Podnews Weekly Review The video-first shakeup of podcast hosting, analytics, and AI with Flightcast’s Roxcodes
Oct 10, 2025
Rox Codes, co-founder of Flightcast and a former engineer for major YouTube creators, discusses the innovative video-first hosting platform geared towards YouTube and Spotify. He delves into the challenges of inflated download metrics and recent price hikes in podcast hosting. The conversation includes insights on AI tools for analytics, the importance of original video storage, and the future of Podcasting 2.0. Additionally, Rox emphasizes a human-centered approach to AI, ensuring technology enhances creativity rather than replacing it.
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Price Rises Link To AI Feature Costs
- Hosting price increases reflect long-unchanged plans meeting inflation and new AI feature costs.
- Many hosts now raise prices or bundle AI features, shifting costs to creators.
Web Browser Download Surges Are Likely Bots
- Sudden spikes in "web browser" downloads likely reflect automated AI tools and cloud scraping, not humans.
- Hosts should examine IP ranges (AWS, Google) and treat EC2-originating browser agents as bots.
Filter Cloud IPs To Clean Metrics
- Consider filtering or reclassifying downloads from cloud provider IP ranges to reduce noise in metrics.
- Use IP and user-agent heuristics before blocking to avoid disrupting legitimate web apps.