Sam Sethi: And if we get it right then we will.
There is now one killer feature which I can tell you about in a minute, but that's the killer feature that I think will switch us all.
Neil McPhedran: Welcome to Continuing Studies, a podcast for higher education podcasters to learn and get inspired.
I'm Neil McPhedran, founder of Podium Podcasts, an agency for higher education podcasters.
Jennifer-Lee: And I'm Jennifer-Lee, and I'm the founder of Jpod Creations, podcasting is broadcasting.
And we want you to know you're not alone.
In fact, there are many of you higher ed podcasters out there.
And we can all learn from each other.
Neil McPhedran: That's right, Jen.
And don't forget to join the community on higheredpods.com.
So in this episode, Jen, we are going to continue our journey into Podcasting 2.0 that we started back in episode 25 with James Cridland.
Jennifer-Lee: I'm so excited about this because James turned me on to Podcasting 2.0 and now we're talking to someone building a Podcasting 2.0 app and my mind is gonna be blowing because I am now such a supporter of Podcast 2.0.
I'm jumping on that bandwagon.
So,
Neil McPhedran: Choo choo.
Jennifer-Lee: What?
Choo choo.
I love it.
Bandwagon.
No, that's a train, not a bandwagon.
I don't know what a bandwagon makes.
A sound?
Actually, that's a good question.
Neil, what kind of sound does a bandwagon make?
Neil McPhedran: I don't know.
That's another podcast.
Jennifer-Lee: That's another podcast.
Anyways, uh, we're exploring a podcast 2.0 app.
For people who are doing Podcasting 2.0, we want them listening on the apps and playing nicely with each other.
Who better talk to, of course, Sam Sethi, who is knee deep in building one.
It's a podcast 2.0 app called TrueFans, and he's also James lovely co host.
We were kind of getting the dirt on James yesterday, which I kind of like, and he's the co host of Pod News Weekly Review.
Neil McPhedran: Excellent.
And remember that we're also continuing our 2.0 segments.
And today we're going to feature and I'm going to talk about the OP3 Prefix Analytics Service.
Jennifer-Lee: And I have no clue what that is.
So I'm going to have to listen.
So Neil's teaching me as well as all of you.
Neil McPhedran: Great.
Let's get into it.
Jennifer-Lee: Let's get started..
Neil McPhedran: Sam, thanks for joining us today.
Jennifer-Lee: Thank you for inviting me.
Very excited.
Neil McPhedran: So Sam, why don't you just quickly give us a bit of an introduction about yourself as well as, you have a specific role in the Podcasting 2.0 space, I believe.
Sam Sethi: Ah, yes.
So, okay.
CEO of TrueFans, which is a new Podcasting 2.0 app.
I also co host Pod News Weekly with James Cridland, the goat of the industry, I like to call him.
He calls himself many other things, but I call him that.
And I, for want of a better reason, I am the Podcast Standard Project Chief Evangelist.
We can unpack what that means later on.
Jennifer-Lee: I'm loving your title.
I was like, how do you get a title like that is what I want to know?
And what does it mean?
Sam Sethi: You make it up and you tell everyone what you want it to be, and then they go, oh, okay, you can have that one.
Jennifer-Lee: We need to make new titles, uh, Neil.
Neil McPhedran: Well, I don't know.
I think that Sam is taking on a bit of a role with that title as well too, so.
So we had James on and we went deep into what Podcasting 2.0 is and some of the amazing features and opportunities it brings to the podcast ecosystem, but off the top, before we get into TrueFans and all the amazing things you're building there, I'd love to just start with getting your take on why our audience, higher education podcasters, should be thinking about embracing and adopting Podcasting 2.0.
Sam Sethi: So 2.0 to me, let's look at the problems in podcasting in general.
Discovery, I think, is a well known problem.
If there's four million podcasts, getting another one into the pool and finding out who or what it is, is really hard.
Interactivity is the other one, and monetization is the third one.
So I tend to focus on those three.
So when you look at discovery, what Podcasting 2.0 has tried to do is bring out, let's look at some of the low hanging fruit, things like the person tag.
Okay, who the hell is this host?
What do they look like?
How can I connect with them better?
So the person tag gives me that little, you know, imagery.
Um, maybe I want to look at chapters, break this podcast down.
Maybe I want a transcript.
So some of the 2.0 tags, features, um, metadata, are ways, I think, of really helping.
listeners get to know and find out more about a podcast.
In terms of discovery, then there are many other things that we're building in that make it easier.
But I think the first and foremost is, you know, who's, who's the host?
What do they look like?
Who's the co host?
Who's the guest?
Can I leave them a comment?
And you know, those things really help when you're trying to get to know a new podcast.
Things like trailers are great.
That was one of the things that started to come out very early from Podcasting 2.0.
So can I put out a three minute trailer to tell people what my podcast looks like.
And then you get into some of the more, what I call, very complex ideas that have to be made simpler around monetization.
Jennifer-Lee: Do you think that a lot of it also has to do with expectations?
Because obviously, we can create all this stuff and make it a little bit easier to find.
But I think a lot of people, and you said the M word, they just start a podcast and they're like, I'm gonna monetize tomorrow.
So we can make all the tools in the world, but we have to work hand in hand with them.
Sam Sethi: Yeah, I think monetization, if your goal is to monetize first, then you're going to podfade very fast.
I think you have to have a passion and that passion comes across in how you present.
You can fake it for a while but I don't think you can fake it all the time and I think you will very very quickly get bored of your own podcast if you don't have a natural passion.
If all it is is about making money there's probably better and easier ways to make money, if money is all that you want.
Neil McPhedran: So tell us about TrueFans.
What have you been building?
Why are you taking on this giant task of building a new podcast app?
Don't we, aren't we good with Spotify and Apple and YouTube?
Sam Sethi: We are, no.
I wish you'd told me that two years ago and I would've gone, yes, you are right.
I would've gone home and got two years of my life back.
I think what it was, my background is technical.
I love technology.
I got asked by somebody else to start building something with them.
At the time I had a radio station that I owned and ran, and I was doing podcasts with James, I was getting more involved in what this new thing called Podcasting 2.0 was, and I thought, oh this is really cool.
I started building this out, and they then abandoned ship, and I went, actually, I quite like this.
So I kept building, and fundamentally, I think what we're trying to do is push the boundaries of where podcasting is to, you know, give users another way of looking at it.
Now, I think what we're going to find, because again, one of my backgrounds, I used to be the product manager at a company called Netscape, if anyone remembers Netscape.
Neil McPhedran: Yep.
Sam Sethi: So, I was in the browser wars, I remember HTML, and I remember fighting Microsoft.
And I feel like I'm in the podcast wars against Apple and Spotify.
And, and, at the moment, Spotify is winning it, really are winning it.
They're killing it right now.
Apple, I think, are fading.
I really do.
I think they're struggling really to find their niche.
I mean, they're not going to struggle because they're the default monopoly on the iPhone.
But, I think they're struggling.
So, they should try, like they did recently, embrace more of the Podcasting 2.0 tags.
They embraced transcripts recently, and they've got chapters, and I think they could be the open standards champion to the closed Spotify proprietary platform.
That's the role I'd love Apple to take, whether they'll take it or not.
And so, in the absence of Apple, there's a whole bunch of us.
TrueFans is one, but there's Fountain, Podverse, Podfriend.
Podcast Guru.
Um, lots of us are trying to build out apps.
Now it's hard, I'm not going to lie, you know, trying to push the rock up the hill to A, get people to switch from one of those two big platforms.
And then of course, YouTube comes along on the side and decides they're going to play in podcasting as well.
So you've got that challenge.
Then you've got the challenge of making people understand what are these new tags and how do they use them.
And hosts don't want to implement them because, you know, when you speak to a host like Buzzsprout or, uh, let's say RSS Blue, oh, they go, okay, we've put the person tag in.
And their customer support person goes, hey, I put the person tag in, in my hosting app, but I went to Spotify and it wasn't there.
Or I went to Apple and it didn't appear.
And then they go, why, why, what's going on?
And they go, no, no, no, you need one of these newer apps.
Oh, I don't want to use them yet.
No, no, no, I'm very happy in my little world.
So chicken, meat, egg, right?
How do we get tags put in by hosts when the big behemoths won't support them?
And that middle ground is really where apps like TrueFans come in to try and show what the future of podcasting might look like if all these new features are enabled.
Jennifer-Lee: So this is the thing that I was just talking to Neil, I grapple with.
Because after talking to James, I'm like a 2.0 believer now.
I didn't understand what it was, but he made it so clear.
Now I'm like praising him and loving it.
But this is the thing, you have Spotify, which is closed and they're doing their own thing.
And people know it because of the brand and everything like that.
And then you have all the people doing the 2.0 stuff, and people who are new into podcasting are getting a little bit confused.
So how do you get them on board with all the 2.0 stuff?
Like you said, when some of the other players are not necessarily playing in that sandbox and they're big.
Sam Sethi: I don't think you can force them into it.
I think you have to show them value in whatever mechanism that is, right?
So if I want to leave a comment on a podcast that's only on Apple Podcasts, how do I do it?
I can't do it, right?
There is no way to do it.
If I want to find out what you two guys look like on your podcast, well, sorry, you're not famous, SmartLess, you know, A listers.
So unfortunately, you know, not far off, but nearly there.
But it's in the behest of Apple to allow you to have your images on your podcast.
So if you then say, well, actually, by the way, if you go over to one of these apps, you'll get all these extra features from us.
Then that's the value.
Now, the first values were, hey, you can get chapters.
So in the chapter, you'll get links from the things we talk about in the show, and you'll get some cover art in the chapters that will tell you more about what we're talking about.
So that's that secondary screen if you want it.
And again, if you want the transcript.
So a lot of those early dual tags that gave value, were the ones that we think will make new users say, you know what?
I'm going to give it a try.
I'm going to switch out of that Apple thing for a bit.
And I'm going to go over here.
It's not an easy one.
Now I'm not saying, you know, we've got an easy win here, but I do think we have the right direction.
I've seen it before.
As I said, in the browser wars, it takes a while for that, that rock to reach the top of the hill, but when he gets there and goes down the other side, momentum really does kick in fast.
Jennifer-Lee: I think when people understand it too, and that's the thing, is like James needs to come and talk to everybody because as soon as he told me about it, I was like, yeah.
So maybe that that's his mission.
Send him out to talk to every individual podcaster.
Sam Sethi: I think he does, doesn't he?
Doesn't he do that anyway already?
Jennifer-Lee: Already.
Just get him to knock on doors.
Neil McPhedran: I think as, as podcasters, part of our job though is, and I just don't hear this enough, is directing our audiences towards trying some of these new apps.
And, and, you know, this is something we've made a concerted effort to do with this podcast and we will keep doing is, is pointing our audience towards other apps to try.
And then our audience has all of their podcast audiences and, and they can, and they can do it.
So, I think part of our mission is, is to, more like where Jen is on her journey.
So I was further along, uh, now you're on board and now the job is now, okay, get more of these evangelists and then we can start to get, um, us talking to our audiences about trying these, these apps, et cetera.
I think that's, that must be part of it.
Any thoughts around that, Sam?
Sam Sethi: Yeah, I agree.
Look, you get the geeks, people like me who, who build stuff, and we are the first on board, right?
And then we, we try and explain it to the early adopters and the early adopters to explain it to their audience.
Then, so on and so forth.
I don't think right now we've got a killer feature yet.
And that's, that's the thing I'd like to say right.
We haven't really individually come up with this, oh my god, I must switch moment, right?
There isn't one of those yet.
I think what we are beginning to see though, is that where most of the apps are focused on podcasting, most of the apps now have to go broader.
And what I mean by that is we've started to see music, we've started to see courses, films, audiobooks, all delivered via RSS, but all being sort of aggregated together under Podcasting 2.0 apps.
And that's the, that's the beauty of where we're going with it all.
We're trying to create a aggregated view of digital content.
So that if you want to listen to music like Spotify, but it happens to be an independent music artist, not Taylor Swift or, you know, Bruno Mars.
If you want to listen to podcasts.
Yeah, it may not be Joe Rogan.
Yes, we have Joe Rogan, but it's probably likely you're going to listen on Spotify.
So, but you know, if you want independent podcast artists, then that's where you come.
Courses is a great one.
I mean, again, talking about higher education, we've now got this new tag called medium equals and medium equals books, courses, film.
So what it allows you to do in your RSS is set that medium and that basically tells the app what type of podcast you're producing.
And then the UI can be adapted to that podcast.
So for example, with Barry, um, Podhome over in Holland, we did an example, he put out a course, Microsoft Azure course.
And a bit like podcasts will be the latest episode at the top.
Well, that would make no sense to have the latest lecture at the top, so you reverse it like you would an audio book, so lecture one, two, three, four.
And then you make it so that you can either say you can't listen to the next, you know, we've done it, so you can't listen to the next episode until you finish the last one.
Because it's a course in this case.
Or you might add the monetization element where you can pay for the course.
So we're looking at how we can broaden the appeal of one app to cover more than just podcasting.
And that may be the reason why people switch.
Jennifer-Lee: I think that's brilliant because I have a client here in Vancouver that's a university and they started their podcast, not to just kind of obviously showcase to the university.
They also use it, uh, within the university, with the students.
They actually bake their case studies into their lessons plan.
So then the kids have to listen to it.
Or not kids, young adults, I don't know.
Whoever's taking university, have to listen to it to do the course.
So I feel like that's another element that you could use this in.
Sam Sethi: Yeah, and I think what we are also seeing, so TrueFans is one of those that is pushing very hard.
So we've just built a blogging platform in, we've just built a ticketing and event platform.
And so the idea is now as a podcaster, okay, so you're listening to my podcast, oh by the way, next week I'm going to be in Seattle at this bar, come and join me here, get some tickets while you're listening, right?
Oh, where do I have to go?
Ticketmaster somewhere?
No, no, no, right in the app.
Here now, exactly.
Then you go, oh, by the way, um, I've got a merch store.
Oh, great.
Okay, dip in and get me a coffee or get me a t shirt and support me, right?
And then finally, you know, we're looking at all the, all the other areas that we can help monetize, not just around advertising or, you know, through host read ads.
So again, I think when we start to aggregate all this stuff together and it becomes simple, and that's the key.
Complexity is failed simplicity, and we have to make this simple so that people go, they're not thinking about the technology.
The technology is hidden and it just works.
So we're getting there.
We're not there yet, but we are getting there.
And I think that's what we're trying to do.
And I know that the other apps in the podcasting 2.0 space are trying to do as well.
And if we get it right, then we will.
There is now one killer feature, which I can tell you about in a minute, but that's the killer feature that I think will switch us all.
Jennifer-Lee: That's a good radio teaser there.
I can tell that's your background.
Neil McPhedran: Jen's background is radio.
So at some point in time, she's got to bring that into every one of our episodes here.
Jennifer-Lee: You're just jealous, so it's fine.
Sam Sethi: Leave him hanging, leave him hanging through the ad.
Neil McPhedran: There we go.
Okay.
We promised an update on our journey to infuse Podcasting 2.0 into Continuing Studies and here we go.
So podcasting, just a reminder, Podcasting 2.0 is making podcasting better for audiences, podcasters and developers with a set of new features and standards to make podcasting better for all of us.
So in this episode, this little segment here, I'm going to talk about the OP3 Prefix Analytics Service.
OP3 stands for Open Podcast Prefix Project and it's a free open source prefix analytics service committed to open data and listener privacy.
Something that we higher ed podcasters should be embracing and love.
Best is, it's easy to set up and there's no signup.
There's no login required.
Essentially what we're doing is we're pre pending, I know it's a crazy term, but we're pre pending the OP3 Prefix into our podcast URL, into our feed, and then that starts measuring downloads.
It's really easy.
Instructions are included in the show notes, and it's about adding the prefix.
There can be more.
If you've already got Chartable or something else in your feed, no problem.
It's easy to add another one.
There's no limit.
So this is an addition.
And then once you've added that prefix, you're up and going, and then you can start measuring your show.
And OP3 then provides this free public stats page with industry standard podcast download metrics, and it's all detailed.
It's really good.
There's actually really good stuff in there.
We use this instead of using our hosting platform analytics.
So we work with, I think six or seven different hosting platforms.
This is a great way that it standardizes it and it just creates a level play field, which again, I think is fabulous for a higher ed podcaster.
So what are some advantages of it?
Well, I got three big ones here.
One, as I just mentioned, standardized analytics.
So it's a way, that this OP3 is a way to provide standardized analytics for consistency, reliability.
It's a common framework for us all to work from.
And we're apples to apples versus our various hosting platforms might have different things going on.
And it's not apples to apples.
Two, transparency and trust.
This is an open source project.
Open source really lends us well to higher education.
And it promotes transparency, as I mentioned before, in data collection and in reporting.
So there's a real trust level there as well.
Three, interoperability, big mouthful, and flexibility.
So, it's designed to work with a wide range, actually, I think all hosting platforms.
I haven't come across one yet that it doesn't work with, should work with all of them.
And this flexibility allows us as podcasters to integrate this seamlessly into our existing workflows.
We're not locked into some ecosystem.
We change hosts.
No problem.
We've still got our standardized stats, our analytics.
It's agnostic from the hosting platform, which is, which is great.
So once again, we'll drop links to the OP3 setup page in our show notes, as well as all the instructions.
We're also going to put in there, the link to the OP3 stats page for Continuing Studies.
We're opening the kimono.
You'll be able to see all of our stats right there.
And you can see how everything is sorted, how it's been built.
It's really great.
Can't say more positive things about it.
Send your questions my way.
Our email is in the show notes.
And if you're doing it, if you onboard it, please let us know.
We'd love to hear and to check it out.
I've done this with a whole bunch of podcasts.
If you've got any questions, send them my way.
Okay, now back to our interview with Sam.
You know, like all those things you talk about, Sam, I think as I put my higher education podcaster hat on, and like so many of those features just feel so great for their higher education space.
Courses, like the people part of academia and who they are is such an important part of academia.
Events, like so on and so forth.
So it's like the opportunity for this corner of the podcast, uh, world, I feel is ripe, especially.
And so I think, you know, I'm, I'm hoping we can encourage a bit of a drive forward for, and maybe more of the higher education podcasters can be a part of this.
So if someone out there is listening, how could they, I want to go back to your feature here, but I just sort of, while we're on this point,
I know I'm hanging on a cliff right now.
I need to know.
I know, I know.
I'm getting there.
I'm not a radio background person.
I'm learning as we go here.
So like, how can people get involved with the, with the project?
I guess, like, how can people get involved more than just trying to onboard some of this stuff?
Like, I think like some of the folks that are in academia, this squarely makes sense for them to get involved.
Sam Sethi: Yeah.
I mean, there's a number of ways.
I mean, most of the community that are building this out or talking about it or thinking about it are on Mastodon, on this new social media platform.
Which you know, get yourself involved in a new space.
Again, we're throwing so much new tech around, but the Mastodon is the answer to Elon Musk in X, right?
Which was, that's just so horrible now.
Let's all abandon ship.
Where can we go?
And you've now got a ten year old technology that's sort of been scraped out and refined.
And everyone's gone, oh, that's where we need to go.
And it's Mastodon and it's ActivityPub.
And it's a distributed, decentralized social network.
That's, that's the best I can sort of say.
And so you go on it and all the geeks are there.
So you can join a Mastodon, uh, client and then just get in and get involved in the community and people start to talk.
If you're more inclined, there is a GitHub community, which I wouldn't advise, you know, the lay person to do.
It is more technical.
But if you just wanna just go to Podcasting2.0, um, and, and, you know, go in there, you can learn about the tags, you can learn about what's going on in that.
And then of course there's the Podcast Standards Project, which I'm involved in, which again, we're, we're refining and we're, we're, we're trying to put that out as a marketing and education front to this whole podcasting 2.0 space.
And you'll start to see a little bit, we've been working in the background on what's going to be done.
And in the autumn, you'll start to see a lot more about it.
Neil McPhedran: Okay Jen, now's your time to.
Jennifer-Lee: I just, I'm waiting.
And I was also like, oh he's speaking to me when you're like for the layman people.
I was like, okay I'm not doing that.
It's like, I'm dating myself here, but I need a book that's like Podcasting 2.0 for dummies.
You know that series?
That's what it really should be.
Okay.
Tell us about this new feature, because I'm dying.
Sam Sethi: So, a rising tide raises all boats, and the only way we're really going to be able to take on Apple and Spotify is to work together.
And so, the killer feature that we're all working towards is something called cross app comments.
The idea is fundamentally that, you know, Neil might be using Truefans, Jen you might be using Fountain, I might be using Podverse.
We're listening to the same episode.
Now, but each one of us leaves a comment.
Well, that's now siloed into that app, and that's just useless.
Now, imagine if you could then aggregate all those comments and then have them flow between the apps.
So it doesn't really matter which app you're using, but you can now have the audience choose their own app.
They don't have to have this one specific app.
Not only will that happen, but the comments will flow between them.
But also other things, you know, you might be able to say, oh, so Neil's followed Jen on Podfest.
Oh, okay.
Well, when you load up another app, it goes, Oh, by the way, you know, what your friend is also on here that you followed on the other app.
Why didn't you follow them here?
Or you can automate that.
So things like aggregating activity between the apps, so that it doesn't really matter which one you get onto, means that I think that's the way to try and break down the siloed nature of Spotify and Apple.
If you try and get a small app like Truefans or Fountain, we haven't got the deep enough pockets to take on those big boys.
But together, collectively, the eighteen or nineteen different Podcasting 2.0 apps can work together like a hive.
And that's how I think we, we get people to switch.
Because the value in the feature becomes really high.
Hey, I want to be able to talk to all my different people.
As a podcast creator, I want to know where my audience is.
I don't want to have to pre tell them.
You must be on Apple.
You must be on Spotify.
No, you can pick any app.
We will find you, listen to my podcast, and leave me a comment, and I get it, right?
And it'll all come to me.
So I think that's the killer feature that we're all looking towards, and that's not far off by the way.
So yeah.
Jennifer-Lee: That was worth the wait, and I'm excited for it.
Because right now I do feel like we need to work together.
There's so many different areas, and I do believe you should have your podcast on YouTube, but I also feel like sometimes people think, especially when they don't understand podcasting, they right away, they're like, Oh, YouTube, YouTube, YouTube.
And so I think it's so hard when we have all these different silos and like I said, the regular person is just like they just see one thing and they're like, oh, well, my podcast only has to be on YouTube.
And I was like, well, that's not a podcast.
You need to be on the other platforms.
But so many people think that.
And that's fine, because we all have to learn.
I'm not putting anyone down.
I didn't know all this stuff until I got into it, right.
Sam Sethi: So yeah, I think cross app comments is the first of many killer features that we'll bring out.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah, I think that's great.
I think right now, comments are such a mess.
You've got what you can pull out of Spotify.
You can tweak your question if you want, or you go with the, what is Spotify?
What did you think about this podcast?
Comments roll in there.
Comments roll, back to your point Jen, about YouTube.
That's actually, you know, built quite into YouTube, the comment feature.
So you get comments rolling in there.
You can get reviews off of Apple beyond just the ratings.
So you've got comments rolling in there.
And then you've got these, all these other apps, and then you've got, okay, well, I'm going to put stuff out on LinkedIn or Twitter or whatever.
So it's really tough.
I actually think, like most podcasters don't pay attention to a lot of that stuff.
And so someone might put a comment into Podchaser, for example, and just twists in the wind and there's no, like someone who's a listener that's going like, hey, this is what I think, or hey, this is my question.
And it's just like such an opportunity for a two way conversation, which is really what's difficult about a podcast.
We've been doing Continuing Studies for coming on a year now, and we're just now starting to see comments roll in.
It takes time.
You feel like you're kind of like talking into the air here.
And then, it's nice to sort of get that back.
I agree with you, Sam.
Like it's going to be a killer thing to be able to sort of pull all that together, that you can see a central place for comments and for the conversation and for engagement, essentially.
Sam Sethi: Comments is just one element, right, but we have this awful metric called downloads, right, which is an awful, awful industry metric because it's a total, I wouldn't say it's a total lie, but it's a lie, right.
Because a download doesn't equal a listen, a listen doesn't even mean how far.
So the new metrics that we're focused on are listen time percent completed, right.
And those two new metrics are much more valuable to a podcaster.
So how long did you listen to my podcast?
Oh, great.
And what percentage did you complete?
So James has got a three minute podcast, right?
So if all you did was, how long did you listen?
Three minutes.
Well, it doesn't sound like you listened too long.
Oh, that was hundred percent of the show.
Oh, great.
How long did you listen to this podcast?
I listened to sixty percent of it or eighty percent of it, whatever.
So time is an interesting metric, but percent completed is also a complementary metric that goes with it.
Now, by the very nature that these apps all will work together, we can share the listen time metrics between each other.
We can share the amount of percent completed.
So suddenly, oh, this user was using Podverse, and that one's using Truefans and that one was using Fountain.
But me as the podcast creator, I need that aggregated view to be able to go to the advertiser and say, do you know what?
Nine hundred people listened to my podcast, and they on aggregate listen to seventy percent of my show.
Bang, bang, bang.
That is the value of where we're going, not from what we call the Podcasting 1.0 metrics of downloads, which really are useless.
Jennifer-Lee: I'm so glad you said that because that's the one thing that aggravates me, especially when people are first starting out on their podcast and they're not looking at the time listen, they're just like so focused.
They're like, oh, well, I only have twenty listeners.
And I was like, yeah, but those twenty listeners are listening to a hundred percent of every single episode that you release.
How many people can say they have twenty people that listen to everything they say?
Because I'm sure everyone will know that, like, if you have kids or a husband or a wife, they don't listen to everything that you say either.
So I was like, you have a great audience.
And I think sometimes that gets diminished in podcasting opposed to other mediums.
Because the audience is stronger and more dedicated, because if they are focused and listening to a hundred percent of your episode and you have a smaller cohort of numbers versus a large, like, say you have millions, but they're only listening to, like, thirty percent.
That's not really an engaged audience.
Sam Sethi: No.
And, you know, advertising, James and I disagree slightly, but advertising, I think, is also, um, the emperor's new clothes.
We will sell the concept of advertising.
Yes, come and do it.
This, this podcast got ten thousand downloads and therefore put your advert in.
And we know, I did a test in L.A., put your hand up if you skip forward past the ads.
Every hand goes up, right?
So we know the audience is skipping.
So, there is no metric value.
And even if you could, the metrics that are involved today, going back to advertisers, doesn't tell them did the third ad actually get listened to because there's no listen time metric, right?
So these new metrics have to be put in place so that actually we can go back and give advertisers better metric reporting.
Yep.
This podcast was listened to, and eighty percent of it was listened to.
And your ad was listened to.
Now, um, the last part of this, and this is the one that probably might blow a few people's minds is, um, we want to pay you to listen to ads.
So, so let me try and explain.
So one of the things we're working on, this is where it's probably still a few years out, is a monetization strategy based around micropayments.
It doesn't really matter what the micropayment is.
It's just an ability to give a point zero zero zero one of a dollar rather than giving, um, you know, a five dollar payment.
And then PayPal and Stripe taking half of it, right.
So micro payments is a mechanism for, um, fans to pay creators instead of a heart like, or a thumbs up.
And that's, that's a metric model we've built.
We've also built a model where you can be playing music within your podcast.
And it's called wallet switching.
So the idea is that I'm paying to listen to Jen's podcast.
She's playing some music.
The wallet will now, the payments will switch from Jen's wallet straight to the artist's wallet for the three or four minutes that the artist plays.
And then it automatically switches back.
The user doesn't need to do anything.
The technology does it all for you.
So the final part of that model is now imagine that you can have what we call negative payments.
Um, they call negative SATs.
So you have a trailer.
Remember we talked about discovery.
I want to put my new podcast out to the world.
How do I do it?
Well, I might have a massive marketing budget.
Well, lucky you, most of us don't.
But if you don't have a marketing budget, but yeah, maybe have a hundred dollars, you can set that aside as your, your advertising budget and say, if you listen to my trailer, I will pay you some micro payments for listening.
For your time and attention.
I value it and I will give you some money.
Micro money, but it's money nonetheless.
The user then can choose how long they want to listen to your trailer.
They may listen to ten percent, fifty percent or a hundred percent.
But you actually get the chance to get them to become your advocates if they're listening to it and they go, oh, I love that trailer by Neil.
Great.
I can't wait for the first show.
Subscribe.
I'm ready for it when the next one comes down.
And then the first episode drops and suddenly you've got an audience, right?
You're not starting from scratch.
So that negative or the creator paying the listener is the first step.
We then built the next part, which is the advertiser now in the middle of your podcast, instead of you skipping it.
The money now goes from your wallet, where you were paying the creator.
It now comes from the advertiser to pay you, the listener, for your time and attention.
So while you listen to the ad, you get paid.
Now it might be small change, but it's the start.
So you get paid a little bit of money.
You then go, oh, no, another Casper matress.
No, I can't do it.
Skip forward.
So what you're doing is going, I'm valuing my time and attention, and you're valuing my time and attention.
I will stay with this ad as long as I find value, the value in the content, then value in the monetization.
And at that point, the advertiser gets really good metrics back.
How long did Jen listen to my ad?
Well, she skipped at ten.
How long did Neil listen to the ad?
He listened to eighty percent.
Great.
Sam listened to a hundred percent.
Well, where am I going to do the follow up email to?
Not Jen, she's clearly not interested in our advertising, but Neil and Sam seem to be really interested.
You know, so, again, what we're doing is being able to give rock solid metrics back.
And you know, that old adage, uh, half my marketing, I don't know where it goes.
Well, in this model, all of your marketing is measured because you know, the minute you skip, you stop paying.
And when you stop paying, you're not wasting a single penny of your marketing.
So this whole metric around, what do we do with advertising?
How do we know if it's going to work?
Who's listening to it?
Well, all the new stuff in Podcasting 2.0 that we're working on, listen time, percent completed, value paid, and switching wallets and reversing payments, all of that sounds mad and mental right now, but I promise you, it's the stuff that we're working on that maybe in a year's time will be super simple.
And, uh, that's the way we think forward that we can beat the likes of Apple and Spotify.
Jennifer-Lee: Wow.
I'm blown away.
Neil McPhedran: Speaking to the future here.
Yeah, this is good.
Before we jump, I did want to focus in on one tag, which is the location tag, and which I think is a really interesting one for higher ed podcasters.
Could you just quickly explain that one for us?
Because this is one that we're going to try to get our listeners to start to use a little bit more.
Sam Sethi: So James actually came up with this tag suggestion originally.
Um, and James wanted it to be, what I would have actually preferred it to be called the subject, but he called it location.
So the idea was it was where you were talking about.
So if you had a podcast that you're recording in Dallas, but the actual subject was the Louvre in Paris then actually the location tag should be the Louvre in Paris.
It shouldn't be your location in Dallas.
The problem is that most people didn't understand that nuance and they started to put in their recording location, not their subject location.
And so we've had a long conversation and there is an extension now to the location tag so that you can put in both your recording location, and also your subject location.
And I think that's critical because James probably gave you an example.
If you wanted to find a podcast about train spotting, right?
And, uh, James likes train spotting.
He does.
Um, so if you've wanted to find a podcast about train spotting, you could put that into a search engine using the location tag and up would come podcasts talking about trainspotting.
But equally, I want to use a location tag to be able to help other podcasters discover people locally near them, and so that they can do meetups.
Or it just doesn't have to be, you know, fifty people.
It could be five people meeting in a cafe.
Hey, should we meet up next week?
We're all in this location.
And I think one of the best ways that we will all help each other, going back to what he said earlier, Neil, you know.
The geeks are going to tell the early adopters.
The early adopters are going to tell the next generation, next, next, next.
And those meetups could be where people have got a little bit more knowledge than the people down the road, can help them understand what Podcasting 2.0 is.
And not from the uber technical thing I was talking about recently, but just add your person tag and which host supports the person.
Oh, go to Buzzsprout.
Go to RSS.com.
Go to, you know, Blubrry.
Great.
I can put my, oh, got it.
Where will it appear?
Over there, there, there.
Oh, lovely.
Thank you.
I don't need to understand the madness of what Sam said, but I can understand the simplicity of the early parts of Podcasting 2.0.
At least I'm on the track to understand the latest stuff.
Jennifer-Lee: So you are the geek, Neil, teaching me, is what I just took from that.
I'm the early adopter, you're the geek.
There we go.
Neil McPhedran: There you go.
Well, Sam, this has been great.
Thanks for coming on board.
If anyone has any further questions, they want to ask you about TrueFans or Podcasting 2.0, or they want to get involved a little bit more, how can they find you?
Sam Sethi: Super simple.
Just email me at Sam@TrueFans.fm.
You can find me on X at Sam Sethi.
On most social media at Sam Sethi.
So LinkedIn, wherever.
Yeah, just reach out.
I, one of my roles as Podcast Standards Project Evangelist is, is to help people, right.
And part of it is I'm, I'm going onto The Podcast Academy to put up a series of seminars.
So that's going to be great.
At Washington and other events, we will be doing Podcasting 2.0 tracks.
So the idea is that, you know, we'll start off, we're getting some of the, you know, hosting companies and the apps together, and just get them to talk about what they're doing or how, how they work.
And then, you know, hopefully over time we will start to educate broader the market and that's the role.
Neil McPhedran: Well, that's great.
I'm glad to hear that there's going to be tracks at the upcoming podcast movement, 'cause having gone a number of times, it's conspicuously absent, Podcasting 2.0 is from the previous ones I've been at.
There'd be like one or two things, but nothing specific about it.
So I think if there's a content there and specific tracks for it, I think that's going to be super, super helpful for sure.
But yeah, thanks Sam.
Thanks for, uh, thanks for joining us today and helping us dig further into the world of Podcasting 2.0.
Jennifer-Lee: Thank you so much.
Sam Sethi: Lovely to meet you both.
Neil McPhedran: I don't know about you, Jen, but I learned a lot from Sam.
That was great.
Jennifer-Lee: Yeah, I, again, I'm a believer in Podcast 2.0 now.
I am on the bandwagon.
Neil McPhedran: I love it.
I thought it was just great how he, I know he called himself a geek and he was worried he went too geeky with us, but I don't think so.
I think that really what he did was he opened us up to this bigger opportunity of what's coming and what's possible.
I think there's so many amazing things that are super relevant for higher education podcasters.
Like he started talking about choruses, location tag, the, the people tag, so on and so forth.
There was so much, uh, good stuff in there that right away as a higher education podcaster, I was like, that makes sense.
We could use that one.
Jennifer-Lee: Yeah.
And I mentioned this earlier with him is the fact that I love the course idea because I have clients that bake in the podcast into their case studies.
So I think there's a lot of potential there as well.
But like to his point, as soon as everybody gets on and starts using all these features, then we're going to be able to get better and better and grow more, but everybody has to start using it.
All the platforms have to work together.
So let's get on it.
Let's make 2.0 happen.
Neil McPhedran: Yeah.
I think we need to get all of our audiences, this audience, if you're listening, starting to use some of these 2.0 apps, Try TrueFans.
We'll add into our show notes, more links to other apps that work really well, but this'll be the start.
If we can get our audiences starting to use these apps and we start to onboard these tags and we start to use things, then I think we're really gonna start to sort of push things forward and our audiences are going to be starting to look for it.
Once everyone starts using it, it's just going to make podcasting easier and easier because the other thing that he said, the biggest and hardest barrier for most people is getting their podcasts found.
So the way that we use all these different tools, the more of us using it, it's going to be a lot easier for future podcasters.
So that's a wrap on another great episode.
So thank you for tuning into the Continuing Studies Podcast, a podcast for higher education podcasters.
We hope you found this episode informative and inspiring.
If you enjoyed the show, we encourage you to follow and subscribe to our podcast on your preferred platform so you never miss an episode, but if you found this episode particularly valuable, please consider sharing it with your friends and colleagues who might be interested in higher education podcasts.
We also invite you to join your peers on a higher ed pods where you can connect with your other podcasters in higher education and learn from others in the field.
Thank you for being part of our community.
We look forward to continuing to bring you valuable insights and conversations around a higher education podcast.
See you in the next episode.