsoon.
Lovely talk with my people.
Let me check.
No, but it Like how how much oflike a knowledge exchange this
whole community is.
But we have a Facebookcommunity called conversation

(26:42):
creators by Riverside.
Definitely join.
You'll see a lot of me thereand also a discord community as
well, and that is the podcastand video creator community by
Riverside.

Sam Sethi (26:55):
And we'll be able to see another live show from
Riverside anytime soon.

Oh well, we actually have a live demo today,
so maybe that's a bit too soon,but we have a webinar coming up
with Jade Beeson.
She's a YouTuber and she has areally well-known channel, but
I'm excited for this one becausewe're going to be going live
with her and talking about howto create a video-first social
media strategy and so basicallyas different algorithms, as

(27:24):
every algorithm is kind ofpushing video beyond, just
creating clips like how can youcreate videos that stand out on
social, that get in front ofyour audiences and we're going
to be talking to her about allof that.
So not just for podcasters, formarketers, for people who are
trying to build their businessor their brand.
It'll be a really cool sessionwith a ton of really practical

(27:45):
takeaways.

Sam Sethi (27:46):
Cool, Kendall.
Thank you so much.
Congratulations on the progressof Riverside.
It's really exciting.
I look forward to seeing you inLondon or maybe Chicago.
See you at both.

Yeah, thank you so much Kendall Brightman from
Riverside.
That company is currentlysponsoring the PodNews
newsletter, which you should begetting, of course, podnewsnet
and talking about that, actually, other live tools which are

(28:20):
available Well, I mean, it'skind of a live tool, but Clean
Feed, which is the tool that weuse to record this particular
show, clean Feed.
They've made their website lookall swish and fancy and modern
and everything else.
They are changing just to makelife simpler.
They've got their free product,clean Feed Lite.
They're putting some featuresinto Clean Feed Pro, and Clean

(28:41):
Feed Pro, from what I canunderstand, is going up in
pricing shortly, so it won'taffect you if you buy now,
apparently.
So I don't know who knows, butanyway, we use a press account
to record this particular show,so we're grateful to them.
But it's a very cool thing.
If all you want to do is recordaudio with low latency, it's a

(29:01):
pretty good thing.
So there we go.

Jingle (29:02):
The Pod News Weekly Review with Buzzsprout.
Start podcasting, keeppodcasting.

Sam Sethi (29:16):
Moving on, james.
Now, this is a rolling story.
I thought they'd be finished bynow.
Cast Media's bankruptcy, I mean, I think the company has been
more bankrupt than it's beenactually active, hasn't it?

I think you're right.
So about a year and a half agowe covered Cast Media, which
apparently had all of a suddenstopped paying its creators.
And then we discover all kindsof weird and wonderful things
about that particular company,which then bits of it were
bought by Podcast One and so onand so forth.

(29:44):
Anyway, it's been going throughthe bankruptcy procedure for
the last year or so.
Virtually everybody is happywith the plan to reorganise that
particular company, apart fromone company which is a company
called Arcadian Vanguard, andsome ex-employers as well, but
that's a little bit different.
Arcadian Vanguard used to makethe Jim Cornette show in fact

(30:07):
still does, but doesn't make itwith Cast Media anymore.
But the story is that they havesent a new lawsuit to Colin
Thompson, who's the CEO of CastMedia, and to his family members
, his wife and his dad, and thecompany is also suing Live One

(30:27):
and Podcast One with this newcomplaint as well.
And what the complaint says isthat $6.9 million worth of cash
has gone missing, which is quitea thing.
Family members received twocars I think there was a nice
Mercedes in there and I think anice Tesla, from memory Also a
$7,600 Cartier watch paid for bythe company and apparently, not

(30:55):
only was this going on, butPodcast One was also quite cool
with the fact that this wasgoing on.
They just wanted to make theannouncement prior to Podcast
One going onto the stock market.
I'm sure that Cast Media woulddeny all of that, as would Live
One and Podcast One, but mygoodness, it certainly ups the

(31:19):
ante.
If you want to, you can readthe entire complaint, which was
sent to us by one of thoseanonymous email addresses, and
yeah, it's really quite the read.
So if there's anybody who isconsidering making you know a

(31:39):
television documentary aboutthis sort of thing, then yeah,
it's certainly worthwhile takinga look at $10,000 per night
suite at the Wynn Las Vegas Wow,Apparently.

Sam Sethi (31:51):
Anyone say Sam Bankman-Fried?
No, I don't think so.
But I tell you what, talking ofSam's, I mean you know the
OpenAI guy.
He's got a £6 million car and Iloved how somebody pointed out
DeepSeek spent less than the £6million car that he owns?
Yes, yeah, exactly £340 billionhe wants to value that company

(32:13):
at, and what for God knows.
Anyway, well done, wow.
Moving on Chris Voss companyand what for god knows.
Anyway, well done, well.
Moving on um chris voss.
Now it's not a show I've heardof james.
Tell me more about chris vossno, there are two chris vosses.

this is the one that has a podcast called the
chris voss show which claimshe's the top one percent most
popular show, don't we all umand um?
He?
He seems a busy, busy chap.
He's very good when you readthe transcripts of his shows.
He's really, really good atbigging up his guests selling

(32:46):
whatever it is that his guestsare selling, whether it's books,
whether it's courses, anythingelse.
But what you wouldn't, just bylistening to his show or by
looking at the show's transcripton the show notes, what you
wouldn't know, is that thoseguests are paying to be there,

(33:08):
and paying quite handsomely.
Apparently he's denied that.
It's a grand to get onto hisshow, but certainly interesting.
He tells us that he acceptsadvertising.
He won't tell us how much hecharges and he says most podcast
sellouts.
We are no different.
We are a non-story.
Except it is the law that youare told that guests have paid

(33:31):
to appear says, and that is notwhat the Chris Voss show appears
to be doing.
He has told us that he has adisclaimer which is at the
bottom of his website, but thatdisclaimer is talking about
reviewing products and it hasnothing to do with this.
And he's also told us that hewas planning to buy advertising

(33:51):
with us, which is very kind.
I'm not quite sure why he wouldtell us that, which was very
kind.
I'm not quite sure why he wouldtell us that, but nevertheless.

Sam Sethi (33:58):
Story go away, go away.
Story.

That was a nice addition and, depending on
whether or not I have publishedit today, Friday, another
podcaster, this time a podcasterwith quite a well-known podcast
network who is charging $10,000if you want to be on that

(34:23):
particular show and againdoesn't appear to be open and
honest that they are chargingfor it.
So there's a thing Seems to bequite a lot of this going on.

Sam Sethi (34:37):
Well, james, look, I feel I need to come clean that.
Uh, the amount we charge forguests coming on this show is
zero.
Just to be clear, we don'tcharge.

yes, it it is zero, no, um, and if we did
charge, we would say uh, and youwill notice, every time that we
mention our sponsor Buzzsprout,we always say our sponsor
Buzzsprout because dem's therules.
So, yes, but there we are.
Other entertaining things goingon in America includes the new

(35:10):
media seat, which Todd Cochranis very excited by because, of
course, he runs the new mediashow, so maybe Todd will be
sitting there at the at thefront of the white house
briefing please tell me you'vegot a jingle for that, please
wouldn't that be brilliant.
Todd cochran sitting there goingyeah, can you.
Can you ask the presidentwhether whether a podcast has to

(35:32):
have an rss feed in it or not?
Get your own lecterncom.

Sam Sethi (35:35):
Yes.

Wouldn't that be excellent.
Anyway, John Ashbrook was oneof the first from Conservative
Talk Show.
Ruth was from a ConservativeTalk Show.
He got the first question,although he did tell Fox News
that he was basically lookeddown at by all of the other
journalists who were there,Journalists who have spent, you

(35:56):
know, many years in journalismschool and you know, doing the
hard graft of being a journalist.
And then some podcast guy comesin and gets to ask the first
question.

Sam Sethi (36:07):
Wait, wait, wait.
All these journalists arebecoming podcasters and leaving
their media networks.
We're now seeing a lot of thishappening.
You know and let's you know.
They can be snooty as much asthey like, but reality is that
the audiences are going to thenew media shows.

They're not going to mainstream media,
although not the new media show.
No, that's right, todd.
So but but you know, I mean,yeah, as an example, nbc's Chuck
Todd is to leave the network.
He's been with the network, Ithink, for something like 20
years or so, but interestinglythe Chuck Todd cast is going

(36:46):
with him.
It's currently an NBC to berunning a thing called the Chuck
Todd cast.
That Chuck Todd doesn't workfor the network anymore.
So obviously it's actuallyrelatively pointless for them.

(37:08):
But one would assume that NBChave done a deal in terms of
allowing Chuck to keep theaudience which he's grown on
that particular show.
That would make quite a lot ofsense.
So anyway, it's interesting toend up seeing that.

Sam Sethi (37:24):
One of my favourite quotes is from Mahatma Gandhi.
In fact I've got his framedquote in front of me.
First they ignore you, thenthey laugh at you, then they
fight you, then you win.
I think the mainstream media isfast laughing, but I don't
think they will win.

One last story that we have today is, you might
remember, a couple of weeks agoyou might have heard me doing a
slightly ham-fisted long readof an email that we got in.
I've been talking about videoand podcasting and saying that
it's such a shame that we havefocused on video a bit more and

(38:02):
such a shame that we're notfocusing on what podcasting is
great at, which is audio foryour ears while your eyes are
busy.
Excellent producer.
He produces the Lateral Podcastwith Tom Scott, who's a
YouTuber, and he sent thiswonderful email with lots of

(38:27):
reasons why you should be doingvideo.

I thought it would be interesting to find out
more about why he thought that.
Yes, well, we come from aslightly different background
because our host, tom Scott, isa famous YouTuber, so, of course
, when we launch a podcastfeaturing him, everybody's going
.
That means that's going to bein full video, right, and um, we
said, well, we'll see how itgoes, and we actually found that

(38:49):
shorter youtube clips workbetter for us, but the the in
terms of the benefits of whatthe video brings.
It's a case of we are a panelgame and so watching people's
reactions is a good thing.
If you have four people'svoices, we try and introduce

(39:10):
them slowly at the start sopeople get to know who is who,
but some people do find itdifficult, perhaps if they're
neurodivergent or whatever, tokeep track of the conversation.
Sometimes, um, and also, just,we have a lot of people who, uh,
english isn't their firstlanguage, and so being able to

(39:30):
see and hear words spoken incontext with the, the you know,
knowing who's saying what and towhom, and with the facial
expressions, it all adds up tohelping understand what's going
on.

Yeah, and that's an interesting point that you
just made about right at thebeginning you're quite slow to
introduce.
You actually hear a good amountof words from one person before
you move on to the second andto the third guest, which is
something that, as a listener,I've spotted, but I didn't
realise the thinking behind that.

(40:04):
That's really interesting.

Yeah, it's a technique that I borrowed.
Slash stole from Radio 4 panelgames.
I actually used to appear along time ago on a BBC panel
game called Puzzle Panel and wewould bring a puzzle to ask the
others, and Lateral's got quitea lot in common with that and

(40:27):
being able to introduceeverybody slowly, without the
immediacy of having to crashinto in YouTube terms, straight.
The content is is fairlyimportant for us so that we know
who's who.

yeah, so you come from a tv background, um,
and I think one of the thingsthat I was saying, uh, in in my
typical sort of over oversimplistic way, is cheap
television was the words thatstuck in my mind and normally I
say, normally I say shittelevision, but I decided I

(41:00):
wouldn't say that on the podcast.
I would say cheap television.
Um, what?
What's your sort of view onthat if you were to do this?
And you know, and obviously tomhas done a lot of different
puzzle games and panel things onhis youtube channel and some of
those are very fancy and haveall of the CGI added to them and

(41:21):
everything else.
Why not just make David?
If I can be so rude, why notmake it properly?

Well, if I was to make a TV show properly, it
would involve 10 times morepeople, probably 20 times the
budget, and it the lead time isjust massively longer.
Uh and uh.
The thing that's great abouthaving access to either youtube
or podcasts or spotify, whateveryou a creator-led commissioning

(41:56):
process where we can just say,look, we think this is good,
we're going to put it out there.
We don't need any commissionersto tell us, oh, that needs to
be a little bit more orange.
I've literally had that happento me sometimes.
We can just say, look, we thinkthis is great, and we'll listen
to feedback from people whoconsume the show by whatever

(42:16):
means, but we will take ourviewers to what we think is good
.
So it's just everything's justso more efficient.
Um, I think the problem with umformats that are regularly
repeating I think they workreally really well as podcasts
because people expect them aslike a weekly friend.

(42:37):
Yeah, on youtube, I don't thinkthey work so well.
I don't think I think peoplehave tried quiz type formats, uh
, panel game formats on youtubeand what happens is people watch
the first one or two and thenthey sort of go what's new?
And they they've.
They don't really have anybrand loyalty that's interesting
.

I mean, I use youtube, um, I pay for youtube
so I don't see any ads on there,but that also means that I can
download everything, and so Iwill typically use youtube on
the not insubstantial amount oftraveling that I end up doing,
um, and quite a lot of the showson there, um, that I've found
are actually panels and panelgames and things like that,

(43:20):
mostly stolen from thetelevision.
I should say, but yeah, butthat's interesting.
So you're saying that thehabitualness, if you like, of a
podcast means that formats workmuch easier than perhaps on
YouTube, where you're findingnew audiences all the time,

(43:45):
which, of course, interestingly,is one of the reasons why
podcasters love the idea ofgoing on there in the first
place, because you're findingnew audiences all the time.

Yeah, I mean what addictive to me, um, as a
producer, is.
I have access to all thestatistics and I can see, you
know, like, all the numbersgoing up, some faster than
others, but it's like veryaddictive to go like the hard
work that we're putting in is isshowing uh results.
Here and on the tv show I sortof go like I turn up, I write

(44:17):
questions or devise games orwhatever help with the format
and it might be successful.
It might not be so successful,but I don't really have any part
of the IP and so I work forhire on those sorts of things.
So, yeah, what's great aboutpodcasting is that you know if

(44:37):
you want to have a break or doit as regularly as possible.
We choose to stick to a veryregular weekly format schedule
because it just helps with the.
Really, we don't have toexplain oh, we're going away and
now we're coming back.
It's just runs like clockwork.

(44:58):
And also, with us we canbecause we're not a uh topical
show we can batch record.
So we actually do a veryintensive for podcasts 16 shows
over four days, wow, um.
So we do two in the morning,two in the afternoon for four
days in a run and that meansthat that Tom is then free to

(45:19):
spend his next three monthstravelling to Europe to look at
dams and escalators and whateverelse he does While I get on
with editing the show.
Well, I send off to get editedand coordinate everything and
get the next set of shows ready.

Does it make it harder to edit if you know that
there is video there as well?

So I got this wrong.
When Tom started he said ohwell, what we'll do is we'll
just completely edit the showsin such a way that audio and
video are going to be inlockstep shows in such a way
that audio and video are goingto be in lockstep, and that way,
what we've got?
The whole audio, we've got thewhole video and the show can
exist in whatever form in thefuture.

(46:06):
It doesn't matter which versionyou listen to.
And now that we're on spotifyand you have to flick between
the video and the audio, uh,then that's actually been a very
good decision for us.
So, yes, I mean that isdefinitely a editorial downside,
in that you either have to say,um, the audio is going to have

(46:30):
some pregnant pauses in it,which for us as a sort of a
stinky panel show isn't too bad,or your video is going to have
jump cuts in it.
So if you've watched somethinglike the rest is entertainment,
uh, in video you sort of go, ohwow, they've, they've really got
a lot of jump cuts in here whenthey've cut out a lot of the
the fluff in the chat.
So, uh, we've got brillianteditor called julie has it in

(46:53):
dublin who, uh, she sort oftakes a view between the two.
Yes, there'll be like any majordead ends will get chopped out,
but not for really very much.
But there might be like one ortwo moments where there's like a
pregnant pause that ideallyyou'd want to take out, but we
can't do it because it wouldruin the continuity of the video
.
But it works 95% better than Ithought it would do.

Well, it's an excellent podcast.
It's called Lateral, you canfind it in all of your favourite
podcast players and you'vefilmed all of them in video.
Does that mean that at somepoint in the future,
particularly on Spotify, whichwill be supporting video in full
?
Does that mean that, slowly andsurely, we'll begin to see some

(47:41):
of the videos of the olderepisodes?

So we had the foresight to edit as we went,
because we needed them for clipsanyway.
So we just asked for the wholeshow to be done.
So I'm pleased to say that allwhatever it is 120 plus episodes
are already now in full,full-length video on spotify.
So, uh, knock yourself outthat's very cool.

Uh well, david, thank you so much.
I I appreciate it.

Jingle (48:11):
Thank you much the pod news weekly review.
With buzz, with buzzsprout,start podcast, keep podcasting.

David Boddickham , the lateral cast.
Obviously you can get as well,and there's a longer version of
that interview coming out inthis feed on Monday.
Should we go around the world,Sam?

Sam Sethi (48:31):
Yes, let's.
And I have to give you a roundof applause, first of all
because you spelt Turkay, whichwas the correct spelling of it,
not Turkey, in Pod News Daily.
So a round of applause to you,sir.

Well, yes, thank you, it's not me, it was Rifat
who very kindly wrote thearticle.
It's a long article all aboutpodcasting in Turkey, which grew
faster than anywhere else onearth in 2020.
It's a $31 million audio admarket there.
If you want to learn more aboutthe Turkish podcasting

(49:04):
ecosystem, then knock yourselfout.
There's a big, long article inthe Pod News newsletter last
week with that.
By the way, wednesday Pod Newsactually came from over Turkey.
As I was flying over overTurkey, there was an AI version
of me there because I didn'twant to sit on the plane and

(49:26):
read pod news out because that'sslightly embarrassing.
But yes, so hurrah, forEmirates is in-flight Wi-Fi is
what I can say.
Podcast one switching hosting toAmazon's Art19, which is
interesting.
It used to be using a companycalled Knox Solutions.
I was always curious why theyused Knox Solutions.
They appear to have just 1,200shows according to the podcast

(49:52):
index, and about 1,000 of thoseare Podcast Ones.
So I'm not quite sure what thatmeans for the future of Knox
Solutions.
I'm not actually sure who ownsit.
Maybe Podcast One actually ownsthat anyway, but that I thought
was interesting.
They're moving to a new hostwhich, of course, they get
benefits from with Art19.

(50:13):
So hurrah for them.

Sam Sethi (50:16):
The BBC Studios is going on its world tour.
Still, it's now.
It was in Australia, it was inNew Zealand and now it looks
like it's over to the US.
James, what's it up to?

Yes, so ads being sold on BBC podcasts
outside of the UK, of course,are now being sold by iHeart
Media in the US, which is acanny move for them.
Bbc doing some really nicethings at the moment in terms of
their shows.
Would you like to have aprediction on what might happen

(50:49):
in the next six months?
Did I get?

Sam Sethi (50:50):
a choice.

But, yes, I'd love to.
My prediction is that BBCSounds will go away for those of
us outside of the UK, which istheir music podcasts app music
radio and podcasts app.
That I think will go away, andI also think that those of us
outside the UK will lose accessto the BBC's domestic radio

(51:13):
channels.
I don't think it's anythingthat I want, but I think that
that will happen, and I thinkthat's probably good news for
the want, but I think that thatwill happen and I think that's
probably good news for thefuture of that corporation.
So there you go, but anyway,they seem to be doing some good
stuff.
I know that they will be atEvolutions in Chicago in March
as well.

Sam Sethi (51:30):
Now, a couple of network stories here.
Back in the UK, James, a newpodcast network called Mercury's
launched.
Who are they?

Yes, they're run by a guy called Liam Heffernan.
What's interesting is it isvery much focused at the
independent podcaster.
I'm not quite sure how scalablethat is, but nevertheless the
network's got half a millionimpressions already.
It's got a number ofindependent shows signed with
them and you know it's alwaysinteresting seeing new companies

(52:04):
getting into this.
And I guess the question is howscalable it'll be in terms of
looking after these individualshows but also making sure that
you can be large enough toactually get the eyes and ears
of advertisers as well.
But that was interesting.
Also, shagged Marriage Noid.

(52:26):
This is a big loss for Acastand actually another big loss
for Acast.
Acast seem to be losing quite alot of people in the UK at the
moment.
Shagged Marriage Noid has justsigned with Adelicious.
Shagged Married Annoyed hasjust signed with Adelicious.
They're a podcast which thetalent is with Avalon and Avalon
shows already on the Adeliciousnetwork.
But yeah, acast in the UK doesseem to be losing quite a number

(52:51):
of large shows.
I'm not quite sure what's goingon there.

Sam Sethi (52:55):
Maybe we'll ask them, maybe we won't, who knows?
Right, james, back over toAustralia then.

What's going on in your backyard.
Well, so there was a newAustralian podcast report that
came out in Australia this weekand lots of really good numbers
in there.
But the Australian podcastreport is a bit weird.
It's produced by Triton, it'sproduced using the Triton
podcast ranker and it's a littlebit difficult reading through
it, working out what data istalking about all of Australian

(53:29):
podcasting and what data is justtalking about the podcast
ranker and what data is talkingabout who is measured by Triton
overall, which is a biggernumber than the podcast ranker,
and so on and so forth.
So there was one claim in therewhich made me feel as if my
podcast was rubbish.
One claim that 63% of podcastsare achieving more than 100,000

(53:52):
average monthly downloads 63%,so two-thirds of podcasts are
bigger than 100,000 averagemonthly downloads, which is
obviously rubbish, obviouslyrubbish, but nevertheless was
apparently in that press releaseas being quoted by Commercial
Radio Australia's CEO sorry,commercial Radio and Audio, I
believe they're called their CEO, lizzie Young and I wrote back

(54:17):
and I said really.
And they wrote back and theysaid yeah, yeah, yeah, although
this is actually just for theranker.
And I wrote back and I saidyeah, but really.
And they said, oh, actuallyit's not got nothing to do with
the ranker at all.
It's completely different.
It's got something to do withsomebody else.
Yeah, it's just like reallyweird.
I had to ask twice to basicallysay are you sure that this is

(54:39):
actually correct?
So you know, absolutely fine,if CRA wants to release this,
two thirds of podcasts aren'tgetting 100,000 downloads a
month.
So yeah, I think it did justprove that.

(55:06):
Podcasters, you know that youhave to have some knowledge of
the industry that you aretalking about, and I'm not sure
that CRA has that.
So quite sad to end up seeing abit of a messy retraction and
then a sort of well, this iswhat we really meant from them.

(55:28):
But yeah, it's a messy oldthing.
But if you're going to releasedata, make sure that the data is
correct and make sure that thedata isn't misleading, which
both of those things weren'tFirst time I can actually say
fake news and mean it Right?
Yes, absolutely yes.

Sam Sethi (55:47):
Now moving on people and jobs.
James, what's going on?
Odyssey is now officially nolonger going bankrupt.

Hooray, hooray for Odyssey.
Yes, it's not a bankruptcompany anymore.
It's closed its Chapter 11bankruptcy process in court.
Along with that, they've losttheir CEO, arguably the man that
made them bankrupt in the firstplace.
That's slightly unfair, but ithas an element of truth CEO
David Field.
He's welcomed the dawn of a newera, but he's also stepped down

(56:17):
from being CEO.
A little bit of a wrinkle inthere.
The incoming government in theUS isn't happy about the Chapter
11 bankruptcy process and mightwant to overrule the deal that
they got from court, so that'sgoing to be interesting.
In case you don't know, ofcourse, who Odyssey are, they

(56:38):
own, yes, lots of radio stations, but also a number of podcast
companies, including PineappleStreet Studios and all of that
Other human beings that weshould be talking about.
Dane Cardiel or Dane Cardiel, Ialways get his name wrong.
I think it's Cardiel.
Anyway, he's concluded histenure tenure.

(56:59):
Concluded his tenure that's aninteresting phrase.
At the HeadGum-ownedadvertising platform, gumball.
He's going to be the founder ofGood Tape full-time, which is a
printed magazine aboutpodcasting, but it's actually an
agency that helps with artwork,that helps with marketing and
all of that stuff.
He's in search of strategicpartners.
He's a good bloke and we wishhim well there.

(57:22):
Also, jay Shaler is going to bethe new boss of NPR's Up First,
which is nice, joining from CBSEvening News a big show in the
US and a managing director ofthe UK's podcast production
company, persephonica brand newmanaging director.
They've never had one of thosebefore.
They've had, obviously, dinoSofos, who's the founder of it,

(57:42):
but they've now got a propermanaging director, fiona Hanlon,
who'd worked for the BBC for 17years.
She is their first managingdirector.
So good for them as theycontinue to grow.
I wonder if that means that shewill be living and working in
sunny Sheffield.
I would imagine that she willbe, so hurrah for them.

Sam Sethi (58:01):
Dino's got a boss at last, finally, well done Dino.

I'm not sure that it works that way.

Sam Sethi (58:08):
Oh no, no, it does.
Now I was listening to theVerge, you know, and they were
talking about how the MDbasically runs the show, so I
guess that allows Dino to go offand do his creative stuff,
which is probably what he wantsto do anyway.

Two events to tell you about.
Well, three events to tell youabout.
Firstly, the New ZealandPodcast Summit is returning for
2025.
It's in Auckland.
It is in May.
I think Tickets are availablenow.
Anyway, you'll find moredetails on the Pod News website,
podnewsnet slash events Comingup.
Of course, evolutions in Chicagoat the end of March, beginning

(58:42):
of April.
Evolutions is where I will bespilling the beans on the Pod
News report card.
Now, normally the Pod Newsreport card will already be out
there and will already be askingquestions and things, and it's
not yet because I've kind offorgotten to put it up.
But we've got a little bit moretime this time because

(59:02):
Evolutions is slightly laterthan it normally is.
So, phew, thank heavens forthat.
But it sounds as if I will bestanding on a big stage with the
suit on talking through some ofthe results of that at one of
the days at Evolution.
So looking forward to ending updoing that.
Of course, coming up in Londonin May is the podcast show

(59:25):
London, but before that, podcamp2.0, which is on the 2.0th of
May.
Sam, what's the latest withthat?
Have you got any other exciting?

Sam Sethi (59:38):
news.
Yeah, riverside, I said I'vebecome a sponsor of the show and
we'll be doing a live broadcast.
I have a meeting with Jasonfrom the London Podcast Show
today, so watch this space.

Excellent.
Well, there you go, and if youwant to learn more about that,
it's podcampcom Dot live, dotlive.
Yes, he's trying to remember it.
Yes, the Tech Stuff.

Jingle (01:00:00):
Tech Stuff On the Pod News Weekly Review.

James Cridland (01:00:04):
Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday
in the Pod News newsletter.
Here's where Sam talkstechnology.
I feel lots of talking aboutmicropayments coming on.

Sam Sethi (01:00:12):
Well, somebody has to , nobody else seems to.
Yes, a couple of stories,really.
I mean, they don't really havea conclusion to them, but
they're just interesting.
I think that joins some dots up.
Stripe, which is the onlinepayment company, has just closed
a $1.1 billion purchase of astablecoin platform called

(01:00:33):
Bridge.
Now, why would I ever talkabout that?
Why would I ever talk aboutthat?
Well, with my TrueFans hat on,we use Stripe as the mechanism
for getting money into theplatform, and then we convert
that into micropayments, bitcoinsats, and what it allows us,
through our partnership withStripe, is now to look at other
stable coins, and I think itjust means that for me, as a CEO

(01:00:56):
of TrueFans.
We can use things like Swish,we can use UPI, we can start to
look at USDT.
Again, I'm not saying we'regoing to do that now, because I
think it's too confusing, but Ilove the fact that Stripe is
going to do all the hard workand the heavy lifting of
payments, and platforms likemine can then just simply use
the API and choose differentmechanisms.

(01:01:17):
So we added Canadian dollars,new Zealand dollars and Japanese
yen last week.
So if we wanted to add stablecoins in the future, then guess
what, thanks to Stripe buyingthis company, we would have the
option to do that, which I thinkis quite cool.

So can I ask a stupid question?
Yes, what is a stable coin andwhy would I care?

Sam Sethi (01:01:37):
A stable coin is a government-backed digital coin
and therefore it's pegged to acurrency and therefore it's not
as volatile as something likeBitcoin, and that's why people
use it.

So there's a US dollar stablecoin, yes, usdt.
Why would I just not use acredit card or a bank account?

Sam Sethi (01:02:00):
For the very same reasons that we have digital
currencies.
You can do micro payments withthem, whereas you can't split up
a dollar or a cent in that way.

Right, so the payments are, you know are very
cheap in comparison to thepayments, and so I mean, ideally
, hidden behind the scenes, youwould just turn um five dollars
of cash that somebody has paidyou into five dollars of usdt,
of a stable coin, and you knowit doesn't actually make any

(01:02:31):
difference under the hoodbecause you're still paying
dollars and cents, right?

Sam Sethi (01:02:36):
yes, exactly, but it allows us to be able to do all
the digital splits and theclever stuff that we want to do,
because that's the way thatmicropayments allow us to do
that, um, but without having allof the fee-based structure of
dealing with fiat currency.
Yeah, so yeah very cool.
Uh elon is doing something, Ibelieve, with uh micropayments,

(01:02:56):
um yes, now not happy on thisbecause obviously it's x, but I
think I said to you, probably ayear ago, the there will be an
event in the future that willbring micropayments, wallets and
digital currencies to the massmarket.
Um, I, when I was at netscape,I said that it was actually

(01:03:18):
microsoft that made the the web.
Um, mass market wasn't Netscapeas much as we like to think
they.
You know we did it was byincluding it and bundling it in
windows.
Now, in the same way, um, youknow, a lot of people have left
X.
I have.
I know you use it as a a, justa point out medium, but there

(01:03:38):
are people still on it and ifall of them end up getting a
wallet and all of them learn howto do micropayments and all of
them therefore can dotransactions, that's possibly a
good way of getting it into morepeople's hands and
understanding how this wholemechanism works.
So, again, it looks likethey're bringing it out and it
won't be long.
But he wants to create theWeChat of the west.

(01:03:59):
Um, you know his super app andx was his original company for
money, micro payments, and Iguess that's what he's going to
do, but he's going back to hisroots on that one excellent.

He should launch his own stable coin.
Call it the heil um.
Also, albie has done somethingweird with friends and family
plugins and things.
I'm not sure I fully understandany of the.
Albie has done something weirdwith friends and family plugins
and things.

Sam Sethi (01:04:20):
I'm not sure I fully understand any of the albie hub
stuff anymore yeah, and andthat's why I mentioned it here
because, um, we at true fans usean albie hub.
Um, after the uh walletapocalypse, when there was an uh
, an unclarity about whetheralbie would be able to get
licenses to give custodiallicenses in the US, they pulled

(01:04:41):
the rug and that caused a greatrift in the podcasting 2.0
market.
So we created our own walletFountain, have got their own
wallets, and then there's otherplayers coming in the market,
like Strike.
Let's not get into all of that.
I then started talking to oneof our power supporters, mike at
the rogue media network, abouthis own network and getting them

(01:05:04):
to use more podcasting 2.0features.
Um, and they're with megaphoneand they were what can we do?
How can we get things liketranscripts and chapters and how
can we do all the other thingsthat we've been talking about?
And I said look, one companymaybe you want to talk to is
rsscom.
They support the Albi walletmechanism.

(01:05:24):
Then I had a look and actually,because of the change in the
way that Albi issues wallets ordoesn't issue wallets, the whole
thing with Captivate and withrsscom issuing wallets is broken
fundamentally.
So I then went on to the AlbiHub and they've got a plugin
called Friends and Family, whichI have told Boomi is badly
named, but it is a brilliantmechanism for podcast networks.

(01:05:47):
So how does a podcaster get allof the lightning address within
their wallet, within the valuetag?
And what you can do as apodcast network is set up an
Albi Hub.
Then you create sub wallets,which are this friends and
family wallets or uncle Jimwallets, whatever they call them
in the US, and they will issuea lightning address for that

(01:06:10):
individual wallet.
So imagine your rogue medianetwork.
You've got 50 podcasts.
You create the Albi hub, thatis the Uber hub that controls it
all.
You create the Orbi hub that isthe Uber hub that controls it
all, and then you control subwallets and issue the value tag
elements for the lightningaddress into each individual RSS
feed.
So then when you publish that,people can then pay that

(01:06:36):
individual podcast.
Thank you very much, I've gotyour lightning address.
And then it aggregates it allinto the Albi hub, so the
network has control.

So the podcast network turns into the bank
essentially, and in exactly thesame way as the podcast network
would be dealing with the moneyfrom the advertisers.
The podcast network deals withthe money from the, with the
cryptocurrency money as well,and everybody's happy.
Yeah, and it works, and it'sreally good with the
cryptocurrency money as well,and everybody's happy.

Sam Sethi (01:07:02):
Yeah, and it works and it's really good and I don't
know why people aren't talkingabout it and I guess when you
look at it first off, friendsand family doesn't sound right.
Friends and family sounds likeyou setting up one for your wife
and your daughter.

Yeah, and that's not what it's there.
It sounds like an enterpriseaccount, doesn't it?
For a ton of different walletsand things?

Sam Sethi (01:07:21):
yeah, Exactly, and that's what it does, and it's
really good at doing it and itissues all the correct key, send
addresses and custom IDs thatyou can plug into your Captivate
RSS feed dashboard or yourRSScom dashboard, and then
suddenly those two services workagain.

Well, there you go.
Um worthwhile taking a peek atif you are uh involved in
development of that sort ofthing.
Also, by the way, worthwhiletaking a peek at um the pod news
um dailies rss feed.
If you would like to do anytesting around sending a um a
bit of money to a L&D account, Ithink L&D is that right.

(01:08:04):
I've basically put my Strikeemail address in there, so
hopefully I've followed the speccorrectly.
And if you are writing an appthat pays people by boosts or
super chats or whatever it isthat you want to call them um,
then feel free um to give that ago and uh see if you can break.

Sam Sethi (01:08:27):
Um, if you can break, I will be doing it straight off
the show because we support italready we did.
We did that because oscarfountain issued fountain radio
and he put an ln address addressin there which linked to an
LNURLP God help us all withthese acronyms which is a strike

(01:08:48):
account.
Basically, we did the payment,it worked and Oscar confirmed
the payments.
So I'm going to do the same toyou after the show and you can
let me know whether it worked ornot.

Well, there you go.
That all works nicely.
Anyway, it's time for the lasttime you'll ever hear this
jingle.

Jingle (01:09:03):
Boostergrams, boostergrams, boostergrams and
fan mail.
Fan mail On the Pod News WeeklyReview.

Yes, it's time for our favourite time of the
week.
It's Boostergram Corner.
It's the last time.
I'll say that as well.
It's got a new name coming nextweek Sam.
Oh okay, yes, I mean partially.
This is your fault.
Oh good, because you ended upchanging the name of what you
call boosts on your own service,didn't you?

Sam Sethi (01:09:29):
I did.
I mean look, just to reiteratedo you understand what a boost
is, or do you understand what alike is?
Do you understand what acomment is, or a boostagram?
Right, yes, exactly I justdon't get me on this, please yes
yes, anyway.

Uh, from this time next week.
Uh, it's got a brand new name,if I can mix the jingle in time.
Uh, sheila d has just done thejingles for us, so that's all
lovely, good, anyway.
Um, we got some um boosts,which was kind, or super
comments, or super zaps, orwhatever the heck we call them.
Um, 1186 sats from neil velio.

(01:10:08):
Thank you, neil.
Using true fans.
Can sam make an lg tv appplease?
I don't know, can you?

Sam Sethi (01:10:15):
I don't know.
I don't know, I'll have tothink about that.
Um, we are making a fire tv appand an apple tv app, so I
suppose we'll just start it tolist, neil.
But um, I need to go and readthe spec yeah, I think how hard
I think lg tv is.

Is it's web os, isn't it?
And I think it's just, um, yeah, it's just using the web.
So, um, I think that that wasshould be relatively simple.
But anyway, there you go, neil.
I don't own an LG TV.
I own a Philips TV, which Ithought I was buying from the
venerable large Dutchelectronics company.
But it turns out that Philipsis a bit like Grundig and other

(01:10:51):
companies they basically licensetheir brand out.
Grundig, when did you drag thatname out.

Sam Sethi (01:10:57):
You remember Grundig.

They used to be amazing I do, but it's now 900
years old Amazing German radios.
And then they sold the brand toArgos, which is a very cheap
company in the UK.
No, alba, I think it was A verycheap company in the UK.
Anyway, yes, and so Philips isexactly the same.
If you buy a Philips TV, you'renot buying it from that large

(01:11:23):
Dutch company, you're buying itfrom, in my case, a bad Chinese
TV maker.
So I've got one of those.
I'm actually thinking aboutgetting a new TV at some point,
but it all depends what elsehave we got Before we go on?

Sam Sethi (01:11:37):
can I just point out one thing it all depends.
What else have we got Before wego on?
Can I just point out one thingthe amount that Neil spent 1,186
, isn't a special SATS number, Irealise now, because he's
basically paid in fiat currency,so in pounds, and we've
converted that into SATS.

Oh, has he.
Well, there you go.
Well, that's very clever.
So I wonder how much you paidus in pounds?
10p, 10p, using Fountain Silason Linux, 5,000 sats.
Thank you, silas, you are thebiggest booster of the week.
Here's some money to balanceout the swastika demonetisation.

(01:12:16):
Yes, we're using a cheap, jokeyphrase that isn't particularly
jokey.
Well, sitting in Switzerland atthe moment, did you see Tesla
sales in France and Germany thisweek?
They're down and down and down,aren't they?
60% down, not just down, gosh,40% down in Australia.

(01:12:37):
And there was this wonderfulpiece in one of the trade papers
saying it's unclear of thereasons why it's not unclear of
the reasons why.
We all know the reasons why.
Yes, he's got a stiff right arm.
Yes, exactly, good Lord.
Anyway, I mean, it's not justthe stiff right arm.

(01:12:57):
I think you're right in thefirst way.

Sam Sethi (01:12:59):
The stiff right arm, yes, or just the stiff right arm
, it's also I think you're rightin the first way the stiff
white arm yes.

Or indeed the stiff white arm.
It's also, you know, the factthat he's supporting the literal
Nazis in Germany.
Anyway, and 100 sacks fromSocial Web Cafe to the Pod News
Daily.
Thank you, social Web Cafe.
Thank you, pod News for theannouncement of Studio Fusion,
very appreciated.

(01:13:22):
Also love your show FromDeborah.
Thank you so much for that.
That's very kind, using TrueFans.
So hurrah.
And we should thank oursensational 16 who support us
every single month with theirold-fashioned MasterCard and
Visa card.
You can do that too,weeklypodnewsnet.

(01:13:45):
Sam and I share the results ofthat.
David John Clark, james Burt,john McDermott, clare
Waight-Brown, ms Eileen Smith,neil Velio, rocky Thomas, jim
James he says I can't readanymore.
Now I can.
Rocky Thomas, jim James, davidMarzell, cy Jobling, rachel
Corbett, dave Jackson, mikeHamilton, matt Medeiros,

(01:14:05):
marshall Brown and Cameron MoleMuch appreciated.
So what's happened for you thisweek, sam One?

Sam Sethi (01:14:12):
of the things that we added was another example of
secure RSS L402.
You can now.
Last week we had it so that, asa creator, if your host didn't
support transcript, you couldbuy a transcript.
We've now added that for users.
So, again, if you go to yourepisode and you go to the

(01:14:35):
transcript tag and there isn't atranscript there, you'll see a
button that says buy transcript,and then you can click a button
and you can buy it.
Now the value is based on thelength of the show, so it's
variable, but you can alsoincrease the amount you pay if
you choose, and the additionalamount you choose beyond the
minimum, which is to cover thecost of the transcript, goes

(01:14:57):
directly to the creator as well.
So not only are you buying atranscript for the creator, but
you also can donate an extraamount, if you want, by
increasing the value of thetranscript.
Very nice, and then, what elsedid we do?
The other thing that we didwhile we were just playing
around, but I think it's quite anice thing you can now add a
playlist to your homepage.

(01:15:18):
So if you've got a playlistwhether it's your queue or one
you've created and you just wantto add it to your homepage so
that when you just open up yourapp, it's there in front of you.
You can now pin a playlist toyour homepage.

Cool, yes, and you're working with categories
as well.

Sam Sethi (01:15:37):
We have been doing categories for a while.
Dave Jones posted on Mastodonthis week is it time for us to
sort out categories?
And I went, dave, I think we'vedone a lot of the work already.
So when you've got the Applecategories, that's the default.
So again it goes back to theuse of the medium equals tag.

(01:15:57):
So in TrueFans when we seemedium equals podcast, we give
the creator the option or of theApple category, so we read it
from your.
RSS feed and then.
But if you then claim yourpodcast you can go in and change
it, but you'll only see theApple categories because you're
a podcast.
But when we talked to Sam atWavelake about six months ago or

(01:16:20):
maybe even longer, the onlycategory in Apple to categorize
music was music.
It was really dull.
I mean, what about soul, rock,funk, jazz, whatever?
None of those categoriesexisted.
So sam uh from wavelake gave ustheir extensive category list.
So when we see a RSS feed withmedium equals music, say for a

(01:16:44):
track, we then switch the Applecategories list out and we bring
in the Apple the Wavelengthcategories list and Wavelength
obviously to give that to theircustomers.
So you see that in the wayWavelength customers already
self tagged as jazz, funk,whatever, and then we can then
display that also in TrueFan.
So that's how we did it withmusic.

(01:17:08):
And then with Pod 2, when wedid the audio books, they gave
us an extensive list of audiobook categories and so when we
see medium equals audio book, weswitched that as well, and
that's the way I thinkcategories should work.
But we switched that as welland that's the way I think
categories should work.
They should be simple enoughfor you to then have a agreed
list, like the apple categorieslist, and then they should be
hosted somewhere.
Podcast index and the appsthemselves, based on the medium,

(01:17:32):
will switch the category listand the hosts should have that
same list so they can allowusers.
But again we go back to what Isaid earlier hosts aren't using
anything more than medium equalspodcast, so it's never going to
take off until that changes.

Well, yes, indeed, but certainly it makes a
bunch of sense to havedifferent categories for
different types of content.
So that, yeah, so that'll begood to watch.

Sam Sethi (01:17:56):
Yeah, it's live.
I mean, James, you can see itin the show notes.
There's the code for it podcast.
Category text equals pop, andthen you can basically have that
in your RSS feed and you justread it.
It's so simple yeah, yeah,james, come on.
What's happened for you thisweek?

Well, I was on the SoundOff podcast again with
Matt Cundall Very good.
Enjoyed.
I enjoyed that one.
Yes, it's always good to go onthat show because Matt is very
good at asking questions thatmake you think, so it's
worthwhile looking at.
The SoundOff podcast is also inOP3, so you can go diving into
the download data, which isalways interesting.

(01:18:34):
If you were to take a look atthe PodNews Daily's RSS feed,
I've been doing some work onthat to.
Essentially I'm doing a littlebit of work with OSHA using
their PSO product, their podcastsearch optimization product,
and we realized a couple ofglaring errors in the way that

(01:18:55):
we were doing the RSS feed.

Sam Sethi (01:18:59):
So one of the For example, like what I mean,
that's interesting.

Yeah, because the way that I was producing the
RSS feed is it was essentiallythe complete text of the
newsletter, um, in the RSS feed,which then got cut off by a lot
of different podcast um uh,hosts or podcast apps anyway, um
, so it wasn't particularlyhelpful for that.

(01:19:22):
It also made the RSS feedmassive.
So what I would then do is onlyshow the full text for the last
five episodes, so for the lastweek, you know, essentially.
And then it just went, and thenit automatically went to a much
smaller thing which, of course,took all of the benefit of the

(01:19:43):
search keywords appearing andall of that because they all
went.
So it was all a little bit of amess, and so what I've sort of
moved to is something whichshows the top three stories, has
a big link, you know, for youto click through and see more
stories, and that way we can getthe supporters into Apple

(01:20:07):
Podcasts, where they weren'tgoing, and various other places.
So hopefully that's sort offixing that, but it's yeah, it's
just been interesting doingthat balance of a full text feed
, which I kind of really wantbecause that's what RSS is best
at, but also appreciating thatyou can't actually fit the full

(01:20:28):
text in quite a lot of podcastapps and so you know the issues
that you have there.
So it's been a lot of sort ofplaying around with things.
But, um, you know, hopefullyit's a little bit of a of a
better experience, um, but uh,yeah, it's, it's.
You know, I I think if I wasbuilding the pod news website

(01:20:48):
all over again, I would haveseparated the um, the text of
the newsletter, from the um,from the podcast audio feed.
Uh, but it's too late for thatnow.

Sam Sethi (01:21:03):
So there we are.
Question though, I mean, ifyou're doing this for SEO
optimization, right?

Kendall Breitman (01:21:07):
is one of the reasons.

Sam Sethi (01:21:10):
You talked about, I think last week also, rsscom
pointed out that the iPhoneIsland has a capability with it.
Have you done any work aroundthat as well?

No, I've not yet had a look into how to support
that, but that's playing audioon a webpage and that is, um,
you know, and that is not a highusage of how the PodNews
website works.
Um, but um, yeah, I mean, youknow there are lots.
I think one of the things thatI you know after, after playing

(01:21:41):
around on the web for you knowthere are lots, I think one of
the things that I you know afterplaying around on the web, for
you know, 30 years, I think oneof the things that you notice
pretty quickly is, you know,getting the open graph stuff
right, getting the structureddata right, laying it out, you

(01:22:03):
know, in a proper way, addingall of the correct RSS feeds and
the auto discovery and all ofthis kind of stuff.
I mean that is months andmonths and months of work just
for a standard.
You know web page with anarticle on it, and I think you
know we kind of overlook theamount of work that is actually

(01:22:24):
required to do the job properly.
So it's, yeah, so it's, it'sjust been interesting, you know
playing, playing with that sortof stuff.

Sam Sethi (01:22:33):
I think the bigger one's going to be AI
optimisation.
I only say that because I don'tknow what your behavior is like
, but now when I go to Google,for example, I look at the
answer question right at the topof the AI answer.
I very rarely scroll downanymore and if you use ChatGPT
or DeepSeq, you only get oneanswer.

(01:22:54):
Really.

Yeah, well, I mean, I don't.
I deliberately use a searchengine that doesn't have any AI
answers in it, the paid for one,carghi, which is excellent, by
the way, and highly recommended.
What that also offers you as apremium subscriber is an access
to all of the open LLMs outthere, so you can play around
with OpenAI.
You can play around with Geminiis an access to all of the open

(01:23:18):
LLMs out there so you can playaround with OpenAI.
You can play around with Gemini, you can play around with
DeepSeek, all of the differentones, and that's been quite
interesting playing around withWhile I was reporting on a story
.
Earlier on in the week, I had aPDF which was a list of total

(01:23:40):
downloads for particularpodcasts, and so I asked the AI
please could you turn this intoa CSV file?
And it did that in a very goodway.
So you know sort of playingaround with that sort of thing.
But yeah, you know, I mean theoptimisation for both the AI but
also for those quick answersthat used to appear.
There is a very important thingto podcasters as well Just

(01:24:05):
essentially making sure thatthey still give enough reason to
click through.
That's also an important thingtoo Not that I particularly care
about that because I don't earnany money out of any page
impressions.
But yeah it's an interesting one.

Sam Sethi (01:24:20):
And you've got car here.
James, what's gone on with yourcar?
Is it breaking down already?

No, no, it is, I'm very enjoying.
So I bought a brand newelectric car last week.
It's an mg um, mg4 essence, um,which, um, the car part is
really good.
Uh, it's made, it's, you know,chinese.

(01:24:45):
It's made by a company calledsaic um, and the car part is
excellent, um, and it's a funcar to drive.
Um, all of the you know, it'sgot good acceleration because
it's electric and all of thatkind of stuff and all of that is
the software in it is anabomination.
I mean, you know, it's a goodjob that it supports CarPlay,

(01:25:10):
because if it didn't supportCarPlay and Android Auto, then
it would be undriveable from thepoint of view of, you know,
audio and navigation andeverything else.
But yeah, it is an absolutelyfascinating thing to go into.
There are, I think I've counted, six different places where
there are settings for you toset, and there was one point

(01:25:34):
where I was getting into the carand this officious sounding
woman was telling me what, the,what, the, what the date was and
what the weather was, andtelling me to uh, drive
carefully.
Every time I got into the car,um and uh, I I must have gone
through every single settingfour times to try and work out
how to turn that woman off.
So it is it's.

(01:25:56):
It's a really interesting thing.

Sam Sethi (01:25:58):
Um just don't find the setting for chinese mode,
you'll never get out of it.
Well, yes, exactly, exactly.
Um, no, it's a reallyinteresting thing.
Just don't find the setting forChinese mode, you'll never get
out of it.

Well, yes, exactly, exactly no, but it's
been really interesting actuallyhow the hardware is great
hardware, but the software it'srunning Android, very clearly
running Android and running abad, you know old version of
Android on a low-poweredprocessor and everything else.

(01:26:24):
I mean, it's got a DAB radio inthe car and even that hasn't
been coded with any intelligenceof how the radio actually works
, to the point where sometimes,when you get into the car, the
radio starts, sometimes, whenyou get in the car, the radio
doesn't.
It doesn't understand thatthere is a method built into DAB
of saying tell me what the nameof this radio station is, but

(01:26:47):
only in eight characters.
That's built in.
That's broadcast on DAB, butthe manufacturers of the
software, of the crappy Androidsoftware for this DAB radio in
this car, don't know about itand so, therefore, every single
station name kind of scrollsacross the screen.
It's just the worst experience.

(01:27:08):
But it's a great car, okay.
So, yes, but Room forimprovement All comes down to
the software.
There we are, and on that,slightly irrelevant, irrelevant,
uh, uh, bombshell, uh.
That's it for this week.
Um, all of the podcast storiesthis week were taken from the
pod news daily newsletter, which, of course, you can get at

(01:27:30):
podnewsnet you can support thisshow by streaming stats.

Sam Sethi (01:27:34):
You still can, and you can give us feedback using
buzzsprout's fan mail.
The link is in our show notesand you can send us a super
comment or boostergram or becomea power supporter, like this
sensational 16 atweeklypodnewsnet.

Yes, our music is from Studio Dragonfly.
Our voiceover is Sheila D.
Thank you, sheila, for doingsome more this week.
We use Clean Feed for our audioand we're hosted and sponsored
by Buzzsprout.
Start podcasting.
Start podcasting.
Keep podcasting.

Jingle (01:28:02):
Get updated every day.
Subscribe to our newsletter atpodnewsnet.

Sam Sethi (01:28:08):
Tell your friends and grow the show and support us
and support us.
The Pod News.

Jingle (01:28:12):
Weekly Review will return next week.
Keep listening.

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season

Dateline NBC

The Bobby Bones Show

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Riverside's AI tools; and why do video podcasting?

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season

Dateline NBC

The Bobby Bones Show

All Episodes

Riverside's AI tools; and why do video podcasting?

40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season