Patreon pays more to podcasts; Bryan Barletta on Podcast Movement NYC

The Pod News Weekly Review uses chapters. The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod News Weekly Review with James Kriden and Sam Sethy. — I'm James Krin, the editor of Pod News, and I'm Sam Seth, the CEO, True Fans.

— This is going to be an event built for creators. We are going as heavily community sourced as possible for this. Brian Barleta tells us all the tea about podcast movement NYC. Plus, the rise of Patreon in the creator economy. This podcast is sponsored by Buzzrout with the tools, support, and community to ensure you keep podcasting. Start podcasting. Keep podcasting with buzzprout. com. — From your daily newsletter, the pod news weekly review. One of uh my predictions

from our 2026 uh prediction show was that content creators would earn more from premium content than advertising. I might not be right completely, but we'll see by the end of the year. But a good start for that is Patreon has just announced that podcasters earned $629 million in 2025. James, that's up 33% yearonear. Yeah, up by a third. U Patreons published uh lots of uh details as big long article in Pod News uh yesterday. 47,000 podcasters are now earning income from 7. 6 million patrons. The company says some of those patrons are of course supporters of Pod News. Podnews. net/patreon. Thank you. Uh which keeps the newsletter free for everybody. So yeah, I mean that is a um tremendous amount really good news in terms of Patreon, the creator economy that is not necessarily relying on things like advertising. Um now I know that this is a monthly subscription which is slightly different to the whole value for value model but even so I think that this is uh something just worth keeping an eye on in terms of where the future of this industry is going. Yeah, their chief operating officer, Paige Fitzgerald, said something quite nice, I thought. We only make money when creators make money, which is a really good ethos to have. One thing that stood out right at the end that I thought was worth noting on this article was that um Patreon is working on expanding its creator first discovery network um without being on boarded to other platforms like Spotify, YouTube. Up until now, I've said that Spotify's S SOA, I think, will go away. I don't say that lightly. I have no inside knowledge. It's just my gut feel, which is Spotify will realize that Patreon's making a ton of money from the content that they're sending over to Spotify and they're not getting a cut of it. If you look at what Apple just did with the Apple API and the advertising taking that 10% I think Spotify is going to go we should copy that model and we should also be making money from private content from these you know premium providers like Patreon and Substack and others who provide premium content and I just think there's a pot of money that Spotify is missing and I think SOA will change but I also think that patrons realizing that actually we don't need to send this stuff over back to YouTube and Spotify we're going to players inside our platform. — Yes, I'm pretty convinced that might happen as well. Um, Spotify, I think, is going to have big changes in the middle of the year. I keep on hearing from lots of people about big changes in the middle of the year. I keep on asking my contacts at Spotify, you know, what I I've heard another person telling me that X is going to happen. Um, uh, and they say there is absolutely no truth to this. And I'm there going, well, can there be absolutely no truth when yet another person has said, "Oh, yeah, yeah, that's absolutely happening. " Um, you know, I don't know. So, uh, yes, I'm sure that there will be big changes in terms of, uh, Spotify. YouTube, I think, have their own, uh, service anyway, in terms of that. The world is potentially moving away from a world of advertising. And I think let's just make a wild assumption that the next 12 months is going to be a recession. um uh given the issues with oil right now and given all of that kind of stuff, the first thing to go in a recession is advertising money. Uh that is absolutely the first thing to go and so hopefully paid subscriptions is a different way, a way which is a little bit less likely to be um hurt by a recession. Um so, you know, worthwhile keeping an eye on out on that. I think — in terms of Patreon, one of the other things I noticed this week that was very funny was more and more shows were announcing video content that they were going to either Patreon or Substack. So, one of those was the BBC show Ellis James and John Robbins who said they've launched their um production company. We talked about that a couple of weeks ago. And as of this week, they've launched their Patreon channel and they've also launched a YouTube channel. James, — yes, they have. And one of the reasons why they're doing this is that they have access to a new thing uh which is uh part of the BBC. It's some uh new trial that the BBC is uh running um which essentially allows a audio producer, an indie audio producer as significant productions are to be able to monetize their stuff off the BBC platforms. So, you can still consume all of this stuff for free on BBC Sounds, but you can now also um get additional stuff and um and uh hear the same shows on third party platforms with ads in. And uh yes, they're launching a new Patreon channel built around a monthly visual series called The Adventures of Ellis and John. That'll be a thrill. And the first installment is already available. It's called Mini Olympics. I'm sure that that's absolutely fine. Um uh charging for something with the word Olympics in it. I'm sure they won't get into any trouble whatsoever there. Um, but yes. So, um, uh, what with Patreon, what with a YouTube channel, uh, as well, you know, all of that makes a lot of sense. — All right, James. Um, back in February

you reported that, uh, podcast movement was going to be in New York as an exclusive on Pod News Daily. It's a weeklong event in midepptember. Do you know more about it, James? — I do know more about it. And in fact, I thought, well, who better to ask than uh the big boss. Um, so I went to chat with Brian Barleta. — I'm Brian Barleta, the founder of SoundsProfitable and the president of Podcast Movement. Uh, SoundsProfitable is the trade association for the business of podcasting on a global level. And our goal is to bring the industry together and help people through networking, conversations, research, uh, and opportunities to push podcasting into bigger than podcasting spaces. — And by the sounds of your voice, Brian, you have been doing a lot of those conversations over the last couple of weeks. Um, podcast movement evolutions in South by Southwest was only a couple of weeks ago. Uh, how did that go for you? — Uh, it was exactly what I wanted it to I mean, this is our fourth total year at Southby and yeah, I absolutely lost my voice to the point where I couldn't make a sound on Sunday and uh and then had to go basically like 6 days later right into advertising week Europe. Um we had three it was really fun. Uh we had three pack days. Um the industry showed up, a ton of really interesting people that we never would have gotten at our, you know, standalone event showed up. And more importantly, we made it easy for the business of podcasting and creators of all sorts in podcasting to go explore South by Southwest, which has become a major creator event uh on the global scale for more and more people to check out. — Yeah, it was the first event um for a while that I haven't been able to attend and I got a lot of FOMO looking at LinkedIn particularly uh of people saying what a great thing it was and all the photographs which I've got through and all of that. So, uh, yeah. So, it sounds as if it went really well. — Yeah, I'm very proud of that. I think the one of the fortunate things I have about being in the podcast space for so long is that, uh, people aren't going to sugarcoat things for me. So, I haven't heard any particularly negative feedback. Um, and I, you know, you were incredibly missed there. And I really hope now that we've announced that we will be back there next year just as soon as South by Southwest announces the dates, which they're waiting for the Academy Awards to post their dates first. Uh but we would love to have you be there and be part of it. — Well, it'll be a fantastic thing as long as you lot stop bombing places. That will be an excellent plan. — I'm right there with you. — Yeah. I'm not sure necessarily that you can that you can change any of that, but still no. uh w would very much like to do that. Um any plans for next year for South by Southwest? Um is it going to grow in scale or what are the ideas that you got so far or is it way too early James and stop asking? — No, I mean I think you're spot on it. So um we really like the venue and if we can come to terms with the venue on the things we'd like to change, we intend to stay there or similar sized. I think what's really fun about um an events company like podcast movement purchasing our trade association is that we don't have to operate on uh in silo for each event having to make a certain amount of money or grow a certain way each uh year. So I would consider this event absolutely a success. Um you know we we're waiting on the last financials but it is close enough for me to call it that. Uh, and again, this didn't have any ticket sales on there. So, um, it hit everything we wanted. But here's the big thing. Sometimes things work just because of exactly how they were set up, right? The price point, the opportunity, the, um, the all the different pieces on there. Um, in 6 years of running sounds profitable, I have not really raised prices. I don't think I've ever raised prices on anything, and I've only ever reduced them or made things more efficient or valuable. So my goal here is how do we keep it exactly this but better? And what's the worst that happens? It hits capacity and then we have to figure out what else we can do, how else we can help people grow. I think I'd rather get to the point where nobody can get in uh because nobody wants to leave and then figure that out the next year. So I think my goal is let's repeat it a few more times. So, uh, the next, uh, event that I will see you is the podcast show in London, but the next big event on the calendar is what you, uh, announced, um, in, uh, Pod News, um, at the end of February, um, podcast movement moving to New York City and a really interesting flagship event, which is a week-long event if you want to attend all of it, at a place called Terminal 5. So, what are the plans for New York City? Yes. So, we have five full days there. And Terminal 5 is a concert venue that has a lot of personal significance for me. I actually got my start in advertising by uh borrowing enough money to go to a 4-day concert at Terminal 5 uh when I was doing mobile app reviews. Uh and so being able to go to this venue is really exciting for me. — Who did you see there? uh Cohed and Cambria whose albums are all like Star Warsesque style stories and uh they played them all in order to a night and it was really fun. — Wow. — Uh yeah. — Okay. — Forever ago. But yeah, the Android G1 had just launched. I grabbed my computer and my mini DV camera and we drove out and just recorded videos all day long and then went to the concerts that night. Um but the uh the events really three events. So we have it for the whole week. from Monday through Friday. Um, starting with, you know, what everybody knows and loves, the podcast movement, that's going to be Thursday and Friday. So, I'm going to start from the end of the week and move back. This is going to be an event built for creators. I think that um people in the business of podcasting have pushed into different aspects of podcast movement before and I personally been frustrated when um there have been specific creator tracks that end up having business panels because they run out of spots elsewhere and that's how you know people want to sponsor them and whatnot. Well, we are going as heavily community sourced as possible for this. The tickets are going to be $200 covering both days. There should be about a,000 tickets available on sale. Um I think we've solidified that we'll have five stages. Uh panels will be about a half an hour long each. There'll be photo like audio, video, recordings of everything, photography, everything there. And we're trying to figure out the most equitable way for people to submit uh panel ideas. Um I'm not completely sold on a committee, but I think that's going to be part of it. I'm not completely sold on a on public vote. It ends up being a popularity contest, but it might be part of it. But we're trying to nail that down with ideally giving people as close to two and a half to 3 months of notice on when they're selected so that if they need any international travel or anything there, they can get that sorted um and all of those things. But this is really supposed to be an incredibly low sponsorship event. We haven't even identified um how far we want to go with perhaps like an expo type setup, but we are getting interest on that. But I think to me this is the type of event that as many as close to all of the panels that happen. I really want them to be things that people who are attending want to hear and of the community by the community. And so things like that can only happen if they're supported in other ways, right? producing this event, having a thousand people in there, the infrastructure, which by the way, I've learned so much about how much events cost and uh you want to ever talk about scope creep and how much uh last minute decisions can cost, I am your guy. Um I spent tens of thousands of dollars on last minute ideas that needed to happen, but probably could have been $5,000 if I planned better. — Yeah. — Um — the middle day, we're still solidifying, right? the podcast the IAB podcast up fronts are going to be held separately by the IAB during that day. Uh and we're not doing any conflicting content there, but at night we have the opportunity with Terminal 5 being such a massive con uh concert venue. What could we do on that stage there? So, we're stilling a few opportunities there and trying to find the best partner to allow for us to do something really to celebrate audio with everyone that won't be a ticket event. So, we're trying to figure out how that fills into everything. Everybody who's attending both of the other events, the sounds profitful one, which we'll get into, and the podcast movement one will be able to go. And then how do we explore the general public and everything there too, the people who maybe just couldn't buy a ticket or, you know, want to celebrate audio. Um, the first two days are our take on uh a more professional business summit. The this is a 600 person total event. It is going to be a very tight schedule. Think more um syllabus style, right? There is going to be, you know, two anchor keynotes, uh, one at the beginning and the end of each day, uh, where everyone, all 600 people will be able to focus on one thing. And then from there, there's going to be three different opportunities to, um, select between uh, breakout sessions or working groups or like 50 person, let's call it conversations in a circle, you know, uh, where people really want to be part of the conversation. We're all experts at an event of this scale. um all the way to, you know, 150 people uh sitting in an audience for um more specific and driven conversations uh in a panel. Uh when I say like there there's going to be 600 people there, the intention is that this is an event that you pop in and out of or that has like open networking space because we want to start it at 10:00 a. m. and we want to end it at 400 p. m. It's New York. People in the business of podcasting, people in advertising know how to entertain their own guests. Uh, and we're moving away from things like sponsored happy hours and whatnot uh, in that regard because we want to let people celebrate and do their own thing and we don't want them to feel, you know, that they have to pay into something when they have their own idea. In New York, there's so many companies in New York that have their own space to do all of that. So, we're really, really excited to partner there. 200 of the attendees will be buyers. Those are freely available tickets. And then the other 400 tickets are a higher price point because they're sponsorship — for uh the whole event, right? If you buy a ticket, your company is a sponsor for the event. Your logo is going to be in places on there. You're going to have access to the attendee list. opportunities to connect with people and, you know, book those breakfast and dinners. Um, and you're also going to be the sponsor of the podcast movement side of the event, right? Your logos are going to be on there. There's going to be thank yous and forwards related to those people that are helping make the whole week possible. The model that we're going for this is going to be $2,000 per ticket and Sounds Profitable Partners will have the opportunity to buy tickets for the first month uh before they're open to the public. What we're doing there is that we're letting the Sounds Profitable Partners buy up to two tickets per company. And another perk that they have will they can as partners they can choose who goes Monday versus who goes Tuesday. And then uh if there are any tickets left and now that we're over we're about 205 207 partners total uh if there are any tickets available left after that they will be open to the public for one per company at the same price um but they won't be able to pick who goes Monday versus Tuesday. So we are, you know, our partners are what makes all this possible, what allows us to take these big swings, allows us to buy a stage at Advertising Week Europe and US and get panel costs down to $4,000 and just bring a whole group of people who haven't been able to push into those spaces. So we really want to reward those partners for that support and encourage more people to consider becoming a partner. Mhm. And that sounds a lot of money, but actually in terms of a proper business conference as this is with the opportunities to uh meet and talk and everything else, that is um absolutely what those sorts of business events go for. Uh so uh in terms of that it if you're listening and you're there thinking, well, podcast movement wasn't that expensive. This isn't podcast movement, is it? is a separate event which happens to be Monday, Tuesday of the week. Podcast movement continues as normal the creator event on a Thursday and Friday. So I think this is being done in a very nice way and of course you can attend all of it as you've said. — Absolutely. Yeah. And it's one of those things where you know I think one of the ways we hit our stride was because we understood the price point sensitivity for the industry. I mean we are competing with every other industry that's competing for attention but we don't have the uh the comfort I would say with uh the cost per acquisition or cost to compete with CTV and whatnot you know as we push into can lion and possible and these other events like the price point gets very high and so this is probably the most expensive podcast focused event but with I appreciate your support on that and everything you're saying there you know our mindset is how do We extend that to be not just a ticket but a sponsorship. And with a third of the audience being buyers and a focus on connecting people, I think that this is really great. — And you know, again, like I said, I don't like to raise prices. So, the reason we're doing it at 2,000, we think we can find a lot of ways to benefit people. There'll be coffee service delivered to where you are and the venue. Uh we're going to be feeding everybody there so you don't have to go figure out — I mean, all of that money is already gone. If you're doing coffee in those venues, I know exactly how expensive that is. So, yeah, — we did that at uh at South by Southwest. We did unlimited coffee, espresso drinks, and coffee. And I think it was I think several people sub subsisted solely off of that for 3 days. I know I was one of them. — Wow. What was the total bill for that? — You know, here's the truth of it. It came out to about $24,000 for three days and it was only $16,000 for just drip coffee. So the difference of you know $8,000 for people to be able to get their latte — like I was like that's a no-brainer. Like we have to do that. — It makes a massive difference. — It really does. — So podcast movement on the Thursday and Friday. Of course the real benefit there is you don't have to stay in Manhattan. You can stay anywhere. Uh public transport in New York City is super good. So you can find a cheap hotel elsewhere. That's absolutely fine. And in terms of um doing it on a Thursday and a Friday, music to my ears because that means that if you're traveling to New York, you've got a weekend in New York uh as well if you want to. Um which is a fantastic uh move uh as well. So um that should be really good. When can we buy tickets for that? Not quite yet. I'm guessing — our goal is to get all of this live for ticket sales in the next 4 weeks. That's uh we're really pushing forward with that. We just want to make sure that we have the website exactly where it is. And there's a few other opportunities that we're evaluating how we put up such as being able to do your own live podcast show at night, right? We have the venue, we have the five stages. We want to figure out how to put all that together. uh and as a small team podcast movement uh like and sounds profitable combined is about six people. There's the event movement team too and they help with a lot but there's you know a lot of this is now following to our team. We want to make sure that whatever we put up there it answers enough questions that we're not drowning trying to support all the interests or all the like any confusion we might have caused. — Yeah. No indeed sounds uh super good. So podcastmovement. com is where to find out more information about the podcast movement side. Um and of course soundsprofitable. com uh where to find um the information about the business uh summit. While you're on uh Brian uh obviously we're seeing Apple podcast doing video um for the first time which is very exciting. Um uh what are your thoughts on it uh now that it's live now that people are beginning to do it? I am blown away by what it could possibly mean for the create greater creator space and ownership of distribution of audio and video content. I think it's going to be really exciting. I'm so pumped to see the uh incoming uh interest from video advertisers on there. Uh and I've checked out a few of the video podcasts, too. playing around the newslet uh technical infrastructure and server costs because I think that me and you have done some of this math and I think this is very exciting but again just like podcasting as an industry has not had to incur a lot of the costs of a lot of other industries to win business I think now we're entering into a space where um we understand how much YouTube moved things forward by hosting video freely and what that did for the internet and what it might cost individuals to host their own video. — Yeah. No, I'm finding that fascinating. I've been playing around yesterday um your today um with um trying to work out how to encode uh all of this and so far uh I've managed to encode one simple 25meg MP4 video file uh into uh the format that Apple podcast wants it which is um turns out to be so far 178 different files and 34 megabytes of disk space um and to play it it'll be 84 far file requests instead of just one. Um, so it's going to be interesting to work out the math on that and work out exactly how expensive that is going to be, but it should unlock more revenue long time. Uh, certainly I appreciate there's some Apple tax in there as well, but it should uh but it should unlock more revenue, I'm guessing. What what are people um uh your your partners uh saying? Well, on the Apple tax on that end, right, on the uh the CPM fee that they're charging for it, I think the exciting part about that is I think we will see more hosting platform or more apps, right? Uh be open to incorporating it if they believe they can charge that fee too. Uh because like take for example Spotify, if they implemented it, they're currently only making money for advertising on the people who host with them directly and the ability to serve ads. But with HLS interstitials, if they set it up that way, the app could inject into any show, not platform, but show that they have a relationship with. And then they also make money off of people serving any ads on their platform. I think Apple really unlocked something big that makes it kind of hard for apps to push back against it. Um on the uh the industry side, I think there are a lot of people interested in it and um I don't think anybody's brought it to market to sell on a like a direct sales kind of way other than the idea of doing prefix URLs and uh ad delivery pixels for their video ads and being able to track it just like their audio ads, which is very exciting to them. Yeah, but I my gut says we're going to see some really impressive things from ASIS in the near future as the major DSP involved in this entire process. — Yeah, it's going to be really interesting what happens there and what happens with the analytics as well as we move into a world where we can now measure how long people listen, whether people have actually heard the ads uh and all of this. Is that something that sounds profitable is working with the IAB uh on or how does sounds profit how does sounds profitable fit into that? — Yeah, I think what's exciting to me there is that this could call for new IAB podcast measurement standards which I felt oh might not make sense to improve much more on. I think we were getting towards the point where each hosting platform kind of viewed things their own way and wanted to customize their own way. So I think this is going to give the opportunity to revisit what metrics we do and don't want. You know, it's really hard, right? Because — the feedback on Spotify, even the ones where you can serve pixels and serving video there is that it's not the same metric as what we have in podcasting. So I think what we need to see is first an adoption of the podcast first metrics of download and ad delivered and then an exploration well because those ones also are IAB certified. HLS can be IAB certified because it's not the protocol it's the server logs that are certified. Um and then from there I think we need to explore what listens and adussion look like. I think that it is not in anybody's best effort uh interest to push those metrics publicly before the IAB and everybody uh agrees on them because even if someone even if a hosting platform takes a first stab at it and releases a killer spec on it, I think everybody else is going to pick it apart and it's going to be hard to get people to agree to that because it you know listens will always be less than downloads. Yeah. But I think every single hosting platform that explores selling that ad inventory different between ad delivery and ad impression, especially for video, is going to have really powerful upside on how they monetize the inventory of the people that host with them. — It's always uh exciting and always uh always good to uh catch up. Brian, thank you so much for your time. — Thanks for having me. — The Pod News weekly review with Buzz Sprout — with Buzz Sprout. Start podcasting. Keep podcasting.

podcasting. — James, now this is a left field story. Um, Flipboard, which is owned by Mike Mchugh, or the CEO is Mike McHugh, um, have come out with a new product called Surf. Now, we've seen social media platforms like Masteradon and Threads and Blue Sky um evolve after the implosion of X, but those have become silos and you can't really, you know, connect all the parts. If you've got a social graph in one, it's probably having to either reinvent that same social graph again or just not bother at all, which is what I've done. Um, now Surf came out and the idea of Surf is to combine social networks with text, video and audio feeds. And those audio feeds are going to be podcasts. So the idea is that you will have one place, one portal, one website, whatever you want to call it, um, where you can have all of your content that you want aggregated in one place. Do you think this is the right way forward or should we be still having multiple sites and just flipping between each one? — I mean, essentially this is a RSS reader, isn't it? It's it pulls in a bunch of stuff. — Um uh it's pulling in um uh stuff from uh somewhere for pod news. Uh oh, RSS. Uh that's what that is is pulling it through from. Um, but I can also see uh posts in here uh from um Steve Stewart. Now, where's that coming from? Um, that appears to be Blue Sky. So, yeah. So, it's sort of pulling um different bits of information from different places. Uh, Masttodon is in there as well, I notice, which is uh interesting. So yeah, it's is just a different way of consuming um consuming stuff, pulling things together, having you know YouTube uh channels in there as well, which I think is the clever thing actually um to have YouTube channels as well as podcasts which are also in there as well as RSS feeds and various other things. Um so quite nice in terms of that and I think that works um quite well. Yeah, they've also called these social websites that you build conversations around. Uh it'll be interesting to see whether this uh gets any uptake. I think you were right by calling it an RSS reader, which is what it was, but obviously they've added the additional protocols of activity pub and the AT protocol. — Um the thing that I find um interesting right now is I think when we talk about hosts last week, we talked about upload once distribute everywhere. So the idea of all the directories but also taking social clips and maybe putting those out to these end points like Masterdollon and Blue Sky and Threads and that would be the role of hosts and this seems to be the converse which is from the creator side aggregating all your content back into one place. I think I can hear Todd Cochran shouting getyou own. com u from above. Um, this is what I think they're trying to do, which is to bring all the parts that have been spread out to the four corners of the web back into one place that you can own, similar to what Substack's doing, similar to what Supercast is other uh creator portals are trying to do. Uh, and that's why I thought this was an interesting uh thing to look at. — Yeah, I mean, you know, there's certainly something there. Um, I find it interesting that there is a listen tab and you can obviously then listen to a bunch of podcasts. Um, to be fair, most podcast apps don't use an algorithm either. Um, so they just give you the shows that you have um, uh, signed up for uh, in um, newest order. Uh, and that's basically how that bit works. Um, so there's a bit of u of um um curation that has been built into this um which I think works quite nicely. There's a fair amount of um you know uh suggested um things that you might want to follow and all of that. So from that point of view it's quite nice. Um but uh yeah it's going to be you know will it take over from all of the other things? I don't know because at the end of the day quite a lot of people are driven by the amount of views people get, the amount of replies people get, etc., etc. Um, so I'm not quite sure whether or not this is going to capture uh all of the social media folk. Um, but it's a new interesting way of, you know, of enjoying uh content in one simple way. Yeah, I think what they are creating is in their um documentation is the idea of a super feed aggregating everything and being able to share that feed. Uh they talk about custom domains coming. They talk about uh custom headers and colors. Um so I think they're just creating web page portals. I think pod page does something very similar in the sense of aggregating your podcast and allowing you to create a customized page with a domain as well. So — yeah, — I don't know. I think this is a trend. — Yeah, I think that that's definitely a thing. So, um, yes, worthwhile keeping an eye on.

— Now, a couple of weeks ago, we interviewed the CEO from Supercast after their acquisition by Red Seat Ventures, which is part of Fox. Um, now there's a new company that Red Seat Ventures is launched called Speak Easy. James, who are they? — Yes, it's a podcast hosting company. Hooray. Uh, everybody's got one. Um, Substack, Supercast, Patreon. Now, um uh here here's one for uh Red Seat Ventures as well. Of course, Supercast um uh have a membership platform which uh is a bit like Patreon um which was acquired by Red Seat Ventures earlier on uh as you just mentioned and Speak Easy will be a podcast hosting company. Now, interestingly, it's an invitationonly podcast hosting company. Seems to be a special podcast hosting company for people that want something special in return. Um, so, uh, there seems to be some, uh, very careful um, you know, very careful um, uh, wording on the websites and all of that. Basically saying, you know, we're a bit clever. Um, we're here for these particular people. We're not here for everybody. Um, but um, yes, it's um, you know, it's it's a new podcast hosting company and that's what everybody wants. — It reminds me of Flightcast, Steven Bartlett's company with Rocks. — Yeah. Exactly. I mean, he, you know, they definitely needed a podcast hosting company for themselves. There are benefits in that. There are downsides in that, actually. you know, if you want to, um, suddenly become a podcast hosting company, um, then that's absolutely fine, but you need to, um, pay all of the money to get all of that stuff up and running. Um, whereas, you know, it's normally much easier to go with a megaphone or an Acast or whoever it is that you might want to end up going for. Um, in this particular case, obviously, there are benefits to them in pulling everything together. Um, and so you can see that being uh, useful. Um, AI powered uh, analytics is one thing. Uh, it says support for RSS, HLS, and video. Uh, it might have support for HLS, but it's not yet, um, an Apple podcast partner. So, we need to wait and see when it becomes one of those. But, um, yeah, you know, it's, um, uh, yet another podcast hosting company. Hooray. M now uh Ashley Carman, friend of the show in Bloomberg, has a report out that she said podcast companies are starting to look a lot like record labels. And so I thought hm interesting. What does she mean by that? She says the power is increasingly in the hands of the biggest talent. We see that with the acquisitions that are occurring. Uh and she said that podcast networks like record labels support these stars in the form of distribution and monetization. But she says more of a 360 business uh view should be including fan clubs, subscriptions, merchandising, newsletters and live events. Again uh reinforcing my belief that we are moving to a creator portal model for content creators, not just a podcast app on its own. — Yeah. No, indeed. It's um always interesting to see new companies working out new ways of uh jumping into this space and um for Red Seat Ventures to be hosting, you know, podcasts for themselves now u of course means that they have a bit more control over things as well. So, um yeah, no, I think I think it makes sense. Now, uh, last week

at the end of the show, um, we wouldn't have covered this because obviously it came out after we were recorded, but Open AI has acquired the popular, unknown to me, uh, talk show TBPN. Had you heard of it before? — No. And it's um, — it's not popular, but it's popular with Silicon Valley. It's popular with Open AI's audience, which is why OpenAI have bought it. Um now of course OpenAI are claiming that um the show will remain uh editorially independent and of course it will yes absolutely it will but Open AI's razondetra is to try and convince everybody else in Silicon Valley that open AAI is a good thing um and um it will be significantly easier uh if they happen to own TBPN. Um so um you would you would presume that there's something um uh involved in them for the benefit I mean cuz the amount of money that TB that TBPN is making is I mean it's quite a lot of money but it's chump change for open AI. Um uh I mean you know it's probably making more money than open AAI is right now but that's a slightly different thing. So um yeah I yeah that I mean so it is popular in terms of the right the the right people and that's about as far as it goes I think. — Is this more about platforms or companies wanting to have direct to fan voices? I mean, I know, yeah, I know podcasts are that anyway, but our corporate companies more and more realizing that going through PR and going through media companies to get their message out is probably not the right thing and now they want to go direct to audience. — Yeah, I mean we are definitely seeing that. We are seeing that um people want to be in control of the message. Um, RFK, the health secretary of the US, is apparently going to be launching a podcast which he claims is a new way to expose corruption and lies that have made Americans sick. His views have been criticized by health experts. That's about as much as I can say to be as fair and balanced as I possibly can be. Um but uh yes and of course the reason why he is doing that is he believes that uh most of the media out there um isn't necessarily telling the story that he wants to be told and so therefore he's going to do his own podcast. Um the Reform Party in the UK is doing exactly that. Congratulations US-based podcast hosting company Buzz Sprout our sponsor for being the official host um of the UK nuts of the UK Reform Party. Uh, so many congratulations for that. Why didn't they go with somebody based in the UK? — Captivate. — Exactly. Well, — they wouldn't have been allowed on my platform. That's — Well, may maybe Captivate turned around and said, "Bugger off. " — Maybe. Well done, Mark, if you did. — And then you'd be stuck. But yeah, so I I'm sure that is what's going on in terms of Open AI. They are talking about it being the low hundreds of millions. Now, if it's about 200 million, then that makes it about the same sort of price as Joe Rogan. Uh, so that is a lot of money. Um, it doesn't do very well in terms of being a podcast by the way, as well. I did go and have a look on the Podscribe dashboard and to actually see how many downloads it gets. It's not an awful lot of downloads. Um, but it is, as I say, it's a big thing when it comes to this particular industry. And um OpenAI clearly see value um you know from it but it's not a side quest Sam and let's not forget that — it's not a side quest. What's that mean? Open AAI got into awful trouble by going off onto these side quests. So they were very keen to point out that this was not a side quest when they thought when they spent 200 million or possibly even more million dollars on a podcast. It's not a side quest. So him buying his Lamborghini wasn't a cyclist. — None of this makes sense. Yes. Exactly. — Right. Okay. — No, I mean, you know, so but I think it does come back into wanting to control the narrative a little bit. I'm currently working on a story uh about a company and um so far no one in the company is talking to me. Um, but I now have a uh very friendly and polite invitation to talk to a lawyer who happens to work for the company. Um, uh, about a story that you're working on, James. Okay. Um, I think I think I've uncovered a thing. Um, so I'm treading very very carefully, but I think I've uncovered a thing. So, uh, yeah, we will — spill the tea. — Yeah. Well, I'll spill the tea. Maybe next week, maybe the week after, who knows? Um, be good if it was next week for a variety of reasons, but anyway, we we'll find out on that. But that again is another form of wanting to control what the narrative is. No one from that company is talking to me at all. Um, uh, I've had a couple of replies saying, "I am not authorized to speak on this matter. " Um, and now I've got a lawyer who, um, I can only assume wants to, um, wants to scare me away. So, um, well, we'll see. We'll see where that one goes. Yikes. — I mean, OpenAI isn't the only company buying up podcast. I mean, Soros has bought up the Midas Touch as well, James. — He has. Yes. Um, leading an investment round in Midas Touch. We don't know how much George Soros's Soros fund management has paid for that. But what we do know is that he has um he is the majority owner of order uh which of course is the big podcast and radio company based in the US. Um he also invested in Crooked Media uh back in uh 2020 I want to say. Um so you know clearly is doing some um investment into uh media there. Apparently also interested in investing into Cumulus. Now, Cumulus is the other big American uh broadcaster which is currently uh in bankruptcy um reorganization or whatever it is it's called chapter 11. Um but he's not able to own both because of the rules. So, we'll see what happens um there. Um but yes, um lot lots of investment. One wonders what Mr. Soros is doing given that traditional media isn't necessarily the way to earn an awful lot of cash. — So, um, are you talking to lawyers as well about us, James? You know, go on, get in there, mate. What we did wrong. — Yes. Why — 50p in a Mars bar? — Why is nobody investing into this show? Well, maybe they maybe they might in the future. Who knows? Maybe I'm having that conversation now. Who knows?

knows? — Now, moving on back to Spotify, I'm afraid. James. Um, we talked about Libson and Buzzrout has signed with Apple Podcast to distribute HLS video. We also talked about um, you know, other companies. There's 10 other podcast hosting companies. But why isn't Spotify joining this party, James? What's stopping them? — Well, uh, yes, exactly. So, yes, if you missed the news, because we didn't cover Libson last week, but Libson are now, uh, in with Apple podcasts. except they're not yet because they haven't actually built it yet. Um, so they've said they're in. Um, but that's about as far as it goes. And actually that goes for all of the companies including our sponsor uh who are talking about HLS video. Um, they've all said that they will do it. I cannot find a single company who is actually offering that to normal customers that want to purchase that. So pretty well everybody is turning around and saying this is a invite only thing at the moment. we're only offering it to certain people, blah blah. So that's um that's interesting. It's also interesting that there is no pricing out there. So clearly um you know the cost of hosting video is going to be quite high. Um, you would expect there to be a special pricing rate for video, but I have not yet seen any of the podcast hosting companies with their pricing. So, um, either that means everybody's giving it away for free, which clearly is not going to happen, or it means that just nobody's ready yet. Um, and that's a bit of a concern when if you're Apple podcasts, it's a bit of a concern because actually there will not be anywhere near as many video shows as you would be hoping to get on your platform right now. So, um, they've still got an awful lot of work in terms of making sure that they can get as much video in their platform as as, uh, possible. And if people's favorite shows or people's new shows that are being marketed as video first but aren't in video in Apple um uh if those aren't available um then that's going to be a bit of a problem for Apple. So um I'm awaiting with baited breath the first podcast hosting company to actually offer this as something that you can sign up to today. — Yeah. Now, I wanted to ask you a couple of questions because I posed this to uh Justin Jackson, the CEO of Transistor, and Ben Richardson responded as well in the group that we're in. I wanted to know, will they put the HLS video playlist that they give to Apple via the proprietary API, will they put that in the alternative enclosure? And Justin from Transistor said yes. and he has an example of that which he showed me and Ben said yes they would be doing the same. My question to you, James, is then uh if they put the HLS video in the alternative enclosure and apps that support the alternative enclosure, — does that bypass Apple then? I mean, Apple can't take a 10% tax and what if DAI is added to those feeds? Then you've just gone past the whole of the Apple ecosystem. — Yeah. So, there are two things that happen there. Firstly, it bypasses Apple so that you could watch that show in video in a different podcast app and um you would be able to uh see that and there wouldn't necessarily be that um tax that money that you have to pay every time you show a uh a dynamic uh video. Now uh I should say there are a couple of things here. Firstly, Transistor might never offer dynamic videos. Um, dynamic ads in video. Uh, Buzz Sprout does not offer dynamic ads in videos. Uh, Buzz Sprout offers what it calls dynamic content, but that's not dynamic content in terms of programmatic stuff. That's basically, uh, please uh, remake all of my audio with this intro on it. um which is dynamic to a point but it's still not really dynamic programmatic. So um with all of that essentially means that um uh there will be people getting involved in Apple video right now who will never be doing any of the dynamic program you know programmatic ads that Apple wants some money from. So therefore they probably don't care about that bit. Hence why they might wish to stick their stuff into alternate enclosure. um because that might work for them. So, you've got that on one side. Um and on the other side, you know, you you've got the point that um all of these um uh companies are um are saying is that as soon as you publish your um your M3U8, your adaptive playlist in your RSS feed, then what you're also doing is you're publishing exactly where the ads are. And so therefore, it's it's a bit difficult if you're going to put an a show out there which is um supported by advertising. Um uh your u the podcast app knows exactly where the ads are and can very easily skip them because it knows where they are. It knows where how to skip past it. Uh and that will work very well. So there are questions there I think in terms of do you want to put the uh the M3 U8 the HLS feed into the alt enclosure because that will essentially just market where the ads are so that any podcast app can use your video but skip past the ads. I go back to Ashley Carman's comment about um podcast companies becoming record labels and I look at companies like Acast ads with and I look at Triton who are set up to deliver high volume uh quality ads, you know, companies like Nike and McDonald's and people like that. Um you know, not your Joe Schmo um bottom of the basement um adverts. And I think those are the record labels that Ashley Carman's looking at and I think those are the companies that Apple signed up first and I think those will be the ones that will deliver that DAI. But what will the others will for example Buzz Sprout have to go and provide higher quality advertising from the likes of you know corporate brands in order to monetize that in the same way as an Acast? Well, but Buzz Sprout has never monetized podcasts in the same way as Acast. And I think that that's the thing here. If uh you know, I mean, I don't want to because I don't know what Buzz's uh plans are, but Buzz right now, the only advertising that you can buy in this show um is somebody buying a Buzzrout ad, which is a program trailer for somebody else's show, and that's it. there's no other advertising available in this show. Buzz doesn't go out and sell it. Um that's very different when you're looking at rss. com for example with their paid uh platform which um you know can have ads from all kinds of people in there. Um, so I think it's going to be different for every single person in this and there will be people like Buzz Sprout in particular who will not want to sell advertising um and so therefore will never have to pay the Apple tax um but instead will you know still get some video into the Apple podcast app. Um but you know how do you charge that? um it won't be Buzz Sprout charging that in terms of advertising. So therefore it will be based on you know either a monthly charge in terms of video um or a per you know 1 TBTE uh charge or whatever it happens to be. So and I think that's going to be the interesting side is actually seeing how people charge for all of this. Let's not forget that for most podcast hosting companies, the first that they knew about this because they were very grumpy about it, the first that they knew about it was the big announcement um with the big four uh Acast and Simplecast and um Omni Studio and the other one um R19. Um it was — them. Yes. aren't um uh it was you know that was the first that any of these other podcast hosting companies knew about it and they were quite salty about that. So they have not had long to have a think about how they're going to do it technically but also uh economically as well. Um hence why I don't think that we've seen any uh numbers in terms of what people are going to charge yet. — Yeah. I mean, look, the hardest thing about doing this show sometimes is that we are having to put the jigsaw pieces together in real time. That's how I feel sometimes. You know, we start talking about it, you know, we we've sort of drifted around talking about creator portals. We've drifted around a little bit about um advertising within it and subscription models and private feeds. And I think I can't quite get my head as into where does this all meld going forward. And I think you just said something really interesting, which is if you don't do the advertising DAI stuff, they could just make it a 10% charge for a monthly subscription. So it might be that, and I'm not speaking for Buzz Sprout, I'm just using them as an example. Buzz Sprout might say, "Okay, we're not going to do DAI, but we are going to say video is $30 a month and um that's what you as a subscriber pay as an additional cost. " and we take a percentage of that and that's the model that is it. I think you're right until we know what people charge uh it's all up in the air but I do think it's an interesting fascinating time at the moment. I think the whole industry is changing. — uh changing very quickly and I you know I think that Spotify will change with it. It wouldn't surprise me if Spotify by the end of the year is doing exactly the same as Apple. Um, I think that probably makes sense and it wouldn't surprise me as well if we end up having um a slimmed down uh list of podcast hosting companies because actually uh this is going to add significant complication to everyone. Um and so uh potentially we might see a bit of mergers, a bit of acquisitions going on there as well. Um but um yeah, it's um we're still not quite sure what's going on. And of course, we shouldn't forget that um the fourth biggest podcast app is Amazon Music, uh who have no um uh video plan at all. Um and so we're not quite sure what's going to happen uh there. Um, so I mean Android Authority only yesterday was talking about you could be paying for a great podcast app and not even realize it. If you're already paying for Amazon Prime, a basic but solid podcast app is hiding inside your app really. Um, but anyway, so we will see what happens there. But not everybody has yet jumped onto the uh video bandwagon. Of

course, — James, let's move on. Sorry, we we've probably got to have a jingle cuz it's Spotify again. But — yes, — but actually I saw your little mastadon response to this. So yes, you were a very happy boy. But Spotify AI playlist for podcasts has launched. What is this, James? Yeah, this is I think this is quite neat. Um now the question is will anybody ever use it? Which is a valid question I think. But you can go into Spotify if you find the um the button to do this and you're in a supported country and you're a premium subscriber. Uh once you've done all of that um you can create an AI aided playlist for podcasts. So you can go in there and you can type in create a podcast playlist that gives me all of the latest news about podcasting, which is what I did. And uh and it came up with uh a pod news daily podcast right at the top. Then next this very show. — Wow. — Uh which was very cool. Uh and then — what was that prompt again? Repeat repeat. — And then number three was you know sounds profitable. But anyway uh so it ended up with a lot of these things. Um so um yeah it was uh quite nice. — Beta James. It's fine. It'll get it right soon. Yeah. Um uh I mean a fine show makes an awful lot of sense. Um but I think um this is a good answer to those people that say, "Oh, podcast discovery and there's no podcast Discovery anymore and blah blah. " Um actually, it gave me a pretty good list uh all the way through. of shows that I might want to go and have a listen to. So I was quite impressed actually at um the quality of the playlist that it gave me. Uh you can see that in the Pod News uh um newsletter on uh Wednesday, which you'll uh see me giving it a go. Um because uh I'm in Australia where they have uh this uh also the US, Canada, the UK, Ireland, and Sweden. Uh where's Spotify based? Oh yes. Um that would explain that one. Um so uh yes, no, I think it's uh I think it's a pretty good thing. Yeah, we talked about this new uh advertising carousel that's in beta with Spotify that goes over the top of playlists. I'm just assuming that now that they've got AI playlist for podcasts, maybe they will bring that carousel and maybe that's a new revenue stream for Spotify to have — uh people um advertise against particular playlists because now they're creating millions of different new playlists which they wouldn't have had as What do they call them? Surfaces. That's the word that the industry uses. — Yes, everybody uses. — Yes. I mean, there may be a little bit of that. It may just be that they just want more people to uh more people listening to podcasts on their platform and this is a nice way of doing it. You've obviously been able to do music in this way for a while. Um the same goes for uh YouTube Music by the way. The same goes I think now for Apple Music as well, which I think has the same thing. So therefore, you could almost ask yourself, is this going to be the next feature in the Apple Podcast app? Um, given that if they've already done all of this hard work for Apple Music, you would have thought that it's going to be quite simple to plug it into Apple Podcast as well. Seemingly, uh, well, pretty obviously the same team who works on the Apple podcast app and the Apple Music app. Uh, if you've ever used both of them, um, then you'll know exactly what I mean. So, uh, yeah, you know, so, so we might see a little bit of that, um, uh, going on. The other interesting thing is right at the bottom of the article it said that um you will uh only be able to uh use this there's um uh what what's the phrase? There's um there are uh limits on how many times you can use this particular feature. So presumably it uses quite a lot of tokens. — Yeah. So you need to be careful you know in terms of that. Um, a nice quote in there from Lizzy Hail, who is Spotify's global head of podcast editorial. They have a Who knew? So, I have a um uh a request in uh to uh see if we can learn a little bit more from her about how podcast editorial works on Spotify. That should be interesting.

— Now, uh tune in. um it seemed to have sort of died. Now, James, what is TuneIn and why did it in 2024 uh simply close down accepting new podcast listings? — Yeah, I mean, it's a very big uh radio um uh app where you can listen to every radio station under the sun. Um and it works very well for that. It's built into a lot of surfaces, uh if I can use that phrase. um and uh it seems to do very well. Um but uh getting your podcast in there was a little bit harder. So it had podcast from the big broadcasters, but that was about as far as it went. Um the podcast submission disappeared in February 2024 and took a whole year before coming back. But it is now back, which is nice. Um you just need to go to TuneIn's broadcaster portal. Uh broadcasters. tune. com is where you go uh for that. Um, I was actually talking to the team this morning um and I said, "Oh, you should have a look at the podcast index. " And he said, "I think we use that. I'll check, but I think we use that. " So, if that's the case, then good. Harrah. Um, but certainly this show is there if you want to go and have a listen to this show in TuneIn in your Tesla cuz it's um automatically in your Tesla car or on your Sonos speaker or various other places. um then uh that is there. But I thought that was uh pretty good news really. — I did ping the uh development team over there to see if they've got an API for automatically uh submitting as a host to the TuneIn platform. And the disappointing response was the one that I got when I had River Radio back in the day, which was basically go to that portal that you just mentioned and individually submit your show. And I thought, God, is that it? Is that the only way you can do this? Cuz that is not going to help them when the hosting industry says, "Okay, we'll add you as an individual directory alongside podcast index or Apple or Spotify. " — This Yeah, they're not very bright in terms of that. They're not from podcast the the podcast world really. — Um, so they're not very bright in terms of that. they are pretty poor at talking to um whether it's broadcasters, whether it's um journalists, whether it's podcasters. Um they are pretty poor at that. I hope that they will get better. They did speak at Radio Days Europe this year um and in fact I interviewed um uh the president of Stingray Radio um on stage who owns uh TuneIn now and he was just talking about TuneIn. That's all he wanted to end up talking about. So that was good. Um so clearly they are interested in talking more to the radio industry and I hope that they want to talk more to the podcast industry as well. Um I think um you know really it'll be worthwhile waiting and seeing whether or not they actually follow through on that. Um they have been a just a rude company to deal with over the last five six years. So I'm hoping that they get a little bit better.

— Now quick question James Podbean are they related to Mr. Bean? because they're closing down live. We talked about this last week in a world where more people are going live. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Can you try one more time to see if you can make any sense of why Podbean are closing their live platform? — Um, I mean, I can't really. They want to focus on something else. I mean, maybe just nobody is using it on the Podbean platform. Um, maybe the secret of going live isn't necessarily the technology of going live. it's the platform that you want to consume and that your listeners want to consume the live podcast on and maybe it's just that. Um but yes, they are uh closing it in June. Um it's going to be missed so much by people um that one person, Joe Antonio, has filed a petition against the closure um uh trying to uh save Podbean Live. You've um don't shut down our community, blah blah. got 86 uh people who have signed that uh as we speak. Um so uh there does seem to be um uh something going on there. But um if the only place that you can consume a live show on Podbean is in a podcast app from Podbean, then I'm not surprised that they're closing it down to be honest. Um, so I think it's more a case of okay, if you are producing a live show, can you get it into YouTube live? Facebook Live or into um I don't know if LinkedIn does live, but you know what I mean. Can you get it into all of these different places? Um, if you can, it strikes me that is the most sensible thing to do. And if Podbean didn't want to spend the time doing that, then, you know, closing something down, you know, it probably makes sense to me. — I mean, I still think live is where hyper local radio will end up. Anyway, that's just and music events and podcasting. But anyway, we'll see. But an interesting story this week was Mr. the uh YouTube um creator did a live stream challenge where he attracted and this is a mad number one million concurrent viewers with a live broadcast using his YouTube channel — right well yes that there's a thing — but I think it goes to show scalability right one of the biggest worries I think has been in the past that you know TV would have said or radio would have said well we can scale because of our networks and the Edward would have said, "Yeah, can we scale with live? " I think this proves you can. — Uh I think you can scale with uh YouTube. Yes. Uh Amazon, if you remember, had awful trouble uh a few years ago when they were trying to do live video um for football uh and they had awful uh trouble. Similarly, Optus uh here in Australia, they had I think it was a World Cup or something uh and they were covering that and it literally did not work. and they handed the broadcast rights to one of the TV broadcasters here because it just simply didn't work. Um, so I think yes, it'll work with YouTube because YouTube has boxes. That this is the secret about YouTube. It has boxes at every single ISP. Um, so it's not um working in the same way as pretty well everything else is. Um, they have large boxes which are caching stuff um so that you don't have that particular issue. Um and um I would imagine that pretty well for pretty well everybody else. It it'll still be really very hard to get the type of scale. I mean you're talking about a million there as if that's an amazing thing. Let's not forget that, you know, uh live TV regularly does 8 9 10 million um uh people watching live. Um and that's still 10 times as large as um — Oh, no. I'm not saying that TV is not able to do it or, you know, or isn't still the primary medium. I'm saying what's interesting for me is, — you know, that my little head about, you know, something like a Substack or a podcast index, sorry, podcasting 2. 0 show, right? And with an ice cast server, you know, if you got, you know, a thousand people doing that would have been great, right? — When you get a million people, and you're right to say it, it's YouTube's own private network in effect that's running this, not the web really. Netflix or maybe it was Jake Paul and yet they've got their own private network and they must have a massive um capability to be able to do — uh concurrent viewers and they were struggling as well. — Yeah. No, indeed it's not easy to do that sort of thing. And um uh and yeah, you know, there are real scalability issues when you get to be that big. Um so uh yeah, and you know, again, that may well be um one of the reasons why Podbean has gone, you know what, we're not going to be doing this. if they are going to feed their live streams onto YouTube and you know onto other platforms well that's a different conversation isn't it but um yeah

yeah — now two things that grab me again and I will bring it back to podcasting before you edit it off the platform um — we'll see about that — yes YouTube is making Leanback TV more interactive so we heard that they're launching a feature called ations, which is basically a video hub uh that will introduce live coverage. They're going to start with the Coachella Festival shortly. Um they're also bringing out a TV companion that pairs with your phone so it recognize automatically that you're playing on your TV and gives you an interactive comments control feedback. That could be quite interesting. And they also are adding a feature called Ask a video specific chatbot designed to help viewers engage more deeply. Do you think because YouTube have said that they are now the main uh display within the lounge, I mean Netflix says they're their main competitor, do the second screen capabilities and these chatbot interfaces interest you? You're a YouTube premium supporter? — Yes, I am. And I'm a bit grumpy about YouTube actually because I went down to YouTube Premium Light which is available here um after it was covered on this show and I went down to YouTube Premium Light because the story that we covered was YouTube Premium Light now includes downloads and that's what it says on the advertising but then when you actually go and use it says oh no this feature is coming soon which I think is illegal. Um so I was a very grumpy man. — Is that the lawyer you're talking to? So, I was a very grumpy man in um uh in an airport going, "Why can't I download any of these videos anymore? " uh for this 14-hour flight that I'm just about to be jumping onto and uh only to find out that YouTuber uh had ripped me off basically. So, I was uh rather irritated at them for that. Uh yes, I use YouTube a fair amount. Um I mean, you know, as with all of these things, the proof will be using them. The proof will be, you know, how many people actually use this? Similar to that weird um uh AI playlist thing from Spotify, how many people are going to end up using that. I like the idea that these companies are trying new things, seeing what happens, seeing what doesn't, and um you know, and roll on actually giving that a go. The one thing that I would say and the thing the trick that I think YouTube is missing is not having um a curated experience for live TV outside of the US. I'm sure that um the rights that they have for many of the channels would allow them to do that everywhere. Um and I'm surprised that they haven't got that. And there are an awful lot of live TV channels already available on YouTube anyway, particularly around the news uh side. And again, I'm surprised that they haven't got a more curated experience for that sort of thing as well. But um yeah, you know, anything that does more of that um kind of makes sense. — I'm wondering whether this stations is that feature that you're looking for, James. — Well, I mean, maybe. I mean, the one thing that I am looking for is um I don't want to buy a new Apple TV until they release new hardware. Uh any sign of that happening soon? Well, uh, rumor is obviously that the WWDC, the Apple developer conference is in June, uh, June the 8th, that they're going to be announcing new versions of HomePod and the new Apple TV. Um, the whole thing, from what I've read, has been held up for one reason, one reason only, and that is Siri. They can't get the Apple AI to work properly, and it's been the one thing that's held up their hardware. This is most of their um applications that they want to do. But by all accounts, iOS 27 will have the new Siri within it uh alongside the new iPhone 18. Um and yeah, I'm like you, James. I'm looking for a new Apple TV. Allegedly, this will have Siri in it, the A19 chip, — support for matter, and I know you use home automation with matter. Um, and yeah, they've also got a small Apple stick allegedly coming out to replace or challenge the Amazon Fire TV stick as well. So, a — a square boxes as we know the Apple TV, but also a small little HDMI plugin as well. — Yeah. Well, if that is the um the MacBook Neo of the Apple TV world, it's a very cheap thing. Um, then that might have something going for it. So

um yeah. Moving on, last story then. Uh, James, uh, Buzz Sprout has put out their report for the total downloads for March. What's the, uh, what's the headline? — Yeah, well, I mean, the headline is that total downloads for the Buzz Sprout um, podcasts are slightly up year. I only really look at year-on-year. I I think looking month-on-month is a bit pointless, particularly since February has 28 days and March has 31. that's a significant larger amount of people, you know, of days uh in March and so therefore everybody should be up. Um so I always look year on year. Um the big thing that really does uh spring out at you when you do compare year though is the amount of um web browser downloads. Um which let's face it is often how AI agents um hide themselves. Um the amount of web browser downloads has more than doubled. Um so um that is uh interesting. That's moved up to the number three uh in terms of the biggest um uh downloader. So it goes Apple podcast at number one with 36. 6% of downloads. Spotify at number two with 27% downloads, but of course Buzz Brow isn't seeing any podcasts which are made in video. And also um there are no automated downloads with Spotify. And then at number three, the web browser at 13% which is a significant increase from this time last year. Um, so I think it's all AI personally. — Do you think that host should block the AI scrapers? — Uh, it's impossible because if it looks like a web browser, then browser. What are you going to do? Block web browsers? — No, you can't. I mean, I agree with you, but John Spellet's got a very interesting oporg list of all the bots. So — yeah, of course. So if a bot is polite enough to say, "I'm this bot," then you can block it. Um, but if they're not polite enough to say that, then you can't. And I think that's the issue there. Um I'm actually interested in something that Cloudflare is now doing which is if you are a bot and you have a particular thing in your accept header when you ask for a website um then the website uh if you're using Cloudflare will automatically reply in text format only and in markdown um which means that it's much cheaper for everybody. you, the website host, because you're just serving markdown to these things. Much cheaper for um the bots because that's far less tokens. Um and so much cheaper for Cloudflare because there's much less, you know, bandwidth. So, everybody wins out of that, which I think is quite neat. I can't do that yet. Um I wish I kind of could. Um but um uh yeah but the difficulty is that at the moment there are no uh laws if you like saying that the user agent has to be correct and until there are those things in place well actually you can type in whatever you want in the user agent and that means that it's going to be very difficult for you to block um you know uh any of these things which is hard.

— Podcast events on the pod news weekly review. So, uh, awards and events. The Quill podcast awards are back for their fifth year. Nominations are now open. There are 13 categories if you want to enter those. The entries are also open for the AIBs. Uh, 2026. It's not the IABS, that's the AIBs, that's the Association of International Broadcasters. Um, there are, uh, podcasts built into that. There's a gala ceremony in London on the 20th of November, but you've got until the 3rd of July to get your entries in, uh, for that. And congratulations to those people who are nominated in the Peabody Awards. Um those will be announced on April the 23rd and then celebrated on May the 31st in Beverly Hills. Uh events and uh things like that you might be interested in. Um Hark um is an excellent podcast app and this is nothing to do with it. Uh it's uh based in the UK is this heart um uh this Hark and it's called Hark Live. It's happening in Manchester uh on April the 29th. It's a free event for agencies, businesses, and brands who want to understand more about audio. It looks quite interesting. Um uh so uh worth a peek. You'll find more details on that at Pod News. The Soundwave Summit is to return to Toronto in Ontario in uh Canada in May. It's right next to Radio Days North America, so you can go to both and there's a cheap ticket for you to go to both. Um, which looks uh very good. Uh, and also Birmingham's Uni Pod Festival 2026 is taking place on the 8th of May supported by BBC Sounds and Amazon Music and uh, it's very good. You will be going to that, I'm assuming. — Yes. Yeah, I've been to the last uh, three. Yeah. So, I'll be going Sport Nina. Yeah. — Well, that all makes uh, perfect sense. So exciting. Even the dogs excited.

— The tech stuff. Tech stuff on the Pod News weekly review. — Yes. It's the stuff you find every Monday in the Pod News newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. — You say Ushoosha. I say uh No. What do you say? You don't say. OSHA. — Yeah. OSHA. — OSHA. Usher. Right. They've got uh visibility ads. James. I thought ads were visible. Tell me more. — Yes, they do. Yes, they've got um OSHA visibility ads, which is essentially the ability for you to buy ads on Spotify and YouTube for your podcast. Um, which you' think, well, why wouldn't I just go to Spotify and YouTube for that? Well, because you probably want to do it in a way that understands um how these things work specifically for podcasts. That kind of makes rather more sense. Um so, OSHA visibility ads is a new thing uh from them. That tool is available in uh beta today. Now, Pod Page, uh, which we've interviewed in the past and Dave Jackson recently joined now transcribes podcasts for every episode automatically. Uh, thank you. — Yes, if you are an elite member, um, then the transcripts are there on the website. Um, it supports speaker identification, which is nice. It supports timestamps and clean paragraph formatting as well. Um they're also uh marked up for Google using schema which I've been taking a peek at um for the Pod News website as well. Um very cool to get um uh transcripts. Of course, if you're with Buzzcraft, our sponsor, then you get those too and those are available on your website. Go and take a peek at weekly. podnews. net uh and you can see what they look like. Um and Overcast as well um has uh just um released their um app with uh podcast transcripts in there as well. Um it's very cool and if you read uh yesterday's pod news, you will have seen that um their transcripts are being powered by a rack of 48 Mac minis rather than trusting that job to the cloud. Um that feature is available to everybody. It's something that Marco uh believes that should be free for everyone. So harrah for that. It's a phased roll out. If you've not got it yet, you will get it over the next week for everybody. So, uh, yes, very cool. I was talking to a friend of mine, uh, about all of these different transcriptions being available, and he asked me a question. Will those transcription apps automatically turn on the elic explicit tag if it detects rude words within the transcript? — Oh, there's a there's an interesting question. I mean, I suppose it could do, couldn't it? H I just I thought you know if you've got the transcript and you know that there are certain words in it do you automatically do that? — Well I mean I think from my point of view I think the answer is knows. We'll see if that I've bleeped it out. You're fine. — Radio stations James can now convert live broadcast to on demand podcast. What's this one about? — Yes. Um, this is a new thing. Um, uh, now if you remember, uh, way back when you ran a radio station, you were, um, recording stuff and then turning that into podcast and sticking it out using a company called Wishka. So good that Spotify bought it and closed it down. Um, so uh, what uh, Ozen have done, ozen. fm, is they have produced a new thing called podcastbot. ai. What that does is um it does that but a little bit more cleverly because it's using — blocked. Sorry, what? — Blocked. It's got the word bot in it. I'm blocking it. — Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Um no, it's do doing it a little bit more cleverly. um it is doing uh because it's listening to them, because it's transcribing them, and because it understands what which bits are music and which bits aren't, um it is uh able, so they say, of, for example, taking any copyrighted music out. Um it's capable, so they say, of, you know, being a little bit brighter in terms of um not putting the ads in or doing whatever it is that you want. Um it does all of that stuff automatically. Um it looks very interesting. I'd like to um have a listen to some of the shows that it is producing because that is clearly, you know, what one of the big hassles in producing a podcast for a radio station is to basically sit there and edit uh a recording down uh to make a podcast best of out of it. And if you can get um something automatic to do that, then that seems to make quite a lot of sense. So harra for ozen. fm. Um and I'd like to learn more about how podcastbot. a AI

works. — Booster. Booster. Super — super comments. — Zaps. — Fan mail. Fan mail and voicemail. — Our favorite time of the week. It's the Pod News weekly review. Inbox. — Oh, new jingle. Uh, so many different ways to get in touch with us. Fan mail by using the link in our show notes, which includes voicemail now or boosts or email. And we share any money that we make as well. Just so that you know, um, in the last 7 days, we got 3,286 sats in total, uh, which is rather a lot lower than we normally get, but still uh, we got some sats. So, thank you very much, uh, if you have been streaming sats, uh, to this show or to the Pod News Daily. — Now, James, we've had some fan mail in, but excitingly, in the form of voicemail. Who have we got? — James and Sam. This is Ralph Eastep Jr., one of your favorite supporters and I just wanted to check in with this new voicemail and thank you so much for what you do every week. I'm out here early morning in Middletown, Delaware on the farm walking the dog and you are keeping me company here in the dark as we walk. So I just want to say thank you gentlemen. Always look forward to your show every week and keep podcasting. — Keep podcasting. God bless you Ralph Eastep Jr. Thank you very much for that. Uh you are indeed one of our favorite supporters. Um Middletown in Delaware. That sounds like a typical American uh in the middle of nowhere place, doesn't it? Middle town. — The flyover state maybe. Who knows? — Wow. There's a um there's a place up in uh up north from us um which is called Townsville. Uh so good they named it twice. So uh Ralphie Stepp, thank you so much. He of course is one of our um power supporters uh as well. And uh here's another one. — Hi James, it's Lindsay from the fiction podcast weekly and I wanted to say hello and test out this service. I have used fan mail with Adwit the audio drama writer independent toolkit and with life in the Ted lane. We did not get many responses but I mean I just don't understand why people didn't use it. we promoted the link, but in any case, maybe this will be a way that people will make more use of fan mail. Hope you're having a great day. Thanks. Bye. — We're having a great day, Lindsay. Thank you, uh, so much. And, uh, yes, I do believe that audio is a great way of getting feedback. And so, I'm super pumped. Um, the Buzz Bro team will know that I've given them a list of at least six feature requests around fan mail. You know, everything from please could you change the name of the file name which is downloaded uh to uh rather less esoteric ones. But yeah, they are uh it it's such a good tool. Uh if you would like to leave us fan mail, please do. You'll find the link right at the top of our show notes. Um uh just take a peek at that. It also works absolutely fine on desktop as well. If you want to use your fancy mic um or you can just use your mic on your Android phone or your uh or your toy phone. That's absolutely fine uh as well. So uh yes, give that a go. It's uh very cool. — Who knew that an audio feedback in an audio medium would work? Gosh, — who knew? Yes, exactly. Who knew? Uh super comments and boosts and stuff like that um uh in True Fans includes uh Seth Goldstein. Thank you, Seth. Uh firstly saying that James' report card is something I look forward to every year. Uh yeah, me too. Uh I'm looking forward to crunching the numbers. Uh if you've not filled that out yet, I would very much appreciate it if you would. podnews. net/reportcard is where to go. Uh and he also says, "Podscribe is a pretty nifty service. Good get on getting them as a sponsor. " Uh I had nothing to do with it, but Seth, thank you so much. Much appreciated. Um uh so uh yeah, thank you uh for uh that and thank you very much to our power supporters. We've got 24 of them uh including um uh Silus Vote uh including Seth Goldstein, Dave Jackson and Clareweight Brown. Uh thank you all uh so much for your very kind uh support there. That's going to make life um much easier when we come to drinks and things in the podcast show in London. Dave Jackson says he's coming. Yay. Uh so that should be good. Um, looking forward to seeing him and a bunch of other people as well. Uh, so what's happened

for you then, uh, Sam? — Well, first of all, I'm busy trying to put those drinks together. So, hey, — happy days. Right, so that's the first thing. Um, we're working on a bot blocker. Uh we are looking at John Spurlock's Oporgist and yeah so we're going to provide a user interface in the creators dashboard to allow you to turn on and turn off those spots from scraping your content. So we'll see how that works. — Um went to see an artist last night called Brook Kum in London. Very good. I love her dearly. Uh new Scottish soul singer. So if you like soul music, check her out. Um and yeah, I'm very pleased. I'm guesting on Sound Off with Matt Kundle and also with Norma Jim Baleni on Poppies. So look out for those when they come out. — They are very good podcasts which you should go and listen to both of them. Uh sound off with Matt Kundle. Uh all the way from Winnipeg in Alberta and — he's moved. — Oh, go on then. Where is he now? — Uh Ontario. I want to say it now. He did tell me. He said to say he makes it even worse. said, "Make sure you tell James I've moved and where I am. " And I went, "Yes, I will. " And now I can't remember. — Oh, no. Well, there you go. And uh I should also tell you that in that show in uh just before he gets to you, um there is a midroll in that show and I pop up um because Matt very kindly even wrote me a script and said, "You want more people signing up to the Pod News report card? " And I said, "Yes. " And he said, "Here's a script for you. and you read it and then I'll stick it in as an ad. And so, uh, you know, I I rewrote it and produced it and sent him a copy of that. So, we'll find out which version he's used. Um, uh, so that's very good. But that was a super kind thing. Um, if you are listening and you are um talking to other podcasters, I would really appreciate it. Uh, again, podnews. net/reportcard. That would be uh very kind um because uh you know, we need numbers uh to help us there. Um, so yeah, very cool. — So, James, what's happened for you this week? — Well, uh, firstly, oh yes, the pod news report card it says here. Yes, let's not forget that. Um, secondly, uh, I drove all the way up to, uh, sunny um, Bundberg um, last week, late last week. Um, you are the reason why I get to drive back and I can avoid my sister-in-law. Uh, so that's, um, good excuse for you. What was interesting is I ended up doing that in the big um in the big uh fancy car um uh electric car and of course this was the first long journey that I had ever done and I was a little bit worried because I was told that um doing a long drive in an electric car is terrifying because you know you're going to run out of electricity and blah blah blah blah. It couldn't have been any more simple. Absolutely When I got, you know, sort of threequarters of the way there, I just asked Apple Maps for the closest uh charger and just parked it there and um and had a pie. — You didn't range anxiety then? — Absolutely none. And then of course I get there and the Murdoch papers are all um they had because it was a holiday weekend, the Murdoch papers all had, you know, these idiots in their electric cars. Look at them queuing for the um tiny amount of charges which are out there. What idiots they are. Um uh it's almost as if um the Rupert Murdoch papers are getting their money from the mining um companies cuz uh there was absolutely not a problem. Every single uh charging point that I went to and I went to four I think in total were all absolutely fine to get on to um and worked absolutely fine. So, you know, typical uh Ripert Murdoch uh trying to scare everybody away from electric cars in this particular case. Um — he's still alive. I mean, — uh unfort Unfortunately, yes, he is still alive. Just he's hanging on. Um — most people at 900 now. — Yeah. I think I think he's 98. I think he's 98, but his mother lived to uh even older. Um so I think his mother lived to 103, I think. Um, so yeah, unfortunately that is going to carry on. I did read a book recently called The Men Who Killed the News and it's all about people like Rupert Murdoch, but also many other people as well and all of the things that they have done and all of that. He's 95 by the way at the moment, born uh in 1931 in Melbourne. — Time for one more marriage then. — Yes. Well, I mean, yeah, absolutely. Gosh, yes, that book was uh amazing. I had no idea. Tony Blair, what a naughty man you are, Tony Blair. Good lord. — Is that the affair? — Yes. — Yes, exactly. That didn't come out, did it? — Anyhoo, uh so yes, so that was fun. And um no, apart from that, um that has basically been uh my week. Nothing more exciting than that. But um I'm looking forward to um uh hopefully doing uh a few more archival stuff. So, I write um uh a bunch of um stories about um the history of podcasting. Uh I'm currently working on a um a piece all about the Microsoft Zoom uh which was a thing which played podcasts. Um do you know who the podcast business manager for Zoom was? — No. — Rob Greenley. — Yeah. So, there we are. He ran the entire thing. Um if you want to know, his email address was robzoom. net. Uh, and the only way to get your podcast into the Microsoft Zoom was to email him because guess what? The official submission process built into the desktop software didn't reliably filter for valid podcast feeds with media enclosures. Genius. Microsoft, you've you've um you've ticked off another one there. Um, so uh yeah, so that was um so that's good. But uh also I've reached out to the editor of Podcast User magazine which was a magazine PDF magazine that came out in the UK in about 2005 2006 2007 and absolutely fascinating. So, um, what I'm hoping to do is hoping to be able to host all of those. Um, and, um, maybe do a little bit of AI in terms of, um, please could you give us a, you know, a sample of what's in here and, um, you know, maybe use a little bit of AI for that. Who knows? Um, but yeah, super exciting. So hopefully that will um, happen in the next couple of weeks. And that's it for this week. All of our podcast stories, of course, taken from the Pod News daily newsletter at podnews. net. — You can support this show by streaming sats. You can give us feedback using the bus sprout thumbnail link in our show notes. And that voicemail works really well. You can send us boosts or you can become a power supporter like the 24 power supporters at weekly. podnews. net. — Yes. And our music is from TM Studios. Our voice over is Sheila D. Our audio is recorded using Clean Feed and we edit with Hintenberg. And we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzprout. Start podcasting. Keep podcasting. — Get updated every day. Subscribe to our newsletter at podnews. net. Tell your friends and grow the show and support us. — And support us. The Pot News Weekly Review will return next week. Keep listening.