Podcast Burnout: How To Hit Pause Without Losing Your Audience

Taking a break from podcasting may sound impossible, but we have some advice that could help make taking time off a reality! Buzzsprout co-founder Tom Rossi joins us this episode to share stories from Rails World in Amsterdam last week and discuss why podcasters feel the need to never stop producing content.  We're also sharing some invaluable insights from Jack Rhysider's  recent three-month hiatus from Darknet Diaries. Get ready to dispel fears about losing listeners and income streams during breaks as we unfold how stepping back can reboot your mental well-being as well as your podcast's health.

View this episode's discussion thread on Twitter/X!

Links mentioned in this episode:
Rails World
Buzzsprout Conversations
Amazon Shuts Down AMP
Riverside Editor & Teleprompter
Apple Podcasts Episode Artwork Guide & Kids & Family Category Guide
Auphonic Automatic Filler-Word Cutter
Mark Zuckerberg Joins Lex Fridman Podcast in Metaverse
Killer Bee Studios: A Podcast Metaverse Podcast Experience


📣 SOUND-OFF QUESTION: Have you taken a break from your podcast? How did you go about it?
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

Jordan: 0:01

That's a really good question, Alban. I don't want to sound like too surprised, but that was a really good question.

Alban: 0:06

Wow, we're not expecting that from you. Somebody said that once and it was hilarious. They were like that's really funny. I wouldn't have expected that and I'm like what? Here we go.

Jordan: 0:24

Welcome back to Buzzcast. I'm pretty excited about this episode because joining us is none other than Tom Rossi. Hi Tom.

Tom: 0:31

Hello, thanks for having me on the show.

Jordan: 0:34

For those of you who might not be familiar with Tom, he is the co-founder of Buzzsprout and a recurring guest on the show. And this is kind of perfect timing, because last time you joined us you announced that Buzzsprout would be sponsoring the Rails World Podcasters thing and for this episode you actually just came back from that conference.

Tom: 0:54

Yes, yes, it was incredible. It was an opportunity for me and a couple other folks from the team to be able to go to Amsterdam to Rails World and just meet with this incredible community. When you think about like the podcasting community is similar in that everyone is so encouraging that there's a real opportunity for people to work together and to help one another and the Rails community is very similar, and this is the software that we use to basically run our business, and this was an opportunity for us to sponsor the conference by providing them with a recording studio and paying for podcasters to be able to attend the conference and coordinating interviews with leaders in the industry. So it was right up our alley and it was a great way for us to give back to a community that has done so much for us that we have benefited so much from, so we really enjoyed it.

Jordan: 1:46

What would you say is your highlight from Rails World?

Tom: 1:50

Oh, the highlight. So the creator of the framework that we use is David Henemaier Hansen and getting an opportunity just to talk to him about what this means for him. It's been 20 years since Rails was created and to see this community as vibrant as ever and as excited about all kinds of new technology that we had buzzed about we're going to get to take advantage of as a result of this community continuing to push the envelope and what's possible with the kind of software that we write, and it was very, very exciting.

Jordan: 2:22

Yeah, did you have to throw some elbows to get to him, or was it it?

Tom: 2:26

was the perfect size conference. It was about 600 people, which at first I thought might be too big, but it actually is perfect. So it's small enough that you can go and meet the people that you want to meet, that you can make connections, and we did. We met tons of developers from all over the world and I really felt like I was able to get time with everybody I wanted to meet with.

Jordan: 2:48

Yeah, and I was always attending those smaller conferences and you're right, that does sound like a lot of people, but sometimes when you get that many people in a larger building it feels a little bit more intimate than you think it would.

Tom: 3:00

Yeah, the organizer of the event did an excellent job of getting everyone in that one room. So when you get all the people into one space, rather than having six different tracks that are in all different locations around the building, everyone was in one space, especially between the sessions. It just made it really easy for people to be able to connect up. And, of course, we're geeking out too, because the people that are in the recording studio are podcasts that we listen to all the time. So, for example, the remote Ruby podcast, which is probably our favorite Rails podcast. Having those guys in there and being able to watch them record, it was great.

Jordan: 3:39

And these are the people that you sponsored to go to the conference.

Tom: 3:43

Yeah, they were able to sponsor podcasts, which helped them with costs. It covered their hotel and gave them tickets, and we also gave them tickets to give away on their shows. So other people that might be interested in going to the Rails World conference were able to go.

Jordan: 3:58

Oh my gosh, that's so cool. And you said that we had a recording booth at the conference Did you guys ship that there and then build it, or how did that work? Because I know that we did booths like back in podcast movement and stuff like way back in the day and you guys said like never again.

Alban: 4:13

Never again.

Tom: 4:14

Never again Alvin and Kevin building the. We called it the space capsule. They were building it in the office for the longest time. No, this was actually provided by the venue. So the organizers of the conference did a great job of getting this. It's like a portable office, but it was soundproofed with glass and it was great. So all I did was bring all the recording equipment to put into the room and we were off to the races. It was great.

Alban: 4:44

We should put a picture of the old recording studio that we take to podcast movement and podcast. We need to put that as the chapter artwork. It was a ton of fun to build and to use, but the shipping and setup was just unbelievable, and so I think there's even a point where we considered giving it away and we were like no one's going to want this and we remember we had people that kept asking us to buy it.

Tom: 5:08

They kept coming up and asking like where did you get this? Can we, can we buy this? And we're like man, we built this yeah.

Alban: 5:16

And they were like well, somebody asked if we would build one for them and I was like I think if you paid us 10 grand, we wouldn't do this again. The materials might have been like 700 bucks, but the amount of effort that went into it was massive. We turned down free tickets to lots of conferences that were like, if you just bring it and run it, we'll pay for you to be there. One of them was a weed conference, tom. We turned that one down.

Jordan: 5:44

I think, you guys are missing out on a business venture if there was so much demand for your yeah, yeah it's.

Alban: 5:50

It's definitely an opportunity. I don't think it's a good opportunity. So I love that Rails world provided that for you, tom.

Jordan: 5:58

I'm curious to know what it was like to be running around Amsterdam with a bunch of software developers.

Tom: 6:04

It was exactly what you would expect.

Jordan: 6:08

I picked string Ted Lasso, like when they went to Amsterdam and like yeah, the highlight of hanging out with my fellow software developers.

Tom: 6:17

There was a group of I'm trying not to say nerds. We were all at this pub in Amsterdam watching on live stream as the homecoming queen was being announced at my daughter's high school homecoming and she was on the court and so we had it on the phone and we're all watching, waiting to find out if she was going to get it. And then they announced her name and everybody was cheering at this pub in Amsterdam.

Alban: 6:41

Oh my gosh, that's so funny. Wait for your daughter. Your daughter won.

Tom: 6:44

For my daughter. Yeah, she won homecoming queen and she was upset that I was missing it, and so I got my wife to FaceTime during the event and then everybody kept coming over to watch hey, what are you watching, what are you watching? I was like, oh, I'm waiting to find out if my daughter is going to be homecoming queen. And then she got it and everybody went nuts.

Jordan: 7:02

That's so cool.

Alban: 7:03

It's hilarious, it's fun.

Jordan: 7:06

Did you guys go sight seeing or anything like that, or was it just mainly in the building?

Tom: 7:10

Not much, not much. We rode bikes around and just explored.

Jordan: 7:13

Oh yeah, you got to ride bikes when you're in Amsterdam.

Tom: 7:16

Yeah, but it was death defying. I mean, there was definitely. There's a lot of ways to die riding around on a bike in Amsterdam. At one point we just parked it and walked. More like this is this is too much.

Jordan: 7:30

Another update from Buzzsprout the Buzzsprout conversations that we've had on the YouTube channel for a long time. It is now in podcast form and, albin, you've been the one heading up that project, so do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Alban: 7:45

Yeah, a few months ago I did an interview with Adam Curry, the co-founder of podcasting, and, like as an aside, he says something about how much he loves podcasts and how much he doesn't like video. He's telling some stories about being on TV on MTV back in the day and he was like you know, and screw you for having this only on video. And then I'm laughing and I'm like, yeah, actually kind of screw us for only having this on video. We are a podcasting company. I don't watch long videos on YouTube. I listen to them and we would every once in a while, drop them in as like bonus episodes on Buzzcast, but there wasn't a dedicated place to go listen to these conversations and if we thought they were valuable, why were we not doing that? And so I carved out a little bit of time last cycle and pulled together.

Alban: 8:36

I think it's up to something like 23 of these interviews that I've done with pretty successful podcasters. Some are ones you might have heard of and some are people that are successful in a smaller way. Maybe somebody like Potter Milligan, who started the Jacksonville podcasters unite here in Jacksonville and you know it's just done a really great job building a community, or we find somebody who's doing a great job monetizing a podcast or has broken into the industry, whatever. You know different stories we've had. We try to pull them together and we share them on Buzzsprout Conversations.

Alban: 9:12

So now that is available all in your podcast feed and we will link to it and you can subscribe and Apple Podcast for your favorite podcasting app and we will have new episodes coming up. We just released one with you, jordan, and everybody can go listen to them and I hope you find a lot of value from the whole. Idea of the show is these are other people in podcasting that have learned a lot about their craft. They found success in some way and so you can learn from them. How are they monetizing? How are they growing? What struggles did they deal with so that you can feel a little bit less alone and be able to learn some of these a little bit more advanced tactics and a little bit more advanced. I don't know, it's not tips and tricks, it's more like strategies, so I'm excited to share it with everybody and I hope everyone enjoys it.

Jordan: 10:02

So the other day I saw a question in the Buzzsprout Facebook community group that I think will resonate with a lot of podcasters, especially ones who have been doing it for a while, and the question was from Liz. She posted after nine years, I'm finding it harder and harder to record an episode. It's the biggest source of traffic to my online school and creates income via Patreon, but in the last year, every time I began to create a session, I resist them, procrastinate, creating anxiety. What the heck is wrong with me? If I'm burned out? How can I keep going? It's taken me years to create what I have.

Jordan: 10:36

At this point I was thinking, man, she's been doing that for nine years and it makes me wonder if in that nine years time, she just never took a break from the podcast. I think a lot of podcasters are scared to step back, take some time for themselves, take a break from the show, because they're scared that they will lose listeners or lose an income stream or something like that, especially once you start monetizing your podcast. It locks you into this contract with your listeners, especially if they're subscribing and especially if you do what I do and you have sponsorships. You have these contracted episode dates that you have to fulfill, and so when you have those dates, it's really hard to take a break and it's hard to take a step back for your mental health, or just so you don't pod fade. Yeah.

Tom: 11:26

I think it's important if you consider the threat to your podcast of oh man, if I take time off, I might lose listeners. Well, if you burn out, you're going to lose listeners because you're going to give up completely, and so I think it's worth the risk to take the break. I've seen other people come up with creative ideas where they've brought in other podcasts on the weeks that they're off. Where hey, we're going to be? They tell their listeners we're going to be off, and then they offer up something else as an alternative for the weeks that they're not there. Is it as effective as them continuing the podcast? Maybe not, but it's more healthy in the long run for the podcast, for you to, you know, not burn out.

Jordan: 12:07

Yeah, that's a really good point.

Alban: 12:09

Another plug for Buzzsprout Conversations. I just finished a episode with Jack Reisider who does Darknet Diaries, and Jack has been doing it since 2017, is making real money off this podcast Millions of downloads a month, almost a million downloads per episode, doing exceptionally well, has a whole team and the beginning of this year took a three month break. Whole Q1 didn't release an episode and, as Jack about it and he's like you know I just felt like all this pressure for year after year, I have to keep growing, I have to keep pushing, I have to do it better and these aren't like, hey, I sit down and record a quick interview. They were episodes that was finding the story and then getting guests and they're doing interviews and there'd be like 12 interviews in one episode. You know these are not small undertakings. And he said like if you want to keep the joy of something, you sometimes do need to have a little bit of a break, and if that makes you uncomfortable, I think I would go back to this word procrastination.

Alban: 13:09

When there's something we want to do, we do not procrastinate. I think about doing my taxes, years that I'm concerned we're going to owe money. I procrastinate Years that I know the government owes me a big check. I do not procrastinate. I'm hunting down W2s and stuff in the minute. They're all in. I do those taxes because I'm excited about it.

Alban: 13:29

Procrastination is not like it's not a failure. It's a sign there's something not right here and figure out what it is. Is it that I've lost the joy for this thing? Okay, that might be a good indicator that maybe we pivot the podcast. Is it because the format is no longer enjoyable or is it because there's something really intense going on in your life that needs attention more than maybe a podcast does? So I would encourage you, if you're feeling that procrastination, dig into that feeling a bit. Figure out what is it that causes me to not want to do this for a little while. And if you're getting close to burnout or you're there, taking some time to figure out where that joy used to come from and why it isn't there is really really valuable.

Jordan: 14:12

Yeah, there are some ways that you can take a break with your podcast and it's not going to affect your listeners, they're not going to be mad at you. The first is to record extra episodes ahead of time and then schedule them for later, and this option I personally don't like so much because it means more work. So if you're already kind of like down to the wick and you just don't feel like you can put out any more episodes, you're feeling burnout, you're feeling tired. First off, the content that you're putting out is probably not going to be as good as your normal content and, secondly, you're just making more work for yourself. So you're working harder to be able to take a little bit of time off and, honestly, that kind of defeats the purpose of it. I know that there are some people that are like I'll just double up on episodes, I'll do this, I'll do that and then schedule out my content calendar for a month and I'm going to do all this work so that I can take a breather.

Tom: 15:11

I'm afraid I'm going to burn out, and so I'm just going to work twice as hard so that I don't burn out.

Alban: 15:15

Yeah, it feels almost like the worst shit in my mind.

Jordan: 15:19

And it's funny enough, like the one that people do the most. It's crazy.

Alban: 15:23

I think that your audience is so much more understanding than you are of yourself. I mean, just yesterday, one of my favorite podcasts was not happening because one of the hosts was on a break. Great, I'm excited when I heard him say, oh, I'm taking a vacation and I'm going to be with my family and so next week we only have one episode. I was like cool, good for you, man. And then he'd say, and I always post which ones I'm going to take off, and I only have two personal days and I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa, too much information. All I want to know is take care of you.

Alban: 15:56

I get way more value from this show than the amount I donate for it. Go for it, and a lot of times I already have like six other episodes I want to listen to, and so I'm thrilled that the quality of the show is going up because you're well rested and you know I'll go listen to something else for a little bit. Jack Reisider said he took three months off. He has a Apple podcast subscription that was big enough that Apple podcasts themselves highlighted it, so that means it's one of the best.

Jordan: 16:26

Yeah, they did like a whole article on it.

Alban: 16:28

Yeah, he is a Patreon. That, I want to say, was close to $9,000 a month with all these patrons who were donating. And Jack just said hey, I'm not pausing anything. You still have access to everything, but nothing's coming out for three months. If you'd like to cancel and then resubscribe later, that's fine. I understand if you want to do that. I'm just not going to go through and change all this for you. It's up to you and everyone's stuck around because everyone's like OK, I get $5. I'm going to give $5 for three months to my favorite podcaster so that they can take a break. Totally appropriate. And I think often we are the ones who say no, I demand more of myself, where everybody else is probably like you need to take a vacation, you know, schedule some PTO.

Jordan: 17:11

Yeah, something that you mentioned there is really important is that communicating with your audience is by far like the only thing that you really need to do to take a break. Just tell them I'm going on a break, tell them when you will be back, because that'll give them an idea. It's not just like, oh, I'm not going to be doing the podcast, because then they'll be like, oh well, I guess they're canceling it or they're done with the podcast, and so you have to like be really good at communicating. I'm just taking a short break to work on more stuff, or I'm taking a short break to work on myself or be with family or for the holidays, whatever and then just tell them the next episode will be back on this date, and then that lets them know okay, they're going to be back and they'll just be watching their feed for the next episode when it comes.

Tom: 18:02

It's a great example of how to use dynamic content on Buzzsprout too, Because you could load that up as a pre-roll on all of your episodes to say I'm going to be taking a break and this is when the next episode will drop.

Alban: 18:12

Yeah, that's a great point, Tom.

Tom: 18:13

Absolutely. What about the use of a feed drop? Like I mentioned, some of the podcasts that I've listened to, they'll bring in when they're off, they'll bring in another show and I feel like it's been hit or miss. Sometimes it's annoying, but it's typically only annoying if I really don't like whatever it is that they brought in. But I know that there's other ones that have brought in podcasts that I was like ooh, I didn't know about that and I actually enjoyed it and then went and subscribed to that podcast as well. What about y'all?

Jordan: 18:38

I've actually done that. When I do take breaks, that's exactly what I do. I will go to Instagram and go to other podcasts that are in my niche. I'm very, very particular about choosing podcasts, especially smaller, maybe less-renowned podcasts that I feel are of the same quality as mine and of the same subject matter that my audience would really like, and I will just message them on Instagram and say, hey, I really want to take a break, can I please feature one of your episodes? And they're like, yes, take it, and they send me the MP3. And I record a little intro about why I think this podcast is awesome and why the listeners should listen to it in the meantime while I'm gone and put their episode in, and that works really well for me. I've held off success with that and it makes really good friends.

Alban: 19:28

The ones I really don't like are when it's a feed drop that I download the episode, I think, oh, there's something new and it's a promo, and there's like nothing from the host that I know. All of a sudden there's someone else there and so I like that. You're doing this promo. Hey, I'm still on a break, but I found this great creator I wanted to highlight. She's doing these amazing stories. Here's her podcast and she gave me permission to include the story here that everyone's going to appreciate it oh, jordan's looking out for me versus there's times where I listen to a podcast for a long time and I'm still subscribed to the feed, and all of a sudden, episode shows up there and I'm like, oh, what's this? And it's somebody totally different. And they're like, oh, this, we're on the same network and it's a totally different show, and I'm like I thought that I was getting another episode of this and now I actually feel like I was kind of duped.

Tom: 20:20

Yeah, that's, that's when I've been. Upset is when it's from the network. So, instead of saying, like Jordan is saying, hey, you the listener, I know what you like and why you listen to this, and so I went and I curated here's an episode that I think you're going to enjoy versus hey, I'm taking some time off, and so here's another episode from our network, which now it's more about you making sure that the downloads are still happening in your network, versus trying to provide value to the listener, to say how can I provide you with content that I know that you're going to like? So I think I think that's exactly what it is. It's typically related to when they're in a network and they just bring in some random podcast it. Yeah, it's tangentially related because they're in the same network, but that's about it.

Jordan: 21:01

Yeah, I've had this issue with Gimlet and Parkast a lot and I'll be subscribed to a show of theirs and they will be dropping those episodes from other podcasts that aren't even in the same niche, right, which is so weird that they do that. It's not even in the same category and they'll drop this episode and then, like the next month, they'll drop another episode from a different podcast, another episode from a different podcast and at some point you go, oh, they canceled the show, and then you have to unsubscribe and it sucks.

Alban: 21:35

Yeah, this is no longer a podcast channel, this is a marketing channel. And you start feeling like okay, I never said subscribe to this.

Jordan: 21:42

Yeah, but the moral of the story here is that it's okay to take a break from your podcast. Your listeners are not going to go unsubscribe and, honestly, if the listener did unsubscribe because of that, you probably don't need them as a listener anyway. So I think that it's really important to just understand that your listeners are going to be supportive of you and that they're going to be there when you come back. All right, so over the last couple of weeks, there have been a lot of updates just from the industry as a whole. All of the big players have been launching new features, doing new guides, things like that. So first up, we have one from Spotify, and Spotify, funny enough, sent Kevin an email.

Alban: 22:28

And to one of their largest detractors.

Jordan: 22:31

So I'm not sure why he got this, but it says hi there, we are reaching out with important information about your podcast distribution. From November 6, 2023, all shows published on Spotify for podcasters will also be distributed to Spotify. You're receiving this email because we have detected that your show is currently not on Spotify. There is no further action required from you if you do not want your podcast referenced here and more information.

Tom: 22:58

Thanks, so does that mean that they're going to put buzzcast?

Alban: 23:03

in. No, I think what this is is. Kevin used anchor at some point now Spotify for podcasters to create a podcast and then didn't put it into Spotify Gotcha, and you could imagine anybody who created that episode just to test. Maybe they didn't want to publish it. Now they're getting this saying either delete it or it's going to be in Spotify and probably not the biggest thing ever to happen in the industry, but it's just a reminder.

Alban: 23:28

250. When a big platform owns your tool not a company that's actually selling you a tool You're going to platform owns it. Of course they're. They need to make money off of it, and so they're probably looking at it going okay, having a bunch of people uploading podcasts and then sending them to friends, or it's internal podcast at a company or it's something that doesn't benefit Spotify. We're going to make sure it benefits Spotify and so probably much people that had free shows on Spotify for podcasters that didn't for some reason, want it in Spotify. They're caught in the middle because, yeah, it never really made sense for Spotify to cover those fees for you when you weren't helping them out at all.

Jordan: 24:09

The only remedy that they're offering is to delete your Spotify for podcasters account if you don't want to publish a Spotify.

Alban: 24:17

Yeah, I know what it does for you. It's either going in Spotify or it's getting deleted. They might let you redirect it. They've always have done that, so maybe they will allow that right now. But clock is ticking. You got 25 days get it off as Spotify for podcasters or put it in Spotify, but no longer are you going to be able to have this side project that you're doing something else with it, because they always intended that you're helping build the Spotify brand. Unless you're doing that, we really don't want to host your show anymore for free.

Jordan: 24:50

Well, it seems that live audio is officially dead. The last one standing, amazon AMP has been discontinued by Amazon.

Tom: 24:58

Albin looked shocked.

Jordan: 24:59

I can't say we didn't see this coming.

Alban: 25:01

I mean, Clubhouse is still around, right, Is Clubhouse still around? I mean, I just got to go back to if somebody ever offers you $4 billion, you take it. You just you don't have to figure out if it's the perfect valuation or not. I really I do feel for the Clubhouse team that apparently had multi-billion dollar offers at one point. It was interesting. We all ran the experiment together. Live audio only chat rooms were fun for the first three months of COVID. I think we all realized it was basically just a much worse podcast. Now we're back to podcasts and this fad of live audio, I think, is passed on Kudos honestly to Amazon for testing this and then, when they realized it wasn't working, to let it go.

Jordan: 25:50

Additionally, there are some updates to Riverside. They've been pumping out a lot of updates to their website lately and it's been really neat to see what they're doing. So the first is that you can now upload files and edit them in Riverside, which you weren't able to do before. You had to record the video and audio in Riverside's application and then you could edit it from there. But now you're able to add those files that are maybe prerecorded, or other audio files, things like that, to it.

Tom: 26:22

Have you used it for editing?

Jordan: 26:24

I have used their editor mainly just for reviewing the Buzzsprout conversation videos for YouTube, things like that, and I have to say I actually really, really like how smooth it runs. I don't get a lot of glitches. A lot of times if I'm reviewing videos in YouTube before they're published, it will sometimes glitch and just stall and I'll have to refresh the page and things like that, and I've never had that happen with Riverside. It's been very clean. When I click on, they transcribe all of the words on the side and so on one side I have all the transcription and then on the other side I have the actual video. And something that I've really appreciated about Riverside is when I click the word in the transcript, it takes me to that exact point in the video, because a lot of times when they do things like that, it'll be off a little bit and so you'll be like five seconds before or five seconds after and it's always just really on the ball. So I actually do really like their editor.

Alban: 27:25

They also added this nice in-studio teleprompter and it's really cool. You can drop in a little script and it will scroll across the screen so you can read it while you're recording, and for me that's really nice for intros. A lot of times I have an intro that I want to say right before I start talking to the guest and I want to also be looking at my screen pretty close to where the actual camera is and so you put it on there, it scrolls by, you read it at kind of a consistent pace and it sounds great. It's not one of these massive world-breaking features, but it's the types of quality of life features that I find myself always attracted to. So really love that they added that and hope everyone finds value in it.

Jordan: 28:07

Yeah, I'm actually trying it out right now because I didn't get a chance to try it out before we started and while you were talking, I was able to hit the script button and they have the ability to bold, italic, underline. You can make the font bigger or smaller and I think if I hit the play teleprompter, I think it plays for all of you too, does it?

Alban: 28:29

No, I don't think we see whatever you have on your screen. So if you have a teleprompter right now, that is, it is not exposed to us.

Jordan: 28:35

Okay, so I'm the only one that can see it, but I was actually able to pop it out into its own window, so it's completely separate from Riverside. Or I can have it kind of running over the video of your faces and I can adjust the timing of it. I can hit a replay to go back and replay the note that I was trying to read for a retake. This is pretty slick, riverside, you did a great job.

Tom: 29:00

I think, in terms of the podcasting industry, it's great that there is competition in this area, where there are companies trying to figure out how to make our lives easier on the editing and recording side of podcasting and you were comparing it earlier to YouTube, right, where YouTube's not as vested in the actual experience for the person right, because they're not really the customer, but in the case of Riverside, you're the customer. They're trying to figure out how to add value to what you're doing, and I think that we, as the podcasting community, need to support companies like that, of which BuzzFron is one, and the hosts you've got to take care of the podcast hosts.

Jordan: 29:43

So there have been a couple updates with Apple. The first is that we talked last episode about how they have added episode artwork to the iOS 17, and something that is really useful is that they have now released guidelines for how to design your episode artwork, because they have, like we talked about last time, they have this carousel of what's coming up next and the episode artwork will show in place of the podcast cover art. But the thing is is that there's a little thumbnail of your podcast cover art that kind of goes over it and then there's some text that fades in to the bottom of it, and so they have created these guidelines of the safe space to create your artwork. Like if you have something that you really want to be seen in their app, then you want to make sure it's in a certain position on the episode artwork. I'll leave a link to that guide in our show notes. The other thing that Apple podcast added is a guideline page for the kids and family podcasters. What I thought was really neat about this is that I haven't really seen them create a guideline page for a specific category, and so they said when it comes to kids and family podcasts, our goal is to make it easier for parents to find great shows for the kids and help creators find audiences for their shows. Below you'll find some recommendations for how to optimize your kid first content to best serve listeners.

Jordan: 31:10

And when you go to the kids and family page on Apple podcasts, they do have it curated by common sense media. It seems to be like a partnership that they have with common sense media and so it's a very well done page that parents can trust. They have it broken down into age groups. They have it broken up into different subcategories and fun little feature lists and things like that. So the guide that Apple created covers choosing the right category for kids and family.

Jordan: 31:41

So it's not just kids and family. They're saying if you're doing stories, then you need to make sure that your podcast covers this kind of information. If you're doing parenting, you need to make sure that you're talking about these topics. They also talk about reporting a suitable age range for your show. So they break it down to where, if you do like zero to two, then that's going to be like babies or this age is going to be preschoolers. Think of little kids, think of bigger kids, so that you can make sure that you are in Apple podcasts saying that the show is appropriate for this specific age range, and then they also talk about how it's curated and also how to pitch your kids' content to Apple and they give you a link to the form. So if you feel that your show would actually be a good fit to be featured on their page or to be in these curated lists, then there's an easy way for you to reach out to them and let them know.

Alban: 32:34

I think this is an area of growing concern, I think for a lot of platforms we're trying to figure out, as we have more children listening to podcasts, more children watching YouTube, how do we make sure and differentiate between different content and the old days that a show would be or a movie would be PG-13 and you go OK if you're 13, you're good. If it's under that, it's not appropriate. But there's a lot of different levels between what's appropriate for a three year old and a seven year old and a 13 year old Very different things and also depending obviously on the child and culture?

Tom: 33:08

Oh sure, think about. We had this conversation in the podcasting 2.0 community. We were talking about introducing some type of rating system into the RSS feed, so that way we could make it clear of who this is appropriate for, and it just turned into a very heated debate and it got into American sensibilities, or?

Alban: 33:28

is it, yeah, which may be a little bit more tolerant of violent content, but less tolerant of sexual content, or something like that Is what you're saying.

Tom: 33:36

Yeah, exactly. So we were talking about well, let's just use the movie standards, and they're like oh, but the movie standards are different, so it's stalled and we haven't done it.

Alban: 33:44

I think that having something, though, is more valuable than nothing. I think that there are times, maybe with YouTube, where somebody is saying I'm not really targeting children, but then children automatically or accidentally fall into the audience, and it's valuable to have something. But he's saying especially the creator, saying, hey, this isn't for kids. It does help parents say, hey, this isn't for you, and they don't have to go monitor every hour of the content to know. We're just going to turn on a blocker so that you only see things that are age appropriate. So I, like the Apple has kind of wading into this area. It's not an easy answer, but I think it's a very valuable thing to do.

Jordan: 34:23

Yeah, absolutely. I was really shocked when I went to my daughter's career day and I was talking about podcasting there we're talking like fourth graders, right, and the amount of kids. I asked, oh, who listens to podcasts? And they raised their hand and I'm like what are some of your favorite podcasts? They're listing off like crime, junkie, morbid, and I was just like no, oh, those are fun.

Alban: 34:48

You're like what's your parent? Listen to dreamful bedtime stories.

Jordan: 34:53

Yeah, it was just really surprising to me, and so I think it's one of those things where Tom's right, maybe something would be useful to have a rating sort of system, but it's also like, how do you do that? But I think just having the explicit tag alone probably isn't enough, because things cannot be explicit but they can still be inappropriate for kids.

Alban: 35:14

Absolutely.

Jordan: 35:15

So it's like it's so hard to manage that, especially as a parent, when kids just have access to all this stuff. I'm also kind of hoping that Apple podcasts does more guideline pages for other categories. I think it'd be really interesting, especially since a lot of podcasters I've seen it recently in the Facebook group A lot of podcasters seem to have confusion about like my show's, about this, but I just don't know exactly where it goes, and so it would be really nice to have them break down things like that for more categories.

Alban: 35:47

What I mostly tell people is for explicit versus non-explicit. You are having this conversation with your friend and your friend's child is in the back seat. Are you comfortable having that conversation in front of them?

Tom: 35:59

And if you aren't, but that's a different standard for explicit. Well, I'm sure I mean you'll see people all the time in the group that are like okay, you know I dropped one F bomb. Do I have to mark my whole podcast as explicit? Do I need to mark that episode? I think that episode's explicit yeah, it's arguable, because you're like this is normal, it's only one, and you're like well, one for me might be market explicit.

Alban: 36:21

Yeah, I tried to think of like a scenario that would make it me most likely to get that right. I know there's not 100 percent and everybody will judge it differently, but I think, like this podcast is going to be played in front of children, do you think that's appropriate? It's your friend's kid, it's not your kid. Are you comfortable turning that on in front of them or saying that in front of them? And if you're questioning it like that's not your call to make and I think you probably need to call it out. And if you're concerned, well, people won't listen. If it's marked explicit, well, is like the one F bomb worth, like not bleeping it out, like I'm not saying you have to be so sensitive that you've never cursed.

Tom: 36:59

I just want Jordan to go and bleep all kinds of random places.

Jordan: 37:05

I did that once. It's not a real bad. It's so hard because you know we're talking about like the content as opposed to just like the curse words, like we're talking about like the actual, like subject matter in addition to curse words. And so I mean you know there's certain like adult things that I went talk about in front of my kids, but it's not like explicit really.

Jordan: 37:26

I don't know so hard. Like crime. You think about crime, you know, if someone's talking about like robbing a bank or hacking illegally into something like maybe that would be like a little worrisome for children to hear about like a crime like that, but it's not necessarily bad. It's not explicit, I don't know.

Alban: 37:45

Yeah, I think we've kind of covered this topic. I will share a personal anecdote. Oh, thank you, thank you.

Alban: 37:50

Last night, as Emerson was going to bed, she started crying because she's like I can't get this thing out of my brain and I'm like, oh, what is it? And she'd watched some video that was Roblox. It was Roblox characters. It was intended for kids, but it was a reenactment of a scene from Squid Games where a character is killed, and then it had a montage of two friends and the one friend like holding their friend who died, and it was so disturbing to her. I was like you've seen so much worse things, but something about the montage of like a friend losing a friend. It was so disturbing to her and I was like man, it's funny, because this was intended for kids and you know it would be hard to figure out exactly what the right thing would be for her to not see it, or is the right answer? You're going to see some stuff that makes you upset, and how do you work through it? So I blocked all Roblox videos. That's the answer.

Jordan: 38:46

No technology allowed in the house anymore. All right. And our final industry update is from Afonic. They have released a beta of their automatic filler word cutter. So Afonic, for someone who might not know, it's this great software that you can like run your episode through and it does a lot of work, like with the audio, things like that. But they've usually only worked with, like removing background noise or, you know, high pass filters or low pass filters, things like that. But now they're kind of moving into actually like the content itself, and so this automatic filler word cutter, that's such a mouthful. It's only available for four languages right now, but it removes ums, us ums, things like that. Right now they're saying it can't remove like well, you know things like that, because the software might jumble up some sentences, a lot of these words, these filler words we actually need to communicate, such as like. I know people use like all the time a little bit too much. I'm one of those people, but you kind of need it for situations in which you're like comparing something or things like that.

Alban: 40:02

I think it's a very cool addition. Afonic started, obviously, with just optimizing how something sound the engine that we use for magic mastering and we think it does an exceptional job of taking audio files and making them sound better, and it's cool to see them in using some of these kind of AI features to identify filler words to clean up the audio a little bit, so I'm excited to see how it works. The Resonate Recordings team also has a company called Resound that is also doing this, so I'm excited to see more companies enter from the little bit more of the AI side of editing and say what can we do programmatically to clean up recordings? And maybe someday they'll get to where a bit more of this is done for the podcaster, rather than every podcaster has to become a full time editor.

Jordan: 40:54

Yeah, if you want to participate in helping their AI learn different languages, they do have a link on the page. I'll link to the blog post in the show notes. But they do have a link for the Afonic web service and how you can activate and test the automatic filler word cutter for all languages, because they're trying to test out on like Slavic, african things like that. So if you want to participate in that and see if it works for your language as well, you can try it out there. I saw something that may or may not be interesting to some people. I thought it was really cool. You guys might think it's super lame, but the Lex Friedman podcast. They have this video and it says Mark Zuckerberg first interview in the Metaverse and I watched the first few minutes of this interview. It was really cool to see.

Tom: 41:49

Can I make a confession here?

Jordan: 41:51

Yeah.

Tom: 41:51

We were at Podfest last year and I met someone who came up and they told me that they run a podcast in the Metaverse. What and I was immediately skeptical Was it Lex Friedman? I believe his name was Brian Currie, from Killer B Studios, I think they're out of Orlando and they have a Metaverse podcast. And so I kind of like I kind of made fun of him a little bit and he's like, well, you should try it. And I said, well, you know, I made fun of it, so now I have to. And I actually went on their podcast and it was incredible. It was so much fun.

Alban: 42:25

I had an absolute blast Did this predate this supposed first interview in the Metaverse?

Tom: 42:32

Yes, oh, and they've been doing it for a while. They've been doing it for a while Killer B Studios. They have a studio set up in the Metaverse where you have a live audience while you're recording, that are watching you what, and you're like backstage. They have a VIP time where you can meet people that get there early, can interact with you and ask questions, and it's all in the Metaverse. You're just wearing your Oculus, talking to other folks, and then it'll in the Metaverse, in this studio, this virtual studio, it'll tell you there's a countdown for when it's going to start recording and then you walk out onto the stage and he puts on a show. There's like a raffle.

Jordan: 43:12

Tom, you're blowing my mind right now. This is crazy.

Tom: 43:14

It was so much fun. And so you do your podcast interview. You sit on the couch and he sits on the couch. You run through the interview and you can see the digital couch. The digital couch so you can see the audience and you can see what they're doing. And sometimes they're clapping or they're giving a thumbs up and then at the end of it there's a microphone set up for the studio audience and then they come up to the microphone and ask questions. So you're interacting after I mean it was it was really, really cool.

Alban: 43:43

Do you have a video of this, tom? I'm imagining honestly like the Wii characters. Remember Wii?

Tom: 43:51

That's what it looks like. It looks like Wii character and I could not figure out how to customize my character, so, like theirs, all looked really good, but mine, I had a bald guy and I was like I'm not bald, for those of you who don't know okay, I'm not bald, so I was like okay.

Tom: 44:08

I gotta wear a baseball hat, and so I'm wearing a baseball hat and yeah, but you look like a Wii character. Now some people had the more advanced Oculus, where it actually showed facial expressions, whereas mine did not, so you could tell some people, you could see where their eyes are looking. So while you're talking to them, you can see their eyes move, and it was really. It was a really cool experience. I think it's definitely the. I mean, it's going to play a part in the future of being able to virtually meet like that.

Jordan: 44:35

It was so crazy watching the Zuckerberg interview because they didn't look like Wii characters. So I actually wasn't picturing Wii characters. I was kind of picturing like, maybe, video game characters that you could do, because what they did was they did like a full scan of their face so that it actually looked like them, like you can see their pores, you can see their freckles, and it was just so fascinating because you know they had a light and they could move the light and the light would shift across their faces and it just looked so realistic. I don't know, it's just wild, but that's really funny that you guys were all like Wii characters, because that makes it way more comfortable but.

Tom: 45:12

I mean they built the studio. I mean they built it in the metaverse so it had, like the Killer B studio, marketing material like it, and they do all different types of live events and some of them they record for podcasting. But they do other stuff there too.

Jordan: 45:28

Man, that'd be so much cheaper than setting up like an actual studio.

Tom: 45:31

Yeah, can you imagine?

Jordan: 45:32

Or do you have to like, buy digital furniture and I have no idea. This is so weird. I just I can't even wrap my head around it. Like I'm just, I'm getting flashes of like Ready Player One. I don't know if you ever read that Ernest Klein book, but I'm just, I feel like we're heading in that direction. It's just so weird.

Tom: 45:51

Yeah, and then it'll be real interesting to see what happens as Apple gets into the metaverse.

Jordan: 45:55

Oh yeah, I forgot about that.

Tom: 45:57

What's possible, yeah?

Jordan: 46:02

It's time for sound off the segment where you are listeners. Send in your tips, tricks, podcasting advice, stories, anecdotes, things like that. Let's kick it off with a tweet that we got from Creativity Found podcast, they said. Just sent my first boostogram with Fountain App to Buzzcast podcast, who have helped me think more about podcasting 2.0 and the value for value. Do you know you can earn sats just by listening. That's so cool. We were the first one.

Alban: 46:31

And I've actually got the first boost right here from Creativity Found. Hi, kevin, albin and Jordan. My first boost mainly funded by listening to Buzzcast. I chatted with Oscar Mary at Pod News Live London but still didn't realize until I started listening to everyone on Fountain that I can earn sats just by listening. I liked hearing about the Guardians the Galaxy Ride, epcot on the show this time, oh yeah, and all the podcast stuff too. I'm traveling from the UK to Pod Fest in January on my Lonesome Hope to meet you there. Love the show and all that, claire. Well, thank you so much, claire. I love that you're getting into podcasting 2.0. And I hope that, if you want to, you can go ride that Guardians of the Galaxy ride when you come in town for Pod Fest.

Jordan: 47:15

And she's coming on our Lonesome to Pod Fest. Buzzsprouts are usually there and we'll probably have like a meetup or something, so she won't be lonesome at the conference. Next up we have 2,112 sats from Dave Jones. Thanks for the ISO, jordan, I don't know.

Alban: 47:34

Now, this is a I have a note from Kevin.

Jordan: 47:36

You have a note? Okay, I have no idea what this is.

Alban: 47:39

I thought ISO was like the international standards. No, iso, kevin thinks, is based on where it was. Iso is isolation. It's the isolated sound and he sent it right during the Jordan screaming from your ice bath, and so that's what Kevin thinks. He thinks that that's getting clipped and that's going to end up in the podcasting 2.0 show. So we will see if Jordan jumping in an ice bath and Dylan ends up there.

Tom: 48:12

We had one from Moritz with Albie saying thanks for sharing these insights about B2B podcast.

Alban: 48:18

Thanks very much for that, yeah, and last week we shared some research about B2B podcasting from Lower Street Media, so you can check that out. You go back to last week and click the link in the description.

Tom: 48:29

And Albie has helped a lot of people get into the value for value, making it easier.

Jordan: 48:35

The sound off question. Last episode was actually more of an assignment, and this is from Kevin. He said tell us about your first car in 30 seconds and he felt like this would be a really good exercise for podcasters to practice Talking within like a certain amount of time All right?

Alban: 48:51

Well, I'm going to get my stopwatch ready and we will tell you how long these stories are, because the whole point was can you tell a compelling story in 30 seconds? We know that Tom and I can't give a compelling answer to a question unless the two minutes. So, kevin Lowe, you are up first.

Kevin: 49:08

What's up? This is Kevin Lowe with Grayson Inspiration and my first car was a 96 Ford F-150 4x4. She was found on the side of old Dixie's highway with a four sale sign in the window. She had eight inches of lift, 38 inch TSL super swampers and, oh baby, she was love at first sight. I got to spend the next 13 months with her cruising down the beach, out in the woods, getting dirty, always with the windows down, country music blaring from the speakers, a month after my 17th birthday. So 13 months later, I would become blind. But one thing that that couldn't take away was the memory of that year or the memory of that truck.

Jordan: 49:54

That was the best.

Alban: 49:55

Kevin, thank you for the story. I clocked you at 46 seconds, but I don't think I would have trimmed a thing. That was perfect I went having a good time. Thank you so much for the story.

Jordan: 50:04

That was so great. Thanks, kevin, all right. Next up we have Tiff.

Tiff: 50:08

Hey Buzzsprout, hi Tiff from the hey Everyone it's Tiff podcast, and my first car was a 1966 Ford Mustang. It's white with all red interior, and it's been in my family for decades, so it was my grandma's and then my mom's, and then mine and then my sister's, and so it's still running, still works, and I think we'll pass it on for decades to come. And thank you for all that. You do, love you guys Bye.

Jordan: 50:35

Like 26 seconds, I think.

Alban: 50:38

And at 26 as well, Tiff can pass a few of her bonus seconds over to Kevin. Two great stories. I love passing down the car through generations in the family. That's a really cool story.

Jordan: 50:49

It makes me wonder how old they were when they got that car. Well, it's the first car, though, because I'm thinking like I would never give my kids a really cool classic car as their 66 Mustang is your first vehicle. Yeah, with red interior and all. Oh, come on Like that sounds amazing.

Tom: 51:08

Tom, what was your first car? My first car was a 1984 Hyundai Excel GLS with gold honeycomb wheels and big black stripe on the side. Really, I want to see a photo. Oh man, I don't know if I've got any photos. It's like the old days, dude.

Alban: 51:27

Oh, I had a white Pontiac Firebird 1995. That was my first vehicle. Got a lot of people who were like man, you're a lot more country than I expected. I wasn't, but that was the first vehicle I ever got.

Jordan: 51:41

Why does everyone have these like cool first vehicles? What did you have?

Tom: 51:45

Hyundai Excel was not a cool vehicle.

Alban: 51:48

I don't think that the Firebird was either.

Jordan: 51:50

to be honest, I had a 2001 Toyota Corolla.

Alban: 51:55

Ooh, reliable, safe, reliable, that's right.

Jordan: 52:00

All right. So, Tom, do you have the question for our next episode for listeners?

Tom: 52:06

I do. I like that we have the conversation about taking a break and recognizing that content creators have a lot of pressure on them to stay on this, just constantly creating new content. I like the idea of asking the question of when was the last time you took a break and how did you handle that with your podcast. Hopefully we get lots of answers that can help encourage others to take a break and how they might be able to do that. And if you haven't taken a break, then maybe it's an opportunity for you to think about. Maybe it's time.

Alban: 52:38

I think that's a great question, Tom. I love it.

Jordan: 52:41

So, to have your response featured on our next episode, leave a 30-second voice message at potinboxcom, slash buzzbrow, send us boostagram or tweet the answer at buzzcastpodcast. And, as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting. You know I did this weekend. For the first time ever I did something new. We just got a new bathroom vanity downstairs because I'm moving the kids, I'm kicking the kids out of the upstairs bathroom because they're getting older, they have their own toiletries and our house has like no storage. There's no cabinets. We just have like a little pedestal sink because it's old and there's no room to put anything. So we bought a new bathroom vanity for downstairs and I installed my first faucet all by myself.

Tom: 53:29

I am so impressed, thank you. I have never installed a faucet or any plumbing fixture whatsoever.

Jordan: 53:36

I have to be honest, I thought it was going to be a lot harder. I was a little nervous, but I was like you know what I'm up to the challenge. I want to do something with my hands. This could be really fun. And I didn't realize how easy it is to install a new faucet into a sink Like it is stupid easy.

Tom: 53:53

You have just offended so many plumbers that listened to this podcast.

Jordan: 53:58

That's the thing, because when we moved in, we had like everything like renovated and whoever the guy was that we had do our bathroom. We had things installed like backwards and wrong and I was just like, wait a second, I'm able to just like do this perfectly. My first time this guy was he did not care.

Tom: 54:16

How much YouTube did you have to use?

Jordan: 54:18

I used about 20 minutes of YouTube.

Tom: 54:20

It's amazing what you can find on YouTube.

Jordan: 54:22

Yeah yeah, Because the instructions were definitely not originally in English. So there was like all caps do not. And then it said make sure to use this. And I was like well, do I not, do not make sure to use this? And I was so confused and so I was like searching forever, Like do I have to use this certain thing on this part? Because it just said do not and then like make sure to do it. And I was just like crap, which is it?

Alban: 54:50

I love doing house projects. I feel very confident with almost all of them, except anything that involves electrical. Yeah. I've been shocked enough times that I really hate it and I am just terrified. Like anything I work around electrical, I'm going to get shocked and so far my success rate and getting shocked has been pretty high.

Jordan: 55:13

What have you done that you were getting shocked?

Alban: 55:16

Well, I used to work for a bookstore and you would think that that did not involve much construction, but it did. We did a lot of construction. We built a few buildings and framed them out pretty much from the slab up, wow. And there was one part where we were demoing something and we're pulling off all this conduit and I went this is all turned off, right. And they're like, yeah, 100%, that's turned off. And I rip it open and I stick my hand in and like, get a full 210 volts. And I'm like, yeah, it's not turned off. And they're like, oh, yeah, I don't think we turned it off. What 30 seconds ago I asked oh man. So that was probably my first experience, but I've had quite a few since then. So I'm always very careful to touch things with the back of my hand, but still, there's something about it. It's just maybe it's this like dead spot in my knowledge where if I'd learned more about it then I would feel more confident.

Jordan: 56:12

Yeah, I don't know. Electrical is nothing to mess with. I've only been shocked once, and it was in a dressing room backstage. I was replacing the bulbs in the mirrors and I didn't think about it. But the switch was on and I was touching the metal of these big bulbs and it hurt so bad. I was shocked so badly and I was thinking like man, if that was just a light bulb, I can't even fathom what it would be to like touch like a wire or something like that. It's be terrible.

Tom: 56:42

I took a screwdriver one time and I was trying to replace a light fixture in my in my bedroom in college and it was really hot. It was in Gainesville, we didn't have air conditioning. It was a nightmare and I didn't want to turn the fan off while I was working. So not a smart move. I took the screwdriver and I was looking for where I could take the screws out of the fan to get the light fixture out. And I see a screw in the very back of the light fixture. No, I take the screwdriver and I get about three quarters of the way into the light fixture before I realize what I'm doing. But it's too late, I can't stop. And then as soon as it touches as soon as it touches, just sparks go everywhere. It burned it burned the whole unit out, it through.

Tom: 57:30

it tripped the breaker for the place. I called landlord. I told him I don't know what, just stop working. It was all like it was all charred, it was just so. Needless to say, I'm not, I'm not good at this.

Jordan: 57:44

I'm just picturing you like no slow motion, like while it's going Exactly what it was.

Tom: 57:49

You're like you can't stop my hand, stop, stop, no, it just. And then just sparks, just bang, is everywhere. Oh, I'm lucky, I didn't get shocked, I don't know, I was lucky, I'm not sure what your driver was.