Buzzsprout Turns 13 + New Apple Podcasts Updates + Spotify Snuffs Out App Developers + Podcasts Now On Vinyl!

🎉 Happy Birthday, Buzzsprout! In this episode, the hosts take a look back on some funny moments in Buzzsprout's history, review the latest and greatest Apple Podcasts updates, discuss the dilemma of businesses relying on Spotify, and decide whether or not vinyl is a viable product for podcasters.

NEW APPLE PODCASTS UPDATES
https://podcasters.apple.com/4359-ios-16-whats-new-for-apple-podcasts
The new iOS 16 update comes with some great updates for Apple Podcasts! We really like the updated Now Playing screen, Sleep Timer, and Live Captions. However, with the update including the removal of podcast title in the Browse section, be sure that your podcast title is clear on the cover artwork.

Buzzsprout's Artwork Resources:
How to Design Stunning Podcast Artwork
YouTube Cover Art Playlist

BEST PODCAST SEARCH ENGINES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7bYXS6bA9I
Justin Jackson, founder of Transistor, posed the question "is podcast search broken?" & did some digging.

SPOTIFY CHANGING BUSINESS MODEL
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2022-09-08/a-swedish-company-aims-to-spend-millions-acquiring-indie-podcast-networks
Spotify pulled the plug on the use of their API for apps.

PODCASTS ON VINYL
https://www.insideradio.com/podcastnewsdaily/luminary-makes-dave-chappelle-s-the-midnight-miracle-podcast-available-on-vinyl/
Luminary created a limited edition vinyl of Dave Chappelle's The Midnight Miracle podcast.

BUZZBOOSTS
Thanks for the boosts!
@georgdahm
@pocketparley
@meremortalspodcast
@andyflattery
Dave Jackson
Tom Raftery - Let the riches roll in!  https://www.digitalsupplychainpodcast.com/ & https://www.climate21podcast.com/
GeneBean

Alban (45%), Kevin (35%), Jordan (20%) 

Transcript

Alban: 0:00

I enjoy the like tension and the risk of going caseless. And also not having Apple Care, because it's like anything could break any moment like be on edge.

Jordan: 0:10

Wow. Such a daredevil Alright, so Alban, yesterday you tweeted Buzzsprout is 13 years old this month.

Alban: 0:23

Buzzsprout is a teenager.

Jordan: 0:27

It's a teenager!

Alban: 0:29

I don't really know why I ran across this, but I had a feeling Buzzsprout started in September. And so I went back onto Facebook, and I was looking through Tom's old Facebook posts, there's way to search people's old posts.

Jordan: 0:42

You were stalking Tom.

Alban: 0:44

As I was going through Tom's old Facebook post, as I like to do, September 1, he posted just went public with our latest service Buzzsprout the best way to publish your podcast.

Jordan: 0:54

Still true.

Alban: 0:55

And it got four likes and two comments from Tom's personal friends.

Kevin: 1:02

Did I even like it?

Alban: 1:03

No. Notable people who didn't like it; Kevin Finn, did Dave work on it when he launched?

Kevin: 1:10

Yeah, he helped.

Alban: 1:11

Dave did not like it.

Kevin: 1:13

Oh, no.

Jordan: 1:14

Poor Tom. He was like,"No, guys, this is really good!"

Alban: 1:18

Well, Tom has the last laugh. He turned out to be

Kevin: 1:20

Some Buzzsprout trivia in there is that we actually like Kevin,m describe the original vision that you had for the right. people were using it back in May of 2009. But you couldn't sign Buzzsprout homepage. What's happening with this design? up or create an account or anything like that. We set up The vision? I don't know that there was a vision. Well, I knew some personal podcast projects, and some people who we knew were podcasting. And so there was like five months while we were building it while people were using it. I mean, the first that we wanted to look different. There were some other feature you need to be able to do is accept an audio file and create an RSS feed. So that's the first thing it did didn't really do much else. And so while we built everything else out, there was 2, 3, 4, 5 podcasts. And we just got finished with our first company off site last week. And I showed some of the screenshots, one of the ones that Alban tweeted. podcasts hosts at the time, but they looked very technical, looked like the marketing stuff was designed by programmers. And so we wanted it to look nice, we wanted it to look friendly. And so it was kind of had this cartoonish background behind all the words and screenshots and stuff. So it was not intimidating at all. There were some like little fun character things in there. One of the early versions of our logo had like a bumblebee in it. And the bumblebee didn't make the cut for the logo. But I liked it. So I stuck it in the background.

Jordan: 2:40

I thought it was cute

Alban: 2:41

The Bumblebee is like landing on the Buzzsprout microphone plant. So it's a flower sprout.

Jordan: 2:47

And there's like an airplane flying across the sky pulling a banner that's like the actual website banner. It's kind of like you guys took the concept of like, so easy a child could do it. And then like ran with that.

Kevin: 2:59

Right. Yeah. And there's, there's more to the story. And I mean, not a whole lot more. It's not super deep. But at the same time that we were building this, Tom and I got interested in flying airplanes like little remote control airplanes and stuff. And so I was like that banner where our navigation is that looks like one of those banners that planes drag behind them, like on the beach and stuff. And so I'm like, I'm gonna throw a plane up there, put some strings on it.

Jordan: 3:22

You know, that always works in design is throw a bunch of like inside jokes and stories to it.

Kevin: 3:27

Yeah, it works for us.

Alban: 3:30

So, Kev, I don't think John's ever told you this maybe, I don't think I have either. When John first took the job with you and Tom -- for listeners, John is my friend who he was here, like a year before me. When John was first applying, he said think I'm gonna take this job to someone and they go, "Tom and Kevin? Those guys just fly model airplanes all day!" I was like,"Oh, no, I don't think they have a real business."

Kevin: 3:58

Not all day. No, we had a client. So again, there's there's more to the story sounds worse than it is. But we had a client that we were doing client work for. And behind their office was a huge open field. So anytime Tom and I would go over there for a business meeting. We had always bring our planes too. So we go in and we have a business meeting for like an hour. And then before we left, we go out in the backfield for 30 minutes and fly just because it was one of the best places in Jacksonville to fly plane. But then they're like, did these guys work? Or they just fly planes? Like, it's not our fault. You're the one who has the office with a massive field in the backyard. So wasn't all the time.

Alban: 4:35

I got access to Twitter podcasts in the last few days. I think they rolled it out for anybody who decided to spend $3 to like have their mental health deteriorated by the Twitter app. So if you spend three extra bucks a month, you do get access to some Twitter features that will make you more angsty and stressed out but one of them is Twitter podcasts.

Jordan: 4:56

You know what's interesting is I saw that they had rolled out up to I think it's called Twitter blue, which is like the premium Twitter. Do you have that Alban?

Alban: 5:04

Yeah.

Jordan: 5:04

Oh, wow. So

Kevin: 5:08

Super impressive.

Jordan: 5:10

This says a lot about a person. But I saw that and then I went to my Twitter and I also have access to it.

Alban: 5:17

Wait, do you have Twitter blue?

Jordan: 5:19

No, I went spend money on.

Kevin: 5:21

I don't have Twitter blue either. Let me see if I have

Alban: 5:23

this is BS, if they're like, "Oh, we rolled it out for everybody with Twitter blue", and then they just rolled it up for everyone.

Kevin: 5:30

I didn't. They didn't give it to me, I think you have to launch the app more than once every two weeks.

Alban: 5:35

We talked about this quite a bit last week. But now that I actually can use it and play around with it. I still like the idea. I know Marco Arment, who built overcast was on Twitter talking about like, why it was a dumb idea and why he didn't like it. I actually liked the idea of being able to find out what podcasts the people I follow on Twitter are interested in what they're sharing. Same way that Twitter kind of collects all the articles together, everyone I follow sharing, I would like something similar for podcasts. That being said, That is not what this is. It's a totally different thing. Really what it is, is like they needed to get a critical mass of audio content into the app. And they have all these Twitter spaces, which are cool, and they record them, which I've never gone back and listened to one but I like being involved when they're happening. And then they're like, We need some more content in here for audio, and they added podcasts but they didn't add like full podcasts. They added a few collections of podcast episodes. The first one I see is like today's news. And so if I click it, this is really good. It's like the daily up first, the Wall Street Journal's daily podcast. So like all the daily podcast are all there. That's great. Swipe over. And now I'm looking at a bunch of Twitter spaces. But it doesn't differentiate to like really let me know which was a space and which is a podcast. Yeah. But then they have some that are based on who you follow. So based on who I follow, it thinks I'm interested in data science. And so it gives me a technology group. And so if I click on it, they've got a bunch of technology podcasts. But there's only like 10 episodes in there. There's one episode from each podcast, there's no show page. So there's no way that I could go listen to other episodes, there's no ability to search for a podcast, no ability to go and find any other of the curated lists. So this entire like feature for me, is only 40 Total episodes, that they have pre selected and put onto the app, and it doesn't do the thing that I would really want, which is helped me find cool podcasts like you are a social media company, you have brought together hundreds and hundreds of people I think are really interesting people, and I follow them. And I'd love to know in one place, what are they listening to? And Twitter can do it. And so I hope that's where they end up. But right now the only thing they're doing is they're like, well, we've got like an 18 year old at Twitter who listens to podcasts, and they're picking out the best ones for you. Like, well, we need people curating but like, that's not who I'm looking for, I'm looking for the 400 people that I follow, like, what are they listening to? That's where I want to see, all of the ability is there and they went in a totally different direction. And this could have just been a newsletter.

Jordan: 8:18

Would you say that the curated lists that they present you with are accurate to your taste?

Alban: 8:23

The one category was right, you know, data science, and then technology that worked. But the other one that gave me was it said, Well, you seem to be interested in startups. So here's stuff about finance. And it's like Dave Ramsey show, and then similar type stuff that doesn't connect for me. Like if I'm starting a startup, the finances that go into raising money and starting a startup, and the finances that go into the Dave Ramsey show are the opposite. So there's just a totally different world. So it didn't feel like a great match. There's probably only 20 of these lists. And they tried to get a few for me, but there's really just not much there.

Jordan: 9:01

See with mine, I went to it and I was very disappointed because like my options were like sports, business, soccer.

Alban: 9:10

Interesting.

Jordan: 9:11

I guarantee you I have never in my life interacted with anything to do with sports. And I am very confused about the curation.

Alban: 9:19

It's funny that you are getting sports here in New York on YouTube, you are getting all the WWE podcasts somebody is like out there in the algorithms trying to convince you to get into sports.

Kevin: 9:31

I don't see the fit. I've read Marco's statement about it. I sort of agree with that, that I feel like it's a big contextual shift to try to do two different things, playing a podcast while you're, as he described him scrolling through Twitter, your mind is trying to do two things at once. I just don't think it's a good combination.

Alban: 9:48

But could you see it as like the collection of what people that you follow are interested in like I'm never going to listen in the app but it could recommend to listen to it somewhere else.

Kevin: 9:58

But I don't think that aligns with the interests of Twitter, Twitter does not want to show you stuff so that you can then close Twitter and go listen to it somewhere else. Yeah, so that's the problem that all of these apps have is that they're in the attention business. And so they want to show you stuff that's interesting to them. But then they want you to consume that within their own app, it's just a tough problem to solve. But that's why you end up with solutions that don't feel like they're giving you exactly what would be most helpful for you, because they have to align your interests with their interests. I'm starting to think that this discoverability problem that everybody's talking about in podcasting, and everyone's out there to solve, and that's going to be the golden ticket, whoever figures this out, I don't think that's the best way to describe it. I'm starting to think about it as a discoverability gift. There's a gift that we have in podcasting, that these are not easy things for algorithms to be able to recommend to people because we've seen what's happened in social media, we've seen what's happened like on YouTube, when they figure out how to continue to hold your attention by finding recommendations that appeal to you, then you start having all these things where you have to start to play the algorithm game in order for your content to be successful. And so what you don't get is a lot of super unique content, you start to get a bunch of content that fits the mold that the algorithm is looking for. Like I said, I haven't completely formulated my thoughts. But I want to start thinking about this from a different perspective. Like, is it so much of a problem? Or could it be a gift? And if we think about it as a gift, then why is it a good thing? Why is it special? And so that's what I'm trying to think about. Like I said, I'm gonna formulate more my thoughts on that, but I want to look at it from a different perspective. So you guys put this, this podcast search engine thing on the outline? This is that same train of thought about is podcast discovery going to be solved with search engines. Justin Jackson did a deep dive. And Justin is an awesome guy. Smart guy did a deep dive into podcast search.

Jordan: 11:50

So what happened is on Twitter, Justin Jackson, he had seen a tweet, Brian Barletta was talking about his podcast discovery, a listener issue or creator issue. And then this gentleman that goes by Clew-Less said, I don't believe discoverability is the issue. And that's a big problem with search. And so Justin went,"Hmm, I wonder if search is broken." And so that's what led him to this deep dive, right.

Kevin: 12:16

And one of the examples he gave was skateboarding in the 70s. Like, I've never gone looking for a podcast. With that in mind, like with a topic in mind, maybe I'm totally different than a bunch of people. So tell me, is this how you guys do it? Do you guys look for podcasts like this by topic?

Jordan: 12:30

I have done that.

Alban: 12:32

Yeah, I think I'd like to make a distinction between search and discoverability. Discoverability is like when you're on YouTube, on that sidebar. It's like, hey, why don't you watch this video that's a little bit more edgy than the one you just watched. And that I feel like really leans into the everything needs to be algorithm focused. Everything needs to be hyper optimized, we need to copy the things that are already working. But search is a different thing, which is I know what I want. I want to replace the light bulb and my headlights. So I searched the car, and I searched the headlight. And now I see a video on how to do it. I think search is so valuable. I think discoverability definitely has its flaws. Discoverability is not fixed on podcasting. And I'm with you, Kevin, I don't know if that needs to be fixed. Search is broken on podcasting. And I think it definitely deserves to be fixed. Whenever I get into something new. I want to listen to podcasts about it. And right now the best thing I have, I mean, it really is listen notes is the best. But the second best is going on Twitter and saying I want to learn about this, which I listened to add a bunch of people recommend their own podcast.

Jordan: 13:39

Yeah, I mean, that's not really like a search engine. But Justin posed the question, is podcast search broken? And you're saying yes, it is. And are you saying that because it's not like a uniform thing across all platforms?

Alban: 13:54

I mean, it's broken because I mean, you watch that video. He's like, okay, Podcast Movement. 2022 very specific. These episodes exist, and they should be on podcasts. And everything is is popping up is like an episode of you're wrong about COVID vaccines. What? Okay, all these popular podcasts are there to have the word movement. Oh, is that sorry, that one was called the anti Vax movement. So that movement got in there. The only one that really seemed to do this well was I mean, listen notes. I think pod chaser did alright, good pods seem to do well. But like listen notes actually pulling back episodes that said Podcast Movement. 2022.

Jordan: 14:33

Yeah, it's almost like the other podcast platforms are prioritizing their ranking system as opposed to the actual like search engine. That's what it seems like to me,

Alban: 14:42

Jordan, you may be too young for this. But like in 1999 This is how internet search was.

Jordan: 14:48

Oh, thank you so much. Yes, I am so too young for that.

Alban: 14:55

I mean, this is what it was like you would search for things and would like get the worst results. And you'd have to like, try to refine the search. And you'll be using Boolean operators to try to like, make sure the phrases were connected in certain ways. But like, why are the podcast apps still working like that? And I feel like they should be able to get to the next level the like early Google. And that's where listeners feels like it's early Google. It just doesn't feel like it's great Google yet. And I would really love to see, listen, notes continue to push forward in this area. And then other apps try to do this as well. Because if you want to learn about skateboarding in the 70s, I know for a fact there's podcasts out there about it. So like, why can't we find them?

Kevin: 15:39

I don't know. Guys, I don't know. I agree search is broken. I just don't know if search for podcasts? is a problem worth fixing? How would you compare it to searching for books? Like you want to you're getting into fixing up cars, right? And so I want to read some books on hobby cars. Right? How do you go about doing that?

Jordan: 15:57

I mean, there's actually like an indexing of book topics within the book itself. And it's actually indexed like in a database.

Alban: 16:05

Yeah, Kevin, you're talking to two people who used to work in a library. So we're about to talk to you about the Dewey Decimal System.

Kevin: 16:10

I'm not saying that it doesn't exist. For books. What I'm saying is that what exists for books is not what we're comparing the broken search for podcasting to. And I think what we need to build for podcasting is more like what exists for books. So if you go to Amazon, right now, and search for a book, what you're going to get is you're gonna see some cover art, you're gonna see a description, you're gonna see a bunch of reviews for that book, and reviews from notable people, that's going to help you make the decision on whether I'm gonna buy this book or not. Amazon has gone a little bit further, and they'll let you read, you know, the so much of the book, the first chapter or something like that for free online before you decide if you want to buy it or not. But it's the same type of thing, like, um, search on the web is, you know, within 15, or 20 seconds of clicking on a link, whether you got what you wanted or not. And if you're looking at a video, like Google and YouTube are getting even better and better, they're not just surfacing a video, they're surfacing the time in the video, so you can click on it, and it's right at that point of how you change the carburetor out on that, you know, Landcruiser, it's a 30 minute video, but you really only need that 30 seconds in the middle of which how to get that screw out. And so let's jump right to that part. For podcasts. It's more like a book, it's like, you're gonna invest 45 minutes to an hour of listening to something. And so in order to be convinced that I found what I'm looking for, I need a really good synopsis of the entire episode. And then I need reviews from credible people, either my circle of influence, like good pods is doing like have any anybody in my friend network, listen to this episode, what did they say about it, or trusted people. And I don't know that there's a lot of trusted people yet in the podcasting space. But like that could be an opportunity for people start stepping up and saying, I'm going to start personally reviewing stuff, I'm going to be whatever the New York Times bestselling book reviewer, but for podcasts, stuff like that, like that's, that's the maturity that needs to happen a little bit in the podcasting space, because you're searching for this long form content.

Jordan: 17:58

Some of what you're describing is like a table of contents sort of thing, which is like reminded me of like chapter markers like if podcasters, were able to like appropriately utilize and label their chapter markers, then you can do that kind of jumping to the topic that you're actually looking for. It's interesting that you brought up the reviews, because in pod news today, there was actually a Twitter account that was brought to my attention. And it's like podcast critics or something like that. And it's actual, like good critical reviews of podcasts. Right. But you're saying like, we need more of that.

Kevin: 18:33

Yeah, I mean, that's what I'm saying. It's like the solution is not necessarily better indexing the content itself. When you look at a book, you look at the back jacket of the book, or the inside, inside the jacket, whatever. Like in two paragraphs, they're trying to summarize all the major takeaways from the book. And then here are a couple respected people in the industry who have read the book and their thoughts on it, like why it's worth your time reading. That's the type of stuff that I think we need for podcasting.

Alban: 18:58

Let me walk you through, I guess now hearing you say this, I'm like, Oh, I just went down this path, reading something and went, Okay, I've decided my next thing is I'm going to start trying to learn about artificial intelligence. I'm going to read some books. I'm going to listen to some podcasts, I'm going to try to figure it out. The podcast that keeps getting recommended by people is Lex Friedman's podcast, and I cannot suffer through more than 20 minutes seems like the great content, the best guests. I think Lux is a pretty poor interviewer, so I wasn't able to do it, then I might Okay, I'm going books. The best way to really learn a new area is to find a really good textbook. So I'm searching best textbooks on AI and you end up on a Amazon page. And I'm just going down the list of the best sellers. I'm looking at the reviews finding some that don't seem overpriced, but also seemed good. I'm ended up on something called Open syllabus, which is telling like how many schools are actually using this book versus other books on their syllabus. So I'm able to say Oh, this is kind of like the introduction book to AI For people in college that gives an overview of the whole area, then I can read the intro, I'm sold, I buy the book, the podcasts, you can go search it. And there's so many things that are still missing. There's no one who's saying like, Oh, this is the most reviewed podcast, and the most recommended by professors in this space like that stuff doesn't exist for sure. But there's not even like the podcasting version of the Amazon page. This like, here are the top 10 In this space, all the ones that I run into our websites that are like 10 Ai, podcasts you better be listening to. And then it's put together by someone who spent like an hour searching, and they just stuck them onto a list and they moved on. Like these are well thought out really cared for articles. And you're not really left with anything beyond the same as what I'd get if I searched on Listen notes. And I got, you know, a handful of good ideas. So it just feels like we're not even to the Amazon listing page level yet where you search something and it's got like 10 items that you could buy or 10 books you could buy. That's what I want.

Jordan: 21:05

You know, I think that as far as the searchability goes, and things like that, I think a lot of that actually falls on the podcasters shoulders. Because we know how the search engines work for Spotify for Apple for these platforms, because they've been transparent about it. They're saying these are the things that we search for, these are the things that we rank. And so if a podcaster is saying we need better search ability, but they're also not doing robust episode descriptions, they're not doing SEO titles, they're not doing transcripts for the search engines to comb through. It's really not on the platforms, I just I think that there's kind of a level of like accountability that needs to be held to the podcasters to ensure that they're not complaining about the searchability without putting forth the work to make sure that their podcast is searchable. Yeah, I do like the idea of a recommendation pages and things like that. But just in the meantime, make sure that your podcast can be found.

Kevin: 22:05

You make a good point here. And I think that the people are really like in the podcasting world are clamoring for this though, because they want smaller, independent podcasts to be able to find their audience. And so I'm not sure that the solution to this is to find the ultimate whatever, top 10 ai podcasts that exist. I think ultimately what they're clamoring for is, hey, if we can solve that problem, if we can find the 10 best for artificial intelligence podcasts, then you could also get down to mine which focuses specifically on artificial intelligence for neural engines in yadda, yadda yadda, like niche all the way down. And if you got that specific, then mine would show up and then my podcasts would get discovered. It's a hard problem. But I think we have to think more like like minded media. And right now I think what's happening is all the discoverability momentum is more like, oh, it's as simple as figuring out how YouTube did it for video is the same way for podcasts. And I think it's just very different.

Jordan: 23:03

iOS 16 dropped yesterday. Did you guys download it?

Alban: 23:07

Yes. But do you know what else dropped yesterday?

Jordan: 23:09

Huh?

Alban: 23:10

My phone without a case!

Kevin: 23:11

Oh, no, you cracked your phone.

Alban: 23:13

I'm pretty sure I did the math 99.5% of the way through this phone's life? Oh, no, I'd already bought the new phone. And I don't know what happened. I upgrade to iOS 16. And like Tim Cook put in some sort of magnet thing. And it jumped off of my book that I was holding, it cracked, that the none of the biggest issue in the world is just funny that I made it all the way to the final three days, I was gonna have this phone, and I cracked it.

Kevin: 23:41

Alright, so you broke your phone. And iOS 16 is out.

Alban: 23:44

The thing that I really like is so when you update. Now the like now playing lockscreen looks so much better. Oh, it's so pretty. When I first saw this, I thought it was exclusive to Apple podcasts. But it turns out, it's kind of like the Now Playing API. So if you're listening to something on Audible, or Apple podcasts, or a different podcasting app or Music or Spotify, you get a really pretty lock screen. So it's kind of this like blur with the color of the artwork, and then the artwork right there. And some of the controls that on its own was like enough to get me pumped. And then there's another really cool accessibility feature called live captions if either of you played with this.

Kevin: 24:27

Yes, I did.

Jordan: 24:28

I did not. I did not get a chance to play with that one. How's that work?

Alban: 24:31

So live captions. They're an accessibility feature if it's just listening to what audio is being played, and it's transcribing it in real time. So I guess it's closer to like a closed caption. I listened to a few podcasts on Apple podcasts and I turned it on. And it's kind of just hovering there and you can move it around on the screen. That's cool. And it's not perfect, but it's good.

Kevin: 24:53

Wow. Yeah, it's good. The bummer about it is that it's like system wide setting and so if you turn it on, you always have have this little dot thing that's always hanging out on your screen, no matter which app you're in, no matter if it's playing audio or not, it's always there. And so this has existed for quite a while on Android phones. And I think they've got the implementation honed in a little bit better. Right now. It's like a beta feature of the new iOS 16. And so I imagine that they will give app developers the ability to toggle it on and off from within their apps at some point, maybe when it comes out of beta, but opens right, it is promising, but it's not great today, but it's promising. What does it look like it starts writing out like a paragraph of text, so you can click a little Expand button, it fills the whole screen, and then it's just giving you a longer transcript that you can read back through. Now. I mean, it's machine transcription. So it's not perfect, it gets some words, right, most of them right. And a few wrong, it doesn't break out speakers, it doesn't like break out paragraphs or anything like that. So again, it's very early, it's interesting that they're pushing into it, I like it. I hope that they don't look at this as this is the future like we no longer need to support transcripts and apps like the podcast app, because no matter how good it gets, you're still not giving the Creator control over their own transcript and how they want to present it. And so I like having that option there. But the reality is that all podcasters will never do this, no matter how good transcription becomes like the support for transcription gets in podcasts, there's still going to be some percentage of creators that just don't do it. And so having default transcriptions available for all podcasts is wonderful. I still think though the implementation should support podcasters being able to control their transcript, if they choose to do that.

Jordan: 26:28

Are they able to(because you said it, it writes out into like a paragraph, when that's finished) are you able to export that text file at all? Or it doesn't work like that?

Kevin: 26:39

No, it's for the listener. So like, if you're listening to a podcast, yeah. And like you're having, let's say you have a hearing disability, or if you're in a noisy environment, you're not catching everything. So you want to watch the words while you're listening? Different cases like that. So you would probably never want to as a listener, you probably wouldn't want to export it, you just want to be able to see it as you're listening. It's great for that I tested it at you know, 1x 1.5x 2x, it seemed to keep up pretty well. I couldn't really tell if it was getting less accurate, the faster I was listening, but I did test it. When I had the audio muted. I had the audio turned all the way down, it still worked. So it's not like the microphone is listening to what's coming out of the speaker. It's not doing that. It's like doing it all pre processing somehow.

Alban: 27:19

Yeah, I, I like it, I think it's really good. The big reason we've been talking about transcripts for so long is a important accessibility feature. I just hope that what is very good does not become the enemy of perfect like the opposite of that standard phrase, because I do want us to move towards like perfect. You know, the implementation I always go back to is on Spotify and listening to music. And I clicked the lyrics. And it's the exact lyrics. And they're broken out by paragraphs, the way that they're Sung. And then they're being highlighted as they're being sung. I'm like, this is such a great implementation. If we can get there and the tech is there for podcasts, that would be the next level. But until the entire ecosystem updates, and people start really leaning into this, right now, this is a pretty dang good feature. And I'm really pumped that Apple made this a priority. And now for a lot of people, this is going to be a way to be able to experience podcasts that just may have been hard for them to listen to.

Jordan: 28:18

Some other features that were introduced to Apple podcasts or updated with the iOS 16 Is that they refreshed the Now Playing screen. And they added some new features with scrubbing the audio if you press and hold and you can do a whole bunch of different things with it instead of just dragging was that called like the time was I call called the scrub bar grab bar. Yeah, instead of just dragging that and trying to find the thing, you can actually switch between high speed half speed quarter speed and find scrubbing.

Alban: 28:51

the scrub bar is a pretty good implementation. So it's hard to explain when we're just talking about it. I don't love listening to podcasts really fast. I don't almost always listening 1x speed. But when you scrub between segments, like you've got a big fat finger for a long episode with a really small scrub bar, it's hard to get precision when you're doing that. And so you're moving from left to right. But as you move up, it actually will make the little.on the scrub bar detach from where your finger is and move more slowly, the higher up you move. And so it can get really precise. Yep, it works

Kevin: 29:31

up or down. So the further away your your finger moves from the scrub bar itself, the more precise it gets. So if you move up a little bit, you'll see the title of the episode changes to half speed scrubbing, you move it up further, it says like quarter speed scrubbing. And then the last one I think is fine scrubbing. And so you can really get to the exact second you're looking for. That's amazing. Just to be clear, these are updates to the Apple podcast app. I imagine there may be new things that are available in the SDK for developers. So maybe things like this could start to come to Pocket Cast and overcast and other third party apps but they're not in there right now. So I don't know if that is officially an iOS 16 update, or if it's an apple podcast update, but I know it works really well in Apple podcasts. So we'll call it Apple podcast feature right now. And maybe it'll come to other apps later.

Jordan: 30:12

And then they updated their sleep timer, you can now set your sleep timer to end on like a chapter marker of your choosing, which is very clever. I love that the sleep

Alban: 30:23

timer ending on a chapter marker. That is such a smart feature that I hadn't seen before in a different app. So maybe other apps already have done that. And I apologize to people who might have tried it. But if there's a chapter marker, some podcasts ad with Buzzsprout, ads to will actually label like, here's an ad. And if ad some different than a person's voice, and you are using a true sleep timer, like you're going to sleep, you don't want to hear an ad, the ad will is likely to wake you up if you're an early sleep stage. And so you can just say, you know, play the 15 minutes or 30 minutes, whatever you'd normally do, but actually just stop at a chapter marker. If you hit one, that's really nice, because now you know, I'm avoiding any ads that may jump in and wake me up. And I just thought that was such a smart kind of forward thinking feature.

Jordan: 31:10

So one of the things that I did notice with this new update that I think will probably have the biggest effect on podcasters. It's going to affect how we create our podcasts in the first place. And I think a lot of podcasters are going to need to consider updating their podcast is in the Browse and recommendations lists on Apple podcasts, they have now taken away the title and the host of the show or the company when you're scrolling through the recommendations. And instead, it shows metadata, like the podcast category and how often it's updated. So the reason why I'm saying that this will affect a lot of podcasters is I know podcasters that do not have their name in their podcast cover art. And that's going to be a problem because now the name is not displayed on Apple podcasts when people are going to be browsing. So you have to have your podcast name on your cover art. And it needs to be legible, so that someone can read it and can see it in that small thumbnail. I think that it's now something that we need to really push and just make sure that we really, really get it into people's heads like, Hey, you must have it so that you can read the podcast title, it just can't just be a big picture of your face. That's it, you know,

Alban: 32:31

it's an interesting decision. So I'm scrolling through and there's a section called season starters, football, and the first podcast is the athletic football show. But what's actually written below it just football, because that's the category and it's updated daily. But there's no unless it was on the artwork, which it is saying the athletic football show, I wouldn't know what it is. And I think you're right, there's enough that have different words on there, or they don't feature the show name is prominently, that I guess I'm a little surprised that Apple went this way and remove that piece of metadata. They probably said for most good shows, it's duplicative. But for a lot of you know, indie shows, I think there's people who are making this mistake. So definitely a good catch. And I think we should start recommending it a little bit more intensely.

Jordan: 33:18

If you look at this, so even on their recommendation lists, they have a foul playlist inspo. And you can see here on this one, I think that song exploder is that right? Yeah, see, but like if I didn't know that, all it is is a block II Yeah. And then there's some other podcasts that they have, where they have too many words, or it's like very small font. And I don't know what those podcasts are. So I'm definitely not going to be clicking on them. Because I don't know what's called,

Alban: 33:46

I've got a thread or I think it was from when I did a talk on podcast cover Podcast Movement that we can link in the show notes here. But those things all still stand like you do want to have the name of your podcast in your artwork. And you really need to keep the number of words down and the number of elements there, it needs to work at a small size. So all the best practices, they're still the same. Apple just upped the ante a little bit more and said, Hey, listen, you got to put your names in there, at least for when you're browsing. You know, if somebody was searching for your podcast, the name is going to be there, but it's not going to be there on that Browse page.

Jordan: 34:25

Alvin, you put an article in here that is very interesting, and it says Spotify is changing their business model. What is that about?

Alban: 34:34

So this is a piece from Ashley Carmen Bloomberg, she wrote was included in her newsletter. It's not a full article, and they're not changing their entire business model. But I wanted to put it in here because it really illustrates this point we make about Spotify. Almost every episode. I apologize. I've heard this 30 times already. Spotify just for music, which I use and I love Spotify has this API that allows other apps to pull in a song. And so some other apps will use it. Like there's one called Amazing slow downer, which will slow down music. So like, if you're trying to learn an instrument, and you really like, you know, Metallica song, you need to play it really slow. So this plugs into Spotify, who has the rights to the music, and you have the rights because you pay for Spotify, they pull the song in, and they slow it down for you. And now you learn to play the drums along with Metallica. And there's another one called Boom bass booster and equalizer, so you can create your own special EQ, because that's what you want to do. There is another one that created a personalized radio station called radiant. All these rely on Spotify has the music because you already pay for Spotify, they're allowed to bring that music in. Well, all these apps built these businesses around this ability in Spotify. Oh no. And this is what we've been talking about. There is a risk when you rely on a platform 100%. In July, Spotify said, Hey, we're going to be phasing this out. And September 1 Buzzsprout birthday. Spotify says it's over that API no longer works. And instantly, all these apps are cut off. So if you were an amazing slow downer user, the person reached out to Bloomberg and said, they have 25,000, Spotify users who use this app every day, oh my gosh. So you either have to switch to Apple Music, or they're going to cancel amazing, slow downer. If you're using amazing slow downer, you definitely need to be part of the group saying alright, Spotify, if you're going to do this, you know, the answer for me is I'm moving away to an app that will actually support this.

Kevin: 36:50

Yeah. And I would highly recommend you switch to Apple Music, it's a much better solution. Keep using your amazing slow downer.

Alban: 36:55

But if you build an entire business based on the kindness of a platform, at some point, they say this no longer aligns with our model, what we're going forward for some reason we're moving away from this and you have no control, you're screwed? Well, yeah,

Kevin: 37:13

the value is kind of clear in that people who got the amazing slowdown or app and then wanted to play music through it, like they were encouraged to get a Spotify subscription. So that made a lot of sense. At some point, the economics of it must have changed, like maybe they were paying different licensing fees when they're it's serving music through the API versus not, or I have no idea why they needed to make this change. But they did need to make the change. And so now these apps are in trouble. Like it's, it's a total bummer. I know you can do this through Apple Music, my son uses an app for this exact same thing, not the amazing slow downer, but his is called songster or something. But he connects to his Apple music subscription. So then he can see like the sheet music along with the song that's playing. And, yeah, there's this whole ecosystem that exists. I don't understand exactly why Spotify changed it. I thought it was interesting, the word that you used, they built it on the kindness of Spotify, I don't necessarily know that it was the kindness of Spotify, because if it was kindness, then they probably wouldn't have killed it, they probably would have maybe stopped selling it, but like continue to support existing users or something. But this is not about kindness. This is about business models. And when the business model no longer aligns, then it changes. And if you lose your business, it just doesn't make business sense anymore. So Too bad for you. Yeah, I

Alban: 38:25

say kindness to be sarcastic about like, your business model is reliant on somebody else doing you a solid. That is not how it works. Like you don't have any leverage. You don't have a contract in place, you have nothing. And you're just really, really hoping that Spotify doesn't need to go in a different direction. You're totally left with nothing, because you realize, oh, maybe I couldn't rely on a different app that had no obligation to me doing the thing I continued wanting them to do.

Jordan: 38:56

You know, I know that we're kind of harping on Spotify for doing this, like crappy thing. But couldn't Apple Music Do the exact same thing? Yeah, yeah, they could. Yeah, there's apps that are reliant upon Apple Music, and maybe they have something in place where they're contractually obligated to not do that. I don't actually know what that would look like. But um, yeah, it's just to me, if I was an app developer, like, like, that's just kind of the risks they took.

Kevin: 39:24

The thing that stinks about these things is like the Spotify built this API for probably this exact reason. I'm assuming they put it out there started promoting it to app developers and saying, Hey, you can do this. Now you can build a business off of this. What do we get from it? Well, you're gonna encourage your users to sign up for Spotify Premium, and what have you get from it, you get to be able to use this to make your app more attractive and more useful. So it's a symbiotic relationship. Go ahead and build your apps. And then down the road, they changed the rules of the game decide they don't want to do it anymore. It's not profitable enough. We're not going to continue to support it. That's a bummer when that happens. I'm not saying Apple would never do it. Maybe they would maybe they wouldn't Apple steam is to probably like maybe be in a healthier position where even if it's not making them as much money as they hoped they could still have the resources to support it while Spotify still trying to work on that profitability issue. I think it just reflects the type of companies that like, at least for me that I want to support companies that do stuff like this, like there are real people that get hurt when companies make these changes. I hate supporting apps like this. I know that Alban, you love Spotify, smart playlists, you happily give them their $15 a month so that when you're running, you get the best music, whatever, I would never give Spotify money, decisions like this, that really bothered me. And I think it's important that you think about the type of companies that you're supporting with your wallet.

Alban: 40:35

I don't think there's anything wrong with Spotify making this decision. But the lesson I want to take away is the quote from the article, such as the plight of orbiting around a big corporation. If your business model is reliant on a different company that's much larger making the decisions that you need them to make. If you're saying like, Oh, I'm gonna go all in on YouTube, I'm going all in on Spotify, I'm going all in on tick tock, well, the minute that the game changes for them, it will change for you because they don't need you. So I don't think Spotify is evil in doing this. I think it really, really stinks. And it's just a reminder of when a platform changes its mind. A lot of people can get hurt if they relied on that platform to stay the same.

Kevin: 41:23

Right. And just to be fair, Apple has done this to app developers in other categories plenty of times, the most famous example being Sherlock which was a really popular third party app that ran on Macs. And I think some version of the Mac OS came out the ability to hit Command spacebar and it basically brought up Sherlock, which is now built into the OS, and it rendered that app useless. And now that's like the saying that when Apple releases new features in their software, they say oh, did your app just get shocked? Because now you're out of business because they built it in. recent

Alban: 41:52

The most recent example being camo, who is using your phone as a pro webcam. And Apple said, "Great feature. We'll build that into Apple."

Jordan: 42:00

Well, I think the moral of the story is every man for himself. Trust no one. That's the takeaway I'm getting from this.

Alban: 42:10

Podcasts on vinyl! These now exist.

Jordan: 42:14

Luminary has created a beautiful vinyl record of Dave Chappelle's The Midnight Miracle podcast and they have two podcast episodes on this vinyl. And this vinyl, we're not talking just like a regular black record. It's actually this like really pretty marbled royal blue. It's very pretty. And this is kind of a neat thing. To take content or like an art and to put it in a format that is vintage and normal. I don't know. I just think it's really cool.

Alban: 42:47

To be clear, this is not the first time that's happened. I mean, why like three episodes ago, Kevin talked about the first cassette tape podcast. Jerky Boys were doing this back in Kevin's middle school days.

Kevin: 42:59

That's what I think we need to do with Buzzcast I think we need to take the best of Buzzcast and start recording them on the cassette tape and selling them for $50.

Jordan: 43:06

You know what, I think you actually bring up a really good point, Kevin, like maybe no. Hear me out. Okay, this I think this is a really good idea that Kevin has because podcasts when they do their merch, it's always like mugs, stickers T shirts, but I haven't seen any cassette tapes. I haven't seen any vinyl records up until now. So maybe this is going to be a new option for merchandise for podcasters

Kevin: 43:33

it's a whole new merch category. Yeah, I want to see the Teespring for vinyl for your podcasts. You just give them your RSS feed and anybody who wants on demand can get vinyl pressed up whatever episodes they want. That'd be great.

Alban: 43:45

I think it's interesting because it's the first I don't think this is the new business model. Music is replayable I just can't imagine me listening to a podcast episode like 12 times in a row NBA like hey everyone great party Y'all ready to listen to the daily from

Kevin: 44:04

Yeah, and it's like where are you have your record players always in a room or living room or something not really the place that you listen to podcasts? Yeah.

Jordan: 44:13

I think it's also like a situational type thing because I believe that the midnight miracle they actually have like musical guests on and stuff like I know that they had like Questlove on I think that they do actually have that kind of like show element of there being music played during the podcast. situationally vinyl makes sense for this but I agree with you. Maybe the daily on vinyl is not ideal. Maybe make sure that you have evergreen content that can be artsy and appreciated.

Alban: 44:40

We need to like find any other podcasts that have done this and have a little collection like at the Buzzsprout headquarters in Jacksonville have a little wall of like all the first podcast vinyls up on the wall like I'd love to if there's only a handful, you know the first 10 or so that do it. I feel like that'd be an interesting collection. versus just having like a blank wall,

Jordan: 45:02

we'd probably have to, like move some desks around to so that we can fit those giant 80s Sound Systems, you know, like the huge it would take up the entire wall and it was like a silver with knobs.

Alban: 45:13

Yeah, so we can just blast like a Blue Apron.

Jordan: 45:19

But it sounds so much better on vinyl

Kevin: 45:26

you know what time it is. It's time for Buzz. All right, it is time to read some buzz boosts. Thank you. We have more booths this episode than we've had in I think ever Whoa, fantastic to see value for value working. Thank you for all you who are listening and boosting and sending us your thoughts. So let's get to it. Let's read them. First one. It 450 SATs from George DOM Hooray for the pebble speech. I think he's talking about last episode. I was complaining about Spotify. And I was saying that's why we're not going to be on Spotify because we are not going to be another pebble on the pile of their success and podcasting. And so thank you once in a while I get on a rant and yeah, I will not be contributing.

Jordan: 46:06

We have 2700 sites from at pocket parlay. Thanks for everything you guys and girls do over there at Buzzsprout. I've been podcasting for over a year now and your team has made it so easy with all the tools you provide. vfv is the way to go. Thank you pocket parlay.

Alban: 46:25

We got 3000 Satoshis. From at mere mortals podcast. I give your Ozzy accent, a solid five out of debt. You need more swearing, and a bit of a drawl to really sell him you've also got to drag out mate is like a lot of A's. Also know ours. Water equals I'm going to try to pronounce what I'm reading here. But let me spell it first. W apostrophe a W E apostrophe T. H. Well, I was ta I don't think that helped. Mere Mortals. I guess FYI, um, Ozzie, thank you for the five out of 10 accent I don't know. I think it might have been Kevin with the accent. So yeah, solid word, Kevin.

Kevin: 47:10

Yeah, thank you. 900 SATs from Andy flattery who just says podcasting should be embracing it's free and open protocol brand and not positioning itself as another soulless corporate gatekeeper. We agree we'd love to open podcasting ecosystem. It's one of the last places on the internet that you can really do that still. And so fantastic. Glad you're on board. And we are to

Alban: 47:31

throw your pebble in with Kevin's pebble speech. That's right.

Jordan: 47:34

And then we have 7400 from mere mortals podcast, sing as you mentioned an interest in boosted shows I currently run three Wow. Mere Mortals mere mortals book reviews and the value for value podcast interesting. In the main show I and my co host chat philosophy in the park, we go outside and explore everyday topics in a deeper manner. The other two are shorter and solo stuff I run the V four v show is great for anyone who wants to know how to implement V for V for their own show, I hope you get a chance to check any of them out buzz boost.

Kevin: 48:09

Yeah, so do it. That's something that we highly encourage we this is working great for our show. I mean, again, we're not doing it to make money. We're doing it to be able to get back to the podcast ecosystem. But it is so much fun. And so anybody who hosts their podcasts on Buzzsprout, very easy to get your podcast value for value enabled, start at the podcast, index that or website, go ahead and get your code and email it to our support team. They'll add it to your feed. That's really an optional step. But we're happy to do it for you. But even without emailing our support team, anybody who put any podcast app that pulls from the podcasts index, we'll get your value for value tag and you can start accepting Satoshis it's not hard to do at all. All right, 4500

Alban: 48:43

from Dave Jackson, head of support at Lipson he's and the School of podcasting said great hanging out with Kevin in Dallas. Notable exceptions to that were Jordan and I who I'm pretty sure saw him so that's more of a

Jordan: 48:59

I actually didn't

Alban: 49:00

see Kevin, seeing Alvin.

Kevin: 49:03

It was great hanging out with Dave as well. Dave and I had dinner together and we're sitting right next to each other for a fabulous dinner and great to see you too, Dave. All right. 9000 might be the big baller boosted the day from Dave Jones said Alvin, you better buy that truck. Here's a few steps to help get you started. Don't listen to Kevin. My wife and I both drive old trucks and working on them gets us away from computers for a while, which has made us happier people wrenching on an old truck is way better than therapy. You have my blessings and may personnel. Thank

Alban: 49:31

you, Dave. There may have been a slight change in the new vehicle plans though. Maybe that'll be in a future episode. If anyone wants to know, Alvin's purchase decision for a car. Maybe I'll I'll talk about that again. We also got 900 from Tom Raftery. Thanks folks. You're good tech support people helped me change my two podcasts, the digital supply chain and climate 21 To value for value. Now let the riches roll in. So we will link to this podcast in the show notes, send him your riches. Let's get him some booths.

Jordan: 50:05

And did he say that our tech support people helped him with that?

Alban: 50:09

Yes. So shout out Buzzsprout support for getting him set up. Yeah. All right, we have 1800 from George Tom again. Hi, it's George from Phil better media in Germany. I love your support for podcasting to Dotto and I would love to recommend you to my clients. But your GDPR policy is outdated and doesn't take into account current rulings about the overturning of privacy shield. George, good point, we should remove that privacy shield language. It is updated policy. But Privacy Shield has been overruled. So we need to make sure we take that out so that no one's confused. Thank you for that update. We are GDPR compliant. Maybe tell some of your friends over there in Europe, give us a break. It's podcast.

Jordan: 50:49

900 SATs from Jean bean. Y'all are talking about the charts from Apple. And I can't help but wonder how skewed they are due to I assume not accounting for subscription podcasts that use Patreon and the like. Sidenote, I switched your podcast over to another player after hearing and last one, you have enabled the value for value features. I love seeing the spread. I mean, it does make sense that the apple podcast charts would not take into account the Patreon super cast member for subscriptions because they don't have those analytics. Those analytics are pulled directly from Apple podcast subscriptions. So that is definitely skewed just for Apple podcasts.

Kevin: 51:25

Yep. And thanks for switching apps that you could support us with your boosts. That's what we want to see more of that stuff. Your next comment was a non 100 more sets from Jean beans that to be more clear, I like overcast best. But the Dev has just made it clear that they don't plan to do value for value I currently use cast thematic for all of my visible shows, but may as well switch to pod verse once they implement CarPlay. So here's the thing, this is fantastic. And we want to see more of this type of stuff. There is a really great ecosystem out there of third party podcast listening apps that developers are working on. And they all have these unique features. And if what you're excited about right now is value for value, we're super excited about it, then you have to go out there and do a little bit of work to find the value for value enabled podcast listening app that resonates with you that you love the most. And so I have heard Marco at overcast say the same thing that he doesn't plan to do value for value. He's not a big crypto person in general, totally fine. But if you're into it, then it might just mean you find another app. And there are other good options out there. So Good on you for going out there and being proactive. Finding a good one and sending us some stats. Thank you, Jane bean.

Alban: 52:26

Yeah, I think if there's something you're really interested in, it's okay that somebody has an app that doesn't agree with you, and they have a different opinion. But lean into the one that follows the values you have. I don't find it wrong to use Spotify music, Kevin doesn't like it good. We should use different apps, if you really love value for value. And even if you like over house, you can just let Marco know, hey, I'm going to use a different app. And he'll probably say cool. So I think lean into the things you love and find more of those good things in the world. We got another 900 from Jean beans. So this is a three straight by Jean beam. Thank you for what it's worth. If you know you normally listen to 25 hours a podcast that do value for value and you have $10 A month To support podcasting, you could set your SAT stream rate to $10 divided by 25 times 60 minutes equals point oh six, six, aka 32 cents a minute. Wow. As of today, realistically, I did the math once rounded off to 30 sets minute and call it done. But this

Kevin: 53:23

is perfect. This is this is exactly what we're talking about Jordan because you're saying I don't have enough money to support all the podcasts that I listened to if you load them all up in your value for value enabled podcasting app, and then just say, I'm gonna go ahead and stream 30 sets a minute or if you want to spend $20 a month on podcasting maybe 60 cents a minute regardless of what podcast you're listening to as long as they have their value tags set up correctly then they start getting your some stats and when your wallets empty. It's empty.

Jordan: 53:47

Yeah, I just needed somebody to like slap me with some hard hitting math. That's right. This makes sense. I mean, the math doesn't make sense to me, but he summarized it as 32 cents a minute that I can understand.

Alban: 53:59

Hats off Jean, and thank you for the boost.

Jordan: 54:02

All right, and then we have Who is it Jean bean again and Jamie and says I love the love boost clip. I've heard it on Jupiter broadcasting podcasts too. And then he circled back around again and says all the JB podcasts are a value for value enabled. By the way,

Kevin: 54:21

I'm just a fan JB so that would be Jupiter broadcasting.

Alban: 54:24

So that's five boosts in a row by Jean being the big boost of the day was David Jones telling me to go buy a truck so we appreciate all of you keep boosting we love this interactive element I mean more much more than the sets themselves the ability for people to share their thoughts and you know have a little bit of back and forth with us is what we love the most.

Jordan: 54:45

Thanks for listening and keep podcasting.

Kevin: 54:53

So last week, the whole team from Buzzsprout and some people from the larger team at higher pixels. all got together down in the Florida Keys for our first full team off site event. We were there for two and a half days. I think Jordan traveled the furthest to get there. I did. But all of us traveled a pretty good distance. Even the people coming from Jacksonville still in Florida still had what was it like seven, eight hour drive straight down? Well,

Alban: 55:18

seven, eight hours down the my trip back I think was a full 15 hour return trip. But it was great. You know, when you start working online, and everyone's remote, you gained so much in like you're not wasting time commuting, and you gain a lot that different types of people can work with you like we could never have worked with Jordan and had her join the team when she was in Idaho. She wasn't going to move to Jacksonville for a job. So like he opens up so many things. But you definitely miss some of this like in person human interaction.

Jordan: 55:53

Yeah, it was really nice, especially being clear across the country. It was so nice to actually get to know the entire team, in person and in like a fun environment. And it was my first time in the Florida Keys. It is hot in the Florida Keys. And it's a different kind of heat. In Idaho we have that there'll be 100 degrees, but there's no humidity. And then in Florida, it'll be like, you know, 90 degrees but the humidity is so intense that it feels like you're being like steamed alive. It was brutal.

Alban: 56:27

You're making everybody from Florida feel like incredibly good right now. We all like we go everywhere else. We're like, you know, this is hot, but it's the humidity that gets you and everyone's like give me a break. And you're just like totally validating our weather to us.

Jordan: 56:41

I was also one of those people because it was like 104 in Idaho when I came down to Florida and like the day I arrived it was like 87 but it was so much hotter. Like I literally got physically ill because it turns out I'm a desert flower and I cannot be in the humidity

Kevin: 56:59

Yeah, we I think we were thinking from Jacksonville, everything that was actually pretty nice down there. There was a you know, pretty consistent breeze. I mean, it's definitely humid, but it was like 80% humidity as opposed to Jacksonville, which is always like 98% humidity.

Jordan: 57:12

I was wonderful. Yeah.

Kevin: 57:13

So weather was nice, hot, like you said, but I mean, you're on the beach, you kind of want it to be hot. We had a good mix of we didn't play the whole time. We had some work events. But then we also had plenty of free time and some fun team activities. We did some I don't know we were at a nice place. They had a nice spa, they had some nice pools. Some people got out in the saltwater and took boats out and took jet skis out. good mix of everything. What would you guys say? Like? Like for future event planning? Would you do like more planned activities, less planned activities? Do you think we had the right mix?

Jordan: 57:43

To me it felt like the right mix. Like I felt really happy with it.

Alban: 57:46

I don't want to be the Buzzkill. But I'm like I think I would have done a little more work. Does it sound normal, but I could have done more. I really loved the moments where we were talking about the bigger vision for the company, or where the marketing team were all getting together. And I'm talking about the vision for the marketing team going forward. It made me realize like I would have loved to have had a bit more time to brainstorm in person with people. And it was funny, like even when we're out on jet skis, you're jumping waves and then I'm you're still trying to like get a little bit of work talking. And it's not because all you want to do is just talk about work. But these are the people who you work with day in and day out, and you rarely see. And so that is your shared experiences like, hey, it wasn't a fun. We worked on that video. And we just finished that. And so it's very nice to be able to talk to people in person. And you know, see how tall people really are versus zoom calls. I think that was Jordans experience.

Kevin: 58:42

One of my most favorite things that we did was we went on these jetski tours, and we had to break into two groups. And not everybody wanted to do it. But like for anybody who wanted to do it, you could. And so we had two groups. And so there were 10 people in our group, I think, and the there was a safety briefing, of course and a little bit of a boater scores before you went out in this thing. And I think within the first like three or four minutes on the water, we were supposed to stay 30 feet apart from each other at all times and single file line. And I think it took about three minutes before Alvin and myself and the guy who ahead of him was John. Like, there was no line. There was no 30 feet. Albin was like right next to my Jetski. And like, so we're gonna stay in line, and we're just gonna go and we're just tearing off. I think in the first nine minutes or so, I took a really hard turn and skip myself about 50 feet across the water. Albin came and checked on me, of course, saw that I was okay. And then he took off. But like you could clearly tell who the real followers were and who are the people who were like, yeah, those are just suggestions, but we'll be fine.

Alban: 59:42

I just want to talk. This is 100% revisionist history. My experience is the line goes all the way back to John out of software than to me and then to Kevin, and we are in a line. And John and I have been on Jet Skis more than some of the people in the front so we're Maybe curving a little back and forth, but we're staying in a line. Kevin starts here right by me, a speeding up past four people ramp as hard as he can speed back gets behind speeds up the ribs. And eventually I'm like, alright, well, I guess this whole line thing is totally out. So I guess I'll do a little bit until I saw Kevin go full speed turn, Blip. last final destination was a full 35 feet from the Jetski. So you gotta launch and I'm like, Alright, I'm going to take this as a learning moment. And I'll go a little bit slower. And I will also avoid,

Kevin: 1:00:39

I felt like you were in it with me. When I came up ripping Next, on the side of you, I felt like you gave me that look like yeah, we're going we're not the line was just a suggestion. You don't really have to do that. I thought we were in it together.

Jordan: 1:00:51

See, I heard a story about you too, on the jet skis. That basically the group lost you because you guys decided to like stop and see how deep you could dive into the ocean.

Alban: 1:01:02

That is also true. That is having stopped and so I like stopped with him and I'm like, oh, what's going on? And John stop Kevin's like, look how deep the water is. You think we touch the bottom? Like no, we gotta go. Kevin's like come on. I'm jumping in who's going with me? And I just was like alright, fine. I'm taking off my life vest, I'm jumping in!