Hello and welcome back to Pop Newsweekly. I'm joined today by John Savage. He's the CEO of the Africa Podcast Network. John, hello. How are you? A fan as what I am of pioneer commentary. Now, where in the world are you? Africa is a big place. Had deep down in Cape Town and we have to be close to the sea. But we also operate largely from Johannesburg. So Cape Town and Jo'burg is really a hub. Now, I mentioned. You'll see. Let's start off with a CEO of a couple of things we're going to talk about. But let's start off with the Africa Podcast Network. Who or what is the Africa Podcast Network? The Africa Podcast Network with the biggest podcast network on the continent. And there's kind of two halves to that. One we represent the biggest podcast is really focused on monetization. So the core of the business is not about ownership like a traditional network might do. We don't own any IP. We're really trying to solve the problem of podcasts, which is all the same. It's monetization. So we're very aggressively in the monetization space. And then we also represent some of the big networks like Sirius and I think now Amazon coming up and a few of the other like cost, we represent them for Africa as well through our relationship with Ad Swizz on the ground. He helps us with our programmatic tech stuff. Right. It's the simple way to put. When did you start all this? I started podcasting in 2009. That's when my first one came out and I try to start a podcasting network in 2014. Failed dismally. It was a year of real pain. And then two years ago we started building the network and then we literally started commercial closing in October last year where we actually opened the doors and started sort of generating revenue. So we're very fresh, but it's a very exciting business, I think. So what are some of your big shows that we might be able to listen to and find? one of our biggest shows is called Is Lucy teMber Choir. Ideas That Matter

It's time to take your seat at the table. Find out how with full seated Aguayo as we discuss ideas that matter. A catalyst for bold action. is also known as the Voice of Africa. He is a beast of a human being who really is like African diaspora inspiration for business. So because in Africa, like the hustle is such a big thing, like we have a hustler's mentality. It's deep in the culture throughout the continent. He is teaching kids, really. When I say kids, you know, I'm old, man. So like, I made, you know, like 18 or 16 to 18 is quite a young audience, but he's really giving them practical. He's hardcore. He doesn't hold his tongue and a very, very, very powerful podcast doing crazy numbers across the continent. On the female side, we represent the biggest female podcast around called him Kumi Ledwaba, who has a podcast called Wisdom and Wellness. Welcome to the Wisdom and Wellness podcast. Ledwaba the founder and your. And it really is also inspirational, really cool stuff for young woman. She's absolutely killing it. We've just signed Caster Semenya, who's one of the global I don't know if you know that is she's one of the biggest athletes on the planet. We haven't started her podcast launching out yet, but this was a really big coup for us. You know, she's friends with LeBron James, She's besties with Serena Williams. And her whole podcast is about if you're a very high performing person, what do you do on the other side and what do you do with those skills and that drive to be the best? Once your sort of physical career is done, and I think that's going to be super interesting. And she's a massive star, so that's very exciting. DJ Fresh is an iconic radio DJ who has one of the fastest growing entertainment podcasts on the continent and many more. how do you go about defining what you're going to do as a podcast, right? What do you commission them? Do people come to you? Where is it? First of all, what can we monetize? I mean, what's your thinking process around creating the next podcast? So we've gone through a whole three six talk and I guess this is the reality and the non sexy part of the business. There's two parts of our business, there's the development part and that's MPT, what we found as APN. And the brutal reality is there is not much value of having a great podcast that doesn't have a sellable audience. And so we really work inside our AMD community. The whole thing is about developing people into scalability. APN is really representing podcasters that have the potential and there is a big signal, you know, even the biggest podcasts they're living off sort of YouTube programmatic revenue. So this is a way to double, triple your revenue by having a strategy and a team behind you. So that's really the differentiator. And the other thing that we have learnt brand safety is a really important thing. And I know it sounds like a buzzword, but we've represented the biggest podcasters like on the planet from Africa. And even though those numbers are a lot bigger than you can imagine, it actually doesn't make it scalable, doesn't actually add the value you think it does. So we're looking for saleable podcasts that have an established audience and doesn't mean big. Even a niche audience is highly scalable, but an established audience in a saleable market. And then APN is a very strong friend. John You keep making this thing called Amped. Tell me more about it studios, is it really was it something that we as a business are really proud of? It's the biggest empowerment house. And it's kind of hard to comprehend if you don't live in Africa how important this is being to community growth. It's a big double story. Huge, safe, beautiful space with the world's best recording equipment. We have five podcasting studios, six stage and really is it's just designed for access to equipment, access to people. So we've got a great team on the ground, access to community, access to guests, and we host masterclasses all the time and it's just to connect creators to monetization or understanding how to be a bit more corporate as a creator to turn your skill into money. And that's what its entire driving force is. And so if that's your funnel, maybe to get some of the best talent there into the Africa Network podcast, is that how you're seeing it? Take some of the best people and bring them across? Or are they just parallel that just, you know, one runs next to each other? It's interesting how APN was born. Was that amped? Is our mothership amp to something that I mean, you could make a movie about the story of AMD. It is so dramatic and insane, but we managed to eventually get this little thing right and it naturally builds community. And we started off as a music studio and the community turned it into a podcasting studio, always listening. And APN as a business grew out of the fact that the opportunity was we had all these podcast is high level. Some of these names I'm speaking about, they still recorded AMP because it's a free facility for them, and then we realised that the market opportunity was there. So we approached them and we built the Africa Podcast Network very organically out of seeing the need for it. And what's interesting is just like now we're doing a lot more travelling around the world and sort of scaling this idea. It's been a very great insight for us and amazing, powerful learning tool to see that, a lot of countries have the same problem. So looking at the continent of Africa, what is the average age of the audience? What are the type of devices they use? And is data still an expensive download cost of going big? Okay, that's huge questions. The market varies. We're quite late to this market. You've got to remember Spotify only came here like two years ago. Was it? They were really late coming here and podcasting wasn't really a thing here until quite recently. But if you look at any of the data, we're the fifth biggest market in the world. We're fastest growing like the one of the things about Africa is we're completely mobile. This continent never went to PCs because it couldn't afford them, so we bypassed it straight into mobile, which is why we like the leading the world in innovations in mobile. The reality is that we're like 96% Android penetration. And when you're designing apps and projects for Africa, you've got to design for them the dumbest of the smartphones and across the board, because data is out, everybody has phones. That's a big thing. Mobile data is an extremely big problem still, but there's a lot of assumptions that come with the cost of data that people perceive as obstacles that might not be. There's a lot of data to show that even though the problem with the cost of data is significantly prohibitive, it's not as deep as you think it is. And there are a lot of solutions coming. And, you know, it's really problematic that we can't get StarLink on it would change the game if we could turn StarLink on in South Africa, for example. Just remind me again who's the richest African in the world? Elon Musk. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. And is he from South Africa? Originally? He's from South Africa, but I don't think he's proudly South African. Whatever you want to say about him, I'm a big fan of his brain and his strategy, but I don't think he had a particularly good experience down here. He grew up in a really tough part of South Africa. Trevor Noah, A different story. Also had a tough time, but Elon, we can't claim him the way we'll claim. Trevor Noah Yeah, no, I just thought, Come on, Ellen. Scarlett you know, not just in South Africa. The whole of Africa would benefit from it, wouldn't it? And Steve Bartlett is born in Botswana. Yeah. So he is purely African, so training to be from Africa. So looping back onto it, we've got a really vibrant market. We obviously see Android penetration very much similar to the Indian market. Apple with no penetration in this space. Really. Hey, they don't have an Android app for podcasting. You know, James has been calling for one for a bazillion years in terms of the brand's monetization. Then just going back to that, all the international brands coming to you now or are they local brands that are still trying to get into this space? Where's the balance between the two? So we do work across Africa and it's a fledgling market. You know, we launched in October and have just seen a massive acceleration of growth that is like exponential every month. Traditionally here, brands are a lot more conservative than anywhere else in the world, very nervous. It's always surprising to me. And I say that might get slammed over the coals for this. How South Africa in particular is globally renowned for its best adverts in the world. You know, we really are maybe very creative, but brands are extremely not brave. And so it's been a lot of education and a lot of testing to show the results. It's a lot of global brands that are here. It's less local brands. It's largely the global brands that are looking for Africa and have a presence in Africa. And I don't think that the local market has seen how affordable that is yet. And we still kind of in the education phase for a lot of people, particularly if you are don't have big marketing budgets, a lot of our clients are well, I've got a multimedia mixed budget. I'm putting it in radio, I'm already putting in programmatic. Let me allocate something there and see how it does. Oh wow, it's done really well. Let's do a bit more. If you are a smaller business, I think it's harder for you though. You know, we're big believers that if you look at the early, this is still philosophical. The early days of podcasting in the US where, you know, the mattress brands went from zero to hero, the blind brands. I feel that Africa is still absolutely ripe for a brand to come in and dominate that low budget and own the podcasting market and build a monstrous business. But you know, we've got to just find the right person who's going to double down on that. Yeah. Last couple of questions in India, Apple and Spotify are not the number one platforms for content consumption. In fact, there are quite a few local platforms like Jiosaavn in being one. Is that the same in Africa or in South Africa itself? Or is it just dominated by Spotify now they're there. Nope, We are everything in Africa has to happen backwards. We're dominated by YouTube. We have been for a long time. Africa's preferred big companies like Netflix have struggled here. You know, Amazon Prime, like I said, they've also kind of struggled here. Spotify is big. We have some local players from Africa like Audiomack that are doing well. But YouTube is that for music listening like you, you know, we have a brand of music. This will give you some insight called Amapiano. And if you know what that means, you know, it's the biggest global export from Africa. It's music that has changed the world that the biggest artists know. I was telling you, I work with a guy who writes a lot of songs for Drake. That's because of Amapiano. Amapiano is massive and these Amapiano artists were making tracks, putting them on YouTube with no video, not even an image, and getting 10 million, 50 million hundred million views across Africa, right? YouTube is the preferred destination and audio is of quite a distant second. And even when we talk about podcasting, we've always spoken about YouTube as a part of it. Now the rest of the world, YouTube is becoming important in podcasting here. It started that way, so that is the dominant player here. What's holding back, in your opinion, further growth? What needs to change in Africa now to see a further explosion in podcast adoption? We in terms of the audience size, the audience part, we're doing really well. Like I said, we're late to the market, we're growing really fast. And there's something you know, I believe that in Africa we have some of the best podcasts in the world and a little bit is of that is and this is a bit philosophical, you know, in in most of the world people say, Oh, I've got an idea for a podcast. Let me start one. In Africa, it's like life or death. Like people are starting this as from now with nothing to build a career. So there's really vibrant podcasts that the ones that do well are so edgy. You wouldn't believe I could tell you a story that you wouldn't believe about a podcast. This is a real story. I'm going to tell you this. One of our podcasters who interviewed a prostitute on his show. Then she went and gave a blowjob to the cameraman off camera while they narrated. They they come in and then they interviewed again afterwards. Right. Like it's mental. Right. But you got to understand that at the core of what's happening here, that's why, like there's a podcasting revolution here, there's so much passion. People are fighting it. Nobody misses a release like people are fighting for equity in the space. So I think we have a really healthy space. I look forward to maybe some international interests or taking some of our podcasts, like Lucy may be into the global space, and that's something we're in negotiations with a big US podcast about a swap to show, but from our side, from the real growth sides, I mean, there's one thing that matters in this economy, and that's the dollar. And so it's really about brand believing in the space and understanding the scale and the power of space and not being too afraid. You know, podcasters are unregulated. They swear, they say things that aren't always great and it's getting brands to relax into that, which is a big challenge. But it's just time. I think we're on a really great wicket. It's exciting space and yeah. Amazing chance. Average CEO of the Africa Podcast Network. Thank you so much. What a pleasure. Thank you.