PodMov Daily: Tuesday, February 9

Episode 368: Testing, One Two-sday

Fireside: A “Next-Gen Podcast Platform” for Live Audio

“Mark Cuban is getting in on the audio and podcasting hype,” reports Ashley Carman of The Verge. Cuban and co-founder Falon Fatemi have developed Fireside, a “next-gen podcast platform” for curated, live conversation. The structure is similar to Clubhouse, with the addition of native recording capabilities.

Fatemi co-founded Node, an AI customer relations service in which Cuban was an investor. Node was sold in August. According to an unidentified source of Carman’s, Fatemi “promises a platform where creators will be able to broadcast, record, and monetize conversations while using Fireside’s built-in analytics tools.”

According to a now-expired job posting, Fireside aims to support “civil intelligent discourse, shared connected experiences, and genuine relationship building virtually” on its platform. Positioned as an answer to social media’s “antagonistic echo chambers,” the new concept seems to place a high value on house rules.

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Why Put a TV Deal on Ice for a Podcast Series?

Sarah Hatherley fought hard against making a podcast. In late 2019, the screenwriter and director was on the brink of a TV adaptation deal with a major Australian producer. She imagined her scripted drama, Use of Force, in full color. When 2020 hit, a podcast producer friend saw a golden opportunity.

Hatherley had “hundreds of hours of intimate phone calls” with the female ex-cop whistleblower at the center of the violent true story. Use of Force launched as a six-episode podcast based on that audio. A ‘New and Noteworthy’ nod on Apple Podcasts quickly propelled it into the top 10 on true crime charts in Australia.

“Escaping the gatekeepers of the screen industry — distributors, financiers — men in suits who still view female screen stories, with female protagonists, as somehow niche — has been liberating for me,” Hatherley writes. She includes Australia’s podcast PSA video, made even funnier by her initial skepticism.

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Here's what else is going on:

• Legal pad: Is it ever safe to use commercial music in podcasts? Writing for Podnews, fair use scholars Patricia Aufderheide and Peter Jaszi lay down the law. In the US, the unlicensed use of copyrighted work may “not [be] risky at all, if you understand and use the courts’ interpretive logic.”

• Minty fresh: Don’t sleep on syndication, says podcast philosopher and strategist Evo Terra. “Done properly, with technology available to podcasters today, the syndicated content in your podcast can make your timeless content timely, pegged to the time of download. No stale content. Ever.” 

• Human lives: Listeners are obsessed with true crime. “But with such intense subject matter comes important questions about ethics and coverage,” writes Michelle Harven of NPR station WGLT. During a conversation on 1A, true crime podcast hosts and experts investigate tough questions.

• Own it: At Acast’s recent Aclass: Asian Voices event, comedian Margaret Cho told attendees not to fear oversharing. As Asian creators and children of immigrants vocalizing their experiences, “You have to be able to speak because so many of the generations before you didn’t get to.”