Is Podcasting 2.0 Pointless?

Mark: 00:00:12

Hello there, and welcome to in and around podcasting, the inclusive

Mark: 00:00:12

podcast industry podcast, where we highlight a range of powerful podcasting

Mark: 00:00:12

perspectives. I'm Mark Asquith, co founder of Captivate, and I'm joined

Mark: 00:00:12

by our wonderful co host, Mr. Danny Brown. Danny, you're not wearing

Mark: 00:00:12

any crazy clothing today. What's going on? I'm a little bit disappointed.

Danny: 00:00:35

I'm not. No, the last time, I believe we got some interesting green screen

Danny: 00:00:35

stuff going on, so I'm not sure about that. Just like a little t shirt

Danny: 00:00:35

today.

Mark: 00:00:45

Lesson learned. I think that is what that is called. And today we're going

Mark: 00:00:45

to talk about podcasting 2.0. What is going on with it? Is it a fad?

Mark: 00:00:45

Is it the future? Or is it something in between? And we're joined by two

Mark: 00:00:45

amazing guest co hosts for this. First of all, we're joined by the

Mark: 00:00:45

man that provided the inaugural stupid stuff in podcasting on his LinkedIn

Mark: 00:00:45

a couple of weeks ago. It is Joe Casabana. Welcome as a guest co host,

Mark: 00:00:45

my friend.

Joe: 00:01:14

Thanks. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here just for the occasion

Joe: 00:01:14

because I know you all are Star wars fans, and I had my Star wars.

Mark: 00:01:21

Yes, we are. We are absolute r nerds there. And I appreciate the thought

Mark: 00:01:21

on that. I love that. And we're also joined by another guest co host,

Mark: 00:01:21

someone that needs no introduction, someone that I've known for a long

Mark: 00:01:21

time and a former advisor to captivate before we became part of global.

Mark: 00:01:21

It's the one, the only, Mr. Daniel J. Lewis. Welcome, my friend. How

Mark: 00:01:21

are you?

Daniel: 00:01:41

Thank you very much. I'm excited to be here and excited to talk about

Daniel: 00:01:41

some of this stuff.

Mark: 00:01:47

Good. Well, we're excited for an interesting show. We are going to

Mark: 00:01:47

go podcasting 2.0, but we've also got some shout outs to other podcasts.

Mark: 00:01:47

In our audio only wave file segment, we've got actually the first ever

Mark: 00:01:47

wonderfully whimsical podcasting wishlist coming up. We've got, of

Mark: 00:01:47

course, the flattering ram delivered by the one and only Daniel J. Lewis.

Mark: 00:01:47

And it would be rude not to do some stupid stuff in podcasting. But before

Mark: 00:01:47

we get to all of that, Joe, give us the skinny. Give us the top level.

Mark: 00:01:47

What is it that you do in podcasting? How do you help people? What is it

Mark: 00:01:47

that you enjoy doing in this industry?

Joe: 00:02:25

I love helping podcasters do two things, save 12 hours per week producing

Joe: 00:02:25

their podcast. And I like helping them do that so that they can do

Joe: 00:02:25

the most important thing in podcasting, which is storytelling. Those are

Joe: 00:02:25

kind of the two aspects that I help people with, and I love telling stories.

Joe: 00:02:25

I always have. And automation is kind of my jam. I was in software

Joe: 00:02:25

development for a long time, and I took that knowledge and moved it

Joe: 00:02:25

over to podcasting to help people be as efficient as possible to prevent

Joe: 00:02:25

the dreaded pod fade.

Daniel: 00:02:59

Right.

Joe: 00:02:59

I want to get people past seven episodes.

Mark: 00:03:02

And you also have possibly the best name in podcasting as well. I'm extremely

Mark: 00:03:02

jealous of it. I've got the most basic 80s name. I am called Mark.

Mark: 00:03:02

It's disappointing, but Joe Casabono, what a legend. And you can find joe@podcastworkflows.com

Mark: 00:03:02

and Daniel J. Lewis, you have been around a little while, my friend.

Mark: 00:03:02

What are you up to these days? You've got a couple of new things ongoing

Mark: 00:03:02

at the moment. What's on your plate right now, mate?

Daniel: 00:03:23

Yeah, the two biggest things I do, helping podcasters engage their audiences

Daniel: 00:03:23

and grow their podcasts. I host the Audacity to podcast, a podcast about

Daniel: 00:03:23

podcasting for podcasters. Talking about podcasting, it's very, very

Daniel: 00:03:23

meta. I also have podgagement, formerly known as my podcast reviews, that

Daniel: 00:03:23

helps provide tools for podcasters to engage their audiences and grow

Daniel: 00:03:23

their podcasts. And I love helping podcasters, and that's why I'm in

Daniel: 00:03:23

podcasting 2.0 and join podcasting, conversations and conferences and

Daniel: 00:03:23

everything.

Mark: 00:03:55

I love it. You are literally the podcast guy. If I'm the british podcast

Mark: 00:03:55

guy, you've got me as you are, the global version of that. And audacitytopodcast.com.

Mark: 00:03:55

Is that still the best place, mate? Yes, legend. All right, I love that.

Mark: 00:03:55

Now let's get on to podcasting 2.0, the future of podcasting, the future

Mark: 00:03:55

of RSS, but also something that can scare indies a little bit. We've

Mark: 00:03:55

seen it. We see it quite a little bit in support at Captivate, the

Mark: 00:03:55

idea being that we want to progress podcasting. We love the open ecosystem,

Mark: 00:03:55

and whilst closed ecosystems such as Spotify, YouTube and whatever

Mark: 00:03:55

else may exist, and we can't really do much about those, they have their

Mark: 00:03:55

place. We still want to protect and to move forward with the open podcasting

Mark: 00:03:55

ecosystem. So, Daniel, I'm going to come to you actually on this one

Mark: 00:03:55

because you've just released a new website to help explain this a little

Mark: 00:03:55

bit more yourself. And James Cridlin, if I'm an indie producer, if I'm

Mark: 00:03:55

an indie podcaster getting into podcasting and someone says to me, what about

Mark: 00:03:55

this podcasting 2.0? Have you done that? Are you quote unquote, doing

Mark: 00:03:55

that? How would you explain it to them. Give us the pitch.

Daniel: 00:05:10

Yeah. Podcasting 2.0 is a whole set of innovations that help improve

Daniel: 00:05:10

the podcasting and podcast consumption experience for everyone, for podcasters,

Daniel: 00:05:10

for audiences, for developers, even for advertisers. So everyone benefits

Daniel: 00:05:10

through the innovations that are being offered in podcasting 2.0 through

Daniel: 00:05:10

different features that we're building into RSS feeds and around the ecosystem

Daniel: 00:05:10

of how podcasts work and just making it better. That's why the name fits

Daniel: 00:05:10

so well. This is the 2.0 version of podcasts, which have been pretty

Daniel: 00:05:10

much the same technologically since the beginning. So podcasting 2.0

Daniel: 00:05:10

brings that in and revolutionises it in many exciting ways.

Mark: 00:05:54

I love that. And it's very much RSS centric. So RSS being the delivery

Mark: 00:05:54

mechanism for podcasts in general. A hosting platform like captivates

Mark: 00:05:54

generates an RSS feed, sends information in that box, which is the RSS feed,

Mark: 00:05:54

off to the apps that read it and deliver features, deliver content,

Mark: 00:05:54

and so on and so forth, information about that particular show and the

Mark: 00:05:54

episodes within. Todd Cochrane, a friend of everyone's.

Danny: 00:06:22

His.

Mark: 00:06:22

Reaction to this a while ago I thought was quite interesting, which is we

Mark: 00:06:22

really want to be selling benefits as opposed to technical features

Mark: 00:06:22

when it comes to podcasting 2.0. So Joe, you work with a lot of people

Mark: 00:06:22

working on the podcast workflows and so on and so forth. How do you

Mark: 00:06:22

see that landscape on the ground for the indie producer? What's the

Mark: 00:06:22

talk of the town when it comes to podcasting 2.0? Are people sort of

Mark: 00:06:22

afraid of it? Are people embracing it? Where do you see the indies right

Mark: 00:06:22

now?

Joe: 00:06:51

Yeah, I think it's more like people want the features, right? I'm an

Joe: 00:06:51

evangelist for RSS.com as well, and we do like to promote podcasting

Joe: 00:06:51

2.0 features, but I usually don't put it like that when I'm talking

Joe: 00:06:51

to folks on that end or my clients. It's almost like saying, hey, you

Joe: 00:06:51

want to get a black and decker hammer? And they're like, I just want to

Joe: 00:06:51

build a house. And so when I'm talking about the podcasting 2.0 features,

Joe: 00:06:51

they'll say, hey, we got transcripts, right? There's like transcript support.

Joe: 00:06:51

There is the ability to lock your feed. There is the ability to recommend

Joe: 00:06:51

other podcasts and a bunch of other kind of 2.0 features. But I usually

Joe: 00:06:51

won't specifically brand it that way unless I'm talking to other folks

Joe: 00:06:51

in the industry, other people who are part of podcast management platforms.

Joe: 00:06:51

When I'm talking to people who are shopping. I definitely sell the benefits

Joe: 00:06:51

more than the underlying tech, I guess it's also like in the WordPress

Joe: 00:06:51

space, the sales pages for plugins used to be like we built it with

Joe: 00:06:51

react and JavaScript, and I'm like, no one cares about those things.

Joe: 00:06:51

They want to know what the plugin does. So that's kind of how I view

Joe: 00:06:51

it when I'm talking to the non technical or like non deeply embedded podcast

Joe: 00:06:51

folks.

Mark: 00:08:14

I think Todd's versioning of that and the way that he articulated that

Mark: 00:08:14

idea know sell the features and the benefits as opposed to the tags,

Mark: 00:08:14

which is know we know the processes goes through GitHub, goes through

Mark: 00:08:14

review. There's a lot of collaborators on there, some more active than others.

Mark: 00:08:14

And the process is that there's a collaborative effort to sign off

Mark: 00:08:14

a round of tag releases, which is an RSS based tag, and they essentially

Mark: 00:08:14

translate into features for people. So we sign off a transcript tag,

Mark: 00:08:14

eventually hosting companies support it, listening apps, even Apple now

Mark: 00:08:14

supports it. So it's a journey. And Danny, one thing I want to talk to

Mark: 00:08:14

you about very quickly is it's been in the industry for a while. We've

Mark: 00:08:14

all spoken on different podcasts about it. We're all aware of it,

Mark: 00:08:14

this being an industry show about the podcasting industry, but really

Mark: 00:08:14

trying to help, not just give that view from the top. What's the general

Mark: 00:08:14

feeling in places like captivate support when it comes to things like

Mark: 00:08:14

podcasting 2.0, you lead up that support team, you got any insight

Mark: 00:08:14

on that? How are the day to day people feeling about it?

Danny: 00:09:17

I think it's a bit of both of what Daniel mentions and Joe, they understand

Danny: 00:09:17

the features when you explain it, but a lot of it is about understanding

Danny: 00:09:17

what benefits it actually does for them as a podcaster and their listeners.

Danny: 00:09:17

And I feel there's a danger of getting lost in the reads or the weeds, whatever

Danny: 00:09:17

country preference description you use there. But there's a danger of

Danny: 00:09:17

getting lost in that by spewing all the cool stuff they can do without

Danny: 00:09:17

actually breaking it down to really basic for the new podcaster or the

Danny: 00:09:17

indie podcaster that just wants to produce a podcast and doesn't know

Danny: 00:09:17

value for value. What's that? What's the people tag? Why do they need

Danny: 00:09:17

a person tag? All that stuff. So I think there's definitely excitement

Danny: 00:09:17

about making the show more interactive and accessible for listeners, but

Danny: 00:09:17

it's what that entails, what extra workflow it entails, et cetera.

Mark: 00:10:12

One of the interesting challenges, I think, is accessibility of podcasting.

Mark: 00:10:12

2.0 and Daniel, you've done some work with James Cridland on a website

Mark: 00:10:12

to try and mitigate some of that. And one of the biggest aspects of

Mark: 00:10:12

that is translating as we've just gone through this idea of, okay,

Mark: 00:10:12

a tag in an RSS feed is actually something that we'll deal with as

Mark: 00:10:12

a hosting platform that an app will then have to respect and look at

Mark: 00:10:12

in order to deliver the outcome of that tag. So if it's comments, we

Mark: 00:10:12

have to enable it, they have to enable it, and the outcome will be comments

Mark: 00:10:12

are available and you can do cross platform whatever transcripts, the

Mark: 00:10:12

lock tag, the funding tag, whatever that might be. The biggest single

Mark: 00:10:12

issue that I think that we face, that I'm going to come to you on

Mark: 00:10:12

Daniel, is that there's just very little support on the app side. And

Mark: 00:10:12

I think Rob Walsh articulated this really well. He just said that actually

Mark: 00:10:12

less than 1% of downloads across the entire industry come from apps

Mark: 00:10:12

that support podcasting 2.0 features in any meaningful way. Pod chat feels,

Mark: 00:10:12

well, there's two sides to this, actually. It's an open ended for

Mark: 00:10:12

you. It feels as if that's true and as if that's sort of, oh my word,

Mark: 00:10:12

look how problematic that is. But yet we're only, what, a year into

Mark: 00:10:12

podcasting? 2.02 years into it, we've barely even begun in the grand scheme

Mark: 00:10:12

of things. What are your views on that?

Daniel: 00:11:45

Well, a couple of things. I first am grateful that Rob brought up that

Daniel: 00:11:45

challenge. Even though it kind of stunned for the industry. I am grateful

Daniel: 00:11:45

for it because that is what inspired James and I to launch podcasting

Daniel: 00:11:45

two point org. Two, I mix up my british and English sometimes now when I

Daniel: 00:11:45

say that. But podcasting two is the website for podcasting 2.0. And we're

Daniel: 00:11:45

trying to make that a site that is both a resource for developers who

Daniel: 00:11:45

need to see what are all of the tags, but also especially for the people,

Daniel: 00:11:45

the podcasters who need to see. I've heard about this thing. What is it?

Daniel: 00:11:45

I have heard about value time split. What in the world is that? Well,

Daniel: 00:11:45

we want the website to explain that, so we're grateful that Rob brought

Daniel: 00:11:45

that challenge. I want to challenge Rob's data and maybe Mark, this is

Daniel: 00:11:45

a great opportunity for captivate to bring some of your own data. Libson

Daniel: 00:11:45

Rob Walsh works for Libson. Libson. Before Apple started supporting the

Daniel: 00:11:45

transcripts tag, Libson did not officially support any of the podcasting 2.0

Daniel: 00:11:45

features. Like there was no field to populate any of the features to

Daniel: 00:11:45

enter your transcripts yes, you could, in an old version of the Libson dashboard,

Daniel: 00:11:45

manually insert XML code in order to add the RSS tags for your podcasting

Daniel: 00:11:45

2.0. And that should sound scary to anyone. You should never have

Daniel: 00:11:45

to do that. So for Libson to say in their data, they see that only

Daniel: 00:11:45

a certain very tiny percentage of downloads come from podcasting 2.0

Daniel: 00:11:45

supported apps. I think that kind of makes sense because they're not

Daniel: 00:11:45

really pushing their own podcasters. They're not enabling their podcasters

Daniel: 00:11:45

to support these features, let alone encouraging them to encourage their

Daniel: 00:11:45

audiences to use their features. Then compare that to I know you haven't

Daniel: 00:11:45

released this data yet, but would be interesting to see data from captivate.

Daniel: 00:11:45

Captivate made the huge splash. What about a year, a year and a half ago

Daniel: 00:11:45

with like you just dumped a whole load of new features of podcasting

Daniel: 00:11:45

2.0 support on the industry. And Blueberry and Rss.com and other companies

Daniel: 00:11:45

are supporting these features much more heavily too. So I'd love to

Daniel: 00:11:45

see how the downloads skew for them. But going back to your point of,

Daniel: 00:11:45

even if it is a small number, yes, this is fringe, this is cutting edge.

Daniel: 00:11:45

But the Apple, the number one podcast app now supports one of these features.

Daniel: 00:11:45

That's not only going to inspire the other apps to support that one

Daniel: 00:11:45

feature, which is transcripts, a very good, very important feature.

Daniel: 00:11:45

But I think that's also going to challenge the other apps in the industry

Daniel: 00:11:45

as a whole to realise this is a legitimate project. This is not just someone

Daniel: 00:11:45

in their basement coding. This is something that now has been embraced

Daniel: 00:11:45

by Apple. Maybe it's time that we also look at embracing this support

Daniel: 00:11:45

in our apps, publishing tools, whatever it is. That's what's really exciting

Daniel: 00:11:45

that Apple has. I don't like to say this word legitimising it, but that's

Daniel: 00:11:45

the way that the industry will look at it, as if Apple's doing it now.

Daniel: 00:11:45

That means this is a real thing. So maybe we should too now. And that's

Daniel: 00:11:45

got me excited.

Mark: 00:14:57

Yeah, it's almost a validation, isn't it? Like you said, it was legitimate

Mark: 00:14:57

before because there were other players that did support it. But the validation

Mark: 00:14:57

that, I think the validation that this could scale has been granted

Mark: 00:14:57

a little bit more because Apple have supported that one tag, and it's

Mark: 00:14:57

a very useful tag as well. And Joe, when it comes to, I think, certain

Mark: 00:14:57

other features, let's get into the mindset of features versus tags.

Mark: 00:14:57

I think for a second, it feels, to Daniel's point about this being bleeding

Mark: 00:14:57

edge, this is fringe this is very early stage, very, very sort of nascent

Mark: 00:14:57

developmental work in RSS and podcasting. On the whole, it feels as if even

Mark: 00:14:57

within podcasting 2.0, there are more bleeding edge things and there

Mark: 00:14:57

are more, okay, safe things. So we've got things like value for value.

Mark: 00:14:57

Let's make money through the blockchain. And then we've got the locked tag,

Mark: 00:14:57

which is. Let's just make sure. Let's add one more layer to just try and

Mark: 00:14:57

stop people from stealing your podcast. The spectrum is huge there. So when

Mark: 00:14:57

you're talking through workflows and so on, have you got any sort

Mark: 00:14:57

of methodology around. Okay, here's, I don't want to say a partial implementation

Mark: 00:14:57

because I don't think there is a full one yet. But do you work with

Mark: 00:14:57

people insofar as. Okay, do you know what podcasting 2.0 is? This massive

Mark: 00:14:57

range of things. For now, let's just worry about these one or two things.

Mark: 00:14:57

How does that tend to sit with you and the people that you work with?

Joe: 00:16:22

Yeah, that's a really good question. And I think to Daniel's point, to

Joe: 00:16:22

the point that you guys are making here, I think it really is kind of

Joe: 00:16:22

up to the industry folks to. It's almost like saying, as a car maker,

Joe: 00:16:22

I don't want to. Oh, well, only less than 1% of people die from car crashes,

Joe: 00:16:22

so I'm not going to put airbags in my car. That's a crazy thing to say.

Joe: 00:16:22

But I think, again, from the kind of feature standpoint, as I watch

Joe: 00:16:22

the podcasting 2.0 space and some of the features that get implemented

Joe: 00:16:22

and the things that I think are going to be most helpful, that's kind of

Joe: 00:16:22

where I land. So, like, transcripts, I've been bullish on transcripts

Joe: 00:16:22

are necessary for a podcast. My current show, my flagship show, we'll say,

Joe: 00:16:22

launched in 2016. In 2017, it had transcripts because I think that

Joe: 00:16:22

it's an accessibility play, it's a search play. It's a lot of things.

Joe: 00:16:22

And so it's really cool to see Apple and other people kind of implement

Joe: 00:16:22

this and give native support to it. Things like chapter markers.

Daniel: 00:17:39

Right.

Joe: 00:17:39

I think that's technically podcasting 2.0. Maybe that's like, support it

Joe: 00:17:39

if you want. It's kind of hard to add. Maybe other apps do it better.

Joe: 00:17:39

But I think about what's going to make the biggest impact based on

Joe: 00:17:39

my clients or students'goals.

Mark: 00:17:57

Right.

Joe: 00:17:57

We want to grow the show. Transcripts are necessary for that chapter markers.

Joe: 00:17:57

If you're going to upload it to YouTube now.

Daniel: 00:18:04

Right.

Joe: 00:18:04

And there is like the medium tag now. So that's pretty cool to see.

Joe: 00:18:04

Maybe we do that. I guess it's all very goals based is the most succinct

Joe: 00:18:04

way for me to put.

Mark: 00:18:16

Yes. Yeah, I would agree with that one. Danny, I'm going to drop this

Mark: 00:18:16

one on you because we've got to touch on it because on the other far extreme

Mark: 00:18:16

side of this, you know what's coming. Someone has to explain value for

Mark: 00:18:16

value. And I'm going to speak to Sam SETI from true fans about this.

Mark: 00:18:16

He's a good friend of the show, he's a good friend of everyone here, and

Mark: 00:18:16

he's doing amazing work in that value for value space. Just give us the

Mark: 00:18:16

top level on this because I feel like this is probably the most complex

Mark: 00:18:16

feature, I want to say, of the movement. So good luck. Go for it.

Danny: 00:18:57

Can you just bleep this section out altogether? Yeah. I mean, from a

Danny: 00:18:57

personal point of view, I see the value, no pun intended, but I still

Danny: 00:18:57

try get my head around, and I see this with our podcasters. I see it

Danny: 00:18:57

online, Reddit, et cetera, where if you're given a listener a choice

Danny: 00:18:57

that's never heard of podcasting 2.0, but you're trying to explain

Danny: 00:18:57

the benefits of why you should use 2.0 apps like Fountain, et cetera.

Danny: 00:18:57

And true fans.

Mark: 00:19:24

Did Judas nearly say only fans?

Danny: 00:19:26

I said only fans. Sorry, Sam.

Mark: 00:19:28

Sound bite, Daniel. Sound bite. Joe, get this on LinkedIn.

Danny: 00:19:37

Yeah. So true fans. True fans. So if I'm trying to tell my listeners

Danny: 00:19:37

and explain to my listeners, you can support me if you love the show,

Danny: 00:19:37

and I'd love you to support, you can either give me $5 a month for

Danny: 00:19:37

a free buck, buy me a coffee, or you can give me 10,000 sats. Okay,

Danny: 00:19:37

what's sats? Why is it so high? Because I'm equating five versus 10,000,

Danny: 00:19:37

think of pounds, dollars, et cetera. And I feel it's really hard to, if

Danny: 00:19:37

people aren't technical, to buy into the setup that you have to do with

Danny: 00:19:37

a get albi or a lightning account, et cetera, and then set up all your

Danny: 00:19:37

details to transfer this via a lightning network or however the transfer is

Danny: 00:19:37

happening to get the support and the boosts, et cetera, from one person

Danny: 00:19:37

over to the podcaster. For me, there's a huge education gap and there's

Danny: 00:19:37

a huge. Just the numbers don't make sense from a simple point of view.

Danny: 00:19:37

510 thousand. 510 thousand. And I feel that's where a big stop gap

Danny: 00:19:37

is at the moment for value. For value really taking off and getting adopted.

Danny: 00:19:37

Yeah.

Mark: 00:20:43

The idea you can stream crypto via the blockchain to a podcaster in

Mark: 00:20:43

return for the value that they provide. And not just a podcast, but like

Mark: 00:20:43

a musician, we've seen experiments in that space. It's a lovely idea.

Mark: 00:20:43

It's a great, great idea. And if someone said, I'll do that and I'll

Mark: 00:20:43

send you $0.05 or $0.01 every time I listen to 30 seconds of your audio,

Mark: 00:20:43

and I think it's worth it, you can sort of see where people would buy

Mark: 00:20:43

into that because they're equating the value that they use at the shop

Mark: 00:20:43

and the store to the thing that they can receive from strangers who enjoy

Mark: 00:20:43

their show. But I just feel there's that. It's quite an enigmatic challenge

Mark: 00:20:43

because you've got all of these different words Satoshi via the blockchain

Mark: 00:20:43

that I can stream to a creator using value for value. It feels like Daniel

Mark: 00:20:43

does the job you're doing on podcasting two, it feels like Sammy's trying

Mark: 00:20:43

to do with true fans, but it feels like that's got such a long way to

Mark: 00:20:43

go as a concept before people start saying, okay, that's one of my main

Mark: 00:20:43

funding methods. It just feels tech.

Danny: 00:21:53

Yeah.

Daniel: 00:21:53

There's an aspect where I think the approach to it is going to get easier.

Daniel: 00:21:53

That's the nice thing, is the way it is now is not the most complicated

Daniel: 00:21:53

it's ever been. It has been more complicated before. It's gotten easier,

Daniel: 00:21:53

it will get easier to get into it. And then some of the app developers

Daniel: 00:21:53

are also making the understanding of it a little bit easier. Like,

Daniel: 00:21:53

I've been using castomatic for a while now, and it's really neat that

Daniel: 00:21:53

it shows me the current conversion rate. So if I'm saying I'm going

Daniel: 00:21:53

to send a boostogram, which is amount of satoshis with a message attached

Daniel: 00:21:53

to it. So if I say I'm going to send 10,000, it shows me what that's worth

Daniel: 00:21:53

in my currency. So that's really neat to see that easy conversion

Daniel: 00:21:53

there. So I can know, okay, 10,000 is a really big number, but, oh,

Daniel: 00:21:53

that's only about 650 right now. So that's not all that bad. But the

Daniel: 00:21:53

other approach is, I like the way that James Cridlin put this, is you

Daniel: 00:21:53

could think of the satoshis as like Internet tokens. Just like you might

Daniel: 00:21:53

go to a carnival or a fair and you buy a certain number of tickets and

Daniel: 00:21:53

then things cost a certain number of tickets to use, and you forget

Daniel: 00:21:53

about the value of the tickets. You start thinking, this is how many

Daniel: 00:21:53

tickets I have. So this is how many I can spend. And that's what it is.

Daniel: 00:21:53

With satoshis. You might load up a wallet, we would say with a certain

Daniel: 00:21:53

number, 10,000, 20,000, whatever it is. And then, you know, this is

Daniel: 00:21:53

how many I have to spend, and I want to send 1000 here, 1000 there. And

Daniel: 00:21:53

then you're spending those tokens, and it's going to become more familiar

Daniel: 00:21:53

to people as time goes on, and especially as bitcoin gets more adoption, that

Daniel: 00:21:53

people will understand this conversion better. So I'm excited about how

Daniel: 00:21:53

easy it will get in the future.

Mark: 00:23:39

I think that's the key takeaway as well from this portion of the show,

Mark: 00:23:39

is that podcasting 2.0 is not pointless. It's a developmental future of podcasting

Mark: 00:23:39

that is in such a young stage that it requires us all to give it space

Mark: 00:23:39

to contribute where we can and to allow people to understand exactly

Mark: 00:23:39

what the opportunities are when they are, without making it seem some

Mark: 00:23:39

big scary thing that if you don't adopt it, if you're not shouting

Mark: 00:23:39

from the rooftops about it because you're an indie podcaster from your

Mark: 00:23:39

bedroom, that's all right as well. There are layers to this and there

Mark: 00:23:39

are levels to this, and I think that's a big important thing, but it's a

Mark: 00:23:39

valuable movement, and there are people doing fantastic work in that

Mark: 00:23:39

space. Thank you to everyone that is pioneering that, and to people

Mark: 00:23:39

like Daniel and to Joe and to everyone else, and to James Quidland and to

Mark: 00:23:39

Adam and Dave and everyone, all the hosting platforms that are doing

Mark: 00:23:39

great work in that space. Now it is time to just switch gears.

: 00:24:46

The last word in podcasting news. This is the Pod news weekly review

: 00:24:46

with James Criblin and Sam Sethi.

: 00:24:55

I'm James Cridlin, the editor of Pod News, the daily podcast newsletter.

Joe: 00:24:59

And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of Podfans.

: 00:25:02

Every week, the Pod news Weekly review is the last word in podcasting news,

: 00:25:02

with a look back at the most important news in podcasting and interviews

: 00:25:02

with the people that matter.

: 00:25:12

This is Rachel King. I'm the CEO and co founder of Pod People.

Mark: 00:25:16

Hey, this is Mark Asgris, the co founder here at Captivate.

: 00:25:19

Hey, James, it's Kathy Doyle.

Daniel: 00:25:21

Hi. This is Brendan Mulligan, founder of Podpage.

: 00:25:23

I'm Anna Sean. I lead the marketing team that is focused on Spotify for

: 00:25:23

podcasters. Hi, I'm Christiana Kromer descripts community manager.

Mark: 00:25:31

Hi, I'm Tom Rossi from Buzzsprout. Hi.

Joe: 00:25:33

This is Todd Cochrane, CEO and co founder of Blueberry.

: 00:25:36

I'm Melissa Kishi and I'm a senior vice president at Edison Research.

: 00:25:40

Hear from Sam, me and everyone else in this industry every week the Pod

: 00:25:40

news Weekly review with Buzzsprout podcast hosting.

: 00:25:49

Made easy from your daily newsletter the Pod news weekly review.

Mark: 00:26:00

Danny, you wanted this one. I'm going to let you jump in with the wonderful,

Mark: 00:26:00

whimsical podcasting wishlist. What have you got? What's the dream?

Danny: 00:26:18

This actually came up this morning after I received the Daily Pod news.

Danny: 00:26:18

I get James's newsletter every day and there's news in there that I'm

Danny: 00:26:18

not always interested in and there's maybe podcasters. I never want to

Danny: 00:26:18

hear the name or like any news about podcasters. And so it'd be really

Danny: 00:26:18

cool if I could stick in an AI browser, tool extension, whatever, that I

Danny: 00:26:18

can let AI know. I never want to hear this topic, this name, this

Danny: 00:26:18

podcaster, nothing at all. And it looks at my newsletters and looks

Danny: 00:26:18

at the content coming in, strips that out from the email, but leaves

Danny: 00:26:18

the email intact and replaces it goes searching off the web for content

Danny: 00:26:18

I've read before, content I've listened to, and takes the latest news from

Danny: 00:26:18

that piece of content and sticks it into my email or my browser, where

Danny: 00:26:18

I've got the email version of the web version of the newsletter open.

Danny: 00:26:18

I'd love a tool like that. That's where I would love AI.

Mark: 00:27:08

Joe thumbs up, thumbs down, or ambivalence.

Joe: 00:27:13

I like it. One of the reasons I'm still on the social network, formerly

Joe: 00:27:13

known as Twitter, is because I have spent years I've been on that platform

Joe: 00:27:13

since seven. I've spent years curating and blocking and muting words aggressively

Joe: 00:27:13

and just moving all of that technical debt to another platform seems very

Joe: 00:27:13

upsetting to me. So I would love an app. There was a chrome browser

Joe: 00:27:13

like this or a chrome extension a few years ago like this that I heavily

Joe: 00:27:13

utilised when the Avengers movies came out because my daughter had

Joe: 00:27:13

just been born and I wanted to avoid spoilers at all costs before I could

Joe: 00:27:13

go and see it in the theatres. And so heavy thumbs up on that. I'm all

Joe: 00:27:13

for not seeing things I don't want to see on the Internet.

Mark: 00:28:03

I relate to that. Most of my mute words are Star wars focused. We do

Mark: 00:28:03

not like spoilers at all. Daniel, you have brought to the table one

Mark: 00:28:03

of our other interesting segments today. So I'm going to throw over

Mark: 00:28:03

to you for the flat. This is positivity. This is where we're spreading goodness

Mark: 00:28:03

and highlighting people doing great work in the podcasting space. And

Mark: 00:28:03

we can flatter absolutely anything that we want at all. There are no

Mark: 00:28:03

boundaries or limits. So, Daniel, thank you for bringing this. What

Mark: 00:28:03

do we have?

Daniel: 00:28:41

I've got a podcast for you that's really fun. It's completely independent.

Daniel: 00:28:41

For some reason, they don't have advertisers yet, but it is knack

Daniel: 00:28:41

news. So that's knickknack is spelled with k's on the beginning of both

Daniel: 00:28:41

of those words. So Knickknacknews.com, this is a podcast from two friends

Daniel: 00:28:41

who talk about recent random news bits. They have dinosaur news, they

Daniel: 00:28:41

have hamburger news, they have space news. They talk about tardigrades,

Daniel: 00:28:41

they talk about science. They talk about all kinds of interesting things,

Daniel: 00:28:41

and they just have fun with it. And I met these two friends at a podcast

Daniel: 00:28:41

movement a couple of years ago. Their podcast sounded interesting. I checked

Daniel: 00:28:41

it out and it's really good. It's not highly produced. It doesn't have

Daniel: 00:28:41

all the NPR style journalistic stuff, but it's two friends who know how

Daniel: 00:28:41

to have an entertaining conversation, which is something that I would say

Daniel: 00:28:41

that a lot of comedy podcasters out there don't know how to do. That's

Daniel: 00:28:41

one of my pet peeves, is two comedy podcasters getting together and not

Daniel: 00:28:41

being funny. But Alex and Anthony in Knickknack news are great together.

Daniel: 00:28:41

It's great to hear one of them bring a crazy news story and the other

Daniel: 00:28:41

just burst out laughing at it. It's a really fun podcast that I think

Daniel: 00:28:41

should really get more attention because it's so good and so fun,

Daniel: 00:28:41

and yet it is very simple, too. And yet it's that good.

Mark: 00:30:05

I love that sounds fascinating. I love the irreverence of just bringing

Mark: 00:30:05

random use together like that. And it's one of those shows that, it

Mark: 00:30:05

feels like one of those shows where you're just in the car, you're not

Mark: 00:30:05

quite sure what you want to listen to. That just feels like it fits

Mark: 00:30:05

absolutely perfectly into that gap. So fascinating. We'll put a link

Mark: 00:30:05

to that in the show notes as well. We'll dig it out and we'll stick

Mark: 00:30:05

a link in there because I think that's a really good shout. Daniel, thank

Mark: 00:30:05

you. Pod chat. That is the flattering ram. Always interested to see what

Mark: 00:30:05

comes up in the flattering ram, because goodness is good to spread and we

Mark: 00:30:05

are going to wrap up because we've got two people that know about this.

Mark: 00:30:05

We've got Joe, we've got Daniel and Danny brought to us this week. I

Mark: 00:30:05

feel like this might become a trend, mate, actually, that you bring this

Mark: 00:30:05

because it feels like you are on the ball with it. Danny did bring

Mark: 00:30:05

this week's stupid stuff in podcasting. All right, what's grinding your gears,

Mark: 00:30:05

mate? Yeah.

Danny: 00:31:02

And this is something you see a lot. It's the good old, and I'm glad Daniel's

Danny: 00:31:02

on here. And obviously job, it's a good old. Get loads and loads of

Danny: 00:31:02

Apple reviews because that will throw you up the charts and it'll get you

Danny: 00:31:02

any search and it'll help you get more downloads and it's just great.

Mark: 00:31:14

So get these reviews.

Danny: 00:31:16

So, yeah, it's just. I'll leave it to the experts on this.

Mark: 00:31:21

Oh, yeah, it's been around for a while, hasn't it? Review swaps early

Mark: 00:31:21

on, on the launch to get into new and worthy and all that was part

Mark: 00:31:21

of the launch plan for a lot of people. Joe, is this something that you still

Mark: 00:31:21

see? Are people doing this when they're launching shows?

Joe: 00:31:34

Yeah, and interestingly, I was talking to a few people who launched podcasts

Joe: 00:31:34

earlier this year that said, oh, we're only launching on Apple podcasts

Joe: 00:31:34

because we want to get reviews there. And I'm like, that's so weird. That's

Joe: 00:31:34

not how it works. Reviews are great. They are social proof and they make

Joe: 00:31:34

you feel good most of the time. Unless somebody says that you have too many

Joe: 00:31:34

ads in your show, it's a real bad review I got on my show. But yeah,

Joe: 00:31:34

I get why people would think that, but Apple does these quarterly. What's

Joe: 00:31:34

new in podcasting sort of things. And everyone, they're like, we're

Joe: 00:31:34

not going to tell you what affects the charts, but we will tell you

Joe: 00:31:34

it has to do with subscribers, listener or followers, listeners consumption,

Joe: 00:31:34

some combination of that. And they're like, reviews don't help, but it's

Joe: 00:31:34

just this thing that has permeated the hive mind, I guess, of like,

Joe: 00:31:34

oh, reviews obviously means better ranking.

Mark: 00:32:41

And it came as well, like I said, part of the launch phase for a lot

Mark: 00:32:41

of the gurus and so on. I think the challenge was it was attributed to

Mark: 00:32:41

rankings, which I thought was interesting, as opposed to just, it might get

Mark: 00:32:41

someone to click and have a look at your podcast. So someone's written

Mark: 00:32:41

a review about it that's positive. Like, we get that aspect of it, but

Mark: 00:32:41

maybe we sat with the foremost expert on this. If only someone had a system

Mark: 00:32:41

that would cheque my podcast reviews. Luckily, such a thing exists. Come

Mark: 00:32:41

on, give us a skinny Daniel, you know all about this. What do reviews

Mark: 00:32:41

do?

Daniel: 00:33:16

Yeah, I created the service called my podcast reviews. It's now called

Daniel: 00:33:16

podgagement. And while I would love it if getting more ratings and reviews

Daniel: 00:33:16

did make your podcast rank better, because that'd certainly be better

Daniel: 00:33:16

for my software, that's just not the case. I have tracked this for

Daniel: 00:33:16

years and I can see that in the charts, especially you look at the top podcasts,

Daniel: 00:33:16

and if you actually click through and see the number of ratings and

Daniel: 00:33:16

reviews that they have, you'll see that it does not coincide with their

Daniel: 00:33:16

position in the chart. I've seen sometimes a podcast will shoot to

Daniel: 00:33:16

number one and it has a dozen ratings, and maybe one of those has a review

Daniel: 00:33:16

on it, and then maybe the number ten has a couple of thousand. There

Daniel: 00:33:16

is no correlation there. But I love what Joe said. It is really about

Daniel: 00:33:16

how you use your ratings and reviews. It's engagement, it's social proof.

Daniel: 00:33:16

It gives you opportunities to learn things about your show, learn things

Daniel: 00:33:16

that you can improve. It gives you special stuff that you can use in

Daniel: 00:33:16

your marketing material. You could use it to figure out what you need

Daniel: 00:33:16

to focus on with your podcast, but it's not going to help you rank better.

Daniel: 00:33:16

It might help someone who has already clicked into your podcast to decide,

Daniel: 00:33:16

oh yeah, this looks interesting enough to cheque it out. So it might help

Daniel: 00:33:16

someone convince, but it's not going to attract them. But it's still really

Daniel: 00:33:16

fun to have. And that's what I think we should focus on with reviews is

Daniel: 00:33:16

to engage your audience with them, not to try to rank better. That comes

Daniel: 00:33:16

as a reward of engaging your audience.

Mark: 00:34:50

Better engagement is huge, and it should be the thing that we all focus

Mark: 00:34:50

on. I totally agree, and I think obviously your pivot to pog engagement

Mark: 00:34:50

is testament to that as well. There's a huge space there that can be worked

Mark: 00:34:50

within to help shows grow in almost, I don't want to say an easy win,

Mark: 00:34:50

but what I would suggest is that probably most shows aren't really

Mark: 00:34:50

doing that much to engage fans, even though they think they're doing a

Mark: 00:34:50

lot to engage their fans. So I think this is a fascinating space to be

Mark: 00:34:50

in. And yeah, applaud you for pivoting that and sort of not necessarily

Mark: 00:34:50

pivoting, but adding to my podcast reviews and building on top of it.

Mark: 00:34:50

Danny, I once got a review that just said, thanks for that, mate. Why

Mark: 00:34:50

did you do it? No, I did. I got one. You guys who do email marketing will

Mark: 00:34:50

get this as well. You do the email marketing, whatever, you send an

Mark: 00:34:50

email out, whatever new episode. I also got on saying f off just to

Mark: 00:34:50

reply to that. But then the hilarity is they didn't what. All right, but

Mark: 00:34:50

what I'm getting at there is I do think that a lot of new podcasters,

Mark: 00:34:50

Joe, you probably see this a chunk, is that they can take the bad reviews

Mark: 00:34:50

to heart a heck of a lot, which can be quite a challenge. It can put

Mark: 00:34:50

people off. Especially one of your core missions is stopping people,

Mark: 00:34:50

podfading, helping them get past that milestone 7th episode. The last

Mark: 00:34:50

thing you want is a negative review within those first few episodes,

Mark: 00:34:50

derailing you, kicking you off the car, and you actually do podfed,

Mark: 00:34:50

do you ever speak to the people that you work with about this and just

Mark: 00:34:50

say, look, here's how we're going to handle this. Do you have anything

Mark: 00:34:50

in place for that?

Joe: 00:36:32

Yeah, I think it's mostly, I mean, like, I've been, you know, I've been

Joe: 00:36:32

making websites, or I had been making websites for 20 plus years. I've

Joe: 00:36:32

been on the Internet a long time. There are people who are just trolls.

Joe: 00:36:32

There's a guy who threatened me via email because I blocked him on my

Joe: 00:36:32

YouTube channel. And I'm like, these are just empty words. There's no

Joe: 00:36:32

consequence for being mean on the Internet. And this is what I try

Joe: 00:36:32

to tell people, right? There's like the scene from how I met your mother

Joe: 00:36:32

where Ted gets like dozens of glowing reviews from his students and then

Joe: 00:36:32

gets like one bad one and it ruins his day. And I try to tell people,

Joe: 00:36:32

look, you're not going to be for everybody. And there are just some

Joe: 00:36:32

people who are having a bad day and they're taking it out on you. Focus

Joe: 00:36:32

on the positives, because those are the people that you're helping, that

Joe: 00:36:32

you're making their day better. Forget about the myopic people who are just

Joe: 00:36:32

trying to be mean. You're going to get those and it's going to be fine

Joe: 00:36:32

if they provide real feedback, by all means. When someone was like,

Joe: 00:36:32

hey, you take too long to get to the actual meat of the episode, I

Joe: 00:36:32

started doing a cold open and telling people the top takeaways in the first

Joe: 00:36:32

three minutes. Right? When someone was like, you have too many ads.

Joe: 00:36:32

I was like, okay, I had four ads in a 40 minutes span. That feels,

Joe: 00:36:32

I mean, if you listen to certain podcast shows, you'll know that it's

Joe: 00:36:32

not a lot anymore. But it felt like a lot of the time. I'm going to dial

Joe: 00:36:32

back and I'm going to have a metric of one ad per 15 minutes of content.

Joe: 00:36:32

So real feedback definitely take to heart. But if someone's just like

Joe: 00:36:32

rubbish or f off or whatever, they've got hurt people hurt people, right?

Joe: 00:36:32

They've got something else going on and they're taking it out on you.

Mark: 00:38:13

I love that. Very sensible and I think very inspirational for people

Mark: 00:38:13

that have not quite been through that process as well. So thank you

Mark: 00:38:13

very much. We are going to stick a pin in it. Thank you for joining

Mark: 00:38:13

us on the second episode here of in and around podcasting. Mr. Daniel

Mark: 00:38:13

J. Lewis. Thank you for joining us, my friend.

Daniel: 00:38:31

You're very welcome. Thank you for having me. And I've enjoyed the conversation.

Daniel: 00:38:31

I enjoy listening and journeying with you around and in. Got that

Daniel: 00:38:31

mixed up in and around podcasting.

Joe: 00:38:42

I love it.

Mark: 00:38:42

No, we will welcome you back soon as well, sir. I'm sure we will. And

Mark: 00:38:42

Joe, always a pleasure and thank you once again for inspiring that

Mark: 00:38:42

first episode last week. It's great to have you on as the co host, and

Mark: 00:38:42

I'm sure we'll get you back as well.

Joe: 00:38:54

My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. This is a great show and a great

Joe: 00:38:54

format you guys have here. I love it.

Mark: 00:38:59

Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Danny. Thank you so much.

Mark: 00:38:59

And the stupid stuff was a good one this week, sir. I applaud thee.

Danny: 00:39:06

Thank you. I'm off to send an apology to Sam Seti.

Mark: 00:39:11

There was nothing butchered. Don't you worry. You did it justice. I

Mark: 00:39:11

assure you. I've been Mark askquith. Thank you so much for joining us.

Mark: 00:39:11

Grab us at in and aroundpodcasting.com at Inaround podcast over on the old

Mark: 00:39:11

X or the Twitter, whatever we're calling it these days. We'll be on

Mark: 00:39:11

YouTube because we're a very modern set of people. And of course you

Mark: 00:39:11

can get it inaroundpodcasting.com slash listen. Until the next time,

Mark: 00:39:11

look after yourself. We'll see you soon. You.