In this episode we talk with the creator of Podfans, Sam Sethi. Sam tells us how he got into podcasting and what his new website Podfans is all about

Hey everybody, welcome to Podcast Answers, the podcast that answers all of your questions.

We like to help people grow and start a podcast with answering any questions that they have

along the way.

So, if you have any questions for us here at Podcast Answers, feel free to go over to

podcastanswers.com slash contact and we will try to answer those on the upcoming episode.

Today, we have the creator of an app called Podfans with us for an interview about this

new app and how it's integrating some of the new Podcasting 2.0 standards.

So without further ado, let's go ahead and welcome Sam to the show.

Hey everybody, welcome to the Podcast Answers show.

I have Sam Sethi with me.

Welcome to the show, Sam.

Hey, thanks, Andy.

How are you?

Hi.

I'm doing real good.

We've kind of known each other for a little bit now through the Podcasting 2.0 initiative

here, but can you take me through a little bit of history on what your podcast, how you

become a podcaster yourself and just how that worked for you?

Yeah, so a friend of mine probably a decade ago, maybe a little bit less, but about a

decade ago.

So if I was doing a radio show with me and I went, oh, never done a radio show.

So I went and did that and it was an 80s radio show and I promise you, after you've played

Shalimar for the 50th time, you really are bored of the 80s.

It doesn't get any better.

I love the 80s music, but on repeat, it's not the greatest thing ever.

So I then started a show called Sam Talks Technology and my background is technology.

I love it.

And so this was a radio show just about technology, but what I decided to do was turn it into

a podcast because no offense to the people who live around where I live, but they're

not really that technical.

And so I wanted to invite the head of Alexa and Otter and whatever.

And so I was doing Skype calls at the time and then Zoom calls before the pandemic.

And it was great.

I could record them and I created a website called Sam Talks Tech and it all worked.

I did over 100 shows.

And that's where I learned to podcast really.

I made every mistake that we all make, you know, was it the right mic?

How long was it?

You know, the voice was wrong.

Everything was wrong.

But through that process of learning, I got better and better and hopefully got to the

point where people could listen to it properly.

But that was that.

And then the pandemic hit and I stupidly for some unknown reason decided, hey, why don't

we just do a conference then online and having not done a podcast conference before I've

done many other conferences, I did one online and we found a platform and we it was pretty

rough, but it worked.

And I invited Kara Swisher and I invited George the poet who was a British award winning

podcaster at the time and an unknown guy called James Cridland, somebody whoever he was, a

few other people.

It was great and we did two of those, you know, I think about five, six hundred people

turned up to each one, which was nice.

And they were paid events.

So, you know, if we had made them free, I'm sure we would have got more people.

Anyway, they worked and then a couple of weeks after the first one, I thought, you know what,

let's ping James Cridland, see if he wants to do something with me.

And we started something called Podland, which was the name that I came up with.

And yeah, you know, again, the first two or three shows of those were really awful.

If you go back and listen to episodes one, series one, episodes one, two and three of

series one, you'll hear James and me not knowing what the roles were for each of us.

And what I mean by that is James is the goat for podcasting and really, you know, I was

novice.

So the best position we should have taken and we do now in many ways.

If you listen to the show, I asked the dumb questions and James gives the smart answer.

That's fundamentally my role.

I'm just like, James, so what do you think of this then?

And then he goes off in a monologue and I'm going, wow, that's brilliant.

Now, James, what do you think of this?

So fundamentally, I can be replaced by anyone, but James is the person who gives all the

best answers.

Yeah.

And you guys, it sounds like you have a good friendship that you've built a good friendship

through that.

And have changed the name of the podcast now to Pod News.

I'll tell you why.

I'll tell you why.

You know, we, we did a year of podcasting, James is in Australia, I'm in just outside

of London and fundamentally we'd never met.

So a podcast movement in LA last year, not the one in Vegas that's just gone, James and

I met for the first time.

And what was the weirdest thing about it is I have no idea, Andy, how tall you are.

You could be seven foot two or five foot four.

I don't know looking at this box that's in front of me, right?

So I had this experience where James turns up and we meet in the lobby and I just looked

up, he's about six foot one, six foot two, and I'm like, oh, wow, you're bigger than

I thought.

And so that, I think he went, you're smaller than I thought.

But that said and done.

I also think part of the name change was protecting James's brand.

He didn't know me from Adam, he didn't know whether, if he'd called it Pod News Weekly

Review from day one, would I have been awful and therefore I could have destroyed his other

brand Pod News Daily.

So I think it was a safe net that gave him, you know, we'll call it Podlan for now and

if it's crap, we can get rid of it.

And if it's any good, we'll rename it.

Sure.

Thankfully, he renamed it.

Yep.

Yep.

And you guys are doing that.

You do weekly and kind of go over all the news in podcasting.

So yeah, I appreciate that show.

But you got, you have created a podcast listening website.

You're just into that now.

So can you tell me a little bit about, about pod fans?

Yeah.

So pod fans was probably some, a couple of people came to me with an idea.

Not the platform so much, but the idea of creating podcasts with celebrities and advertising.

Nothing new.

Nothing new at all.

And I just rolled my eyes and I went, oh, no, not another one of those podcasts, please.

Right.

There wasn't need to hear another celebrity endorse another product.

Right.

So I wasn't really interested and then they sort of got me interested and then I went

going to the details, but we decided to go our separate ways and I put, I parked, it

was called viral tribe.

I parked on the side and I have River Radio, which is a radio station as well, which I

started in the middle of COVID for some strange reason.

Yeah.

All the best ideas come in the middle of COVID, right?

Exactly.

I was bored.

I didn't know what else to do.

So let's start a radio station.

Right.

So I went back to doing the radio station and then, but this little itch kept scratching

at me.

You know, it was like, oh, you know, that platform, that looked quite good and what if you extended

that and what if you took it one stage further and whatever?

And I was like, yeah, let's do that.

So me and my developer, there's two of us who do it.

We basically have been building it for best part of seven months now.

And I think that's where we're at.

We demoed it in Vegas and got some really good feedback from people, you know, this

doesn't work.

That doesn't work basically.

That's right.

That's fundamentally the feedback you get.

Now, don't like that.

Why is that there?

And I'm going, why aren't you pressing that button now, what it's in front of you?

And so that's partly, you know, coming out, coming out of your blinkers when you're developing

into the real world of people is often painful, but fun.

And so, yeah, we've been adjusting.

We hopefully will have it ready.

Well, what we're doing now is we've finished all the features.

We have, we are feature complete, but one thing that's being done today and I can talk

about that in a minute.

But other than that, the, it's a, it's a progressive web app.

And what I mean by that, a PWA is that we've designed it for the desktop and then it will

degrade gracefully down for an iPad or an iPhone.

We aren't going to go native.

We didn't want to go native.

It meant having to build three different development platforms otherwise.

And that's crazy.

Right.

Yeah.

It's easier to do it if you can do one thing for every, every location.

Yeah.

And actually iOS 16.4, which came out a few weeks ago has added pretty much all the features

that iOS native apps would have given me like home screen, home screen icons, red dot notifications,

push notifications.

So all of that was what you would have got in an iOS app has now become available as

a desktop app and a PWA.

So very happy on that.

So that's what we're working on for the next couple of weeks.

And that will be the beta and then the London podcast show is May the 23rd.

You'll see me walking around in this very lilacly looking buddy and basically, yeah,

handing out as many flyers and invites and come and join us type notifications.

Awesome.

So what makes your listening web app different from any other app?

Can you talk a little bit about, a little bit about value for value?

So if our listeners don't know, you know, can you explain what value for value is and

what makes pod fans different than any other app?

Yes.

So value for value is a, is a term that Adam Curry uses, the pod father, as he's known,

who, it's really a way of saying, look, I will pay you for the content you produce at

a value that I perceive to be what it's worth.

Right.

Now that works very well.

And look, we, we, we have this in everyday society.

I say to people in Britain, certainly, and I don't know the rules in America, but in

Britain, the price tag on the item of clothing you buy is an offer price.

It's not a final price.

And if we weren't so British, we could actually go up to the counter and go, I will pay you

20 pounds less.

Yeah.

But we don't.

So we're so British.

We go, Oh no.

Absolutely.

64.99.

Absol bargain.

I'll pay that straight away, sir.

And the reality is I could just go off and barter, but we don't.

And it's that fundamental value for value model, which is the host sets their price

or their perceived value on the listener, then we'll agree with it, disagree with it.

And that's the two states.

Now why, why, why do we do that?

I want to just take a step back because I think people should understand, look, I'm

fairly old and I've been around the internet quite a while, in fact, most of it.

And when I was the product manager at Netscape, I do remember going up to people and saying,

it's called a browser.

Yeah, you'll get it, HTTP colon forward slash w w stick with it, Andy.

It's, it's, it's useful.

No, no search engines yet.

We'll get there.

So anyway, it was all this sort of vocabulary that was really difficult.

But Mark Andreessen, who was one of the guys behind Netscape that in fact the CEO and founder,

he really wished at the time that he'd created a micropayment system, this ability to pay

small micro amounts, not with a credit card, because then you get gatekeepers and payment

right fees and everything else.

So he wished he'd done it.

He never did.

And in, in respect of that, we ended up with likes, hearts, thumbs up on all other sorts

of rubbish.

And then we ended up with advertising as a way of supporting digital content.

Now that's the model that's existed for the best part of 20 years on the internet.

And what we're seeing now is this new thing, cryptocurrency, if you want to call it, but

it's called Bitcoin.

You know this, but I'm just sort of laying it out for people.

And a 100 millionth of a Bitcoin is known as a sat by, and that's because the inventor

of Bitcoin was Satoshi.

So a sat is such a small micro amount, you know, a thousand sat sounds a lot, do I need

to take a mortgage out?

Should I go to the bank manager first, you know, and that's probably less than one cent.

So what we have now is a micro payment peer to peer system.

So there's no gateways in between, no third parties.

And it allows content creators to create a set of value for their content and pod fans

is doing it with podcasting to begin, but we will be doing it with music and video and

books eventually.

And the user and the listener can change that value if they so wish.

So they could say, no, I'm going to give you zero, don't value anything you're producing

Andy.

Dats and twos.

No, you're getting zero.

Forget it.

Not another.

Or Andy sets it, you know, you set it at 100 sats per minute, which is a streaming sat.

And I go, Andy, no, no, no, no, that's far too low.

Very generous of you, but I'm going to double that to 200 sats per minute.

And I could do that as well.

So it's a bar to exchange system using a micro currency payment system.

And yes, we've implemented that.

Um, I'm glad to say that took a little bit of brain power, but we've got that.

We've also got, uh, booster grounds, which are fundamentally comments with a payment.

So if you're listening to a podcast, you go, wow, that's a brilliant piece.

Yeah, I'm going to, I'm going to congratulate you boost a comment or I'm going to write

a comment and I'm going to pay a certain amount with it.

And we've added zaps as well.

Much of the dislike of some, um, a zap is basically a like.

It's no different, but, but it's, uh, it's worth 10 sats at the moment in our system.

It's a fundamentally, I, I like what you're doing.

I don't want to write a comment, but I'll just give you a quick zap to say, well done,

Andy.

Yeah.

So that's a little bit about where we are.

Great.

That's that sounds good.

Um, so, so as me as a creator, I can put some, some code into my feed or, uh, whatever,

and then be able to get the payments through, through the listens and you take a portion

of that for providing the service.

And that's great.

That's awesome.

That's one of the things that I like about the podcasting 2.0 initiative and the streaming

sats is the ability to, you know, as a, as a creator of an app, uh, you can go ahead

and set that you're going to take a little bit of a fee for that.

And so you get paid.

Everyone gets paid in this where, you know, in the previous model, it was, you know, Apple

or Spotify taking some money, but we didn't really see a whole lot of it or any of it.

And then as an app creator, you paid 99 cents for the app, maybe, but you don't get a reoccurring

revenue.

And so this is a great, a great opportunity as a creator, both, uh, as a podcast creator,

a content creator, but then a content, you know, listening app to be able to provide,

to get that same reoccurring revenue.

So that's, that's great.

I love it.

So we, we've focused on five areas.

Okay.

Uh, discovery, interactivity, gamification, social and monetization.

Let me step through those.

So today, as you just said, you know, you can go on to Apple and Spotify, you listen

for free, fundamentally, if you want to have ads in Spotify or pay your subscription, but

fundamentally you'll listen to podcasts for free.

And as, as we both know, the, the podcast that gets no value out of that, and, and even

if you put some advertising, you've got to have 10,000 downloads, so get a decent number.

So, um, what we started off with, I sat down and said, okay, we've got them monetized

station part, which I just described earlier and we'll talk a little bit more about that

in detail.

But the first part, and you know, this is discovery, how do I find a new podcast, right?

You probably have three or four podcasts, maybe five, you know, in your weekly listen.

And if somebody says to you, Hey, I found this really cool new podcast.

You should listen to it.

You might give it a go.

All right.

But there isn't, or hasn't been really a good way of discovery other than, you know, Apple

maybe putting it in the new and noteworthy or Spotify doing the same.

So if you're lucky, yeah, well, basically not if you're lucky, if you happen, just know

the right people.

That's all it is.

Right.

Um, and you scratch their palms, um, but other than that, um, you, you, it's word of mouth.

So the first thing we've done is we've created a semantic search engine within pod fans and

that, that's just, it sounds grand.

Let me explain that.

It's, it's fundamentally the podcast namespace, the extension to RSS has added a whole new

features tags and what they call, but we call them features.

So I can search by the person or the host fundamentally.

I can search by location, category keyword, and we've added country as well as an extra

field.

And so what you might say is, Oh, I want to find everything that Andy does.

Oh, I didn't know.

I know this podcast.

I didn't know.

Doesn't do.

I didn't know his other one.

Great.

Oh, well, but if you don't know the title of those other podcasts and you don't know

how to find them, then one way would have been to put your name in.

And so with the person tag, hopefully if you've added that to your RSS feeds, then all three

of your podcasts would appear.

Great.

So discovery is a great way.

We've also, uh, gamified this a little bit.

So we don't want to take all four million podcasts.

We've said, you know what we're going to take probably the top 500,000, but there might

be a brand new podcast or there might be a podcast that we haven't thought about.

So now what we do is we, we allow you to suggest a new podcast.

And if you suggest a podcast that isn't in our database, you get paid a hundred sats.

And then if you vote for that, cause you know, the first boat, excuse me, the first person

to vote, sorry, suggest, um, gets that a hundred sats, but the next people get 10 sats

for all voting.

Right.

Got you.

So we then go, and then we look in our system and go, oh yeah, that's, that looked like

it's trending.

Yeah.

We'll add that because we don't want to add every podcast, you know, we know 80% of stuff

on anchor was, hello, it's a podcast testing one, two, really don't want those.

So we've, we've gamified the search interactivity again, going back to Apple and Spotify.

I want to leave a comment on your podcast, right?

Can't do it.

So we've, we've added, as you, we talked about earlier booster grams, but we've also added

the ability for you to create clips for you to fundamentally begin to interact with the

podcaster.

And we've also added threaded comments.

So it's a feature we haven't released yet.

I've got the exclusive.

We, we basically, um, we, we, there's a feature in podcast and called lit live item tag, which

allows people to broadcast live, I know you do.

And that live show then is basically allowing people to go, oh, Andy's live, let me jump

on board and we can then interact.

Well, we also wanted to do another feature, which is, uh, we will put in your profile

what you're currently listening to, by the way, you can turn that off in your settings.

So it's not, it's not a default.

I'm going to find everything he's listening to.

Really?

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, so fundamentally in your profile, it says what you're listening to and it has a

little share icon next to it.

If I then wanted to click on it, I jumped to the exact same second that you're listening

and we then co-listen nice, fundamentally, I can then go, hey, and start a conversation.

So we, the podcast doesn't have to be live, but the listeners could be live together.

That's a great idea.

So yeah, so that's coming in the next two weeks that your future will be live and what's

really cool.

I really like that.

It's like, hey, I want to listen with you and yeah, and then we can come in and we can

boost and we're thread together and whatever.

And that makes it much more interesting, I think, and you can invite friends to join

you as well to come into that conversation.

Yeah.

That sounds a little bit like the Apple's, uh, share, I forget what they call it, but

the sharing where you can share play, I think.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's a great idea.

So that's the, a bit of the interactivity.

The gamification, we, we fundamentally believe in the value for value model.

So yes, you pay to listen to podcasts.

You don't have to.

You can put it to zero, as I said, but if you, as a listener, start to create value

as well, so you're sharing clips, you're sharing boosts, you're doing, inviting friends into

the system, then we give you in the gamification model points as well and we then can create

badges and leaderboards.

And of course, you then can become a super fan.

And one of the things we haven't talked about, but let me do it now is there's something

called splits and, um, splits are the ability in the payment model to say.

So let's say you were listening to James and I on pod news and you went, Hey, I love what

you guys are doing.

Here's a row of ducks, two, two, two sats, right?

And we go, thank you so much, Shandy.

And then it goes 50, 50 split and it does that automatically in the system.

So James and I get half each brilliant.

We've also within pod fans done it so that you can include your guests, you can include

editors, you can include writers and authors, so you can split it in any million different

ways that you want to do it and the system will work it out for you.

But what we also wanted to do was have the super fan get a split.

But if you are doing lots and lots of work for a podcast that you really love, and it's

demonstrable because we can measure every time you share something, every time you clip

something, every time you comment, then we go, Hey, do you know what?

It's the host can then say, Hey, Andy, thank you so much for going back to that thing we

said earlier, word of mouth discovery, sharing it with your network.

Thank you so much.

You know, I'm going to give you 5% split and you can then put the super fan into the splits

as well.

So not only the host get it, not only the producers, the editors, whatever, and guests,

but you can also bring super fans.

So that's pretty sweet.

So that would be in your system on top of the split that I would already have in my

RSS feed if I had that in the feed.

Yeah.

So one of the things that we have had to do as an app developer is go, do we wait for

the hosts to provide the features?

Or do we provide some of them ourselves?

Sure.

So one of the things that happened, I think last week, it's that fresh was something called

the pod role.

And I know that you've implemented a pod role.

Yep.

So what is a pod role?

It's like a blog role.

It's basically your personal recommendation of other podcasts that I might be interested

in if I listen to your podcast.

Great.

Another good word of mouth, way of discovery.

That hasn't been implemented by hosts.

So I'm guessing you hand rolled that yourself and add it to the RSS feed.

James did the same.

The guys at Buzzcast did the same and we can suck that in through your RSS and we've exposed

that in our app.

Great.

But not all features have been implemented.

So for example, Buzzcast haven't implemented wallets and value payments.

Other podcasters haven't done other things.

So the way that we've done it, we've said, look, we will pull your RSS and we will look

at all the things that you currently support and we will enable that from your RSS feed.

But on top of that, we're going to build features that we think should be supported and later

on maybe your host will catch up.

So a good example might be your podcast person tag hasn't been set in your RSS feed because

your host doesn't support that tag.

But when you claim your podcast and you become the creator and verified creator, you can

go into an admin system on our podcast platform, pod fans, and you can then go and add the

person tag locally.

Now what will happen is when your host provides the person tag, you might go into your host

and then change it there.

We will respect your RSS and then we'll overwrite the local version that we've kept.

What we've said is we will add new and newer features that we think are appropriate to our

platform and then when your host catches up with those features, we will overwrite our

local feature and that's how we're working.

Great.

Yeah, that sounds really cool.

Anything else that our listeners should know about and how they can get involved in this?

Yeah.

So the last part is the S social.

One of the things that we implemented about a week ago is the new Twitter API just opened

and thank you, Elon, it took you forever, but you got there eventually.

To be fair, it's not a great API, but that said and done, what we can do now is we can

go and look at your following, who you follow, not how many people follow you, but who you

follow, and we can pull that into pod fans.

Now what's cool about that is we will give you 10 free invites to begin with and those

invites, then you can go out to your 10 friends who are podcasting friends and invite them

to join your pod fans.

Now each of your friends gets a value, a bit like a collection of cards like we used to

call them in the UK, Panini soccer cards, best kicker, best header of the ball, best

whatever, right, and then have a point system on them, well, we've done that by saying,

how many followers does that person have, okay, that's the value in sats that we will

give this person.

So this person's worth 600 sats or 400 sats.

And if you invite them, you get 100 sats for inviting them.

So creating value, you get some value.

But then when they join, you get the value of their followers, so the value that we've

placed them.

So you can get 600 sats for one person, 700 for one, and 380 for another, right?

Got you.

So you get these 10 invites and you get sats.

We're also, we're just doing it now, we've also put splits into that.

I know we're mental, right?

But fundamentally what it means is that you invite a friend and he's worth 700 sats.

You can then click a toggle button which then says 50-50 split.

So when he joins, he gets half the sats and you get half the sats.

So you can be nice to your friends or you can take all of it for myself, I'm not sharing.

So it's really your call, what you want to do on that.

So that interactivity brings friends into podbounds quite quickly.

But we've done something, the last couple of things, it's called an activity stream.

And what it is, it's just basically like a Twitter stream.

It shows you all the things you've done in the system.

So you might have followed two people, you might have become a fan of a new podcast,

you might have played three episodes, whatever you've done in the system, we will have a

stream of content that tracks you.

What's nice is then you can then follow people in the system who are your friends and they

can follow you back and you can then see their activity stream and you get an aggregated

stream a bit like your Twitter stream of everyone in the system.

So you suddenly go, I'm going to filter this by boosts, who's done a boost this week?

Wow, Sam's done a hundred thousand pound boost podcasting index on that episode.

Wow, I think I should go and listen to that then.

So again, it's another signal or I might get, Andy's just become a fan of a new podcast.

Wow, why is Andy a fan of that podcast?

Let me go and have a listen to it.

Oh yeah, that's a really cool podcast.

Let me become a fan too.

That's a great idea.

So that's how the activity streams work and the social element of it.

And then the last part, as I said, we've done the monetization through.

So when you join, one of the biggest problems with all of this technology is the terminology.

I said to you earlier, when people started hearing about browsing and HTTP and what's

a URL, I could have gone to 99 people in my pub in 2000 and said to them, do you know

what a URL is?

And they wouldn't have known, right?

And now they all do.

And in the same way, if I said to you, what's your digital wallet?

Give me your lightning address and have you got an invoice?

You're looking at me going, you're talking Swahili again, Sam, stop it.

I've told you about this.

But the reality is that it's just common vocabulary that people haven't got used to yet.

And when they do, then it'll be easy.

So what we do is there's an Australian guy called Edward de Bono, it's a favorite saying

of mine, complexity is fail, simplicity.

And what we are in the moment right now is a semi-complex moment where people don't know

what wallet to get, how do they get it, what's a sat, how do you make this payment, will

I lose my house and all of those things, right?

So we've built in some really cool things.

So when you first join, you get 10,000 sats when you join, part of the gamification.

Complete these tasks, we will reward you.

So you've added value to us, we'll value you back.

Now you've got some funny money.

You might not even know what a sat is, but what we've done, and this is again, something

unique to pod fans, we've valued every show and every episode in a unique way.

And we say that each show is worth 100 sats per minute times the time of the show gives

you the total value of the show.

So an hour show might be worth 6,000 sats, great, okay, that's good or bad, I don't know.

So we've got a converter in there as well.

So you can just type in 6,000 sats and it'll tell you, and actually underneath the value,

we tell you what it is in your local currency, that's about $170, right?

So it's not massive.

Now you know that it's not going to break the bank and make you have to get a mortgage.

So the second thing was we do streaming sats, so 100 sats per minute, but you only pay for

the amount you listen to.

So a one hour show, you might listen to 20 minutes, in which case you're only paying

2,000 sats, which is cool.

So this payment of per minute sat streaming payment is the way I think it will go, not

just for podcasts, but books, films, video and music, right?

How many books, I don't know, how many books in Audible that I started and got to Chapter

3 and I've never listened to the rest of it, right?

Or I've got music tracks that I love, but I played it and then I tend to fade out at

the end, I haven't listened to it.

So but I've ended up paying for the whole value without getting the value.

And so this new model of value for value and per minute payment is where I think the internet

is going to go, not just for pod fans, but for everyone.

Right.

And I think that that's a good and it also gives you as the creator kind of an idea of,

okay, I see that my sats per minute are dropping off at minute 35.

Maybe I'm talking too long, maybe I have a non-interesting topic, like it gives you

a better signal on the content that you're producing and the value of that as your list

to your actual listeners, not just a, okay, I have, you know, 7000 downloads in this episode.

Yeah.

Downloads is a really bad metric now.

So the guys at Bumper are a really cool podcasting agency, Jonas Foost, has come up with this

thing called Listen Time.

And it's basically a measurement of how long, as you just said, did these podcasts get listened

to because you could have 6000 downloads and only 100 people listen to it, right?

Right.

Well, that's the dirty secret of podcasting in some ways because now advertisers go, oh,

6000 downloads, 10,000 downloads, that sounds like it's great.

Let's put our advert there, right?

But the reality is the advert was 40 minutes into a 60 minute show and everyone drops off

at 35 minutes.

No one's heard that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So not only did not, not only did 6000 people not hear it, but also of the 100 or 500 who

listened to it, nobody heard your ad.

So we've built in Listen Time into the system.

We've built in value paid.

So as a listener, you get your own dashboard as well, which is how, how much have I listened

to this month, break it down by months, which podcast, how much am I paying?

But also as a creator, you get a dashboard of that as well.

So there's lots and lots of stuff in there, I'm afraid to say, but you know, it's taking

this time, but I'm really excited.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And you're in alpha going to be beta soon, is that correct?

Okay.

So I think by the, we've set a goal for the end of April to be an open beta.

Yeah.

Okay.

And so what we're trying to do, you know, if you think of everything I've just explained,

there are a lot of moving parts in that, right?

Right.

Yeah.

The fundamental complexity of it means that, you know, we made a couple of, oh, that didn't

quite work or what, how'd you do that?

And also one of the things we're doing at the moment in this last couple of weeks is

building a help system on top.

So when you, when you first sign in, you don't know what you're earning and why you're earning

stuff and where am I now in the system and how do I start and where do I go first?

Right?

Sure.

So we've built this sort of last help system we're testing now where you go in and it says,

right, you've earned so many sats so far for onboarding and then, hey, complete these

next six tasks now, more sats.

Oh, okay.

Let me try and do that then.

And then then you go to another page and I said, on this page, you can do these seven

things if you want.

Right?

And it explains what's going on.

I think that's the challenge we've got.

We've built something so powerful that I worry that we've over engineered it maybe in some

ways where people won't know where to go to hit what button to get it to work.

I mean, one good example, last example, it came from Adam Curry was this requirement

of, I want to support your show even if I don't listen to your show.

And it was like, what do you mean, well, I might be away on holiday, but I still want

to support you.

Right.

So in your profile settings, you can, there's two features, one of the features is you can

go into your profile settings and say, right, I'm going to put 100,000 sats.

That's my budget for this month, right?

I'm not spending any more.

I've promised the wife no more sats.

So you put 100,000 in and as you're streaming through episodes and you're paying whatever

you want to pay, that's taking out to the budget.

It doesn't go to your full wallet.

Now, what you might then say is I want to become a fan of three podcasts.

I don't need to be a fan of every podcast, I'm just the three podcast and becoming a

fan is like subscribing to the podcast.

So you get notifications and new episodes, but you can toggle the button in your profile

settings from streaming to support and when you turn it to support.

So if that 6,000 sats full value episode that we described earlier is downloaded, instead

of you, even if you only listened to 20 minutes of it, you said, I want to support this creator.

It pays the full 6,000 in advance.

So you'll say, I don't care how much I consume, I'm valuing you and supporting you to the

full extent of the value that you say this episode's worth.

And I will do that when your next episode turns up and the one after and the one after

and the one after.

So being able to support the podcast that you're a fan of is a cool feature, we think.

And all the other podcasts where you're not a fan of, but you just want to listen to them,

you can still pay them a streaming sat or you can pay them nothing.

Sure.

That's great.

And where can our listeners see the site and get to know more?

So come and visit us at podfans.fm and come along and we'll get you through the wait list

and we'll get you on boarded.

So yeah, thank you.

Awesome.

Well, thanks again for joining us today.

I really appreciate the explanation and again, just telling our listeners and showing them

this new idea of value for value.

Thanks, Andy.

All right.

That was a great interview.

Thanks, Sam, again, for that interview on the podcast answers podcast about your new

app, Podfans.

So guys, if you've enjoyed this podcast and you're listening in a new podcasting app,

go ahead and hit the podcast boost button there and send us a message.

Send us some satoshis like Sam was talking about in his interview.

If you don't have that, you can always go to podfanswers.com slash buy me a coffee and

support us that way too.

So guys, with that, I will see you next week as we answer more questions about podcasts.