Shownotes
Spotify recently announced they're no longer offering the option to easily record and edit within the platforms's hosting dashboard, a popular feature that was part of podcast host Anchor, before it was rebranded as Spotify for Podcasters.
Online communities on Reddit and Facebook are full of upset podcasters looking for alternatives, since many podcasters used the "all-in-one" recorder/editor/publisher.
So, should podcast hosting platforms continue down the tech stack path, or is this a sign that perhaps a "one size fits all" isn't a viable strategy in the long run? Join your regular hosts Mark and Danny, with guest co-host Neal Veglio, as they discuss what hosting looks like in 2024 and beyond.
Neal Veglio Founder of Podknows Podcasting, collaborating with Captivate to help brands and individuals to get the best possible return from branded podcasting. Neal's Website @realnealveglio on X Neal on YouTube
Links to interesting things from this episode
- Evolving how you create on Spotify for Podcasters - Spotify
- Spotify for Podcasters discontinues the old editor - what now? : r/podcasting
- What's changing with Spotify for Podcasters? : r/podcasting
- Podcasters' Support Group | This might have been asked already re. Spotify
- Podcasters' Support Group | PSA to my fellow podcasters out there
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Mentioned in this episode:
A Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye
Join Sandy Kaye on A Breath of Fresh Air, a podcast that brings you intimate fireside chats with music legends of the 60s, 70s, and 80s. Note from Mark: as a rock fan... I mean... you HAVE to check out this podcast!!
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Transcripts
Hello and welcome to In and around podcasting the insightful industry podcast where we highlight a range of powerful podcasting perspectives and what a time we live in the dominance of Spotify has never been more apparent. YouTube is coming up the real leave it down here for you get into your only fans. I know what you're like, mate. I can see you laughing. This is ridiculous. It is ridiculous. You are muted. Thank God YouTube is.
Danny (:I'm muted.
Mark (:Indeed, coming up Spotify from behind and starting to take a little bit of that market share. But as everyone struggles for that share of ear, the creators are theoretically being left out in the cold a little bit because consolidation in tech stack, consolidation in recording platforms is not always a great thing. And we now live in a world where Spotify for podcasters, the recording tools.
are going away. So what do we have left? Is this a good thing? Is this a bad thing? And should tech stacks, should companies, should platforms, should people do more to help creators in that regard? It's a very complex subject that we're going to get deep into in just a second. But of course, I'm Mark, the co -founder and MD of Captivate, the world's only growth focused podcast hosting platform and joined by my ever present co -host, apart from the weeks that is not here.
It is of course Danny Brown. All right mate, hello.
Danny (:Alright, alright seems a while since we've been together mate. I did one like a special while you're at the podcast show. You obviously did the sort of review with Gary and Ben over that one. So it seems a while but good to be back in the old chair, the old saddle Rooney.
Mark (:It is, it is, it's nice to be back. And we're joined by a voice of the podcasting industry, someone that straddles actually the creator and the pro side of the industry. It is, of course, the one and only Mr. Neil Velleo, you might know from the bloody Twitter. Hello, mate, you all right?
Neal Veglio (:I mean, I'm barely on Twitter now, so it's, yeah, that's great. Can I just start off by saying I'm really disappointed that Danny is wearing a very normal looking shirt today because I've been hearing about these wonderful, colourful shirts and I thought he'd get one specially out of the wardrobe for me but clearly hasn't read the memo.
Mark (:come on. That's not true. There is always Twitter and I log on Twitter. I'm like, Neil's here.
Danny (:You haven't seen some of the green screen stuff that have been sent to my DMs, mate. That'd shock you.
Neal Veglio (:Hahaha!
Mark (:Lesson learned. All right, we are going to get to Spotify. We're going to get to Spotify for podcasters. We're going to talk about tech stacks in platforms, in podcasting, in frankly, in general, because I've got a lot of thoughts on this. I think it's really interesting. I know you guys have as well. But before we do that, Neil, give us the skinny on what you do. What's Neil's day to day in podcasting?
Neal Veglio (:blimey. I mean, lots of things, honestly, varies. But I suppose most relevant to your listener would be that we tend to work with people that are podcasting that would like the playing field leveled a little bit more for them. You know, normally everybody from someone that's just discovered the medium and plugged in their microphone and recorded some content all the way up to people that have been doing it for a couple of years and they're just not seeing the needle moving at all. So what I tend to do is just sit down with them and say, look, you know, this is what
you're doing, this is where you're at, and these are the opportunities that I think could be available to you if you make these tweaks and changes and give them actionable tasks that they can tick off during the next couple of weeks. And yeah, seems to work so, work okay so far. So that's good.
Mark (:Nothing better than getting things done. That's a big thing for any creator. I think podcasters sometimes struggle with getting the things done that aren't the recording part of podcasting. So I get that, mate, and I appreciate it. Now, we are going to go Spotify, but if you want to listen on Spotify, you can do so. You can go to in and around podcasting dot com slash Spotify. You can do slash Apple to get us on Apple. Or if you want to take your pick, you can go to in and around podcasting dot com slash listen and remember to tell a podcasting friend about the show.
So Danny, Spotify announced they're not gonna be recording and editing your podcast anymore. They're not gonna allow the platform to do that. An old hangover from Anker, they bought Anker, which was a great move. Anker came on the scene, stitched Apple up with the submission, direct submission, and then sold to Spotify after a mass round of funding, and Mike and Neer and everyone that founded it did a cracking job. Classic startup move, which was acquire.
a pile of funding go through to series A or series B, whatever they got to. I have absolutely no intent of getting through to profit, which again, I completely understand if the exit at that point was the goal. Mass, mass, mass user acquisition, hockey stick the numbers, sell and create this all in one platform. All right, I get it. But that's going away. So Spotify have acquired all these users, maybe pivoted a little bit. Daniel X.
change maybe the strategy a little bit in podcasting for Spotify, you know, exclusives aren't so exclusive anymore. All audio was their goal. Not sure it is anymore. We'll have to see about that one. But it's still the biggest hosting platform in the world due to the acquisition of Anker. And frankly, it can burn money by being a free podcast host. We know that it's the way of the startup world. But all these recording tools are going away. So the landscape is is really rather
Interesting. You've mentioned you put in the recording notes, the production notes for this, so you're pretty active on Reddit. The first thing to ask is, like, what's the general flavour? What are people thinking? What are people asking? What are people worried about because of this news? And we'll get into really what other companies could, should or would do to kind of combat this. But what's the general sentiment you're seeing, Danny?
Danny (:Yeah, and I think it's not like I'm not pushing this to too much to say there's a bit of panic like over on Reddit because a lot of you podcasters went to anchor because they made it easy. You know, you got your phone, you could record anywhere, edit on the spot, use a little segments and boom, you've got a podcast. So it was like super simple for them. And they've become so used to that flow for what, three, four years.
Now it's been taken away. They've never used a dog. They've never used an audacity, you know, a Hindenburg or whatever like a pro tools. And they've been looking at Riverside because I know Spotify sent an email about you can use Riverside's editing tools, but that's putting a lot of people off because of the sort of different approach where it's not quite on your phone. It's not as easy to record, etc. So there is a genuine feel of panic amongst these podcasters scampering now to try find out.
A record and B edit in two.
Mark (:think a large element of this as well, which Neil, I'll come to you about in a second because you work with so many clients and so on is the free element. Everyone wants everything for free, right? Podcast hosting. Podcasting has become commoditized and there's nothing wrong with that. If podcasting is a hobby for you, then you should probably be free. I wrote a piece back in 2018, I think, saying why anchor is not the villain and why Spotify isn't the villain. And everyone can say that they're closing the doors down and they're creating a walled garden. But of course they are. My butcher's got a walled garden. He's the only butcher in the village.
It's how it is and it's business. That's how it is. You know, whether we love open podcasting or not does not matter. They are creating a business which is frankly a very good business. And I completely get the the logic of it all. And free is great if you're a hobbyist, but it's never it's never good. It's never free, never good if you're serious. That's why Captivate's pricing model is what it is. We don't have free and.
We say that we want to work with people who identify as being serious about the podcast, whether they're veterans or new starters. That demarcation doesn't matter to us. I don't think that really matters at all. So, Neil, when it comes to the. The general podcaster that you work with, that you see, that you see around on social, that you talk to events like the podcast show that you were at last year. Let's just get the elephant in the room out of the way.
Free matters, doesn't it? Let's be completely frank, free absolutely matters.
Neal Veglio (:Yeah, or at least accessible. I mean, it's really interesting because all of this that's happening right now, and it was really interesting what you said as the head honcho at a hosting company actually publicly acknowledging that hosting is a commodity now. It's...
You can essentially set up your own hosting company quite easily if you've got the inclination, the time, the resources, as you would know yourself. You know, it's literally get a Cloudflare account and, you know, hire some developers. So, you know, there's not a huge barrier to entry on hosting, which is why we see so many hosting companies come and go on an almost annual basis.
What this reminds me of now with the free element or certainly the cheaper end of the market is it takes me back to the days, I don't know if you remember, maybe you're not as geeky as me and go back this far, but we used to have internet radio and it wasn't what it's known as now. In other words, big brands like...
ffering. Back then, in around: ot com bubble burst of around: Neal Veglio (:is get the ad inventory so that we can monetize this audience and then allow people to, for free, or if not free, very cheaply, do their own radio stations. And so what you had was a whole collective of hobbyists, maybe churches, local community groups, that were setting up their own entire radio stations. And obviously, there was varying results, like there are in podcasting. You had everything from the really polished
expensive play out system to the person doing it on their phone. I think what we learned from that era was that yes, you can do it. Yes, you certainly can grab your phone and do audio content, whether it's live online radio, podcasting, live streaming, you can do it on your phone. But if you're going to do it seriously, as in you want some return on your time, and I think this is the thing that a lot of companies miss is it's not necessarily.
The doing it that's the problem. It's the getting the return on it. It's the whole challenge of, okay, so if I'm going to invest an hour, two hours, three hours a week of my time, which is usually private time, because let's face it, it's incredibly difficult for any podcasters to monetize for at least a few years, if at all. What you're then getting is this challenge of, okay, the podcast hosting is free, great, but I'm still wasting three hours of my life every week.
putting content out there and I'm not seeing any return on it. And if it's a free hosting company, they're not looking to help you to monetize because you are then the product as you will know yourself, Mark. You know, that's the difference between something like a Captivate or any of the other hosting companies that I won't mention on your show. They're out there and something like a Spotify for podcasters, Previously Anchor, Red Circle and all those companies that existed. I can get it for free but...
Why should I? And I think now with the fact that podcasting is becoming a lot more mainstream in the marketing world, people are getting more savvy of the, you know, okay, yeah, I could set up a Spotify for podcasters account for my client or for my influencer or for myself. But what's the point? Because if I don't actually, you know, get the buy in on this and have the strategy, then it's a complete waste of my week. And I've got a million other things that actually do give me a return, like an email newsletter.
Neal Veglio (:website blogging, YouTube if they've been doing that for a while and have learned how to do it. So I think that's the problem. And I don't think Spotify has ever really addressed that. I think they're all, yeah, we can help you get a podcast out there. And although they used to do this whole, well, if you get a thousand listeners, we'll give you some money. But the education isn't really out there on how you can leverage that quite easily as an indie podcaster.
Mark (:I'm not sure that was ever their market though, you know, I don't think that was their market. I think their market was the nerd that wants to talk about Star Wars like me or the guy that is into golf like me and wants to start a golf podcast or whatever. I actually, that's a bit of a contentious point for me is that you've got to get a return on your podcast. I don't want to get a return on my golf. I don't want, I don't watch Star Wars because I think I'm going to make money from it. I don't take my kid to the park because I'm going to make money from it. I don't go to the pub.
because I don't go to the pub if anyone's listening. But if I did go to the pub, I wouldn't want to return on that. And I think the. I think that's where Spotify fit into the market. We were talking off there about the podcast show in London, having to fit so many different markets and podcast movement has to do that. Podfest doesn't. Podfest, Chris never goes, Mark, I'm going to create an industry show for the entire industry. He never does that. He comes up and he says, I'm going to work with.
indie creators that want to start and grow their audience. Podfest fits that box, whereas podcast movement and the podcast show have to have their microcosmic representations of the entire industry and that there are different levels and different tiers. Now, those tiers didn't exist when Anchor was created. You had, you know, the entrepreneurs saying you can make six figures like, right, I can make six figures from golf, but I'm going to have to get really damn good and put a hell of a lot of time and practice and money into it. And
That feels to me like a bit of a hangover. Podcasting still feels like that to many people, but what's happened is a lot of the top tier podcasters have remained top tier podcasters. Jordan Harbinger, people like that. And they're working the backsides off. Then media companies have come in and we've got all these media companies that are like the top, top, top point five percent and doing great work. And it is great work because without them, you can say what you want about celebrities and highly scripted dramas.
You know, this is not right. Why should they get some of our revenue? It's not your revenue. It's not our revenue. If it wasn't for them, our industry would not be at four billion ad revenue. That's it. It's that simple. But I think Spotify for podcasters has moved. The times have moved. And so the creators. Now feel more underserved because Spotify for podcasters served the crea - in my view, served the creators like -
Mark (:I'm not going to get even someone like Stephen Bartlett, right? He's I think he's on. He was certainly on anchor, right? But what he wasn't doing is using anchor to build his show. He was recording it now at normal and it was just the hosting part that was free. So for me, there's that distinction now between right. OK. Yeah. If you want to get return on your podcast, you product, you probably got to get some decent gear. And that but that's always been true. Whereas I think the issue now is that.
There's Spotify for podcasters, the host, and then Spotify for podcasters, the stuff that's going away, the creation tools and so on and so forth. And I'm just not sure that.
I don't want to say a serious creator, because I think that does a disservice to a lot of creators that use these tools.
I'm not sure that a creator that has always understood how difficult podcasting is and has wanted to build a meaningful audience would have ever used the range of tools that Spotify for podcasters gave, which then, Danny brings me back to this fact that.
Mark (:the same potential podcasters that are using the, right, here's, go drag this block and then go drag this block and then make this thing and here's the intro and the outro.
There's issues around, OK, the tech savviness. I don't want to learn audition. That's rubbish because that's a lot of work. Hindenburg, probably the most accessible version, maybe, probably Ali too. That's my recommendation for that. But those creators.
Mark (:Are they ever going to want to do anything different to that? Like, are they ever, do they, let me rephrase, do they care enough about their podcast to spend two hours learning Hindenburg? Do you know what I mean? So is it, is the audience, has the audience been manipulated and mutated a little bit by anchor existing? Do you know what I mean? Because what those people have ever got into podcasting?
If it was a bit harder, do you know what I mean by that? That's a bit of a random way of explaining it. But do you get what I'm saying there?
Danny (:Yeah.
And I think that's always been the strength of anchor, Spotify. I still call it anchor because that's what I've known. I grew up with it as and I still call Spotify for podcasters as that one that's for podcasters that don't host with Spotify because they've got all different tools for them. I didn't grow up with anchor. I'm obviously a lot older than that.
Mark (:Back up.
You grew up with anchor.
You had a rough old paper on me. You're like, I'm 19 years old. I've been around his house a lot.
Danny (:yeah.
Neal Veglio (:Have you got the hovis music ready?
Danny (:Maybe I meant anchor butter. Do you remember anchor butter from the UK? Yeah, there you go. That's that's that's brought me right back into it. But yeah, I mean, you know, kudos to anchor. They did make it super easy. And I think especially when the pandemic came around in 2020, a lot of podcasters came out and thought I'm going to a lot of new podcasters. I'm going to try it because it is so easy to do. And there's there are there are podcasters making good, good dollars on Spotify because they've got.
Mark (:Ha ha.
Do remember Ankerboy, yeah.
Danny (:X amount of audience and Spotify ad partnership gives them good money. But I think for the majority, where it is maybe hope, not so much hobbyist, but amateur. Let's go, you know, like most podcasters got 100 episodes, 100 downloads per episode, et cetera. And they're used to just going in, click record, edit, and that's it. Boom, they're out. They've never used the jingles. They've never used the ads. They've never used the ambassador program when that was out. I think that's gone away, gone away now as well. So then I really cared about that. It was just about.
I'm on my phone, I'm going to record something I'm thinking about while I'm in the park and I'm going to stick that out as a podcast. And I think I'm curious what the fallout might be six months down the line. Once this is cleared out, once we know what things look like and how many podcasters that we're using just as you mentioned, Mark, just to record, just the edit, just the publish option. How many won't be here in six months because now they can't do that. And the kind of no one likes to be told, well, you have to use this if you want to continue being a podcaster. That's.
To me, that's where maybe the communication's not been great and the options. So and goes back to Neil's point about the education. Maybe Spotify could have had a big program in place that says, hey, this is a tool like Alatoo that is very similar that lets you arrange segments to publish a podcast. This is a tool much like, you know, you're recording, you've got a recorder on your phone, et cetera. So maybe that's missing. But I'd be curious to see what it's like in six months and what the drop off might be now that we can't record just using a phone or something.
Mark (:And I think an important point is that you can get good audio from your phone. You can. And yet it's not going to be pro -grade, but I could hold my iPhone up and I could get decent audio. I could. And it would be good enough for a podcast. It would, whether we like that or not. And I think one of the biggest kind of... One of the biggest... What's the best way to phrase this? One of the biggest kind of juxtapositions, for want of a better word.
within the opinions of the podcast industry is that some people will say it is good that you can't just record easily because that will get rid of the quote unquote people that should not be podcasting. And then there are the normal people that are like, it's cool, do what you want. Totally fine. Like if you want to if you want to record an episode called Test and put it out and your show is called Test and you decide never ever.
to podcast again, at least you've kicked the tires. And guess what? I'm not having to chase you for a refund. Do you know what I mean? I don't have to worry about giving you 20 bucks back because you didn't stick to it. That's cool. Right. Go do anchor. Go do a free host. That's mint. Right. And this was the crux of the piece I put out a few years ago, which was I'd rather people could do that. I would rather people could pick up a phone and they could they could test. They could try something.
And they could, you know, I'm not going to I'm not going to tell my little girl, all right, you can't know where you cannot possibly hit this golf ball unless you're going to birdie the first hole because it's it becomes self -fulfilling doom. You will never get that good unless you practice getting that good. And it's the same with podcasting. So I'd rather people tried these tools. So I think it's almost a bit of a shame that a tool like that would be going away because we're using Riverside now and Riverside's all right. It's decent enough. There's some.
weird things about it, but it's good enough. There's SquadCast and Descript, good tools. There's Ali2, good tool. But you can't use them like you could Anchor or Spotify for podcasters. So I genuinely think that's a shame, you know? And selfishly, if 50 people try podcasting on Anchor,
Mark (:Probably five of them eventually might not be today, might not be tomorrow, might be a year, might be two years, might be five years. We'll go, do you know what? I might just try and captivate. So we all win. All ships rise. Yeah. So Neil, I don't know. I just feel like we all want this industry to grow, don't we? But then we all sort of slay anchor a little bit and whatever. But then it's going away. And Danny's worried that it might stop people coming into the industry. And that just feels like.
pretty counterintuitive. And I'll tell you straight, it doesn't matter who comes in, because someone will make it a hosting company. They'll be like, we're all in one now. Cool. But you aren't going to have the impact that Spotify has because you're not Spotify. That's it. Right? It's that simple. So I don't know, man. It just feels a bit of a shame, regardless whether you like or loathe Spotify. It just feels weird that we're not going to allow it to be as easy as it was before.
Neal Veglio (:I think there is a definite prejudice against Spotify from some of the OG podcasters, which I would probably consider myself one of them in terms of longevity versus knowledge. You know, I'm not going to claim that I'm...
to experimenting in the early:And it was like, wow, this is huge. You know, because there were only like 50 podcasts on Spotify at that point. And you had to really kind of know what you were doing to submit your show at that point. It wasn't really sort of talked about. You had to be a real geek to figure it out. And I think with that...
It's like, you know, people say Joe Rogan, why does everyone have a target on his back? Well, because he's Joe Rogan. So, because more people know about him and they're aware of him and, you know, the more people know about a bad thing or a good thing, the more there are going to be critics of that. So, and I think Spotify, it's the same thing and I agree with you.
On a personal level, I wouldn't encourage anyone that's working with me to use Spotify for obvious reasons. It's harder to grow. And when we've got a platform like Captivate, plug, here, which I use for my business, and you guys have been absolutely fantastic, and I've come over from the other place six or seven months ago, and honestly, although you would never attribute growth to a podcast hosting company per se, although your RSS feed programming is beautiful,
Neal Veglio (:as I think I said to you the day I signed over to you. Well done, Danny and the team. You know, there have been some benefits to doing it in terms of growth because of simply because of the tools you offer. You know, the single link, the attribution and all those things. These are things that you wouldn't sit down and maybe put a features and benefits list together and say, well, captivates better than Spotify for podcasters for this thing. However, it's naturally going to occur that if you've got the tools available and you're using them,
you're probably going to see some knock on effect from that. So I do agree with you. I think it's back to the gatekeeping thing again, isn't it? Of the OG is, you know, Spotify is terrible. It's, you know, taking all the ring fencing and all. Walled Garden, I heard James say on the podcast show live, Pond News Weekly. And yeah, to a certain extent he's right, but it's a big corporate. Of course it's going to ring fence. They want to be special. They want to be exclusive and elite. And that's their kind of branding approach. But...
I think, like you say, if you're a brand new podcaster, before you sign up for a year or, you know, monthly with a podcast hosting company, the big thing I've seen is podcasters, they'll go, I tried it a few years ago, I had a free account with Anchor, did three episodes, circumstances kicked in, I had a baby or whatever, and then I had to stop. But now I'm looking to take it seriously again. And then I'll say, great, brilliant, what are your goals? And they'll say, well, you know, I eventually I'd like to monetize, but right now it's about
putting content out and getting the credibility piece. Brilliant. Here's who I suggest you go with for your specific goals. And nine times out of ten, that's going to be a captivate recommendation for obvious reasons. But sometimes it's, you know, it depends on the individual's goals. I agree with you. We need to stop this classist attitude of if you're a decent podcaster, you're not going to use Spotify for podcasters and actually encourage these people to do it, but learn...
Mark (:you
Neal Veglio (:how to do it in a way that serves them. And that might be, you know, getting Riverside and just top and tailing it, getting a producer in off Fiverr or whatever it might be. But there is too much of this gatekeeping in the industry. And it really does bug me because like you say, like you say about how someone signing up for free account with Spotify will eventually maybe lead to them taking it a bit more seriously and going with something like Captivate. Same with me. If someone's going to start podcasting,
they might eventually work with me on management and consultancy and things like that. So obviously I want as many people to try this as possible because it feathers my bottom line in the future. Selfishly, like you say.
Mark (:And I think it becomes a bit of an economy as a scale thing as well. So Danny, one of the questions that you posed in the production side of the episode, who's really the crux of the conversation. What's going to fill its place? Should and could and would hosting companies add more to their tech stack?
And I think one of the challenges with that becomes that, like I said, it's an economy of scale. You know, Spotify was Spotify before they did podcast hosting and they did they bought Anchor and they bought Megaphone and whoever else they bought. And everything that has been done in podcasting by Spotify benefited from Spotify already being Spotify. So when someone else does something. Like I said, it's economy to scale.
you will not get the same number of people using those tools because you simply are not Spotify unless you have Spotify brand or budget. So where's your head at Danny on like, I suppose the tech stacks. That was really the question for this episode, wasn't it? It was very much around. What what does that tech stack look like as we move forward? We've seen a lot of all in one stuff. We've seen a lot of specialist stuff.
We've seen Anker try to do everything. We've seen Libsyn try to do everything when they got a hold of AugsBus and some other stuff, because I forget. We've seen other hosting companies do certain elements of this. We've seen people at Alitu ad hosting. And then we've seen different models. Here's an Amazon voucher if you sign up for us.
that terrifies me. He has a specialist podcast hosting platform, a transistor, a Captivate. I would class us two probably as the most specialized because we focus on a very specific part of the podcasters workflow and we just want to be really bloody good at that part of it. So I don't know, man, what do you see? You're a podcaster, you're head of support and experience here at Captivate. What's your view on that?
Mark (:text that question.
Danny (:There's a jingle there. You get a new jingle. Tick stack. Yeah, I mean, I see podcasters you saw at the podcast show. You spoke about an episode about everybody was asking, when are you going to do AI? And everybody's asking about bloody AI. And I think we get to a point where hosting companies and tech companies, not just hosting companies, but just companies in the podcasting space might feel pressured to add a feature because the audience think they want it.
Mark (:Hehehehe
Danny (:as opposed to do the audience actually need it to align with their goals that they've got for the podcast. And it's great to have podcasts, you know, tech stacks that all work together. So it'd be awesome if you could go and record, edit, publish, produce, you know, market all that cool stuff. Create snippets, remote recording, everything under one roof would be awesome because then you just go to one place. But then I think back to like pre anchored. Let's go back to the proper old Danny Brown.
And I think of the old combined VCR and DVD player, right? That came out because everybody thought, that's great for my dad because he's got video tapes. He hates this newfangled DVD stuff, but I can watch DVDs and nobody cares. Problem is, if the DVD player broke down, the whole unit had to go back and get replaced or repaired. So dad couldn't watch video or vice versa. So my concern with like text acts is we start to add a bunch of stuff on to try a piece. You know, podcasters might want to try to get all stuff on the one.
one place. If something breaks because you're adding so many things on that are trying to talk to each other as opposed to talking to each other properly. If something breaks, what's a knock on effect? So if we're on Riverside at the minute, if Riverside video breaks, great, I can still do audio, but then I've not got a video afterwards, so I can't market my show quite as good. If you know, if Captivate, if our guest book was tied so keenly into research links, for example,
And for whatever reason, the Research Links browser extension wasn't working. Now I can't book guests and pull in their research links about that. So little things like that. I worry. A, it's great to have like the flexibility and just sheer, you know, easy use of having everything on the one roof. But then you start to add more problems and the more weight you put on a roof, you know how much that's going to buckle and eventually collapse on you. That's a lot of analogies there. Have at it.
Mark (:Well, I think there's a lot in there, but I would just pick up the point that.
You inevitably. As a podcasting company, as a tech company, you want to sell benefits and features. You do want to do that. And there's always a balance like captivates mantra is we'll only create features that either save you money, make money or save your time. Because with those three things, you can do other stuff such as grow your podcast and more obviously education around that as well. But. The.
The challenge that you've got is that tech platforms inevitably grow and grow and grow. Captivate is huge in comparison to what it was before. And it's probably got the most features out of any hosting platform that certainly I can think of. I can't think of, I'm not saying any other host is bad. I don't think there's a bad hosting platform. I think there are just different ones. And the challenge that you have with that is that...
When we did guest booking, we didn't do calendar integration. Why? Class, it's an 80 -20 rule. People will have a whine about it. you don't integrate my calendar. That's cool. It doesn't. Calendly does. So if that matters so much, go and use Calendly. That's cool. But if it doesn't matter, which it doesn't to 80 % of people, Captivate is going to be easier and better for you. And we'll build your show notes and this, that, and the other. And the 20 % that it doesn't help are always louder than the 80%. It does help.
because you only shout when something doesn't exist that you want. You never just go, this is brilliant, oxygen exists. You never do. It's like, I can't breathe, I can't breathe. So what you end up doing is, as a tech company, you end up, if you're not careful, biting off too much. So if we'd have done the calendar integrate, and we will do it, we will integrate, but it'll probably be a chargeable thing at like two quid a month, five quid a month. I don't know what the pricing will be. And it'll be powered from a third party platform called Chronofi. Why?
Mark (:because every calendar has 50 different APIs, right? And if Apple iCloud API changes, if anything, all of twice changes, if anything changes with Google Calendar, we do not want to have to build another connector or maintain a connector because that's not our job. Our job is to be the best at being a podcast host in distribution and monetization platform. So you've got to pick these fights and you've got to, you've got to understand.
the customer generally doesn't really know what they want. It's like a marathon runner. Right, he's running along, do you want a cup of tea? No, I don't want a cup of tea. Right, are you sure you don't want a cup of tea? No, of course I don't want a cup of tea. I'm running a marathon, right? Nine miles later, do you want a cup of tea? No, I don't want a cup of tea. What do you want? Water. Right, no, sorry. Another six miles. Are you sure you don't want a cup of tea? No, I need water, I need water, I need water. Well, look, all I've got is this tea.
Yeah, go on then and they drink it and guess what? They get what they need from that because what they wanted was not the drink of water. They wanted to solve the problem of being thirsty. And the thing is users and consumers generally get that confused. So they'll say, we need it to integrate with our calendar. That's cool. You want it to integrate with your calendar. You don't need it to. You want it to. But if we do that.
then some of this other stuff might suffer until we find another solution like a chroma file. If we apply that then to recording and we apply that to editing, now we can, editing actually would be pretty easy for a Captivate because guess what? Amy is actually an editor. We've got bulk editing tools. We can clip bits out, we can add bits in. It's an editor. Amy is an editor.
But recording can be tough. Local recording, local storage. How do we do it? What's best for the bandwidth? What do we do in low bandwidth circumstances? Where does that get stored? How does it get plugged in? What's the deletion policy? And so on and so forth. Is it destructive editing, non -destructive editing, whatever? A thousand things to consider. To be really good at that, something else has sort of potentially got to have its eye taken off it a little bit. And I just, I feel like that's where...
Mark (:Any host could do it. I guarantee someone will. Someone's going to come out. Buzzsprout will do it, and it'll be like a basic thing, and that'll be cool, whatever. And it'll just be a tick box on a feature list. Then Libsyn will probably add it back in. Todd will do it at Blue recall. It's something fancy. And then everyone will do it. But the point is, we could technically we can all do it. And the question I would ask is, should we? Are we doing a disservice if we don't do it deeply? If we don't do it really, really well?
e the old Facebook, you know,:And I can't personally make my mind up where this all sits because it's not as flippant and as simple as that. It's my editing tools have been removed and now I've got to learn a DAW. I've got to learn a digital audio workstation like a Pro Tools or an Audition or a Hindenburg or whatever.
Or I've got to use or wait for something that might come from a hosting platform that won't be as good as Anker to start with because no one's got that head start. No one's got that run at it. So, yeah, I don't know. I think this is my just my way of saying it's not easy to do all this. We should respect what Anker built. It was really difficult to do it. I don't think that the consumer wants.
an anchor or Spotify for podcasters replacement per se. I think they just want those problems solving and it might not need to be in the way that they think. I don't know what the answer is, but I don't think a straight replacement will do that much. Neil, that was a bit rambly, but I just try to articulate my thoughts on that one. What's your what's your take on it? Should what should the host be doing? What what other companies should be out there doing things? Are we going to see some new companies springing up? What's your take on that?
Neal Veglio (:It's very possible you'll see new companies springing up. But I think, you know, when you were saying, should we be doing this? Should we be doing this from the Captivate POV? I'm there shaking my head. Anybody that's watching this, the video version of this will see that because I think this is the problem is, you know, you can't be all things for all people. And for me, Captivate has a very specific place in the market, which is people that have done a little bit more research, perhaps.
They know what they want. They know they want the dynamic insertion for content, which is brilliant. You've enabled that for non -enterprise level, which was one of the things I loved about it when I saw it coming out, and the marketing pace as well with all the, like I mentioned before, all the marketing links that you put out there. I think if you were to try and tackle that problem of...
a brand new podcaster that's just having a bit of a dabble and needs maybe some simple recording and editing software built into the hosting platform. I think you're almost going to do yourself a disservice as the platform that you've built. I think you're certainly where I'm coming from and the people that I talk to on an almost daily basis about this. A lot of people, they have an idea now of what they want to do before they even start talking to experts.
They know that they want to, like I say, they want to monetize it eventually, but they want to put content out there. And so they'll know they might want to have some dynamic messaging they can insert. They might want to have a link that they can put together, that they can put out that makes it all simple, saves them having to send out three different links for the... Well, it's two now plus YouTube, isn't it, essentially. But, you know, all these things that they've been researching through blog posts, YouTube, other podcasters like this and other podcasts, whatever.
I think if you were to suddenly start, like you say, weakening your overall proposition for that kind of podcaster by risking development on the things that push the needle just to offer this thing that, you know, actually they could probably get from Audacity if they actually spent the time doing it.
Neal Veglio (:And it's not that huge a learning curve. I mean, you know, there's enough posts out there that can get you through editing a 30 minute piece of audio. Where I think this is going to be solved, to use that word that you use there, to solve the problem, the cup of tea is going to be Descript, I think, because obviously you've got that integration with Captivate and other hosts as well. It's really simple. It's a simple text based editor. And I know that, you know, their UI has been hit and miss. You know, it's been laggy. It's been difficult sometimes.
But I've got really excited about it again with this new AI, you know, AI yawn. But the AI that they've used has been quite sensible and I can see brand new podcasters that don't have that editing prowess, that experience of doing deep edits. They're going to get a benefit from going, okay, Descript, I can sit down, I can learn that relatively quickly. It's like editing a Word document.
It might not sound brilliant for the first three or four episodes that I do in it because I, what's this thing in the bottom? it's a waveform. you can get a bit more intricate with that. That's brilliant. You can add layers in. You can bring sound in. Fantastic. look, I click a button and go straight into my Captivate feed. Fantastic. And I think that is really why try and take on Descript and something they're going to nail really quickly. I mean, I already mentioned in the day I posted a tweet about.
Descripto overnight has put a bunch of AI clip tools out of business literally overnight because you can do it now within five minutes Whereas you know taking all those clips before it was quite quick sticking your RSS feed into a website and then having that rip out 30 clips for you You can do it in Descript now in like three minutes. So yeah, I think for me the danger is We're all really keen to do everything for everybody make things really easy
But I think you just kind of got to stick with the whole like, you know, you mentioned Libsyn. They were a great hosting company. They did that really well. Ninety nine percent retention time. Rarely a technical problem. Then they started adding things in and what happened? They had more problems. They had more downtime. And that for me is the risk. Like you say, I would rather companies like Captivate, Buzzsprout, Blueberry stuck to the things they're doing really, really well, which is enabling podcasters.
Neal Veglio (:to get audience and monetize if they need to or grow if they need to do that and let the editing side of it be handled by Descript, Adobe, Audacity and whoever else. And while we'd love to be able to walk people to the waterfall in the desert and say, there you go, drink, I think sometimes you've got to have a bit of faith that they'll find that waterfall themselves eventually.
And you know, the slurps are not gonna taste brilliantly to start with, but eventually they'll get there.
Mark (:Danny, turn it on its head. I reckon Descript, actually, let me say this first. I think Riverside will get bought by Spotify. I think that's what's been lined up. And I think Descript will try and add hosting. That's my opinion. Which I'd be all right with as a hosting company. I'd be fine with that because it fills the gap in the...
I want the all in one. I just want that. And the all in one is always just, you know, they're 60 % as good as the specialist at any given facet, in my view. I don't know, man. My gut says that if I'm descript, I'm probably looking at hosting right now.
Danny (:Yeah, and it was talking when the the squad cast deal got announced. Was it last year now or before? Anywho, when the squad cast deal got announced, there was talk. well, who's the hosting company they're going to buy? Because they obviously got a lot of cash, got a big investment. And it made sense to OK, well, squadcast already ties into a bunch of hosting companies via the API connection. So should the script by a transistor, for example, a red circle or a RSS?
I know you obviously you got acquired by global, so we are seeing more of that. And I do feel that that's that's a point that that I wouldn't be surprised with. I kind of agree. I think that's maybe the end goal is to bring every one in as a one stop and describe, do some great stuff. They do some stuff. Not so great. I've used it. I had a look at the new version, Neil, based on your how to toggle, you know, whatever the mode is called. And I looked at that.
I'm maybe I'm a Luddite, I still prefer to have separate separation between tools. I paid the extra on Hindenburg to get transcriptions and their transcription service for me is awful. And I told him that I'm not dissing them now behind their back. I speak to Preben all the time and he knows that it's not great for non -neutral accents. So I've canceled that and I've gone back to Whisperscript that I use for my transcripts. So I'm always of the point of having separation, but yeah.
for a descriptor, I think it might make sense for them to buy. And now you've got the script going up against Spotify. Now, what does Apple do? Does Apple continue to be in the hosting podcast space? Sorry. Do they look to acquire hosting? Do they start to step back because podcasting doesn't make a lot of money for Apple? It's not a huge, you know, chunky change for them. So this would be an interesting topic to revisit in a year's time and see where we are with that. But yeah, I can see that happening, mate.
Mark (:Yeah, I think so as well. If I'm Descript, I am looking at RSS .com. I'm looking at Transistor. I think there's a couple more hosting platforms that come with more inherent risk based on models or the legacy of the brand. And I think that Transistor and RSS are very well placed for it. Personally, I think they're the two strongest for Descript.
and they're all good people as well. Like I'd like to see something like that. And which sounds really counterintuitive from my side, but I've always been this fan of like, you know, help everyone out and all ships do genuinely rise. And we're all really different, aren't we? You know, we're all really different people. I can go out and I can say the same words as Justin. I can say the same words as Ben Alberto. I can get out there and I can quite literally we could use the same marketing script. And some people come to Captivate, some people come to Transistor.
some people come to RSS because they just like different people. That's just life, it's how it is. And I think that is one of the potential challenges with this is that.
Spotify was differentiated. Well, first of all, Anker was differentiated because it was the first to do the thing that it did and get that direct submission. And they pulled a blind draw on Apple, getting the direct submission, which we'll talk about probably next week. Then they got bought by a mega music startup brand, the Uber, the Netflix style company. So.
to replicate the success of Anker. But then, for it not to be free, I think is now an impossible. For it not to be free will mean that the adoption rate will just, there will not be another Anker because no one would buy another free version of that platform. No one would in my view, because it would take that long to build the user base to prove there was still a need for it. The sort of pod .com bubble.
Mark (:has burst a little bit acquisition just slowing down consolidation slowing down. I think that. Probably start to see a little bit more like I mentioned with Descript and someone else maybe buying hosting companies and potentially stateside doing a little bit more of that.
But we don't live in the same world that we did when Anker started, where Mike and Neil did what they did. And there's a mutiny in our village. They're changing the free car parks to like 40 pence an hour. So people are going wild. So imagine all these people that are starting podcasts and have been used to podcasts being free through Anker. They're not going to want to pay one or two, five, 10, 20 bucks a month for this all in one platform. So then what you're left with are the people.
that do want to pay for it and the people that do want to pay for it are generally the type of people like us that want a really good recording system, that want a really good editing system, I want a really good distribution and hosting platform. So then you end up back where we are today. So I think there's I just feel like there's a lot of challenge there in putting a tech stack together and then trying to grow it.
rld that is very different to: Danny (:Yeah, I think like I say, I see the benefits of a tech stack and to certain degrees hosting companies of tech stacks, descripts tech stack, Riverside is now a tech stack. You know, there's a whole bunch of stuff, Alatoo, etc. So I see, I completely see the benefits. I'm not a fan of an all in one shop because I do feel that something is going to suffer. You're not going to be 100 % great at every single facet of that tech stack. So be great at what you do and leave.
the nuts are good stuff for yourself to someone else that they can be great at, but then they'll talk to your tech stack itself.
Mark (:Neil, any part in wisdom, my friend, on this topic?
Neal Veglio (:Yeah, just to sort of extend on what Danny said there, I agree with him. I don't think the all in one solution is a good one. I think that, you know, instead of taking, if you think about it as a three part system of planning and recording, editing and publishing, and then marketing, I think that companies that focus more on the marketing side, which I know you guys have started to do quite nicely, that's going to be the win for me. And I think, yeah, let the dabblers and the people that want the recording and editing
thing taken care of, use the tools that designed to do that really well.
Mark (:All right. We'll probably revisit that, because I think it is an interesting topic. And I just want to footnote it with the fact that as long as creators don't have artificial barriers put up, as long as we can keep creating and as long as we can keep encouraging people into the space, that's that's what we all want to see. So I think that part of it we should never really forget. We want to see this space grow and people should be free to create however they want. And I think the I don't think we should be telling people that.
It's not a podcast if you don't use these tools or if you do use these tools. I just think that's really important to maintain as we probably enter this next phase of technology in the space. But we will come back to that one. But enough of it for now. Let's do a little bit of this.
Mark (:In a rare segment, the wonderfully whimsical podcasting wishlist Danny Brown has brought to the table the reason that he went deaf at 40. What's your wish this week, buddy?
Danny (:Yeah, it's it's loudness normalization across the whole industry. Just make it default. I started with Anchor. I published my first podcast with Anchor and that was cool that you could put all the segments together. But I did find when you listen back, the music was different volume from me speaking, was different volume from the jingle, et cetera. And, you know, you hear it on podcast today, obviously, the dynamic ads coming in our way up here. And it's just because podcasters.
generally don't know about or often don't know about the loss levels and the loudness level. And I would just love it if no matter what host you used or what podcast publishing software you used or what audio editor you used or where you sent it out and what app you were listening on, everything was set automatically to minus 16 or minus 19 based on stereo or mono use. And you don't have to worry about yourself. It's all done for you by the tool, the tech stack. There you go.
Mark (:Well, that's quite a wild one. I'm a minus 16 mono guy myself. That's what I use. Loudness units relative to full scale is the luffs. Is the luffs leveling that Danny is talking about, which is properly boring and nerdy. And it is a big thing, though. We do it with with DAX. We make sure.
The DAX leveling is really close to the audio level. And I think the challenge with that, and Neil, you'll be able to chime in on this, is that there's a couple of things that are challenging with that one. Who does the processing and who's paying for it? Because it's computing power. Computing power costs money. If I want to process a file, I've got to compute the file. And the computer has to change it. So something like Orphonic takes it, processes it, and it costs money because the computer is running and that costs money.
And then there are the purists as well. So Neil, you know, if I'm gonna take like a mega bit rate file from some audio file and knock it down to 96 or 112 and I'm gonna normalize it to minus 16 mono, not everyone's gonna be happy with that. Don't touch my audio. In fact, they used to be a thing. I don't even know if it's still a thing. A lot of the hosting companies,
would get compared by third parties. And one of the things was, do they change your audio to make it smaller for their bandwidth and their hosting needs? So I don't know. I just feel some people might go mad at this, Neil.
Neal Veglio (:Yeah, I mean, you're talking to a purist here. I mean, I, it's one of the few things I agree with a certain person that's known for his ranty loudmouthness at other podcasting events. You'll know who I'm talking about when I say that. But I do agree with him. You know, one of the things he bemoans is podcast companies that take your audio and downscale it. Because it's not, I'll give you an example, actually. I was working as a consultant with a guy that makes a classical music podcast.
unds like it's through an old:And he went, no, I just can't get my head around that. I don't understand. I said, wait, who are you hosting with? He gave the answer. I'm not going to say, but you'll be able to guess exactly what I'm talking about. You mentioned them earlier. And I went, well, here's what they do. They literally take your audio and they down, unless you pay a lot of money to them extra per month, that's what's going to happen. So off the back of that, he then moved hosting company. And now his friends and his listeners all say, your music is so glorious now. It's back to the, you know, the 128K stereo that
that I would expect it to be. I mean, they obviously, they're not getting that technical when they're listening to it, but he knows that's what's causing it. So I do agree. I think that, you know, it should all be the same level. I mean, I get annoyed when I hear podcasts from so -called podcasting experts, not naming any names, whose audio is...
because I haven't mastered it correctly and you know I just think well come on, minus 16 it's not a huge jump I get that there's you know there's processing and there's understanding how you get there but you had one job guys you had one job minus 16 go on do it.
Mark (:Yeah, it's a funny old situation. It's like I'm a minus 16 mono for my shows just because they're all like this. They're all people chatting and I don't need decent stereo on that. So it keeps my file sizes down and whatever else. It's just quicker, quicker for people to download and whatnot. But it's you know, if you are running a music show or whatever, I see the challenge and it's it's it's one of those things where for me it's very much about the
as silly as it sounds like a lot of my listeners in the car and, you know, I listen to shows that are well produced and I know that they're well produced. I don't even need to know the love level because I know that I've got enough give in the volume either way I can. If I'm on the motorway, I can turn it up and there's plenty of headroom. And if I'm not on the motorway, I can turn it right down. It still sounds good. And there's plenty of headroom that way. It's usually the shows. That are recorded probably all in one genuinely, you can sort of tell.
because the sort of stunted editing and so on as well that are usually that quiet that there's no headroom for turning it up and that the ads blow your socks off. So Danny, it would be absolutely brilliant. It would make the listening experience far better, absolutely. So put that on the list, everyone. Put that on the list. We only need two, don't we? We only need two. And I'm no expert on this, on audio processing whatsoever. But yeah, Danny says we only need two.
minus 16 mono and minus 19 stereo. So, at Danny Brown CA on Twitter, if you want to mention that.
Danny (:There you go. Taking tips right now. Open my DMs just for all the pitches. We have a P.
Mark (:Right, let's do something super positive to finish up.
Mark (:Neil, as the esteemed co -host here on In and Around Podcasting, you get the honor of being able to give someone something, somewhat, somewhere, some why, somehow, a really positive shout out just to spread a little bit of goodwill. So who, what, or when or whatever is your flattering ram, my friend?
Neal Veglio (:It's a collective, actually. I want to flatter and say thank you to everybody that is, you know, leading the charge on the podcasting 2 .0 advocacy right now, because I think in 2024...
We really do need these features to become quite mainstream. And I'm a massive fan of chapter artwork. I'm a huge fan of transcripts. I think, well done, Apple, for finally getting on board with that. That was really good to see. But just the voices in the space that are pushing for this. I know there are some naysayers. Again, we're back to the OG crew who, no, it's RSS feed. It needs to be simple. No. Everything evolves. And I think...
is. And I don't think it's in: stening stats for a start. In:now is not only aware of podcasting, but regular listens. So for me, I'm a big shout out to people like James Cridland and Sam Sethi at PodNews who not only talk about this stuff all the time, but Sam's an active developer. I know that he works with you guys in various different ways as well through his platform, Trufans.
Neal Veglio (:Massive shout out to you guys at Captivate because you are literally leading the charge on this and is pretty much right. Okay, so what's the whole industry going to do next week then? Well, let's look at Captivate's changelog to get an idea where things are going to go. Just brilliant. But also, you know, just some of the people in the industry that are really pushing for this, you know, different podcast hosting companies, different influencers.
Just want to say a massive thank you if you are one of those people that is really leaning on companies and leaning on the industry in general to make those changes and give us all the benefits of that.
Mark (:Love that podcasting 2 .0 for anyone that's listening for the first time is a range of new features that as a collective throughout the industry, all the hosts and a few industry thought leaders and doers trying to add into RSS feeds and we're slowly getting there. So, yeah, I would give a shout out to the PSP, the podcast standards project, which is a collaboration between a range of hosting companies and a range of podcast listening apps and so on and so forth. And yeah, it's working well. We get together a lot. It's.
You know, I got into the space way back when and hosting companies barely talked to each other. They didn't. And now we're all working together. So this is great. So, yeah, big shout out on that one. Danny, do you want to give a shout out to anyone? Would you like to flatter anyone this week?
Danny (:I was muted wasn't I? You could have said man, there's me mooshing along. Alright then, let's edit that one out. Yes, there is actually. I'd like to give a shout out to Harry who's the founder over at Boomcaster. Much like you and Kieran, if you hear an idea come from a user that makes sense, you tend to jump on it and Pierre will jump on it and get it out the door. So I watched Dave Jackson.
And Jim Coulson's live show on Saturday on YouTube the a support cast coach and they've got really nice templates are really designed that they use with ecam So I took a screenshot sent off to harry and says hey It'd be great to have a similar option like this on boomcaster and he came back to me a week later How does this look so he'd count with a bunch of different templates allows you to do logo designs and all that I thought that's awesome And that to me that's what a startup is like they they're looking for good stuff to add and and bring out that makes sense. So I
Shout out to Hari, thanks for doing that, appreciate it.
Mark (:Love that. That's the way to do it as well is to keep people engaged. You know, and that's I think that's a big lesson for a lot of people on the podcast inside of things as an audio creator is that someone gives you something, gives you an idea, some feedback, some criticism. If you make changes based on that, let them know you've made the changes. That was one of the biggest, quickest ways that we grew Captivate. It was was community engagement. You know, take the ideas, give them feedback and off you go. I think that is really, really important. So, yeah, huge one.
Love that man. And I'm just going to give a shout out to our very own Ben Dodd, who's doing his first ever solo talk this week at Unipodfest, Unipodcast conference down in Birmingham. Unipod, I forget the name of it because it's one of those that's like it's one of those cool kid names. And I'm way too old for that now. I'm pretty sure it's Unipod. And it's just, you know, like startup style stuff where it's two, it's a portmanteau or two words.
Danny (:I'm glad you know the name of it.
Mark (:So good luck, Ben. Absolutely smash it. I'm sure it's a Unipod down in Birmingham here in the UK, which will be absolutely fantastic. So Neil, thank you for joining us, my friend. It's been a real pleasure having you here as a co -host. I'm sure we'll see you back.
Neal Veglio (:Honestly, it's been an honor. Thank you so much for inviting me on. And, you know, as I know, I'm sure everyone says this, but as a regular listener to the show, I've been listening to your stuff even in its previous iteration. And I love what you bring to it. And, you know, while I didn't want to sort of focus it all on you, Mark, because we didn't want your head to explode through the Riverside screen here. But, you know, thanks for all you do as well in terms of bringing this content to us, because it's been fab for many years.
Mark (:Well that's very kind mate and I couldn't do this one of course without you Danny, the engine and the talent some would say so thank you Brady I'll see you next week.
Danny (:Indeedly, indeedly, I'm like Thomas the little tank. Just keep toodling away. James, James!
Mark (:I suppose I'm like grumpy old James, aren't I?
Mark (:Could be worse, we could all be Gordon.
Neal Veglio (:Am I the fat controller?
Mark (:For anyone wondering what we're talking about, Google it. Google it. All right, you beautiful listener, thank you for joining me. I've been Mark. And of course, this has been In -N -Around Podcasting. Tell your friend about it or go to inaroundpodcasting .com slash listen. And if you want to be included in our wave file, go to inaroundpodcasting .com slash promo and we will feature the trailer for your podcast within our.
Sure. So until next week, keep doing what you do. Thank you for what you do for your audience. Keep enjoying it and we'll see you then. Bye bye for now.
