216 James Cridland - What Podcasting Can Learn From Radio
Podcast Junkies
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Full episode transcript -

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So it does get a bit weird when you're listening to reply all. And then all of a sudden somebody is telling you how Australia Post is doing a great thing this summer

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because that was very confusing, huh? Podcast Junkies Episode 216 I Am Back I'm Harry Duran. I'm the host of this show since 2000 and 14 Bringing You So the most amazing fund conversations with podcasters and podcasts personalities from around of the Pot, a sphere This week I have a doozy for you. It's the one and only James Cridland, host of pod news dot net. But before we jump into that, in case you missed last week's episode at a really great and insightful conversation with one simple with the he's the host of three podcasts and one of them is the gentleman's brotherhood. He's a free mason, so we were schooled on all aspects of freemasonry and how to raise a scholarly child, which I thought was a fascinating discussion. There's something about the way one speaks that puts the listener at ease, and so I was really happy to connect with him after a couple of years, connecting in person and so that episode it's got a lot of good feedback. Shout out to Dave Jackson for mentioning it when I was a pod fist. This episode is brought to you by Focus,

right? There's a fantastic sponsorship happening this month. Focus. Right has launched the podcast studio makeover, and it's running from March 6th through April 17th. This is an amazing giveaway and should definitely jump on this. They've partnered with a group of companies to give away three prize bundles to chosen winners, each of them valued at over $2300. This bundle is bananas. First off, it's to Scarlet, 18. I ate third generation USB audio interface. It features four upgraded third generation scarlet mike preempts, the switchable air mode I've mentioned earlier Too high headroom instrument and puts eight line inputs. This thing is amazing.

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Got a podcast? Junkies dot com forward slash focus right promo That's podcast junkies dot com forward slash focus right promo. What are you waiting for? Go sign up now. So I mentioned pod fast. We just got back in to Minneapolis from Florida last night, stayed a couple of extra days, and with everything that's happening in the world at this moment with regards to the Corona virus, it's been a crazy week, to say the least. Suffice it to say that if Pot Fest was probably 3 to 5 days later, that conference definitely would have been cancelled. Everyone, that's within the sound of my voice. I hope you and your families and friends and loved ones are all safe. I think,

for the most part, the smart thing to do is not travel in the next couple of weeks. I've cancelled a couple of trips as well that I was looking forward to, and I think it's the best course of action. It's something that we worldwide, I think, don't understand completely. I think as of this recording, they're still not known cure for the Corona virus. So I think it makes sense for everyone, especially folks that have been traveling lately to stay indoors, which I don't think it's gonna be news to anyone hearing this so wishing everyone the best of health, and I know that collectively as a country but also as a human being, I think it's imperative that we all stay a little calm in these situations because I know we're all gonna get through it. So that being said, let's jump into this week's conversation,

it's with James Cridland, host of Pod News. Regular podcast listeners will know who he is. Anyone in the podcast industry at this point? No, Sir James is. He's got a long background in radio and podcasting, and I think he's perfectly suited to be the editor of Part News, as it's a well rounded daily update on all things podcasting. I've had the pleasure of connecting with James several times at live events. He's an extremely personable guy, and I'm always looking forward to our discussions. And I knew this one was gonna be special, since it's a podcast that geeks out on podcasting, and I knew we were definitely gonna go over the hour so before warned, you might have to listen to this in parts.

Let's not forget that this episode is also brought to you by full cast forecast that CEO is the website. If you need help with any aspect of your show from launch to production and marketing, we can help schedule a free chat at full cast dot c o force Last Chat 15 about your existing or new show. Make sure you stay to the end of the episode where I reveal this week's retention hashtag But for now, let's jump into this conversation with James So James Cridland, host of Pod News. Thanks for joining us finally, on podcast junkies. It's a great pleasure. I've been thinking you were trying Thio avoid May

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I know because we've because we've had this in the diary and then it's not worked and then And then it's being in the diary again. And then it's not work for some of the reason. Probably because I was travelling or something. So, yes, but it's it's great to finally friendly manage

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it. Yeah, and we've had a chance to connect in person. Originally, I think it pod fest. I don't know if it was last year now or maybe the year before. I'm losing track at this point with podcasting conferences. Probably not as much as you are. And then we got Teoh be on the stage together at Ron's Lee's event, and we're podcast, which was a lot of fun. That's right. On my first, my first trip to Australia, which was great. Yeah, I was Yeah, I still can't get over the size of the bats in the trees.

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Yes, we do. We do quite a lot of things down here. At least those bats wouldn't kill you, which is you know, I like most of them. Most of the things kill you here, so yes, there is always that on We caught up a tw n a B as well

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at the end of the show. Exactly. Yeah, we had a nice chat as there's well,

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yes, which is mostly known as hell on Earth through the just because of the size of the thing in Vegas. So yeah, absolutely

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so. I've been looking forward to this chat just because of everything that's happening in this world of podcasting, and thankfully, you're you're newsletters. Definitely help me helping me keep up to date with everything that's happening. But I imagine even you are sometimes overwhelmed that so many things that are happening. And I was doing a quick check for another project of of even just the latest round of funding that's been coming in. It's been a world of that, so we'll dive deep a little bit and a little bit about your background. But I'm just wondering what your take is on what's happening in terms of, ah, interest money coming in. It seems to be picking up pace. I'm wondering what your take is in it from your point of view.

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Yeah, I think it's certainly picking up pace. I mean, I think you know the Spotify conversations last year and this year have bean all about Spotify spending lots of money in this space. Spotify really investing showing that they mean they were talking. Ah, recently in their financials they were talking about They have data that shows that people who use Spotify four podcasts are more likely to stick with the products more likely to spend the money to upgrade to premium. You know, all of that kind of stuff, I think has helped other people wake up. Andi, go all. There is definitely something going on in this podcasting world. Because if Spotify doing it, then we should be having a look, too. So all of a sudden,

I think we're seeing a bunch of new entrance into the market, some of whom will be massively successful, most of whom I suspect will fail. But that's usually the way of these things. And so, you know, just sort of really interesting seeing just so many new ideas coming out on. Dhe knew sort of niche things. So there was a podcast host released very recently, which is a a podcast host specifically for branded podcasts.

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Oh, yes. Oh, that.

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Yeah. You know. And so you've got this tiny sort of niche off, you know, a specific product for that. Andi think that's gonna be really interesting. Just sort of seeing where the niches are in this in this place so that we've got you know, large companies, like lips in on Blueberry have been doing this for years who are something for everybody. And then you've got, you know, much smaller niche companies who are focusing on riel needs that particular podcasters have. So, yeah, it's gonna be interesting to watch,

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and that's casted, I think the company that you mentioned, yes, that's right. I just saw that come in, come through earlier today. So naturally, my curiosity had me clicking the 15 minute chat with casted buttons. So I'll be talking to them to get a deeper dive just from initial looks. If all you want. If you fall, you had to go on for these startups. Was that the beauty of their their mock ups and their screens and it would seem like they would all succeed. It looks

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interesting. It's a beautiful of markup. I always like more cups that still have Latin in them. And

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the Lauren Epsom. Yes,

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on. I don't know whether you looked at the stats, which is really interesting. The stats is like, you know, the stats has a beautiful graph of lots of different colors and everything else. And if you have a close look at it, then you realize that two of the buttons say exactly the same on the So you go. Well, this is obviously a mock up, but actually looks really good. It looks, you know, it looks interesting, and they've got a good amount of funding for that, I think from memory, 2.35 million.

2.3? Yeah. Yeah. So I think you know that that's a good sort of, you know, a good amount of money to put to put into a product like this to make it really work. So, you know, mock ups are all fine. It'll be really interesting to actually see how it goes on. And you know what is different about it To a typical podcast host?

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Yeah. And Justin, specifically the hosting It is fascinating. Andi? No, As a disclaimer, Yura a an adviser to captivate, but even just the hosting space, I think at last count ballpark probably 15 to 20 hosting companies out there and in all shapes and sizes. And and maybe it speaks to the to the decide the how the industry is growing, that there's room for all of them. But at this point, it seems like the majority of hosting is considered a commodity. And I don't know if there's a lot of folks doing a lot to differentiate that differentiate themselves in the space. And if you've seen anything different,

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yeah, I mean, I think that's one of the difficulties that actually, when you go to a Facebook group, for example, then you will see three different companies on you'll go. Okay, Should I be choosing from Buzz Brown or Lips in or and then they throw in another one on? That's really interesting because, you know, clearly there are the heritage podcast hosts who have a lot of, you know, history in this space and so therefore people are using them. They're not necessarily the best, but they certainly have a lot on awful lot of heritage there on. I think what's going to be interesting is for the other podcast house, because at the end of the day,

hosting a podcast is not a difficult technical challenge, so therefore it's actually making sure that there is a unique selling point, a unique reason for that podcast host to exist. And I suspect that we will see Maur of thes smaller podcast hosts really focusing on individual parts of the pie. You know, like casted with the whole branded podcast stuff you know of actually seeing, You know, if you are doing a podcast that is ex, you need podcast host Why, you know, and so on and so forth. And, yes, there's some differentiation there in terms of I a b compliance which surprise doesn't actually matter to most podcasters. There's also some differentiation there in terms of you know, other things as well.

But you know what I've bean trying to mention in pod news as much as anything else is that all off the podcast hosts will get you into Apple. All of the park process will get you into Spotify. And that's something that for brand new podcasters, they don't necessarily understand. They actually look at the at the icons and the logo's on people sites and go with this one I can get into into Di za Um, a little That kind of stuff on deeds is great in France and great in parts of Europe. On dhe you definitely want to be in there. But guess what? You could be in there with any podcast house because that's how forecasting

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works. What's your thoughts on? Something that makes things dropped It easy to to start a show, something like Anchor, because, you know, people are of two minds, and they either just break him over the coals. And I think I've come around a little bit in terms of using it as a test bed for podcast. Obviously, it's a graveyard, a podcast. There it was, thanks to some in depth reporting from Daniel Day Lewis, we've gotten We were able to see exactly what's happening there. But what are your thoughts on making it easy for people to try? I know transistors a plan with, like, unlimited shows that because obviously would cost them, is the actual downloads on it, thoughts on anything that makes it easier for people to try.

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Is that a good or bad? I mean, I think if you look at a typical heritage podcast host, it's really complicated. You know you need an image for your podcast. You need that image to be an RGB space. You need the image to be between 14 40 pixels and 3000 pixels. It must be square. It must be less than 500 kilobytes. All of this kind of complicated stuff anchor takes away on dhe. So, you know, you really notice when you're on Facebook podcast groups and you have people who simply don't understand why Apple has rejected their podcast automatically because the images somehow the wrong size. And I think the difference between some of the podcast host is some of the podcast host will give you the error and it's up to you to go away and fix it. Other podcast host will go. You know what? You've given me a really stupid sized image.

I'm going to resize this for you. I'm gonna tell you that I've resized it, but I'm going to resize it for you so that it works. And anchor is one of those anchors actually gone one step further and you press a couple of buttons and it makes the podcast artwork for you. And I've personally think that, you know, it's like a gateway drug. In a way, it lets people get involved. It lets people start making a podcast. There are gonna be about 20% of those people who get it on Dhe start what on want to take it further and when they want to take it further, then they will very quickly realize some of the limitations that Anchor has on want to actually take it to the next step. And that's where podcast hosts like, captivate like lips in Like, You Know, except for except for a transistor,

all all come into it on. Did you know, I think, because the great thing some people very vexed about the fact that there are lots of podcasts in the Apple podcast directory that have faded, that our tests from people on anchor who've tried it for a couple of episodes and just stopped. And I think that's probably a valid thing on. I think that maybe one of the things that Apple might wish to consider at some point in the future is to look at podcasts. Perhaps broadcasts from certain hosts on dhe say, if there are less than three and if it hasn't been updated for two years, then we should probably remove those because I think that would get rid of some of the noise from the directory. But I think apart from that I'm absolutely all four, getting as many people. Podcasting is possible, and it's a really good thing.

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I'm surprised someone hasn't had someone with a lot of spare time hasn't taken upon themselves to actually try out every single pod host and say, This is how long it took me and just do some sort of indepth. Maybe it's it'll be Daniel Day Lewis because he loves doing these sort of things. Stephanie, may I tell you that S O s? Oh, shut out to Daniel. He's he's he's a good sport, but he's definitely like speaking out on the stats from some of the things that he's been doing.

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But, you know, I mean, I think I mean, there are certain things that I think we could. We, as people in podcasting, could make. It could be making things easy. So worrying about you know, I mean, I mentioned the size of the size of of our artwork is one thing. Worrying about what bit rate we use, whether we use MP three, whether we use a see whether what what? Love's no encoding, right.

We use all of this stuff Yeah, loves is well, absolutely. Technology will figure all of this. So what we should be doing, to my mind, is giving people all of the tools to automatically fix this stuff. And the more advanced podcast hosts may also wish to allow people to turn that off. But, you know, I mean, I think I think there are a lot of really avoidable errors being made right now from, you know, sometimes from really big companies who are. You know, if you are NPR,

for example, NPR is really bad example, but I'm gonna go with it if your NPR you will make a lot of podcasts. But all of the podcast that you make will be to quiet, because the way that you make stuff on your radio production thing means that it's minus 23 left, which means that it's very quiet. Sorry, minus 24 in North America, it means it's really quiet. And actually, a typical podcast should be about minus 16. So I louder. And that really is just a case off. Putting it into a into a thing and saying make this as loud as a podcast should be. But we're even seeing you know, broadcasters,

NPR is not a good example. But we are seeing other broadcasters who are literally exporting stuff from their play out system and hoping that that's gonna be loud enough. And it really isn't. So you know, all of those really easy, simple things that technology can fix. I think we should probably be helping people in fixing that. You know, as much as we possibly

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can, you have been following an interesting no code movement. I don't know if you've seen some of these new tools, like bubble and Web flow, which incredibly easy to you create and and whip up websites. Table to site is one I tested out recently with my, uh, podcast books Club. But it's just been easy and interesting to follow, and I'm wondering if there's gonna be something happening like an easy button. And I think maybe, you know, what you alluded to with anchors is making it easy for people. But I think reducing the barrier and on all the jargon and the technology and all the specs that new podcasters if we're gonna grow the population, I think I don't have any business like modeling in those all they want to do is actually just turn on the microphone record and have it magically appear in somewhere in the pot. A sphere?

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Yes, yes. Oh, yeah, Absolutely. I mean, I think anything that makes it easier on anchor being the obvious example there anything that makes it easier for you to get started is a great thing. And once you know what you're doing, um, once you know what the rules are, then you can work out how to break those on whether or not it makes sense to actually break those. But I think you know the very beginning. We should be holding people's hands far more than we have been doing in the past on Guy Think, you know, some of the good podcast hosts are doing that, and I think anything that you know, I mean,

running a support team is a cost. And if you can, if you can lower that cost by making things easier and smarter, then you know that's what anybody ought to be doing. I think

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so. Let's wind the clocks back a little bit. Where did you grow up?

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So I'm a I'm a Brit, as you can tell from this ridiculous accent. I've been practicing it for quite some time. Now s So I grew up in England, in the north of England, mostly. And the first thing that I did when I left school was worked for a radio station because I thought, Wow, this is definitely something that I want to be involved in. Actually Aranha around a pirate radio station when I was at school. Okay, which is which is a bad thing? Don't

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do it, kids. Did you watch that Christian Slater movie on pirate radio? What was it? I'm dating myself, but it's like a eighties movie about a pirate

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radio station. No, I didn't. I didn't, but there are. There are light loads of these. My part radio station ran on a nine volt battery. You could just about pick it up around school and that was it.

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Most importantly, where were the call letters?

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Well, we don't have called letters in the UK, so I I think I just called it the name of the building that it came from. So it came from a building called Bolton House. I called it Bolton Radio just to hide from the police. So Yeah, but it ran off a couple of cassette decks so I could record the top 40 on DDE. Um, yeah, it was It was great fun. When I

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did that, Was it all? Was it all music?

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It was mostly music. There was music and, you know, on the occasional people talking. But it was mostly me on for a couple of months, we had a remote studio. Ah, which was very Course you can actually eso So we actually had a studio in a different in a different building run through the electricity wiring is probably not a good plan as well. So anyway, so, yes, I was, you know, always really interested, really excited about what you could do in terms of audio, what you could do in terms of reaching, you know,

reaching people, broadcasting which podcasting is still, you know, really part off. I was very excited about that. And so so at school, I I did three big exams. I didn't examine politics and examined music and an exam in physics, which is a very strange mix. But you can see that, obviously, music for the music side of radio politics for the news site and physics for the electronic sites. So that kind of work, I think I think I have

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my plan. It's all coming together perfectly now.

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Indeed, indeed. Yes. I worked in radio in the north of England for a while. I was on the air for a couple of years, and then I realized that I wasn't good enough of that on dhe. Yeah, and that and that sort of basically where my where my career started.

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Are there any of your tapes of you on the air still available?

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You know, I didn't think that there were any. I certainly didn't keep any tapes on. Then someone said someone started posting on Twitter recordings of the radio station that I was on. So this was 1993 and somebody has started posting these tapes on Twitter. Andi, I used a different name when I was on the air. So just to confuse things, But occasionally I pop up in the pro Mose and things and, you know, thankfully, nobody's recorded an actual show, but I keep on hearing little clips

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of may sound dreadful. It's a very strange thing

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because I have no tapes off me whatsoever. And even if I had tapes, I certainly wouldn't have anything to actually play the tapes. So that's another issue. Yeah.

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How did your love of technology stem from How far back does it go?

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Um, I think it went back. Thio s o. The school I went to was a boarding school on DDE. Had a very proud sporting tradition of lots of people playing rugby or cricket, and I cannot stand sport. And so therefore, I worked out that there was a way of hiding away from the sports by spending the afternoon in the computer. Okay, so that's what I did on day instead of running around keeping myself fit. I, you know, talk myself

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a skill which right on in retrospect, was quite a clever skill to treat.

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Yes, So I started doing that and really began to be very interested at some of the things that you could do with computers back then. Our computers back then were not particularly clever. There was no access to the Internet, Morse. But, you know, I was using the first computer I learned to program on was a Commodore Pet. Commodore. Pet was his great big sort of metal thing that had a monitor green screen monitor inside it. And if you wanted to, I programmed a game which was essentially snake that I'd seen on somebody else's computer. And I wanted to play on on the on the Commodore pet. So I programmed it on DA Yes, And in order to get, you know, a ah block to appear on the top left of the screen,

you had to write in the basic language you had to write, Poke 32768 comma 64 Whatever it waas on dso you suddenly think Wow, you know, this is thing is complicated stuff, but yes, I learned how to do that. Quite proud that people actually started to pirate

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my game. Wow, that's a sign that you've made it.

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Yeah, which is which was nice. Andi. Yeah, and I started, you know, using technology s O. I was the first radio presenter in one of the radio stations that I worked out. I was the first radio presented to work out how the playoff system would work. The planet system Is that the thing that plays the songs you can record? You can record yourself into there, and it plays that the adverts and the jingles and everything else. And I spent a lot of time trying to work out how I could get the most out of that, because I'm a relatively mediocre radio presenter. But if I can use the technology to make me sound less mediocre, slightly more possible, then to me,

that was a good thing on DSO ended up playing around a lot with that. And I think you know that then allows you to learn the rudimentary basics off editing audio of treating audio to make it easier to hear, you know, all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, that's how I learned to end up doing that. I remember my first day when I was being taught how to use a editor on audio. So I learned how to edit on tape on reel to reel tape so you would cut it up and you stick it back together again with sticky tape. And you would, you know, use China graft, pencils and everything else on. I learned for the first time we had this very expensive computerized editing system, and the people from this company called Sadie came over and taught us how to edit on the thing that I learned, which is a useful thing is that the word fish looks like a fish when used.

Try editing it, which is a fascinating thing. So therefore, you could actually s so therefore you can actually edit by using the word fish, and you can see the word fish appearing on your on on the way form. So yeah, so it was It was it was. And you tell

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young people that today I'm sure that they're hearing the first here definitely on podcast junkies. So that's that's great. Do you remember when you first discovered the internet?

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I do S o. I used CompuServe for a while on and a well, is Everybody used a well, but I actually used CompuServe first on CompuServe was, Yeah, Was this sort of really complicated text? Only thing. It's email addresses when numbers on its email addresses were numbers in base eight. So I had a ridiculous email address. One double Oh, don't want to dr 32 hour compuserve dot com temp. Try doing that because it won't work anymore. And there was a way on CompuServe and I think you type didn't go Internet or something like that where you could actually get go away from the walled garden of CompuServe into the Wild West of the Internet. And after a while I worked out how to use something called Mosaic, which was the first Web browser. Yes, and I remember sitting there in going,

Wow, this is amazing. I am here in Yorkshire, in England, and I'm connected to a computer run by NASA, and I can see the A picture loading very slowly

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of the space in line at a time. How exciting is this? Yeah, it really

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Waas. And I remember looking at that and thinking, Wow, this changes everything because if all of a sudden you know you can connect to other people I mean, CompuServe was excited was exciting enough. I also used a thing called Fighter Net as well, which was a network of bulletin boards and things. This is a very geeky podcast when you when you go on to when you go on to the apple podcast stats later, they'll be about 10%

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of people listening by this point. Be interested.

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But yes, I was sort of playing around with that, and I suddenly thought, Wow, this is really this is really interesting and really exciting. And radio is one way of communicating to people. But this way you can actually see people coming, you know, connecting back to you on. Yeah, and that really changed things.

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So a lot of people may not know this, but before pod news, you actually had a similar newsletter. But for the radio industry

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as well. So yes, which I still run

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s. So do you want to talk about the origins of there and where you were in your radio career when you got that started?

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Yes. I mean, So what I did is I I started working for a radio station in the north of England. Ah, Venna went to run a media information website for a couple of years, just after the dot com boom had had a bust. Excellent timing, James. Well done. And then because I needed to eat again, I I went to work for a radio station, but I ran their website. So this was a radio station called Virgin Radio. It was in London and I joined there in 2000. In 2000 on Dhe was very lucky that Virgin Radio was a radio station, that it was, Ah,

music station on a M, which isn't automatically a great start. And so therefore it was always playing around with new technology. So it was the first to broadcast on satellite radio in the UK the first to broadcast on the Internet. I should clarify that there will be pendants First radio station in Europe to broadcast on the Internet 24 hours a day. Okay, I believe that that it's important and what my job was there waas both running the website but also working out what innovative things we could be doing. And so launching the first radio station streaming app in 2005 which ran on three Symbian phones

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that was good

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and also launching the first daily podcast from a radio station in the UK in January of 2005 Sites Center and wrote the road, the R. S s feed and really started playing with what you could do with audio and new technology. You know, back at that sort of time, then went to work for the BBC for a couple of years because everybody has to in the UK

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it's like in Israel you have to join the army in the UK

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If you work in media, have to work at the BBC for for two years. Just so you know what a mistake you've made. So then jumped out of that very, very quickly and realized that actually there was a real need for someone to help radio companies understand what the future was going to pay on. DSO set myself up as a radio future ologists not realized, not realizing I got the word wrong. It's actually futurist, but radio future ologists is what I still call myself on. Dhe wrote a blawg which morphed into a weekly newsletter which you could still get now James dot create dot land is the website address on that is you know, things around how people are consuming radio now, um, on what the radio industry needs to do to actually stay relevant for the next generation on dhe Surprise, Surprise. Podcasting is very much part of that.

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What year did you start? The radio newsletter

32:38

probably started that in 5 4006

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which is also the time you said you started your podcast

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year, which is the time that I started doing the podcast for the radio station. But it was it was a completely automated podcast. So what was quite weird about it is that it would take We wrote a complicated algorithm that new which bits of the breakfast show to take which bits of the breakfast show not to take, edit them all together and make a podcast That was a bit choppy, but actually, it was pretty good. It was getting. After a couple of years, it was getting 10,000 downloads per episode, which I would be quite happy with that. Now, you know. So that was doing that was doing fairly well on. I only started podcasting myself, only about sort of three or four years ago. So I was working on the technology behind it,

helping particularly the BBC helping their podcasting, you know, work a bit better be be the same loudness, you know, be the same. You know, working on all that kind of stuff is well. But, you know, I only started podcasting for myself, as I say. You know, two or

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three years ago, you had started to a 60. You know what podcasting was and you had been focusing your time on the majority of your time, I imagine was being too focused on radio. When was the inflection point? Yeah, When there's that, I imagine there's something or a series of events that sort of caught your eye and started to pull you Maur into the podcasting world. Do you remember how that happened?

34:9

Yeah, I mean, so I was at a So I get to speak at a lot of radio conferences across the world and a lot of podcasting conferences across the world and one of the radio conferences. I was speaking at WAAS, the worldwide radio summit in L. A on da very American. It's called the World Wide Radio Summit because nobody from the rest of the world goes that apart from me, but on I remember sitting in the pub afterwards with a few of my friends, US friends on dhe. We were talking about podcasting. We would talk about how exciting it waas on Dhe. One of those people said, What really frustrates me is that there's nowhere to go for poor casting news. At that point, Nick Choir had started his excellent hot pot newsletter. But his hot pot newsletter focuses, does real deep dives on a couple of things very focused on public radio, very focused on the New York podcasting scene and the Boston podcasting seen obviously on.

35:10

Do you mean that's not the world of podcasting?

35:12

Well, it turns out that other people of podcasting as well and I suddenly thought to myself, Well, I I know how to do a lynx newsletter because I've bean running my radio one for a while. I know how to do that. I understand about the podcasting side from a business point of view from a technical point of view. So what I should probably be doing is looking into whether or not there is a podcast newsletter out there, and if not, well, why don't I see if I can work on doing it? So I came back, and within a month I'd started doing a very bare bones, you know, n v p version of pod news, which I coded everything myself because I wanted to make sure that I was able to, you know, I wasn't sort of backing myself into a technology called a sack.

I didn't want to put all of this on two male chip because that would have been a mistake. So I started, you know, building all of this myself on realized that there was certainly something in it, you know, It started growing quite fast, and I thought to myself, Well, there's There's definitely something here, particularly since the amount of news at the time. You know, I was lucky if I could find three or four items for the newsletter every day, but it was really interesting. What was lovely about about that time was that I was able to play around with the format. I was able to play around with the time it would go out. So pod news for me goes out at nine o'clock in the evening.

Nine o'clock in the evening is a great time because it turns out that you'll all go to bed at about two o'clock in the afternoon. Ah, here in Australia, there I'm talking to you from, and so therefore, I've got a good six hours where I can actually put the thing together. But that also allows me to have a full day's working if I'm doing other things as well so you know. So I was very lucky in terms of that, and seeing it grow very, very fast was also a great thing. So, yeah, Andi s O now, 11,900 people get it every single day. There's a small amount of people that get the podcast as well, which is nice on dhe,

you know, And that's sort of grown very, very nice and fast, which I'm very, very pleased about.

37:28

Yeah, and so kudos to you for what you've done in terms of being, You know, I would say you're one of the more respected voices in terms of what's happening in the industry on dhe being on top and also being a fair voice, I think in terms of covering all aspects and with objective and sometimes ah sort sarcastic, witty, uh, effervescent occasion if I don't get myself into trouble. Yeah,

37:56

well, thank you now, and I and I think it's important to look at the podcasting space to try and give something for everybody to go to try and give something for the passion podcasters who have a full time job elsewhere but our into podcasting because they really enjoy it. But also to focus on the business side as well and to focus on podcasting from outside the U. S. So, yes, there's some stuff coming from the UK, which Caroline deals with a lot for hot mod. But actually, there's an awful lot of other stuff as well. And you know what's going on in India, the Middle East, here in Australia, you know, there's some fascinating stuff going on which is actually useful to everybody. And so what I I hope that I try and do as a Brit who lived in Australia anyway,

is to try and put things into context s O that actually, it's hopefully useful for everybody who's, uh, you know, who's interested in this space

38:52

Had a nice conversation with Javi Sucked of she can claim being the number two podcaster in India. Yeah, s o. It's been fascinating, fascinating to get back information on her story, and she is the number one podcaster if you consider the fact that the the actual first podcaster no longer lives in India, so she make the claim for that.

39:16

I mean, I mean, of course, there is also Prime Minister Modi, who does do a podcast on that podcast reaches 600 million people 600 million people. However, most of those were also listening to that podcast on the radio. Yes, oh doesn't necessarily count, but yeah, India is one of those fascinating places. It's the second largest country in the world that speaks English. 125 million people there speak English. It's growing incredibly fast in terms of podcast consumption. But again it has its own unique culture has its own unique APS, an ecosystem which again is fascinating to watch. I mean,

it's interesting I'm doing Ah ah, I'm doing a talk next week as we record this around podcasting trends around the world and actually seeing what's the same and what's different. Andi, you know, an India is one of those countries, China as well, where you follow that in you go. The really are things that we can learn out of these individual countries and what they're actually doing.

40:21

It's also been interesting to see the response from sponsors on your newsletter, and I think what's been interesting that I think there hasn't been like a consistent place for sponsors to to sort of get get the word out about what they're doing. So can you talk a little bit about how that's grown in terms of like what you're doing with with the newsletter and the ability to have a classified network? And I know that you're occasionally doing banner ads and then you've been testing out some of the inserts at the end of your show, which I think Dave Jackson from the School of podcasting had an opinion about. But weaken talk further about

40:57

that. Yes, I mean, you know, monetization is a whole currently not monetizing the podcast. It'll, but at some point I'll start doing that. It's interesting how many people I tried for a couple of months, because I never like doing the same thing. So I tried for a couple of months, occasionally putting trailers for new podcast that I found interesting at the end of of the podcast. Quite a lot of people didn't like that, but I think also interestingly, quite a lot of people assumed that that was that was paid for yeah, and assumed that the podcast that I was promoting, there was something that you know, that paid me money to go into the podcast.

And so I got, you know, I mean, I mean again, there's a difference in culture. I think Europeans wouldn't expect that to be paid for unless it was very clear that I said, And now here's a sponsor thing from such and such because that's what Europeans or used to. I think North Americans are much more used to anything being paid for at all, which is interesting. So one of things I'm trying to be very clear and open about in the the in the newsletter is what is paid for and what isn't. But yeah, so I mean in terms of the way the pod news earns its money, there's a set off supporters. ATT, the bottom of every single pod news which are, you know,

large industry players, or indeed, small industry players that pay a certain amount to support pod news every month, but which is awfully kind off them. They're also personal supporters in there as well. So all of that comes through a patriot on DATs. Fine, but that gives you a logo and gives you, you know, and gives you the glow of knowing that you are supporting pod news. So all of a sudden. I thought it would be useful, wouldn't it? If there was a way off getting a paid for message in there. So the classified advertising in there so again, Because I code everything myself.

I set myself a goal off trying to build myself a classified system, a classified ad system. But because I tried to build myself a classified ad system in the past for another website that I run, I knew that it doesn't work. So I thought to myself, right, I'm not gonna waste too much time on this because I know that it doesn't work. I'm literally going to see how much of this system I can code in one day and put it life. So I wrote enough of the system that it would actually work, put it live, went to bed, woke up the next morning because that is essentially, you know, the peak time is when I'm asleep. Eso woke up the next morning to find somebody had booked some advertising. Not only had they bought some advertising that had spent over $200 when you give them that,

you know, it was only I think it was $16 to g o. I thought to myself, Old there's something Maybe I should go in to make it look a little bit better now, so that was really interesting. And again, it's that sort of, you know, try things. Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don't, you know, try things, try things and see. See how they work. For the 1st 2 weeks of that, if you had forgotten your password, there was a button that you could press and it said, Forgot your password Question mark and you would press the button And it said, Congratulations for being the first person

44:14

to forget your password. You'll need your need to email me

44:17

so that I write this code. That's because I simply simply haven't written that bit on now. And, of course, there's also title sponsorship. Then there's sponsorship of various sections as well. But what one of things I try to avoid is there's no ad banners in part news. It'll because I hate at banners. I don't think that ad banners are actually helpful, And so one of things I try and do is I try and work with people as much as possible to go. What is it that you actually want. What is it that you want to promote about your your business? What can we do to help you promote that that also gives something to the audience as well? So, as an example I've got at the moment Eric Newsome's new book, which is called Make Noise, which is very good.

They wanted to advertise that book without Banner Right Way Don't take out banners, but what I'd really like to do is, Can you give us some really nice quotes from the book that give our audience enough sort of, you know, interest to actually want to find out more about what the book is, So you'll notice that that current, that current placement is all there with a new and interesting quote from that particular book every single day on bits, that sort of thing. It makes booking, advertising and pardon use a little bit more complicated. But it is the sort of thing that I feel is important to actually give audience, you know, to give my audience something which is more interesting than just another flashing at banner that they can scroll past because I don't think that works for anybody it doesn't work for the advertiser. It doesn't work for the reader as well. So you know. So I feel fairly strongly about that.

And I think that's probably, you know, as I say, I think that's probably one of the differences between the European model in the North American model is perfectly possible for you to grow up in the UK tow, watch TV, to listen to the radio and not hear a single commercial. It's the BBC, which has a 50% market share, has no advertising on it whatsoever. They have a rather unique business model instead. And so therefore, it's really possible for you to avoid an awful lot of the advertising if you want to on dhe, so that I think gives you a different outlook on just the noise and the clutter of advertising. If you grew up in that in that environment, ah, and it's the same here as well in in ah, in Australia. So you know, it gives you a different viewpoint on what advertising is on DDE what you might want to end up doing with with ads in the future

46:53

and have you found that the responses or the feedback from the theme the businesses that you're working with, especially those that are doing some of the the title sponsorships that they're. They're happy with the performance and how it's helping drive the type of traffic that they're looking for from this audience.

47:12

Yeah, I mean, I think so. I think two things on that I've always tried to give as much stats and data as I possibly can. So if you, for example, if you book a classified out, then you know exactly how many people got sent that newsletter, how many people opened it, How many people clicked on your ad? You know, except for etcetera. So you can actually see all of the numbers, Not just not just some of those, but, you know, the feedback that I've had from advertisers has been,

You know, this has worked so much better than anything else we have ever tried. And you should be charging farm or which is always, which is what is nice, you know? So from a point of view of does it work? You know, it seems to work really nicely. I mean, there are obviously sometimes, you know, I used to be an advertising copywriter in my dim and distant past and you know, advertising works on a number of different things. One thing is how visible the advertising is. But also what you say is also important to know if what you're promoting isn't actually very interesting. Then no one's going to click on that,

however good the however good the placement is, so you obviously need to bear that in mind. But I think you know the other thing that I was keen to do when I was building the classified system, as I was keen to make it cheap enough for a passion podcaster to afford, but also make it expensive enough that there aren't too many classified ads in there. So the way that the classified ads system works is it starts off very cheap. But it's like airline tickets. The more people who buy it, the more expensive it gets. Andi, that, you know, again seems to have worked, so okay, there's a bit of sort of, you know,

playing around with numbers every so often is it manage that. But I think that that's worked okay in that, You know, I haven't got 15 or 20 classified ads in the You know, I

49:5

think you're capping it at six, right?

49:7

I mean, there's no cap, but it does get ridiculously expensive.

49:11

You, once you

49:12

get help that that high, Okay, you know, because it does cost more Maur, depending on how many other people have actually books. They're so so yeah, so you know. So I would much rather have a natural cap that if you've got something, if you want to spend $300 and you want to be in there tomorrow, then I don't want to stop you, you know, obviously. But I think you know, it's It's that case of just making sure that it doesn't get, you know, it's not just a classified ads thing, and actually,

it's one of the things There are jobs at the bottom of the newsletter. One of the things that I recently dropped is I used to have logos for the company's so you could eat instantly. See, there's a spot of fine logo. There's an apple logo. They're all of these jobs that you can can. And then I realized that people were seeing those as adverts as commercial as commercial content. Now they are ads. They're not paid for. But they are job ads, obviously. But I didn't want people to leave reading that newsletter and think, My God, it's full of ads. And so one of things is, you know,

I got rid of those logos because that was giving a bit more of an impression of, you know, of advertising in there. So, yeah, so it's it's it's It's been a really interesting learning experiences. You can probably tell from this is really interesting learning experience of just, you know, seeing what people think asking people, I think probably Harry, this is one of the biggest learnings is when you unsubscribe from pot news from the newsletter. I send a very personal sounding email, which is, you know, why did you unsubscribe? I'd love to know,

because I love to make it better for everybody else. Please, if you wouldn't mind, you know, tell me on dhe. Surprising how many people do actually tell you, and so many people come back and say, Well, you know, you know, it wasn't right for me because of X, because of why on that is so, so useful. Because if one person is saying that 100 people are thinking that so being able to actually use that quite negative feedback to actually go I had no idea that people were seeing it in that way. And I'll make this change is actually really helpful. So so for anybody that is doing something similar,

always ask when people have stopped. Spero customer, You know, that's a really, really handy thing.

51:36

What are some of the, uh, changing gears a little bit? What are some of the topics that you're currently being asked to speak on? What's top of mind for folks? What do you want to hear about?

51:46

I mean, I think it's interesting, I think certainly international is a really interesting area. I think there's a bit of a thinking that, you know, I mean, obviously the U. S podcast industry is growing tremendously. How can you make money, given that there are another 179 countries out there? How do you make money out of that? So that is interesting. But also, you know, and I've got loads of interesting data, and one of the nice things is being able to reach out to people and say I'm just writing something on this. You don't happened.

Toe have any data on X y and Zed, and they will normally give you that data, which is really helpful so that, you know, the international side is is one thing, you know, on the other side, I do a fair amount of talks, which is just, you know, how to promote your podcast, Maur things you things that are interesting from the last year of podcasting news. Because then you get into the, you know, the rise of Spotify. The rise of,

you know, android phones What Google podcasts means, you know, to all of that, the weirdest thing that I did was last year a podcast movement where I was asked five days before podcast movement by Google, please. Can you come and talk about Google podcasts on? I'm their thinking.

53:8

Surely one of you guys

53:10

officially doing that. But there are reasons why they can't talk at conferences. And I completely understand why their reasons why they can't talk literally everything that they say it gets twisted. And Andi,

53:21

I hear they I hear the attending conferences that they make sure to take their badges off when they're at the parties.

53:26

Yeah, s O. I did this really weird thing where I was standing in front of the podcast movement crowd explaining what Google podcasts Waas explaining how to get the best out of Google podcast, explaining why it was a bit silly that they were still running Google play music podcast, which is different and doing all of this while the guy that

53:49

came up with Google podcasts were sitting, taking photographs, talking about his product. I was there thinking, This is really weird, but, you know, that

54:0

was that was great and, you know, and feel cute us to them for, you know, for trusting that I wouldn't hopefully go to too much off the offer scripts. But also, you know, I mean, I asked them over coffee. I said, What do you want me to say? I can't really say I really hope that Well, you know what would you like me to leave these people with? You know, say whatever you say, whatever you like Really strange. So yes,

so a lot, A lot of that sort of thing. But I also find myself because I'm still doing an awful lot of radio conferences as well. Speaking of radio out radio events. Actually talking about podcasting in that you know, in that environment as well is really interesting because, you know, certainly when you look at radio consumption, you can see there's being a big difference between under 20 fives and over 25 under 25 have grown up with on demand audio in various ways. Podcasting, being part of that on radio for Under 25 has really suffered really suffered. And it's something that the radio industry don't talk about too much and something that if you look at the numbers you can, you can argue. Well, you know, under 25 is still listening to the radio and the same numbers as they have.

Well, yes, but not to the same length of time is your half. And that's the important side. So yes, so that's S O. That's really interesting on that side, actually helping broadcasters understand, You know, the opportunities that on demand has on that the opportunities are farm or than just taking your show on putting a scope version of that on as a podcast. You know, there are many other things that you should that you should be doing and actually sharing best practice from across the world. You know, on that has Bean, you know, has been a really interesting side of that to

55:52

get a feel that they're trying to make up for lost time by just acquiring some of these companies and of some of these radio companies. I mean, you saw with e. W. Scripps did with mid roll. And some of these older companies in order industries on, like, radio in, like newspaper, I think are already using acquisitions as a way to catch up. Are you seeing more of that?

56:13

Yeah. I mean, I think in America they are. So, you know, I heart radio certainly got its checkbook out and has spent quite a lot of money on individual bits and bobs from the podcasting world, as has intercom scripts is interesting. Script is quite fascinating, actually, in that they used to run radio stations and own radio station. They they've bought into every part of the podcast ecosystem on dhe. They sold their radio stations. And so, you know, scripts is really interesting in that it owns, you know, mid roll and stitcher.

So it owns an app. It owns a ad selling unit it owns Triton's that owns the technology behind it tried, of course, own on the studio. So tones are hosting company. You know, all the way through scripts has bought into this particular Reeker system. And that's, you know, I find that whole thing fascinating on really clever if they get everything to work as one. And maybe, you know, it is interesting looking at scripts with a myriad of different brands that they own. Looking at that in comparison to a cast who bought Pepper, which was a French podcasts. Ah,

host last year spent six months, I think. Itwas rebranding it and it's now called a cast open. And everything is under the A cast brand on that to me, you know? I mean maybe a brighter idea than owning a bunch of desperate brands in the area. But, you know, there are various reasons why you might want to keep hold of those of those heritage brands. So yeah, you know, So I think I think the radio industry, certainly in the U. S. Has grown by acquisition into the podcast space. It's actually really interesting seeing what the radio industry is doing in other countries.

So in the UK, for example, global radio, which is the big sort of I heart radio equivalent in the UK they went out on Dhe just built their own ad sales system, which sells dynamic advertising into podcasts into Spotify into, you know, desire. And you know, all of those music service is it sells dynamic at insertion into live radio streams as well, and so they have really grown by building their own tech. And similarly, if you come to Australia, then you you can see radio groups doing two different things. Southern Cross the stereo, which is the big one here, has bought into Podcast one on Dhe sales podcast.

One adds down here and all of that. Where is Nova Entertainment? Which is another one of the large ones, goes out and sells advertising for a cast which actually think about it makes perfect sense. So they are going with one sales person, going to an advertising agency and advertising buyer and saying you can buy audio ads on our radio stations, which really X number of 1,000,000 people and also on all of these podcasts as well, including podcast from the BBC and comes from all over the place, and that's a really clever by. I think so. There are different radio groups doing things in different ways, and it's fascinating seeing which part of that is goingto work on. I'm one of the organizing team for a radio conference in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia in September called Radio Days Asia and one of things I'm trying to do with that, and it may or may not work. One of things I'm trying to do that is to have a track which is purely about podcasting. On if your passion podcaster instead of paying $300 or whatever it is to get into the main conference,

you can pay $10 to just get into the podcasting track because I'm really excited about what happens when you mix passion podcasters together with radio broadcast because I think each side has a lot to teach each other on any of that. That I can sort of, you know, facilitate would be really interesting, I think,

60:11

and you're helping coordinate and put that event on,

60:14

Yeah, eso eso We had our first year last year, which was really good, which had about 300 people there from lots of radio companies across Asia, including India, on dhe on. And this year, we're hoping to make it even bigger. Radio days asia dot com is where to find out more information about that.

60:33

Are you okay with the fact that you're still gonna occasional be receiving ads for products that you can't buy in Australia?

60:43

Well, yeah. So this is one of the things that is interesting about the international podcasting world in that when you listen to podcasts in in Australia, I hear ads for blue apron or ads for Casper. You know, Casper mattresses and I can't buy Cook your own mattresses here. I you know, it doesn't work, so yeah, so I think that podcasting you know it It's interesting you look at the top 100 podcast that has subscribed to here in Australia. I got this data from pocket casts. So the top 100 podcast, which has subscribes to be off those 79 of those from the U. S. So you can see that there's a lots and lots of us content which is coming into coming into Australia on most of those do not have advertising, which is targeted here. So it does get a bit weird when you're listening to reply all.

And then all of a sudden somebody is telling you how how Australia Post is doing a great thing this summer because that was very confusing. But most of them are. Most of them are advertising for, you know, Geico insurance and for you, no credit cards. You can only buy in the in the U. S. And so on. And I think that's just such a missed opportunity. Totally. You know, I mean, having said that, I was out walking the dog a little bit earlier. I was listening to a great podcast, and I love it because they say, You know, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be back after this on Welcome back

62:15

because there's no it's in

62:16

there. It'll so you know, So that's really interesting. But I think you know the amount of money which is being lost to the to the podcast industry by not sufficiently monetizing non U. S. Audiences is really interesting. And I think that's something that we need to bay fixing, you know, in in this year, and actually making sure that you know, wherever you listen to a to a podcast, that there's an opportunity there, I think also, by the way, I think that, Ah, what the industry should be looking at is some way off escaping from the advertising area completely.

It's interesting one. Once you start looking into China, for example, they're big podcast at Himalayas is a podcast at where 50% of podcasts of free but 50% of podcasts are paid for. On it is just in the same way as you go on to, you know, the apple app store or something in you sell a nap. Apple keeps 30% of it, and you keep 70% of it. Well, why aren't we doing that for podcasts? Particularly wise? An Apple podcasts doing that? Because Apple pocus has all of the infrastructure and all of the complicated tax stuff and everything else to me. If they were to do that, then all of a sudden Apple podcasts would be earning money for Apple because at the moment it's earning nothing and then,

secondly, that would then give Apple the opportunity on the business reason to go and put a apple podcasts app on toe android bigger 79% of all mobile phones in the world or android phones. So if all of a sudden they can both be on Android as Apple podcasts but also so but also earned money out of android users. You can see that being a riel opportunity for Apple there, but also real opportunity for podcasters to be able to earn money in a different way other than a 32nd ad of somebody shouting at you about, you know, a new kitchen or a new car or or whatever it is. And I think you know, wouldn't it be interesting if that was explored a little bit more?

64:26

Well, there is an open position for business development at Apple. If I remember correctly, you raise

64:34

that there is a poor jobs, poor jobs. Yes, there is. And I mean, my my suspicion is that, you know, I mean, I'm sure that Apple just like Google, just like any large company, is fraught with politics and everything else. But that would be really interesting. One of the questions that I've never really got a straight answer to has Bean. How important really is podcasting to Apple? Because you know, podcasting at the moment is earning, what,

$600 million in the U. S. Every year, Apple earned $600 million every seven. So, really, how important is podcasting to Apple? And I wonder whether, if it is another line on their profit, avert their attitude towards it might change a little bit more. And we may well end up having lots of shows which are exclusive to Apple progress because they're paid for by ample podcasts. And and I don't necessarily have an issue with that, as long as you know, as long as it's it's done in a sensible way. So, yeah, be really interesting to see

65:40

you talk a little bit about the work you're doing Tiu or the interest you have in open standards with regards to podcasting. And you had a at least one or maybe several projects in the works I can't keep. I can't keep up.

65:51

Yes, I mean, I'm just keen. One of the things I've always been keen in doing, whether it's the radio industry, whether it's podcasting, is to stop reinventing the wheel where it gives us no commercial benefits even to do so. So as an example. A user agent list that list off of things where your podcast house. Congar Oh, Congar away and say You had 20 lessons on you know, Google Podcasts 200 listens on Apple podcast, etcetera, etcetera. That's done with a thing called the User Agent, which is a little piece of text that every device sends back to your podcast host. And every single podcast host at the moment keeps a list of those separately to the degree where,

actually, I'm not entirely convinced that every single podcast host is keeping that list updated to the same degree on. And my suspicion is that Google podcasts, for example, is rather larger. That it would seem, because quite a lot of podcasts those aren't doing a very good job of monitoring it. And so one of things that I felt quite strongly about Woz Okay, let's publish something which is open, which is on get hard, which anybody can use, which is a proper full list off podcast user agents, podcast ATM user agents. And so that's there. It's ah, it's on get hub under O P.

A. W G, the open podcast analytics working group on, so you'll find that list there that is now being used by. I believe five or six podcast hosts automatically every single week. They update their data with the latest information loads of people keeping it updated, which is fantastic. The user agent for Apple podcast, it turns out, is translated, which is helpful. Thanks, Apple. So if you if you're using it in Iran, then it's translated into into Iranian. If you're using in Spanish,

it's translated into Spanish and so on and so forth. So all of that kind of information is now available there on I think that's, you know, an important thing on Another important thing is, you know, you know, sharing as much code as much data as we can said that we are actually competing on the things that matter and not competing on the standards that everybody should be doing. So I'm quite keen in that I'm quite keen in standards around how we measure podcast downloads. I be version too good. I think it could be improved. Is all of these things could, you know? So I mean all of that kind of stuff I'm quite keen in doing because, you know, the end of the day. If there are things that we that allow us to focus on making podcasting easier for other people rather than reinventing this particular wheel for the 17th time, then that would be really helpful. So yes, open standards and stuff like that really helpful and useful there,

68:49

I think. What's the latest count of user agents?

68:52

Oh, I've not got the faintest idea that there are quite a lot of them. I mean, you know, I mean, what's interesting? So I've got a list off. There's an open list of user agents. There's an open list off pre penned cos

69:3

people are you

69:4

activate, not captivate people like

69:7

impossible to Colonel backtracks.

69:9

Yeah, and all of those. So there's a list of those links to privacy policies and all that kind of stuff. And then there's an open list off of podcast hosts as well, so that actually you can actually tell which podcast host this particular podcast is hosted by which is surprisingly hard to find. And so all of that, all of that information is, you know, really interesting, really useful information to just have somewhere the other people can actually taken years.

69:38

Very good this conversation did not disappoint and it says podcast, geeky as I imagined it properly gay T s. So we'll put a pin with percent of Li. Listen yeah, it's the podcast. It's the podcast where I talked to other podcasters about podcasting talking to the podcast editor of the most popular podcast newsletter. So it's literally a podcast. Rabbit hole wave, gun down. It really is, isn't it? Yeah, it's just fascinating to see what's going on This I've been in it for about five years myself and just from seeing what's happening and just been lucky enough to have conversations with some of the most interesting folks in the space. And I'm just fascinated, just fascinated to see what's happening. And I'm wondering just a just a kind of a recap a cz. We wind down like your thoughts on where we are,

like where we are in terms of the ark of podcasting having, and I think you have a unique perspective, having spent a bit of time in radio. You know, a lot of people like to talk about the exponential growth and technologies, and they talk about the movement from, you know, radio to TV and then the movement from TV. Maybe I think it was t. O. I think it was the telegraph to the phone or something like that. And they do these exponential jumps and the window keeps getting shorter and shorter. So I'm wondering what your take is, like, where we are in the ark of the podcasting space.

71:8

I mean, I think we've We are right at the beginning and I think that the podcasting industry likes big ing itself up because you kind of have to big yourself up to make you appear bigger than you really are. But let's let's be clear. For all of the growth of Spotify, only 16% of Spotify is users. Only 16% bother to listen to podcasts within Spotify, so there's a tremendous amount of growth that could happen there. If you look at consumption off podcasting, its highest will its highest in Canada. But let's but let's look at the U. S. Numbers us every month, 32% off. People listen to a podcast. Now that's a nice high figure, 32% every month, every week in the U.

S. 92% of people listen to the radio. Not just that. If you look at total time spent with audio, then you end up with radio being about 60% on podcasting, being about 7%. There's a tremendous amount of growth that we actually have on. So I see podcasting very much as being Ah, very early, very nascent. It's definitely a business which is going to grow. I think they're going to be a few bumps along the way. But I think, you know, we will certainly see some really interesting things happen. I mean,

I think also, podcasting hasn't yet properly sorted out its business model, really, And I think that's something that will continue to play around. You know, we'll continue to sort of, you know, play around with people for the next couple of years. He's actually just trying to work out where where we are going. In terms of that, you know, will a luminary type service work or measure Lan or Sibyl or any of the other service's, which are, you know, coming up in Europe as well, you know,

So all of that is gonna be really interesting, but, you know, as I say, I think we've got so much to learn and so far to go. I think it's a really exciting space because as we as we grow, you know, we can make this business be what we want this business to bay. And if we want, as as a whole, if podcasting wants our business to be open, if podcasting wants podcasting still to be run by R. S s, you know, still tohave stats, which aren't particularly great,

but they're good enough certainly rather better than stats that you get for newspapers. You know, I think you know, So all of that stuff that's kind of really up to us. And I find that as being a really interesting time in the growth off an industry that will only grown will only get better as we move forward.

74:2

And that might be crazy to hear for the folks who've been around that long as you and Robb, Walsh does not like the word renaissance, but But I think there is something to be said. Obviously there's early adopters, but I think there is a assistant exciting time, because I think we are. We haven't even seen what we're capable of in this industry.

74:23

And in terms of the adoption. I think it is an exciting time. And I think the one sort of caveat that I would put is that there are a lot off heritage voices out there in the world of podcasting who every time something new happens in podcasting. They jumped on the brakes and they say, But you've got to remember where we came from and you got to remember how podcasting got here. And I think it's useful to have a look back at the history off podcasting. But I think it is also useful to remember, to quote the the novel that the past is a different country, things different. They do things differently there on Ben. Actually, if we are going to move forward, if we are going to change this industry and turn it from being 20% of people consuming it every week to 90% of people consuming every week, which is where it should be, then we do have to break some things in order to actually get there. And I think, you know,

looking at the tradition of things. Looking at how things used to be is probably the reason why radio is currently failing when radio in Canada has the worst audience figures it has ever had. Where radio in the UK has the worst audience figures that it has ever had, by the way, four times larger than podcasting. Yeah, I think that's probably the reason why radio is failing is that we have looked back too much and our past and gone. But guys, you've got to remember how radio got here. Yeah, I think we just need to occasionally break things in order to move forward and to change the

76:1

way that we do things. Yeah. Here, here. Just a couple of questions as we wrap up. What's Ah, something you've changed your mind about recently?

76:9

Something I've changed my mind about recently. Wow, that's an interesting question. That's completely got me off guard. Something I've changed my mind about recently.

76:19

Noticed that and ask you something. You've had a strong opinion about recently,

76:24

you know. I mean, you know, I mean, I try. What what's What's difficult, I think is important news. I try and keep my opinion out of it. On I try and keep it to be, you know, I mean occasionally will be a sarcastic comment. But I do try and keep it His opinion Freeze. I possibly can, because I don't think that, you know, I really matter. In the great scheme of things s o I was saying a year and 1/2 ago,

I was saying only put apple and Google buttons on your poker website only promote those two because everybody else knows how they're poor car stops work. And now I think, probably shouldn't have said that profit shirts at Apple, Google and Spotify because given the relative size of Spotify these days, I did also used to think rather Maur negatively about the I be standards that I think now, Okay. And I think, you know, I think what's interesting is, you know, slowly changing my mind about these sorts of things has been quite interesting. Because, you know, again, I don't want to be one of those people that is stuck in podcasting as it used to be. Yeah,

I'd much rather I'd much rather make sure that I understand where things are changing and how to use that change for the better, You know, for the goodness of the podcasting industry. Yeah, so I mean, I think that that's basically, you know, I mean on The other thing is, I used to believe that all American beer was rubbish on now. Actually, American craft beer is quite good.

77:59

It is good results. The results of that. Well, I think it's important to always not have fixed notions about how things should be or how things are hard. Things used to be and I think to too much. And this happens in American politics. God forbid you. You change your opinion about something you become quote unquote, wishy washy on. I think, as

78:20

it does really annoy me. That does. Really. So somebody has actually read about this and has thought a little bit hard, and it's changed their mind. And you're criticizing people for that. Why would you do that? But yeah, exactly. You know, you get people accusing people of flip

78:36

flopping and clapping. That's

78:38

it. Yeah, I do come at most things with a relatively open mind, and I kind of sometimes wish that others in in you know that some others in the podcasting world would have a bit more of an open mind as well of just sort of thinking, Oh, well, maybe Maybe there's something in there instead of saying no, that's not the way it's done. But you know that there again, I'm sure that I have many. No, that's not the way it's done. Yeah, thoughts as well, particularly around banner ads in in newsletters. You're not gonna get panel rides in youth.

79:9

Yeah, it's clear that you're passionate about that topic. What's the most misunderstood thing about you?

79:17

What's the most misunderstood thing about me? I think having a radio background, I think quite a lot of people assume that I come with some of the thinking of the radio industry on Dhe. Similarly, you know, it's a weird one where quite a lot of the radio industry think that I don't I don't understand the radio industry enough because I'm also in other parts of the online world as well. And there's a sort of, you know, again, it's that sort of the misunderstanding that you can try and understand other people's industries, but you don't necessarily come back with just having very, very viewpoint on everything. Podcasting is interesting because we way have as any industry does, we kind of have to have an enemy. We kind of have to have a common foe that we are always fighting against, and for a long time, that is,

that has bean the radio industry on. I remember talking at my first podcast conference, which was in 2005. In June 2005 in a ah hotel in the center of London on Dhe, I was being shouted at by people in the audience saying, You guys in big media, you don't get it, you don't you don't get the podcasting is all about the little guy. And it's not about big names and big podcasters and all of that. You know, you guys don't get it at all. And it was a really uncomfortable time because I was there going. No,

80:49

I'm trying to share a CZ. Much information, possibly can one of you, but

80:53

But I kind of that I kind of understand why, you know, I kind of understand why everybody does need an enemy on, I think, just sort of, you know, hopefully knowing that there are, ah, that there are people who you know might share quite a lot of your views. He's quite is quite useful. You don't necessarily work in your industry.

81:13

Well, I appreciate you sharing your opinions and views and and just this opportunity to get to talk all about one of my favorite topics podcasting. And it's been it's exciting to see what's happening. I'm appreciative of the of the lens through which you're allowing us to see the world of podcasting and for also people who are new to it to discover it. Because I'm sure as you get new readers, they're learning a lot about podcasting, things that they hadn't learned before. So So I just want to thank you publicly for your contribution to what you've been doing for the past several years to help grow this road. This industry

81:53

Yeah. Well, thank you. And thank you for Thank you for inviting me on. I appreciate it. Thank you for asking me some of those

81:59

swerved ball. Question. Where's the best place for folks? Thio, Continue Thio Follow the adventures of James Cridland.

82:7

Well, I mean, obviously part news dot net is the place that everybody should be going to to subscribe there if you're interested in the radio. Bit of what I've been saying, James dr dot Land is tthe e already very difficult with the right address to read out on. I'm on a ll that I'm on a ll the social media. Although at the moment what I've been doing is I've I've deleted both Facebook and Twitter off my first smart because it's driving me absolutely mad. And so I'm posting on there rather less than I used to. But nevertheless, yes, I'm also a man.

82:38

You have turned up almost all of my alerts. It's that Pavlovian response was basically driving me bananas with every little thing and clipping Beeping,

82:46

Yeah, the the alerts are turned off a long time ago, but it was, you know, I just found myself something in front of the television arguing with somebody on Facebook on thinking this is No, this is not This is not the best use of and again, it's a useful place to be. But I've learned that, actually, you you spend your time on Facebook or on Twitter on a laptop at where you are in the right mental converts to write mental place to actually be engaging with with other people. Yeah,

83:19

it's all that and social media tips as well. From James Prevalence. Yeah, I don't know about that. Thanks again, James. I appreciate it. Thank you so much. So thanks again to James of being so knowledgeable and so accommodating with his time. I was really looking forward to this conversation, as I mentioned earlier, because it was a great opportunity to understand exactly what's happening in the podcasting space. Given his perspective and given his experience and time in the trenches special thanks to our podcast sponsor, Focus. Right. Make sure you check out the new podcast Studio Makeover promotion That's happening now. Podcast junkies dot com forward slash focus right promo.

They're giving away over $2300 in prizes, and one of them happens to be an hour of consulting with me on your show and show natural music composed by cedar and soil podcast production and marketing provided by full cast dot c e o. Sign up for a free consulting call at full cast dot c o ford slash chat 15 Tune in next week for my conversation with Taz Ahmed. She's the co host of good Muslim Bad Muslim special. Shout out to pass guess Jake Connor for making that introduction very, very interesting conversation as it's the first time I've chatted with a podcaster about the full cycle and life. Have a podcast. Don't miss that one. If you made it this far. No doubt you're waiting for the retention hash tag. Let's go for pod news, James. That's hashtag pot news, James. And you contact James at James Cridland and me a podcast underscored junkies. Thanks for all you do to support the show. I'm immensely in debt to you all. Stay safe during these crazy times, Love you guys and gals.

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