YouTube Starts Paying for Podcast Content + The Ethics of Spamming Podcasters

In this episode, Jordan Blair joins the crew to discuss several innovative audio apps, why YouTube is paying podcasters to create video content, Apple Podcasts' newest feature, and why companies are sending spam emails to podcasters.

Special BuzzBoost Shoutouts to Kyrin, Dave, and Andy for supporting the show.

Be sure to check out Jordan's podcast Dreamful on your favorite podcast listening app.

Links from this episode:

• Racket launches an app for 99-second micro podcasts
• Run the airwaves with Amp, the live radio app from Amazon
• YouTube is reportedly paying podcasters to film their shows
• iOS 15.4: What’s New for Apple Podcasts
• Dorktales Storytime podcast offers classic tales to raise awareness about autism

Transcript

Kevin: 0:00

I have another question here and I just slipped my mind this is why Travis gets so mad at us because we just talk like this in the middle the episode and we rely on him to cut it out.

Jordan: 0:06

There's a lot of theory left.

Kevin: 0:08

I know. That's that's normal, even when he was like full time co hosts

Alban: 0:19

two weeks ago Travis was stepping away but this is a very gradual step away Travis is still editing and producing the show so he's here with us today. Yeah, I'm here so I know what I'm getting in for tomorrow. When I start editing it was gonna be a little much it was just dragging the edit audio at it was you're like alright guys, you didn't you missed like three of the topics. So we know what happened last time Kevin and I did the show on our own. There was no show was no show. We're happy to have Travis but we also have a guest co host, Jordan Blair.

Jordan: 0:46

Hi. Thanks for having me. I stepped in for Alban stepped in for Kevin. Now seven and for Travis. So I have come full circle.

Alban: 0:56

Oh, that's right. You've been on twice. And you have replaced each of us different times.

Jordan: 1:00

I have. Yeah. I'm breaking up the bromance here.

Kevin: 1:06

And this is appreciate it. You saw your third appearance. And we were just talking that this might be this might put you in the lead for the person whose guests hosted on Buzzcast the most right now that you're welcome to the three timers club. You're the senior member, congratulations, you get a jacket when you hit five times. Oh, are we gonna do that like SNL we're gonna have a jacket make sense to me. So I should have like, at least 10 jackets. So Jordan, if you hadn't caught the previous episodes, where Jordan was guest hosting, she runs the Dreamful podcast, which is huge on Spotify. And it's available anywhere you get your podcast, but Spotify is where you get most of your audience. Right?

Jordan: 1:42

Yeah. Which is kind of strange. Usually people have most of our audience on Apple. But I think I'm like 76%, Spotify. Whoa, it's really weird.

Alban: 1:52

And then, but you also have an apple podcast subscription. Right? Or at least that was when we had you on last year. You were talking about that? Are you still running that?

Jordan: 1:59

I am and it's actually really successful. Nice, which is super cool. Yeah, I think I have like 20 subscribers.

Kevin: 2:07

So what what do you do? What do you offer your subscribers on Apple podcasts?

Jordan: 2:10

Oh, just two bonus episodes a month. Nice. And

Kevin: 2:12

then do you ever release those episodes to everyone else? Are they only for your subscribers,

Jordan: 2:16

they're only for subscribers, I also run a Patreon page, which doesn't play nicely with Spotify. So I'm going to be adding a third premium content that partners with Spotify. So I'll be uploading my premium content to three different things just so I can really reach everyone who could potentially want to buy my bonus episode. Is

Alban: 2:42

that are you doing that with Super Cast? Yeah.

Kevin: 2:44

So is it the same premium content whether and somebody subscribes through Apple in the future supercast, or through Patreon? No matter where you buy, you get the same stuff.

Jordan: 2:53

Same stuff on Patreon. I I have different tiers. So I do like handwritten cards and like send them stickers and stuff like that and run polls. But with Apple, it's just the bonus episodes

Kevin: 3:05

out of the subscription options that you offer. Which one provides you like the how do you get the most money? Like we know Apple takes 30% I assume Patreon takes somewhere you know, 10% or something like that. And in supercast is gonna take some cut, what how do you end up making the most

Jordan: 3:23

Patreon only takes 8%. And I'm actually on a higher subscription model with Patreon. So 8% is actually one of the higher things so that I can have access to giving my audience more stuff they actually offer the ability to send merch, like they have different merch that you can also offer if you do 12% Cut.

Alban: 3:46

Whoa, like is that like they? You can bot people can buy merch and then Patreon. Getting it printed and shipped for you. Are they working with somebody to do that?

Jordan: 3:55

Yeah, so what they do is, if a Patreon member subscribes to your page at a certain tier, like at a higher tier, and they're on that page for let's say, like two months or something like that, then Patreon will ship your merch to that person.

Alban: 4:11

Thank That's awesome. Yeah, that's good.

Jordan: 4:13

Super cool. Yeah, I haven't done it yet. It's kind of expensive. The print on demand stuffs really expensive. So I haven't I haven't tried that out yet. But honestly, like the bonus episodes are really good.

Kevin: 4:25

Really good in front in terms of enticing people to subscribe. Mm hmm. Yeah, that's the key thing for you. That was

Alban: 4:31

a review of her own pocket. It was like, and let me tell you, these episodes are awesome. Yeah,

Jordan: 4:40

they slap No, I just make sure that I do my call to action at the beginning of every single episode and get new Patreon members and new Apple podcast subscribers through that, but yeah, so I'm interested to see how supercast goes especially since all my listeners pretty much are on Spotify. And I've had people not subscribe just because they can't get those bonus episodes on the Spotify platform so it's nice and cohesive. So I'm really interested to test that one out. So while Albin was trying to become a viral Tik Tok star, I decided to give a try it becoming a racket or so there's a new app, a racket or any new racket or racket here.

Alban: 5:30

What's a Raptor,

Jordan: 5:31

Raptor is a person who uses this new app. That's audio basis is like tick tock versus with a clubhouse and Twitter. And it just kind of like mixes all that together. And then you have racket, and rack. It's only been on the Apple App Store for four months. So it's really, really new. And I actually had an opportunity to talk with the founder awesome. Peter Smith, and, you know, his intentions is to try to fix the discoverability issue, that the bad the big D word. Is that what you said? Yeah, the word, right. Yeah, he's trying to fix that a little bit with podcasts. So it's similar to tick tock in that you can have zero followers and still be trending and get put in front of people.

Kevin: 6:21

So is it I mean, is he's specifically saying that they're trying to be like a promotion tool for podcasts.

Jordan: 6:27

It is a social app in that you can communicate with other people, you can comment on people's rackets, which are similar to voice memos. And you can also reply to rackets with your own racket. So if somebody asks, asks a question. On the app, it looks very much like Tic tock where you just like swipe through. But if somebody asks a question or brings up a topic, you can actually click a reply button and record your own voice memo and reply. So it's it's kind of interesting in that way,

Kevin: 6:59

so when it's playing rackets when you're swiping through, do you have to click something else to hear the replies for that? Like as I'm assuming it shows you there's 10 replies to this and then you can click on something to hear all those replies.

Alban: 7:09

This sounds a lot like clamor, doesn't it? Remember, clamor? Yeah,

Kevin: 7:13

clamor. They weren't around super long. But I thought it was an interesting idea. But clamor was like, you would take small you find a podcast episode that you'd like, and then you could, I don't know what they called it clams, or something clicked in Klamath. And then it would let you you know, highlight a segment of that episode, and then you could upload it as a claim out,

Alban: 7:33

but couldn't you like reclaim, you could respond to the claims. The crater clamor now is ruining it.

Kevin: 7:42

Well, I think it's already ruined, I think it's gone. It's been gone. But the The difference here is that you can't take you're not taking segments of podcast episodes, you're recording these rackets from scratch, right?

Jordan: 7:52

Yeah. And that's kind of thing when I was testing it out, that was sort of the issue that I ran into, because my podcast is very heavily edited. It's very high production, and there's a lot to it. So in using it to potentially market my podcast, I had to get a little creative, because with racket, you record directly onto your phone. And they don't, at this point, have an import audio function. But Austin assured me that that is coming down the timeline here, in a couple months, they will have the ability to import audio. So it will be a little bit more friendly for podcasters that are trying to repurpose their content. But I found a workaround for now where I can play my podcast episode on my computer and hold my phone up to the computer speaker. And it's not quite as crystal clear as it would have been if I was able to import the audio. But it still works. And I still get likes and follows. And it's at such an early stage for adopters, you know, when clubhouse first came out, and people were able to get on there. And it was kind of like a small group. That's sort of where racket is right now. They only currently have 200 active users. But I like this app so much. And I think that it will catch on. So I think that this is a really, really, really good time for podcasters to get this app and start establishing themselves on it and getting their profiles built up getting the content built up. So that when it does get so much bigger, they're already established as you know, when the bigger users on it.

Alban: 9:33

How do you find it? This is like, I mean, that's super early, super, super early.

Jordan: 9:38

Very early. I actually saw that it was mentioned in an article about micro content. On the in podcast magazine. We

Alban: 9:46

need to get everyone from Buzzcast to go over there and get on racket we could text the listeners if everyone listening to this got on racket and you could be a Buzzcast takeover.

Kevin: 9:55

The there have been a lot of apps that do stuff like this like micro content in the audio space. Yeah, and none of them are really taken off yet. But I think the opportunity is that one of these might take off. You know, I'm not saying one will, but one might. And if racket is the one that takes off, getting in early and establishing yourself on there, and getting some followers getting some likes early on, is a huge opportunity. So if it's something that you can do if you can put a 32nd 62nd promo together for your podcast overall, or maybe even just hone in on specific episode, so in this episode of The Dreamful podcast, we talked about this story, and yada, yada, yada, and get people interested, start to build a following, hey, who knows two years from now, Racket might be the next tick tock and right, you're established early, and you have a following, which is much harder to do once these things actually get huge.

Alban: 10:41

Well, there's what I mean, it's the same curve you have for every single social app. The people who started blogs a long time ago are some of the biggest bloggers, people who started your first YouTube channels. Some of them have the biggest YouTube channels now, because they started early. And you see it in podcasting, and you see it in Tik Tok, and you see it on Facebook pages, and Twitter. If you're early to it, you have a good chance that this app will fail. And you'll never, it won't turn anything. But it could turn into you being one of the big stars of the platform. So, right. It's cool that Jordans kind of testing it out. And have you trended yet, Jordan?

Jordan: 11:15

I did. I was on their trending page for probably like a day or two. And I was trending with only 30 views and zero likes. So if

Kevin: 11:26

Yeah, web app and find Jordans content, give it a like, so she has wanted

Alban: 11:31

to put something out there ourselves and try to get as a trend. Yeah,

Jordan: 11:34

that shows like even the even the people that I see on the trending page every single day, you know, they might only have maybe 60 views, but you will see a lot of like conversation going on. It's It's so interesting to just kind of like scroll through these rackets, or you can turn your phone off and just listen to them. And I'll scroll through it, because it's audio based. Yeah. But it's just it's sort of like the wild west at this point. There's different people using it for different things. You know, you might have somebody that goes on a hike, and they decide to record a babbling brook, or you'll have a podcast coach that is announcing an upcoming seminar that they have. And you can click on the link in the bio to sign up for it. Or there's a comedian talking about their upcoming show or something funny that somebody did. or somebody's asking a question and hoping to get an answer from other people.

Kevin: 12:29

So Jordan, that sounds awesome. Do you know if it's iOS only? Or is there an android version yet?

Jordan: 12:35

Yeah, it's currently only available on iOS.

Kevin: 12:38

Alright, but I'm sure there will be an android version soon. Hopefully this takes off. And you can get a following before it gets huge. If it does. Yeah,

Alban: 12:46

I think it's got to become the next Buzzcast hangout spot.

Jordan: 12:51

Another company that announced that they are getting into the audio space, the audio social space is Amazon, they launched a new app called amp. And it's by invitation only at this point to get into the beta. But I was on the waitlist for a total of probably 17 hours and got right in. So what it is, is it's this social app where you are a DJ of your own live radio show. And you can take callers you can have discussions and things like that. So I gave it a try. And I DJ, my own show, I put together a playlist, I gave it a name. And I went live, what's on the playlist? Well, I was doing it for my podcast, which is very relaxed. So I did ambient, calm kind of indie music, and the pause,

Alban: 13:55

there's something there. So

Jordan: 13:58

it was a little bit of a train wreck.

Alban: 14:02

The app or the DJ set,

Jordan: 14:04

the DJ set was awesome. I have amazing taste in music, there was nothing wrong with that. I did find when putting together my playlist, when setting up this live show that they actually did not have very much music listed yet, which really surprised me. It being Amazon because they have Amazon music, but they actually don't currently have all of Amazon musics library on the app yet. So I was super limited.

Kevin: 14:33

So let me ask you this. It sounds like a fun app to play with like especially if you like the idea of DJing your own show and putting your own music together and I could see people like listening to that like finding somebody who's DJing a show who has similar music interested in you and listening to their you know why I like the song and that song plays that's all great. How could a podcaster you said you use this and you talk like you did it to promote or to tell people about your podcast. How did you do that?

Jordan: 14:59

So for me Because of the nature of my podcast, my podcast is not very conversational or anything like that. So all I did was I put together a playlist of relaxing music. And I just introduced myself said, I was the host of this podcast. And I would play the songs out. And then there'd be like new listeners. And so I would go in and like introduce myself again, say, thanks for listening. There were some podcasters that had the calls enabled. And so people on the app in between songs or something they can say like we're taking calls now or taking comments, or do you want to chat, and someone could push the button? I think you can push the button similar to clubhouse where you like, raise your hand. And they can have that conversation with a person on the app?

Kevin: 15:48

I gotcha. Is there? Do you have like a profile where people can click on your profile to link to your whole podcast? So I like the radio show that Jordan did?

Jordan: 15:56

Yeah, I got three followers with my little relaxing. Yeah, I don't mean to brag, but I'm blowing up on amp. So they

Kevin: 16:06

can follow you on amp. But then how do they make the transition to find your podcast? And hopefully subscribe or follow you? Over there on their podcast app of choice? Can you link directly to a podcast page? Yes,

Jordan: 16:17

you can have a link on your page. And so I just linked to my website that has everything. And you can also have a little short bio, for your podcast, or for your personal

Alban: 16:30

this sounds similar to what Spotify had for a bit where you could do these, like music shows. But one of the criticisms was that you had to basically play the entire podcast, and it had to fully end before you jump back in. And then you could start another full song. And like every good DJ set, you do not like play the whole exit of the song, you're running one song into audio into your voice into the next song. Like there's a, I don't know, sense of continuation to the whole thing. So it doesn't law in the middle, do you still have to do that? Do you have to go all the way through and then the song ends.

Jordan: 17:08

You don't have to you can actually pause the song or jump between songs, things like that. And I think part of the reason why you're able to do that is because it's not recorded, and you're not publishing it out.

Kevin: 17:18

Oh, so this is like a one and done people listen to you live or they can't listen to you.

Alban: 17:21

So it's like a radio show.

Jordan: 17:22

That's exactly what it is. And you can connect with people on there, you can build your thing. But as far as like flow goes, it's a little clunky, because you set up your playlist you go live. And my thinking was that I could just put my mic on mute. And it would just play through the list however many songs I wanted. And I discovered that as soon as the song ended, it would not queue up the second song. And my mic would go live even though I was on mute. Yeah, exactly. So there's one point I'm sitting in the living room with my husband, he's playing video games quite loudly. And it pause it like the song ends. And I'm thinking it's gonna cue up the second one. And so this ambient lovely music ends. And then it's just like hail of gunfire before. Before I can mute my mic. That's awesome. So there are some things I think that are, I hope get worked out. But I'm thinking that it could be useful for music podcasts to gain listeners, it could be useful for mental health podcasts or coaches or something like that. Like there's our fitness trainer podcast, you know what they have, like, let's get pumped, yeah, play play set. And then they give like, tips and tricks throughout that. So that's kind of what I'm thinking there. There is an application for it. It's not content that I think will be contributing to your podcast, in the sense that someone can go back and listen as of yet. But I do think that it could be a platform for you to get more of an audience or create more of a community. So Alvin word on the street is I could get paid 50,000 to$300,000 to film my podcast for YouTube.

Alban: 19:19

Somebody might. So I guess we're talking a little bit about YouTube right now, this article in The Verge where it sounds like and I don't know what shows these are, and I'm not sure what the official sources beyond the trust the verge, YouTube is apparently offering $50,000 for some podcasts and up to 300,000 for podcasting networks, to start filming their podcasts and supposedly uploading them to YouTube. So it's interesting idea. I mean, we've seen YouTube kind of getting more and more into the podcasting space. So I'll be interested to see if they're happening, but have we seen any of like, what podcasts these are how they're picking pockets? castors have any of these actually panned out? Yeah,

Kevin: 20:03

I haven't at all. I know, Jordan, you said you dug into this a little bit. What did you find?

Jordan: 20:06

Yeah, I did a pretty decent Deep Dive. And basically everything saying that YouTube is reportedly paying. And there's no other information. I don't know who's reporting it. I don't know, what shows are getting paid for this. So I'm wondering, as just a podcaster, that does not do any video. Does it seem like I need to be doing video? They're putting so much money into this? Is it that important that I do that?

Alban: 20:39

So one of the things that stuck out to me was $50,000, for podcasts, and 300 for networks, which means to me, they're reaching out to networks to very well established shows. And so I think it's more likely, they're going to the shows, they know they really want on YouTube. And they're saying, hey, what's it going to take for us to help you get over the hump from, you've never recorded video to your recording video. So there's lots of great shows that are YouTube podcasts with video content. They also have a podcast that's audio only on an RSS feed, something of that, like there was a podcast called im athlete, with football players talking about their time in football. And it was so much more fun watching on YouTube, because I'm watching players that I know. I don't know them, but I have watched them play football before. And you're seeing their faces and their stories, and they're laughing. So there was a different element there. And I could see them being like, Hey, I know it's a lot to start filming this and buying cameras and getting a video person in. But here's the money to get you to that spot. Is it more of that? Or do we think they're trying to do like, licensing and trying to get big shows onto YouTube and be like, Hey, let's do video only here?

Kevin: 21:56

Yeah, my take is that it's your first assumption. And in this offer, I think there's a big acknowledgement from YouTube saying, we know that there's a lot more that goes into creating a video show than creating an audio only show, which is why so many people are having so much fun starting up their own podcast, because the barrier to entry is so much lower than it is on YouTube. Now you can do some great YouTube content by just filming something funny on your phone and uploading it. But that's not the way to grow a channel to really grow a channel on YouTube takes a pretty good investment in camera equipment and lighting and maybe some studio space or, you know, writing scripts and getting talent and all the stuff that goes into it. And so I think what's happening here is YouTube is saying there's some great audio shows that are blowing up that are getting a massive amount of audience in the audio space. We know there's a big hurdle there to take that same content and make a video version of it and do it well. And we want to help subsidize the cost of making that leap. So I don't think this is a this is an offer for indie podcasts that are doing, you know, it, you know, whatever, whether it's 50 downloads an episode up to a couple 1000 I think this is more of an offer for people that are doing 10s of 1000s of downloads per episode. But their content is not available on Youtube, in video format might be their audio only and YouTube saying, Hey, we're not really an audio only platform right now. We're a video first platform. And so if you are willing to make the jump, we'll help you offset some of that cost.

Alban: 23:17

I don't know why they found me. But my YouTube homescreen now actually has some podcasts on it that are not video podcasts. It's just static image. But it's related to this. It's like a city of Jacksonville audio thing. I sure they've made somehow connections that I'm that that's where I live. But it's interesting to me that that's even out there. And that YouTube's promoting that at all because it's getting very, very few plays. And there's not going to be much engagement if it's audio only. And I can't play it just, you know, I'm saying like to go search it out to play it to turn off the screen with premium YouTube. And listen isn't great. But I think you know, for shows actually have a visual component, it can be really awesome.

Kevin: 24:03

I think there might be some sort of, if I'm reading the tea leaves correctly, this could be a bit of a stop gap or a bandaid to a problem that you might be having right now, which is they want to get into podcasting. They want to create an excellent audio first experience for people to enjoy audio content through the YouTube app. But that stuff might not be ready yet. And so we've heard rumors about them exploring that are getting interested in it. And while they're figuring that out, they're saying, Well, do we have to wait because all this great audio content exists today? So what's a easy way for us to get that audio content available in viewing experience that works well on the app that we have today? Well, that's just that's something money can solve. And something that YouTube has a lot of is money. And so I think they're trying to throw money at a problem right now while they're trying to figure out how do we really bring podcasts to the YouTube app. They might not be able to solve that problem well for you know, maybe a year or two and HC we don't want to wait a year or two. To be able to start benefiting from having this amazing content on our platform. So if it was just available in video form, that would be a good stopgap for us. So how can we solve that problem, let's throw some money at it.

Alban: 25:09

During the early days of Airbnb, they actually, if you signed up with a new house, they would send a professional photographer to people's homes to take photos. And they were eating the costs, obviously, of professional photographers, which was a lot. But what they were doing was they were like, No one goes and stays at a house with like, flip phone cameras, like shots. And so they're like, We need to set the tone for Airbnb rentals all have professional photos. And so they kind of bootstrap that by just paying for it. And I wonder if like, if YouTube podcasts become synonymous with the static image, audio file, I can't see that being exciting. If it becomes synonymous with, Hey, these are really highly produced excellent podcasts with video component. And then you can grab just the audio and listen to that if you want to, then you could see how that makes sense. And it works really well. So it'd be cool if that's kind of the direction they're going.

Jordan: 26:08

I think that my concern with all the news about video podcasting is, you know, and especially being a moderator in the Buzzsprout community Facebook group, we get a lot of questions about video about podcasting video about whether or not Buzzsprout is going to have video and the RSS feed and all this stuff and where it's going. And I think that maybe podcasters are putting a little too much emphasis on video at this point. I don't think that video is necessarily the future of podcasting. And the reason I say this is because there's people that I've talked to, that have asked about Buzzsprout not having video in the RSS feed. And when we explain why. They say Will my podcast is only on YouTube? Well, no, you don't have a podcast, you have a YouTube channel, right. And I think that there's certain podcasts where it might be nice to have a video component to it. Such as, like Alan was saying, enjoying seeing the faces of people while they're being interviewed or things like that. But for someone like me, where I'm just like reading from a script, that doesn't make sense, no one's gonna watch that. Or when you have those podcasts like unraveled, well, they don't have their video podcast on Discovery Plus, they have a documentary, like at what point is the line drawn? Where it's no longer a podcast? It's actually a separate thing.

Kevin: 27:35

Yeah, I think that's a great point. There are, they're very different things. And oftentimes, you can get lured into the idea that, well, YouTube is the future of video is, you know, the future of audio first content. But in order to take that viewpoint, you have to disregard everything that makes podcasting work that makes podcasting so special, there are more opportunities in our lives to be able to enjoy audio first content, and then there's video first content. And so when TV came along, it didn't kill radio, but it did change radio. Right now, we're listening to more music and more talk shows. But we're not listening to like stories or audio dramas as much on the radio, as you did before TV. So as video platforms continue to press into podcasting more and more, I don't think that means that podcasting is dying. Or if you don't have a video version of your podcast that you're missing out on something, I think it's an opportunity for people who do different types of shows. So if you have an audio show that could benefit from video, now there are great opportunities for you to be able to get more exposure, maybe get discovered through other channels, and point people back to your podcast. But the idea that anybody wants to and we've experimented with this before, we've done video versions of Buzzcast, where it's not just an audio experience, it's a video experience. And you know, we found out it wasn't super helpful for this show. So as the video space continues to evolve, and creators get opportunities to create video content, if that makes sense for your podcast, it might be something worth exploring. But I don't think it's something that you're necessarily missing out on as a podcaster. What's special about the medium is that we can create audio first experiences, and there's tons of opportunities for people to enjoy that without having to stare at their screen or be locked into a screen. You can do it while you're working. Do it when you're driving and do it when you're exercising and video first. experiences are different than that you have to have some focus on it. But at the same time, it changes a lot and it changes like generationally. I know that my children will find podcasts that they listened to on YouTube. And those podcasts don't exist in podcast apps. And so maybe when YouTube steps into the space, maybe some of that will become a little bit clearer about maybe YouTube generates RSS feeds and if they do, then that's a great way to experience those out those that same content in a podcasting app. But for now, they don't and we don't know exactly what we're gonna they're going to end up doing.

Alban: 29:51

This is the same thing that a lot of people run into with repurposing content. We're kind of hinting at that right? People will be like, Oh, I did a webinar and I record Did it and now I'm turning that into a blog post. And I'm filming a video off that webinar, and I'm cutting that into Tik Tok videos. And they're like, so I just repurposed one piece of content into 12. And like, Isn't that incredible? Well, the downside to that is often what you're doing is, you're sticking something on tick tock that was not meant for tick tock, and you put something on a podcast episode that wasn't meant to be a podcast episode. And you're making a blog post out of a webinar. But that webinar isn't a complete answer, like a blog post should be. And so what you've done is you've kind of you have made 12 pieces of content, but they're not exactly right for the medium. You're putting something on LinkedIn that would have performed better on Twitter, stuff like that. And it works. Well, if you're like, Okay, we understand what makes a great audio experience. And we understand what makes a great YouTube experience. And based on the type of content we're creating, we can do both. And like for this show, for a while, we went can we do both. And we found in our work to make the visual component work on YouTube, we were sacrificing on the audio component, and it wasn't as good. And so we said, Let's just kill the video. Because we don't want to make the like crappy version of both things. We want to try to make a better version of the one thing. And there's so many good things, good podcasts, good blogs, good YouTube channels that haven't branched out to do all 16 types of content. So yeah, if your content naturally lends itself to expanding into two or three different areas, go for it. That's very cool if you have the bandwidth for it, and there's like a way to make money and fit your life. But you don't need to feel like we'll come on podcast, if I wanted to get any bigger, I need to become a video and a tick tock star. Well, if you ever figure out how to make become a YouTube star, or tick tock star, maybe podcasting isn't the one for you. So I don't know, it's good for it to be options. I don't like when we put more pressure on people who are trying to learn one thing, that they should also learn six others, and they need to be doing six other things.

Kevin: 32:08

Alright, so if any of you guys upgraded to iOS 15.4.

Alban: 32:12

I did actually during lunch today,

Jordan: 32:14

Jordan, if you haven't yet, not yet.

Kevin: 32:17

There are some updates to the Apple podcast app, which include being able to filter by season, and what was the other one?

Alban: 32:26

You can browse by season, and then you can filter the episode type. So you can say, Hey, show me all the episodes I haven't listened to. But the big one to me is the browsing by seasons on show pages. So remember how last week we talked about Apollo app? Yeah, it's this like app that's mainly focused on audio dramas. And they really built the whole UI around things are in seasons and seasons go in a different order. Apple was the one to pioneer this when they rolled out the season tags. But the UI wasn't always the best in Apple podcasts. And I feel like this is a significant improvement. So I'm pulling it open now. And I can flip over to Kevin, I both listen to land of the giants, which is a podcast, a Serial podcast that goes through like five or six episodes about Amazon. It's done by I think the verge?

Kevin: 33:19

Oh, I don't know. I don't know who makes the podcast? Yeah, land of the giants. I listened to all the time. And it is a very frustrating experience. Because in the podcast apps that I have used to listen to that all of the different episodes are intermingled when they shouldn't be like they follow one specific company like either Amazon or Netflix or Google or Apple. They do a whole season about one company. Yeah, and yet all the time. And again, this is why I want the done button at the end of an episode because I will listen to you know, 46 minutes of the 46 and a half minute episode, and then it will keep wanting me to play the end of that episode. But really, I want to go to the next one. And then it's recommending, you know, I'm in the middle of the apple season, and it recommends Oh, you didn't finish, you know, the Netflix, any of the episodes from the Netflix season, you still have 30 seconds left in each of them. It's terribly frustrating. So I really like this UI enhancement that they've done in the podcast app. Now I don't use Apple podcast app, but I might just when I'm listening to Lana, the Giants, because this seems like such a huge improvement. And I think every third party podcast out that's out there needs to go take a look at this and figure out their own way to implement it. But when you're when you're dealing with a serialized podcast, and especially one that's broken into seasons, I should be able to select season one, season two, season three, whatever season you're in, listen to all those and then it should recognize that I'm done with that season and prompt you to the next one. So Apple is really in and this is not something we say about Apple podcast that very often is that they're kind of leading the charge here and how they're organizing things. But they are like this is a massive, great improvement to their app and I hope other apps, other podcast apps take note and follow suit.

Alban: 34:50

So real time follow up land of the giants is by Vox. I was getting the Vox and verge confused for a second. It is really a podcast and the most recent season was about Apple So maybe this is the podcast that Apple podcasts was listened to it. Now this UI isn't great, let's fix it. But you go to the podcast, and you can click like, Hey, show me this season, because I don't want to listen to the seasons from years ago, show me season five. And then all the episodes are in order from 123456. Because you need to go back six episodes at start there to actually listen to them chronologically in the correct order. So it's a good experience, you subscribe to a show based on which season you're listening to Apple podcasts downloads the first three episodes. And as you listen to more, it will download more. So it's working really well. I mean, this was a huge complaint, that I think EVO Tara was the first one I remember, really bring it up. Most podcast apps, this is a terrible experience. And it was the reason I think he left using Apple podcasts, because he was like, I want to find the app that does this, right. And in his big search, I'm not sure where he ended up. But now Apple is probably the right place to be if you're listening to a lot of these types of shows. This looks like a great implementation.

Jordan: 36:10

Kevin, you know that. On these apps, you can mark your episode is played so it doesn't show.

Kevin: 36:16

What how do I do this?

Jordan: 36:19

There's there's three dots. Next to the episode.

Kevin: 36:22

This is on the Apple podcast app. It's on Apple podcasts. Yep. Is it on is on other apps as well, or just Apple podcasts?

Jordan: 36:29

Yeah, I think it's on other apps as well.

Alban: 36:32

There's literally a Marcus played button. Oh, my gosh. But to be clear, Kevin wanted the I'm done. He wants a big button.

Kevin: 36:42

Why hiding like the under dots just make it really big. I'm done.

Jordan: 36:46

I don't know. But there's this thing with Apple. Since I haven't updated to the 15.4. I'm really hoping that this is a bug that they fixed. But there's this weird thing that Apple podcast has been doing. And I noticed it when I went and started re listening to your episodes of how to start a podcast that you guys re recorded. And I noticed that any episodes that I have listened to, or not marked as played and any of the ones that maybe I'm I'm halfway through an episode. And then I exit the app to go do something else and I come back, it will reset it as if I had never played the episode.

Alban: 37:25

That's why we're getting so many plays.

Kevin: 37:32

But yeah, it doesn't doesn't remember your position. It just starts at the very beginning.

Jordan: 37:36

If I'm not following that podcast, so I'm not like following How To Start A Podcast. I just decided to like re listen to it. Since you guys redid it. Great job, by the way. And so yeah, I just I noticed that it's a little annoying. So hopefully that's a bug that got fixed too. Well, this has

Alban: 37:53

been good. I like the implementation. The one feature that I wish Apple had added but they won't is Krypto. Kevin,

Kevin: 38:01

you know what time it is. It's time for Buzz. There we go. Here we go. Welcome back to The Buzz boost segment. I'm your host, Kevin fan. And I'm going to be walking you through the boosts that we've gotten from the past few weeks.

Jordan: 38:14

You know, when I first heard that little Stinger that you guys got from fiber, Iraq's hard, I had to go chug an energy drink and just like, on my forehead. So pumped. Let's do this. And then I came back.

Kevin: 38:30

Well, our booths are down last week, we had like four or five or six booths. I don't know a lot of them this week, we only have three. So I don't know what's happening. quality of the content. It could be quality content, we need more people going out there and you know, the two apps I'm going to recommend now I talked a lot about cosmetic this week, I'm gonna talk a lot about fountain out whichever one works best for you. But check them both out, set up your wallet. One of the things I did I guess it's been about four weeks ago now it's two episodes ago, I offered to pay anybody who sent me a lightning invoice for 5000 sets or less, I would pay it for you so that you had some stats to start out with so that you can start listening and streaming stats to podcast as you're listening or boosting them. Well, I'm happy to report that we now have earned 53,651 sets have come in to Buzzcast which means I paid 10 invoices at 5000 sets apiece. So that was 50,000 out and we're back. I've got 50,000 sets back from our loyal listener so I'm ready to give out more sets. So I will pay 10 More invoices over the next two weeks. If you send me an invoice for 5000 sets or less, and you just DM it to me on Twitter. I will go ahead and pay your invoice to help get you started. And so anything that we earn from the show anybody who boosts us money or boosts us that we're going to send those right back out to the community. As long as you keep supporting us. We'll keep putting that money right back out into the podcasting ecosystem. And you don't have to send them back to us go find another show that that has value for value enabled and support them boost them. We'll keep this thing going. So shall I start running through the boost We got this week.

Alban: 40:01

Sure. What's, what's number one?

Kevin: 40:03

All right, the first boost that we got was from Andy Lehmann le Hmm, I think I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Andy, thank you for the boost of 873 sets. He says Welcome to the booster gram game, anyone who's not used that to send a message to a podcast or should it is so much fun. I totally agree. It is like the most fun thing that is going on in podcasting right now. From like, from a listener perspective, that you get to boost something, somebody says something great in their podcast, you like it, you now have a button that you can say that was awesome. And you can send them a message. That's fantastic. And it's a massive opportunity for podcasters. Like, Andy, I don't know if you have a podcast, but if you do, I would suggest maybe putting the name of your podcast in next to your name. So when we get the boost, we could say Andy Leeman from the such and such podcast, we'd be happy to talk about your show, give us a boost. Tell us what your show is, and send us a message. And we will read it live on air. And I hope to do more of these live on air. It's a it's a podcast, on demand on air. Live in the past. But we want to do more and more of these we want to give shout outs to your shows. So if you have a podcast and you're listening, go find a podcast app that supports value for value light cast ematic like found nap send me an invoice. Let me give you some stats to get started, and then boost our show so we can talk about it. The next boost came from Dave Jones Dave boosted us 4876 SATs he's the big booster of the week. I don't have a sound for that. But I'll play this

Jordan: 41:30

buoy. Ah.

Kevin: 41:33

They thank you so much for the boost again a huge supporter of the show. He says that fiber boost bank is top notch and Alban Have you tried to hat since you leave most of your body, you lose most of your body heat through your head. So maybe you don't even know he's a jacket.

Alban: 41:47

Man. Okay, point of clarification. For the third time, I don't have a heat regulation problem. I had a sickness problem like three episodes ago. So I wore a jacket. But um, I live in Florida. So jackets and hats are almost not necessary, most months of the year. So I will wear a hat. And thank you for the recommendation. But it will be for style purposes rather than for heat purposes. Yeah.

Kevin: 42:14

And one of the things people do when they boost is sometimes the number of sets that they're boosting, you have some meaning. But I'm really bad about like the numerology game like I don't understand. So if you're boosting us and your number and the number of sets you're boosting means something you're gonna have to help us get into this more. So David for 876 is something that I should know. Help me out, man. Like in the next boost? Give me some clues. Yeah. And I love the puzzle aspect of it. But I don't know exactly what it is. That album just Google the number

Alban: 42:42

IRS Form 4876 A election to be treated as an interest charged domestic international sales Corporation. I gotta be that right probably. Is that Yeah, it's

Jordan: 42:53

probably either either that the Illuminati, so one of the could be both actually,

Kevin: 42:58

I keep boosting. So when I boost pod land, James keeps, he doesn't understand what my numbers mean. But it's I boost him the exact number of new people who signed up for Buzzsprout. Each week that number is available on our homepage. So James is listening to this. That's what that number is like, how's

Alban: 43:14

he gonna figure that out? Well,

Kevin: 43:15

he says it sometimes because we sponsor his podcast. So he'll say like, last week, 4126 people signed up to be a Buzzsprout podcaster. And you can too, thanks for supporting the show. He says that and then I boosted that same number, but he hasn't connected this to so here's your clues. Yeah,

Alban: 43:29

I wouldn't have I wouldn't know that number. I mean, I should know that number because that's my job. But I wouldn't know it off the top my head. Yeah.

Kevin: 43:37

So the number game is fun and something you can get into too. If you start using a value for value enabled podcast app. Kieran from mere mortals podcast has boosted us 1000 SATs. Thank you, Karen. He says you guys mentioned the dreaded D word which is discoverability. And we did talk about it again today. How do you personally discover new shows considering that you're surrounded by them all day? So that's a good question. Jordan, how do you discover new podcasts,

Jordan: 43:59

I do a lot of browsing the podcast apps. And I also will sometimes browse the Buzzsprout share your latest episode or looking for guests or lease achievement, I found some really good podcasts in the Buzzsprout Facebook community group by looking through those threads and listening to people's new content that they've posted. Especially the achievements where you can tell that they like they're really taking off and have really awesome listeners or they've had something really cool happen. It's really fun to listen to those ones as well. But yeah, I do a lot of browsing, you know, on different apps. You know, Apple has a different feature algorithm than Spotify does. So sometimes I can find different podcasts in that way.

Alban: 44:48

Mine is mostly their interest based so mostly it'll be an interview with somebody that I'm interested in that person and by following them on like Twitter or something they'll mention I was on the podcast and I'll go listen to the show. If I get really interested in a topic, mostly I'll go and I'll subscribe to a bunch of podcasts and quickly weed out the ones that I don't enjoy. So like a few years ago, I was trying to learn everything I could about COVID. And right now I'm paying a lot of attention to Russia Ukraine stuff. So I'm finding podcasts that are talking about it, and quickly knocking out the ones that I don't necessarily enjoy, though. One of I mean, I said this last time with the discoverability. I don't discover tons of new podcasts. We work in podcasting, though, I'm probably not a podcast, super listener, like some people are. I listened to a fair amount of shows, but a lot of them are ones that have stuck with me for a couple of years. So probably not the best at finding new content.

Kevin: 45:47

I do. I mean, your questions that since you're surrounded by them all day, and that does happen once in a while, like I get pulled into support cases on a pretty regular basis. So usually, maybe one a day, maybe, you know, one every other day, and usually in the, in the process of helping that podcaster with whatever answer they're looking for, I do usually listen to some of it. And if it ends up being something I'm interested in, I will subscribe. But that's not the main way that I find. The main way that I find podcasts is one probably listening to other podcasts that do some sort of cross promotion or something. I'll be listening to a podcast I listen to regularly and then somebody's doing like a promotion or might have a guest on their show or something. And then I'm interested in that. And I'll go find it and subscribe. And the other way is just talking to other people. So since we work in a podcasting company, we are all surrounded by podcasts all the time. So it's a topic of conversation that comes up regularly, whether we're having lunch or just a chat around the watercooler. Oftentimes, people will go ahead and mention a new podcast that I find interesting. And I'll subscribe that.

Alban: 46:47

You know, one way we don't find new podcasts was that people finding our emails and our RSS feeds and sending a spam.

Jordan: 46:55

Yeah, I've actually heard about that a lot from the Buzzsprout Facebook community group. There's been post after post after post about this person's emailing me I'm getting this Is this legitimate? What's legitimate? And yeah, it's a pretty intense how many spam emails are coming in?

Kevin: 47:14

So let me give a little background. What can happen to podcasters is that every podcast that is available online has an email address for the podcast that is listed in the RSS feed. And it doesn't have to be your personal email address. But it's it often is and if it's not, then it would be a general email address that's used to contact people who make the show. And because this is public, and because it's an email address, most people in the podcast space have long, there's kind of been an unwritten rule and respected rule that we won't scrape email addresses out of podcast feeds, and then cold email those people doing so would be like most people would consider that spamming. Yeah, there are some laws and regulations like in especially like in the in Europe, in Canada, where this stuff is illegal. I don't know how well that's enforced, or how much they follow up on it. But it is illegal in some places. And in all places, it's just looked down upon like it's frowned upon, right? It's it's spamming, just because your email addresses available in a public space does not give that doesn't give people permission to cold email it, especially like in a mass way. But more and more, it seems to be happening in the podcasting space. People are using this as a marketing tactic to go out and reach out to 1000s, hundreds of 1000s of people without their permission and make them an offer. It's not just podcast hosts, although that has been happening a lot over the past couple of weeks. But it's also happening with this any offer that would be somewhat attractive to somebody in the podcasting space. We're starting to see more and more emails.

Alban: 48:49

Yeah, and this is not unique to podcasting, like I on the regular get emails from people who maintain massive lists. And they're like, oh, we have all the email addresses of one of your competitors do you want them and I hit spam, because I'm like spam, or we had the entire list of everyone who plot who went to Podcast Movement last year. And then I send it to Podcast Movement. I'm like, Ah, this looks like, you know, it's not legit. It's actually never have a podcast move. But with a different conference. I was like, I sent it to him. And I was like, Hey, I don't know if your list got stolen. Or if this is just totally bogus. People send that stuff all the time. And it is a email marketing tactic, but it is one that I don't think works very well, and is also unethical. And so we've never leaned into that. I mean, I think it was like 2014 The first time someone pointed out, Hey, we could get all these email addresses. And then we thought about it for 30 seconds and said, yeah, there's no way we do that. That's like knocking on everyone's door and trying to sell them something like it's annoying and maybe you make a couple sales, but it doesn't feel right.

Jordan: 49:55

Yeah, and people can really tell you know, it's funny because A lot of the posts I'm seeing of people sharing these emails, they're mostly making fun of them. So I don't think it has the effect that the companies setting the spam emails are intending. Because it's very, like generalized and sometimes really funny. Like, wow, we noticed you published up to 10 episodes, we like you to be an expert. You know, it. It's not good. It doesn't work. It just annoys people. There's these spammy things. But you know, there's also some things where it's more of an announcement like, yes, they are just emailing everybody. But it's an announcement for maybe like a sponsorship program or an incubator program. So pod move daily announced that there's a major media company, emailing people to join their incubator program with them, and I Heart Radio, they're partnering up with I Heart Radio. But if you read the fine print, any thing that you send to them, if you're in the incubator program, they own your intellectual property, so you do not own your podcast. So it's just kind of a reminder to podcasters that you need to be really careful, sometimes there are things that are helpful. And you could do your homework, you could look into it, but be really, really, really sure that you look at those terms and conditions, because some people might have genuine intentions of wanting to help you. And then others might just have genuine intentions of wanting to help their company grow. Right.

Kevin: 51:30

And it's very different. If somebody seeks out your podcast and looks at your RSS feed and finds an email address, and then emails you personally, that's a very different offer, than somebody who uses technology to scrape 1000s or hundreds of 1000s of podcast feeds, pull email addresses, and then send emails that start something like, Hey, friend, I noticed that you're a podcaster. And I want to tell you about this thing, and that they're not approaching you one on one, that's a mass email that's going out. And the best way to deal with that stuff is just to hit the spam button in your email client. So whatever email client you use, whether it be you know, Outlook, or Gmail, or Yahoo or something, they all have spam buttons, hit it and report it as spam, that actually does a lot to impact their ability to continue to send emails like that. So as the what the services do, what like, we'll just take Gmail, for example, it learns that, oh, this company sent out you know, 10,000 emails to Gmail users, and 400 of them mark that as spam. So we're just going to go ahead and move that to the junk mail folder of everybody who got it. So you're really helping everyone out, and you're cutting down on spam and junk mail in general. So that's the best way to do it. If you recognize it as spam, it doesn't feel personal. It doesn't feel like somebody individually reaching out to you mark it as such and move on.

Alban: 52:40

Yeah, I would say almost every day, I mark at least five emails to block. And every once in a while a spam. And so people if they reach out, and they're like, hey, here, I want to be on your podcast, and they're listing a different Buzzsprout podcast, Mike, you probably did reach out to me personally, I'm not going to spam it because I don't want to hurt your ability to send emails. But I don't want your six follow up. Like this is your last opportunity to have me on your podcast. So that one gets blocked, because I just don't want to hear it from it again, spam, if people are spamming you, that is a good thing to hit that button. Because some of these are spam, some are all the way over to a scam, like they're actively doing something that is trying to harm people. And all email clients, like Kevin said, are actively looking at it, it's not a big percent, it's like is half a percent of the people who get this marking is spam. That's a huge red flag to Gmail. And it massively will hurt their ability to send more of these spammy emails if people are hitting that. So you're getting emails that you did not sign up for, that you can't unsubscribe from that are obviously a list that was stolen or scraped. Go ahead and just hit spam. Move on with your life. And no, you did a little bit of good for people's inboxes.

Jordan: 54:01

Don't click links.

Alban: 54:02

Don't click links.

Jordan: 54:03

Don't click links. Don't do it.

Alban: 54:05

Yeah, I one of the things if you don't know who it came from, don't click their link, search. If you think Hey, this looks good. Search that in Google and then find it on your own. Because it may say, hey, go to your at&t account to sign up for some new services. Well, when you click that you may be on like at&t, dot ru.com or something you're on some weird website that's stealing your info in, you could just search at&t and go over there and update your account if that's really needed. So it's a good way to avoid any of the truly scammy ones.

Kevin: 54:41

All right, well, let's wrap up the episode with some good news. Jordan, you found a news article today that featured a really awesome Buzzsprout podcast called Dark tales, right?

Jordan: 54:51

Yeah, dark tale storytime podcast was featured in the news, the host of dark tale storytime. Jonathan comer. is autistic and so he was featured for autism awareness because his podcast, you know, kind of brings inclusivity to storytelling and having like a geekier side and not being the cool kid and stuff like that. So it's a really awesome podcast. It's really fun to see. Fellow Buzzsprout podcaster can get lifted up.

Kevin: 55:21

Great work, Jonathan, and thank you for putting out that podcast dork tales. Storytime. That's it sounds like a fantastic show. We're gonna check it out ourselves, and we will leave a link to it in the show notes of this episode. So Jordan, we have come to the end of the episode. Thank you so much for joining us and CO hosting today. Would you like to take us out?

Jordan: 55:39

Yes. Thanks for listening to another episode of Buzzcast and keep podcasting