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The Podcast Index presents Podcasting 2.0 - Upgrading Podcasting

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August 14, 20261 hr 35 min

Episode 267: Chocolove

Podcasting 2.0 August 14th 2026 Episode 267 - "Chocolove" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00 - THE SPOTIFY "SKIP AHEAD" BUTTON — THE BIG ONE What it is: Spotify is testing a button that appears on the playback screen the moment it thinks you'd want to skip — an intro, a sponsorship message, or an entire ad break. It is bigger than everything else on screen. One tap drops you at the end of the break, back in the show. Premium subscribers only, selected markets including US and UK, and only when the app is in the foreground. Who broke it: James Cridland at Pod News, 4 August 2026 — an exclusive. Spotify never announced it. Semafor and most of the trade press picked it up afterwards; Cridland noted on air this week that some of them ran it without credit. The number that makes it different from a skip button: Cridland's arithmetic — skipping a typical ad break by hand is nine presses of the 15-second button, plus a correction tap when you overshoot. Skip Ahead is one. "Some people have said, oh, but you've been able to skip for years and this is no different. But a button that only appears when it's stuff that Spotify thinks you should be skipping is a start." It skips other people's money: the button fires on third-party ads — Acast, Odyssey, the New York Times — and on ads inside Spotify's own shows. It even skipped Search Engine's read for its own paid tier, PJ Vogt pitching Incognito Mode. One half of Spotify sells advertisers reach; the other half hands listeners a button to leave. Spotify's answer, and the trapdoor in it: Spotify told Cridland it is "not affecting ad delivery." True only if delivery means to the device. Cridland: "If ad delivery is to the listener's ear, which is actually what people are paying for..." — the download still counts, the ad still gets billed, the human never hears it. Spotify's other defence: the button merely shows where other listeners already skip. Cridland: "I'm not entirely sold on that, but if that's what Spotify say, I mean they wouldn't lie." 🔥 THE LINE FOR THE BOARDROOM — read the terms of service: "What's to stop them from going, you know what, people are using that skip ahead button, why don't we just turn that on automatically? I went to have a look at the terms and conditions of Spotify. There is nothing to stop them from doing that. Nothing at all. And let's be clear, that would destroy the ad-supported ecosystem that podcasting is." Why the scale makes it existential: Spotify is 72% of all podcast downloads in the Philippines, 47% in Mexico, about a third in Australia, 75%+ in some markets. ~300 million paying subscribers plus 500 million free. Cridland on the smaller ad-strippers: "Podtastic will never be that big... they're not going to materially harm the podcast industry. This is." And it sets the precedent — if Spotify does it, every other app can say the same. The YouTube comparison, and why it fails: YouTube also lets you skip some sponsor reads — but YouTube pays creators to be there. Spotify pays nothing for an RSS show to be on Spotify. Same behaviour, opposite deal. Board question (Adam): if the ad is baked into the file and the file is fully downloaded, who exactly is the injured party — and is that an argument for the download metric or the final proof it's worthless? Timing, for the cynics: Spotify's Q2 report credited "favorable podcast impacts" with pushing its profit margin to an all-time high — in the same window it built a button to strip other people's ads. Pod News — Spotify threatens industry with ad-skipping tool Semafor — Spotify's new 'skip' button could end the podcast business as we know it Forbes — Spotify tests ad-skip button that could upend podcast advertising Gizmodo — very cool for listeners, not for podcast businesspeople Digital Music News — Spotify appears to be testing a 'Skip Ahead' button ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Make the Funding Tag Buttom Prevelant! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 - THE DEAFENING SILENCE — WHO ACTUALLY PUT THEIR HEAD UP Cridland's charge, this week: "I find it fascinating, although not altogether unsurprising, that so many people who rely on podcast advertising for a living have sat on their hands and said bugger all on this." His read on why: nobody wants to go on the naughty step with Spotify or Apple and lose promotion. Acast — Greg Glenday, given only after a week's thought (he declined to comment for the original story): "We do have some creators on the Acast platform who are not happy about this, and we will support them completely as they evaluate any recourse. Acast is working privately with Spotify to understand if we could have collaborated more on the rollout or positioning." Cridland's read: a hand-slap for not consulting partners, not a condemnation. Adopter Media — Glenn Rubinstein calls it "fundamentally wrong." One of the very few naming it plainly. Ben Richardson — interviewed on PNWR, sat squarely on the fence, neither for nor against. 👀 Watch this space: Cridland said on air this week he is publishing another story next week — "because I've discovered even more." There is a second shoe. Cridland on Spotify's character: "I would hope that Spotify respects the creators. All of the history of that company suggests that they don't." And on the replies he got: "the responses I've got from Spotify seem to show just a total misunderstanding of how the podcast industry works, which is more concerning to be honest." The endgame he sketches: "The advertisers will notice when the ads don't work as well as they used to. And if the ads stop working, the advertisers will walk away. And we will have no opportunity to bring them back — they'll say, we've tried podcasting and it doesn't work for us anymore." ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 - THE APPS THAT GOT THERE FIRST — AD-STRIPPING AS A CATEGORY The framing worth having: this is not one rogue app. In the space of about three weeks there are at least half a dozen shipping products whose entire pitch is removing the ads. Spotify didn't invent the behaviour — it industrialised it. 🥇 PODTASTIC — the one Pod News covered (22 July 2026). Publisher: Freewheel Group Ltd. $2.99/month billed annually ($34.99/yr), or $9.99 monthly, 14-day trial. None of it goes to creators; up to 30% goes to Apple or Google. It "automatically skips past the interruptions other listeners skip" — crowd-sourced from aggregated listener behaviour rather than transcription. Plus AI summaries. 🥷 Podtastic's real trick — it is nearly unblockable: the app downloads the MP3 straight to the phone and identifies itself in server logs as a web browser (Safari v604.1). To block it you'd have to block every web browser. The developer deliberately never mentions ad-skipping in the store listing and never names specific podcasts. Same developer previously ran PodcastAdBlock, which stripped ads and sold ad-free versions — shut down May 2026. 🆕 CASTRIA — the one Adam is thinking of, and it's FREE. iOS, iPad, Android, plus an installable web app, one account syncing across all of them. It transcribes the episode and pinpoints every ad, sponsor read and commercial break — including host-read ads, which crowd-sourcing misses — and skips them hands-free. One tap to switch it off or keep a sponsor you actually want. Ships AI summaries, searchable transcripts, tap-to-jump topics. 🎯 Castria's defence is the interesting part — they've pre-argued your side: "Does this hurt podcast creators? No. Castria downloads the complete episode straight from the publisher using your phone, so it registers as a genuine download and the ad impressions count just as the creator intended — we never re-host or alter the file." That is the download metric being used as a moral alibi. If the number is all anyone measures, stripping the ads is victimless by definition. Same trapdoor as Spotify's "we're not affecting ad delivery." Also in the wild: ZeroAds (zeroads.ai) — "remove ads from any podcast, keep your app"; AdSkipPro; PurerPodcasts. There is now a comparison-shopping blog post ranking podcast apps by ad-skip quality. Neil Vellio's voicemail to PNWR, which is the whole argument in ten seconds: "You can measure an ad to the end of its days, and it's still going to be an ad that someone's gonna pay to get shot of. Fix why people are paying to skip the ads, and half your measurement problem evaporates." And on the AMP Accords putting Spotify and YouTube on the committee: "a bit like inviting the two biggest meatheads to the anti-bullying committee." Pod News — Another app promises to cut out the ads (Podtastic) Castria Podtastic ZeroAds ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 - DAVE'S WORLD — PODPING v0.12.0, AND THE ONE-LINER OF THE WEEK 🎯 DAVE'S POST ON THIS EXACT STORY (7 Aug), the line to open with: "I look at what AMP wants podcast app developers to do in support of advertisers. Then I look at what podcast app developers are actually doing with advert skipping. One of those will win out. And it isn't the one that requires tons of first-party data collection/reporting and the taking on of privacy liabilities." #podping v0.12.0 shipped (7 Aug) — writer, watcher and monitor, source and docker. DHT is gone: bootstrap peer discovery now uses the 5 stable, never-changing podping.cloud writer IDs as a pre-seeded list. Dave, 3 Aug: "It adds nothing but redundancy and bugs to the code." The ask to the audience: "Existing watcher nodes will need to upgrade to v0.12.0 for long-term stability. I see hardly anyone has upgraded past v0.9.0. Upgrading is super easy now that everything is on docker hub." — make him say this on air; it's a direct call to action. Iroh v0.97 → v1.0.3 across all podping.cloud servers (v0.11.0, 2 Aug). Multi-arch docker in progress from @suorcd; @DavidMarzalC testing on a Pi. Dave on a reported memory leak: QUIC connections historically eat memory per connection, so self-monitoring recycle code exists — "and build with --release, it makes a huge impact." He'll fire up an Iroh relay once the code settles. 💰 The server-memory bit — good boardroom filler (13 Aug): "I just priced 128 gigs of ECC server memory from HPE. It's over $6,000." Then the correction: they don't sell a 128GB kit anymore, so it's two 64GB kits at $6k each — $12,000 for 128 gigs, as much as the entire base server itself. Dave on the modern tech stack (12 Aug), replying to Marco Arment: "It's every corner of the modern technology corporate world. All the digital business processes are broken. Even the simplest things that used to be handled in 20 minutes can take days or weeks. All the beauty of modern tech interop gets stomped on by massive corporate greed, incompetence and inefficiency. When you make mountains of profit even while your shit is broken it's hard to get anyone to care." Also, flatly: "AI customer support chat bots are infuriatingly bad." 🤖 Gell-Mann amnesia, with a screenshot (7 Aug): "Gemini says Overcast supports video. Just your daily reminder to not believe what AI says without verification." OpenJDK bans AI-generated contributions — "Contributions in the OpenJDK Community must not include content generated, in part or in full, by large language models, diffusion models, or similar deep-learning systems." Dave: "This coming from Oracle, who has bet their entire future on generative AI." His theory: Oracle's fear of copyrighted code surfacing in Java keeps the policy alive for years. Spurlock counters it reads as "interim" — "not no, but not yet." Dave: "Not yet can last a very long time." Housekeeping: no board meeting on 7 Aug — Adam was out of town for the JCD memorial. Dead feeds are blocked naturally by the UNIQUE key on the url column of 'newsfeeds' — once marked dead it takes a new feed URL to get back in. And Mike Dell is speaking at Podcast Movement NYC: "Podcasting 2.0 — Why it's not Fringe anymore!" Off-topic but very Dave (9 Aug), Wendell Berry: "Science can function as religion only by making two unscientific claims: that it will eventually know everything, and that it will eventually solve all human problems." @dave — AMP vs. what app developers are actually doing @dave — podping v0.12.0 ships, upgrade your watchers @dave — Gemini says Overcast supports video Last Modified 08/14/2026 14:30:57 by Freedom Controller

July 24, 20261 hr 33 min

Episode 266: Research Velocity

Podcasting 2.0 July 24th 2026 Episode 266 - "Research Velocity" Show Notes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 📌 FROM PREP.md — Adam's PC20 items Pod News — podcast app revenue (source for 'cut the apps into the money') Pod News — the ad-skipping player Board Q (Adam): "If you go to another chapter, is that a new play?" — for the AMP play=30s definition. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00 - DAVE'S WORLD: THE ALTERNATE ENCLOSURE FINALLY GETS PICKED UP + HLS-IN-RSS SURGE Take the lap: Podbean and Buzzsprout are now testing/supporting the alternate enclosure — letting other apps (Pocket Casts, Amazon Music, iHeart, TrueFans) reach the video/alt versions instead of everything vanishing into the Apple-only void. Lead the boardroom with the namespace win. HLS video in RSS is accelerating: @js — "the rate of podcast hosts publishing high-quality video in podcast feeds using HLS has gone up quite a bit, thanks mostly to Transistor and Flightcast." The open path is winning adoption; watch it live. Namespace repo status: attribution bylines merged for the block and alternate enclosure tags (PRs #772/#773). Quiet week on commits — the plumbing is holding. Dave in the wild: on the LLM-vs-tags thread — "A 'weight' is just a form of heuristic. Regression is literally built into the LLM at a fundamental level. Re-weighting a model will always regress other weights." (Continues the on-device-AI vs authored-tags fight from 265.) Also: Hover auto-renews domains 2 days out — @genebean's alert script gets a Dave thumbs-up. HLS-in-RSS tracker (livewire) Dave Winer — distributable is not distributed ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- BM - FROM THE TIMELINE — podcastindex.social this week (JS & Dave) @js: "the rate of podcast hosts publishing high-quality video in podcast feeds using HLS has gone up quite a bit — thanks mostly to Transistor and Flightcast." (tracker: hls.livewire.io) @js: "Waves of new podcast listeners may exist, but they aren't downloading episodes via RSS, no matter how many podcast apps are being vibe-coded." @js shared Castro's "Podcast apps: a framework for dying" — his read: "well thought-out, but a bit too pessimistic imo — the next few years are going to be interesting." (Steven B: "anyone interested in the PC2.0 namespace read and consider this.") @js on Patreon's "painful update" (Conte, layoffs): "I'd love to know what change Patreon's operational market has undergone in the last six months." @js on the scraping wars: a court ruled aggregated search data (URLs, snippets, index facts) are "publicly accessible facts," not copyrightable — relevant to index/crawler rights. @js (amplifying Dave Winer): "Threads and Bluesky are not distributed. Distributable is not the same as being distributed." @dave: "A 'weight' is just a form of heuristic. Regression is literally built into the LLM at a fundamental level… one slider." — the on-device-abstraction vs authored-tags thread, continued from 265. @dave, namespace repo: merged the block-tag + alternate-enclosure attribution PRs (mid-May); no new commits this week — the action is in adoption, not spec. @csb → @dave @adam: "bros, I've just sent you $15.55 via bitcoin gram and amazingly only one split failed" — boosts still flow on-network (counter to 'streaming sats is over'). @mgdell (Mike Dell): "21 years of podcasting: the thing I don't want us to lose." Mike Dell — 21 years of podcasting Castro — Podcast apps: a framework for dying ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 - "WHAT IS A PODCAST?" — THE AMP ACCORDS PUT A FORMAL DEFINITION ON IT The AMP Accords landed this week (Oxford Road's Dan Granger + Giles Martin), a year-long, commercial-end-of-the-industry group defining what a podcast IS, what a "play" is, and building exposure/attribution standards to replace the download. Note: the definition still names open RSS feeds. The formal definition: "an on-demand show rooted in the spoken word and fully intelligible as audio… accessed as audio or video via open RSS feeds and other distribution methods." The commercial world catching up to what this room has said for years. The play = 30 consecutive seconds (audio OR video); Spotify already adopting it, YouTube ~same ballpark. No time-window qualifier yet. Downloads called "a faith-based metric" (Tom Webster). "Amen," says James. It's in the air everywhere: Mike Dell (@mgdell) — "21 years of podcasting: the thing I don't want us to lose." And @js flagged Castro's @dabluck must-read "Podcast apps: a framework for dying" (@StevenB: "anyone interested in the PC2.0 namespace should read it") — @js pushes back: too pessimistic, "the next few years are going to be interesting." Mike Dell — 21 years of podcasting Castro — Podcast apps: a framework for dying ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 - QUIPS / TRANSITIONS / LINK DUMP ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Last Modified 07/24/2026 14:52:27 by Freedom Controller

July 17, 20261 hr 41 min

Episode 265: Jihobbyist

Podcasting 2.0 July 17th 2026 Episode 265 - "Jihobbyist" Slop or Not! Lightning or Frightening! Adam and Dave go deep with the Boardroom after a 2 week break ShowNotes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00 - PODPING GOSSIP-WRITER → PRODUCTION + INDEX PLUMBING ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 - THE OPEN INDEX TURNS UP INSIDE AN AI SCRAPER (SUNO) @js flagged it: a hack at Suno reveals the AI music generator used PodcastIndex to do its targeting — "with the help of an online tool called PodcastIndex, Suno identified 420,000 different podcasts that had at least five 30-minute episodes and sought to download roughly 1 million hours of podcasts." Board question: the Index exists to be "free, for any use" — and here "any use" is an AI company bulk-harvesting a million hours to train on. Is that the deal working as designed, or does anything change? A live test of the open-index ethos. Ties straight to the on-device/namespace fight below and to the spam/AI-slop lane — the same extraction pressure from three directions. Hack reveals Suno scraped via PodcastIndex (404 Media) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 - ON-DEVICE AI vs NAMESPACE TAGS — "DIDN'T YOU INVENT THE NAMESPACE?" Your own post set it off: Adam — Apple in talks to run a startup's compressed AI models on-device (PrisMML) — "More fodder for on-device features vs new tags." The core board fight of the week. 🎧 CLIPS TO PLAY — a 3-part PNWR sequence (Cridland and Sethi discussing your position; your own SOT is NOT in their show, so play + respond): 1. The jab (44.5s): recap of the Car Curious "podcast annotations" (≈ Apple timed links) debate — Nathan Gathright: LLM-from-transcript data stays the purview of players, not publishers; Sam Sethi: "Adam Curry also came in… he sees LLMs as the way for on-device abstraction of data rather than tags. And I'm like — didn't you come up with the namespace?" File: 01 - Cridland Sethi - Adam annotations, didnt you invent the namespace - PNWR.mp3 2. Sethi's thesis (55s): his actual position — fine, copy Apple, let LLMs do transcripts as a FALLBACK "if you can't be bothered," but if a creator wants to put real data in the feed, respect what the creator wants FIRST. "An LLM is a fancy autocomplete system… I'd much rather the creator is given the opportunity to do something good first." The publisher-vs-LLM argument, self-contained. File: 02 - Sethi - an LLM is a fancy autocomplete, creator first - PNWR.mp3 3. The Spurlock correction (36s): Sam apologizes for mischaracterizing @js — "I don't think we should leave it up to LLMs at all… but in practice it's going to be the app crawlers that mark shows up using hard work and drive for differentiation, not the publishers themselves." It might not be an AI LLM, but someone still has to mark the metadata up. File: 03 - Sethi - Spurlock correction, app crawlers not publishers - PNWR.mp3 Ammo for your side: @manton — his daughter's voicemail "Hi dad, this isn't an emergency" was transcribed by Apple as "this is an emergency." Player-side LLM inference is lossy; publisher-authored tags are authoritative. The case for the namespace in one anecdote. Cultural backdrop (@js, Atlantic "The End of Reading"): a postliterate generation that treats reading the source as "arbitrarily withholding information" — if the phone abstracts everything for you, who ever touches the feed? Apple + on-device AI compression (CNBC) The End of Reading Is Here (Atlantic) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 - FUNDING NAMESPACE: STREAMING SATS COLLAPSE → APPLE CASH IN podcast:funding? Streaming sats fell off a cliff: PNWR — Sam Sethi says boosts/streaming sats are "down to pretty well zero" in July: only TrueFans and one from Podcast Guru, NOTHING from Fountain. "Streaming sats is going away quite fast now… a real shame." A direct V4V gut-check for the room. They're quoting you: James Cridland cites "Adam Curry is talking about splitting the funding from the advertiser with the app or host developers" — app devs are otherwise "cut out of the entire economic chain." Your funding-split idea is now on the record on their show. 🎧 CLIPS TO PLAY — PNWR V4V audio (hosts discussing V4V; your SOT is not in their show, so play + respond): 1. Streaming sats collapse (47s): Sam Sethi — boosts/streaming sats "down to pretty well zero" in July; only TrueFans + one Podcast Guru, nothing from Fountain. "Going away quite fast now… a real shame. TrueFans is the place keeping it alive." File: 04 - Sethi - streaming sats down to near zero, TrueFans keeping it alive - PNWR.mp3 2. V4V economics (80s): James — app developers "weirdly cut off from the entire economic chain"; Sam cites your fix: "Adam Curry is talking about splitting the funding from the advertiser with the app or host developers… the ecosystem needs to have a way." File: 05 - Cridland Sethi - app devs cut out of the money chain, Adam funding-split - PNWR.mp3 Dave's concrete move: "Is an 'Apple Cash' request just a specially formatted IRI of some sort? I'm wondering if there's some way to do an open-ended AC request and plug that into the podcast:funding tag." A fiat on-ramp in the namespace as boosts fade — real board business. Quip that fits here: Adam — "Try depositing $10k cash into someone else's bank account. They will surround you with armed guards within minutes." The banking-rails friction V4V was built to route around. ADAM'S THOUGHTS ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 - CONTENT HIJACKING + AI-SLOP: SOL GOOD NETWORK AND THE SPAM-COP LANE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 - MEASUREMENT: AMP'S "WHAT IS A PODCAST" PAPER DROPS NEXT THURSDAY -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

June 19, 20261 hr 27 min

Episode 264: Podcast Plebicide

Podcasting 2.0 June 19th 2026 Episode 264 - "Podcast Plebicide" ShowNotes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Justin Jackson's post: We Have A Communication Problem ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00 - PODPING.ALPHA STABLE + INDEX / PV-ALPHA HYGIENE Milestone: Dave — "I think we can safely say that podping.alpha is stable now. It's been many weeks of 100% uptime." Lead the boardroom with the win. PV-alpha 500s: @mitch + Dave debugging the "get a list of feeds that have updates over the last X" endpoint throwing 500s; @mitch adding a delay between paginated requests in case it's a too-many-requests block. Feed de-listing puzzle: Dave to @ChadF — a feed marked dead with no spam flag; aggregators de-listing it for some other reason. Open question. Iroh 1.0 — Dave flagged it: "Dialing keys instead of IP addresses." p2p networking, boardroom catnip — worth a riff with Dave. Discussion: also surface your own snags — Sovereignfeeds webhook "Unknown Error sending to Server" and ladder.podcastindex.org appearing down (to @StevenB / Dave). Iroh 1.0 Release ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 - SPAM + AI-SLOP — TOWARD A "SPAM-COP SCORE" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 - MEASUREMENT: AMP'S 30-SECOND "PLAY," ROUND TWO AMP defined a "play" as 30 seconds; Spotify immediately adopted it. You and Dave already called 30s "bullshit" last week — push total listen time + percent-completed as the real metrics. The walkback: AMP's original press release said "30 seconds of content played… once per user per session" — and quietly DELETED "once per user per session," leaving a woolier definition. James flagged it on-page with the HTML5 del tag. YouTube is in AMP: Google confirmed YouTube "has been participating in the AMP-led conversations" — implies YouTube uses a 30s play. Apple's stance still unknown. RSS.com test (Alberto): moving the DOWNLOAD threshold 60s to 30s changed totals by ~1% — negligible. So 30s for both plays and downloads is just simpler. The HLS gotcha: playing 10s of an HLS video podcast still downloads ~60-72s, so server logs can't tell real play — only player-side instrumentation (Spotify, future Apple) can. James: it's all too "cloak and dagger." Watch July: AMP's implementation doc is due July and the group is light on technical people — needs to be real technical work, "not a sales press release." Understanding podcast stats (PodNews) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 - BEYOND CPM — INDIE + MISSION-DRIVEN ECONOMICS Losh Moodaley ("Beyond CPM"): the indie middle class (5k-25k downloads = only ~1-1.5% of all podcasts) can't survive on CPMs. Roadmap: audience-as-economy, sell exclusivity not inventory, scale outcomes not audiences, "owners of trust, not renters of attention." Pure V4V-adjacent framing — Sam Sethi tied it straight to TrueFans activity-based value (a share or comment is value, not just dollars) and "creator portals." Easy on-ramp to your worldview. Vox Topica (Richard Fall): full-stack agency for nonprofits/mission-driven orgs — speaks engagement/reach/"depth of message," not downloads. Nonprofits resist AI voices (authenticity) but use AI for scripts/cleanup/show notes; now recommends video to ALL clients. Beyond CPM: Surviving the New Measurement Era (PodNews Daily) Vox Topica ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 - NUMBERS + MONEY MOVES ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 - AI BUBBLE / EDGE COMPUTE — DATACENTER WATER ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 - CROSS-STORY: COMMODORE FLIP-PHONE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 - QUIPS / TRANSITIONS -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------                   Last Modified 06/19/2026 14:30:08 by Freedom Controller

June 12, 20261 hr 29 min

Episode 263: Chat is Dead

Podcasting 2.0 June 12th 2026 Episode 263 - "Chat is Dead" ShowNotes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DG Editor - Building an idiot proof recording system for Bridge Church ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 00 - THE USER-AGENT WAR — SPOOF vs. SIGN ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 - THE PODCAST DATA COLLECTIVE (PCDC) — and Pod News reacts ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 - MEASUREMENT RECKONING — AMP's 30-SECOND "PLAY" ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 - PODCAST STANDARDS PROJECT vs 2.0 — and Index hygiene ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 - APPLE WWDC — VIDEO PODCASTS EVERYWHERE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 - AI BUBBLE — FINANCIAL ENGINEERING + LOCAL/EDGE COMPUTE ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 - INDUSTRY — AD-SKIPPING, AI LIABILITY, GROWTH ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Last Modified 06/12/2026 14:21:15 by Freedom Controller  

June 5, 20261 hr 51 min

Episode 262: Podcleanse

Podcasting 2.0 June 5th 2026 Episode 262 - "Podcleanse" Dave and Adam are joined by John Spurlock and throw a big idea into the boardroom: The Podcast Data Collective Shownotes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- John Spurlock - Guest The man behind op3.dev and Livewire.io - From the Great State of New Jersey! ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 - THE IMPRESSION HEIST — AMP TASK FORCE RATIFIES 4 EXPOSURE DEFINITIONS, NO DISSENTING VOTES Podnews press release Jun 4: AMP Task Force Introduces Cross-Platform Alternative to the Podcast "Download" — "unified impression guidance for audio and video, advancing impression-based measurement as the medium's primary transaction currency." Four exposure definitions ratified. JS Jun 4 quote: "the AMP Task Force ratified a new framework with four exposure definitions, with no dissenting votes." Podcast Play: 30 seconds of content played, audio or video, once per user per session. Podcast Audience: The number of unique users who had a Podcast Play. Ad Impression: A commercial begins playing for the user. Ad Audience: The number of users exposed to an Ad Impression. They wanted to 'hasten the demand' Backstory: AMP first emerged May 29 (Podnews) — same day PC20-261 aired — "to confront podcasting's measurement dilemma." @dave reaction Jun 4 16:12: "RE: [Podnews AMP story] More secretive, back room podcast 'industry' nonsense." PNWR Jun 5 confirms the cabal-composition critique — James and Sam open the show debating AMP. James: "they also want to define what an impression is" + "we don't have a definition of podcast." Sam: "I don't think podcasting is [defined], we can measure consumption." PNWR catches the gaps [0:09:00-0:09:30]: "Spotify yes, Acast no, Art19 missing… Apple is already doing that. Apple is already being cut [out]." Same observation @dave made — who's in the room and who isn't. @js replies @dave on AMP Jun 4: "@dave Dave there were no dissenting votes" — Mastodon-thread confirmation that JS + Dave are on the same page about the consensus-by-cabal red flag. Discussion: V4V counter-thesis — No Agenda is value-for-value (no impressions, no exposures). Open standards vs industry cabals. PNWR is independent-podcaster-aligned; AMP is platform-aligned. Podnews AMP Jun 4 press release Podnews AMP origin May 29 @dave Jun 4 reaction post JS Jun 4 quote post PNWR this week (Pod News Weekly Review) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 - THE OPEN COUNTERPART — PODCAST INDEX ISSUE #775 (PNWR + @DAVE BOTH ON IT) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 - THE WHY BEHIND IMPRESSIONS — "THE FIRST FOUR AND A HALF MINUTES" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 - THE PODCASTING 2.0 DATA COLLECTIVE — THE OPEN ANSWER TO AMP The Podcasting 2.0 Data Collective — the open, V4V-aligned answer to the AMP cabal. Not a consortium with ratified definitions and trade-press releases. A collective of open tools and honest sentinels: OP3 for analytics, Podverse + newpodcasts.net for corpus data, Podcast Index for the namespace, Issue #775 for client identification done right. Matthew 5:6 (KJV): "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled." The verse that frames the work. Open data, transparent measurement, value-for-value — righteousness in podcast governance. Those who hunger for it are the ones who'll be filled. The AMP cabal trades righteousness for an ad-tech seat at the table; the Data Collective just keeps the lights on. THE CHARTER — Adam's working document, June 5 2026 We hold more power than we give ourselves credit for. Definition of a Podcast: Syndicated delivery of media files with precise consumption data for all stakeholders. What we brought in (the Podcasting 2.0 namespace contributions): Transcripts Chapters Funding (V4V) Person Location …etc. Statistical relevance: Advertising is based on percentages. Collectively we have about 10% of all apps — statistically enough to be relevant. Godcaster app tracing proves we can measure important metrics. Data to aggregate and display: Follows Plays per episode Completion rate by time Strategy: Become the authoritative source by publishing open stats Monetize We will not be loved initially by the industry, because we will have the truth. Advertisers will love us though, as will Podcasters. Monetization: Data subscriptions Resellers (DJL) Ad Networks Podcasters themselves (consideration) Podcast Index has built the trust needed to house this data. We already have a data exchange relationship with the apps. op3.dev is critical in this equation to offset the old system for correlation. OP3 full podcast support landed this week [PNWR 1:53:00-1:54:30] — OP3.dev now has full episode-level + show-level analytics support for podcasts. Spec work also moving on private feeds (insecure feeds spec). Direct relevance to V4V infrastructure. @dave → @james Jun 5 11:50: "Do you have the daily lists that show up on newpodcasts.net available anywhere as a download? I'd love the full, historical list of feed urls that have appeared there if possible." Open-data request — corpus curation theme. @dave → @mitch May 30: "Would you be able to send me a flat list of all the feed urls in Podverse which have more than X number of subscribers/followers? Let's say more than 5?" Podverse data request — corpus quality. Anchor FM RSS restoration request — Fri 11:01 email to NA inbox (Lusso Lets). Listener can't retrieve feed data from Podcast Index. Adjacent infra beat — the unsung user-facing pain of corpus indexing. Discussion: corpus curation as a steady-state job (Dave's sentinel work) vs measurement standards (the AMP cabal) — which one keeps the ecosystem honest? The Data Collective doesn't ratify, it just shows up to maintain. Hunger and thirst. They shall be filled. OP3.dev — open podcast analytics ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 - CAPTIVATE LAUNCHES DAX US — THE IMPRESSION ECONOMY IRL ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 - BBC GOES ALL-IN ON CROSSED WIRES YEAR 3 — IPLAYER DEAL + "EDINBURGH OF PODCASTING" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 - STREAMING CONSOLIDATION — YOUTUBE MUSIC + TUBI + NETFLIX ALL WANT "PODCAST" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 08 - SUPPLY CHAIN SECURITY — VS CODE DELAYS, PHP FOUNDATION, SLSA LEVEL 3 IS NOT ENOUGH ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 09 - AI BUBBLE PC20-FLAVOR — TOTO CHUCKS, MOTHER COMPUTERS, "NO 'I', ONLY MATH" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 - QUIPS / TRANSITIONS ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Last Modified 06/05/2026 14:38:09 by Freedom Controller

May 29, 20261 hr 26 min

Episode 261: Podhemian Grove

Podcasting 2.0 May 29th 2026 Episode 261 - "Podhemian Grove" Podcasting 2.0 May 29th 2026 Episode 261 - "Podhemian Grove" Mike Dell joined the board room to help Adam and Dave with the solution to the Secret Pdcast Group's Problems. Download the mp3 Podcast Feed PodcastIndex.org Preservepodcasting.com Check out the podcasting 2.0 apps and services newpodcastapps.com Support us with your Time Talent and Treasure Show Notes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 - ALLIANCE FOR MEASUREMENT IN PODCASTING — Podnews press release this morning: Alliance for Measurement in Podcasting (AMP) launches. Industry consortium for podcast measurement standards. Dave reblog with snark (May 29): "They want better app metrics for their ad-tech but the only 'app' in their council is Spotify. 😆 There's a right way to do this IMO, but this is not it." Discussion: measurement standards written by/for ad-tech — what would Dave's "right way" look like? Podcast Index neutrality vs industry-coalition co-opting. Podnews AMP press release Dave's reblog ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 - SPOTIFY INVESTOR DAY — CREATOR MEMBERSHIPS (PATREON KILLER) + CLIPS + AGENTIC AI ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 - BIPOC PODCAST CREATORS CLOSES — DEI FUNDING COLLAPSE → COMMUNITY ORG OFFLINE BIPOC Podcast Creators (American podcast org for Black/Indigenous/People of Color creators) closes. PNWR interviews the co-founders 00:27:00 → 00:43:00. Co-founder reflection: "the beginning of our podcast careers… feeling really…" DEI funding pulled by new government (00:31:30): "we started to see a decline in the investment." Direct call to platforms (00:36:00): "What is Spotify going to do? What is Apple, you…" Legacy framing (00:39:00, 00:40:30): "You two created the first and the largest…" / "We made a mark in the history of this industry." Discussion: DEI-funding-collapse → community-org-closure pattern. Platforms' responsibility to creator communities they don't host. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 - DAVE'S PACKAGE-MANAGER-SUPPLY-CHAIN-ATTACKS RIFF — "OSS WEAPONIZED BY AI" ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 - LEO EMBRACES PODCASTING 2.0 — MAGIC CHAPTERS FOR CLUB TWIT MEMBERS Drebscott observation May 28: Leo has finally embraced Podcasting 2.0 — added podcast: tags to TWiT shows. Paid Club TWiT members get chapters and don't get the funding tag. Paid Members get podcast:chapters; others get free podcast:funding. Dave (May 28 multiple posts): "I noticed it too. It makes me feel valued as a TWiT club subscriber. Having chapters makes my WW and SN listening so much more enjoyable. I'm very thankful for it." Dave: "I wanted to use magic chapters in my Castamatic but my iPhone 13 doesn't support the needed APIs. And, like you, I was pleasantly surprised when one day they showed up!" Nathan working on podcast:image support for Podlink — asking for feed examples that already support it (May 28). Discussion: differentiated namespace use by membership tier — clever segmentation. Compare to Spotify Creator Memberships (above) — Leo's RSS-native paywall vs Spotify's on-platform paywall. Drebscott observation Nathan podcast:image ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 - RSS-AS-BLOG + <sopml:origin> + THREADED CONVERSATIONS IN RSS — DAVE + @FAHRNI THREAD ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 - JS SPURLOCK SPOTLIGHT — FLIGHTCAST H.265 + SIGNED-HLS PUSHBACK ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 08 - POD ROLL ATLAS + /DATASETS — STATUS CHECK FROM PC20-260 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 09 - TRUEFANS RSS PAYMENT METADATA BUGS (JS NAMESPACE QC) JS Spurlock to @samsethi May 16: truefans RSS payment metadata has field-naming bugs. Flagged against PR #734. Bug list: "podcast" should be "feed_title"; missing required "split" + "timestamp" fields; "episode_guid" should be "item_guid"; "episode" should be "item_title"; "url" is not defined. 30-sec namespace-discipline beat — payment metadata correctness matters because boostagram split routing breaks silently when fields are mis-named. PR #734 (truefans payment metadata) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 10 - PREMIUM RSS / SHARE-EQUALITY + HLS APPLE COMING IN (PNWR TAIL) -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------   Last Modified 05/29/2026 14:09:19 by Freedom Controller

May 15, 20261 hr 37 min

Episode 260: Tennessee Trickshot

Podcasting 2.0 May 15th 2026 Episode 260 - "Tennessee Trickshot" Podcasting 2.0 May 15th 2026 Episode 260 - "Tennessee Trickshot" Adam & Dave Predict The Winter. That's all you need to know! Download the mp3 Synopsis Podcast Feed PodcastIndex.org Preservepodcasting.com Check out the podcasting 2.0 apps and services newpodcastapps.com Support us with your Time Talent and Treasure ShowNotes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 - NGINX Rift: Achieving NGINX Remote Code Execution via an 18-Year-Old Vulnerability ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 - ROB GREENLEE'S LLM-GHOSTWRITTEN "FRINGE REGRET" RETRACTION (folder: 06 Rob-Greenlee-Fringe) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 - The DGX Spark Donated by RSS.com Aesus DB10 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 - POD ROLL ATLAS @ atlas.rss.io — DAVE'S /datasets PAGE SHIPS, ALBERTO BUILDS THE POSTER CHILD (folder: 02 Pod-Roll-Atlas) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 - DAVE'S SPAM CLASSIFIER SHIPPING WEEK + THE "AISTEN"/"RAPIDLU" BOT WAR (folder: 08 Dave-Spam-Bot-War) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 - AI SLOP LANDS ON SPOTIFY MEGAPHONE WITH ZERO DISCLOSURE (folder: 04 AI-Slop-Megaphone) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 - JOHN ENNIS "HEAVEN AND EARTH" — THE RALPH-WIGGUM LOOP THESIS ON LLMs + DAVE'S CODING-AGENT CONFESSIONAL (folder: 05 Ennis-Heaven-Earth) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 08 - HLS VIDEO TIPPING POINT — AMAZON MUSIC + SPOTIFY MEGAPHONE BOTH JOIN APPLE'S HLS IN A SINGLE WEEK (folder: 07 HLS-Video-Tipping-Point) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 09 - UP NEXT — HOLGER KRUPP'S MIT-LICENSED SERVERLESS iOS PODCAST APP (folder: 03 Up-Next-App) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sources Last Modified 05/15/2026 14:35:52 by Freedom Controller  

May 1, 20261 hr 23 min

Episode 259: SlopJacked

Podcasting 2.0 May 1st 2026 Episode 259 - "SlopJacked" Dave ships first-party data at the app level - the new /upload/followcounts endpoint changes everything. Plus the podcast:contact; proposal, RSS.com's Alberto Betella on AI disclosure as enforcement substrate Download the mp3 Podcast Feed PodcastIndex.org Preservepodcasting.com Check out the podcasting 2.0 apps and services newpodcastapps.com Support us with your Time Talent and Treasure ShowNotes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bloomberg article we discussed about podslop, featuring the chicken guy from Alabama ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 01 - DAVE SHIPS /upload/followcounts — FIRST-PARTY DATA AT THE APP LEVEL (folder: 01 Dave-Ships-Followcounts) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 02 - <podcast:contact> NAMESPACE PROPOSAL (folder: 02 Contact-Namespace) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 03 - ALBERTO BETELLA (RSS.com CEO) — AI DISCLOSURE TAG AS ENFORCEMENT SUBSTRATE (folder: 03 Alberto-RSS-AI-Disclosure) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 04 - TUCSON DENTAL CARE SEO SPAM PODCAST CLEANUP (folder: 04 Tucson-Dental-SEO-Spam) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 05 - AI HARDWARE CRUNCH — $65 BILLION US POWER EQUIPMENT BOOM (folder: 05 AI-Hardware-Crunch) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 06 - ANTHROPIC + AI PRICING FOLLOW-UP (folder: 06 Anthropic-AI-Pricing) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 07 - ROBLOX TANKS 18% ON CHILD SAFETY MEASURES (folder: 07 Roblox-Child-Safety) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 08 - BOARDROOM NEWS BITES (folder: 08 Boardroom-News-Bites) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Clip Sources Last Modified 05/01/2026 14:18:38 by Freedom Controller

April 24, 20261 hr 39 min

Episode 258: Perceptron

Podcasting 2.0 April 24th 2026 Episode 258 - "Perceptron" Dave and Adam walk through the entire technical process of building an industry resource for auto-flagging spam and slop podcasts. It's a doozy! Shownotes ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Booking Tag ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- DeepSeek V4 Released — Open Source AI From China DeepSeek V4 released April 24 — two variants: V4-Pro (1.6T params) and V4-Flash (284B params, 13B active) Open-weight MIT license, 1 million token context window Trained on domestic Chinese chips (Huawei Ascend, Cambricon) — not Nvidia V4-Flash: $0.14/M input tokens — cheapest frontier-class model available White House OSTP accusing China of 'industrial-scale' distillation of US AI models Anthropic caught DeepSeek using 24,000 fake accounts and 16M exchanges to distill Claude Our own testing: DeepSeek V3.1 on Together.ai is 4-10x faster and half the cost of Llama 3.3 70B for production tasks CNBC: DeepSeek V4 Preview CNN: White House Accuses China Copying American AI ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anthropic Claude Code Pricing Drama Anthropic quietly removed Claude Code from $20/month Pro plan on April 21 Developer backlash immediate — reversed within hours Head of Growth: 'a test on 2% of new signups' — but page changes were global Internal data: heavy users cost Anthropic $60-$150/month on a $20 subscription GitHub also suspended flat-rate Copilot signups, removed Claude Opus from $10 tier The AI subscription model is structurally broken — WeWork/Uber playbook StartupFortune article Anthropic postmortem (April 23) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Microsoft Voluntary Buyout — 7% of US Workforce ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Topics for Today Podping / namespace updates? Feed cloning follow-up from 257 — any new developments? Sovereign Feeds update — feed editing experience Last Modified 04/24/2026 14:38:32 by Freedom Controller  