Get Millions of Downloads by Gaming the System

In this episode, Tom Rossi joins Jordan and Kevin to discuss ways to celebrate International Podcast Day, why farming downloads isn't an effective growth hack, the significance Serial had on the podcasting world, what we can learn from audio fiction podcasts, and the importance of owning your podcast.

INTERNATIONAL PODCAST DAY
Friday, September 30th
https://internationalpodcastday.com/

WHAT'S NEW IN DIRECTORIES
Goodpods added!
Stitcher & Pandora removed (for now).

GAMING THE SYSTEM
Podcasters Are Buying Millions of Listeners Through Mobile-Game Ads
by Ashley Carman, Bloomberg
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-09-27/inside-podcasters-explosive-audience-growth

155,000 PROLIFIC PODCASTS?
https://www.amplifimedia.com/blogstein/the-most-prolific-categories-in-podcasting

SERIAL IS BACK!
Another episode of Serial is released following the release of Adnan Syed.
https://www.npr.org/2022/09/19/1123878679/adnan-syed-released-serial

FLIPPING THE SCRIPT
Tenderfoot TV has struck a deal to adapt a short film into two podcasts.
https://www.insideradio.com/podcastnewsdaily/podcasts-give-birth-to-film-now-tenderfoot-tv-is-flipping-the-script/article_7d496c96-3517-11ed-825a-337912be3e27.html

STUDENTS SUE SCHOOL DISTRICT OVER PODCAST
https://co.chalkbeat.org/2022/9/19/23362483/know-justice-know-peace-podcast-trademark-denver-students-lawsuit

HELLO INTERNET VINYL
http://www.hellointernet.fm/podcast/68

Kevin (49%), Jordan (27%), Tom (24%)

Thanks to guest host, Tom Rossi @tomrossi7!

Transcript

Kevin: 0:00

Wait, do you pay them? You pay 'em?

Tom: 0:02

For music. I listen to Spotify for music

Kevin: 0:04

Oh my Gosh Alright, let's get Alban back. No, Alban pays them, too.

Tom: 0:10

Alban pays them too!

Kevin: 0:11

We need, we need somebody else.

Jordan: 0:13

I also pay

Kevin: 0:14

No way!

Jordan: 0:15

Yeah.

Kevin: 0:15

Am I the only one on Buzzcast that doesn't give Spotify money?

Jordan: 0:25

Joining us on this episode of Buzzcast today we have Tom Rossi standing in for Alban. Tom, welcome back on the show.

Tom: 0:33

Thanks for having me.

Kevin: 0:34

What happened to Alban?. Where's he?

Jordan: 0:36

Well, Alban was supposed to be going to Atlanta. But because of the hurricane, his trip got canceled. So he said he was available for this episode. But I was like, no, we got Tom.

Tom: 0:49

That's right. That's right.

Kevin: 0:51

Once your replacement has been scheduled, you're out.

Tom: 0:54

You're out. No take backs. As a matter of fact, I don't know. Maybe Maybe I'll just stay in.

Kevin: 0:58

That's true. Until you take a trip on recording day, then Alban can get back. Yeah, exactly.

Jordan: 1:04

I really, really, really wasn't sure if this episode is gonna happen at all?

Kevin: 1:08

Well, once you live in Florida long enough, it's probably a really bad thing. This is why people lose a lot. And a lot of people get hurt lose their lives. Because, you know, like, every year, we have one or two of these, and most of the time, they don't turn out to be that big of a deal. Now when they are a big deal, they're a really big deal. super dangerous. And so you have to be disciplined to take the necessary precautions every time. But then like after you do that two or three or four years in a row, you fall into a I don't know, just laziness, or whatever. But like,

Jordan: 1:36

a false sense of security.

Tom: 1:38

I mean, my kids are so excited, because we just haven't had one in a while. And their memories are just like, it's kind of fun. It's like camping, like maybe you're gonna lose power, but not for very long. Jacksonville does pretty well with hurricanes.

Kevin: 1:51

Yeah, kids get excited about it. It's kind of like a snow day up north, I would imagine. Yeah, schools close, you might lose power. You got to stock up on some, you know, whatever the grocery stores have left when you get there. So it can be fun. But yeah, but not to take away from the danger side. And also that is very real, and often have a lot of trees come down, which is, which is a pain.

Tom: 2:11

Which is why Kevin and I avoid having trees, right? No trees on our property. That's the rule. If you look at our properties,

Jordan: 2:18

I've got trees like taller than my house. Like somebody planted them five feet from my house and it drives me absolutely bonkers because we have to trim them but the tree is like 50 feet tall. Take it out. I want to go. Joshua, let me I know we're gonna get a big windstorm one of these days. It's just gonna go right she's gonna slice our house in half.

Tom: 2:40

We used to call Kevin the Once-ler, you know from the Lorax he would just take down trees.

Kevin: 2:45

I replaced them with smaller trees that are metallic. Now my backyard is artificial turf grass, so I kind of am the Once-ler.

Jordan: 2:59

When this episode airs, it will be International Podcast Day. Does International Podcast Day usually mean anything to you guys? Do you guys celebrate it? Like have barbecue?

Tom: 3:08

Oh, it's huge. It's huge in our house. We wear costumes. Like we go around the neighborhood we talk to people

Kevin: 3:14

do you have like a podcast tree and you put gifts under it? Everyone comes in, unwraps podcast gifts.

Tom: 3:22

Podcast tree. My kids would kill me. Like they don't even like listening to podcasts when we get a car on like our Hey, what podcasts are we going to listen to? And then like, no, please. Wait until I tell them it's, Podcast Day, all podcasts all day long.

Jordan: 3:35

It's one of those things that's more so on social media. Like I'll see the post like Happy International podcast day. And I kind of went like, what is podcast day? Like what is the purpose of podcast day podcasters don't get a lot of cool things. And we have our own day, and I don't really know how to celebrate it. So I went to the website, internationalpodcastday.com. And they have a list of ways that you can celebrate including using the hashtag, hashtag international podcast day to engage with others, supporting other podcasts. So going and leaving like a good rating and review on another podcast, sharing a podcast that you really enjoy. So things like that, I think are maybe a really good way to celebrate it instead of putting up a podcast tree and hoping that your spouse or parent gives you another microphone.

Tom: 4:26

A reminder to be intentional about supporting the podcasting community, especially for podcast listeners. You know, we get so much value out of the podcasts that we listen to. And so maybe it's a good reminder to just spread the love, help podcasting grow, help your podcast or by telling somebody about them.

Kevin: 4:40

I'm reading the about podcast a page on the internationalpodcastday.com website and it's kind of interesting. Steve Lee is the person who started this I guess, but I want to hear more about the history of this. Like how do you get is it you just put up a website and set and choose a day? Do you have to register? Is there a board have international days that you have to register with.

Tom: 5:02

I think it was one of the founding fathers does this happen?

Kevin: 5:05

Is it like the star registry? I think somebody bought a star for me one time for a birthday present or something. That's right. Is this the same way?

Tom: 5:12

Have you guys ever heard of Sweetest day? I was shocked that in the Midwest, they have an a holiday that I've never heard of before called Sweetest day. And it's it's just Valentine's Day. It's another day during the year where you're supposed to buy something for your boyfriend or girlfriend. I had no idea. I had a girlfriend when I lived up in Ohio, and did not know there was such thing as Sweetest day. And I remember the shame that I felt associated with this totally fake holiday.

Kevin: 5:38

Oh, it's coming up. It's October 15.

Jordan: 5:40

It's like spooky Valentine's Day.

Tom: 5:42

Yeah, there are, there are days I don't know who registered it. I don't know where that is officially recognized. But if you move to the Midwest, you should know right away.

Kevin: 5:51

Right. According to Wikipedia, Sweetest Day is a holiday that celebrated in the Midwestern United States, parts of the northeastern United States and in Florida. It's on the third Saturday in October. So you can't just blame this on the Midwest. Tom, this is a Florida thing, too.

Tom: 6:09

I stand corrected. I mean, they have you go into a Hallmark store. And it's like filled with Sweetest day stuff. Like just like Valentine's Day, I thought I was in the twilight zone I seriously.

Kevin: 6:20

Podcast Day, Sweetest Day, it's the holiday season!

Jordan: 6:27

We have some changes to the directories pages. I know some Buzzsprout users have noticed, some may have not noticed, what do we have that's new, Kev?

Kevin: 6:36

What's new is the link to Goodpods. So, Goodpods is a podcast listening app, iOS and Android primarily, they just launched a web version. So you can go to goodpods.com and log into your account. And I think do most everything that you can do on the mobile app, you can now do through the website, which is good, because a lot of what they're trying to do is like it, I don't know if it's ratings and reviews. It's more like kind of comments and commentary around a social graph. You and your friends what you're listening to what you liked what you didn't like, maybe good reviews, but those reviews being more intended instead of for just the general world to stumble upon more like whoever you're following in good pods. So that's cool. We've liked them for a long time good pods came out maybe three years ago, I don't know I'm not good with time. So maybe seven years, maybe one I don't know. But they've been they're relatively new is how I think about them still. And it's a great app and a great idea. And so they now have a link on your Buzzsprout website that you get with your podcast. So when somebody clicks Listen, now, it's now shows up as a listening destination. So hopefully that gets more and more traction, good pods really works best more people that use it. And so check it out. If you'd like it as a listening app, then maybe you want to start talking about it and recommend your audience go listen there. It's a good way to build community around your podcast because it is based around these discussion threads and these social circles. Tom uses it a lot, right?

Jordan: 7:56

Tom actually shared the Buzzcast one with me the other day, and I went and looked at it on Goodpods. And there's a lot of comments on every Buzzcast episode they had not seen before. Have you seen those Kev?

Kevin: 8:09

I've seen some of them. But yeah, it's not like my daily podcast driver. But I do really like it. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Tom: 8:14

I gotta give it another shot. I love the idea. But like Kevin said, it comes down to if your friends are on it. If there's people that you can follow, it's really cool to see oh, this is what Jordan listened to. And then, you know, read her comments on a particular pod. I mean, I just posted over the weekend, I said, Hey, can you recommend a comedy podcast? Whereas you can go into Goodpods and you could see what are your friends listening to? What are the podcasts that they like? And then you know, you can kind of do that. I'm a big fan of good reads too, which is, you know, similar model for books.

Jordan: 8:42

Yeah, I actually steered clear of Goodpods for a long time because I listen to very inappropriate podcasts a lot of times, I didn't want, you know, I didn't want people to see what I was listening to. And I think like now I'm kind of gotten into a point in my life, maybe it's just the 30s, you know, the onset of the 30s, just not caring what people think. And then also, I think that people are more open about like the trash that they listen to. And so I might have to give it another try because maybe I don't care if people know they listen to a raunchy comedy or murder podcasts.

Tom: 9:20

I cannot wait to follow you on Goodpods. Let the judgment ensue.

Jordan: 9:29

Hopefully I don't lose my job. You guys are like,"she's way too dark".

Tom: 9:34

She went somewhere I did not expect to go. So the way that the Goodpods integration works is any Buzzsprout podcaster who is already connected with Apple has already been connected with good pods. So whenever you get your directory set up with Apple, we will automatically add several different directories that are listed down at the bottom that are all what we call Apple derived directories and so good pods is one of those now, and so you don't have to do anything you already there, the link is already on your site. It's already in your share and your player so that way people can see it.

Kevin: 10:05

We have temporarily hopefully temporarily removed the directory listings for Stitcher and Pandora, this is a result of them changing the submission process. So what happened is, I think the larger company is XM, Sirius, XM, Sirius bought Simplecast, bought Pandora and bought Stitcher. So own all three now and in an attempt to consolidate some of these properties, I again, I'm giving them the benefit of the doubt here. In what seems to be an attempt to consolidate these properties, they've now put down on the directory submission for Stitcher and Pandora are happening through simple cast. Well, simple cast is also a podcast hosting service. And what they're making you do is create a simple cast account, a free simple cast account to be able to submit. Okay, so in and of itself, that's, that seems totally fine. But we were having a lot of Buzzsprout customers writing in and saying that, they now have a simple cast account. They don't necessarily know why, but it imported all of their episodes, and they're afraid that their podcast is now going to get messed up. It's not going to get messed up. But it is a very confusing process. And Simplecast, during this process is trying to get them to buy a hosting account. And so I reached out to him a couple of weeks ago, we've been going back and forth. And they're saying no, no, no, that's not our intention at all. We're not trying to steal hosting customers, we're just trying to consolidate these properties together and bring them all under one brand. Okay, that's totally fine. So why is this confusion happening? So they sent me screenshots and showed me how the flow is supposed to work. And it does not look too confusing. So I don't understand what's happening. So I decided to walk through it myself. And I think I found the point of confusion. And that is when you create a simple cast account, they require email verification, standard practice, not a big deal. So I get the email. And then I click the link to confirm my account. And I am brought into from that link down brought straight into a simple CAS hosting account. So I'm now out of like the Submission Portal side, and I'm in the hosting side. And then they give you two options. And the two options are important existing show or start from scratch, either one of those options that you choose, you're choosing to set up a hosting account. So if you import an existing show, and then you search for your show, it's going to import it from Buzzsprout. If you start from scratch, it's you're setting up a brand new podcast and some podcast. Neither one of those are what you want. And neither that whole page is not the page that this confirmation link should be going to it should be confirming your email address and then dropping you into like the what is it site creators that simplecast.com or something like that, I think is the link. That's where it supposed to be going. So anyway, the result of this is that they have a link just going to the wrong place. So I've notified them of that. They said, Okay, thank you for the report, we're going to look into it, I've let them know that we've had to pull the directories until they get it fixed. And now we're just waiting for them to fix it. Once they say it's fixed. I'll just confirm that it's fixed. And then we can add those directories back. But that's why it's out.

Tom: 12:58

And just just to be clear, we've only removed it for adding new links. If they've if they've already gotten their links established, then they're still there. Right. So this is just for new podcasts that haven't previously. Yeah, we're not pushing people into that submission process. Because it's broken. It's not it's going to be confusing. And it's going to result in support for both Buzzsprout and for them.

Kevin: 13:18

So once they get it fixed, and then you do submit it. So I did walk through the process, then it seems like they've got some issues on the analytic side. So Buzzcast, for example, has been listed in Stitcher and Pandora for a long time. Like, it took us a long time to get into Pandora. But I think we've been in there for well over a year now. And so I clicked into the analytics section. And I would assume that there's lots of data because we've been listing these directories for a long time. But there's, there's like no data, there's no data, I think it's showing over whatever the time period is since 2017 until 2022, it shows that we had like nine Pandora streams. Well, we know that's not true, because Buzzsprout is accounting for hundreds of podcast streams during that time. So the whole system seems a little bit broken now. So if you're new to Buzzsprout and you're you're wondering how do I get the Pandora? How do I get into the Stitcher, hopefully, we're gonna get this worked out, we're gonna get it put back in. But at the same time, it's not even none of it seems to be working great right now, as they're trying to consolidate and bring all this stuff together. I think they've got some issues to work through. So just be patient. You can go fumble through it yourself if you want. We're not linking to it right now. But you can find it through Google and do it if you want. But again, I think it might the best solution might just be to wait it out until they get the stuff squared away.

Jordan: 14:29

I mean, really like it could be squared away before they even be accepted by Pandora anyway, because they take so long. That's true. Yeah. I know when I submitted my show, I think it took about seven months for my podcast to be accepted by Pandora.

Kevin: 14:44

Yeah, it seemed like they were very slow in adding podcasts like when they got into it. They didn't want to just open up the floodgates and let anybody with a podcast in sounded like it was more like an apple system where it was going to have some sort of human review, but they didn't have as many humans are doing Have a system or they were looking for a certain level of quality, maybe trying to figure out what the guidelines were around that quality guidelines couldn't have been too big because Buzzcast got in.

Jordan: 15:08

All right, this is a really fascinating story that just dropped today, Ashley Carmen at Bloomberg, who has been really pumping out some great articles. She wrote an article called podcasters are buying millions of listeners through mobile game ads. So, some podcasters and networks, they have found a way to gain millions of new listeners through mobile gaming ads. And the way that this works, is in these mobile gaming ads when a player wants to have like, a special like loot crate or get more coins or something like that, you know how these apps will say we'll play an ad and then you can get this item. And so the user will play the ad, and then it actually will load a podcast player. And then a podcast will load it up and start playing. So it's downloading a podcast every time someone wants to get one of those loot crates, which is really sketchy.

Tom: 16:12

Okay, here's the thing. I thought there was a tone to this article that as a person who likes to play video games, I felt like a little bit called out there was this one quote, it's like the practice allows network to amass downloads quickly by tapping into a wellspring of hyperactive video game users. When did I become hyperactive, and now I'm just like, spazzing out, just clicking on listening to podcasts, because the ads are showing up. If anything, we know masterfully, how to not click on the ads so that we can just get back into our game. I thought it's a great creative idea for being able to get your podcast out for people to be able to hear it, especially if there's some type of, you know, targeting or some type of relationship between the games that they're putting them in not targeting in terms of nefarious sketchy things, but more like, Hey,

Kevin: 17:02

I'm sure there is target. I'm sure there is.

Tom: 17:05

But but you know, more matching up category type things, where I've got a podcast that talks about this. And so I'm going to put it I'm going to advertise for it in games like this. So if I've got a Dungeons and Dragons podcast, and I want to insert that ad, in a role playing game on an iPhone, that seems like a really great fit between two different products.

Jordan: 17:23

One of the games that they listed having these podcast ads is Subway Surfers, which I guess has gotten like something crazy, like 3 billion game downloads since it started in like 2012. But yeah, so I mean, that's probably mostly kids, I would think like, kids and teens.

Kevin: 17:42

I have a 12 year old and he's on Subway Surfer a lot. I have a nine year old. Yep. And as far as I can tell, he's never come to me and tell me about the new podcasts that he found after playing.

Tom: 17:51

So there was another quote from the article, I just, it's just weird tone. To date, the podcast industry has said next to nothing about its embrace of this video game strategy. Kevin just did as a member of the podcast industry,

Kevin: 18:06

on behalf of the industry, it doesn't work.

Tom: 18:08

my 12 year old plays Subway Surfer and has never come to you with a podcast recommendation.

Jordan: 18:14

Yeah, I think there was an independent podcast are listed in this article that he had tried this. But basically after a while, he realized that having organic listeners is worth way more than having just these downloading your podcast onto people's mobile devices. In the long term, it works so much better just to have people who are actually like meaningfully connected to your podcast. It was interesting, because deep sea, which is a fraudulent ad company, they they look for these kinds of things. They actually published a paper and they found that the New York Post and I heart were among the networks that were found to be running these ads. And a spokesperson said that I heard has paid $10 million to gain 6 million unique listeners per month through the ads.

Kevin: 19:02

I mean, this whole thing seems ridiculous. Like, okay, so let's let's just take the article at face value and say this is exactly what is happening. So my understanding from reading the article is that when you click to hear an ad, it is then linking to an audio file that is being hosted from a podcast hosting company, somebody like I heart is affiliated with, and it's just starting to play a podcast. So we know IAB says after 60 seconds of listening, or 60 seconds has been downloaded to the user's device that can count as a play. Well, that happens very quickly. So even if you only listen to 10 seconds or so of it, you've probably downloaded a minutes worth. So it's counting as a download. But these are in order for this to work and register as a download for the podcast. It has to actually be playing the podcast audio file, not a promo but an episode, unless they're like playing the trailer or something or some audio file that they just threw into the feed to be used as a promo. But it sounds like it's just playing an episode. So you're playing a video game and then in order to get 1000 Free tokens are something you click on an ad. Yeah. And it starts playing a podcast. And if it's an I Heart podcast, we all know the first four minutes of I Heart podcasts are just ads anyway. And so now you're listening to an ad. That is a podcast that's giving you ads for other products. The whole thing is sounds insane to me. And it sounds like it is exactly what the article is saying, which is just a scam to drive up numbers, which if I heard just wants to drive up numbers, aren't they the ones really measuring their podcasts anyway. I mean, you basically just lie about your numbers, or go on Fiverr and pay somebody to download your podcast 10 million times, like, that'd be cheaper. It seems like it might just be a justification or something, because they're saying they are legitimate downloads. And I guess technically they kind of are, but they're useless, unless you're just trying to get your numbers up so that you can sell

Tom: 20:44

That's like the inception model for having a look at an ad

Kevin: 20:44

Which is the point that actually makes in the article more ads. I click on it. And so now I'm hearing more ads and ads within the ads. that they're paying roughly, I think she said around $27 per 1000. For these ads, that's the CPM to run these ads. And then the downloads that they're generating, presumably, they can make more than $20 CPM on the ads, probably by running multiple ads in a podcast, and maybe doing host read, so maybe they're getting higher than $20 or $27. CPM. Maybe they're just getting a $25 CPM, but they're running, you know, eight ads in a podcast episode. So it's kind of like a money machine, I guess, you just drive as many downloads as you want. But again, I come back to this idea of like, you're measuring your own podcast, so just just lie about your numbers. Good.

Tom: 21:30

I mean, we've had a lot of these conversations now that we've launched Buzzsprout ads, but there is some value to it, there is some value to it now attributing that value is very difficult, and trying to apply the same formula to an ad that's being put in front of nine year olds that are playing Subway Surfer versus inside of a podcast, it's in the same category. You know, I just think that it just highlights that there can be value. And like Jordan, what you were saying, it's tremendously more valuable to have some type of organic connection. But that doesn't mean that there isn't value in doing this as an and not an or so that you're still doing something like this. But it's when you try to attribute value that it gets really difficult at$27. CPM, it just seems like that's going to be hard to get that kind of value out of an ad like this.

Kevin: 22:12

I don't know, I push back on it a little bit. Because I think if you were trying to really extract value from this ad, then you'd be running a promo, like a piece of audio that is produced to entice somebody to actually listen to a podcast or subscribe to it. That doesn't seem to be what they're doing. It just sounds like they're playing a podcast episode. Right? They're just starting from the beginning, Dan, anything. Welcome to my podcast. Yeah, that's not a good sale.

Tom: 22:31

I would much rather have a promo, but even a promo at $27. CPM, I think would be difficult, just because I mean, it depends on the game, I guess. And the audience for the game?

Kevin: 22:41

It would be it begs the question like, are they really trying to attract new listeners for their podcasts? Are they just trying to get those download numbers up?

Tom: 22:48

There's also a Bloomberg article written about it, right? So that alone is valuable to them. So the fact that they did something different in the way that they approach their advertising strategy gets them positive press, which for a lot of these companies, that translates into value, you know, we were talking about some of the moves that Spotify made, where they'll do something in Facebook, for example, will they'll do something and then they abandon it, they start doing something and then they abandon it, but they still got the value out of it, because they got all this positive press about, ooh, Facebook is getting into podcasting. No, actually not. But they got all the positive press and that was all that was valuable to them. And so maybe there's some bit of that here, too, of, oh, look at us, we're trying this new strategy, which is creative to you know, do advertising within games.

Jordan: 23:29

I mean, if I was one of those companies, I would also be trying to spin it but you know, they're actually not I heart and the New York Post are both not willing to comment on it. And I don't think that this article really says like, Hey, this is a good strategy. I think it's more just revealing like how scummy it is that I Heart Radio, you know, they're taking up space in like half of the top charts, but they're also essentially farming downloads, and they're able to get around the IRB stuff because it's legitimate downloads even though it's done in kind of a kind of gross way. It's it's a little icky.

Tom: 24:06

Kids are gonna be like I had to listen to 60 seconds of a podcast. Why? Because of IAB. I was playing a video game I had to listen to 60 seconds. Otherwise, a download didn't count.

Jordan: 24:17

Thanks, IAB.

Tom: 24:21

so Okay, wait back to the quote though. So to date the podcast industry you said nothing about its embrace of this video game strategy. So we're saying we're not big fans of the strategy or at least the way that it's being used to essentially farm downloads versus promote your podcast to you know, possibly find connections with people that might be a good fit for your your podcast.

Kevin: 24:39

Go write it down. Dash Tom Rossi. On the record.

Jordan: 24:43

XOXO, Tom Rossi. I saw on pod news that there were only 155,000 regularly updated podcasts and I thought that was kind of a low number. I thought it seemed kind of odd. Though I linked to the article here from amplify media, I think it's more 155,000 prolific podcast, right, Tom.

Tom: 25:08

That's my takeaway. But we're still out on whether it's 10 days or seven days, the quote from the article, roughly 155,000 podcasts with over 10 episodes have been updated over the last 10 days. So that sounds like their definition of maybe a prolific podcast would be, they have over 10 episodes, and they've updated it in over the last 10 days.

Jordan: 25:31

So daily podcast,

Kevin: 25:33

no, it can be weekly, it just has to be updated once during that time, well,

Tom: 25:36

they could have just done one per week.

Jordan: 25:37

Oh, See, I'm looking at more than 10 episodes up to last 10 days. So in my mind, I'm thinking an episode a day for 10 days.

Tom: 25:47

But then, on their chart, they say prolific podcast has 10 or more episodes in one released in the last week. So unless there is a different definition of a week, that is 10 days, I don't know what that means. But at the end of the day, what we know is there's all these different ways of answering the question of how many podcasts are there? I hear that question all the time. And, Kevin, what do you say, when somebody asks you, how many podcasts are there?

Kevin: 26:15

Yeah, well, it's hard to know, there's a bunch of numbers. So we know There's well over 4 million podcasts total that exist in the world, but the vast majority of those are not really, you know, there's not much to them, like, how many books are there in the world? Well, I have, you know, personally, I write books every day, but then, you know, I crumpled them up and throw them on my desk somewhere, you know, is that really a book? That's what a lot of these podcasts are like.

Tom: 26:39

I intended it to be a book, right?

Kevin: 26:40

It could have been could have been mean, if somebody finds it and listens to it, but nobody will. And it's terrible quality anyway. Well, that is a lot of what we find in certain directories like no disrespect to anchor as an app, but it is designed for people to test the waters of podcasting. So a lot of people have tested the waters of podcasting, they've launched the anchor app, they've been like, Hey, this is Kevin, it's my first podcast ever. Hey, Mom, isn't this cool? I'm live on radio, save, publish, somehow it makes it into some directories, it's counted. That's not really a podcast, I'm never gonna do it again, decided podcasting wasn't for me. So we get the 4 million something number, that's probably not a great number to use. There have been other people who've gone out in the world. And they've said, Well, let me put some more parameters around what we will consider a podcast and what we won't. Those people have landed somewhere between 400,000 600,000. And they use like definitions like, well, they have to publish more than three episodes, and then have to have made an update within the last 90 days. Okay, well, that seems reasonable. Now we get between 400,000 600,000. But then you have you know, you have to think about like, what about the cereals of the world cereal, like they publish a season and then they don't update, they don't publish something else for more than 90 days sometimes. So with by that definition, you're not counting cereal, that's one of the most popular podcasts that has existed ever, and it's left out of that count. So no count is perfect. I think it's fine to throw out numbers like this to say that there's 155,000 active podcasts as long as you define it right afterwards. The problem with this article, of course, is their definition goes back and forth, depending on which section of the article you're reading. One section says seven days, one section says 10 days, like if you're going to define a number, you should be consistent about how you define it, and then talk about it in that way.

Tom: 28:18

Why do so many people ask that question? And why don't we have that question for for example, YouTube? Right? Nobody ever talks about? Yeah, I know. There's there's whatever, 52 million channels, but of those channels, how many are active channels are prolific channels? Like why do we always have this conversation around podcasting, but not in other areas?

Jordan: 28:38

I think it's because podcasting had such intense growth, that it became overwhelming for people and they went like, Whoa, this is crazy, like this just like boomed. And so it's more intimidating for people to enter. I don't know why. Because there's way more YouTube channels, and there are podcasts. And yet, people are still trying to get onto YouTube.

Tom: 29:01

Yeah, exactly that what what I wonder is is kind of a you know, Alvin brings up this principle of how we, you know, we're looking for reasons to not do the thing that we know is going to be hard. And it's almost like people use this as an excuse not to start that podcast, because all there's 4 million podcasts already out there. You know, it seems like when the question is asked, I wonder if that's what they're thinking is, well, you know, well, how many podcasts are there? As if to say, surely we've gone too far? Surely it's oversaturated? There's, there's just too many out there. But there's just no evidence to support oversaturation. Right. Like, there's 52 million channels on YouTube, you know, like we're saying, and so there's plenty of opportunity for more content and even more creative content, like break some of the molds that are that have already been done, you know?

Kevin: 29:46

Well, I think there's another thing that leads to this and that is, you know, podcasting is open and distributed. And so there's no one source you can go to to find out how many podcasts there are in the world, you have to go to lots of different sources. Now there are some some organization Seems like the podcasts index is a really good one that tries to gather data from all the various sources and bring them together to give us one number, but it's still distributed. And there's no, everyone delivers data slightly differently. So there's still some kind of finagling that has to go along with those numbers. When you want to know how many active YouTube channels in the world exist, there is one place you can go to, to get that answer definitively. That is YouTube, they can tell you, they know exactly how many channels they have, they can measure them however they want. They can define what is a play by however they want, since you have to listen to it in their player, whether it be on their mobile app, or through their website, they can tell you a lot of data about like what that viewer experience was like, if it's a 10 minute video, they can go to probably to the millisecond, like how much this individual person watched. They can also see what else they watched how they got from one video to another video, what website they were on before they came to YouTube, an incredible amount of data exists when you own the entire ecosystem. Spotify is not naive to this. And it seems to be what is very interesting to them. If we can have the directory and the publishing, and the playback and all the data that goes along with it, look at how valuable that's becoming the video space. And it could also be very valuable in the audio space. And so I think that's why it's so interesting to them. But it's also why we all have to agree on a definition, when somebody owns a space themselves. There's no agreeing, it's just whatever they say,

Jordan: 31:25

you know, another factor that's kind of difficult and skews those numbers a bit that I think people need to remember is that a lot of those podcasts that are regularly updated, they're not actually podcasts. Um, a few months ago, Jonathan Swanson and I talked about how Spotify there were all those podcasts that were actually just like phone line directories being spoken through. And then recently, since anchor added video, there have actually been a lot of people that are taking their pirated videos, like films, movies, things like that. They're uploading it to anchor and then those movies are being distributed on Spotify. Those aren't podcasts. So there's a lot of different factors that need to be considered too is that even in these numbers, where things are being, you know, updated regularly, it still might not be an actual podcast that somebody will listen to.

Tom: 32:18

Yeah, it just highlights how difficult it is to answer the question of how many podcasts are there.

Kevin: 32:25

But it makes me think, though, the number of podcasters that seem to be drawn to video content. And I don't know, if it's just the lure of producing a video seems fun. Maybe after you've just done audio only for a while. Or if it's the draw of I think if I can get on one of these video platforms, then I have a better chance of getting discovered. I don't think either one of those are really good reasons to get into video. But like the video, we talked about this before, so I won't be long about it. But video production is a whole nother beast like in terms of equipment and prep, editing, lighting, like there's a whole lot more that goes into it. Probably just like mental stress in terms of now you're not just thinking about what I have to say and how I sound but also how I look, and how the room looks and everything else. So you're definitely upping the complexity. And when complexity increases, the chances of you continuing on in that venture go down significantly. And so I think it's something that should be highly considered before you jump into video, my perception is that the majority of people are making this extra effort not just because they think it's gonna be fun, because if it's just gonna be fun, just go on YouTube and publish a video. But I think what they're thinking is, it's going to help my show grow, it's gonna help with discoverability. And that might be true, because there are algorithms that Drive content on those platforms, but you're also playing in a much larger arena, because you're talking about now competing in a world where there's at least 55 or 52 million channels active on YouTube. So while there is an algorithm behind it, that is looking for specific content that it might want to promote the choices that it has are overwhelming compared to what you're competing against in the podcast world, whether we go with the 4 million number, the 500,000 number, or the 155,000 number doesn't matter which one of those, it's like an order of magnitude smaller in terms of the number of pieces of content that are competing for attention in that space. And so your chances of succeeding and podcasting, although it might not seem as though they're greater, because there there is not an algorithm that can help you push your stuff. If you do a good job of marketing your stuff. You're marketing against a much smaller amount of competitive content, the amount of content that's competing for people's attention in the podcasting space is just much smaller. Now, there might also be fewer people looking for that content. And that's probably true as well. But those people are of higher value. Because when you're on YouTube and you're looking for content, you're usually looking for something short something and I'm kind of at the mercy of whatever the algorithm kind of throws into my feed. Or if I go to a trending page, whatever the algorithm throws there. There's not a lot of people who are like marketing, you know, find me on YouTube, it happens a little bit but mostly people are trying to play the algorithm game. I'm going to create content that plays into the hands of algorithm hoping that the algorithm then promotes me, but in the podcasting world, we have to mark get our stuff. And you can do a good job of marketing your stuff, and you can find an audience. And once you hit a certain scale, then flywheel starts to work. And people start, if it's good content and they like it, then they start recommending it. And as soon as they start recommending it, then you start to gain a little bit of speed, even without this massive amount of marketing effort behind it. So it's just a different world. And I get encouraged, like, the more parameters we put around this, and we think like, how saturated like how many podcasts exists? And can my podcast really, you know, make a name for itself? Can it really stand out in the space? I think? Absolutely. If you have any hope or belief that you can do it on YouTube against 55 million other content creators, then why in the world, could you not do it in the podcast space, when we're talking about hundreds of 1000s?

Jordan: 35:40

Exactly. And if you produce something that is intentional, and you have good clean audio, you're already leaps and bounds ahead of probably like 70% of the podcasts out there.

Tom: 35:53

So we're also in the early stages still of figuring out the type of content that people consume. So one of the things that was that was in the article, they introduced this concept, I thought was interesting, called Content flanking, where creating content that maybe is different than what everybody else is doing, to try and gain an audience. And they use an example I thought was, was really good, which was Yellowstone, and how Yellowstone was his TV show that just nobody had produced a Western in yours or anything close to it. And yet Yellowstone had all this, you know, critical success or big following. And I think podcasters could think that way, right? Of well don't do what everybody else is doing, just do something that's true to you that you want. But that is you know, your unique content. There's so much opportunity out there to be able to get out there and do something. And I think that that's a message that needs to be heard a lot in this community because it is, you know, so daunting to get into it.

Kevin: 36:51

Serial is back.

Jordan: 36:53

Serial is back, baby! For a lot of people, this was the podcast that started all as the podcast that got them into podcasting has recently had a bit of a resurgence because the story that started all about Adnan Syed. He was released after his conviction was vacated, which is big news, because that was the whole purpose of serial was saying was he wrongfully convicted, and he spent what was it like 23 years in prison?

Kevin: 37:23

I mean, is that really what they were doing on cereal? I didn't make it through the whole thing. So give me the 30-second version of Serial. They're asking the question the whole time?

Tom: 37:30

It was a roller coaster. What what she did so well was you'd listen to an episode, you're like, oh, yeah, he definitely did not do it. And then at the last minute, she dropped in something that you're like, oh, wait a minute. I think he did do it. And you'd have to listen to the next episode. And I just felt like it was a roller coaster. That's why I can't even remember where I landed at the end of it, hopefully, hopefully, that he was not guilty. Because that's what the court decided.

Jordan: 37:55

And that's the thing is like, it was not an open and closed case. There was not strong evidence against this kid. And there was like reasonable doubt. So um, after he was released Serial dropped another episode. I have not yet listened to it. I'm interested to hear about it, though.

Tom: 38:14

Would you agree with this statement that in the timeline of the history of podcasting, Serial is on that, right? Whenever we talk about the history of podcasting, the release of Serial, I feel like belongs in that conversation. Because that's when it felt like everybody was talking about it. Remember, Saturday Night Live is doing skits about it. And just podcasting went from being something that only, you know, techies or you know, a very small population of people, like everybody was talking about after Serial.

Kevin: 38:42

Yeah, somehow they think this would be an interesting thing to do, like a little case study on is like, how did Serial become as popular as it became? I don't remember ever playing a video game on my phone, and then clicking to get more tokens and hearing an episode of Serial. Like, I don't think that was the strategy. But it must have been something right. They had some sort of marketing strategy, and they got in front of enough people. And then those people started telling people, and maybe there was also like podcasting was new at the time. So maybe it was the right quality content at the right time. And they got in front of enough early adopters. And then those early adopters love telling people about new things. Oh, you don't even know what a podcast is? Oh, this is super exciting for me to tell you about it now, because I can show you how you can load a podcast app on your phone. I think that was about the same time like didn't Apple make it a native app. And it was probably heavily promoted. When you launch the podcast app. It was probably there. And so all those things came together and made Serial.

Tom: 39:39

What's this new app? And then they see Oh, in the in the first podcast that they see Serial, they click on it, they download it and they're like, I didn't even know what a podcast was. But this is amazing. Maybe it's the intersection of, you know, the podcast app being built into the iOS and cereal, you know, being released. Yeah,

Kevin: 39:55

it's pretty rare that you get that early adopter warm feeling inside now when you tell somebody about a podcast They're like, Yeah, I know about him. Like, either I like him. And I want to know what show you on tell me about or I know about him, and I'm not into him. But nobody's been like podcast, what's a podcast? Oh, cool. I get to tell you about this new thing. That doesn't happen.

Jordan: 40:13

I actually, I did go to lunch with a family friend this weekend. And he asked me, So what do you do now? And I'm like, Oh, I'm a podcaster. Like I podcast professionally. I talk for a living. And he was like, I don't know what that means. And he walked away.

Kevin: 40:29

Like, he just didn't know what it meant. And he decided to have enough because yeah, he was like,

Jordan: 40:35

I am not interested in whatever you're trying to tell me. Couple of months ago, we talked about that movie, Vengeance, that was coming out in theaters, and it's about a podcaster going to solve a murder. And I didn't go see it in theaters. Did you go see it?

Kevin: 40:58

I did not go see it in theaters. But I did notice that it is now streaming on Peacock. So I might need to download it. Because there's a good chance I'm not gonna power this weekend. So maybe I'll cue it up on my phone so that I can watch it if we lose power.

Tom: 41:11

Yeah. If anybody could share their Peacock username and password on the comments on Buzzcast?

Kevin: 41:17

Sure, you can use it. Yeah, I'll put it in the show notes.

Jordan: 41:22

And podcasts lately have been adapted into TV shows, movies, things like that, right? There's two new shows that tenderfoot TV is taking from TV to podcasts. So they're being adapted the opposite direction. They have a short film called the Unexpected. And it's a true crime project that dives into human trafficking. And then the other podcast that they're creating based on this is called B1 Butcher. And it's a scripted fictional podcast based on true life events. And I think it's the same vein of the true crime like human trafficking, harvesting organs kind of thing. So we're talking like very dark content here.

Tom: 42:01

Do either of you guys listened to like fiction podcasts? I do. What are some of the podcasts you listen to that are like,

Jordan: 42:07

um, like graphic fiction? none?

Tom: 42:10

That you can share...I'm gonna have to check Goodpods.

Jordan: 42:13

There's one that I really, really love. And they're actually coming out with a third season, I think this week. It's called The Tower. It's this really beautiful audio fiction podcast about a woman that decides that she's going to climb this tower is basically like a magical realism podcast. So it's based in our world. But in this version of our world, there was a tower that was built by like a mad king, and it goes clear up into the clouds. And so she's seeing how high she can climb this tower. And it's really mysterious and very pretty. And I also listened to Bridgewater, which is the one that Aaron Mehnke did. And it was kind of like a groundbreaking podcast because it was done with the Dolby Atmos, like the 360 soundscaping. So if you listen to it with your headphones on, or certain kinds of headphones, it's almost like three dimensional immersion through the sound. So that was really, really cool.

Tom: 43:08

Yeah, I think there's definitely an opportunity out there for audio fiction to continue to grow. There's a big following. There's a real opportunity there for storytelling in a podcasting, environmental.

Jordan: 43:17

Absolutely. You do that? Yeah, absolutely. And there's just, there's so many different things that podcasters can do that people this, I mean, this is another differentiation between video and audio is that, you know, if you're doing, let's say, a fiction podcast, and it's a science fiction story, well, if you're gonna do it in a video format, you have to have the set, you have to have the costumes, you have to have all this stuff. But if you're doing it in audio format, you just have to have the sound of the audio of like, maybe the beeps and bloops of the spaceship or things like that, or the sound of like the rocket launching, you don't have to have an investment and all this other stuff, it's just sound is all so you get a little bit more freedom and the ability to build worlds within audio that you can't necessarily do on a budget otherwise. So the thing about this I'm really excited about is that they're taking a television series and making a podcast out of it. Whereas in the past, really, the only thing that we've seen is people taking television series movies, and doing commentary podcasts on that. So this is the first time that I've seen them actually tried to adapt it into a different medium. Yeah.

Tom: 44:34

And telling stories, the way that you described it, I think is really good as is you can tell stories in a different way in an audio form. And so I was thinking about the new Game of Thrones, and how it's the same kind of thing where they have an audio commentary and they tell you, you know, go listen to this podcast. But the podcast is just a commentary about the show that you just saw versus, you know, for another story or to expand on it. You know, there's a real opportunity there to tell more stories in the universe that they're creating visually, and now they could do it, you know, with audio. That'd be pretty cool.

Jordan: 45:04

That's, that's actually a really good point. I mean, you think about it, like with Star Wars, you know, they have like those books, and then they have movies, and then they have like TV shows. Yes. And it would be really cool if they also had a podcast.

Tom: 45:17

Yes. Well, if we're gonna throw Star Wars out, then. I mean, there's a whole book series, it's out right now called the High Republic. And it's this all these stories about this one time in the Star Wars universe. But there's no audio, there's no drama, there's no TV shows. And everybody's clamoring for a movie or something or video game to be made in that time period. But man, what an opportunity for Disney to be able to release an audio show based in the, you know, this rich universe that they've created.

Jordan: 45:43

Yes. So maybe we'll see more of that, maybe this is just the beginning. Maybe this could be a trending thing, where they go, oh, people aren't really like engaging with the audio commentary podcast as much. And maybe we need to start shifting into adapting these stories, the little like sub stories, things like that into a podcast format for the super fans that want to consume more of that. And it would be cheaper production than doing a TV series, a video game, anything like that.

Tom: 46:15

Yeah, think about how much an episode of you know Star

Wars: 46:17

Andor costs or Game of Thrones, I think goes back to what we talked about earlier with content flanking. Right, nobody else is doing that right now. I think it was HBO. That was the first one that that did that where they would release a podcast commentary associated with a show at the same time. And they kind of fed each other. And so you'd listen to both. But there's an opportunity here to flank it and do something different, instead of creating commentary, do something different with it.

Kevin: 46:43

Yeah, so I'm being a little quiet here. This is not my genre, but I'm enjoying the ideas that are coming out of it. And I think it has application for even for people who do podcasts that are not necessarily audio fiction, like there's times in our podcast, whether you're interviewing somebody, or you do a solo show, when you go into storytelling mode. And obviously, the simplest thing is just stick with your format and tell your story. But there is also an opportunity that once you go into a story, whether it be a small part of your episode, or the entire episode, to use it as an opportunity to do creative experimentation. And it's it reminds me of what we did for the Buzzcast episode, the day the podcast stopped, when we were talking about the hack, what was the DDoS attack on Buzzsprout. And so we decided to do a storytelling episode to like, tell what it was like kind of behind the scenes of what we were dealing with that over a couple day period. And do it as a storytelling podcast. So there was, you know, there's background music, there's multiple voices and interviews and then weaving that together into like a story to kind of build interest and build drama, and get people interested in the story that they might not normally be interested in. So if you're listening this podcast, you might be interested in podcasting, but not necessarily all the technical background of what goes into running a podcast hosting company. And so how do we tell the story of what it's like to live the life of a podcast hosting company when they're being attacked by somebody? Well, I think Travis did a really good job when editing and putting that together. It also reminds me of Malcolm Gladwell, his book talking to strangers. I don't know if any of you listened to the audiobook of that. But it's like any other audio book. He's the narrator. He's reading you the book. But there are a lot of stories throughout the book. And when he goes into telling a story, then he puts in not only background music, but background sounds. So he's telling you know about whatever they were on campus at this university, and you start hearing people kind of sounds like people are walking around him as he's telling the story. And he's setting the scene and you hear people like stepping on leaves as he's talking about how they left campus and went into the wooded area. And it just makes the story so much more powerful and interesting. Like when you're doing a podcast week to week, you're not necessarily thinking about, Oh, could I try some storytelling techniques? Could I incorporate techniques that I hear in other podcasts into mine, I think there are opportunities. So I mean, again, audio fiction stuff that you guys are talking about? Those aren't necessarily podcasts that I like to listen to, but they sounds like they have some really great techniques involved in them that create an experience more than just listening to something and we could as podcasters we could take those experiences and figure out is there an opportunity to work them into what I'm doing, even though it's in a different genre?

Tom: 49:13

Yeah, that's a really good point, especially when you're talking about things like saturation. Like there's no way we're saturated, because we're rattling off different ideas, different ways of doing podcasting. So there's yeah, there's just so much opportunity out there to do something different.

Jordan: 49:26

That's exactly it. It's just not saturated, because there's still things that have not been done yet. And we're coming up with these things just riffing right now. So if you actually like apply yourself and really think about it, and think about, okay, what talents do I have that I could bring to the space that don't already exist? Or, you know, who can I bring into my team, that we could do something groundbreaking, you know, maybe more interactive podcasts, you know, just all these different things that have not been done or haven't been done as much. It's super easy to get into that kind of stuff. But yeah, it's like You said you know, there's there's a little bit of like a cross genre thing that can happen and we can learn, you know, fiction podcasters can learn from journalists and journalistic podcasters can learn from fiction podcasters about like building the audio world and creating a more immersive story. Denver students had started a podcast on racial justice in 2020, called Know Justice, Know peace. And that's "Know" as in like, knowledge. And the students did such a great job with their podcast that they were named to like an advisory board to create a new curriculum on Black History called Black History 365. They raised $14,000 to purchase books for this curriculum. They put in all this work, to this podcast, to their message and all this stuff. And I think they were like high school students at this point. So they put all this work into this podcast for like two years. And then last month, the Denver Public School System submitted state and federal applications to trademark the Know Justice, Know Peace in their trademark application, it says, "for providing a podcast series offering information about inequities in the educational system and providing solutions." And then the school district also took over all the social media accounts for the podcast and locked the kids out who had initially started the podcast. So these kids are now suing the public school system over their podcast. This is just not a great story at all.

Kevin: 51:36

Yeah, I mean, it's a tough one. I have some questions about it. The last line in the in the notes, you said something about the district is saying that the students were paid for their work on it. And I think that does make a difference. If they if there was some compensation. I think it's weird, like, since when did a school ever pay students to do work or work on a club or a project? So I mean, if that's true, there's definitely a different spin. But if it's not true, if they weren't paid, which I wouldn't think they were, then it does seem a little weird and unfortunate. The analogy I bring up is like if I was a high school student, and I'm doing a science fair project, and I develop whatever it's like, oh, my gosh, the first perpetual motion machine ever in existence I did as my science fair project. Well, the school district can't like take my science fair project, can they then be like, we're gonna power the world now. Thanks to Kevin science fair project?

Tom: 52:22

That's a good question. I wonder if any kid has ever done anything is a science fair project that went on to do something? Yeah, because it's very similar.

Jordan: 52:29

You know what this reminds me of, I actually just finished rewatching, because I love it so much, I rewatched Silicon Valley on HBO. And there's a premise in the first season where this guy has this new algorithm that is just taking off. And the company that he used to work for is trying to claim intellectual property over it. They kind of get like down into the weeds with how this all works. And the part that kind of reminded me of this TV show is that the kids were using the school district's equipment, they were using the space provided by the school district to record the podcast. And it's one of those things where I think that the school district actually legally can claim intellectual property on this podcast, because they were using the equipment to create it because they were using the school district's space.

Kevin: 53:24

Yeah, well, I would imagine there's a solid argument to say they certainly probably own the recordings. I don't know if they own the IP. So Know Justice, Know Peace, like the concept of that that being able to trademark that that is probably very questionable. Now, the recordings for the podcasts that came out of it that were done on their property and using their equipment, maybe on school time, stuff like that, like that seems sure I mean, this happens all the time. Like in in the music world, record labels own the recordings, because they paid for the studio time they paid for the musicians that were playing as you know, backup for the singer and all that kind of stuff. They pay for the record to be produced that they own that, but the songwriters still own the song, they can go rerecord themselves what Taylor Swift just did with all of her Taylor's version albums, right? Like they don't own her songs, but they own the recordings of those songs that have made the millions of dollars. So it'd be interesting to see how this plays out. But I am actually weirdly enough as in the podcasting as I am, I'm actually more interested to figure out if anybody has done anything in the science experiment in the science fair, that has like changed the world in a big way. But they didn't benefit from it because it was the result of a science fair project. So somebody else got it.

Tom: 54:30

Couldn't they just release a new podcast? We'll give them a free account on Buzzsprout if they're listening, they can reach out to us we give them a new podcast called No justice, no peace. And

Kevin: 54:40

oh, yeah,

Tom: 54:42

maybe totally different. There's this K-now K-now K-now or

Kevin: 54:46

They could just do you know, Know Justice, Know Peace(Student Version). So Taylor's version students.

Tom: 54:53

Here's the thing. They created this content. They created this podcast that garnered an audience you know that for summer Isn't the school district wants to own it, whatever. But you're never going to own those kids, they can go start another podcast and do the exact same thing. They are the personality, they are the valuable thing, the podcasting equipment that they use to record it, the studio that they recorded in like those things aren't as important as the content that was created. And so I would think that those kids have some amazing skills. However, they accomplished what they did to be able to do that again.

Kevin: 55:23

I like it. So reach out to us support@buzzsprout.com and get your free Know Justice, Know Peace: Student Edition on Buzzsprout. And we will claim no ownership of your content ever. You own all your stuff hosted on Buzzsprout.

Jordan: 55:39

You know what time it is. It's time for Buzzboosts. We have quite a few buzzboosts for this episode. First off, we have 900 from Genebean, who says podcast search sounds like something that would fit being on or connected to the podcast index. Podcast index does have a search engine on their site?

Kevin: 56:02

You're absolutely right. Genebean and Jordan. Yes, they do have a search API. And so podcast apps can tap into that and use it. And I think they offer their own spin on prioritizing the results based on what you search for. And we'll get into it in a second. Dave Jones continues to talk about that in an upcoming comment. So you're right Jean being podcast index is a good fit for that.

Tom: 56:23

All right. 4500, from at technical issues. I'm curious what your take on op three dot Dev is and if it can be used by a podcast on Buzzsprout? Yes, absolutely. As a matter of fact, this podcast on Buzzsprout is using OP3.dev. So OP3.dev, if you haven't heard about it is an open source project for capturing statistics through redirects. And so you can put a prefix on your episodes. And it'll capture statistics in a way that's totally transparent, open source, the code is open source. So that means anybody can go look at it and see how it's working. And it's got an API, so you can actually go and pull those stats down. So yes, you can absolutely do this. If you ever want to experiment with it, you can reach out to our support team and just let them know that you want to have the prefix included for OP3.dev.

Kevin: 57:09

Yep, just remember that when you do that your numbers become public. So we chose for Buzzcast It's totally fine. If anybody wants to download our stats and see how many plays we get per episode. We're totally fine with that. But if that's like proprietary information for you, you don't want that shared with the world, then you will not want to turn this on for your podcast.

Tom: 57:26

Correct. And really on prefixes in general, just it's not something that we offer directly in the interface. It's something that we asked you to go through support, not to slow people down. But just because we want to make sure that there's legitimate prefixes that are being used. And we want to make sure that we don't cause any problems. There's a real opportunity to break in your podcast, and we don't ever want to have that happen. So

Jordan: 57:46

All right, next up, we have 4000 Sats from@meremortalspodcast. They say some of the apps like Curiocaster will also let you modify your streaming amount per podcast. Oh, so if you have some favorite shows you want to give more to it's possible to customize the amount you support. Curiocaster. I've not heard of that one. So that's good to know.

Kevin: 58:06

Yeah, I do that in the app that I use. Cast thematic, lets you do something similar. So some shows I give more sets to and some shows I give less. And that is private. Which ones I support. Just for fun. I listened to some shows and I I don't know like hate listen, you ever hate listen to podcasts like this podcast? Crazy, but I listen to it. I streaming like one set of minute. I'll still boost them. No, they get me really mad. Because it's fun. It's entertaining. They're earning my Listen, so they deserve something 10,900 SATs from Dave Jones, he talks about Google's secret sauce for search has always been linkbacks, which is a great quality signal when the content is rich, but replicating that from text derived from transcripts is difficult. And I think he's talking about last week we're talking about search and podcasting and how we can have high quality search results for podcasts, and that we don't necessarily have all he's saying we don't necessarily have all the same tools that Google has available to him. You're absolutely right. It's hard. You know, Google right now can easily see how many sites are linking to a particular site. And if a lot of sites are linking to one site, then it must be a pretty good site. So they prioritize that's hard to figure out how many podcasts are out there talking about one particular podcast and then giving that priority in search results. Probably doable, but you're right it's it's much more technically challenging, but glad you're thinking about this stuff. Dave. That's why you're running the index man. Thanks for the hard work you do.

Tom: 59:31

All right, we got another 4500 from at technical issues. So if you're keeping track that means he is now up to 9000 SATs for this episode. And he said as a follow up it seems transistors implemented op three already. Transistor I haven't heard of them before. transistors, our friends at transistor, it's a competitive service to Buzzsprout well, who we love we love these guys and yes, they have already launched their integration with OP3.dev prefix.

Kevin: 1:00:01

All right. 1800 SATs from Nathang

Jordan: 1:00:04

I it's Nathan G.

Tom: 1:00:06

Let him say it Jordan. He thinks it's Nathang.

Jordan: 1:00:08

I think it's Nathan Gathright.

Tom: 1:00:10

Naythang! Nathang, that's him not Nathan G.

Kevin: 1:00:17

1800 SATs from Nathan G or Nathang. In 2016. The show hello internet with YouTubers, CGP. Grey and Brady Haran. I don't listen to the show. But they released an episode exclusively on vinyl. And it was a massive success. And in a regular episode, they discussed all the challenges with pressing vinyl. So it didn't seem like something that service like Teespring could spin up easily. That's good input, but my wish lives on. I still wish there's a service that I could just upload an audio file and get it pressed on vinyl.

Tom: 1:00:45

That's pretty cool.

Jordan: 1:00:46

So it can be done that can be done. I'll have to find that video and then link to it in the show notes because that sounds really interesting to see how they were able to press their own vinyl.

Kevin: 1:00:56

Alright, take us out Jordan,

Jordan: 1:00:58

thanks for listening and keep podcasting.

Kevin: 1:01:05

I got an Apple Watch. If any of you use an Apple Watch

Jordan: 1:01:08

recently, No, I've never owned one. Not recently.

Kevin: 1:01:12

So this is only the second Apple Watch I've owned. And the first one was like series one, the first one that ever came out. And I did not use that for very long. So it was it was a good product. But it was a very early product that was very slow, didn't have a bunch of apps for it. And so I probably used it for like a year. And it's been sitting in my drawer ever since. Well, finally, what are we on now series eight or something like that? I don't know, whatever. The one is, they announced a couple of weeks ago, they just got him in the store. So I'm like I'm gonna go back I'm gonna try an Apple Watch again, because I've into like, you know, fitness tracking, sleep tracking all this kind of stuff. So I'm like, maybe an Apple Watch is going to be the one thing that can live on my wrist that can do everything I needed

Jordan: 1:01:50

to do. So did you get like the rugged Super Ultra,

Kevin: 1:01:54

I got the one the aspirational one, right. Climbing mountains diving to the depths of the ocean, I bought the whole package. I'm doing all of these things. It's amazing. So far, my deepest dive has been eight feet, just to the bottom of my pool. That's how deep it is. But it's great. I survived the dive. The watch did, but it was supposed to tell me how deep it was and the temperature. But here's the thing. So I'm going running. And I'm like this is a while I listen to podcasts when I run, I don't want to have to sync them to my watch. So like the watch should just download them and play them. Well. It just doesn't work that well in all the third party apps that I use to listen to podcasts. So cast thematic has a watch app didn't work. And overcast has a watch app didn't work. And when I say didn't work like it loaded up. It showed me my episodes, it took forever to do like the sync thing. And then I click on episode and it's just sitting there spinning and spinning and spinning. It would never load the episode never play it, I finally got home. And when I got back on Wi Fi, then I got it to play. But then it was like playing out of my phone wasn't playing through my headphones. It was really clunky. And it was feeling like these app developers have really kind of pushed out. I don't know if there's just a bunch of bugs with it, or if it's hard to develop for on it, or if it's just an afterthought. But the watch experience was not good for these third party apps. So I was about to give up on the stream of listening to podcast while I run. Like the whole reason I bought the watch is I don't want to run carrying a phone. And then I realized, Wait, there's an app for listening to podcasts made by Apple. Maybe that one would work. So I loaded up Apple podcasts on the watch. And it is awesome. Yeah, it is awesome. And I have like waited for this day because I'm a fan of Apple like Apple products. And so it kind of hurts me a little bit every time. I'm like, I don't really like the Apple podcast app, because I love podcasts. I love apple. But that's just not listening out for me. It is on my watch on my watch. It works beautifully. Like the UI is Fanta it's exactly what you want to be it's nothing fancy it just you know shows you a list of podcasts.

Tom: 1:03:55

Do you have to pick which episodes to put on your watch? No. How does it How does it know? Well,

Kevin: 1:03:59

because it's a this watch has the cellular in it. So that's why I wanted a watch. So I didn't have to have my phone with me. So as soon as I get far enough away from my house, it switches over to cellular. And if there's a new episode that drops in the middle of my run, I can just tap on it and start listening. And it's it's pretty fast. It streams nicely. I can adjust the speed because I like to listen to him a little bit fast. It's fantastic. There's no shownotes so know this if you're targeting your podcast to Apple Watch listeners. They're not reading any of your show notes. There's no following links or anything. But I wanted to report because like I said I love apple. But I just you know their app isn't the app for me when it comes to listening to podcasts. But now they've I can absolutely say I listen to I use Apple podcasts to listen to some podcasts the ones that play through my watch. It's awesome.

Jordan: 1:04:45

Did they finally implement your big red I'm Done button. No,

Kevin: 1:04:49

there's no I'm Done button.

Jordan: 1:04:51

Missed opportunity.

Kevin: 1:04:53

Yeah. Especially because I'm not the world's fastest runner. So I definitely finished podcasts in the middle of my run. Two or three Yeah, and I can't stream sets through, I can't boost anybody. So there's opportunity for improvement. But they got the main thing done, which is I can tap on an episode and it plays it seems like I can't get that to work and overcast or cast thematic even Pocket Casts, I tried Pocket Casts, I was like, I'm gonna go over back to Pocket Casts because that showed up on my watch, too. And I opened it up and it was like, Please connect your phone to see your list of podcasts. If I had to have my phone then what's what's the whole point of this?

Tom: 1:05:30

Man? I feel bad for him. That's got to be so hard. I mean, we we've done it right. We built a watch app, and it's a whole nother app to maintain. It's a whole nother set of source code. That's gotta be so difficult. But

Kevin: 1:05:41

if you're an Apple Watch user, and if you decide to jump back in Apple podcasts, at least for me, that's been the way to go.

Jordan: 1:05:47

Maybe I'll actually get one. I've thought about it but I don't dive or climb mountains so I don't

Kevin: 1:05:54

but you will if you get the watch. comes with it for free as part of the package get the AppleCare in case you get hurt on the helicopter