Episode Details

Podcasting 2.0 June 19th 2026 Episode 264 - "Podcast Plebicide"

ShowNotes

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Justin Jackson's post: We Have A Communication Problem

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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

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01 - SPAM + AI-SLOP — TOWARD A "SPAM-COP SCORE"

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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)

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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 i