The Biggest Stories From Podcast Movement 2023

What was it like to spend three days in the midst of a bustling expo hall with six stages? That's precisely what we tackled at the Podcast Movement Conference in Denver. The experience was full of highs and lows, from the confusing Denver Airport and emergency evacuations, to making heartening connections within the podcasting community.  Through it all, we heard updates and announcements from podcasting's heavy-hitters; YouTube, Spotify, and Apple!

View the DISCUSSION THREAD on Twitter!

YOUTUBE
YouTube announced that by the end of the year, they will ingest RSS Feeds, podcasts will be available globally, and users will even be able to add RSS Feeds to YouTube Music (including private ones!)

SPOTIFY
Spotify will soon be adding recommendations and a podcast bio to their platform.

APPLE
Apple announced the release of Subscription analytics on the Apple Podcasts Connect dashboard!

AI vs COPYRIGHT
A court in Washington D.C. has ruled that only works with human authors can receive copyrights.

📣 SOUND-OFF QUESTION: What is your biggest podcasting pet peeve?
To have your response featured on our next episode, leave a 30-second voice message at podinbox.com/buzzsprout, send a boostagram, or tweet the answer @BuzzcastPodcast!

Transcript

Kevin: 0:00

Yeah, but are you gonna edit this so I don't sound like an idiot, Jordan?

Jordan: 0:03

Yes, absolutely.

Kevin: 0:11

I'm in a very uncomfortable position for today's show. I want everyone to appreciate I'm giving myself scoliosis.

Jordan: 0:17

Where are you sitting?

Kevin: 0:18

What are you using? Because I don't have the boom arm, so I'm having to lean over to talk into the paper towel holder what I'm contorting myself. What are you talking about? Paper towel holder.

Jordan: 0:31

Oh my god.

Kevin: 0:35

I remembered everything to do this remote recording except the the mic stand, and so I've rigged up a paper towel holder.

Jordan: 0:42

You, you literally rigged it, so it's one of those like paper towel holders that has like the hollow bar and you shoved the microphone.

Alban: 0:49

Yeah, but wait, the paper towels are still on it, right. Scroll, l, can you turn the camera against?

Jordan: 0:55

we can see how this is rigged up cable management.

Kevin: 0:57

I run my XLR cable through the paper towel and it comes out the bottom.

Alban: 1:02

Okay, so wait, let me describe this for your listeners. Kevin is preparing his house on the Gulf Coast for the hurricane that's gonna hit, and so you're down there and you're not at home. And now you're you've got a SM7B attached to a metal paper towel holder, but you kept the paper towels on there so you could run the cables through the paper towel center.

Kevin: 1:26

Yeah, cable management, very, very on brand and the paper towels act as like a shock mount. This is when people say podcasting is too expensive.

Alban: 1:37

You're not creative enough, holder you've got a boom Kevin Finn with a $450 microphone and a free paper towel holder. Boom arm is like I'm saving money here. That's the $12 piece.

Jordan: 1:51

You know what I did when I had to go record at my friend's house. I took a bunch of like her big books, like dictionaries and stuff, and I stacked them up so I wouldn't have that problem where my back was hunched over trying to reach the thing.

Kevin: 2:02

Oh, you have like books out of here a book guy, but it's just way off to the left, so like my back is like in an S curve right now so I can stay close to the mic.

Jordan: 2:11

I thought you're just leaning to like look cool.

Alban: 2:13

Yeah, I thought that was kind of like.

Jordan: 2:15

I mean it has that side benefit.

Kevin: 2:20

Right, so I might I don't know. I've got a good 30 or 40 minutes in me before my back locks up, so let's get to it boy.

Jordan: 2:29

We are back from podcast movement Denver. What was your highlight? I knew it highs and lows. You hate this.

Kevin: 2:36

I don't know anything that was ever no, I'm all in on this because I think this, this conference, was perfect for how you're all in, because in some ways, I think it was the best podcast movement ever and in some ways I think it was the worst podcast Whoa. So this is just perfect, all right. So the reason you can make an argument that it was the worst podcast movement ever is because, as far as I know, every single session that they had the stage was in the main exhibit hall. Oh, did they even have any sessions that were in private post offerings? Yeah, yeah.

Kevin: 3:05

Okay, I didn't go to any of this, maybe the main stage was off in its own room main stage and then three smaller ones.

Jordan: 3:11

Okay, but there were six stages in the expo hall, which is, yeah, a lot. Six stages too many.

Kevin: 3:16

And all the talks that I went to which wasn't many but the three or four that I went to and walked over and listened to. They're in the main exhibit hall and so it was really hard to. You couldn't hear them unless you're like in the seats. So they did have the sound like projecting the right direction, but it was very noisy and just like there's a lot of distractions all around. So for somebody like me that's easily like I'm like like a dog or a cat, like something shiny is flashing in the corner. I'm I can't focus, and that was. I found it very difficult To engage in any of the talks that were happening in the six stages in the expo area.

Alban: 3:52

Yeah, I experienced a little bit. I feel like my voice went out a little bit sooner than normal, just because you kind of had you're pretty loud the whole time, not yelling, but, like I don't know, half yelling, you're half yelling most of the time.

Kevin: 4:05

And I think what that also encourages is because there are just people walking around not listening to the talk. There are people who will stop right next to a bunch of people who are trying to listen to a talk and they're just having a conversation Right behind you.

Jordan: 4:16

Oh yeah.

Kevin: 4:17

And so you're sitting at a chair trying to listen to the talk and then people are behind you're having conversation and you're kind of like I don't know if someone's talking in a movie theater, like you might turn around, say like, could you please, in a nice way, could you stop talking? But then you can't really say can you stop talking, because that's a perfectly normal place to have a conversation. You're in an expo hall. They're not being rude, they're just standing out of booth having conversation. But you're trying to listen to a talk right in the middle of that.

Alban: 4:39

So I did not like that part of it. So good news for you, kevin. I talked to somebody at podcast movement and they Asked for feedback, and that was the one piece of negative feedback I gave and they said we've already heard that a bunch. So there will be, I think, two stages in the expo hall and All the others next year will be off on their own. And I got a sabooth far away from the two that will be in the expo hall. I think they already heard it and they were like okay, we got it, we're gonna fix this.

Kevin: 5:08

Yeah, yeah. I really felt bad for the presenters too, because I feel like they were like it was probably distracting for them. Like they're trying to give a presentation and they're looking out, there's just a lot of people walking around. They're right in the middle of a high traffic area. I guess, like if you were a performer growing up, like if you did like mall performances, you'd be used to it.

Alban: 5:28

The guys are like I'm gonna jump over there.

Kevin: 5:30

Or if you were like Kids grew up doing clogging at the mall like they probably would not have a problem with it, but anyone else yeah, they're basically like buskers or like the people standing on the corner trying to like do their speeches with a megaphone.

Alban: 5:46

Tom Rossi, a former guest of this podcast and co-founder of Buzzsprout, gave a speech and or he gave a talk and I guess the person who was announcing his talk, like the hype man, didn't show up, so Tom walked up there and acted as his own busker. He's like hey everyone, this great talk is about to happen. Tom Rossi from Buzzsprout is about to be here in like two minutes. And then he walked off the stage and two minutes later he walked on to the stage and he goes. It was me the whole time. I could never do that.

Jordan: 6:24

Shame. He just does not care, what anyone thinks.

Kevin: 6:27

So my positive, I think, has to do with the attendees. I think we it were. There's a lot of Buzzsprout customers there. There were a lot of people there who were starting a podcast and we had a lot of really great conversations with people about Starting a podcast or like what's coming new to Buzzsprout or how to use Buzzsprout better for their podcast. That seemed like a really Healthy flow like, I think, conferences.

Kevin: 6:49

In the past it's felt like we've been slammed with like 30 people at the booth and then nobody for an hour and then 30 people at the booth and so then you're not having quality conversations. You're just trying to go quick because you're trying to get to everybody and then you're not doing anything for like an hour and then it happens again. So maybe this is, you know, the double-edged sword with having all these private rooms in an expo hall. Everyone goes to the rooms, then no one's in the expo hall and then everyone comes back to the expo hall on your slam. Then they go back. So yeah, maybe I'm a positive and negative or in conflict with each other, but it was nice that the flow of people seemed more steady so you could have more engaged conversations for people.

Jordan: 7:24

That's a good one, Albin. What was your negative?

Alban: 7:27

highs and lows. The low was this isn't really a podcast movement low, but a personal low. I started going to podcast movement when I was 27 and now I'm 37, maybe like the first one was 28. But now I like I can't go out and drink and all these things all night and then wake up like four hours later and like go work Wait, this is a negative, or maybe it's the positive that I've learned that, like you have to actually take care of your own body If you wanted to like still be around later on yeah, but I missed out on quite a few of the Late night going out to the party sessions and was like, alright, we got to be up in nine hours, so I'm headed to bed.

Jordan: 8:10

Good night, I think that actually was a positive this year Because, let me tell you, I went to the big I heart party. It's always like the biggest part of the year, right?

Jordan: 8:20

Yeah they had it in this really small venue and it was so packed and the line to the bar was so long that I drink water. So yeah, like. And then I got on the last bus to go back to the hotel at like 10 so I had like a little bit of red wine because they had that out in the beer garden. There was a lady serving that, but that was like my only option and they were being very stingy, so it was like a little like finger of it. It's just a teeny bit of red wine.

Alban: 8:49

Oh well, taste test.

Jordan: 8:50

Yeah, it was all I could get, so it's probably a good thing this year that you weren't able to Go do anything, because you didn't miss out on anything the positives.

Alban: 8:59

Podcast movement, as always, is super well Organized. It's very clear, very easy to like navigate the hall, get to things on time and. But personal pie is always meeting people. I just have a blast talking to people. We say this all the time. You're talking into a microphone and you see numbers come up on your bus bread account and it just doesn't feel real and there are multiple times. Someone's like I love buscast, it's one of my favorite shows. I'm like, really Know, I appreciate it so much, but there's something in me that like there's a little bit of my brain that's like there's a 10% chance. None, no one's really listening to this. Yeah, we're doing it for years. We meet people in real life. People mentioned things that happened on the show and somehow I still think I just feels like it's not real.

Jordan: 9:51

Yeah, I mean there were so many this year. So, anna, she came up to us in Dallas last year.

Alban: 9:58

Oh, and a Jawski.

Jordan: 9:59

Yeah, yeah. So it was awesome seeing her again this year. And then same thing with, like, david and Tiffany. They're always fun to. I got to meet them at Evolution, so it was fun to see them this year too.

Alban: 10:10

Matthew from Girl Dad Nation brought us doughnuts the first day.

Jordan: 10:13

Oh my gosh, yes and the Robin Hood audio drama, which is oh, is that from him?

Alban: 10:18

Yes, oh, I, I have one. So yeah, thank you.

Kevin: 10:23

I remember it, like I, when he walked up, I didn't recognize his name and but his podcast name was right underneath it and as soon as I saw Girl Dad Nation, that was clicked. For me. It's like oh yeah absolutely.

Alban: 10:34

Brittany Wilkins saw her again. She does black history on the other side. I feel like we've run into each other on a handful of conferences, so good to see her again. We met Nicodemus and Francesca the. What was their podcast name? Like this siblings the saucy sins, saucy sips, and they do a podcast about, like Breckenridge right.

Kevin: 10:54

Yeah, I think they used to live in Breckenridge, not live in Denver, so it's changed venues With an interesting story of them their departure from Breckenridge. You have to go listen. No spoilers.

Jordan: 11:06

Oh, and then we also got to meet. Meredith is listener of the show and she's super cool.

Kevin: 11:11

Oh, yeah, she's. She's from Florida.

Jordan: 11:13

Oh, that's right, she in Florida too, I think there's a hurricane headed her way.

Alban: 11:16

Oh yeah, she was on the Gulf Coast in Sarasota, right.

Kevin: 11:20

No, no, no panhandle, oh Pensacola or something like that.

Jordan: 11:24

I mean have the people who are at podcast. We were from Florida. I don't know what it is about Florida.

Kevin: 11:28

There's a lot of good people in Florida.

Jordan: 11:31

That's what it is.

Kevin: 11:32

I was so happy with.

Alban: 11:33

People told me they're from Florida, because there's a lot of times that people see the news and they're like what's going on down in that state? Sounds like you're just living in like constant fear. And then you see other Floridians and they're like no, we're fine. I mean, a couple hurricanes, alligators no big deal, we're okay.

Kevin: 11:49

There's a lot of people who do feel like they would never move to Florida, but yet our population keeps increasing by like 15 20% each year. So Explain that one.

Alban: 11:59

No one's ever saying I would never move to like North Dakota, because it's so far from your mind that you're not really saying it, but you kind of have to say I would never do this thing that you might do, just to like reiterate in your mind like I'm definitely not doing that.

Jordan: 12:14

Who else? Who else are we missing?

Kevin: 12:16

There was a couple other people at the meet up, I spent a lot of time talking with Liz, who runs a yoga podcast, and Sam, who's not a BuzzFerraut podcaster yet she runs a science podcast. Oh, you remember the name of that one.

Alban: 12:28

Yeah, tiny Matters Matters. There you go, because it's a pun on tiny and then matter like it's a was it was, it wasn't physics.

Kevin: 12:38

It's sorry, she told she told me signs.

Jordan: 12:43

Yeah, it was just what kind of science is that? I don't know.

Alban: 12:45

Follow the science. No, because the whole thing was that there's not too much physics. Because I was like oh, physics podcast. She's like that's actually kind of a joke, for our podcast there's not much physics. Anyway, this is interesting content for everybody.

Kevin: 12:56

So she's moving to BuzzFerraut, though she told me she promised.

Alban: 13:00

And we also met Matt and did we talk about Rachel. No we didn't, oh man? Well, if we forgot anybody, our apologies. We really enjoyed going to these conferences and hanging out with everybody is definitely. The highlight for me Is the next big one pod fest in Florida. Pod fest in Florida, yeah we're going to blow that one out.

Kevin: 13:20

We need to have like 90 percent of the attendees be BuzzFerraut. That should be the goal.

Alban: 13:26

Jordan, what were your highs and lows?

Jordan: 13:28

I think my low. It really wouldn't be like a podcast movement if there wasn't something weird with the hotel, like last year we had like the cricket infestation.

Jordan: 13:37

No, and this year we had the fire alarm evacuations at random hours and it was only like certain floors of the hotel, which was interesting. So I was one of the unfortunate souls that was stirred awake at 4 am and had to go out in public in my pajamas, like just rolled out of bed, just stumbling next to the fire truck. Yeah, I was evacuated too, and I somehow went down the stairs.

Alban: 14:07

I was like I'm going to be in the fire truck and I somehow went down the stairs, because I know you're supposed to go down the stairs when there's a fire.

Kevin: 14:15

Such a boy scout.

Alban: 14:16

Good job. But then the stairs that I went down kicked me out into a construction area, like there's an area of the hotel that was under construction and so like I just walk out into active construction site.

Jordan: 14:28

Oh my gosh, that was the other thing too. I think sleep was my low for this podcast movement.

Alban: 14:35

Lack of sleep.

Jordan: 14:36

Yeah, I woke up at 4 am, had to go be evacuated and then when I finally fell asleep, my room was right outside the construction crew and they started working around like 6, 6, 15. And it woke me up and I was just like are you kidding? I was so mad.

Jordan: 14:53

And then I fell asleep at breakfast and you asked me if I was taking a power nap. My peak was really just getting to see, you know, friends I've made over the years attending these conferences, because you start to see familiar faces every time you go and then it becomes like a reunion of sorts and you start making friends with, like the other companies and the podcasting space and then you know the podcasters and listeners and that's been really really cool, Just like slowly over time making really good friendships. So yeah, I think overall highs of podcast movement is definitely just human connection.

Alban: 15:33

On the last episode we talked quite a bit about conspiracy theories about the Denver Airport and I am happy to report all true After being there. This airport makes no sense, Absolutely no sense. The thing with airports, supposedly, is that the older airports are often the most confusing because they've been built up over time, and the Denver Airport is newly it's like not even 30 years old. Right, we looked this up last time and it makes no sense. The layout was like so confusing. There's a giant. There is a giant blue horse with red-eye statue Makes no sense. It's got weird writings on the ground.

Jordan: 16:17

I saw Pyramid. I saw Pyramid at the TSA.

Alban: 16:21

They're leaning into this as hard as they can and then they're on the, on their website, going like don't believe the conspiracy theories. There's definitely nothing going on, I'm like, but you're kind of, you're going for it as hard as you can, trying to make it as weird as possible, and some of that weirdness is just like TSA is a mess.

Jordan: 16:40

Oh my gosh, I've gone to huge airports to fly back to Idaho and usually what happens is I get there two hours early and I have so much time to kill that I have to stop at like an actual restaurant and sit down and order food, because it takes forever. And then this time, going through Denver, the TSA was such a mess it took forever to get through it and then when I finally got through, they randomly selected me to do like a swab for like explosives. And then they like, yeah, so I got pulled aside for that and I was just like, oh my God, like I didn't eat today. You remember you were trying to get me to eat at the thing and I'm like, no, it'll be fine. So I was just like crap.

Jordan: 17:20

But they pulled me aside to do a swab for like the explosives and then I noticed that my bag was not on the conveyor when I got released from that and I was freaking out and I looked over and they had it in the search pile but it was backed up because there's only one person conducting the searches through the bags and they tried to confiscate my snow globes that I bought my kids. I think they saw my face and the guy was like I'll let it go, it's not that big. I was like, thank you, don't take the snow globes.

Alban: 17:51

I'm not sure I understand the threat of a snow globe, but it's over 3.4.

Jordan: 17:56

I bought it from the airport, like I bought these snow globes from the airport.

Kevin: 18:01

They should be marked.

Jordan: 18:02

And I've never had an issue how much liquid is in there, man, the liquids thing is a great development.

Alban: 18:08

I love this. It feels sick yeah.

Kevin: 18:11

It's, it's. I think it has something to do with the big water lobby. They want to resell you water once you get through TSA.

Alban: 18:17

Oh yeah, I think he's been pushing this hard. Yeah, big water.

Jordan: 18:23

That's the real conspiracy.

Alban: 18:25

Maybe another high from podcast movement Denver. I had been there once before, but this was. We were a little bit outside of Denver, in Aurora, and after the conference ended I drove down to Garden of the Gods, which, Kevin, I don't know if it was on the podcast or it was just after one year.

Jordan: 18:41

Yeah, it was in the post.

Alban: 18:42

Show it was the post show, so Kevin recommended it. It's one of your favorite things that you do with your kids. I'm going to go and it was awesome.

Kevin: 18:51

I like how you're like, what do you do with your kids? Cause I'm going to do that.

Jordan: 18:56

I love how I asked you. I was like, oh my gosh, we have time to do this, and you guys are both like no, and then you both go and do all these things. Dang it.

Alban: 19:05

Well, I didn't fly out to the next day and I didn't think I was going to have time, but as I shipped everything out, I look and went all right and pulled up the Hertz app and rented a car and ran over to the airport and got it and drove and I got there about five and then hiked till I don't know, maybe nine till it was really dark, and then eight dinner and came back. But it was very, very cool. It was just a beautiful area and it's so different than the East Coast. You know, we have what we have mountains up in the Carolinas and we have cool rivers and lakes and oceans, but nothing that looks like Colorado. It's beautiful.

Jordan: 19:43

Yeah, and Kevin, you left a day early from podcast movement.

Kevin: 19:48

Well, half day yeah.

Sara : 19:50

Was it a half day? I think it was Half day on Thursday.

Kevin: 19:53

Yeah, we took off and headed into the mountains on, rode some motorcycles on some scenic routes and that was wonderful. That's super cool. Yeah, it was really very nice.

Jordan: 20:04

It wasn't like a super eventful podcast movement. You know there wasn't a lot of like big guest speakers or anything like that, this podcast movement. It felt a little bit more subdued than in previous years.

Kevin: 20:16

No, mark Cuban.

Jordan: 20:17

No, mark Cuban. I'm trying to even think of someone else who would be like a celebrity. No, lance Bass.

Kevin: 20:23

You know they have changed that. They used to do some, like I don't know, pretty big headliner names.

Jordan: 20:28

Yeah, oh, will Ferrell was another one.

Alban: 20:31

Will Ferrell was there one year. Terry Gross was there one year. That was probably the best. Oh, she was amazing and Sarah.

Kevin: 20:38

Sarah Kaniyia Kaniyia Gai Roz was there.

Alban: 20:41

Really yeah.

Kevin: 20:43

Gai Roz did a session. So yeah, they've had huge names in podcasting, but this year not so much.

Jordan: 20:49

Yeah, but the big like podcasting platforms were there and they all had different announcements, so there was a lot of news coming out during podcast movement, a lot of things being announced at podcast movement. So I think that was kind of the big thing for this conference this year. The first was that YouTube has some announcements and it was funny because I thought YouTube canceled their talk at podcast movement. Did they change their mind or did I like mishear something?

Alban: 21:18

No, they didn't cancel their talk. I think it was just that Kai Chuck, who's the head of YouTube podcast, got double booked so he had his session for YouTube and then he was also on a panel and so he still did the panel. And then Steve McClennan stepped in and he's the head of podcasts across all of Google and so he did those kind of YouTube announcements. A lot of the announcements were things we kind of already knew, because a lot of them got leaked, I want to say March of this year, and so they're all in pod news and we've talked about them on this show before, but they're confirming kind of all the stuff that they've been building. They're going to have it out worldwide by the end of the year. So that'll be things like that podcast page being able to take a bunch of videos and turn them into a quote unquote podcast on YouTube than those would show up in YouTube music. So all of those things are going to be worldwide coming by the end of the year.

Alban: 22:18

And then it sounds like they will also be using RSS to upload content to YouTube. We talked about this one as well, the idea being that it's not RSS to manage content like we do with our podcasts, where if you delete an episode, it now is no longer on Apple Podcasts or you edit it, it's edited on Apple Podcasts. Youtube sounds like what they'll be doing is basically, they will watch your RSS feed and when they see a new episode they will copy it. They'll copy that in as a YouTube video and a YouTube music audio thing.

Jordan: 22:54

So does that mean if, like let's say, that I uploaded an episode and a track was off, which has happened in the past I had to replace an audio file, does that mean that that replaced audio file would not update to YouTube?

Alban: 23:09

That's going to be the type of thing they're going to have to figure out. So I mean, there's technical ways you could do that. They could try to have some way of figuring out that something changed and then overwrite that file. But the downside is when you've been using one technology for 20 plus years, the bugs have been worked out and lots of other apps have made decisions about how to manage files with RSS and how to watch for it, and all the podcast hosts work and we've all banged on this for 20 years, figuring out what works and what doesn't.

Alban: 23:46

And YouTube obviously has great scale on the video side and they know how to do the things they've done on video and now they're kind of going in the middle. They're not going exactly the way they did with video and they're not doing exactly what podcasts have done. They've done this new. They look like they're doing something new which I think will just bring up a whole new host of issues, One being replacing audio files to getting stats back to your podcast host will be a whole another process. You'll have probably less creator control inside of YouTube than you would if it was on the video side. So this will just be one we have to keep watching out for and learn more as they actually implement this feature, Because the way they implement it will really affect how it works for podcasters.

Kevin: 24:31

Yeah, you know, technically, when we think about systems like this, you can think about like an importer and a syncing system. They're pretty different in how you implement them technically and YouTube has always referred to this as like an RSS import tool. They've never talked about a sync tool. So I would. To me what that means is that anytime they see a change in your RSS feed, like a new episode, they're going to go ahead and import that.

Kevin: 24:54

But if you deleted something like I don't think they're probably looking for that and they probably wouldn't delete the video. And so same thing, probably with replacing audio. So I would go into it assuming that if you make a change, like an audio replacement or a delete, that you're going to then have to log into YouTube and delete the old video and then hopefully maybe somehow get it to resync or like re-import. If you did an audio replacement, get it to pull that thing in again. Maybe I'll give you a button to do that. But if you have an old episode that's maybe I don't know, let's just say, two months old episode and then, for whatever reason you decide, you want to unpublish that, I would assume that you would then have to switch over to YouTube and manually unpublish it there as well. I doubt they're probably going to try to keep it in sync.

Alban: 25:37

One other YouTube announcement that wasn't made at podcast movement but I think will affect podcasters. This is just a general YouTube thing. Youtube shorts those short vertical videos, are soon going to be allowed the creator to link to a long form video and now connect this together with YouTube. Working with YouTube music, there could be a world where you're scrolling through shorts, you see a clip from a podcast and it's interesting to you, and now there's a button that's like watch the full video. Now you go watch the full video, the two hour interview, and if you really like it now you can follow it over to YouTube music and subscribe to the show as an audio format.

Jordan: 26:21

That's cool. That makes up for I saw an announcement that they would be disabling links in shorts descriptions, so that kind of makes up for that. Maybe they were doing that in lieu of like in the actual like interface linking to the full video.

Alban: 26:37

And this kind of reminds me of maybe a year ago Kai Chuck said I really don't love it when people watch videos on YouTube and now they leave to go subscribe to the podcast somewhere else. And it feels like they now are trying to bring the whole discovery process from short form video to long form video, to audio first podcast. They're trying to bring all of that into a YouTube ecosystem, because you've seen so many podcasts grow really big on YouTube and that's kind of their growth engine, but then they end up taking that audience somewhere else, maybe it be to Apple podcasts or Spotify, and so I know YouTube is excited about trying to keep more people in that YouTube ecosystem and it seems like this is the beginning of having that full path of breadcrumbs laid out.

Jordan: 27:23

And another thing that they're doing that might be kind of also in that pathway of trying to get more people to use like YouTube music is they also announced that users will be able to add RSS feeds into the YouTube music app, similar to like what you do on like Apple. So like, even if you subscribe via Patreon or something like that and you copy the RSS link, you can put it into YouTube music and then it'll bring in the private RSS feeds too. So that's them taking a little step ahead of Spotify. Really, they're just like no, we're not going to do that quite.

Alban: 27:59

Nice, I didn't know that they had that, but I think that's a critical feature for any podcast app, and so it's good to see YouTube music is adding that as well.

Kevin: 28:08

Yeah, I think that's good and that shows some support at least for open podcasting. I do really think Spotify needs to do this at some point. It seems hostile I guess is the word I'm looking for that they don't do that.

Alban: 28:24

So we had a bunch of Spotify announcements and they kind of go with this I don't know if I'll say hostile, but passive, aggressive development path where a lot of these things we're going to talk about Spotify announcing. They sound exactly like things that already exist in open podcasting, but now they have their own way of setting it up and their own nomenclatures. If any of these sound familiar, yeah, you're not mistaken. The first was recommended the best place to start, where you can feature your favorite episode to hook new listeners. So imagine if somebody clicks on your podcast. Now there is like a pinned episode right there at the top. I don't know of any other app that does this.

Alban: 29:07

So this is one that's totally unique to Spotify and I think is very cool. A lot of times when you get into a new podcast, you want to find a good episode that's indicative of the quality of the show and it kind of highlights what's special about the show, but it also doesn't need a bunch of knowledge. You don't need to have a bunch of built up knowledge over time that you understand the story arc or how they ask questions. So it's nice to be able to have one that's like hey, start here. I think that's a great feature.

Jordan: 29:38

There's that, and then there's also, you know, for podcasts, or so I think about like my podcast. Since it's just a bunch of random stories, people can really jump anywhere. So that means that I can take my favorite episode, the one I think is my like personal best, and say this is where I'd like you to start Like this is my featured episode in the about the podcast, and that's cool to have like a host recommending what their favorite episode is too.

Kevin: 30:04

Yeah, I like this idea quite a bit and implementation wise, it should be a no brainer just to implement this in RSS again, because there's no reason that this needs to be a Spotify exclusive feature. So think about just having a very simple tag in your RSS where you have all your episodes listed that just says you know this is the pinned episode, or something like that. And there's some minor technical issues like what if that tag appears twice, or something like that.

Kevin: 30:29

Well, just take the first one. You can only have if your app only displays one pinned episode. But I see this is something that I have a feeling that a proposal might come to the podcast name space project, similar to this, very quickly.

Jordan: 30:43

Is that what you're typing up right now?

Kevin: 30:45

Yeah, I'm gonna.

Alban: 30:49

YouTube has had something like this for a long time. If you click on a YouTube channel, then there is a highlighted video. Yeah, can be at least, and that's where you highlight like this is what the channel is about. Some creators use it to introduce the channel, which would maybe be more like a podcast trailer, but some just say here's a great video that we think highlights what's great about our channel and if you like it, you'll probably want to subscribe to the whole thing.

Kevin: 31:15

There's an old blog post from a guy used to work at Spotify called the innovators dilemma.

Alban: 31:22

Well wait, kevin. Innovators dilemma is a famous book about this problem.

Kevin: 31:25

I'm just telling you what. Yeah, but I'm telling you what the blog post was called. Okay, not the name of the book that he was referencing. So that's what the blog post, I think, was titled. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

Kevin: 31:36

The point is is that the argument that he was making is that you can to move quickly and to innovate quickly. You can't do that in the open. If you try to do it in the open, then things are going to move more slowly, and this is why a lot of us in open who support open podcasting thought was it was disingenuous because something like this there's absolutely no reason that this would take longer to do in the open. In fact, it would probably be faster to do it in the open. So to submit a proposal to the podcast namespace project, then have some discussion around it, it's like it's not going to be hard to build a little momentum around a good idea that tag would be implemented quickly in the next phase. So phases come and go every two to three months, phases are being open and closed, and then what you have is you have a huge community of people who support open podcasting, like Buzzsprout, like Transistor and Blueberry CaptivateRSScom, who would all implement that tag. So almost every podcaster immediately would have access to this feature within the dashboard and the tools that they're already familiar with.

Kevin: 32:34

You don't have to then like go log into Spotify for podcasters and figure out where this thing is and how to turn it on. You would just like log into your podcast host, like Buzzsprout, and there'd be a little thing at the top or so. We'd put a little announcement like hey, do you want to choose one of your favorite episodes, or whatever. We'd explain it and let them choose one. And now it's in the RSS feed. Now Spotify can use it and so can overcast and pocketcast and cast-o-matic and podfriend and everybody, and then you have this podcast the largest and most popular podcast directory, Right.

Kevin: 33:01

And then you don't have this fractured experience where if you look at my podcast in this app, you might find a great place to start, but if you look in this one, you won't see that, like that's not great. I love the idea of giving the creators more tools to be able to influence their audience. Like I want you to be a fan of the show. This is a great episode. You should start here. Or we've talked about like Podroll in the past. Like, oh, if you like this podcast, here are some other podcasts that I listen to that I recommend you should be able to see those instead of, like relying on some algorithm to promote other podcasts around my show. So I love ideas like this and I just. This is the power of open. I think Spotify's got some great ideas, but I don't think it's a dilemma. It's a like there is an open community, it's active around podcasting. Just participate, please.

Alban: 33:45

So, speaking of Podroll, kevin, the third announcement from Spotify. You can share host recommendations, where you choose up to two pieces of content from other creators on Spotify. This could be a podcast, it could be a playlist some music and pin them to the top of your more like this tab. This is literally the exact same idea as Podroll that we talked about a few weeks ago, with the addition, I guess, since you're on Spotify, that you could also make it like music or another piece of content on Spotify, but just another one. That was kind of funny because I was like, yeah, it's a good idea.

Alban: 34:19

This has already being implemented other places and you could just pull it from the RSS feed, but instead you're making it more painful. So now the podcasters have to set it up with their host but then also individually go out to Spotify to do this. And you can just see this world where, if Apple and YouTube and overcast and everybody else do this separately, now the podcaster uploads one time but then they go to four or five other places to like do the final tweaks Just not a good user experience for anybody.

Jordan: 34:54

Well, it doesn't stop there, Alvin, because they also added podcast bio, so you can do like a host bio and link to socials and stuff.

Alban: 35:03

This is like the host information page. Yeah, yeah, so another podcasting 2.0 feature implemented in Spotify, without the podcasting 2.0 support, right?

Kevin: 35:15

So the name of that element is the person tag Buzzsprout supports it where you can upload an image, write the name and then do a short little bio and a link of the hosts that are on your show host or co-host. And there's actually a larger taxonomy that goes around that that you could do, like producers and everything like that. We didn't implement all that stuff. We just wanted to roll out the basics and see how people responded and how they used it, and so that's where we are right now, but it's a fully flushed out element that can be used in RSS.

Kevin: 35:40

It exists in 100,000 Buzzsprout feeds today, and I'm sure other hosts have implemented it as well. But again, spotify choosing not to embrace open, choosing to do their own proprietary solution instead, which leads to a place, exactly like Alvin said, where you have to now log into all these separate apps after you do stuff on your host and get your podcast set up to make sure that every single one is using all the features of the offer. It's not good and I don't think it's passive, aggressive, I do think it's hostile.

Alban: 36:04

Well, we come off as a little bit of like Spotify curmudgeon. I don't. It's not just Spotify Like. A lot of this YouTube stuff we just talked about is in the exact same vein. Right, it's. Hey, we know there's an open standard. We actually are excited about it. That's why we want to get involved in podcasting. We see all the school content and we see all these great creators and we see a big audience.

Alban: 36:28

Okay, how do we use that to build the brand and the shareholder value behind YouTube or behind Spotify, when, if you want to pull all this stuff in, I feel like you need to respect the creators who are already been doing this stuff for so long.

Alban: 36:45

They're creating the value that you want to pull into your app. And it's not just not a good world where somebody's going to have to now upload to a host and then also go over to Spotify to do something and also YouTube. It's just a complete waste of time and it just is so reminiscent of what we were doing in the 90s, where people were coding up websites multiple times because they wanted to make sure that it looked good in Microsoft Explored and it looked good in Netscape and it looked good here, and it was just a big waste of developer time. Now it's a big waste of podcaster time. If we get on the same page, then we can solve all of this and it's a super easy fix. Instead of creating a whole UI to log into Spotify to set this all up, just pull it from the RSS feed, where it's already available to you.

Kevin: 37:36

So as much as this frustrates me what Spotify is doing, I am there is a bit of opportunity to do this. There is a bit of optimism that I still hold, and that is that Apple has not really done anything hostile towards open podcasting ever in their history. I don't believe their subscription stuff is proprietary, but that makes sense and it's not hostile. It's like they still let you, if you want to do a private podcast through Buzzsprout subscriptions or Patreon or something else, they totally are fine with that. They also offer their own subscription service and it's it makes sense why they do it because they have it's a more Apple like experience. Like you have your Apple ID and you have your credit card already on file, and so they make it perfectly seamless and beautiful and it is an Apple experience.

Kevin: 38:18

I get all that, and they were able to do it without being hostile or passive, aggressive to open podcasting.

Kevin: 38:24

They still supported it all, and so I feel like Apple being the largest player app Apple podcast being the largest, they haven't done anything to work against open podcasting yet.

Kevin: 38:35

So I am optimistic that the days coming soon when one of these new podcast namespace tags or elements or features some people call them will peak Apple's interest enough that they'll embrace it, and that could just that would mean so much All the people who are working so hard in the podcast namespace project, in the podcast standards project. It would just mean a ton to have some support, or at least I don't know a glimmer of hope that the all the work that's being done is not is not only for this very small minority of apps that very few people actually use Now. Us in podcasting, we use them and we love them and it's great for us. But we would love to see this work go beyond just a small community of avid podcasters and reach more mainstream users. But in order to do that we need the support of a mainstream app, and I'm hoping that that could be Apple someday soon.

Jordan: 39:30

Well, speaking of Apple, they also had an announcement that they made last week and it's subscription analytics. This has been, I think, probably one of the biggest complaints about Apple podcast subscriptions, because, other than this, this is a fantastic program to be in. It works really well, it's sleek, but their analytics were definitely not the best because there weren't any. So you'd have to. If you needed any sort of like information on like your subscribers, or reports or anything like that, you'd have to go into, I want to say like the payments or somewhere in these subscriptions, and you'd have to download a CSV file, like a spreadsheet essentially, and it was really hard to navigate. So they just launched their analytics for subscriptions.

Alban: 40:20

So all these analytics are specifically applicable to somebody who's running an Apple podcast subscription. So, kevin and I, it's not as applicable to us. But, jordan, this is pretty big for you, right.

Jordan: 40:31

Yeah, this is definitely big for me. I'm able to see a lot more information about my subscribers. Before it was so difficult to access the information that I wouldn't even look at like how much I made in that month because it was just so complicated to get that information. I would just ignore it and be like, well, guess, I'll never know.

Alban: 40:50

Looking at the press release free trial subscriptions, you can see how many people actually end up paying for your podcast subscription, how much money you're making. What other information are you able to see?

Jordan: 41:03

Yeah, so I can also see the conversion rates on my subscribers. I can see, like, how many free trials have started and how many have become new paid subscriptions the conversion rate on that. I can now see my monthly paid subscriptions, yearly and monthly free trial, like all in one graph, which is really nice, as well as the countries and regions. And then they also have trends, finally, for subscriptions, which is very, very helpful, you know, similar to their regular podcast analytics. Now you can see trends for your subscriptions and how many subscribers you have and how many people are going for the free trials. So if you change up your call to action in your podcast, you can see if that had any effect on, like, how many people were signing up for your subscription.

Alban: 41:54

Alright, not to put you on the spot, but are you willing to share what your conversion rate is? I'd love to hear, like how similar is this to other types of subscriptions and conversions?

Kevin: 42:04

Well, the only thing we have to compare it to are the screenshots from the press release. That's true.

Jordan: 42:08

This is the great thing, because I actually don't have conversion rates on like my other subscriptions. I would have to do math for that and we all know I can't do math.

Alban: 42:19

So let's just do division.

Jordan: 42:21

I don't know what that is, but what so?

Kevin: 42:25

my conversion rate is 69% on my subscriptions, so 69% of the people who do a free trial end up paying.

Jordan: 42:33

Yeah, is that good, that's good yeah that's really good 7 out of 10 people.

Kevin: 42:39

Yeah.

Alban: 42:40

Screenshot. Apple cent has 65%, so even the most, the very optimistic version. Yeah, you're doing better than that, so that's very cool.

Jordan: 42:49

Nice. They also say that the monthly proceeds is like 65,000 in that screenshot.

Alban: 42:55

So is your podcast higher or lower than $65,000 or so?

Jordan: 43:01

It's definitely lower.

Alban: 43:03

I would not be working for you.

Kevin: 43:08

If I made 65,000 a month.

Jordan: 43:10

I'm sorry. Like you, guys are the best.

Kevin: 43:14

Sounds like 65,000 a month is the best. We might be second best. Everyone has a price. I will say I'm noticing in these screenshots that there you said there's a lot of additional information about people who subscribe to your podcast, but it all looks like financial information or number of people who are doing this behavior or that behavior, but we're not seeing like demographic information.

Kevin: 43:35

We're not seeing gender breakdowns. We're not seeing median household incomes, we're not seeing all this other kind of stuff which you know, spotify does show a little bit of that when you log in and look at your podcast level analytics from Spotify for podcasters. But Apple and this makes me super happy, so I'm great you can't see me, but I'm smiling as I say this, and that is I am.

Alban: 43:56

Look that is a grin, maybe a grimace.

Kevin: 44:02

I don't know, it's like DeSantis trying to smile You're a robot.

Kevin: 44:07

But Apple, with their commitment to privacy, like it comes through, and everything they do, and so I really love how they implemented this.

Kevin: 44:14

They gave you all the information that you really need to be able to track the business side of a subscription podcast without getting creepy. Like they have that data because it's all tied to people's iCloud and Apple, whatever payment accounts and everything. Like they probably know all that stuff, but they recognize it's not relevant For you to grow a subscription podcast business. You don't necessarily need to know the gender of your audience. Or, again, like broad demographic information might be helpful as you want to play in live events or something like that, but knowing median household income or what somebody majored in or what they do for a job none of that is relevant when you're just trying to create a subscription podcast business or a side house solution or something like that. Like people always want more data and I think Apple does a really good job of balancing relevant data to help you be successful Without getting creepy and sharing people's private information without their permission. So good job Apple.

Alban: 45:06

Well, that's great. I mean again, this is, from my perspective, a huge value add because there's complete support for people want to do things completely openly in the open podcast ecosystem, and Apple knows there's something really valuable we can layer on top, which are Apple podcast subscriptions, and it's great to see them building out this more and more so that you can Get all this valuable data not just things like free trials and conversion rates and how much you're making, but you also see play through data and how many people are listening, and all that's gonna help inform podcasters, not just on Apple podcast, but the improvements you make based on this data will also carry over into all the other apps that are out there. So I love that they're doing this, because that data is really valuable In helping improve your podcast everywhere.

Jordan: 46:00

I saw this crazy story last week in Washington DC and this guy was suing because he was trying to copyright this AI generated artwork. And the judge said, no, you can't do it. Like they've been going back and forth forever, right. And the judge said that in order for a work of art to be copyrightable, it must be human, created like it has to be, like made by human hands. And so this has raised a lot of questions with you. Know how people are starting to create their work of art, their writings, things like that, like this, actually like spreads farther than just this, like work of art that this guy made using mid journey. It's starting to make people realize like okay, so you know, now these films can't use AI writers for script writing. It's just, it's really interesting because you can't copyright the work like that. This is kind of like set the precedent that if you create something using AI, you can't copyright it or you run the risk of not being able to copyright it.

Alban: 47:05

I should say yeah, I should add a little bit of color to this, jordan, because it seems like this is probably gonna be a pretty important area of law. It's not that you can't copyright anything that includes AI. It's that you can't copyright something that doesn't include a human. Oh, is that what? It is so this was completely created by AI, with no human input.

Jordan: 47:26

But it was his input with, like the prompting right. So with that, count or no?

Alban: 47:32

The prompt doesn't seem to have been enough to actually give this copyright protection. Judge Howell wrote the copyright had never been granted to work that was absent any guiding human hand, and that human authorship is the bedrock requirement of copyright. And so I think that you'll be fine if you're including. You know you're using chat GPT to clean up your writing, or maybe you create a piece of art with you know one of these with mid journey and then you're making you know hand on tweaks to it.

Alban: 48:05

It can be part of your creative process, but it's when people are trying to get a copyright for something that was completely created by AI that makes sense that that probably shouldn't be copyrightable. So it's an interesting case. I would honestly not be surprised if this was appealed to the Supreme Court, because copyright is an important area of law and all these cases are going to be really, really important. So I'm sure someday a bunch of people in law school, and especially in their property classes, are going to be reading about Taylor. Stephen Taylor is the person who tried to get this copyright. That'll probably be a pretty important case at some point.

Jordan: 48:48

I think about, like there's these AI music websites and stuff. So like what if you created like a theme song using those, like prompting the AI to do that, like you couldn't copyright your theme song, then right, or would it be copyrighted because it was used in your podcast?

Kevin: 49:06

Well, hang on. Clarification here, alvin. Like you don't have to copyright something right, like you create something, you can just say I own this. You can fill out a copyright symbol on it if you want to put it out in the world. The question becomes will you be able to defend it if somebody steals it?

Alban: 49:20

Something is copyrighted when it's put in a fixed medium. So if it's in a podcast, there's a copyright. If you just wrote it and then you've got the copyright.

Kevin: 49:28

Right, but you don't like to fill out a form or register or anything, you just publish it. Yeah, you right, you put it out this.

Alban: 49:33

I honestly. There's nothing that makes me more uncomfortable than Alvin answering legal questions based on something I remember from 14 years ago.

Kevin: 49:43

So just keep it high level. So the question that Jordan posed is if you create, if you used AI to create a theme song for your podcast, could you copyright it or not? Well, absolutely, I mean, you can say it's yours, I use some tool to create it, you put it out there. But if somebody steals it, are you going to be able to sue them and get you know some sort of damages for it? No, probably not, or maybe depending on how this case turns out. But who really cares? Because at the end of the day, is a amateur podcast or probably going to go sue somebody for ripping off their music? Anyway, it would probably be a lot easier for them just to go figure out how to prompt AI to create something a little bit different for themselves. Now there was that weird case where somebody used AI to generate what was it?

Alban: 50:23

Drake song, yeah like a Drake song that went viral on Spotify.

Kevin: 50:28

Right and I think Drake actually, or the record label behind Drake, actually got them to take that down, but I don't think they went after the creator of it. I think they went over after the platforms and said this is shaky ground for you and you probably don't want us to bring a lawsuit, so the easiest thing is just for you to take it down. And I think YouTube and Spotify whoever else was streaming it was like yeah, you're probably right, we probably don't want to fight that fight. We're going to let somebody else figure that out. But in the podcasting world, I don't think it's like where we're using AI right now in bus route. We're using AI to generate show notes and episode titles and stuff like that. Like no one's going after anybody for copying your show notes or your chapter titles or anything like that.

Kevin: 51:06

And the few AI podcasts that have started up that were completely AI driven like the one that got a lot of notoriety was the one that was somebody wrote a bot that would go scrape all the top stories from like hacker news or something every day and then had an AI generated voice reading off all those headlines and that podcast was actually pretty good, like it was a pretty good sounding voice and the stories were interesting because they were at the top of hacker news and so that podcast started to get a little bit of popularity. But I don't think again. It's like anybody could do that. That software I don't know if somebody else created a clone of that. Is that something that you're going to be able to fight and defend?

Kevin: 51:40

Maybe not, but I'm just wondering, implication wise, what does it really matter in the art world? I think it does matter. I know a lot of people are starting to use AI prompting to generate artwork and then they're trying to create NFTs and stuff out of it. But is this really going to impact the real world? I don't know. I'm just rambling.

Jordan: 51:56

I don't know. I saw something about it impacting like writers. You know. It was sort of like part of the basis of like the writer strike and stuff like that.

Alban: 52:05

I think that there's a lot of different issues that we kind of conflate under creation, copyright and AI. Right now. There's some like what is art? What is copyrightable? What can you defend? What is taking away the livelihoods of people? I think that's some of what the writer strike is about, and some are legal, some are moral, some are creative questions.

Alban: 52:28

I personally feel like there is a bit of convergence between all of these, like what makes something good art? It's not, at least right now. I've never Just put in a prompt and immediately gotten something that I went, wow, this is, it's a lot of C plus content, whether it be image creation or whether it be written content. Now, c plus work is really valuable sometimes, because sometimes you create a bunch of C plus work and then it kind of makes it clear what is actually really good. So I, with cohost AI, we have five title ideas, because giving you one title idea might not give you something great, but now you're in the driver seat and you go oh, you know, I really like number two, but I like the phrasing of number three, and now you, the human, maybe combine those and you get something even better. And I think that the human element, right now, where we are is adding something on top of what the AI is generating, and I think this, across the board, is accurate, at least right now. Maybe in the future it will change.

Alban: 53:32

But add something of yourself to this work and now you can copyright it, now you can defend it. It's yours. There's nothing wrong with that. It's a technology, in the same way that probably somebody complained that word processor so like you just move the words all around and typewriters we had to type it straight through. It's just a technology. It's okay for you to use it. I personally don't find anything morally objectionable about it at all and I think it's wonderful. But I also think if you're just creating a bunch of C plus content and then you're trying to defend copyright Because you just blasted fifty thousand images out to the world or millions and millions of pages of text and you're trying to copyright that, that's just not a good thing for the world. I don't think it's a good thing for you. I don't really find it super intriguing at all. So you know, add something of yourself and create something cool.

Jordan: 54:29

It's time for sound off the segment where you are listening or sending your tips, tricks, podcasting advice.

Alban: 54:35

Last week I asked what's the worst environment you ever recorded a podcast, what was happening and what did you do to overcome that obstacle?

Jordan: 54:42

that's right. So we actually got just one response for this. It's from Sarah.

Sara : 54:49

Hey, bus cast. This is Sarah Rosette of the wish I'd known that podcast for writers. The worst recording environment we've had is Lost power to have internet before an interview and I had to go to Starbucks and sit in the parking lot with my laptop and record the interview in my car Is also in my cohost another time and she had to go do this at a different Starbucks. The audio is actually pretty good one time, the other time not so much, and I'm recording this on my Tulia.

Kevin: 55:17

Yay, no way she's got a Tulia. That sounded good.

Jordan: 55:20

It sounded really good and it sounds gorgeous.

Kevin: 55:23

Yeah, I never would have guessed that was on a portable recorder. That's fantastic.

Jordan: 55:27

No, I was actually thinking like her voice sounds so silky on this, Like usually when we get these voice memos, sometimes it's just on like phones, and so it sounds like you're talking on a phone. But it was. It's cause it was Tulia. It's such a good mic.

Kevin: 55:40

Yeah, I can't. That's encouraging Cause I did record in the car on a Tulia last week. I haven't listened back to the recordings yet, but I do have quite a bit of audio that I grabbed on driving my daughter up to college, so I'm excited now to see what that sounds like.

Alban: 55:53

I love the escaping from the no internet, no electricity and going to a Starbucks. Kevin, you may be in that boat, I may be in that boat, as we have a hurricane coming over in the next few days, so yeah, I thought I might have to do it today and I was thinking what's going to be better to try to drive up.

Kevin: 56:09

I know I can't go inside of Starbucks and set up all this gear and try to record podcasts. That's ridiculous. But I was like should I try to get within wifi range and do it for my car, or should I just use a hotspot? But turns out it didn't have to do either. We still have plenty of power.

Alban: 56:22

Sarah, thank you so much for reaching out and leaving us a voicemail. We appreciate it.

Jordan: 56:27

So back when we had Tom on the show, he had asked what is your why behind creating a podcast? So this was, I think, two episodes ago or something like that. This is the one about fake podcasts on social media, which was great episode if you want to go back and listen to that. And then we got a response in a little bit late, but we're going to include it in this one. It's from Richard Dodds.

Richard: 56:49

Hello, my name is Richard Dodds and my podcast is still talking black. I started my podcast after the murder of George Floyd. I wanted to protest in a way that felt genuine to me, and at the time I was already doing a different podcast and I saw how much of a difference one voice can make. I wanted to learn and talk about blackness from my experiences and my perspective. It started with a speech and it evolved to a podcast. I love your all show. Thanks for all you do.

Alban: 57:17

Oh, that's awesome. We actually know Richard. So I met Richard at Podfest, I think, and then Black Podfestival up in Atlanta yeah, a long time listener to the show. I think Richard was doing a I want to say it was like a relationship podcast before this and I remember him telling me he was thinking about changing directions with the show. It's really cool to hear that he's done that.

Kevin: 57:37

Yeah, I love that he said based on he wanted to share his voice from his perspective and based on his experiences. It's like that is the heart of podcasting. I love that and especially open podcasting. What other places? If you go put something out on Facebook, you're going to get it's just a bloodbath out there and whatever happened with Twitter. But there is something nice and oftentimes, again, this is another double edged sword. It's maybe the theme for the show, but it's like as podcasters, we get to share things about our lives or share our perspectives, without it devolving into bickering and people trolling and just trying to raise the temperature in every social media room. When you're interested in sharing your experiences and your perspective with the world in hopes that it might go further and do some good for the world, that's wonderful, cause it's hard to do that in other social media's right now.

Alban: 58:28

Well, thank you, richard, for reaching out. We also have a bunch of boostagrams. We have a couple from Dave Jones. Dave said warning milkstout would be horrible with cookies, don't recommend. Well, thanks, dave. I think he's referring to the beers that we had at podcast.

Kevin: 58:45

If I hear milk, I think cookies Disagree. That's where we thought about it. But here's good news, dave we did not get cookies, so we had some cookies earlier but they were gone by the time we Matthew brought us cookies. I think we ate them all by the time the milkstout showed up.

Jordan: 58:58

No, that wasn't Matthew that brought us cookies. It was another guy that brought us cookies. Really. Yeah, we had so many sweets at our booth. People were just like awesome making sure we were fed and our blood was drugged.

Kevin: 59:10

We should keep encouraging that, because that was incredible, that was great. But yeah, somebody brought cookies and they were good, they were delicious. They were gone by the time the milkstout came around, so we had a clear palette.

Alban: 59:21

Dave also said missing you guys podcast movement this year. Dave, we missed you as well. Hopefully we will see you at podcast or at the next podcast movement.

Kevin: 59:29

It's definitely been a while, yeah, and we're missing the podcasting 2.0 show. I know Adam's been traveling, but my Friday is not the same without your show, so get back on the air.

Alban: 59:38

Sam Setty boosted us with an update about pod fans. We're two weeks away from releasing our mobile version and opening the doors to everyone.

Jordan: 59:46

Cool.

Alban: 59:47

Make sure that you consider pod fans.

Jordan: 59:50

Sam also sent us some sats saying streaming sats, sending boosts and now a clip and Joy, podcast movement. We did enjoy podcast movement, but Sam was another person that we were missing there. And then Sam said I love streaming sats to the show, boosting comments and sending sats, which is a like with a comment. See, now he's speaking my language. I can understand a like with a comment. I get it.

Kevin: 1:00:13

How would we say this next name?

Jordan: 1:00:14

It looks French to me, like Bourson, je le bais.

Alban: 1:00:18

Oh, you have to do it. I think you got it.

Jordan: 1:00:20

Or Borson Gellifer.

Alban: 1:00:23

Borson Glamour.

Kevin: 1:00:25

All right, that's how we'd say it in Florida. What did they say Jordan?

Jordan: 1:00:29

Said, didn't notice this phenomenon before. What a scam. At least we can still distinguish the rubbish from the quality and authentic real podcast Thumbs up. I don't know what this is in reference to.

Kevin: 1:00:40

Oh, I'm sure that's referring to the people who are acting like they're on a podcast.

Alban: 1:00:44

Oh, of course, that's what I was thinking too. Yes, yeah. The fake podcasters which I've seen, even more of this now.

Jordan: 1:00:50

Yeah, we actually had someone that came up to the booth and they were like my friend is a musician and he does the fake podcast thing on Instagram and he showed us the videos of it and, oh man, so funny, it's a real thing. So, I'm sure Borson Gellifer I still like Borson Glamour better but maybe they'll see more of these videos now that they're aware of it.

Alban: 1:01:18

Yeah, leave us a pod inbox and let us know with your own voice how we can pronounce your name, and we'll get it right in the next one. Jordan, what's your question?

Jordan: 1:01:28

All right. So when we were at podcast movement I got to talk to Dave Jackson and it was funny because I was talking to him about how I was on podcasters round table with him and Ray Ortega like back like episode 150. I was talking about how much I really enjoyed that and I love that show and my favorite episodes they did a few of these were their pet peeve episodes and they would talk about podcasting pet peeves and I learned so much from those so I thought I should do a question where we ask about podcasting pet peeves of our listeners and make sure that you're being nice about it no calling out names or saying that you don't like my dolphin. Laugh like nothing like that.

Alban: 1:02:12

I won't air it. Jordan actually laughed at the booth and somebody turned around and went.

Kevin: 1:02:16

Oh, Jordan hi there you are, there you are.

Jordan: 1:02:19

So that's my question is what is your biggest podcasting pet peeve and to have that featured on the next episode, leave a 30 second voice message at potinboxcom, slash buzzbrow, send us a boost gram or tweet the answer at buzzcastpodcast. And, as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting. I didn't realize that you guys had a hurricane until Cameron posted in the base camp and was like, oh, I'm gonna be like bouncing out early. Gotta do hurricane prep. And I was like God again. I don't think he said it exactly like that. That's my paraphrasing.

Kevin: 1:02:53

Yeah, it's usually a once a year thing. Hopefully we're getting it out of the way early this year.

Alban: 1:02:59

We had one year. I wanna say it was one of the years I was in college, maybe like 2005. I wanna say there was something like seven that hit us. We got remember this that year, kevin, that we got past the names, oh I remember. And then we started going alpha, bravo, charlie, and they weren't even trying anymore.

Kevin: 1:03:17

Yeah, this was the year my daughter was born. We were in Miami at the time, so was that 2005? Yes, and she was two weeks old when that I can't remember the name of it, but it came through. Miami knocked out all the power and we had two week old baby. We were living in like a high rise condo. So my wife took her new child and left and went to her parents' house and I had to stay in Miami because we had to put her office back together.

Alban: 1:03:40

I just remember that school kicked people out of the dorms and so one of my friends left the dorm and he didn't have anywhere to go because he's from Maine, so he just went and slept in his car in a rest area. I was like this is not an improvement from a concrete block structure at a school with tons of stuff around it to now you're sleeping in a car.

Kevin: 1:04:02

Yeah, and sleeping in the car is not. That's not safe. I remember waking up the morning after the hurricane passed and we looked out the window of the condo we were in down at the parking lot and all the cars had been blown out of their parking spots. Whoa, they had been sliding around in the parking lot.

Alban: 1:04:19

But it's funny how quickly you acclimate to it. You start like there are times where we have really bad storms and you have to leave. We got evacuated a few years ago where we had one of those that almost was a direct hit on Jacksonville. But for a lot of the other ones like this, one won't be bad for Jacksonville because it will hit the Gulf Coast and just kind of come across. So we'll have a lot of rain, but it won't be the high winds which are really what I mean you have. You tears the roof off and then it pours water in and that's when things start getting bad.

Jordan: 1:04:48

I went and checked the weather channel after hearing that you guys were getting another hurricane. Just see if it was going to affect our recording today. Now they're not concerned for you, but priorities. And I saw that they had like the power outage map and it was just this. The worst power outage was just like a strip and it just went shoot Jacksonville right in the middle. I was like, oh, they're going to have troubles.

Kevin: 1:05:12

We probably will lose power in Jacksonville, but any given afternoon we could lose power in Jacksonville. We get pretty violent thunderstorms every afternoon.

Alban: 1:05:21

Yeah, we had one last bus cast yeah. Yeah.

Jordan: 1:05:26

I, okay, you know my lavender hand sanitizer that I brought to podcast movement with me is going to clean my glasses and it's the exact same size as my glasses cleaner and I just sprayed it all over my glasses.

Alban: 1:05:38

Spray out your glasses. And it worked really well.

Jordan: 1:05:41

They're pretty clean and they smell like lavender, so that's nice too.

Kevin: 1:05:45

Yeah, I imagine the ingredients have to be similar. Basically both alcohol right.

Jordan: 1:05:49

Yeah, I mean basically. Yeah, this is like 62% alcohol, A little bit of lavender essence.

Alban: 1:05:56

Growing up. The pastor's wife in her church reached into her purse to grab eye drops. Imagine what the worst thing you could grab would be.

Jordan: 1:06:06

Nail polish remover.

Alban: 1:06:08

That's not the worst.

Jordan: 1:06:09

It's not For real.

Alban: 1:06:10

Super glue? No, she super glued her eyes. Oh, no, no, no, like she dropped super glue into her eye, rubbed her eye and it sealed shut instantly. And I want to say like she's in the hospital and it took like days to get it open.

Jordan: 1:06:25

Oh my gosh.

Kevin: 1:06:26

What about her eyeball? Was it permanently damaged?

Alban: 1:06:29

She still can see today, so dang yeah that's probably the worst, I mean, unless it was something that would instantly burn your eye, that would make it so you could never see again that would.

Kevin: 1:06:40

Maybe that could be worse, but yeah, I'm thinking of things that you would normally carry in your purse. Exactly, but even super glue, but super glue is a stretch, like who carries super glue in their purse.

Jordan: 1:06:50

Moms, moms carry super glue.

Kevin: 1:06:52

For fixing things or stitches.

Jordan: 1:06:56

Both.

Alban: 1:06:57

Yeah, I don't know what it was. Four, it felt like something that if it was in a movie it would have not been that believable. And then it happened in real life and it was just horrible.

Jordan: 1:07:07

Do you remember the woman? She went viral on social media because she used gorilla glue to slick back her hair into a ponytail.

Kevin: 1:07:16

What she used gorilla glue to slick down her hair.

Jordan: 1:07:19

She used gorilla glue, and I mean her hair. Like hair gel yeah.

Alban: 1:07:24

Sealed.

Jordan: 1:07:25

And it just like I don't know. I don't know why she used it or if she accidentally used it. I don't remember what the story was, but I mean it was literally like her hair became like an actual helmet on her head and it was like this whole saga on TikTok or something.

Alban: 1:07:40

Internet's not a good place. Honestly, I feel like this is. Those things just make me think this was a mistake.

Kevin: 1:07:47

Is this the world's most boring podcast ever?

Alban: 1:07:49

Oh, we're going for it.

Jordan: 1:07:51

Ours. Yes, well, can you turn up your volume just a little bit.

Kevin: 1:07:57

Yeah, I can. I can even move to a room that probably has less reverb, if you want.

Jordan: 1:08:01

That would be amazing. You have a room with less reverb, yeah.

Kevin: 1:08:07

I just set up here in the kitchen, which I figured would be terrible, but I figured I'd give it a shot, because it's not upstairs and I didn't feel like climbing stairs. Fine.

Alban: 1:08:16

I'll climb the stairs.

Jordan: 1:08:19

I was like, well, I guess, if he's out of town, like we're just going to have to deal with this and it's just going to be what it is, and then you're like there's a better room.

Kevin: 1:08:27

Yeah, there is, and it has a comfy chair too. It's just, I got to climb, I got to do like 12 steps.

Jordan: 1:08:31

Yeah, as long as you're not sitting in the bathtub, that's all it matters.

Kevin: 1:08:34

All right, I'll be back after my 12th, ok.