Sounds Profitable

Today on the show, Bryan Barletta speaks with Ma’ayan Plaut, who is the growth marketing manager at 3play media. They discuss what it means to create accessible and compliant podcast transcripts. Ma’ayan recently tweeted about the need for transcripts to include non-speech elements. Her tweet was instructive and contained practical information for podcast publishers. We expand upon her thread in this conversation, and go beyond it as well. We are moving towards a world in which we don’t simply consume podcasts by listening. Consumers will read podcast content, too; whether that’s because they prefer to read it or because they are d/Deaf or hard-of-hearing, or for a variety of other reasons. For those use-cases, and more, we need to find a way to make transcripts for available and accessible. Listen for:

  Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: transcripts should be vetted by a human. Even if AI gets us halfway there, it’s important to have the final version looked over by a real human. Why? Names like Ma’ayan Plaut and even Arielle Nissenblatt very rarely get AI transcribed the right way. Links:

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ICYMI: Warner Music launches a podcast network, Spotify weathers the storm, and personnel changes at Edison Research. Warner Music Group is dipping its toes into podcasting with its first network: Interval Presents. The new network’s slate promises a variety of content lead by popular musicians and celebrities who work with WMG.    “The initiative marks the first major music label to follow in Sony Music’s lead; Sony entered the podcast arena five years ago in May, 2017.”   WMG Senior VP of Digital Strategy & Business Development Allan Coye has stepped into the role of General Manager of Interval Presents content. CDO and EVP of Business Development Oana Ruxandra set the tone for what Interval Presents intends to accomplish.    She says, “There’s a hunger for more inclusive and authentic podcast content and, with Allan leading the charge, we’re thrilled to launch an audio platform that will connect with this growing audience and spotlight a breadth of voices and perspectives.”   While this might initially look like simply another company jumping into the field of celebrity podcasts, that itself is enough to help grow the industry. With more celebrity-hosted podcasts comes a higher chance of graduating those who only listen to music into full-fledged podcast listeners who seek out content beyond their initial introduction, be it with a Jason Derulo-hosted fiction podcast or a Lupita Nyong’o series on African diaspora.   ---   This week Spotify’s Q1 numbers became the subject of much discussion as they became public. On Wednesday Bloomberg’s Ashley Carman published “Spotify Tumbles as Investors Question Podcast Investments.”    “Spotify Technology SA has spent more than a billion dollars in an effort to become the No. 1 name in podcasting, but investors’ patience is wearing thin on how much that will cost.”    Carman’s article paints a cloudy sky for the big green dot with investors getting antsy at the amount of money invested in podcasting intended for long-term growth over short-term returns, including a gross margin of 25.2% that falls short of the 30 to 40% target. That said, both paid subscriptions and unpaid ad-supported users are up despite locking out Russian users and much-publicized Joe Rogan backlash. Sarah Perez writes for a TechCrunch article on the same subject this Wednesday:

“Despite losing 1.5 million users in Russia, Spotify’s premium subscribers grew 15% year-over-year in the first quarter to reach 182 million, largely in line with analyst estimates. Ad-supported users, meanwhile, grew 21% to reach 252 million.”

The #deletespotify movement, sparked by a transphobic conversation in his latest Jordan Peterson interview, a history of COVID-19 disinformation, and a compilation of him saying a racial slur lead to musicians and podcasters alike pulling their content from Spotify or threatening to cancel contracts. As Sarah Perez reports:    “But app store data at the time indicated rival streaming apps were not getting a boost from this latest PR headache, as Spotify’s app had continued to see millions of weekly downloads — a significantly larger figure than its nearest rivals — even amid the #deletespotify campaign on social media.”   That lack of attention to rival apps likely stings especially hard for Neil Young, a figurehead of the Rogan backlash who pulled all of his music from Spotify in protest of Rogan’s COVID disinformation. Young, a vocal critic of low-quality MP3 streaming on services like Spotify, also happened to be releasing high-quality versions of his discography on Amazon Music shortly after the much-publicized stunt.    As with all things, Spotify’s growth remains a complicated beast. Subscribers are up, stock value is down, all while successfully weathering a weeks-long PR storm.   ---   Last Thursday Spotify dropped an article on their official blog announcing Spotify’s big entrance into video podcasting.    Quoting the article, “Last fall, Spotify began activating Video Podcasts for creators on a limited basis. Since then, we’ve found that podcasters love having the option to accompany their audio with visual components, and fans love having the opportunity to more deeply connect with the content.”   As of Thursday creators in the US, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the UK gained access to the feature, as well as a handful of new features to help the transition for video podcasters with backlogs. The new system requires a podcast be hosted on Spotify’s service Anchor, meaning any existing video podcasts interested in trying out the service will either need to make a Spotify spinoff feed or wholesale transfer from their existing service to take advantage of this new feature.    Once integrated into Spotify the video podcasting appears to function identical to simply watching a video podcast on YouTube, with those who prefer pure audio able to leave the app or lock their phone to background the video.    Video in podcasting challenges an open ecosystem to consider themselves creators, agnostic of any one medium, while also pushing them into siloed solutions. Podcast-first creators exploring video as a channel is powerful, even if the current options dead-end into proprietary solutions. Spotify’s requirement that a show must be hosted on their own service. Anyone currently producing videos with their podcasts have to weigh the pros and cons of porting everything over into Spotify’s silo purely to have one more place to upload the same video content already going up on YouTube and social media.

There’s promise in the concept of podcasts-with-video, but current offerings are lacking as they all appear to exist to push an open podcasting world into producing siloed content.    ---   And finally, while we don't often cover personnel changes here on The Download, this one is important enough that we mention. Tom Webster has just today announced that he is leaving his position with Edison Research. But Tom and Edison will both still be with us in the podcasting industry. As Tom says in his newsletter, I Hear Things:   "My work with Edison is far from over, and we have established an agreement to partner on many things in the future."   So what will Tom be doing with his time? That's not been announced just yet, but again quoting from today's newsletter:   "I want to continue to work to establish a podcast industry: a place where established networks and independent podcasters alike have fair access to information, revenue, and opportunity. I think there are some structural issues in podcasting, and a some information arbitrage, as well. I want to work on both of these issues, and help to create the sandbox I wish to continue to play in for years to come.   I'm excited about what is next, and I'll have more to say on that in the next edition of I Hear Things, which isn't going away, by the way. Just as I am doubling down on podcasting, I am also going to be evolving I Hear Things into something very exciting, broad-reaching, and ultimately useful for podcasters of every stripe."   The podcast industry might be grateful for everything Tom has done at Edison Research to grow the platform, but I’m personally grateful for everything Tom has done for me. See what you may not know is that I have worked closely with Tom for five years at Edison Research. Now he’s said before that he wishes he could have been a better mentor, but to him I say: you did an incredible job. Clearly, your wisdom is invaluable and I’ve absorbed a lot, but it is your confidence in my abilities that has allowed me to face challenges I didn’t think I was capable of facing. Suggesting I take the lead on presenting research for the first time or asking for my advice as if I were the expert served as ammo to fight off my imposter syndrome. As you did for much of the podcast industry, you opened doors for me to bring my own passion projects to life, my own research on Latino and Black podcast audiences. You helped me evolve from a project coordinator to a Director of Research, and listen to me now, a host of a podcast. I don’t think there’s a better way to say that I’m forever grateful than on audio that will forever live in the world you’ve helped build. Thank you for everything.   ----   The Download is a production of Sounds Profitable. Today's episode was hosted by Gabriel Soto and Manuela Bedoya, and the script was written by Gavin Gaddis. Bryan Barletta and Evo Terra are the executive producers of The Download from Sounds Profitable. Special thanks to Ian Powell for his audio prowess

Ashley Carman's article on Spotify's earnings call: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-27/spotify-dodges-joe-rogan-controversy-forecasts-miss-estimates?sref=W6GJF3MSSupport I Hear Things! http://buymeacoffee.com/tomwebster
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Today on the show, Bryan Barletta speaks with Conor McKenna, director at LUMA Partners. They discuss how adtech in podcasting applies to adtech in other adtech-led companies. Listen in to learn about:

Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: Bryan and Conor don't agree about everything. And it makes for some interesting takeaways! Links:

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Today on The Download; data scraping is officially legal, recent Spotify purchases prove concerning for some, and what fiction podcasters can learn from their non-fiction cousins. Collecting data just got legally less questionable in the United States. On a Tuesday news roundup for ExchangeWire, Hanna Dillion covered a huge decision by the US court of appeals. The suit, brought by LinkedIn to prevent a rival company from scraping their publicly-available data, has ended with the Ninth Circuit of Appeals declaring the act of data scraping legal.  The act of scraping - using software to automatically collect data hosted on the public internet - is now legally defined as an act that is not classified as hacking with the court’s decision. Scraping, thus, does not violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1986.  The landmark ruling should come as a relief to academics, journalists, researchers, and archivists, for whom scraping publicly available information from the internet is an integral part of their day-to-day work. The decision, however, could also renew privacy and security concerns, as web scraping has been used for nefarious purposes in the past; in May 2021, several tech giants filed lawsuits against Clearview AI, a facial recognition startup which claimed to have scraped billions of social media profile photos, without the consent of users. What does this mean for the podcasting world? One can legally scrape data, but what they do with it remains a legally gray area. Scraping publicly-available RSS feeds for academic purposes is fine. Scraping those same feeds for email addresses with intent to spam anyone who isn’t using a certain company’s hosting service with offers to switch to said service is subject to other pre-existing laws. For more on the state of data scraping, see our March 11th episode coverage of a story about a similar lawsuit. Up next, in yet another recurring thread that has resurfaced: last Friday a Morning Brew article by Alyssa Meyers went live, titled “Spotify’s acquisition of podcast analytics firms has some in the industry concerned.”  The piece acts as an industry reaction to the February acquisition of Podsights and Chartable (see The Download’s February 18th episode for our coverage at the moment). In the interest of full disclosure, we must note one of the industry voices quoted by Meyers is Sound Profitable’s own Bryan Barletta.  The week after Spotify announced the acquisitions, Mike Kadin, CEO of podcast hosting and monetization platform RedCircle, told Marketing Brew it “had folks reach out to us from major publishers and ask if we have attribution technology. I’m not super worried about it, but it does sadden me to see more chunks of the ecosystem getting centralized.” It’s no secret the official position of The Download is pro-third party analytics to keep the industry honest and prevent further walled gardens of information in adtech. The concerns continue to be real and the industry will continue to fret until more options exist. Once again we return to highlighting the global nature of podcasting outside of English-speaking markets. On Saturday Luis Pablo Segundo, writing for Milenio, broke down the results of a recent study. The flashiest piece for our audience is the reveal that ad spending on podcasts in Mexico has risen fifty percent from 2019 to 2021, though it still represents a small market share in comparison to traditional radio.  Traditional radio is expected to reach an advertising revenue by 2025 of $480 million, 10.6 percent higher than what was recorded in 2021, while podcasting will remain almost 11 times lower at $44 million, according to consulting firm PwC. A quick note for our Spanish-speaking audience: this story, as well as every other story covered each week, is covered in our Spanish sister podcast La Descarga! Hosted by myself and Gabriel Soto. Before we leave the realm of global podcasting growth, a small bit of news from Canada. eMarketer’s Paul Briggs shared last Monday data predicting almost two-thirds of the Canadian population will listen to some form of digital audio by the end of 2022.  Last Thursday media critic and podcast producer Wil Williams guested on the Hot Pod newsletter with a column titled “What fiction podcasters can learn from nonfiction podcasters.”  Their piece aims to provide fiction podcast producers, aspiring and existing alike, tools to build stories with techniques that are second nature to their nonfiction cousins. Over three sections Williams explores story flow, following a thesis, evocative sound design while providing three examples of existing podcasts that best embody these traits.  But while fiction is finally getting its due, nonfiction is still considered the primary mode of storytelling in podcasting. This can cause some understandable contempt from fiction creators, but there's creative gold to be found in nonfiction. If you want your stories to have realistic goals, realistic sounds, and realistic characters, listening to real stories about real people can help you find those roots. Their piece heaps praise on high-quality nonfiction podcasts while also identifying what they do to be high quality. Podcasting needs more successful shows made by well-read producers. Williams effectively provides an entry-level reading list covering everything from a critically-acclaimed episode of Radiolab to the pilot of the hyper-niche podcast The McElroy Brothers Will Be in Trolls 2. Consider their nine to be an extended version of The Download’s occasional suggested reading sections. Knowing why and how podcasts work is the key to making more podcasts that work. For our final full story this week: Matt Deegan’s recent article “Tech Trying to Do Radio & Consistency.”  Posted on Wednesday to his Matt on Audio newsletter, Deegan circles back to the topic of live audio and interrogates why the trend has swiftly fallen out of public favor despite multiple platforms. A consistent trend Deegan notes, similar to that of Facebook quietly abandoning podcasting endeavors, is a lack of follow-through and consistency. The vast majority of radio’s success comes from consistency and I’d argue that most successful podcasts are consistent too. If you take out the short-run documentary series, the vast majority of podcasts at the top of the Apple Podcast charts are long-running shows (and that’s with an algorithm that focuses on new). Meanwhile, the majority of flagship podcasts and content creators meant to push new services, such as Spotify’s forgotten Podcasts with Music feature, have faded away months after launch. Flashy tech does not make a successful long-standing platform. The Download is a production of Sounds Profitable. Today's episode was hosted by Shreya Sharma and Manuela Bedoya, and the script was written by Gavin Gaddis. Bryan Barletta and Evo Terra are the executive producers of The Download from Sounds Profitable. Special thanks to Ian Powell for his audio prowess, and to our media host, Omny Studio.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Today on the show, Bryan Barletta speaks with Steve Wilson, chief strategy officer at QCODE Media. They discuss what it takes to get podcasts featured in major podcast listening apps, building relationships with podcast discovery platforms, and becoming a co-marketing partner.Listen in to learn about:

Here’s our favorite idea from this conversation: podcast publishers have an opportunity, when posting on social media, to elevate the relationships they have (or want to have) with podcast listening apps, by promoting the link to their show on Apple or Spotify or Castbox (we could go on all day).Links:

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This Week On The Download:  the IAB cites digital audio as the fastest-growing digital ad sector, Anchor language update embraces global podcasting, and Adweek launched their own podcast network. Let’s get started. Good news for those in the world of digital advertising: your efforts are working extremely well, according to the International Advertising Board. On Tuesday the IAB published an article titled https://www.iab.com/news/digital-advertising-soared-35-to-189-billion-in-2021-according-to-the-iab-internet-advertising-revenue-report/   Not the catchiest of headlines, but the article is full of good news.    “The growth is consistent with a recent study from Harvard Business School, commissioned by IAB, which showed the internet economy has grown seven times faster than the U.S. economy over the past four years and now accounts for 12% of the U.S. GDP.” Digital advertising in general might be up, but there’s a tiny bit of news for the world of podcasting. Digital video, social media, and search revenue are all trending upward but digital audio has outpaced them all. According to one of the IAB’s highlights, digital audio took home the highest year over year growth at 57.9%, totaling $4.9 billion.  There’s a lot changing in the world of advertising. Both this and previous episodes cover the small evolutions required to adapt to new tech, legislation, and industry standards. Despite it all, podcasts are still bringing in the money.    One of the big-picture stories we’ve been following on The Download for months is that of podcasting as a global medium, not just something for English-speaking markets. The biggest news on that front was posted last Thursday on the official blog of Spotify’s podcast hosting platform Anchor. As of Thursday, https://blog.anchor.fm/updates/anchor-web-localization?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2022-04-11

“One of our biggest goals is to ensure that creators everywhere have access to all the robust tools and features Anchor has to offer. And while creators around the world have been able to record, host, and grow their podcast on our platform, Anchor on web hasn’t always been available to everyone in their native language.” As podcasting grows its infrastructure needs to grow with it. Localizing websites built for a different language is difficult under the best conditions. A major player in the podcasting industry allowing sites built on their service to be built in the native language of thirty five languages is a big step forward in supporting a world where the idea of a podcast does not automatically default to something produced in English.   On Tuesday Al Mannarino, writing for thehttps://www.adweek.com/podcasts/.    “We are excited to announce the launch of the Adweek Podcast Network, the first-ever podcast network for advertising and marketing professionals, brand enthusiasts and anyone curious about what the heck that ad they saw was about.”    The new network is planned to feature twelve podcasts, featuring five new creations, four existing Adweek shows, and three pre-existing podcasts from Adweek partners.    “Through our partnership with Acast, the world’s leading independent podcast hosting platform, we’ll make sense of trends, tackle pressing challenges, and share top-tier insight to help you level up your career, creativity and strategy.”    Adweek joins an ever-growing group of media outlets, organizations, and others who’re capitalizing on the inherent cross-promotional capabilities of a network. More content, more inventory, and a shiny new delivery vehicle for their existing ad sales team. What’s not to love?   A changing of the guard is happening at Ad Results Media. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220412005775/en/%C2%A0Ad-Results-Media-Appoints-Co-CEOs-Steven-Shanks-and-Michael-Kropko. Chief revenue officer Steven Shanks and chief operations officer Michael Kropko are slated to replace Williams as co-CEOs.    Williams’ replacements aren’t newcomers to the industry, either. New co-CEO Steven Shanks laid out his bone fides:   ““I’m honored to have had the opportunity to learn from Marshall for the last decade. I’ve enjoyed purchasing some of the first podcast ads, negotiating some of the largest buys in the history of podcasting, developing 360-degree integrated ad concepts, building sponsorships from the ground up, and ultimately fueling the industry up to $2 billion in ad revenue. I’m thrilled to work with our team to further innovate and deliver performance for our clients.”    While ARM looks to the future with two new CEOs and a former as chairman, it’s worth acknowledging William’s contribution over two and a half decades. ARM has played a big part in the growth of podcast advertising and Williams’ involvement was easily a large influence in how Podsights became the success they are.   The Download has covered multiple articles about upcoming privacy changes on larger platforms and how they’ll affect advertising. On Mondayhttps://www.businessinsider.com/impact-apple-privacy-changes-meta-youtube-snap-twitter-lotame-2022-4?nr_email_referer=1&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_content=10_things_tech&utm_campaign=Post%20Blast%20sai:%2010%20Things%20in%20Tech:%20Musk%27s%20U-turn&utm_term=10%20THINGS%20IN%20TECH%20SEND%20LIST.  “The fallout from Apple's major privacy update is expected to continue well past the first year of its rollout, with a new analysis estimating the change could dent Meta, YouTube, Snap, and Twitter's revenues by almost $16 billion in total this year.”    Facebook parent company Meta is projected to take the biggest hit with a revenue impact of 9.7 %, just edging out Snapchat owner Snap’s 9.6% loss. Though, where Snap is losing just under $550 million, Meta stands to lose $12.8 billion.
“The change forced many advertisers to reassess their marketing and shift spend into channels that are less reliant on Apple's tracking identifier, such as offline advertising or Apple's own search ad products.”

This humble podcast news aggregation podcast wishes to point out podcast ads are a pre-existing channel that are in no way reliant on Apple’s tracking identifier.    On the February 10th episode of The Download we covered an Ashley Carman op-ed in Hot Pod that highlighted Facebook’s apparent lack of interest in a push into podcasting, a move the company had seemed to be quite vocal about.  Carman is back, and the news isn’t looking good for podcasters who favor their grandparent’s favorite social media platform. In an article for Bloomberg, Carman’s new headline reads “https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-04-14/facebook-is-pulling-back-from-its-foray-into-podcasting.”    “A spokesperson for Facebook said the company is still working on podcasts even as it’s accelerating work on priority features like Reels and Feed. The company is seeing good engagement for its audio products, according to the spokesperson, who declined to provide specifics.”
Meta’s focus appears to be firmly directed towards plans to build a shortform video platform to compete with TikTok and building out their virtual reality hangout space Metaverse, where users can have meetings and buy NFTs. Meanwhile, the proposed projects to get Facebook-exclusive podcasting have been left to die on the vine.  Carman’s reporting reveals multiple contractors who’d been brought on to create content for both Facebook’s podcasting arm and their social audio platform have not had their contracts renewed. Facebook sponsored Podcast Movement last August, yet was absent from Podcast Movement Evolutions last month. Still, not all hope is lost. Carman’s report ends with anecdotal evidence that might suggest there’s still a use-case for podcasting on Facebook.    “But even Facebook’s limited podcasting efforts have been a source of growth for some content providers. TYT Network, which produces political programming, said Facebook is its second-most-popular listening platform after Apple Podcasts.”  Finally, it’s time for our semi-regular roundup of articles that didn’t make it into today’s episode, but are still worth working into your weekend reading.    The first title: https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/12/23020962/ariel-shapiro-joins-the-verge-as-lead-reporter-for-hot-pod   And finally: https://www.amplifimedia.com/blogstein/what-i-learned-teaching-a-nyu-course-about-podcasting
As always, the links to every article mentioned on an episode of The Download can be found in the episode details.  The Download is a production of http://soundsprofitable.com/. Today's episode was hosted by

Suscribe to the I Hear Things newsletter at http://tomwebster.mediaMichael Stelzner's Crypto Business podcast: https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/crypto-business-podcast/Brian Fanzo's NFT 365 podcast: https://www.isocialfanz.com/nft365Support the show at http://buymeacoffee.com/tomwebster
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Today on the show, Bryan Barletta and Arielle Nissenblatt discuss Podcast Movement: Evolutions, which took place last month in Los Angeles. Overall, they had a blast, met with a ton of industry folks, had some nice meals, and attended some innovative sessions. Bryan and Arielle take time to highlight Evo Terra's Podcast Hall of Fame acceptance speech.Listen in to learn about:

Here's our favorite idea from this conversation: It was super neat to meet Sounds Profitable listeners, sponsors, and readers in person! Links:

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**This week on The Download; digital ads evolve as online privacy increases, Substack poaches podcasts from Patreon, and iHeartMedia is buying NFTs to make podcasts about them.**A fair amount of coverage has been written about the so-called death of targeted advertising. Privacy changes implemented by Google and Apple have made some waves, but said waves are having interesting effects on the industry. On Wednesday Brian Chen and Daisuke Wakabayashi published a New York Times piece called *You’re Still Being Tracked on the Internet, Just in a Different Way*. A fair amount of coverage has been written about the so-called death of targeted advertising. Privacy changes implemented by Google and Apple have made some waves, but said waves are having interesting effects on the industry. On Wednesday Brian Chen and Daisuke Wakabayashi published a New York Times piece called *You’re Still Being Tracked on the Internet, Just in a Different Way*. Throughout the piece Chen and Wakabayashi alternate between birds-eye views of the tech industry and personal anecdotes from small business reflecting the changing landscape of traditional digital ads. “The rise of this tracking has implications for digital advertising, which has depended on user data to know where to aim promotions. It tilts the playing field toward large digital ecosystems such as Google, Snap, TikTok, Amazon and Pinterest, which have millions of their own users and have amassed information on them. Smaller brands have to turn to those platforms if they want to advertise to find new customers.” Where in previous years a business would be able to purchase ad space on services like Instagram or Facebook, famous for their tracking providing fine-tuned results, now the pendulum has shifted. “Shawn Baker, the owner of Baker SoftWash, an exterior cleaning company in Mooresville, N.C., said it previously took about $6 of Facebook ads to identify a new customer. Now it costs $27 because the ads do not find the right people, he said.” With the devaluing of assumed default channels of advertising, more budgets are being redistributed to new avenues of advertising. Especially options with first-party data. While podcast advertising doesn’t offer that data for users, the contextual nature and growth of podcasting-first data solutions are becoming appealing options for those buyers Dave Jones (no relation to the undersea legend) posted a blog to Substack Monday with intent to clear the air on Podcasting 2.0. What exactly is Podcasting 2.0? As Jones puts it: “The Podcasting 2.0 project is simply this: A vision of what podcasting experiences can be in the future, and a set of free, open source standards for how that vision becomes reality.” Jones goes on to give context for what some of these open-source standards could look like, folding them into a fictional day in the life a podcast super-listener named Joy. Throughout Joy’s typical work day she uses a one-size-fits-all podcatcher app that folds features and functionality from existing first-party services into one place. Whenever a video podcast she likes goes live, Podcast 2.0 framework allows her to join in and listen to just the audio (much like YouTube’s audio-only feature). When she dips into the video portion of the stream she can tip money to the hosts, causing an on-screen notification akin to Superchats on YouTube and donations on Twitch. Her app displays episode-specific links and data mentioned in podcasts manually placed by the hosts. It automatically switches to lower bitrate versions of audio feeds when traveling into areas with poor signal. In Joy’s Podcast 2.0 world she can check comments and reviews aggregated from other podcasting apps. “Every bit of the above scenario is perfectly possible using only RSS and open source standards. Much of it is already functioning today in apps and services that are early adopters.” For those who’ve only heard of Podcasting 2.0 in passing, Jones’ piece aims to explain the passion and potential open-source future the concept could provide. We move from a story posted on Substack to a story about Substack. On Tuesday Ashley Carman published the Bloomberg piece Substack Poaches Patreon Stars for Expanded Push into Podcasting. Substack now offers two resources popular with monetized podcasts: a newsletter and a private RSS feed for paying subscribers. Substack’s COO Hamish McKenzie says the company is giving grants to certain podcasters who make the switch from Patreon. Though, like a recent report on YouTube offering grants for podcasters to pivot to video, Substack is keeping quiet as to which specific podcasts got grants. Currently only four are known. The grants Substack offers serve to soften the blow of abandoning an existing service. Patreon does not offer the ability to take paid subscriptions to a competitor’s platform. Podcasters making the switch will lose patrons, moreso than they normally would to monthly churn. Marketers have been telling podcasters that newsletters are a successful way to create and own an audience. Substack taking initiative shows they might begin to own and understand the market of podcasts centered around communities. And, by extension, own the revenue derived from said market. That said, this introduces another hosting solution that does not appear to be following IAB standards. Substack joins Apple’s subscription product, Supercast, and Supporting Cast in that crowd. This isn’t necessarily an issue for the individual user because they provide first party info. Nevertheless, it does show the IAB standard doesn’t have the teeth many hoped it would as this industry continues to grow ****Soon it might be time to break out the picket signs and pro-worker chants at Spotify. On Monday Ashley Carman, making her second appearance this episode, published the Bloomberg article *Spotify Podcast Union is Ready to Strike Over Contract Terms*. Barring successful negotiations, the Parcast Union is poised to execute the first ever strike at Spotify. The union cites unaddressed issues include basic concerns like pay, but also staff diversity concerns and IP rights. “The bargaining committee told Bloomberg News that Spotify specifically doesn’t want to commit to a request that half of job candidates who make it past the phone interview stage be people of color, people who identify as LGBTQ+ or people with disabilities. They also added they haven’t agreed on acceptable salary minimums.” 97% of Parcast union members have pledged to join the strike, spanning multiple departments. “A strike would be a first for Spotify and would come at a particularly fraught time for its podcast ambitions. The company laid off the internal team at its fourth podcast studio, known as Studio 4, in January, and has struggled to get much of its headline-driving content off the ground.” For more information on that reference to unreleased headline-driving content, we direct you to the March third episode of The Download for coverage of that particular story. Here’s hoping the union walks away from the bargaining table with their goals achieved. People deserve to be paid a fair living wage, and podcasting on the scale Spotify operates at is certainly big enough to handle that. For our final story of the week, something bizarre. Non-fungible tokens, a digital collectible known for being rife with pump-and-dump schemes and other classic forms of financial scams, are potentially getting their first big break in podcasting through iHeartMedia’s new scheme. Sara Fischer, reporting for Axios, broke exclusive news on Tuesday: iHeartMedia is building a podcast network around NFTs they’ve purchased. “iHeartMedia is currently in talks to make 10–15 investments in prominent NFT collections over the next few days — including CryptoPunks, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and World of Women — per Khalil Tawil, EVP of strategy at iHeartMedia.” As Tawil describes it, iHeartMedia will purchase NFTs from various internet-popular collections and then craft a slate of podcasts that retroactively create a series of stories and characters around the algorithmically-generated artwork they sort-of own. Fischer quotes Khalil Tawil as saying there is “no real precedent for this.” While technically true in the context of podcasting, it’s not new in other forms of media. Most notable are the multiple attempts at getting NFT animated series off the ground, as Vice covered in November. Though, iHeartMedia has the scale needed to truly take advantage of the IP inherent in their purchases. From Hot Pod on Thursday, “One of the unique features of these character-based NFT series is that they often hand IP rights over to whoever owns them. That means if you buy a Bored Ape, you can print your Bored Ape on a T-shirt, market that shirt online, put it on a billboard, and so on. Folks who believe in the NFT hype want to turn these collections i