Do Not Go Gentle Into That Metaverse

In this episode, the hosts share news of a new Buzzsprout feature, and discuss the Apple Podcasts search function, QR codes, AI tech in podcasting, and podcasts in the metaverse.

Buzzsprout Share Page
This page contains all of your directory links and social media channels. This way followers can easily listen through their favorite podcasting app!
https://www.buzzsprout.com/help/94-sharing-your-podcast

Apple Podcasts Search
Apple Podcasts discloses how their search in the app works & how to optimize your podcast for ranking in their results
https://podcasters.apple.com/support/3686-search-on-apple-podcasts

Podcasting Q&A Episode: SEO for Podcasts
 https://pqa.buzzsprout.com/328913/10675064-seo-for-podcasts

QR codes
Podcasting Q&A Episode: Using QR Codes for Podcast Promotion
https://pqa.buzzsprout.com/328913/10772851-using-qr-codes-for-podcast-promotion

Steven Robles QR Code Shortcut: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/e5e5bf765cd249d4b69762594bbc7f61

AI in Podcasting
Sonantic AI Voices
https://www.sonantic.io/

Fathom AI Search
https://hello.fathom.fm/

Fathom Ken Miller interview on Podland:
https://www.podland.news/1538779/10803400-interview-with-ken-miller-from-fathom-spotify-buys-an-ai-voice-service-google-podcasts-slips-up-in-pride-month-sam-looks-different-to-what-adam-curry-thinks

Podcasts in the Metaverse
iHeartLand in Roblox
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220608005163/en/ 

Buzzsprout Ads
Podcasting Q&A Episode: How to Create an Effective Podcast Promo
https://pqa.buzzsprout.com/328913/10819074-how-to-create-an-effective-podcast-promo

Sounds Profitable: The Creators Webinar 6/28/2022
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Q2NmOFYETmSUgQq5IJQsBg

Transcript

Kevin: 0:00

Alban Are you on board yet?

Alban: 0:01

No, like so far away from being on board. You guys are very good at living in the "this is a good idea" world and once something gets to like some percentage of happening I get the okay this is how much work it takes like

Jordan: 0:17

Alban who hurt you who hurt you?

Alban: 0:20

Kevin! Many times! So Kevin, thanks for the real time follow up last episode,

Kevin: 0:35

what was the real time follow up?

Alban: 0:36

After we wrap up the episode you're like, "oh, by the way, the Hummer is out. I just didn't want to correct you on the episode." So now I've got other people correcting me, we could've edited out, I could have come up with something better. I have this whole rant about things not releasing. And you're like, yeah, that I hear at least

Kevin: 0:55

I didn't want to interrupt your flow.

Jordan: 0:57

I think the last episode was just kind of like the whoopsie episode, because I don't know if you caught it, too. I didn't catch it until I was editing. But my math was like horrendous during a segment. Because if there's two things that are $2,400, I said, that's just under $6,000.

Kevin: 1:15

Well, it is under six, it is under $6,000.

Jordan: 1:18

But yeah, I also did some bad math. And I caught it. And I was waiting for people to come at me, but no one did.

Alban: 1:24

It's also under $12,000 as well. So I don't know, do we want corrections because corrections, at least mean people are paying attention. And it's important to them. But the downside, obviously is that you are corrected. But I don't know which way is better, which was worse. I think we want the corrections.

Jordan: 1:41

Yeah, I don't mind being corrected, as long as it's kind. As long as it's not like you idiot

Alban: 1:48

This is why you only get three stars! You can't math. Well, thanks to everybody who didn't correct? I don't know, I got nothing.

Jordan: 2:02

So there's a change that quietly came on to Buzzsprout users websites, and it's the new Share page. I don't know if they have noticed it, they may not have noticed that it's there.

Kevin: 2:13

The share page is the answer to the question of, hey, I want to share my podcast, what links should I use? And so that is a question that we get all the time through support, which saw a lot in our Facebook group, people asking on Twitter, they're new to podcasting, they have a Buzzsprout account, they probably don't have their own website, people who like have their own website, just share the website. But we give you a podcast website when you create a Buzzsprout account. But people were looking for something different. There was an itch that that page was not scratching, it was almost like they wanted like, if you're familiar with Link tree, they wanted a page like that. They just wanted a page that they could link to that had links to all the other places that people could listen to their podcast episodes not necessarily listened right on that page itself. And so the page that comes with your Buzzsprout account, had little bit information about your podcasts, links to all of your episodes, and then a really nice player that you could play and listen to any of those episodes. But that was actually more than what in their mind. They were thinking No, I just want a page that links out to Apple podcasts and Spotify and Google podcasts and Overcast and Pocketcast any other place where any of my potential listeners might use to listen to podcasts. I want to link to a page that just has all those options on it, nothing else. And so we gave it all thought and after looking at all the different solutions that people were using for this, we're like, Oh, I think we can give you exactly the link that solves that question. Exactly. Which is what if I just want to share a link to my podcast? What link should I share, and that's the share page. And so if you log in to your Buzzsprout account, and you click on website, where there used to just be a link to your podcast website, now there's two links, there's a link to your podcast website. Of course, we didn't take that away. But there's also a new Share page. And that share page is exactly what I just described. It is just a podcast link page, it has your artwork, a little bit of your description, and then links to all the different players where your podcast exists.

Jordan: 4:03

If they want to look at their Buzzsprout share page, all you have to do is put in their Buzzsprout URL slash share. Yeah,

Kevin: 4:09

yeah. So I mean, I love it because I love the idea of third party services for sure. But there's there's some simple things that just make sense to have all in one place. And this idea of like going out and creating a link tree account or another service. There's multiple services that create things like this, just to set something up like this really basic and simple. And then having to put in all this information that already exists in your Buzzsprout account, like links to your apple podcast page in Google podcast, and what's your Spotify URL, all that stuff? It just seemed totally redundant. And so that's why we like, you know, we look for opportunities like that. And we say, Hey, can we give the same thing and save people a whole lot of headache and work? Yeah, we absolutely can. And so this is a this was a fun project wasn't a huge project, but it was a fun one, to be able to just take all the information that we already have presented in a different way and give people the answer to that question of which page should I share? Well, now there's a really simple answer. There's a sharing Like right inside your Buzzsprout account, you can share that anywhere looks great on any browser, mobile, desktop, laptop, whatever you look at it on, it looks great. And people can jump off and listen to your podcast and whatever app they like.

Jordan: 5:10

Yeah, I actually set up a link tree account for my podcast. And I remember going through that like trying to learn a new platform and trying to get all of the URLs for my links, and then figure out how to how I wanted to design and, you know, trying to remember which podcast platforms I needed to include on my link tree. And this is exponentially easier. I wish they had this instead, when I first was setting up, because it's so handy to have on your social media pages, a lot of those pages such as like Instagram or something like that, they only allow you to have one website. So it's really handy to have a link that just includes your social your your website, link, your podcast, subscription links, all of that together. So I am very, very excited about this feature.

Alban: 6:01

You know what I am excited about what search on Apple podcasts?

Jordan: 6:05

Yes.

Kevin: 6:05

Whoa, what's new on search with Apple podcast?

Jordan: 6:09

After so much speculation. Apple podcast is finally shared how the apple podcast search works.

Alban: 6:16

I liked that they released this right after you and I did our episode on podcast SEO. I know. Like the next day, I'm sure that um, they're heavy listeners of Podcasting Q&A, I'm sure. So maybe they heard it went out. Let's get that out there.

Jordan: 6:32

You know, and here we are, again. I was wrong during--Yes, I was wrong, you get wrong. What I got wrong--and I'm wondering if maybe this is like one of those Mandela effects--I just have such a clear memory of it highlighting words in a podcast description, an episode description. And it kills me. They said, it's not! Like, I'm visualizing, and I have an experience that never existed is what it feels like.

Alban: 6:58

Yeah, one of the things this article says that's different than what we've always told people. And I still believe I kind of want to go test it now. So here's what Apple says how Apple podcasts search works, some of the main factors that Apple podcasts uses for your search and said main factors. So there may be others. But metadata, including show name, channel name, and episode title. And, you know, we've always heard that the author tag was included in search like that was included. So I was surprised to not see that included here. I don't know if that's maybe a change, we could maybe go test and start searching.

Jordan: 7:37

So yeah, I searched my name. And my name is not included in the show name, the channel name, episode title, and nothing like that. And it pulled up my podcast, I think it does also do the author tag, they just didn't list that which is interesting.

Alban: 7:51

Oh, good. So the author tag is still included there. Other things that we're seeing popularity, they're sharing podcasts, with large followers and lots of plays and Apple podcasts. And also podcasts, they get lots of engagement, such as whether or not they're played or followed, those seem to be prioritized in search results. So there can be multiple podcasts called the daily. And Apple is going to prioritize the one from the New York Times rather than the one from like somebody who just went ahead and started copying a feed. Are there any takeaways here, Jordan, when you were reading this, that you thought maybe this, we should change some of our recommendations?

Jordan: 8:29

Not really. The only takeaway that I gathered from this as a that they do not pull from the episode description, they actually don't list transcriptions, which I thought was interesting, because I know that there is some searching going on in transcriptions and then also that in order to improve your ranking, they say to send more people to Apple podcasts so that you can get more listeners more listener engagement, and then thereby improve your ranking on their search results.

Alban: 9:02

Yeah, I mean, this is kind of the dilemma that we're caught for a lot of these rankings, you can go different ways you can split everybody up, you can use a Buzzsprout share page and say, Hey, go listen on whatever podcasting app you want to listen on. But if you go talk to Spotify, or you talk to Apple, or you at least read these kinds of pages, they're all going to say, Hey, you're going to perform better if we see that you're actually a big show. So one way to make yourself a bigger show is by using Apple and Spotify both have really good promotion tool. So you can get a little Spotify player, Apple will let you make a QR code that will go directly to your apple podcast page. They both have lots of these options. And they're both saying, hey, why don't you just use ours? And if you do, then you'll be bigger on our platform, and then you're gonna get even higher rankings. And so I know there's some podcasts that makes sense for that. They're kind of doubling or tripling down on a single platform. I do think that this is advice that would probably work I think what you're losing, though, is going to be much bigger than what you gain. Does that make sense? Like, yeah, you might get 10% more exposure on a specific platform. But that's probably gonna be offset by not being available on other platforms or by you trying to encourage people to do something that doesn't fit for them.

Jordan: 10:16

Yeah. And that kind of like circles back to the whole point of Apple podcasts, you know, being on iPhone since iPhone users are primarily in the US. And I kind of feel like if you're only promoting yourself on that one platform or linking to that one platform, you're kind of cutting yourself off. It's like you said, and something that people really need to remember is that it's not available on all devices around the world.

Alban: 10:42

Yeah, I like that Apple has been going on this bend lately of just kind of going through and talking more about how Apple podcasts works, how search works, how the rankings work, how to get featured, and new and noteworthy, like they're starting to put out a lot more. So we're getting a lot less of the like silly podcast guru stuff we used to get in the past where people tell you exactly how to make this stuff work. And it never did,

Jordan: 11:04

how to get new noteworthy. Yeah.

Alban: 11:08

Some of those gurus at one point, now we're getting the data from Apple. So I appreciate that quite a bit. A lot of this is stuff that we believe to already be true. And this is, you know, what you and I've talked about when we did the SEO episode that we can link to, but it's good to have it all affirmed. And we will let you know if there are any changes.

Jordan: 11:33

On this QR code train, they're really digging into it.

Alban: 11:37

How long have QR codes been around? It's been a long time, like 20 years.

Jordan: 11:43

I don't think it's been 20 years yet. That they're out. It's just under 20.

Alban: 11:49

It's definitely under or over two, I--when was the QR code...?

Jordan: 11:52

I want to say 2005. I don't know though.

Alban: 11:53

1994 was the first QR code over 20 years ago. I remember when QR codes, everyone was like trying to make them a thing in like 2007. There was a point where people were like QR codes are a thing. And they were really not a thing.

Kevin: 12:15

I saw it first on what like the posters that people put up for bands and shows. That's that's where I first started seeing them. And that was not back in 94. That was 10 years ago.

Jordan: 12:26

When I worked at the library, and we did like events and stuff like that, we would do the QR codes on those little like flyer things that you see in the library where people could like, sign up and stuff. And yeah, I mean, this was back in like 2008. And literally nobody did. They probably even know what it was.

Alban: 12:46

So when when were you doing your first QR codes?(2008.) Well, so QR codes have been kind of a thing since iPhone and smartphones were out. And I feel like for a long time people were trying to make it happen. And it really wasn't really picking up. And the last few years, at least in the US QR codes have kind of had their moment. As soon as we started going to restaurants and realizing touching the same dirty menu as somebody who might have COVID maybe wasn't the best idea. Then restaurants were like, hey, what have you scanned this little QR code on the table, and you could look at the menu on your phone, right?

Kevin: 13:26

You don't want to touch the Menu that like gets wiped down between every patron. So dig out that phone that you sit on and use when you're in the restroom and use that right before you eat. That's the solution.

Alban: 13:36

To be clear, Kevin menus are highly unlikely to have been wiped down between every patron. I think that if you're going to celebrity, you know restaurants with laminated menus that have been laid down. I don't think that that's the reality like an Applebee's. Yeah,

Kevin: 13:52

I exclusively eat at restaurants where they wipe down the menu between every patron it's either

Alban: 13:56

like you get the paper menu that was like printed out that day and is thrown away at the end. Or it's probably not getting wiped down. I think the phone at least you have control you got to white, you know washed your own hands. And so you now have control over that piece versus the menu where you are subjected to whatever hygiene the previous user that menu decided was appropriate. So QR codes and menus big thumbs up for me.

Kevin: 14:23

I just steer clear of any restaurant that I need to use a menu for at all. I won't go there.

Alban: 14:29

How do you know what's on the menu? You haven't been there before? I

Kevin: 14:32

have been there before. So much so that I walk in they say welcome Mr. Fenn. Good to see you again. Would you have your usual when I say absolutely. And then the bill is just taken care of from that point forward. And they say the chef has something special for you.

Alban: 14:45

He's like a character from The Sopranos or something. Oh, he got the table for you in the corner. So anyway, back to why we are talking about QR codes. QR codes at least in Jordan's in my world have had like a moment there's a lot Last week, I think it started James Cridland asked me, the editor of pod News asked me about QR codes are recommended, like, you know, it'd be really cool for podcasts to start promoting with QR codes. Maybe Buzzsprout could create QR codes. Yeah. And then I was like, oh, did you listen, Jordan did an episode on QR codes today. And I feel like since then, James tweeted me today and he found a newspaper in Australia that is actually has a QR code says, listen to our podcast, like in the newspaper. And this is not interesting. But I also have QR codes on like, the coke can I'm drinking right now like QR codes definitely are happening now. And might be a good way for people to start promoting their podcasts.

Jordan: 15:40

They are Yeah, they're on business cards. They're on merch I'm using see them on people's like T shirts at like conferences and like people can like scan them. They're on sponsorship boards, they're on all sorts of things. They're just they're everywhere, or even being like painted into murals. I've seen those before, too. It's very cool. Yeah, I think it is a tool that can be used for podcasts. And I think podcasters are starting to figure that out. I do see some recommendations to put QR codes on social media. But that doesn't really make sense to me. And if I'm on my phone, scrolling social media, how do you scan a QR code? When you're already on your phone? Why can't you just like click a link? It just, it doesn't make sense to me. Yeah,

Alban: 16:20

I mean, it is possible to save that picture to a phone and now click the QR code on a photo. That's defeats the purpose. The whole point was the fidelity of a URL is perfect. When I'm on, you know, on social, I can just click the URL and it's over. It's done. I'm at the place I want. QR codes are helpful for the real world where being able to take a picture of some URL, the fidelity is not high enough. And so you often get mistakes. And if something looks like a D, and it really was a B, or a C and L or something, the minute that you get any character wrong, the whole thing's broken. And the benefit of barcodes and QR codes is that there's redundancy built in. And it's really easy to tell, okay, I can figure out what the URL is here. So they're great in the real world. If anyone's putting them out there on their website. That's insane.

Jordan: 17:14

You would be surprised how much advice I have seen of people recommending that with QR codes. You should put them as your Facebook cover photo or make it into your profile picture or something like that. And

Alban: 17:28

your profile photos up a QR code.

Jordan: 17:31

Yeah. And I think it is the stupidest advice I've ever seen. If you're on a device already, just No, don't do that. No one's gonna be like printing out your Facebook profile and like putting it up around town. It's just not going to happen.

Alban: 17:45

If people are pretty your Facebook profile photo and scanning it, you've got bigger issues than getting people to your website.

Jordan: 17:52

It probably happens a lot more often than you think Alban.

Alban: 17:58

I would guess no one has printed my Facebook profile photo.

Jordan: 18:04

There's a reason why you haven't seen my back wall here. I've got like a

Alban: 18:12

QR codes. They're useful. I liked that people are starting to use them, we should make a little explainer on how to make a QR code. I think Steven Robles has shared like a iPhone shortcut to create a QR code for a website. So we could put that in our description. It'd be nice to take your Buzzsprout share page, drop it in there, generate that QR code. And you can use that on physical things that you print. So business cards, or maybe a t shirt, I probably wouldn't do that. Maybe flyers, things in the real world where people would like the ability to scan and listen right away. So use them there. Don't use them on a resume.

Kevin: 18:53

Yeah, we're talking about James pod News gives you a QR code in their directory. So pod news.net has a podcast directory, you can type in any podcast name, it'll bring up a page that gives you a whole bunch of information about the podcast and he has a QR code that he generates for you. I just tested it out. And it takes you when I scan that with my phone and I tap the link, it takes me to a webpage off of pod news.net. And then since I'm on my iPhone, it automatically flips over to Apple podcasts and loads the show. Oh, cool. That's great. Except you know me, I don't use Apple podcasts. So now I got to figure out how to get that over into my podcast app. So it's like I think the Buzzsprout implementation would be like if we had a share page, we could bring them to the QR codes can all go there. All right.

Alban: 19:32

Well, this actually has been a feature request from James Kevin to take people to the share page, so you can make his dream a reality.

Kevin: 19:40

It's funny because he has it. He has it from his own site, and he's requesting it in his Buzzsprout site. I'm gonna follow up with him figure out what's the what do you how do you want us to do it differently than the way you do it?

Alban: 19:50

I think he's trying to recommend a good feature for Buzzsprout customers who are using a shared page rather than saying, Hey, I desperately need this for my show. James is smarter He could have made this himself. He's literally built an app for everybody else to have it. I think he's just saying, Hey, cool feature, here's a little enhancement that might make it even better.

Kevin: 20:09

You know, the category that I put QR codes in is Do you guys remember early 2000s? I think like before the iPhone became popular.

Jordan: 20:18

Yeah, I remember the early 2000s. Okay,

Kevin: 20:20

so did you have like international friends in the early 2000s? Because the US was way behind the rest of the world when it came to texting. No. So like, I had some friends in Germany, I had some friends who lived in Australia, and they would come over to us and they would be like, you guys don't text over here. It's crazy. Like we text for everything. And back then we're like, why do you seriously on these old flip phones where you had to use like Tina, no, the t nine. Yeah, text was, it was terrible. Well, you couldn't text because it was so expensive. You had to pay per text. Yeah, there was also that that happened to us. That's the rest of the world was ahead. Anyway, I use this as a kind of analogy. I think QR codes as much as they're kind of having their heyday here in the US because of, you know, the menu situation, I think, and the rest of the world. They're a little bit ahead of us on this. They're putting them everywhere. Calvin and I were just in London and all the we're writing, what do they call it the tube? Yeah. Like, there's QR codes all over the maps and all this stuff. And it's, it's great. Like, we know how to do it. It's just we don't see them as much in the US as we do internationally.

Alban: 21:21

I mean, I think the big moment was when I think it's two years ago, that Apple started having just if you use your camera and saw QR code, it would go, Oh, that's a URL and let you click it right there. When we had to download a designated QR code scanner app that had like weird ads all over it. Nobody really wanted to do that. And so I think the US, which has a pretty high concentration of iPhone users, people didn't really want to put QR codes out there. Because not everybody knew how to scan them and make it work. The rest of the world had figured it out. We were a little bit behind. But yeah, like your texting example, I think we're starting to catch up. And we're going to continue texting, and we're going to continue clicking QR codes. And I'm sure the rest of the world has figured out some other stuff that we might have in a few years.

Jordan: 22:11

Maybe just a couple things.

Alban: 22:13

We gave everybody like democracy. So I feel like we're fine. We're well, the

Jordan: 22:17

Greeks gave everybody democracy, don't you? Oh, no.

Alban: 22:25

That's a myth. That's not real. No way. That's just Greek propaganda. Again.

Jordan: 22:36

I included the story of Sonantic voice AI that Spotify acquired, because I am seeing so much more news lately about these podcasting, audio companies acquiring these voice AI systems. And I kind of feel like they're trying to push podcasting into more of an AI generated thing. Like, I don't understand why this is trending right now.

Alban: 23:03

I mean, my guess is that there's lots of written content. And it's pretty easy to create written content, it's a little bit harder to create audio content. You know, when we experienced this with writing blog posts, and then making podcasts out of it, and there's a big play, if you can figure out how to make digital voices, then I think the the theory would be, hey, there's all this great written content in the world, we'll just show up at CNN dot coms headquarters and say, Hey, let our AI create audio of all these stories, and then you can put it out on podcast and you can put it out everywhere, and you're gonna get so much more exposure for the existing content. And so has a nice little selling point, I think it's going to be very easy for the salesmen and saleswomen of the world to go and pitch big companies with written content do this stuff. It'll really depend on you know, is this a good implementation? And right now, I think there's a lot of people who are listening to content. But in a world where like, every New York Times article, and every CNN piece and every Reddit thread has been AI generated audio, are people going to listen to that stuff? Or maybe the listen to like the first few that start digitizing stuff. But does the future look like the entire web can be consumed through audio? And if that's the case, wouldn't it make more sense just for the audio to be generated by your device?

Jordan: 24:26

Now that I'm thinking about it, I do see some benefits from an accessibility and a production standpoint. So accessibility wise, let's say that somebody has had a surgery that left them with the inability to speak clearly or you know, anything like that. So I could see it giving a voice to people who want to podcast and maybe aren't able to because of the nature of the medium, but it also kind of intrigued me in a way from a production standpoint, and I'm thinking of like journalistic or maybe even like a translation standpoint, you know, during it interviews when they have somebody speaking another language other than English, and you have the translator speaking over the top of them, I could see somebody doing a translation of what the person is saying and running the AI translation in audio format. And then also, I can kind of see it from a standpoint of production in even a fiction narrative kind of style. So let's say that you're somebody who has this like really great story, and you have these different players, but you don't have voice actors. Some of this AI is actually really capable of doing very intricate voice work. And it's fascinating. But you can create different characters even and have them speak their lines, have them speak a certain way or put certain inflections on the things that they're saying, there's different uses for this now that I'm thinking about it. And maybe that's the reason why it's just kind of like trending and, and people are trying to get in on it. Maybe they're seeing something with that in the future.

Alban: 25:56

There's definitely some people who are starting to use it, like you're saying to translate into another language and then create a think one of these companies calls it like a synthetic voice. It's your voice as if you were speaking a language that you don't speak. I think Brian Barletta sounds profitable has played with this. But again, like the translation has to be really good before that starts making sense. And the synthetic voice has to be pretty close to your voice for it to really make sense. There's also the solution of just paying somebody who's a native speaker of that language to read it. And you can see like, it's got to be pretty dang good before it crosses the uncanny valley, from Robo voice to kinda like your voice to actually the sounds very similar to my voice. If I was speaking a language I don't speak. So. It's not like at that level yet where I get very excited. But maybe in the future, we'll be listening to lots of this stuff. And we'll open up the doors to a ton of new content. But speaking of AI and podcasting, Have either of you played with this? Fathom app? fathom.fm. A little bit Fathom AI recommends? I don't know if I like this tagline. But Fathom is the podcast player that listens to you. It's like everybody's fear about Facebook or Google like listening in on your conversations and fathoms like no, that's not a conspiracy theory. That's the selling.

Kevin: 27:24

tagline seems like something they would use as a joke. And like a movie or TV show for a company that's got caught doing something creepy.

Alban: 27:31

But it does actually listen to you, you click to record something, and you can ask questions. And what Fathom does is it's a search engine that is going through tons of transcripts of podcasts, and actually try to find clips from these podcasts to play for you. That will actually answer your question.

Jordan: 27:50

I listened to the interview on pod land between Sam Sethi and Ken Miller, who created fathom, and I don't know if you guys, you guys didn't listen to it yet. Right?

Kevin: 28:02

I listen to part of it. I haven't listened to whole thing yet. I'll have to

Jordan: 28:05

link to it's a very, very good interview. But yeah, Ken Miller basically indicated that they're working on transcribing the podcasts. But then yeah, they also extract the answers from the questions that you ask in this app into listening will snippets from the podcasts. And currently, he said that they only have transcribed about 3000 podcasts. And they are mainly in the business and technology space. So if you're trying to find an answer for something like mental health, you might have more difficulty. But yeah, it's it's very interesting what he's trying to do with that with discoverability.

Alban: 28:43

So I played with it. And I started out with like, a little bit more advanced searches, I thought that we're going to probably break it. So the first one I searched was, will Michelle Obama run for president? And instantly I had three different podcasts that were definitely answering the question. They were like, oh, would Michelle run. This is why she said she wouldn't. Here's the examples. Here's why it wouldn't work. And I was like, Oh, that's pretty good. And I searched like, should I start a YouTube channel? And there are a bunch of examples of people talking about starting their channels or what that process was like. And then I searched one about podcasting and ended up getting a bunch of shows that we listed like pod land was kept popping up as the answer for a lot of podcasting questions. It was pretty good. I was surprised I expected it to be pretty bad. And it was good. And I could see this being a way to pretty quickly get exposure to a lot of new podcasts.

Jordan: 29:43

Yeah, he said in the interview that the AI actually works best when you ask high level questions and very, like have a lot of specificity and stuff like that. But yeah, if you ask very, very specific questions, and it will narrow it down quite well for you. and pull those clips, which I think the clips bit is what's really cool, especially if can you share them?

Alban: 30:06

I don't know, I didn't try to share any, we could check that out and maybe link to it. It does make a little bit of sense to me, though, that maybe those more in depth questions would make more sense. Because if you think about like high level, like I just searched QR code, during our last segment, the kind of content that Google will surface, there is like the Wikipedia page for QR code, and you get tons of information. And it's all really well organized around this big topic. There's not as many podcast episodes that are written that way. No one's recording, like a two hour conversation about the history of QR codes. And then QR code uses and QR code and alternatives. But a very specific question like, when was the QR code invented? There might that actually might be a question that's been asked in a podcast, and thus could be surfaced. So it doesn't make a little bit of sense to me just based on the types of content that we create in podcasts versus create on the web. So Fathom

Jordan: 31:06

is available on iOS and on the web right now. And the Android app should be available towards the end of July. All right, so

Kevin: 31:17

I don't want to I don't want to be Mr. Negative, but I'm having a hard time understanding if this is the best application for this technology. I just typed in the sample question that Alban put out there. Well, Michelle Obama run for president, it surfaced a podcast, Michelle Obama, 2024. Great. Like, it looks like that is going to answer my question. Now I can click the button and play that clip and listen for three minutes and see if they actually answer it. Or I can take that same question to Google and get my answer in about four seconds. I think there might be more potential beyond this. But as it exists today, do we think there's enough here, one of the things I did listen to in the beginning of that podcast interview was he said something about, I don't know, magical moments or something like that, like, that's what they're trying to do? Is there enough? Did they capture enough magic here to actually help it catch on?

Alban: 32:02

So there's two things I think that are valuable with fathom, there's one that, hey, could this be the primary way that you interact with a voice assistant or something? And so that's kind of what you seems like you're talking about Kevin, you're like, well, Google's already trying to do this with all their their voice assistant, Siri and all the other voice assistants. But the downside to all the other voice assistants is that they are kind of doing the same thing, that synthetic voice in the last segment was trying to do strip all the personality out, and then just say, Hey, we're generating all this content on the fly with a fake voice. But it's kind of cool that I can ask it, hey, is Michelle Obama going to run for president? And I'm not just getting an answer box on the top of Google, I had four or five different people having a discussion about why she might why she wouldn't and the positives and negatives. I thought that was cool that I could flip through a bunch of different answers. Right. But

Kevin: 32:59

that's, that's different. Like, you're not you're not really looking for an answer to that question. In an efficient means. What you're trying to do is you're trying to like explore the topic, but I don't have anybody to talk to who's maybe knowledgeable or available. And so I would like to listen to some podcasts where they're discussing this. And that's a great use case. Is that a use case that's big enough to support a business? I imagine there's the money behind the business like the build this sort of technology, certainly not cheap. So that's what I'm wondering, is it enough?

Jordan: 33:29

I think that maybe the emphasis on the search engine aspect is a little bit too much, because I kind of view this more as a podcast discovery tool.

Alban: 33:40

So that was the second thing I was gonna say is the first one is the voice assistant angle where the search engine and the second is we're going to help you find podcasts. So think of it as a competitor to like pods, or any of the other ones that have come out in the past. Well, I found a new podcast just searching couple of these queries, like, there's certain questions that I might be interested in, what's the future of AI? What is gonna happen with I think I put in something about YouTube and podcasting, and I found an episode of verge cast. And I was like, Oh, this is really good. I would listen to this episode. So right now my go to if I'm trying to find podcasts about a specific topic is to go to listen notes.com and search and then start like saving a bunch of those episodes to my queue on my phone and then start listening. This is actually quite a bit more efficient. If I just pop open Fathom and I can go, let me ask you a question and see if there's podcasts that are trying to answer the question that I'm trying to learn about.

Jordan: 34:38

Yeah, the clips are handy in that you don't have to listen to an entire podcast to find the spot where they talk about that particular topic. But it also is kind of a downside because the listener doesn't have to listen to the entire episode. Hear that one spot? I don't know there's I think that there's maybe like an upside downside bid for discoverability, but also maybe not as engaged listeners as you would get on other platforms.

Kevin: 35:07

You know, I haven't tried to solve the problem myself. So it's not really fair to say, but I feel like there's a lot of over complication going on in the podcast, Discovery solution world right now. Like, it could be as simple as this is where Apple back in the iTunes days when they launched the music store, they used to have a recommendation engine that was like, Hey, you would build these playlists, you would listen to all the songs, and then they would just match you with other people who listened to similar songs. But look, they've got 10 artists that you don't have on yours. And so it's kind of like other people who listen to this type of music. also listen to this. And I'm sure some of that's happening in the podcast space right now. But when we're talking about discoverability, like, show me something new, it's more like kind of like, look at what I already enjoy, and help me figure out something else that fits into the Ox. And maybe it's just a paradigm shift that has to happen in my mind. But when I think about a specific question that I want answered, I don't necessarily think a podcast is a solution to that question. Now, somewhere along that journey, like I might become interested enough in the topic to want to pursue it further. So now I'm interested in whatever like cryptocurrency podcasts have become, you know, super hot or something. So, if somebody starts to journeying down the road of Well, first of all, what is what is a Bitcoin? How do you do NF T's? What do you do all this stuff? At some point, they might get further far enough into that journey that would actually start looking for crypto podcasts. But I don't know that it's necessarily a starting point. What Fathom is doing is it seems like they're saying, hey, Podcasts can be a jumping off point for you to get interested in topics that you're interested in, or like to get more information. But I feels a little bit like too much too soon. I just have random questions that I want answers to, you know, I want a three second answer. I don't want the 30 minute answer. No, I don't know, I'm just a little bit skeptical. But I'm happy to be wrong. When anybody's doing anything cool in the space. I'm all excited about it. I'm just wondering, like sometimes we have cool technology, but not necessarily the right application right away. And sometimes we have cool technology that's being developed for other purposes. And it's being brought to the public in a certain way. That's not necessarily the ultimate end all solution of how it's going to be at the end of the day. So I don't want to totally knock it. I'm just saying I don't really get the business model here yet completely. But kudos to them for jumping in the space and trying to contribute and I hope it ends up being something awesome that I'm just not seeing it. I'm just not totally getting it.

Alban: 37:22

You know, there's upsides and downsides to different types of new technology. I've got one for you. That is all downside, in my opinion. Podcasts are entering the metaverse, I heart media and StateFarm, two of the most trusted brands in my house announced that they are redefining entertainment experiences in the metaverse with their AI Heartland arena, which they're launching on the Roblox gaming platform. Wow. Are you guys excited? Yeah, I'm in.

Jordan: 37:51

It's so funny, because I can see my 10 year old being excited about this. Can you? Yeah, I mean, so she's super into like, Kpop. Right. It's let's say that I heart does like a Black Pink concert in Roblox. You bet. She's gonna be right there. She'd be in on that. But I don't know, I don't really see the whole Well, here we are, again, in adopting new technologies and possibly being late to the party on that, you know, because I don't get it. I don't see it. It doesn't excite me.

Alban: 38:24

So I know that this has happened before. Maybe it's like two years ago, I want to say it was might have been marshmallow might was somebody did like a concert in fortnight. And I know, it was like a good crossover between an artist that was really popular among people of the age range that are going to be on fortnight I get that. What this is, is the naming rights to a digital space where maybe events are going to happen in Roblox, Ed so it's not just like, hey, fortnight set this up, and they got somebody to come on. And they had a digital concert during COVID, which all of that seemed make a ton of sense. This isn't Roblox doing it? This is StateFarm. And I hurt media who were like, Oh, we bought the naming rights to an area where hopefully one day many 10 year olds will be coming to digital concerts. And they'll see I heard media signage, and there'll be so positively influenced that they're gonna like, we're gonna make our money back on this. I'm not catching on how this is gonna make sense.

Jordan: 39:29

I don't know if you ever read the book or watch the movie of Ready Player One. Yes. It reminds me so much of that, where it's like they're buying this imaginary plot of land, and like staking their claim to it and then it's just like more storefronts that you can go visit but digitally like you know, it's not tangible or anything like that. They're trying to pitch it as with this technology with this partnership with this arena. Fans can connect To the top podcasters to the musicians, and I don't see how that's possible, I don't really understand that how you can interact so much other than just watching them do a performance or do a live show in these virtual spaces. And I don't understand how that's any different than doing like a live stream.

Alban: 40:19

This is the same thing that I feel like clubhouse tried to do. It's what fireside tried to do. Everyone's like, hey, we will be the place for all the creators and all the audience to come together. And it's gonna be amazing, because you'll all be here. But really what they've noticed is it's going to be amazing for them, the creator of this meeting point to skim some of the profits off for themselves. There's nothing wrong with that. But you haven't brought some like, new, exciting thing to this. What you've really done is said, Hey, wouldn't it be a great business model? If somebody owned the digital space where this thing happened? And I'm like, Yeah, I think it could be a great business model. And they're like, cool, so we're going to launch it. But what are you going to do? Are you Are they set up like 40 concerts? And are they have a strategy for marketing these kids and getting them in and loving State Farm or is it just kind of like, hey, we heard Metaverse is kind of like hot topic right now. And Roblox apparently will sell us like this cube of space for almost no money. And they'll also talk about it. Whatever. Let's just do it. Like I just don't. It just doesn't feel like this is happening.

Jordan: 41:35

Speaking of fireside Did you hear that Mark Cuban is taking the stage again at Podcast Movement in Dallas.

Kevin: 41:41

I honestly am shocked. I'm just like, knocked me off my chair.

Jordan: 41:46

And guess what he's talking about? They are talking about the metaverse. No. Yes, yes, it appears to me. And this is my assumption. I don't actually know because I don't keep up with them. But it appears to me that maybe the live chat space didn't work out so hot. And so they're like pivoting to this new exciting thing. The it's just like it's running from like shiny toy to shiny toy. You know what I mean? Like trying to find their place in it.

Alban: 42:13

I do think there's something to Kevin's point, is this the best use of the technology? I get that thought a lot when people start adding the hot technology on to what their existing pitches where people start talking about like, we're using Blockchain. But are you really is it actually useful in this scenario? Or are you just saying blockchain the word because you think you might get some people to invest? And AI has the same thing? Metaverse right now is the same thing. audio chat had its moment. You know, like two years ago for this. There's all these times that people want to stick the word on podcasting had its time where it got stuck on to people's things they were building. And then everyone went, Oh, cool. I'll buy that. I'll be more interested. But the metaverse I'm like, Yeah, in the future of VR experiences will be bigger. There's cool ideas there. I don't feel like people are building the metaverse with their building is, hey, this would be cool for me to hype up this thing. I'm already dealing to try to get a little bit more money for my startup.

Kevin: 43:16

I mean, what's going on? Why would they do that? It was terrible. I mean, I just think everyone absolutely agree. There was like, no, no one dissented from that vote. 100% of the people in attendance voted. That was a terrible presentation. Why in the world? Would they invite him back on the big stage again, for next year?

Jordan: 43:34

What you don't like being advertised to for like, 40 minutes straight?

Alban: 43:37

I don't know. You remember? I mean, last week, you and I kind of gave a little bit of grief to the podcast show. We're like, Oh, why are they it felt like more people got on stage to talk about their stuff than normal. And in the interim, I signed a speaker engagement thing for Podcast Movement, and explicitly says like, this is not an opportunity to pitch your own product. And I went me and that's why I love Podcast Movement so much. And it had totally gone past my mind. That Podcast Movement last year, it felt like Mark Cuban got on stage, because he's Mark Cuban. And then was like, alright, so I don't have a ton prepared besides like some softball questions about how this thing I built is going to crush podcasting. And I was just like, why are we here? Why is he speaking? This is not a good idea to go for round two. I don't know what what's the purpose, just so

Kevin: 44:26

everyone knows where I stand? I like Mark Cuban. Like, I think he's entertaining. I would listen to somebody interviewing him about his success in the business world or what it's like being on Shark Tank or what he looks for in a good investment, all this stuff. When it comes to him sitting down and talking about podcasting. I think that's where it all falls apart. He doesn't really he's not involved in space doesn't seem to really understand the space. And that was a bit of a train wreck last year when he tried to talk to podcasters about what the hot new thing in podcasting is going to be. It didn't resonate with anybody. Everyone who knew about podcasting was like, Dude, you're off your rocker. And sure enough, a year later, like he had no idea what was happening, and he built an app that flopped. And maybe they're trying to pivot or maybe they're not. I don't know what the heck's going on with it because it's irrelevant because no one's talking about it. And so here we are a year later, and they want to bring it back on the stage to do something similar. No, like IT guy Roz to interview him. I would show up for that keynote any day? Oh, yeah. Like I said, I like him. I think he's entertaining. I think he's got a ton of valuable information to get out. And it would be a huge draw for the conference, putting him up to talk about his new thing that he's going to do in the space that he really doesn't seem to have a whole lot of, again, like you said, last year, he showed up, and he's like, I didn't really prepare anything, but I'm just gonna tell you about why this is so awesome. Man, that's not gonna work. Let me try to be positive. Maybe he's gonna prepare better this year. Maybe he learned a lot from that experience last year. Oh, I hope so. I hope so too.

Alban: 45:40

But you only get to pitch. I know the future of your industry. Once I really can't say it over and over. It was like, hey, the future of podcasting. Well, if

Kevin: 45:50

you're if you're right, the first time you get to do it again, maybe Yeah,

Alban: 45:53

okay. You can't come and say, guys, I know the answer. And it's the clubhouse app. And everyone's like, I don't think it's the answer. And then a year later, come back go. No, for real. I mean, this is the name of the talk, the power of web three and Metaverse the future of podcasting, media and entertainment.

Kevin: 46:11

Okay. I just don't know that I'm willing to gamble and other how long an hour, hour and a half of my life on it, I'll probably find something better to do during that time.

Jordan: 46:19

Do you think that podcasting as a medium is just so simple, that people can't handle it? Like, they just try to complicate it and make things more difficult?

Kevin: 46:32

I don't know if it's simple, I think what it is, is it's perplexing, because they're, as big money comes into it, they need to be able to make a lot of money on it. And figuring out how we're going to make a ton of money on it has been hard. Figuring out how to make a good amount of money for independent creators has been hugely successful. There's a lot of people in podcasting that are doing quite well. But when you need to generate hundreds of millions of dollars, because you've invested 10s of millions of dollars, that becomes harder. And that's when you start running into things like Spotify, saying last week that you know, RSS has limitations, and it's holding back the platform. And that's why they need to move podcasting past RSS and all that stuff. Yeah,

Alban: 47:09

it's exactly the same that you want to get the returns that make all this investment interesting. You have to own the medium. And so your theory of the future has to be one where you control everything that's happening in this ecosystem. It is a platform, not open protocol. And so there's a ton of reasons for you to take shots at it and say, oh, we'll fix this, in the same way that I feel like writing online, had people taking shots at it. I mean, think of like Tumblr, or Reddit or medium, the future of writing, like they all are coming out saying, Oh, this HTML stuff kind of stinks. Like everyone's writing their own stuff. But if all the writing was done with us, then we could sell a subscription, where everybody paid to reach each other's writing. That sounds awesome for us. And I remember this critique I heard a few years ago of Silicon Valley that was, we're really taking the brightest minds of the world. And we're turning them into people who are amazing at coming up with business ideas, and they're not trying to come up with the best ideas. So they're not building the best product. They're building the best business monetization strategy. They're building monetization, rather than actually building the business itself. And I'm seeing a bit of this in the fireside stuff in the Spotify stuff, we can see how this would be a really great business for you. But you will earn all of that monetization, all that revenue. When you show Spotify can do podcasting better than everybody else. Like if they can, then they'll win. And if fireside can show, the future is definitely in this NFT space. And we got to get off RSS and get on to NF T. Metaverse, web three world, like, if you can pick like pitch it, and maybe we'll see the future. But I think that probably this is a monetization strategy in search of opportunity away for it to come out. And it's just not there. I don't think that there's something really attractive here besides somebody could make a lot of money,

Kevin: 49:10

right? Well, I think this I think instead of talking about what's wrong with what other people are doing, like happens a lot with their Spotify gets a lot of criticism. And I know we give our share. But I'd like to think that the ultimate solution to that instead of just criticizing is offering up your own solution. Yeah. And so Spotify has been promising monetization for creators and that they're trying to do everything in the best interest of creators. They want to connect creators with their audience and make monetization opportunities happen and all this kind of stuff. So what we're trying to do is we're trying to actually do that. Right. And we're trying to do it in an open way. Like, is there another way to do it? That's open? Yes, we think there is and that's what we're trying to do. So that mean, that may be a good transition into what's going on with Buzzsprout ads.

Alban: 49:54

What is going on with Buzzsprout ads? I

Kevin: 49:56

was hoping you knew you don't know the I'm on

Alban: 49:58

the marketing side. The curtain Kevin, you're back there with the engineers like plugging in wires and stuff I, what's going on back there.

Kevin: 50:06

So Buzzsprout ads is working way better than we had ever expected, like, we'd certainly hoped, but it is going gangbusters. It's fantastic. And so on the engineering side, we are doing our best to remain calm and continue to work the plan. But at the same time, the reaction and the number of signups, the number of people running ads, the people, number of people who are buying ads to run have way exceeded, like our wildest dreams. We served you tweeted this, we served up over a million ads in the first like less than two weeks of rolling it out.

Alban: 50:40

We've crossed 2 million as of today. Wow.

Kevin: 50:43

Yeah. And we rolled it out super quietly. And then the number of people who are buying ads is exceeding our expectations as well. And so that's really good. We're focused on two things. One, we want to make sure that podcasters have meaningful monetization so that if you decide to run ads on your podcast, those ads are something that you you like, like I've listened to it, I have control it, and there's nothing getting dropped into my podcast episodes that I'm not I wasn't aware of that got dropped in. And when I say meaningful, I mean, like you're making more than like pennies, right? If you turn this on our qualifications to be able to monetize, first, we want you to have a good podcast and kind of get your legs under you as a content creator, so that you don't have a bumpy show. And it's being interrupted with advertisements, right? Like once you get compelling content that people are tuning into on a regular basis. And so for us, that marker right now is 1000 downloads in a 30 day period, once you hit that, now, we're comfortable that you're creating compelling enough content that your listeners aren't going to mind being interrupted by something that helps you continue to fund this project that you're doing. And so people who are doing it are getting 1000 downloads in 30 days. So if you only run one ad, then that is $14. But if you have longer episodes that you're doing two ads, that's $28. And the math keeps going up from there, if you have longer episodes, they're doing three or four. So it's good money for podcasters. And then the other side of it is effective ads for advertisers. If somebody pays us to run an ad in the Buzzsprout ads network, we want to make sure that ad is effective for them, meaning that if they spent $100, we want them to get at least $101 in value back. And so we've been working hard on optimizing those two sides to make sure that while we're continuing to tighten the screws on all that stuff, and build out additional tools that are still in development, that's why we're giving all of our Buzzsprout customers 30% off every ad buy that they do right now. So if you go buy an ad for$100 in your Buzzsprout customer, it'll only charge you 70 Obviously scales up from there. So $200 Buy would be 140. And so that's a limited time offer, it's gonna go away at some point, but because it's new, and we're learning all this stuff, and we're making sure that everything's right on both sides of the marketplace 30% off for Buzzsprout customer. So I'm super excited. And like I said, the response has been amazing.

Jordan: 52:47

And one of the things that has been asked so much since we started Buzzsprout ads is how to make a podcast promo because there's not a lot of resources online to do that. So Alvin and I actually just dropped a Podcasting Q&A Yesterday, which would be the 20th. And we explain how to make a podcast promo, give tips on that on the script, writing the production of it, and then also mistakes that you want to avoid when creating a promo. So that's definitely something and then we're also doing a YouTube video too, right?

Alban: 53:22

Yeah, we've kind of one of these nice moments where we got to do the research once and get to create a few different types of content. So YouTube videos coming out. P QA is already out. Kevin, do you want to guess what did the number one mistake to avoid when creating a podcast promo?

Kevin: 53:37

Not saying the name of your podcast

Alban: 53:42

was the one we put at the end? There's a radio station. I actually talked about this. On the radio. There was an ad recently that I heard and I'm like, I'm pretty sure I missed the name of the business. And the next time I heard it, I listened again. I was like, I don't think I understand who the business is like a fishing sounds like it's a fishing store. And I have no idea what the name of the store is. So it happens. We've already seen it in the promos that people have tried to but it even seems to slip through in the radio world as well. So if you're running a podcast promo, check out our checklist and make sure you say the name of your podcast itself.

Jordan: 54:18

It also slipped through on your Twitter post when you were asking what people were interested in with out that

Alban: 54:26

you could have just left that left that out.

Jordan: 54:28

It was pretty funny.

Kevin: 54:34

I can tell you I am shocked. Like there are some podcasts that have turned this on that have found ads that they feel like are a good fit for their podcasts. They've enabled them they're doing 1000s of downloads. They are making some really good money from like nothing two weeks ago to hundreds of dollars that are now sitting available for them in their their Buzzsprout wallet. And don't worry, we are working on a cash out implementation right now just had a meeting about that. Right before we started with According

Alban: 55:00

this, we're still in the land of like crypto earnings, Kevin until it's cashed out, I don't know if it's real, these are, these are numbers on a digital wallet, that Buzzsprout will get you this money that is a top

Kevin: 55:16

priority and it is not tied to crypto at all, the number will not go down. So we absolutely are podcasters that money and that solution is being built. Hopefully, it'll be out by the time, I don't know if I can say that. It'll be out by the time we record again, but it should be close. And so we're gonna give you cash out options. And yeah, podcasters for the first time, I Buzzsprout, like can click a button and start making money on their content. And I honestly think it's kind of like an industry game changing thing. Now, years ago, three, four years ago, this was the promise of anchor anchor was like, we're gonna get you out opportunities, and you're gonna be able to make money on your podcast, but it never panned out the way that they executed. And the rush and the Spotify purchase. And all that kind of stuff is that over and over again, we had podcasters coming to us saying, Oh, I'm leaving anchor, I'm coming to you because I never got any ad opportunities. Like we have the exact opposite problem right now, in Buzzsprout ads, you'd log into accounts, and you'll see like 20 3040 opportunities for ads. And so the problem is the opposite of I can't play all these ads. Like I just gotta find my favorite ones. And they're not

Jordan: 56:16

all Buzzsprout ads like anchor, pretty much the only ads that anchor podcasters would get would be anchor.

Kevin: 56:24

There are no Buzzsprout ads.

Alban: 56:25

Hopefully the one thing we have in the future is a way for people to get their money out of Buzzsprout as promised by Kevin. Another thing that I'm looking forward to next week, we often like follow Edison Research pretty closely for new podcasting stats. So Tom Webster, who would always kind of tell everybody like, Hey, here's much stuff that's happening in the podcasting industry has recently left Edison Research to join Brian Barletta sounds profitable. And they have done some new research that I'm going to be checking out, it's going to be coming out next Tuesday. So if you listen to this on Friday, a few days later, and they're calling it the creators. And what the creators is, is instead of researching all of the podcast listeners, they did all this research, they'll be releasing all the data about the people who are actually creating podcasts. So who are they? Where are they in the world? What differences are there between the people who create podcasts and the people who that consume them. If you're interested, I'm going to be going it's next Tuesday, June the 28th at 1pm. Eastern Time, and we can put a link in the show notes. I think it's gonna be really exciting. I'm looking forward to it. All the work that Tom has ever done with Edison Research is really good. And this is a partnership with Edison. So I think it'll be exceptional. And I'm going to be learned, you know, interested to learn more about the people who are creating podcasts, what they're trying to get out of podcasts. And if they think that I hope they asked, you know, is the metaverse and web three and NF T's. Is that the future of podcasting? Or is the future of podcasting, something different. So hopefully we learn more of that. And then I mean, something I have to look forward to I will not be here next recording. One of the things we do at Buzzsprout is a we all do a sabbatical every three years. And so mine is coming up. And so for a lot of July, I will be out of the office, so I will not see anyone. You won't be hearing me in the next episode. And I think it too, I'll probably be recording remotely. So maybe you'll get a little bit more lag.

Jordan: 58:30

Just what we need. More lag,

Alban: 58:33

we definitely noticed at once we started recording from Florida to Idaho. Yeah. And I catch myself running over Jordan quite a bit more. Because I think there's just that second delay, that we both start talking a lot at the same time versus you know, everybody being in same spot because we never shut up. It takes two people to take it right. I mean, it's not like you're talking by yourself.

Kevin: 58:56

You guys are both too polite. You need to start talking and you don't stop. It doesn't matter if somebody else is talking you just keep going you push through

Alban: 59:03

that's the power move is just to not stop talking and just keep going.

Kevin: 59:06

Yeah, you're both like,"you go", "you go", "you go", you know,

Alban: 59:10

actually you just called a podcast. That's pretty much what know most of the shows, I hear just two guys going through had a few drinks and they're just talking over each

Jordan: 59:19

other. You know, that's exactly what happened last episode. And listeners may not have noticed it because of my incredible editing skills. But we had some feedback on one of the tracks where everyone's vocals were bleeding in and normally I sorted out so that we're not talking over the top of each other. But yeah, in the last episode, the great splatter debate. During the splatter debate, there was a whole lot of talking over the top of each other. So if you want to know what normal episode sounds like throughout, that is probably a very good section to listen to.

Alban: 59:52

Speaking of the great splatter debate, this is where all of us were disagreeing about the aesthetics of the new vote caster from We are focused, right? Jordan put up a poll. And I have the results here right now. What do you think of the aesthetic of the new focus?

Jordan: 1:00:07

Who's right? Right voc caster, it's great wins by 72.7% a landslide. Many are calling it it's being recorded on as a landslide. Nearly a dozen people participated in this whole--

Kevin: 1:00:28

Nearly a dozen people. That is like, no statistical relevancy at all

Jordan: 1:00:36

Upwards of 12 people.

Alban: 1:00:39

Upwards of 12 people participated in this poll.

Kevin: 1:00:43

I'm gonna pull it Trump here, and I'm going to choose not to concede my position.

Alban: 1:00:46

Great.

Kevin: 1:00:48

I'm sorry.

Alban: 1:00:50

Let me ask how many people on this podcast voted in that poll?

Jordan: 1:00:53

I did not. I should have. (Kevin be honest.)

Kevin: 1:00:57

I did. Yeah, I did, too. So 10, upwards of 10 people.

Alban: 1:01:02

Yeah, nine votes that were not Kevin. So one person agreed with you eight disagreed with you, Kevin. Well, and

Kevin: 1:01:10

I have seven Twitter burner accounts. So

Jordan: 1:01:17

you settle all your debates with your burner accounts? Yeah.

Kevin: 1:01:21

So Alban, if you're not here on the next recording, and I'm out as well. That means another guest episode for Jordan, which makes me believe we're absolutely getting an explicit tag next time.

Alban: 1:01:32

I'm not even going to be available to like, review content. So Kevin, you might need at least step in.

Jordan: 1:01:40

Guys. I'll be good. I promise. Nothing dirty. Nothing naughty. But I don't...I'll behave.

Kevin: 1:01:49

Alright, so Jordan has to find a couple of guests for the next episode. If you want to be on Buzzcast reach out to her jordan@buzzsprout.com Let her know.

Jordan: 1:01:56

Alright, with that, as always, thank you for listening and keep podcasting.

Alban: 1:02:04

Alright, I'm just gonna say this. BuzzCon 23. You can't give us this! (Why not?) Because all you're doing is you're exposing your idea to the potential people who had come to this conference. And then we're gonna have people who want it before we have the ability to do it.

Jordan: 1:02:23

You know, instead of BuzzCon. What if we do Buzzapalooza? Or Sproutella.

Kevin: 1:02:35

Oh, that's nice. Alright, so the working name. I don't know what they were Buzzapalooza or Sproutella. 23. What do you think? Can we pull it off? (No)

Jordan: 1:02:47

I think we can. With a little moxie and some elbow grease. We can make this happen. Let's get Mark Cuban.

Kevin: 1:02:55

Yeah, that was actually one of the things I was thinking about that made me that made me revisit. The idea is that we just did this the pod show in London, which had its pros and cons. And then I see at Podcast Movement, which we're super excited about. It's a super fun conference, but they're putting cubed on the stage again, oh, my gosh, I haven't. I keep thinking about like, if we did our own conference, how would we do it differently? And like, I can only say that for so long before I have to just stop saying stop being critical and do something about it. If you want to have a different conference and do a different conference.

Jordan: 1:03:24

I love it. Alban looks like he's about to like--

Alban: 1:03:28

What happens is when we move from the oh, what are the good ideas that would go into this thing stage into the let's do this thing stage? Then all the way of how do we do all the good ideas. So I'm excited to talk about the good ideas without committing to anything. There's some conferences, they screen all the talks heavily, they get a lot of feedback. They really work with the speakers to hone their talks. I'm thinking of like Moz con in Seattle, they do a really cool SEO conference, the SEO tool Moz does, and that's really good single track, they get really good speakers. And it's just very, very valuable content. I also like the idea of having really good food there. I don't know why. conferences that just like release everybody and say like go figure out food on your own. And then like you show up later. I think once you start having people like released and then they go out into the world, then a lot of them don't come back. And it becomes like a just hangout and I think you have a better community feel when you kind of get everybody to show up and stay there. So those are those are some ideas I have for buzzer palooza.

Jordan: 1:04:45

You know, Blk Pod Fest really nailed the food that was(Oh with all the food trucks) Yeah, well, and she had a snack bar. I mean, come on.

Kevin: 1:04:57

The snack bars really? That's what pushed it over the top?

Jordan: 1:04:59

Well, for visitors! It wasn't even for the sponsors. Like it wasn't just like a sponsors lounge thing. I mean, it was like, Yeah, this is great. There's

Alban: 1:05:08

definitely something that you can do a little bit nicer when you control the venue rather than it being like attached to hotel. Hotels have like all these weird rules. They're like, Oh, if you're not food, it has to be our caterers. And they're expensive. And I don't know why there's some of these conferences that like, the food ends at a time. It's not running out of food. It's like the time of the food is ended. And so they just start packing up and taking food away as people walk in. And they're like, Oh, cool. I'm gonna grab a coffee. And they're like, No, this coffee truck is leaving. Like, why there's coffee still here. There's cups. There's people who want to drink coffee. What is the value of like removing this? So one thing I would probably like Kim is if we get if we do this, it has to be away. Try, like try not to be involved with a hotel. I think once you start getting the hotel, and you start getting the Conference Center, and you get the unions and everything like that you start getting like subpar quality, and it starts costing more money. I thought we could do something better if we could find a different venue to rent out a Bono's barbecue.

Jordan: 1:06:17

How about a yacht? No! A series of yachts!

Alban: 1:06:22

a series of yachts? a series of yachts.

Kevin: 1:06:26

Depending on what yacht you're on, that's the track that you're on. There's a monetization yacht, there's an intro to podcasting. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Jordan: 1:06:32

And then like, right in the center, there's like a floating bar, and everyone's just in their little tubes.

Alban: 1:06:38

Alright, so thoughts on renting a yacht?

Kevin: 1:06:40

You know, I'm thinking more about the idea that one of the things that we tried to do at Buzzsprout is think about problems from a different perspective, and do stuff that it's not necessarily the same way that everyone's done it before. But try to figure out what's unique about people who use Buzzsprout? And what are they coming here for? And how can we help them solve their problems, like maybe more directly, maybe in a way that hasn't been tried before? And I think there's an opportunity to do that in the conference space. Now I'm not talking about like trying to compete with a pod fest or a podcast movement, or the pod show or black pod test, or I'm, like, I'm talking about something completely different something if there's an opportunity for people who are Buzzsprout customers and Buzzsprout fans, and they've chosen the Buzzsprout platform to build whatever their mark is in the podcast space through Buzzsprout. Is there not a unique opportunity for those people those like minded people to come together? And and figure out what is it that makes us, us and one of the things that bothers me about podcasts conferences, oftentimes, there's seems to be a lack of practical opportunities to like, get your feet dirty, right, like jump in and get your--

Alban: 1:07:50

Hands dirty, or your feet wet. You can't mix those, get your feet dirty, and--

Kevin: 1:07:54

We're gonna get our feet dirty. This is a barefoot conference.

Alban: 1:07:57

This is what you're bringing to the podcast space is mixing--You're mixing metaphors.

Jordan: 1:08:02

It's called a malphor when you mix two. MAL-PHOR Yep.

Kevin: 1:08:07

Well, see, that's me, Malphor. But I love the idea of somebody being able to get into like a podcasting session with Jordan and Jordan, just like showing, here's how I edit an episode. Here's how I take it from rough cut, like, Listen to how messy it is beforehand. And then in the 45 minutes, we're going to slice this thing together. And I don't know if you can do a whole edit in 45 minutes, but maybe like at least a rough cut. And then, you know, or here's 10 minutes on polishing. Yeah, workshops.

Jordan: 1:08:35

I love that, like not just like breakout spaces, but yeah, like workshops where they can

Kevin: 1:08:39

actually like, and I love the idea of us teaching monetization from this perspective of here's our take on monetization. Here's our take on how like Buzzsprout ads can support your podcast, and when should you start? And maybe when should you stop? And when should you look at brand deals? And how do we approach brand deals? And and how do we use the dynamic content tools that we built into Buzzsprout to be able to use those. And so like, this isn't something that we can do at a traditional podcast conference, because we're not going to get up on stage and teach our tools. Let's that's like a turn off for us. But at our conference, we can absolutely do that. So it would be a place for Buzzsprout podcasters to come and learn how to use the tools that we've built and understand our thinking and methodology behind it to take your podcast to the next level. And it wouldn't be for everybody. It would be for people who are super passionate about their podcast super passionate about Buzzsprout want to meet the team want to get Buzzsprout swag, want to see what we think is fun. Want to see the type of food that we like, like it doesn't have to be a 500 person conference, it could be a 200 person conference,

Jordan: 1:09:31

you know, I really liked the concept of with tracks maybe even doing like the levels like beginner intermediate or like haven't started a podcast yet. It would be so interesting to do different workshops where it's working through the process of creating the podcast, at the beginning stages, like maybe somebody who's having trouble with the concept, the naming of the podcast, podcast, artwork, things like that and you can like work out those things so that they leave the conference. feeling more confident that they have had the community input, the guidance from somebody who's an expert in the space and they will leave having the confidence to go forward and start their podcast with what they've created during the conference

Alban: 1:10:15

Right. Alban, are you on board yet? No. I'm like so far away from being on board. You guys are very good at living in the "this is a good idea" world. And once something gets to like some percentage of happening, I get the okay this is how much work it takes like

Jordan: 1:10:34

Alban who hurt you, who hurt you?

Alban: 1:10:37

Kevin! Many times. This is how everything starts at Buzzsprout. Kevin's like, what if we did this? And these are saying enough times, and it often is right? But then we have to get into doing it. So this happened when he said we need to have our own podcast and then when we need to have our own YouTube channel, and what it was for I did ads ourselves. And I'm always like, we've still got to do the last stuff. We got figured out how to do that stuff, because like that, but just thinking about the conference.

Kevin: 1:11:10

Well, I think that settles it. So save the date, fall of 23 Sproutchella,

Alban: 1:11:16

Save the date, the entire three month period, block out the entire fall of 23. Sometime in the next few years, there may be something that you'd want to block off some time for

Jordan: 1:11:29

upwards of one year from now.