Podnews Weekly Review - Why Acast Bought Backyard Ventures And What Changes Next

0:00Through this whole process, it was not wanting to exit something as much as it was to continue to build. And what AKS had in place was just so fitting for what we were trying to do. AKS buys back-yard ventures. We speak with both CEOs plus... My topic here was actually to share the global trend of podcasting and whether or not it applies for Asia. We're at podcast day Asia in Jakarta. With James Grydland and Sam Sathy. This is the POD News Weekly Review with Buzz Sprout. Stomp podcasting, heat, heat podcasting. James, well, here we go. Now, we've been trying to get Greg Glenday on to the show for a couple of weeks now. He was busy a couple of weeks back and then my fault last week. Well, I'm very excited to say that Greg is joining us today and Greg's going to be telling us all about, I think the main thing I want to get from Greg is what's the overall strategy.

1:00They've become profitable, they're buying back-yard ventures, they're partnering with Kirt, they're taking on new people. It all seems very positive. Greg, hello, how are you? Great to see you. I'm Greg, thanks, Sam. Now, Greg, you've been a very busy company in the last few months. One of the things you've been doing is acquiring companies. One of those companies is back-yard ventures and we're joined as well by the founder and CEO of Backyard Ventures, Matt. Matt, hello, how are you? I'm doing great, thanks, I have me. Now, before we get Matt's view of it, Greg, why did you go and buy back-yard ventures? Great question. I think, you know, if it's one word, it would be synergy. If it's two words, it would be synergy and culture. You know, a funny story and I know you had recommended to me Thomas Readman's book. Thank you for being late. I think our story starts with Matt and I both being an hour early for a meeting in January. We were supposed to meet with a bunch of advisors and lawyers and literally it was a 9am meeting.

2:01And both Matt and I went to the coffee shop downstairs at 8am and we had an accidental get to know you before the meeting. All he talked about were the people, the culture, you know, what it's like to work there, what it's like to work in our industry, the reputation they have. And that's the same thing we were trying to do on a different scale. You know, coming from Sweden and Europe into the US versus coming from Austin and heading east. So we hit it off as people and human beings first and then with business strategy and culture, it felt like this would easily be one plus one equals three. All the stuff they were focused on, I think if we looked in the mirror, we could get better at. And all the stuff they were thinking about building for the future, we had been building for a few years. So we sort of like, man, you could really accelerate our hypothesis here together. Matt, we've never talked about it, but that's how art felt. Absolutely. I absolutely agree. Through this whole process, it was not wanting to exit something as much as it was to continue to build. And what ACAS had in place was just so fitting for what we were trying to do.

3:03And so as Greg said, I'm going to go and alluded to this was not just a, okay, we know I'm inventory and move on. There's culture, there's people, there's just complimentary skill sets on both sides that are going to allow us to really build faster. So let's take a step back. What is back your adventures? Give us the, what it is, first of all. Absolutely. Well, I would say the same way that Zappos says they are not a place to buy shoes, they are customer service destination. That is what we are for our clients, right? So creators first, it is always thinking about what is best for them and ultimately revenue will follow. And so that started with just podcasts, right? Two podcasts in 2019 with a goal of just doing that as well as I could with the background and media sales. And so as that progressed, we got into other avenues, right? YouTube newsletter, social media. Some of that was within my background and skill set and some of it was dependent upon demand. And when that demand came once again, it's creator first. And so we did not want them to go elsewhere.

4:03We wanted to have the solution for them. Fast forward to today, fully operating business that now fits into Acast with the model of creator first service relationship management and ensuring that we're doing what's best for our clients. Would you defeling yourself then as a creator portal? Would you pry to the acquisition my Acast has considered your competitors to be substacked, super cast? Who was your competitor in the main? So I think you can look at it a couple ways, right? Anybody who's selling media, I guess is technically a competitor, anybody in the podcast space that's looking for advertising dollars or partnerships, that's competition. But I truly didn't see it that way. I thought there's plenty to go around. And if we do it really well, I think we gravitate toward success and others will see that. And so as Greg mentioned earlier, the culture and the people and just generally the direction that we were going, I never looked up and said, what are other people doing as much as I said, how do we continue to scale in the manner that we see fit?

5:04And ultimately all the chips fell correctly and it worked out. So could have failed no doubt. But I think just having the vision of success as to what we saw was advantageous for the industry and our clients is what ultimately made us win. I would say the biggest risk on the deal is when the mix beat the spurs because I'm an it planet. He's a spurs, so that was some tens, there was some tens times there. Sorry, that's okay. I'm going to ask an entrepreneur's question of you now and feel free to say no response, but you were doing 16 million in revenue and you were required for 20 million. That normally is 5x 6x acquisition numbers of your revenue. So how come how come 20 million only? I've say that a couple things one without tech, you're not necessarily getting the multiples that you mentioned. In second to that, I'm sure you've read most articles. There's a stock component with that number right. And so I truly believe in this stock and our ability to continue to grow there.

6:05And so I'm not departing after this interview and never in this industry again. I'm in this to build and continue to grow. And that's just in an expedited fashion now. So money is great and all, but I'm 41 years old and I'm not complacent right. I want to continue to grow. And so more is going to come right if we continue to do the plan that we have in place. Yes, I'd like we're going to be successful in you know with success money comes. And so I don't see it anyway, but advantageous for both parties. Can I add to that? I think first of all, for any of my investors listening, I hope you listen to Sam's questions. We got a great deal. So we believe that, but also in first Matt really did the calculus for Matt. And this was really important to me. He wasn't doing the math on what's the biggest outcome in summer of 2026. He was doing that plus what's the brightest future for Matt and his team and the people. And again, I think he has zero turnover since founding the company like people start there and stay. So Matt's looking for like what's next and how do we do this together? And I think taking four or five years to build a company and sign 200 shows.

7:06That was a lot of work. And you know, it's sort of daunting to say, okay, now is the next 200 also five years or together. Do we solve a lot of this together? So you know, we're kind of like locking arms and moving forward together in this. And we're not having Matt set sail after the transition. This is really important that he and his team stick around. Absolutely. Matt very quickly. How big was the team that got acquired? What is the size of blackout trenches? There's 18 of us divided across sales ops finance accounting. So it's not a huge team is Greg and a cast team have told me they're like, man, you guys do so many jobs. But that's kind of the only way you know to function right whether anybody wants to say their next word in the system or not. It is still new. There is nothing that is just defined in stone from 50 years ago. And so as we were grinding along and seeing everything ahead of us, it was. Do we have to hire 20 more people to get to double triple the revenue or can we integrate. And so that's where the integration came. Great. Let's take a step back earlier this year in July. You announced the key to results.

8:07I'm glad to say that you are now fully profitable. What has been the driver that's driven that growth to profitability? Yeah, I think the success we had in 25 and so far in 2026 kind of started in 2024. We fought a lot of alignment work that we did into the beginning of 25. So you know, I think sometimes companies like ours were all in a new industry. Think about how many things have changed how many companies have you know sort of shifted strategy over the last three years even so this is moving at light speed. So for us, you know, we got really focused on what do we do? What are we good at? We stopped doing a lot of things and you could catalog all the things that we shut down where it's like, you know, sometimes you have to say, you know what? That's not our lane. And it's actually made us better partners with people like Apple and Spotify by not trying to do everything for everybody. We focus on infrastructure, people, technology being the best place for independent creator. Matt's creators are actually in our sweet spot. We believe that podcasting is a meritocracy. Yeah, hate to say it, but there's a lot of big shows that were remain nameless or are but saying or their audience is maybe 85% smaller than last year.

9:11So people vote every day and you have to earn your listening. These aren't licensing deals. So we look at those shows and we say, man, that is 200 shows like that. I would take that over a big show that's maybe a little more unreal or isn't necessarily a podcast. This is our sweet spot for us getting focused. We're able to move a lot faster on that. So I think it was alignment. I think we have great people next week. We're going to make a huge announcement. A big hire that I think will be interesting for the industry. So I feel like we know where it's going now. We have all big brands that are super interested. They know podcasting works. It's like all of those objections that we heard for the last few years. Those kind of became everybody's road maps. And I think we've solved enough of those problems that the industry is ready to take off. Obviously there's crazy macro stuff going on, but I still think we are underneath the chop on the water. And I think we're below the storm. I think podcasting is going to continue to grow. It's exciting. This is probably the most exciting time in the 20 years the industry has been emerging. It may be emerged now. So look, I was fortunate enough to be invited to the A-Cast offices in London when you started the video studios.

10:16You obviously opened them in the US as well. So you were ahead of the sort of hiatus that we've been seeing in video. You're also one of the first partners for Apple. So talk to me about how video is now integrating and affecting the revenues with the main cast. The short version is, again, strategy and alignment. We made a couple of hard decisions early on that we weren't going to take the badge of gold from one particular video platform and say all of our stuff is there because that's not the spirit of podcasting. You can get it everywhere. It's up to the user. The relationship is between the creator and the audience. So we really believe that. So by sticking to our guns and not sort of putting all into one camp when we came to a secret Apple meeting last summer and they said, hey, we want to build this with people like you. And we said, yeah, that's great. And didn't have to be exclusive. So we believe video is sort of an evolution like we're seeping into video. It's not the pivot. The podcast pulse research that's coming back now that we present every year around now. So it's coming up for for podcast movement. That's coming back that more people this year than last year in our survey do both right audio and video.

11:26So we think this sort of multimodal bet that we're making is the future. And you know, this thing is never going to go away. People are always going to do both. And that's what makes our medium really special. So I'm glad we were early. And I think that was the right bet. So how are you giving back feedback to your creators? Finsley Apple will give us data that Spotify and YouTube obviously aren't giving us past three data. Are you as a cast as a preferred partner getting this data now? We are. And we also have a lot of our own data. We're talking about the skip story and all those things like we do 500 surveys a year. So you today we've already done 500 surveys ourselves with our audience that we spend a lot of money on research for ourselves. So we sort of know where things are going. Videos not for every show. We have some shows where we're saying, hey, it's actually not help. For the most part, it's better and most of them want to do it, but not everybody. So we're providing guidance. We're telling them when it works and when it doesn't not every episode has to be video. So we're being very open-minded, testing and learning. And ultimately our creators, unfortunately, all the portcard is their revenue. So as long as that's in a good place, we're not going to get a lot of complaints while we test and learn.

12:34Sam, I'll add one thing to that. At the end of the day, your creators are your equity, right? That's how you grow. And so if they trust you, then you can continue with them. Right? And so it's simply in this, like we're educated and what's going on? We can tell our creators, this might be best for you and this isn't. We allow them the opportunity to grow with us. Right? And so because things are changing, you have to be nimble, but on top of that, like staying educated in having those relationships with your creators to trust you to make those calls for them or at least educate them is very valuable. And that's why we're building this. You mentioned it, Greg. Spotify, skip ahead. This has not been received very well by the industry. It makes sense for people like me as a user who pays Spotify. I give you money. I don't want ads. I pay Netflix. I don't get ads. I pay. I don't get ads. I pay YouTube. I don't get ads. So he doesn't feel like they're doing anything wrong for the consumer who's chosen to pay. But for platforms like yourself who have partners who have ads within their platform.

13:39What is a consul response to Spotify? Yeah, but it's funny. Sometimes it's nice to have a skirmish where you can kind of sit there and say, we're taking all sides and no sides. And you know joke. I'm actually doing a panel with our client, Christina, we're being know from bright side up about this. And it's her topic and we're going to do 10 minutes in a couple of weeks on everyone take a deep breath and rely on she's representing the advertiser that she's telling her clients don't panic. We're going to get you the results. Also, there's been a real shift when I go to these distant from the podcasting events, but the real advertising events that are sort of you know the N or the MMA or the IB these things that are sort of generalist. Most people tell them that outcomes and how great podcasting outcomes are. So the idea that you can skip as has always been there. You know for us, we had a couple of creators that were really upset and we had to take that seriously and reset to Spotify. Hey, we've become great partners with you are relationships never been better between these two Swedish companies, but hey, we've got to let you know we've got to back up our creators if they want to take a break or if they want to pull their content down.

14:41We've got to do that and they understood. I think they probably weren't ready for all the backlash. I can't speak for them, but I think it was probably not intended the way it was received. But you know, that's like while moving fast and making quick decisions with the info we have. It hasn't impacted us. I think it also shows that nobody has full market power, right? They prove that with the exclusives years ago. But if one company does something and the audience and the creators don't like it, they can step away from any of these platforms. And I think that's kind of a cool thing for our meritocracy. Talking with platforms, we've got new entrance coming into the market Netflix Disney Paramount. How's that in terms of your strategy within a cast? Would you sit down at exact level and say, how do we get involved in those platforms? It's how do we, but we start with should we, you know, I'm not sure they understand what the podcast is. And I think we kind of have to weather the storm of, you know, a giant MG for someone like Amazon and Netflix is a percentage rounding our point for us. We take it seriously and we want them to make money.

15:43I think we could do a whole episode on I'm going to start a cold war against the whole MG process because I don't think it's good for anybody except lawyers and agents and they all heard me say that. And that's not sour great. You know, if I were a creator, I'd take the biggest check to but it doesn't mean it's good for the audience. Sometimes it's not good for brands and all those other things. So I think the new entrance, it's great if we have creators that want to distribute and it makes sense for them. We want that to be open again. We want to be agnostic. So if there's a place to reach an audience that makes sense, they should do it. If it hurts their business in other ways, we devise them against it. So I think, you know, the jury's out. I think the way most people I know the way they use Netflix is very different than professional user generated content like a podcast. I think they're used to this is a little more curated and this doesn't quite feel like Netflix. So so we'll say it's definitely changing. I think kind of like Walmart coming into a place. I think a lot of big companies are seeing gold. You know, they see oil and they're coming into the space to say, oh, this looks easy. Let's try and do it. So I think we're going to wait them out. It's not as easy as a lot of them think we'll partner where it makes sense and we'll fight where it makes sense.

16:48Okay. I've got two more questions. Your son in a lot of exclusives is inventory now. The next battle between platforms like a cast ads, where's audio, are you having to get these exclusives in order to have the inventory to deliver the advertising platform that you want to know. No, you know, part of that was, you know, and I think I heard you mentioned that like, well, of course, you know, Matt's got great inventory. We think we can raise sell through rates on our side with his team and what they know how to do on YouTube and newsletters and all that. We can raise revenue per show and then vice versa. We think we can help because he's got inventory that we could probably utilize for self serve and programmatic that they haven't been as far along. So, so yes, but I also think we had a long tail. I'm desperate to get more money into smaller shows. And I've said it to you a million times, but I think a thousand small shows with niche audiences that are so passionate. I think if you can find a way to make that easy, that's worth more than one big show with the same size audience. I truly believe that.

17:50But we have to make it easy and that's kind of our mission. There's lots of inventory in the long tail and we can only raise rates so much on the big shows that should push that in. So that's what we're focused on. And I think we've got years of growth if we keep doing that right. So you mentioned newsletters just now obviously might you have the newsletters capability, but you've just done a deal with Kit. Great. What's going on? You got one greedy man. What are you doing? You got one. You want another one now. Can't stop won't stop. Now we have a you know, it's I've got to do something during Swedish summer. So we just like do these deals. But no, Matt, Matt honestly is I've already learned a ton from their team around how they monetize newsletters. We did that preferred partnership with kid was in the works. It really if you think about Matt's going to be like a catch all for a lot of things, but he's going to be our global general manager for newsletters like running all of our strategy. We've been curious, but we don't know how to do it and they've really figured out how to make that a market. So we're excited about that because again, that's inventory that's offline that's created that you know, there's no ceiling to that and live events, you know, we can go for a long time on those.

18:54Matt, you've got a long experience with YouTube YouTube a bit like Spotify is recently disappointed the industry quite a bit YouTube put in skip ahead and that disappointed people because it was a surprise. It wasn't a conversation. There was something called the amp group which Oxford road led which was to try and get you know standardized analytics around play counts and then left field suddenly YouTube say a player the hover players zero seconds or one second. What's it like to work with YouTube and what do you think they're doing when they are changing the analytic numbers so they fundamentally in my opinion inflate the numbers falsely to advertisers. So Greg will back your adventures be kept as a brand name or is it going to be just rolled into something else. It's officially a cast Austin so it is our beach head in what I think is one of the most important podcast markets in the world. You know, you think these things pop up. There's a couple in Germany and Miami and Austin is definitely it also will save us some money on meeting space for South by Southwest. So that was another synergy.

19:58And then I think their brand does mean a lot and they built something from scratch. We love the cactus. So we've done some fun kind of mash up stuff with backyard and a cast for their office. But it's for all kinds of purposes. This is because it's a synergy play. They've become a cast Austin which we're excited about. Okay now let's move out. You're doing really well in Europe. You're doing well in North America. How far east in Australia. That's great. Our team there led by Henry can guy. They're so far away that they kind of run their own thing but they pop up with the most amazing they've made. I think some of the most important signings this year they've really pulled in all different types of personalities and have been growing. We also have a couple of employees that are focused on Singapore and all the growth there. So I think APAC is going to become you know, I could see us next year having you know, the Americas Europe and APAC is kind of the three places that we really operate in 2027 and the year. They're doing an amazing job. I always use this example but great content in Australia is really portable to the UK and the US and you know Tony and Ryan just they just sold out tour of Australia.

21:01But they're popular here. They're a top 200 top 100 times show in the US. So I think it's pretty amazing. You know again, it speaks to the uniqueness and portability of our medium. There's really never been anything like that. So we're talking about English language but where are you in international language? Yeah, you know, it's tough because every time they don't something the technology is like, okay, are we ready to do this in Swedish? Are we ready to do this in German? Are we ready to do this in French? So it's something to think about that it puts up sort of natural language borders. But our teams really had gotten good at figuring out how to do that and when to do it. We've been investing in Germany. We bought a couple of companies there last year. We've got Nina as our country manager doing an amazing job. So we'll do that. It just takes a little bit of extra focus because you know, you've got to do everything sort of bespoke for those regions. So you talked about a big hire coming next week. Shame we couldn't get it today. But okay, you got a big hire coming next week. Help people kill me. No one's listening LP. Come on. Anyway, but you've also taken on Mark Bulling as VP of products. So what's Mark's role going to be within the company? Obviously it says product but specifically what's he been targeted to do?

22:12Yeah, I shouldn't have understood that. You know, Mark is Ed has a unique company and we've had mostly homegrown product people, which is good and bad. Right. It's pretty amazing and that they don't have some of the bad habits that you develop in old school tech. But Mark is somebody his reputation is amazing. I'm really I shouldn't have undersold him because I think he is a big hire. You know, the idea that somebody who worked at Apple and understands that marketplace work at Facebook. So understands that revenue is important. You know, that's where the Facebook God's prey to is the revenue alter. So he understands that. And then he did a lot of data work with WPP. So the idea that he's been at a hold co. It's sort of if we could create an AI product person in a lab, they would be Mark's a LinkedIn profiles. So we're really excited. He's a couple of weeks in. He's been spending time kind of paying attention while he was waiting out his start date. So we're really excited about Mark and having somebody that just a fresh set of external eyes with our great internal homegrown people. I think is going to be really, really perfect. So we're excited about that. And we put him in the UK on purpose to kind of bridge the gap between our engineers in the Nordic region. A lot of the sales and commercial stuff that's happening in the US.

23:17So those have become kind of our three beach heads. So you said the buzzword bingo. You said it. I didn't you said AI. I didn't everybody can drink now. Fundamentally, where is AI with a car? I mean, where'd you sit fitting into what you guys are doing? One of the big things that came out recently was the EU directive around labeling AI. How are you dealing with that? And then where'd you see creators within the ACAS platform using AI? Yeah, again, that's so funny. So I stepped on the Spotify skip land mine and the AI land mine. I tripped both of those wires for you. So with AI, we're actually this is another one where I think we made an early bet. And I think we got lucky. I'm not taking any credit for this. But our engineering team has a really good machine learning AI experience little anyway. So we've been using that on our products for sort of making connections easier product matching shows to demograph it. So all those things have been happening. We said a pretty bright red line that we don't want AI creators. We just don't believe that that's what people want from companionship. I think the daily stokes, for example, that's a relationship that one of Matt shows has with that audience.

24:23Nobody's looking for a synthetic version of Ryan. And I think we will use it for ad creative here and there. We will use it to make things easier and faster. We're going to be honest with the audience. And I think that's what people want to transparency. Even from when the stuff started coming out, even from London podcast showed it now, I feel like there's been a bit of a backlash on AI content itself. It's just sloped. And it's, you know, sure, maybe for information scores and things like that. Sure, I'd be fine with that. Stop market stuff updates. But I don't want to have a relationship with AI through a podcast. I think there's plenty of other places to do. So we're, I think we're in the right place for where it's going. So I started off by saying it's been an exciting, probably 2026 for a cast and you've done a lot. You've grown, you've got profitable, you've acquired, you've grown the team. What's the overall strategy, and then leading into 27. Yeah. So we are very focused on making a task, the best place. And when I say independent creators, you see there's a lot of people sort of say, hey, wait, why am I W2 employee for this media company? And I'm doing a podcast where people are tuning in to hear me.

25:30And I think we've already had some of those migrating over. So we're going to focus on making the water really warm for independent creators. This is the best place where you'll have the best tools. You can make a lot of money. We've got scale. We've got sales people that are bringing you deal. So we want that then focus on the audience and the audience brings us the brands. We've already we're working a really high level with the whole coast. And I think and I'm not to be too flippant. But I think we're trying to represent the industry there. I don't think we're not going to do a whole lot of a cast deals with PNG and Unilever. They're going to be podcasting deals that we think we would love to take a slightly unfair share if we can. But if we can make the Todd rise for everybody, I think that's really important. So we're spending a lot of time there focused on our industry, not satellite, not local radio, not streaming news, not other things and podcasting. We are just focused on this. So, you know, I think our team, I think is pretty lean for how big we are and where we are in the world. And I think a focused team in a new industry moving fast. It could be really, really dangerous. So we're excited about 2027. We've got to get through Q3 first, but we're excited about 20.

26:33So let's wrap it up there about one last thing you're in podcast movement in New York. What can people expect to come and see Greg if they come along to this and what you're going to say. Sure. Well, maybe we'll say a few controversial things that always make it spicy. But, you know, the main thing is I got a preview of our podcast, Paul's annual research study yesterday. And I'm so excited about it. I think it's going to be, you know, as it's we're starting to put it together. It looked amazing. I think people are going to be really excited about the insights. Again, it's not a cast. It's not a cast specific. It's about the industry. And so we'll have some new tidbits there. We'll have some announcements. We'll talk about the hire. We're going to announce Mark Bowling will be in town. It's going to be amazing. So I'm so excited. It's in New York. And I think, you know, pulling it all together is really, you know, it's buzzing. It's really exciting for everybody. The IB also has the creator front that week. There's a lot going on. So it's going to be a fun week. Mark, it just leaves me to say congratulations on your acquisition into a cast. Thank you. And Greg is always great to see you catch up with you very soon. Take care, guys. Thanks, Tim. Thanks, Tim.

27:33The part news weekly review with bus sprouts. With bus sprout. Stump podcasting. Keep podcasting. YouTube announced something I think is quite interesting. It's had YouTube for shopping creators for a while. The ability to link or affiliate link to product. But I think they've just done a deal with Amazon now, which I find interesting. Now in his 2026 letter earlier this year, Neil Mohan the CEO of YouTube said YouTube is focused on making its plot from a premier shopping destination. Now we've talked about in the past the Kelsey brothers having a Kelsey clubhouse on Amazon. I always thought if you're going to do a merch store capability, having Amazon as your product catalog and deliver me is a really cool place. I mean, think of the marketplace and size of prime. Now YouTube integrating their shopping for creators with Amazon to me seems like a really smart move. What are your thoughts before I give you mine?

28:35Yeah, I think it's definitely a clever thing that YouTube are doing. It's a eligible US creators only. And the difficulty with the Amazon affiliate deal is that Amazon might be a global organization, but their affiliates deal isn't. And so therefore you if you sign up to the US affiliate deal, and that's all you can sell. And if you if somebody comes and buys something in Canada, well tough, you're not going to earn any money out of that, which is always a little bit of a strange one. But putting that bit aside, I think yeah, you know, YouTube seems to be leaning in fair amount now to earning revenue from lots of different ways. And this is clearly one of them. And I think it's going to be really interesting how it all works. Now in the past you've told me that you know advertising within podcasting one of the ways of measuring the success is the attribution of product purchase. Right. And I think actually adding a merge capability. One of the things that people love about podcasting is that they have a high deep trust of the host that they listen to.

29:42Generally, that's the reason that people go back to them. And so product recommendation from those hosts, I think is a great way that the creators and hosts can make money. You know, if you for example said that my favorite Mike is the sure MV7 blah blah blah and this the one I use, I guarantee if we had a merged or link a number of people would buy it just purely based on your recommendation. Yeah, I think that's certainly true. The question is how much money do you earn from that sort of thing? And is that a good replacement to advertising? Or is that just an addition to advertising? And I think from my point of view, I don't necessarily see the money in these deals. I think if you are an affiliate and you're talking about a wonderful show microphone, then in 10 weeks time when you're thinking about buying a new microphone and you just go to the show website and you buy a microphone. Well, that's fine, but I haven't earned any money out of that. Even though it was me that got sure on your shopping list, so to speak.

30:42So I think there's quite a lot of issues with it, but you know, I mean, again, there's no harm in having yet more ways of earning revenue from some of the content that you make. Well, I think this is akin for me to Apple's timed links, you know, Apple are adding affiliate links fundamentally to Apple product through the transcript. And I wonder whether we can extend what YouTube are doing to actually create an ability to have affiliate links within the transcript, within the chapters. Again, I just think it's another way possibly for podcasters not relying advertising as their sole means of monetization, but also to diversify. Yeah, no, I think it's interesting. And suddenly, I mean, you know, the proof will be how much money you can actually make out of this sort of thing. But I do think it's well worth doing. So I started playing around and one of the things that YouTube does is it sets the bar very, very high. I feel for becoming a YouTube partner for this deal.

31:47So you have to have 3000 qualified watch hours, you know, and again, 4000 qualified watch hours if you have 1000 sub. So again, the bar I feel is quite high. I don't know why maybe they just don't want too many tie kickers. They just want to set a level of quality. Don't know, but it feels very high. So I then went and played with the Amazon affiliate codes and the Amazon store and it was quite quick. Actually, for me to create a store straight away, I created one, I haven't played any product into it yet, but Amazon.co.uk forward slash shop for slash Sam set. And I can then link that if I want to into my podcast. Now I could put it my show notes. I could put it anywhere I like. One of the things that me as CEO of true fans very quickly, we've created a new tag that we're proposing to the podcast into the community. It's called podcast storefront name can change, it could be merch. I don't really care. It could be shop. That'll be the community decide. But what it does allow you to do within the RSS feed is have that your

32:52balance of based it on the funding tag because I think that's a really simple tag. So you can actually then have a shopping cart icon on your page with links to whatever affiliate you want. We can be the Amazon store. It could be sticking me all. It could be Shopify. It could be anything else you want. I think we ask the podcasting to the community need to address this in some way and have some capability to a similar feature. Yeah, I mean, if if there are lots of podcasters that want to do this, then yes, absolutely. I suppose the question is how much does it change from just having a link in your show notes to having a specific button. And I'm not quite sure what the answer to that is. But yeah, why not? Why not add one of these sorts of things? Yeah. I only think the button makes it more prominent. That's I mean, it doesn't change it. Yeah, you're right. The show notes with a link got it. It was just the idea was it's just a little bit more front and center. That's why I did it. Yeah, yeah, no, dude.

33:53Let's move on James YouTube. Now you've been talking about it. I was away, but you've been talking about the YouTube play and downgrangie last night posted on LinkedIn a response. I don't know if you saw this. Yeah. Yeah, it was a good response. And he basically said, you know, YouTube's announcement felt a bit like a kick in the pants to be honest because it just came barely a month after the amp chords had been unveiled. And of course, the amp chords were supposed to be making a standard measurement for podcasting. And then all of a sudden YouTube stands up and says, well, you know this view, a figure that we have. We're just going to change it. And the change is just going to be from the first frame. And so of course, you know, that was just a weird, a weird thing directly after the amp chords, which YouTube were involved with. And so Dan was basically saying, look, you know, that really hurt the timing really hurt. But there is a silver lining and the silver lining is basically this really shows that we need a standard metric, which I think is down most certainly manufacturing a silver lining.

35:03And so the silver lining out of out of stuff that isn't necessarily silver. So any says, you know, YouTube's decision was the best advertisement for amp I could have asked for. But I think certainly it's a frustration. Dan Meisner from bumper has discovered that the new YouTube play metric essentially has doubled the numbers that you see in YouTube. So of course, the YouTube engaged play still exists, which is apparently, although it's not quite the same, but it apparently is nearly the same as the old play figure that we had, which most people say is something to do with 30 seconds, although YouTube has specifically said, no, it isn't. So, you know, who knows what's going on there, but, you know, YouTube is essentially double all of its numbers. That's exciting for them. And Dan, as I think putting in play, yeah, you played in play, you're looking for it. Inflated, well, I mean, you know, and doubled. So, yeah, but falsely doubled. That is what I mean.

36:03Yeah. And I mean, particularly for us, it means that if your mouse hovers over the thumbnail in the, you know, in YouTube main on the front page, and our podcast starts playing, well, that is a view apparently, even if you're not going to hear any of it. I mean, you know, it's bizarre, but clearly YouTube want more numbers. So, you know, there we are. Now, James, where are you in the world? Come on. Well, I and you may hear quite a lot of background noise of cars and things like that. Earlier on, you would have heard a call to prayer, which seems to happen quite often, especially at four o'clock in the morning. Thanks. Did you make it? Did you get there on time? So, I am in Jakarta in Indonesia, which is very exciting. It is my goodness humid out there. But yes, it's I've been here for the last couple of days and will be here for a few more here for radio days Asia, which is a both a radio conference, but also a podcast conference here.

37:07I'm looking after the podcast day. And yeah, it should be a really good, a really good time. Give me some highlights. What's going to happen? Well, yes, highlights indeed, because we're recording this slightly earlier than we would normally, but I tell you what, I won't even give you some highlights. I will give you some some after the event highlights of what did actually happen because I took my microphone around to learn a little bit more about what everybody was talking about. Hi, I'm Sarah Toproff. I work on growing your podcast audience if you give me money with headliner. Well, that's an excellent thing. You've been here at podcast Asia and also radio days Asia. You've been here for the last couple of days. You've got a radio background as well as a podcast background. What did you think of the whole thing? I really like radio days. I think that it's one of the best international conferences. And I think it has a really strong way of bringing people together from different markets from different languages from completely different contexts and

38:10like radio podcasting, creators of all types, legacy media, and really cross pollinating ideas. I've heard it several times today where people have said, oh, I want to try that in Indonesia or oh, that would actually work really great in Japan. And that is why I love these types of events and I love participating and helping organize and facilitate as much as they'll let me. Yeah. And you organized much of the podcast day and you did an excellent job. It was very easy for me to just stand there and coast off the back of that. What were the things that you saw which were sort of most interesting on over the last couple of days in terms of the podcast side? I was really impressed by first story, which is a hosting platform that does hosting and monetization and also direct support, but they are localized to each kind of national market in terms of their user interface.

39:14And also they're where they faced so there they were founded in Taiwan and so that's their biggest market and then they're kind of translating that success to the Indonesian market now. And yeah, I think I think that you know, being able to offer direct support from listeners via the Indonesian national QR code is not something that you that a different hosting provider. I'm not going to name names, but you know them is capable of doing, but it's actually essential here. Yeah, that was really interesting. I took a picture. I sent it off to Sam because obviously, you know, we've been talking about monetization for a long, long time and realizing that not very many people here have a visa or a master card, but obviously have access to, you know, some of the what it apps that they have here, you know, I thought that that was a fascinating thing. I also was interested in these speakers from Japan that we've had really talking about the importance of video and everything that they've been doing there and, you know, pointing out that the number one show in Japan carries no advertising, which I thought was really interesting.

40:19What is it? What's the show? It is called cotton radio, C O T E N radio and it's a bit like the rest is history, but it's got 10,000 members who all pay $6 a month. And yeah, so you know, all of those sorts of monetization things I thought was really interesting. And he was also there talking about another podcast that he worked on saying that clips and video clips are just as important now as the main show and saying that the clips of the show. So I saw, I saw a bit of that, which I thought was really interesting. But yeah, it's a wonderful sort of mix of different markets in different states, I think here, which I always find really interesting. There was a guy from Vietnam as well in a beautiful jacket, did you see him? Yes, the Kang show. Yeah, yeah. And he stood at the end and he said, you know, Vietnam, we're very behind in terms of podcasting, we're just getting into it. You have the best opportunity because you know what didn't work and what did work, which I thought was really interesting.

41:26Sarah, where next for you? Are you coming to podcast movement or anything like that? This is the close of my very long conference season actually. So I'm going to hang out on an island for a little bit. And then it's almost right back to work to start radio days Europe. Wow. Okay. Gosh, gosh, well, I'm going to hang out on an island in two weeks time Manhattan Island. Hey, amazing. Yes. But really, really good to see you. You too James. Thank you. Hello, hi, my name is Guangjin and I run one-up media. We specialize at taking narrative audio audio dramas into video. Now, is this your first radio days in podcast days, Asia? Oh, no, it's actually, I think my second author. Yeah, and you're based in Singapore. Yes. What were you talking about? Wait, what's my topic? Yeah, what we talking about here. Okay, okay. My topic here was actually to share the global trend of podcasting and whether or not it applies for Asia. Should I share more? Yeah, I mean, does it apply to Asia?

42:29So good question. Good question that you asked. Thank you. When it comes to dubbing, actually, subs seem like the better path. Subtitles. Yeah, subtitles. Subtitles for Asia seems like a better path. AI is actually very interesting. I think in the rest of the world we're seeing more apprehension. I think Asians tend to be viewing AI less of a devious entity and as long as we're respectful towards our audience, it seems like adoption is fairly positive. Yeah, now I saw that. I've seen both you showing data around that but also a number of other people as well. So it's going to be an interesting time in the next couple of years where lots of AI in this part of the world, not too much AI in the US or Europe perhaps. Yeah, that's so true. But that's what we know now, right? We aren't sure maybe two to three years time when safeguards are better or maybe the perceptions change. We might start to see a change in attitude. Yeah, and that mean indeed, indeed. Anything else that you've seen over here in the last couple of days that we've obviously spoken about what you said?

43:33But who else have you seen? I think James Creedland looks good in a suit. Okay, okay, okay. What else is in particular really, really interesting? I think so many. What do you think of the guy we saw somebody earlier from Japan talking about how podcasts are working in that country, which of course is a very visual country. We saw somebody from super long form. And we saw the clips. We also saw Ron. So the Japanese guy. So he was talking about the clip is the show. And basically, you know, yes, there's a one and a half hour show, but he's actually making tons of clips from it, which I thought was a really interesting thing. And then Ron was talking about TikTok's long form podcast, which I looked up 10 minutes long. 10 minutes. It's quite crazy, right? That 10 minutes is the long form. But yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's true for us actually. We also create our own TikToks as well. And I think organic traffic comes to think of it as actually quite strong by a TikTok.

44:35It's really good to see you again. Will I be seeing you at podcast movement? Yeah, in one and a half week's time, we'll see you on the 19-hour flight after in New York City. I will see you on the 20-hour flight from Auckland, New Zealand. Oh, really good to see you, Reggie. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good to see you. And if you want to learn more about Radio Days, both Radio Days Asia and Radio Days North America and Radio Days Europe, then go and search for the Radio Days Europe podcast. It's called RD. And it is out now, or if you get your podcast, the first guest is me. So that's exciting. Excellent. Now, our sponsors, Bosprout, are been busy. They've got a new one-click submission for podcasts. What have they done? Yeah, this is really interesting. So they have discovered that over 70% of active podcasts aren't in the directories that they could be because quite a lot of people have set up a few directories.

45:35They didn't bother setting up all of them because it's quite a big hassle. And so actually they're not in as many places as they probably could be. And so what Bosprout have done very recently has redesigned its directory submissions process to add to your podcast to 16 directories in just one click. You press one button. It goes and it adds it to 16, which is very cool. It's been there for the last two weeks. And the company says that more than 5,200 Bosprout podcasts have added at least one directory where they weren't listed before. So that can only be good news for all of the podcasters there. But I thought that was really interesting. There was a long debate in the podcasting 2.0 show last week with Adam Curry getting very upset about the lack of education that was going on in podcasting and how podcast hosting companies should be educating people how RSS works and all of that kind of stuff. I think this kind of proves the opposite really.

46:36It proves that actually it's a deeply complicated thing to actually get into a bunch of these podcast directories. And if you can simplify it with just one click, then yes, it's not really the whole ethos of open RSS and you know what your open RSS feed is and you plug it into X and Y and Z. It's not really the ethos, but my goodness, it certainly helps. So I thought that was very interesting. By the way, Adam said that he didn't mind open RSS. There you go. Didn't mind that as a phrase. The phrase that pays. Now I will give you the good, the bad and the ugly of what this has done. The good is for true fans. We've seen a lot more podcast being registered. Fantastic. Thank you, Buzzsprout. The bad is the uneducated. Why am I in your directory? I don't know. I never put you here blah, blah, blah.

47:36Lots of support calls to do with that followed by, do you understand what RSS is and how it works? No, I do not. And I don't care. I don't want to be. So I think there is an education part still. I think the work that we do with the podcasting 2.0 metadata, the name space, is critical to the future of podcasting. And I think I go back to my point. I think we seem to duplicate the conversation around RSS too often. And that means that when you say, oh, look, we've put chapters or transcripts or other metadata tags. People don't know where they are and how they get delivered. Yes. I think RSS within the conversation of podcasting in its entirety needs to be from to center. And I think Adam's right, education, education, education. Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting hearing that because yes, I get those sorts of things every so often. Occasionally, I get legal threats, actual legal people and lawyers sending me long, complicated things.

48:41And it's, do you not understand how RSS works? It's just fundamentally. And that is fundamentally, yeah, you know, you're absolutely right. So yeah, there's a, there's an interesting side of it that I hadn't thought about. But yeah, so very cool. And you can give that a go now on the Buzzsprout dashboard. I do also notice that RSS.com quite recently, I'm an advisor to them. And they also added a new sort of dashboard when you log in. And again, it sits there and it says, oh, hang on a minute, you're not in the iHeart podcast directory and you should be. And so I suspect that that's going to be happening for quite a few podcast hosting companies as we move forward. I think one of the expressions that I'll leave been using is upload once, distribute everywhere. Not my expression, not unique, but I like it. And one of the things that I've been thinking about and looking at is how we can also do clips from podcast and distribute to social media everywhere.

49:47Again, removing that task. We'll talk about it a little bit later when we talk about headline and we talk about vertical clips. I think in the essence, I think the host can also look at taking AI grabbing the best part of the podcast, presenting that back to the creator and saying, this is a clip you might want to consider. And then providing the social media endpoints. So not just the podcast directories, but integrate. So give me my threads account, give me my ex account, give me my LinkedIn if I want. And let me choose in the same way I choose directories, let me choose social media and auto post. So I think for me, that's the next stage of where I'd like to see podcast host go. Not just the full audio video, but also the clipping as well. Yeah, yeah. Now indeed, it's, I do find it all all really fascinating, you know, in terms of that. And it's definitely a thing that, yeah, we just need to keep, keep an eye out on.

50:49Well, let's go around the world. Australia is the first place that we should probably go to. A couple of very interesting things happening in Australia. Firstly, audio, internet advertising, growing, of course, as you would expect, 6.6% in the financial year of 2026. Financial years in Australia end at the end of June, just to confuse you. But the market grew to $353 million Australian, which is about a quarter of a billion US dollars. Podcast advertising much smaller though. There's a lot of money in streaming ads in radio stations, rather a lot less in podcast advertising. So it's only 30 million US for the quarter. But that's up, you know, 13% year on year. So that's good news from Australia. But also some really interesting news from Australia. There's a company here called SCA Southern Cross Australia used to be known as. It's the largest commercial radio company in Australia.

51:49For a long time, they used Omni Studio as their podcast hosting company. In fact, they used to own shares in Omni Studio when it was first starting. And they have just announced that they have switched. They have partnered with Flightcast to power its podcasting distribution, including video. It is probably Flightcast's biggest customer, apart from Stephen Bartlett himself, of course. So more than 150 shows are going to move on to Flightcast. You know, Rockscoads who we've spoken to on the past in this show has done some fantastic work. And really interesting to see all of a sudden, large companies moving everything that they've got over on to Flightcast, partially because of the video, of course. But also, I suspect partially because there's no really want a bit more movement, a bit more innovation in their podcast hosting platform. Rocks is very quick at coding stuff.

52:51And it's arguably Omni Studio, the pace of change there, because it's so much more of a big company has rather slowed down. So certainly I was talking to somebody this morning over breakfast about this. And you can see how excited SEA might be because they can move nice and fast again. So some really interesting things going on here in Australia. So let's move on to the US. Triton and RCS have announced, well, this is interesting. This is a most definitely tail lagging dog here. They've announced programmatic audio advertising, just like we've got in podcasting for broadcast radio. So broadcasts will be able to monetize traditional radio advertising with the same automatic workflows used in podcasting. So basically you're on the radio, you press the button, and the systems automatically work out what ads it should end up playing out. So the other things that wasn't in the press release was of course that Triton and RCS are both owned by IHART

53:51and IHART run 860 radio stations across the US. And I think you can probably see from this why you might wish to move away from Triton if you wanted a little bit more innovation. Because very clearly IHART media, they've got 860 radio stations, it's going to be whatever they want on this platform. And if you're a smaller radio company with only 30, then probably these companies aren't going to listen too much to the feature requests that you have. But some fascinating moves there from Triton and RCS. Okay. James, let's move on then. People and jobs, who's moving and grooving? Who's getting fired? Well, yes, and it really is a case of who's getting fired. So Odyssey is closing its podcast hosting and monetization service, Odyssey creator lab. They'll be closing that on November the first. So you've got a couple of months to get your podcasts off there if you're hosting, but you're probably not hosting because so much as so far as I can work out, there are only 426 shows on Odyssey creator lab in terms of actually hosting.

54:59So there's not an awful lot of shows that need to be moved there. So I would also take part in creator lab if you were hosted somewhere else as well. But yeah, that was really interesting. They launched it in a big exciting thing at podcast movement evolutions in April in 2025. And yeah, and it's sort of, you know, here we are 18 months later and it's basically gone away. Unless you have a look at the website in which case the website doesn't say that it's going away. So which is a bit of a bit of an overlook that I'm sure that they will fix that. But yeah, so as we see more podcast hosting companies appear, it is fascinating to see that this one is just going away. Yeah, go back to that rocks code story of flight cast and and try to they looks like the older, let's say legacy hosting companies if they're not nimble are going to get removed and the new ones are going to replace them. Yes, yes, no indeed indeed. And a couple of events to talk about of course podcast movement in New York City is a few new key notes which have been announced on Webster

56:02giving a preview of the podcast landscape 2026. Tink Media's Lauren Purcell and Ariel Nissenblatt are explaining WTF is a podcast in 2026 which is inaccurate because Mark Marin has stopped doing that podcast. See what I did there to get available on the podcast movement website which is very cool. They're also doing something quite nice in Times Square. I'm not quite sure how they've managed this but sponsors and attendees will get their logo on a billboard in Times Square. What's the betting it's the Amazon Music Billboard which is the big one down there. But yes, so if you are going to podcast movement make sure that you upload your logo through the swap card app and you never know you might see your logo in Times Square. This logo for this very podcast might be up in Times Square. Will I be there to take a photograph of it? Probably not. But it would be nice. But it would be nice. So yeah, so that's going on to Ariel Nissenblatt also doing a podcast walking tour on the Wednesday which I would have liked to have gone to but I can't go to because I'm going to the IB up front as well.

57:14Rather sadly alongside podcast movement this year there is another event going on in a place called Woods Hole in Massachusetts. I've never heard of Woods Hole. Have you heard of Woods Hole Sam? No, I've heard of Woods Stock but not Woods Hole. Yes. Well, this is where an event called Transome 25 is taking place. At the same time as podcast movement that is a scheduling snafu isn't it? It's all about audio storytelling, run by Transome. They've sold out of all access festival passes. You can't go even if you wanted to. Ira Glass is speaking there and various other people. So yeah, so but what a strange thing to put that up against podcast movement. Maybe it was just purely that they're already sorted out their dates and maybe it's actually podcast movement that's up against this thing. But yeah, so that's all going on and the London podcast festival taking place from today until the 13th of September. Tickets starting at 11 quid if you want to go and see some things. It's in King's place just up the road from King's Cross.

58:19If you want to go and see some podcasts getting recorded. The tech stuff. The tech stuff on the partners weekly review. Yes, it's the stuff you'll find every Monday in the podcast news newsletter. Here's where Sam talks technology. What have you got for a Sam? Well, congratulations to pocket cars. I'm looking forward to interviewing Ellie Ribbonstein, the head of pocket cars. She's over with you James in New York, but after she comes back, she's on the show. They're pushing stuff out. So they've now put pocket cars onto the Apple TV and Justin Jackson. I keep wanting to say Justin Timberlake. Justin Jackson. I'm sure he did. Every time I hear the word Justin, I go Jackson. Timberlake. Timberlake. Video podcasts finally get a screen worth watching them on browns discovered from the big screen when you're after something news. So I haven't got an Apple TV at the moment. I'm waiting for the new one to come out, but I assume it works on the existing Apple TV as well.

59:21So yeah, if you've got it, try it. Download the pocket cars app and see what it looks like. Yes, indeed. And of course, any day now you'll get Apple podcasts in video as well on your Apple TV. That is coming out with the new TV OS release, which I think is likely to happen next week. If not the week after we've just had another beta. So it's a very, very close now apparently. So and that means that you get video on macOS desktop and you also get video on Apple TV as well, which is a smart thing. And today as we record, which is the first of September, Tim Cook has stepped down as the CEO of Apple. He remains executive chairman, but yeah, well, yes, CEO at Apple indeed, and not just that, but Phil Schiller has also taken the decision to step back from a few things. He steps back from organizing the big events and he's also stepped back from running the Apple App Store, which is interesting timing. So that's going to be that's going to be fascinating. What with all of the EU stuff going on about the about the App Store and then of course Tim Cook's last day as well.

1:00:36Yeah, it's going to it's an interesting to see what happens with Phil Schiller and whether that means changes for the Apple App Store. Now sticking with Apple slightly, Neil Modi, friend of the show, the CEO of headliner said on LinkedIn, I don't often post and finally coming up from a busy summer long overdue for a shout out to the team and headliner. We've managed to build product partnerships with all the giants in podcasting clips with Spotify, then automation with YouTube and now video and audio templates with Apple. And yeah, I thought wow, that sounds interesting. It is actually on the Apple dot com domain. It's podcasters dot Apple dot com. Yeah, if you want to check it out, very cool, Neil, I haven't played with the clipping yet. It only came out yesterday for me. But what do you think, Jane? Yeah, I think this has been out for I think this has been out for a couple of months actually, but through Apple podcasts, but I mean, a brilliant thing. And you know, anything like that to help podcasts get out there is really is really useful clips. You know, obviously are an incredibly useful thing just to help people find a particular show.

1:01:46So yeah, I think it's I think it's really good. Yeah, I think as we've talked about earlier, I think, you know, upload once, distribute everywhere, I think clips are going to be extremely important. I know that we've got hub hop or on in a couple of weeks time as well. You've integrated with headliner and done some very clever things with clips. I think we're going to see a lot more in the latter part of 26 early 27 where clipping strategies. I mean, you're doing something you talked about for pod news daily as well with a clipping strategy. Yeah, I mean, so occasionally if we've got a big, big story, then I'm now doing a little bit of video of just me talking to camera saying, oh, here's a, here's an interesting story that you should go and have a listen to that. I think is for pod news daily much more interesting than just, you know, me sitting reading a script for four minutes. I can't really see how that's going to make that particular product better, whereas a clip, which is, you know, 42nds long, which appears in LinkedIn or in Facebook that basically says, hey, there's an important news story today. I think that's probably an important thing.

1:02:57So yeah, playing around with that sort of thing and also, you know, obviously playing around with, you know, video for this particular show as well, because of course, you know, we get video now on all three platforms through the buzzer out dashboard. So that's quite helpful. So just sort of playing around with that and seeing and basically seeing what happens. Yeah. Now Stephen Goldstein, the CEO of Amplify Media wrote a post a couple of weeks back, fourth of August. And I read it because it was an interview with an ad Lopez. And I really couldn't see how we would bring it into this show as a conversation. But I've gone back to it. It's called is podcasting ready for vertical video. Now, I only have been working with clairwit brown head of podcasting here at true fans about how we can integrate this because both Riverside and D script allow to export vertical video. And vertical video, I think is a really interesting format. It's the way that we hold the phone. So we're doing video today and side by side, two heads talking has generally been the way of podcast video.

1:04:06But actually, I think we're going to see the orientation to be one above the other this vertical video format. And an ad Lopez just did a vertical media summit. And he's saying that there's a massive market, for example, reals is on pace to become a 50 billion a year business. Instagram is doing, you know, lots and lots of content this way. YouTube reported 200 billion daily shorts. He's very excited. And it is about this vertical format. And he says it's not just clipping a video from your desktop or from another format into a vertical. It is actually producing it in this format from the beginning. Yeah, I suspect if you would have a look at the podcast alternate enclosure tag, I would suspect that there is a way of adding vertical video into that as well if you wanted to. And that to me makes quite a lot of sense. I think if you're watching Sky News in the UK on the Sky News app, then Sky News itself is automatically made into vertical video for you, which is very clever.

1:05:15The way that it's the way that it all works when they've got you know two people on camera, then on the TV, they're next to each other and on the mobile phone that they're on top of one another, but it just works flawlessly because the software is built to do that sort of thing. And so I suspect that you can probably do that automatically with quite a lot of video editors and maybe that's the right way of doing it to produce a video a vertical video as well as a horizontal one. I'm certainly experimenting with this. I think there's something in here for the way that content is delivered. And I think we should podcasting start to look at this format as well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, Substack, we talk about them from time to time, they've got a substack collaborated tool. It's called creator match alongside a number of other new hosting tools that they're releasing. The matching feature connects creators with others who share their interests. Do you think this is a useful feature James?

1:06:18Yeah, I think it is. I mean, it's very similar to a guesting on a podcast. It's very similar to you know all of that sort of thing that we've been doing in podcasting for quite some time, sharing individual shows and feed drops and all of that sort of thing. So great to see Substack, but basically offering the same sort of thing, helping you find people who write stuff, which is adjacent to yours and seeing if they can you know grow their grow their platform a little bit more. Of course, you know, that that's a very a very proprietary thing for Substack to do and you need scale in order for that to work, but it's quite a nice plan, I think. Now, friend of the show Frank Rassio P has a good newsletter called Earworthy and this week the guest was Angela Hollowell. She writes and has a podcast called Honey and Hustle and I thought I'd read it. It was a long post, but what I found really interesting was creators don't just need a paywall anymore.

1:07:18They need distribution, they need retention, they need relationship infrastructure. She was talking about why she thinks Substack is eating people's lunch and why she thinks Patreon is not going to be the platform of choice. I think she's saying that the secret source of Substack is email and the way that it does it. It's worth a read. So if you've got time, check it out. It's on Earworthy and I highly recommend reading it. Now James, you posted something on mastodon that I found funny. It was about creepy crawlers and I just thought the term creepy crawlers was a lovely way of looking at how AI is stealing our content. What was this one about? Yeah, this is a fascinating thing. It's basically somebody that runs a website which is a website a bit like GitHub and he is just getting so much AI tools just going onto that website and scraping it and doing just using up so much resources.

1:08:21And he calls them creepy crawlers or he calls them locusts which I think is a very good phrase for them. But one of the things that he has pointed out is that right now there are AI crawlers not just operating on the bad people's machines but also operating on maybe even your television. You know, somebody has installed a back door into a bunch of TV apps and stuff like that. And while your TV streamer box isn't being used, well, it sits there and is being used by an AI bot network and grabbing stuff from lots of different places. Really, really interesting. And I mean, just the amount of random AI related stuff that all website owners are having to deal with at the moment is absolutely fascinating. I got an email only yesterday saying I'm telling me that I was paying another $7 for yesterday's hosting because basically one AI crawler had helped himself or herself to 100 something like 125 million images from my website.

1:09:39And I'm just like they're going, why are all of these tools just just basically helping themselves to as much stuff as they possibly can. Of course, we know the answer. But yeah, really, really interesting. And the cost for all of this is a real cost to all of us. So yeah. Yeah, we have got to fix this. I mean, we're seeing it in our analytics. How much bots are scraping. It's ridiculous. It really is. Yeah. Now, lastly, two stories that I don't even know what they mean, James. I'm just going to go to thing and just turn to you. Podscriber's added a modeled attribution for YouTube shows without accompanying RSS feeds. The service blends observed attribution from an audio campaign with video consumption data. I read that sentence and went, wow, I have no idea what it means. So if you have a podcast and it's also available on YouTube as this show is then, although an attribution service like pod scribe, it can't really see into YouTube, but it can see a bit.

1:10:44And so it can kind of understand, okay, we know that you've got an ad here. We know that, you know, X amount of people visited so we can work out that given your YouTube stats, another X amount will will visit through YouTube. So it can basically make stuff up to work out what the total estimate of, you know, of people using that advert is because pod scribe can do that for a podcast that exists. What pod scribe has now worked out is a way of just as long as it knows what the ad says and how the ad works, then it can probably work out. It can probably estimate the amount of extra visits you're getting from that YouTube link. So it's a lot of very careful estimates based on the consumption data that it has to basically work out whether or not your advertising is working or not, which is quite useful. So yeah, it's, but, you know, all of these things that we need to, you know, hoops that we need to jump through just to get some numbers. It's always fascinating.

1:11:51Okay, this second story again, I get the first part of it, the second part, no idea what you're talking about. So a tune X is a new iOS podcast player that lets you follow people great true fans have done that since day one and serve many other eyes, so not just shows. Dreg welcome to the party. The tour promises interviews, yes, I think most do not just passing mentions not sure what that means and you can read transcripts as well as listen to the transcript. It's called the audio podcast now one intriguing feature. Same name strangers stay off appearances are weighted against who the person is rather than just a matching name Dave Jones rejoice what I didn't get the second part of that no idea. Right, so and the reason why put Dave Jones in there is that Dave Jones is quite a well known name and there are lots of people called Dave Jones and it just so happens that there's the Dave Jones that we all know from podcast index and everything else. And then there is a different Dave Jones who does a fair amount of podcast hosting and he's a financial expert somewhere in America somewhere.

1:12:56And so what this tool apparently will work out is if you have chosen to follow Dave Jones from podcast index. Then it looks at what this Dave Jones is talking about looks at what the other Dave Jones is talking about and goes well this clearly is not the Dave Jones that that sound wants to follow it's a different Dave Jones. So even though they share the same name. We know that he's talking about something completely different and so therefore it's not it's not the right thing which I thought was quite clever. I thought was quite a clever thing gets over the fact that there are lots of people with the same name and would hopefully fix a little bit of that if you just want to follow the Dave Jones from podcast index or indeed the Dave Jones the financial expert. Then you can probably do that with a little bit more accuracy. So I thought I thought it was pretty good. Okay, I get it now. Okay, thanks. Hurrah. Hurrah. Yes. Yes.

1:13:56Don't say slow. Fair mail. Fair mail. And voicemail. Are a favorite time of the week. It's the POD News Weekly Review inbox. Yeah, so many different ways to get in touch with the voicemail by using the link in our show notes or email to. We're recording very early this week for complicated timing reasons because I've got a couple of busy busy days coming up. So no fan mail this week, but thank you if you do want to send us some fan mail. Then weekly dot pod news dot net is actually not a place where you'll find a fan or button rather annoyingly, but you will find one in our show notes. So that's probably where you want to go. You can also become a power supporter in there. And that's also a good thing you can join the super secret WhatsApp group and all kinds of things. So pop along there today and we would really appreciate it. So what's happened for you this week, Sam? Well, I remember an eagle eyed journalist named James Crittle and pointed out that my company TrueFans technology was going to be dissolved. Yes, you spotted it, James.

1:14:57Yes. TrueFans technology, which will see a limited company name I set in motion three months ago to be dissolved. And there was a reason behind it. It's now called true fans FM limited, but I also wanted to change the SIC code. And that is what way, where, where, what's the SIC code? So the SIC code is a standard industrial classification, which the UK government uses to define businesses. There's I don't know how many hundreds of them. Right. Formerly we had a really awful one. It was something to do with, I don't know, technologies and audio and it's very abstract to what we were doing. Now in May audio UK worked with the UK government to come up with two new classifications that companies can use. One was five, nine, two, one, two, which said podcasting and other sound recording activities. It covers production of audio, podcast and mastering of recording. So lots of podcast production companies like message herd, you know, for example, or I persephone a code would use that now as their SIC code.

1:16:04We've chosen five, nine, two, two, two, which is the podcast and other audio publishing activities covering publishing and audio led business models, which seems much more akin to what true fans is doing. So yes, so the company is now called true fans FM limited and we have the SIC code of five, nine, five, two, nine, nine. Which I think is much more appropriate. So there you go. Yes. Very nice. Gosh. There's a thing. Took a bit of time to do. One of the downsides is of course that Google then said, well, this is no longer true fans technologies and they close my account on my Google Play console, which I wasn't expecting. So I am now putting that back today. And so yes, the Google app on will be available for true fans later today. But gosh. The funny game. Sometimes I'm scared. Unintended consequences, I say. I'm very excited. The Apple say there are unveiling the iPhone 18 Pro Max and ultra on September the ninth.

1:17:07Just in time for my birthday. So thank you very much. Oh, well, there you go. And is the iPhone ultra? Is that the one that we think is going to be a folding phone, finally? Yes. Yeah. I haven't seen the price yet. So who knows I might not be getting it. Oh, well, yeah, it'll be it'll be, yeah, it'll be thousands and thousands. I would have thought. The question is, is it worth two and a half? Because that might be my budget. If it goes into the three something, I might have a trouble asking the wife for that one. So yeah. Yes. Wish you a wife. That's my birthday present. Oh, well, yes, I suppose so. Yes. Can you just get me a birthday present for three grand? Doesn't really sound good. Nice. And today's we record is my daughter's 22nd birthday. So happy birthday to Ella and Rolf did dinner in Harrod's tonight. Oh, very nice. Gosh. I didn't even realize that Harrods did dinner. But I suppose it does. Yes. We get a discount because my daughter works at Harrods. She's one of the marketing people there in the fashion and beauty.

1:18:11So we go, we're all going to have a family gathering up there and then she's going to use her staff discount. Well, there you go. Well, there you go. Indeed. So James, what's happening for you? So what I normally do when I come to anywhere new is I take a radio because I am that boring. And so I took a radio and I was flicking around. Do a radio featureologist. You can't be seen without that. I mean, you know, I kind of have to. So I took a radio and I was flicking around on the radio. And I found a radio station called called Paddle Corner FM. Nice. And it's a radio station which is specifically run by a paddle court. And that paddle court has a number of different paddle fields, courts, whatever. It's also got a sauna and it's got a place for food. And I happen to know all of this because the only advert that you hear on this FM radio station is that. Basically telling you all about paddle court. So I noticed that. So frankly, you should be here in Jakarta because you could, you know, do all of your paddle excitement.

1:19:18And then I noticed as I was out for a walk earlier on today that there is one of the apartments that you can, that you can rent just down the road from here comes with its own paddle court. Wow. So yeah. So seemingly Indonesia has gone paddle crazy. So so there's a thing that has been it's been a fun. It's been a fun week. I mean, it is so hot and humid here. It's ridiculous. And Indonesia is the infrastructure here isn't quite as you would expect. So there's quite a lot of, you know, walking down the pavement, for example, or the sidewalk if you're in America, walking down that is not an easy experience because you are literally there. You're trying to work out whether you're going to get run over by the motorbikes, which are also on the sidewalk with you, whether you're going to fall into into a hole because there's just like basically sewers underneath and great big holes. If you're not careful in you're just full straight into the sewer. All kinds of stuff going on. So it's it's it's a yeah, you really need your your wits around you. But yeah, but I've enjoyed it. I've enjoyed it so far.

1:20:25I'm hoping to get a little bit of free time on Friday. So I plan to go up to the old town and see a little bit of that. But yeah, but it's an interesting place to be. No game of paddle for you then. No game of paddle for me. My goodness. No, the humidity outside is just ridiculous. And it's in just incredibly hot as well. So yeah. So nobody's been good. So yes. There was a report in the UK newspaper this week that paddle is the new Tinder. This woman is running paddle singles nights now. So literally, you know, single people go down to the paddle courts and then they play multiple games. And it's a way to break the ice rather than sit there with a pint or a glass of vino trying to talk to somebody. You go and play paddle. Now that's the new way. Well, there you go. Yeah. Thankfully, I will not need to do any of that. Nora. I pointed out to be very clearly. Yes. Exactly.

1:21:28And that's it for this week. All of our podcast or is of course taken from the pod news daily newsletter at podnews.net. You can give us three back using the buzz. Brow voicemail link in our show notes or become a monthly power sport like the 24 power supporters at weekly. podnews.net, which we thank them very much for. Yes, we do. Our music is from TM studios voiceover is Sheila D audio this week is being recorded using a super secret thing that we can't talk about. We edit with Hindenburg and we're hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout. Start podcasting. Keep podcasting.