Podcasting Horror Stories

In this episode, the hosts speculate on the future of podcasts on YouTube and TikTok, Jordan reads some mildly spooky stories of podcasting mishaps, and Alban and Kevin explain why Pocket Casts going open source is such a big deal to the industry.

PODCASTS ON CASETTE
https://podnews.net/press-release/canadian-politics-is-boring-cassette

POCKETCASTS NOW OPEN SOURCE
https://blog.pocketcasts.com/2022/10/19/pocket-casts-mobile-apps-are-now-open-source/

YOUTUBE ANNOUNCES AUDIO ADS
https://www.insideradio.com/podcastnewsdaily/youtube-to-allow-advertisers-to-specifically-target-podcast-listeners/article_a7640a5c-4f04-11ed-90ea-a734f291c3fa.html

TIKTOK MUSIC (& PODCASTS)
https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/31/23286166/tiktok-music-app-challenge-spotify-apple-streaming-bytedance

Alban (47%), Kevin (31%), Jordan (22%) 

Transcript

Jordan: 0:00

No soapboxing on social media.

Kevin: 0:03

What? I'm so positive and you guys, I get a bad rap.

Alban: 0:06

I'm positive that if we talk about both YouTube and Tiktok, one, Kevin or I, will be like this frickin social media is ruining! Like, we'll get it one of us. Two opportunities.

Kevin: 0:18

We're just lucky that we stick to just podcasts because I think it's ruining the entire world.

Jordan: 0:22

And there it is. So Alban, you have a follow up, another follow up. We're doing a lot of follow ups on these vinyl podcasts, but you have sort of a different take on it this time.

Alban: 0:39

You know, you're getting old when like your first format for music is now like the vintage version. So Kevin had his moment in the last few episodes where like, vinyl records or podcasts around vinyl and it's old and everyone's like, ah, that's cool. But now it's starting to hit a little bit home. Cassettes are now being used to distribute podcasts. So Canadian politics are boring is a podcast that covers Canadian politics, just announced that they are going to be recording a special edition of their podcast and putting it on 50 cassettes to mail it out. So reminiscent of Kevin's Jerky Boys tapes.

Kevin: 1:19

Do you think they took this idea from our show?

Alban: 1:20

I think that's highly likely.

Jordan: 1:22

I was wondering that too.

Kevin: 1:23

I don't see where else it could have come from.

Alban: 1:25

No one's ever thought about cassettes before you started talking about that Kevin. So this is gotta be where it's from.

Kevin: 1:30

T hat's great. I'm glad that we can contribute.

Jordan: 1:32

So I think maybe Buzzcast should be on an eight track. They kind of like skipped a step there. We got to, we got to fill in that void. So we're gonna do an eight track episode.

Alban: 1:41

How long were eight tracks at the peak?

Jordan: 1:44

That--it's a scarcity thing. It makes it more rare and valuable.

Alban: 1:48

We're not gonna make it like a Betamax or something.

Kevin: 1:52

LaserDisc, or what's the what's the first thing well, let's start writing down our transcripts or episodes and like attaching them in pigeons and sending them across the world.

Jordan: 2:01

Oh, yeah. Now we're thinking.

Kevin: 2:02

pigeon post.

Jordan: 2:03

This is more like economical. There's no plastics in use. It's a little more like earth friendly to use the pigeons.

Kevin: 2:10

Yeah, I like the picture of the Canadian politics is boring podcast. Lately, they have like this really old looking cassette tape, and then like recycled packaging around it or something. It's like a cool take on a cassette.

Jordan: 2:22

You know, what's interesting is that they have slasher font on the cover, and then like the tape itself, the cassette itself is like pink, like Barbie pink.

Kevin: 2:31

They're gonna have to send out like cassette recorders like no one's gonna be able play these.

Alban: 2:36

I've literally got a mp3 boombox with cassette recorder player. Like, I've got it right here. Do you think this stuff's out of style?

Kevin: 2:45

yeah, where you pick those up from? Like Urban Outfitters?

Alban: 2:49

I guarantee this is sold at Urban Outfitters. 100 percent.

Kevin: 2:53

They sell the most random stuff.

Alban: 2:55

This is a prop for a future Buzzsprout video that we're filming tomorrow, actually. So yeah, I'm sure it's an Urban Outfitters specialty item.

Jordan: 3:04

I'm interested to see how many more different like versions of podcasting we can come up with, like how many different mediums.

Kevin: 3:10

Jordan I know you're doing. Let's like, let's try to market Buzzcast and grow the show for this workcycles One of your small projects. I think cassettes have to play into it.

Jordan: 3:19

I think so too. We've been like vibing with like the 90s thing lately. It's on our minds, like yeah, we're kind of in the flow right now. So I think that's a very viable thing, especially since we already have the tools to create this.

Kevin: 3:32

Yeah, I'm gonna go on Alibaba and figure out if we can order like the set Walkmans how much they are. If they're under like $5 If I can get if I can buy like 1000 for $5

Jordan: 3:41

Yeah, have like Buzzsprout edition Walkmans!

Kevin: 3:45

Conference swag. Come get your cassette recorder.

Jordan: 3:48

Oh, that'd be so good. Alban, yesterday, I saw that you tweeted about Pocket Casts, their mobile app was now like open source or something like that. And I need you to talk me through this because I am not technical enough to even like understand the first part of what that means. Once you explain that, to me, like a five year old.

Alban: 4:15

Pocket Casts is I think, for a long time Kevin's preferred podcast player, right Kev?

Kevin: 4:20

My preferred player? No, but it is a really good player. Yeah, so Pocket Casts is a great podcasting app. It's available for iOS and Android. It was built by a group of really good developers, they had a team. So it was it was not like a solo project. Not that solo projects can't be great. They just kind of take, you know more time to become great. So there are some really good ones that are just starting out. And they're just going to take some time to get all the features and polish that something like a team can put together a little bit faster. POC has been around since 2010. But they had a great team of developers. It was really polished, really robust podcast listening app. And it's gotten a lot of traction, especially on Android, but a lot of iOS users use it as well and It kind of competes with overcast is kind of being like the most popular independent third party podcast listening app, but it's not like native to the platform like Apple podcasts. If you look at Buzzsprout global stats, I think it usually comes in somewhere between one and 2%, which sounds low for overall listening. But that's that's actually a pretty good amount of listens. And so Pocket Casts went up for sale a couple years ago, I think, when when they go for sale, Alban, just about like two years ago, I think, yeah. And it shopped around a little bit. And it landed with automatics automatic is the company that makes WordPress and they have acquired a bunch of other little apps along with WordPress over the years. And now they've just added to their suite of applications with Pocket Casts. One thing that WordPress is known for is their commitment to open source technology. So WordPress itself, which is their main product, which they built a whole company around is open source. And a lot of these smaller products that they pick up, they go ahead and make open source as well haven't done this with everything like they bought Tumblr and a couple other things. They haven't made all of those open source. But the question has been going around in the podcasting circles, like do you think Pocket Casts will go open source? And they just announced this week that they are doing it, they made Pocket Casts open source?

Jordan: 6:12

So what does that actually mean? Like how does that benefit other people?

Alban: 6:17

Developers? Yeah, open source software is kind of like this broad category on the spectrum from something that's truly a public good, anybody can use it for any purpose, all the way to, hey, this is our proprietary code that we would never share. So Buzzsprout is like totally our own, we have a copyright, it's a trade secret, we're gonna keep it hidden as much as we can. So no one could copy it. And then there's some stuff that's all the way on the other end of the spectrum, anybody can use it. With open source, you're trying to kind of thread a needle between two different those two spectrums, because what you want to do is something called instead of copyright, I think it's called Copy left. Really? Yeah. I think it's a play on words, but copy left, the idea is, hey, we're going to share all of this stuff that we put in a ton of work, we built this library, we've written this code, we've done something. But if you're going to use it for your own project, we want to encourage or require anything you do, and you add on to give it back to everybody. Does that make sense? So like, you take something that we created a and now you make something else cool? Well, you can't just now get all the benefits, you also have to kind of give back to the community. And so different licensing projects or open source projects, live on a spectrum between how much do we just totally give it away and say you're allowed to do whatever you want with it, even if you sell it later on, that's fine, all the way to, hey, if you do anything with this library or this code, you've got to give us all of what you build back to the community. So kind of dug into what our Pocket Cast is going to be they announced this is going to be the Mozilla Public License, which basically means they're going to release everything that bill how to build Pocket Casts, you'll be able to just copy, paste and make your own. If you make any changes to those files, the requirements will be Hey, you let the community know what those changes are so that people can keep building on what you built. But you are allowed to have other parts of the app that are proprietary to yourself. So if it's in a different file, you don't have to share it back. So it's kind of this middle ground that they've landed on. And why does this cool? It's because this is how we got the Mozilla browser. This is how we got Firefox. Oh, really? Yeah. This is how we built so many of our web browsers that we use today. All the modern web browsers come out of a bunch of developers saying, Hey, we're building this engine, and we're going to let everybody use it and their browsers, and hopefully, we're gonna get everybody on board. So we have some standardization and the ability to create new modern browsers more easily.

Jordan: 9:01

So it's like innovation through community support.

Kevin: 9:04

Yeah, exactly. So let me ask the question of you Alban, like I know that the WordPress license works, where you can take a full copy of WordPress, you can fork it, which is just like creating your own copy, do whatever you want to it, their license, my understanding is that you can do anything commercial with it that you want, as long as that commercial project remains open source as well. So people can view your source code, your changes, your additions, or subtractions, whatever, but you can totally take it and build your own business off of it, if you want. Is that Is that your understanding of this Mozilla license as well?

Alban: 9:34

Don't use anything I'm saying. It's like the basis for your future legal decisions, if anyone's listening to this. WordPress is is a different licensing structure and it's called the G in EU public license. And I think that one's slightly more restrictive, actually. Then what Pocket Casts is going to be under where Pocket Casts I think you're able to keep more of the work you do the proprietary work. You're able to keep that hidden. And so it's a little bit stronger of an incentive for you to build off the Pocket Casts, you know, the foundation that they built, is a little bit more exciting, I think to use that than it would be to build, you know, different flavors of WordPress or build something on top of the WordPress engine. All have to say like, this is a very complicated area of licensing law. And I'm not 100% confident about it. But what this does is it really opens the door to developers who want to do something like you know, fountain, in the last few years said, Hey, I'm going to build a cool podcast app. And I'm going to figure out how to accept and give donations through crypto. You know, if somebody has a cool idea, like snipped, and they want to say, I'm gonna make it really easy for you to snip out little segments of a podcast episode and save it in a note, they can do that anybody who has these cool ideas now has a really, really good foundation from which to build for their podcast app going forward. So I think what we will probably see is more podcast apps, when they get launched, they're gonna be much more full featured, they're gonna be much more developed much more mature. And this is going to be awesome, because it lines up directly with all the podcasting to Dotto group, the podcast index, all these efforts, will now we've got a really good app that supports a lot of those things. That's going to become the basis for a lot of future apps. And so I think it helps build a lot of consensus around all the work that they've been doing. So I'm very, very excited to see that they made this change, it's a really big deal.

Kevin: 11:36

Well, it sounds like the main like core, the Pocket Cast team at automatic is they're keeping control of that. So in the news article that they released, they said that they want encourage everyone to report bugs suggested new features and submit pull requests for current issues. But it'll be the Pocket Cast team that will be adding new features, fixing bugs and expanding their plus offering. So I don't think they're really encouraging people to come in and make a lot of code changes and submit a pull request that would then be pulled into the main app, I think what they're doing is they're saying, Hey, if you want to use this as a jumping off point to build your own app, great. Or if you want to help make the existing app better, you can report bugs and suggest features. But if you really want to make a lot of changes, like you want to implement s ome Podcasting Q&A stuff, what you should probably do is make your own copy and go from there, which is great. What a gift to the podcasting community. It's fantastic.

Jordan: 12:26

YouTube has had quite a few updates recently. So Advertising Week was this week, and they announced that they will be rolling out audio ads. They've been testing the audio ads, since like 2020, I wasn't really sure how that was going to work in like a video format, right? Like, would it just be like blank and then play the audio? And obviously, that's not the case. So what they do is the advertisers when they buy an audio only ad, they will have like a static image over the video. And the advertisers are going to be able to target the ads based on like just basic podcast categories for the YouTube podcast. But the thing that I think a lot of podcasters might be interested to know, I know that there's been like a really big push about YouTube and podcasters are looking at it as a really big opportunity for them to just like expand their podcast, maybe like another monetization stream. But YouTube's CPM for the audio ads is going to be the same as their video CPM. And so for podcasts for each advertisement slot, the average CPM ranges between $2 and $8 per 1000 downloads. And the average audio podcast ad is going to be you know, closer to like 14 to $25. And YouTube changes the CPM based on different things about your channel. So if you have like explicit language, you're going to have a different CPM than someone who has like a kid based channel or if you don't have as many subscribers as like another channel, your CPM drops. And then on top of that YouTube takes a 45% cut of what little CPM you get. So I don't think that it's going to be a really great stream of revenue for podcasters.

Alban: 14:14

So the first thing that I think is super interesting is like audio only ads on YouTube, when I first heard that I'm like, This doesn't make any sense to me kinda like well, you're saying, so it's just gonna be a blank screen with audio, which is a person who buys advertisements. I don't see that as something I'd be excited about. Imagine what's the click through rate going to be what's the brand look like if that's what you do. But then I saw this rumor of tests that are being done in Canada. And so with YouTube premium, you can just turn off the screen and your YouTube video will continue to play the audio out of your phone. And that's really big for someone who's listening to a podcast on YouTube that maybe has the video and they want to just listen. Well in Canada they're actually testing I think since Last October, the ability to play content in the background when not looking at the screen, pretty much that premium feature is now available for everybody. That's when audio ads start getting really interesting. Because now there's a use case for somebody who's just driving around town. And they want to listen to something and they pull up a podcast on YouTube, they don't want to look at it. And now it's playing in the background. And then YouTube goes, Hey, we've got some audio ads, let's start dropping those in. Because if you're an advertiser, it you made a pretty much like a commercial, like, real production value, there's audio, there's visual effects, there's all this stuff. And then you found out YouTube was playing that with the screen off, you'd be like, What the heck, What a rip off, like, we're not gonna get the traction we were hoping for. But by sourcing Audio Ads, they're going to, I think kind of line themselves up to say, we've now got the audio ads, we have the audio experience together, we think we can bring something pretty cool. This really feels to me like a direct shot at Spotify. And their business model of we're going to be the audio experience, where YouTube is the visual this YouTube saying, Hey, I think we're going to try to do some audio first experiences even more and make those even more prevalent outside of just for premium users.

Jordan: 16:20

Yeah, we kind of like speculated on that a few times, just with, like, the different announcements that YouTube's had about, like the podcasts and stuff, and I'm just like, Oh, they're gonna go audio, they're gonna go audio, they're gonna go audio, and now it's starting to feel like we actually are moving into that direction. So I'm pretty excited about that.

Kevin: 16:37

Yeah, I 100% agree, I think that's the most interesting takeaway from this article is that we're seeing more and more evidence that YouTube is going to be I think they're gonna have to drop the whatever they call it, the screen off watching or listening experience, there have to drop that as a premium offering. And they're gonna have to offer that to everyone for free. And then the way they're going to make their money back on that is with things like these audio ads. So that's the great thing about YouTube controlling the whole platform like soup to nuts, they they own it all. So they that Apple absolutely know if you're watching or not watching screens on or off. And since they serve ads in like a streaming format, real time, it could switch. So if you're watching a video, and it's getting ready to show you like a display video ad, but then you turn your phone off put in your pocket, like right before that ad is served up to you, they could switch it to an audio only add an audio only version of the same ad or a completely different ad. So it's smart. What's discouraging is that CPM that $2 to $8, and then a 45%. Cut that's brutal. That is way low. And I don't know, like, we don't know anything about what YouTube's really doing. So like, are they going to allow you to opt in or out of that? I mean, if my podcast was on YouTube, and they were paying me a $2, CPM and taking 45%, I would turn those ads off as quickly as I can, if they give you the option, but they might not even give you the option, they might just do it. So we'll have to see how this plays out.

Alban: 17:57

I pulled these numbers to give like that point of comparison, the final amount of money in your pocket. If you're doing YouTube CPM, for every 1000 views, it ends up being about one to $4. Okay, that's your piece of the pie. If you use Buzzsprout ads, you're looking at $14 consistently in your pocket for 1000. Place advertised cast. I don't know what percent they take, but they sell about $24 on average.

Kevin: 18:25

Yeah, those are host read though, it's a different comparison.

Alban: 18:27

I'm just trying to give I guess, audio versus where YouTube is, yeah, and it's an order of magnitude difference. Like it's literally $1 to $4. And then we're up in the 20s or 14 at least, as your takeaway. So it's quite a bit different. I think this is just the different world do you end up in? When YouTube is providing all the distribution for you, you know, they're saying, Hey, we're finding these people for you. So you should be excited for what you get, versus you went and you built the audience yourself. So just kind of an interesting comparison to look at. It's very different world audio versus video. I don't know if YouTube is going to be able to get the audio CPM up there.

Kevin: 19:08

I think that is a good distinction. I think YouTube looks at it through the lens of you created the content, but we did everything else. We found not only advertisers to advertise against your content, but we also found your audience for you. We brought your audience to you. I think that's how they look at it. I've never really heard a YouTube person say that, but we look at some of these numbers. Like that's what the numbers tell you. They think they're bringing a lot of value to the relationship. When in podcasting, the numbers seem to reflect the reality of what's happening in podcasting, which is not only do you create the content, but you also built the audience. And so you're compensated for like, you know, all of that. Usually when you're doing something like Buzzsprout ads or host read self sale ad programmatic, not so much. Those numbers are still a little bit low, but they might be starting to trickle up a little bit. I think we've seen that. But there is some sort of recognition in podcasting that not only are you creating the content, but you're also marketing your Don't when building your audience and that's what we're interested in gaining access to. So we'll pay for that. When you go into the YouTube world, I think they take credit for the audience building.

Jordan: 20:08

Oh, yeah, big time. And researching what the like average CPM for like a YouTube ad would be. I saw so many sites that said like, basically, the highest amount of CPM that they've like seen is $10. So $10 Minus the 45%. And that still only comes out to like, what$5.50? Well, and minus taxes. So, I mean...

Alban: 20:30

Did either of you read this article by Tom Webster about podcast competition this week?

Jordan: 20:35

Yes, it was so good.

Alban: 20:37

So this was in sounds profitable. And Tom kind of starts at this point of like, Who are you competing with kind of the standard thing? We've heard everybody talk about a million times? How many podcasts aren't there? Is it too late? Who am I competing with? Do I have a chance, and he kind of approached it from a different angle. He said, when he wrote a book, when he quickly realized was, he wrote it, but the publisher, publisher, they were actually going to print it, but they weren't going to market it. They didn't do any work to sell it. He was responsible for every single sale of the book. He realized, okay, so I'm not actually competing against other books. It wasn't a question of how many books are there in the world? The question was, how much can I compete against my own obscurity? Like, can I get my name out there, it was less important that there are 12 other books on the subject, it was more important that he had 12,000 Twitter followers and 100,000 people on an email list or something. Those were the stats that were important. And I think what you're kind of saying, when we talk about the CPMs, and podcasters are bringing the audience kind of goes to what Tom's point was, which is, it doesn't matter how many other YouTube channels there are and podcasts there are and blogs, what matters are how many people can you bring to this thing? Because if YouTube's bringing everybody, they're going to say I think we should take at least 45% of the money here. Where if you're the one bringing it in podcast, and you're saying, Hey, I'm sending it out to my email list, and I'm going to meetups and I'm going to conference speaking and talking about my show, then you're able to command a much larger percentage of any money that's made off of it.

Kevin: 22:16

Yeah, I think about you know, YouTube's perspective on it as got to be, hey, if somebody comes to YouTube, we've got plenty of content to show them. Like Alvin, you did a great video here. But you know what, like, if that your video is not here, it's not like it's hurting us, we've got plenty of stuff to show them. And we're getting really good at keeping people on our platform serving up relevant content, with or without your little show. It's very different for people who are competing in the podcast space, which is when you fire up a podcast app. And it's not like there's a lot of really great content being pushed at you, you kind of have to go search it out. Like everyone's trying it Apple podcast is doing a good job, they have a bunch of different charts and they're trying to surface some of the best content. I don't know if anybody's, you know, trying to make smart recommendations based on other listening other things you've listened to, I've seen a little bit of that in Apple podcasts, good pods is really pushing into the everyone's trying to help podcasters build an audience. But still, it's very much on the podcaster to really build that audience. I think YouTube's a totally different world, YouTube, they don't you know, they don't really need us, they don't really need any content creator. You can see the evidence of that, when it's like they don't hesitate at all to D platform D monetize huge creators, when they do something that violates their policy, you might think that would be a huge deal when like pewdiepie at the time he was demonetized was I think the number one YouTube channel and you're like, how could they do that's crazy. Nine, he went off the rails a little bit with some of his videos for sure. Not saying they shouldn't have. But I don't think that's a huge issue for YouTube. Because even the biggest creators on their platform are still a very small fraction of the total viewership that's taking place in the platform.

Alban: 23:56

Yeah, the only corollary to that in podcasting is Spotify. They're like we have the people, they come here to listen to music. And we are incentivized right now for them to be listened to podcasting instead. So we don't have to pay these annoying music licensing monies anymore. So will show podcast if it's good. And they're in the driver's seat. And I think YouTube has been in the driver's seat, the idea that you would cut off your number one channel, because you don't agree with the content. That means like, we know we're in control here, we're not going to lose our business over the fact that we're now going to kick you off the platform or upset you. So I think that's a really good point, Kevin, I've told you this thing before my Field of Dreams marketing, like build it, and they will come everybody imagines like the creation of the thing is like all the work. We believe in our heart that like Field of Dreams. 1989 movie Kevin Costner is like, actually reality if you build the thing, then all the people will come if I build this app Every one will come and buy it. If I make this podcast, then everyone will listen to it. If I create a YouTube channel, everyone will come. But the sad reality is, that doesn't happen, like the ghosts from old baseball games are not going to show up to your baseball field if you create it in the middle of Iowa. And it's not going to you're not going to have a number one podcast just because you recorded the episodes.

Jordan: 25:23

It's kind of like that whole saying of every overnight success took years to make. It's there's something to that effect is very much like that. And I think that there are rare cases of where people get lucky and maybe go viral for whatever reason. But it's just not a feasible marketing strategy to just kind of sit and hope.

Alban: 25:43

Yeah, it's super alluring when we see these stories of like, authors who die and then after their death, their book is discovered, and it goes like massive. So Confederacy of Dunces is maybe an example of that, or you know, a painter who after the life is now recognized as a master. That just is not the way things really happen. What really happens is somebody blogs for years about the same topic, and they build up a base and everyone's listening to them and reading their newsletter. And then they write atomic habits. And everyone's like, Oh, James clear. I've been reading his blog for 10 years. And then it becomes a New York Times bestseller. It's not that he wrote a book in obscurity. And all of a sudden, I got big, he built this audience, very specific audience for years and years. And then when he released the book, it fit perfectly. So just like is a good reminder that when we are creating content online, if our goal is I need to get a massive audience and I need for me to be successful. You can't just create the content. There also needs to be this other half, which is the marketing and distribution of that content.

Jordan: 26:54

Back in July, TikTok filed for a trademark for TikTok Music and this caught a lot of people's attention and they were wondering, could this mean that podcasts are coming to TikTok? And then this week, something else happened that's kind of indicating that yeah, I think TikTok is moving into podcasting, too.

Alban: 27:15

Yeah, so they've had this TikTok Music platform. Think of it as like a very primitive small competitor to Amazon music or Apple Music or Spotify. I think it's called Resso. And reso actually does have podcasts in it. And so as soon as we saw Tik Tok say, hey, maybe there'll be a TikTok Music, everyone's going, will shoot if it's built off that Resso thing. You guys have that ByteDance runs that is probably gonna have podcasts on it. And at the same time, a French podcasting app said they started seeing all their feeds start getting scraped up two weeks ago. And so they started digging into it. And there's all this evidence kind of starting to line up, like so the IPs are all related to vite dance. It's definitely written in Go, which is what tick tock is written in is the language they use. There are a bunch of different things that indicate that is tick tock. So I actually reached out to Tom and Brian, the whole infrastructure team, and was like, hey, the sad thing about this? And he, I mean, it's blowing us up for sure. Yeah, so the user agent and all the IPS and everything, like, we're talking hundreds of 1000s of requests, there's definitely something that is trying to learn about everyone's fees. We, I think almost immediately identified it as a bot. And so you wouldn't ever see this in your stats, like a big part of providing the most accurate stats that we can, is identifying bot behavior and say, Okay, anything they want to do with audio files, like, those don't count as a download or play. So you wouldn't have seen it in your stats, but we definitely see it on our side. There is someone who's written this script. And they look like they're tick tock, and they're highly interested in learning about as many of the open podcasts that are out there. So we don't know anything for sure. But there's definitely evidence starting to line up in this direction.

Kevin: 29:11

Yeah, so I noticed and I shared this last week with Albin that I was watching some video that my daughter sent me on TikTok. And the next video that popped up was we're podcasters. So I was watching it, like, yeah, TikTok's smart. They know I'm into podcasts, right? So there shouldn't be a podcast or video. And a segment from a show it had video was two people sitting at a desk with microphones talking to each other. And then when that video was over, it popped up a ad like something that I could click through. So trying, I guess, trying to encourage me not to just go scroll to the next video but to interact with this ad. So I went back watched it again, it's a sponsored post. It was a segment from a podcast and the ad prompted with a like a listen now button. And if you click the Listen now button, you were taken to a web page that set up I think specifically for this campaign. In that just had two big buttons, one listening on Apple and the other was listening on Spotify. And if you tapped either one of those, it would jump you out of the Tiktok app, right and Apple podcasts or right into Spotify. So it could be this new audio like podcast ad format that they're testing. And they might need to be scraping feeds or lining things up to be able to verify like what you are advertising is actually a podcast with legitimate feed. It could be that they're adding podcasts into Tik Tok. I don't know. But they seem to have an interest in podcasts for sure, not only with the evidence that we're seeing in the Buzzsprout logs, but also what I'm seeing just interacting with tick tock seeing podcasters advertising their shows through TikTok.

Alban: 30:39

Is the UI that you just experienced, do you think that that TikTok made that and that's an ad format that you can use, it's like, hey, advertise all sorts of different things. And if it's a product, we send you to Shopify, and if it's, you know, if it's a book you we send you to kindle or something to buy it. And if it's a podcast, we send you to Apple or Spotify, or do you think is just kind of like a smart podcast or goes, Hey, I've got a new marketing idea. And they kind of use an existing format to fit what they're doing.

Kevin: 31:09

I think it's a little of both, I think TikTok built the first half of that UI, which is somehow they said, I'm going to create like a sponsored post on tick tock, and I'm going to be advertising, I think they probably chose podcast or music app or something, because it prompted with a listen now button. And then from there, it went to a website. And I think that's where the handoff was. So that could have just linked to anybody's website with anything. This particular website seems to be a landing page for this particular ad, because it is just showing the podcast artwork, and then a couple of big "listen now" buttons.

Jordan: 31:47

You know, what I'm really hoping for with this is if you're watching like a TikTok or an Instagram reel, or something like that, or if you create one, a lot of times, what you can do is you can actually like click out of like, TikTok, if there's a song that you like that someone's using, you can click out of that and then like actually be taken to the song itself for the artists and things like that. So my hope is that podcasters can use it as a marketing tool, not just like with like running a campaign. But also if it can link to their podcast episodes, and they could create like a tick tock or other people could use their episode as like a soundbite for their tic tock or their Instagram reel. And then that would be like, really awesome. That would be so ideal, I would be so happy if they had something like that, because then I could personally use tick tock or Instagram reels because I can't right now it doesn't make sense for me to do it.

Alban: 32:38

So let me give a an idea of why I think that may not be the beautiful future that we'll get.

Jordan: 32:44

You're gonna rain on my parade? No.

Alban: 32:48

So if something goes viral on Tiktok, there's a viral sound, it almost directly correlates with that song going viral on Spotify. And there's a big overlap. So even when I was researching how people market podcasts on TikTok, all of them said if he goes viral, my Spotify numbers shoot up, they didn't see as much happening on other apps and things just because TikTok and Spotify for a lot of people are very connected. If you're on one, you're probably on the other. And I think this TikTok music is them saying okay, we're kind of doing all the work or we we pay for these little clips, we licensed the music. We've got all the infrastructure built in, we've got the amazing AI that just makes you sit there and watch hours and hours a TikTok at a time. And then when music goes viral, we're sending all that traffic over to somebody else. And now Spotify is a sweet business, and I feel bad for us. I wonder if tiktoks saying hey, we're gonna do tick tock music is them saying? Why does that need to go to Spotify, we have the distribution, if anyone's going to get the reap the benefits of this shouldn't be us. If you click a artist shouldn't open up our other app for people to listen to it. If you want to listen to the whole song, listen to it in our app. And so combine that with the piece of information we have about reso their existing music app has podcasts in it. I feel like TikTok is probably just saying we're going to be positioned exactly opposite of Spotify. Have our own app for all audio. And if anything goes viral on Tiktok Hey, come listen to more. But do that over with us don't go somewhere totally different.

Jordan: 34:31

See, I don't think that that actually does rain on my parade because that just like fully supports what my idea was originally if if Tik Tok music is the one scraping these podcasts and they're also populating podcasts into Tik Tok music then that means that like TikTok videos can link to those podcasts. So I think I might be right.

Kevin: 34:51

Yeah, one of the things tic tac does is they certainly license a lot of music for people to be able to use those sounds to create videos but they also give creators The ability for anything that they push into tic toc that they can make their content available as a sound in their sound library. So you'll see that all the time on tick tock like people will comment on you'll, you'll be watching a video, it's whatever two people interacting and it's kind of funny or something like that people in the comments will say, please make this sound like I want to do at it. Like you set the rights to your content that you push them to tick tock so you say if it's available for a duet, you say if people can use the sound without the audio, whatever. And so it would be nice if they do work podcasting into Tik Tok, somehow, if they give podcasters the ability to say yes, the sound is available, which is you saying I give the Tiktok universe the rights to my audio to use it and do what you want with it. So if you think this bit on Buzzcast is pretty funny, and we check the box it says people can use it as a sound, then you might start seeing other people creating videos on Tiktok who are like lip syncing over our voices but doing their own funny interactions.

Jordan: 35:52

Yeah, exactly.

Kevin: 35:53

That could be big for podcasting people.

Alban: 35:55

Lip syncing this podcast is not going to be big for podcasting.

Kevin: 35:59

This is what's gonna push it over the edge.

Jordan: 36:02

Now just wait till we go viral.

Kevin: 36:03

You wait until we have our first viral sound we're gonna blow up. Yeah. And it's nice because the sound is always tracked back to the original content.

Jordan: 36:10

Yes.

Kevin: 36:11

And pages if you have them and then potentially maybe link through to your original podcast.

Jordan: 36:16

Please make this true. I want it so bad.

Kevin: 36:18

Yeah, I think it's like a perfect fit for like a dream for that type of stuff. Like telling stories. And you can see parents doing their own versions of that for their kids or something and putting them on TikTok.

Jordan: 36:27

Or people playing that over those, you know, I-- Well, I've watched a lot of those things where people are doing like watercolors like it's just a like video of someone doing like a beautiful watercolor. And then there's like audio over the top of it. It's my dream for that to happen. I want that for my podcast. I want someone to be creating something really pretty and then just like my stuff in the background, I would love it.

Kevin: 36:47

It'd be a beautiful video and then people would want to know where did that sound come from? who's reading that story? Who's doing that? And they would find your podcasts from it.

Jordan: 36:54

Where's that siren's voice? Where can I get more of that? That's what I want people to say.

Kevin: 37:00

Do you want to be a siren's voice? Didn't the sirens end up killing a lot of sailors?

Alban: 37:04

The voice was so good they ran into the rocks. I think that's a it's a compliment.

Kevin: 37:09

Yeah, but I think they were like they were murderers? These sirens.

Jordan: 37:12

Yeah, they'd like lure them to their death.

Kevin: 37:15

You're the murderer.

Alban: 37:16

All right, Jordan. I know this makes you cringe. But you posted a I think pretty funny review that we got on Apple podcasts into like our group chat. Can I Can I read it on air? I know you hate reading at the read reviews.

Jordan: 37:30

I'll allow it.

Alban: 37:31

This is from JJ Lemieux my bar is set pretty high when it comes to shows giving quote unquote, advice. This podcast does that and much more in great tone. Unlike 90% of podcasters who all believe they're comedians. The crew on this podcast uses humor without trying too hard. Keep up what you're doing. And I responded. I love that the compliment on this is that we know we're not funny.

Kevin: 37:58

We know we're not comedians.

Jordan: 37:59

The humor is that we're just so stupid.

Alban: 38:03

These guys know they're not funny, which is palatable to me. It's the podcasters who think they're comedians. They're the ones who get under your skin. JJ, we appreciate you. Thank you for leaving us a review. This is not a promise that we will read reviews. Because Jordan has asked to this part of the show.

Jordan: 38:21

This is a promise we will not read reviews.

Alban: 38:23

I love it. I love reading reviews but Jordan's barred that from the rest of this show.

Jordan: 38:28

Yeah. So it's spooky season here in the Pacific Northwest. We do like the campfire stories in the autumn. And I've got my flashlight here.

Kevin: 38:42

Oh my gosh.

Jordan: 38:44

And I'm gonna read some podcasting horror stories.

Alban: 38:47

You're like the YouTube ads. They're audio only so that no one understands what's happening. Jordan has a flashlight shining into her face.

Jordan: 38:55

I have transformed. I'm in a dark and spooky wood. And there's like campfire crackling in front of me and I've got like a flashlight under my chin. They can see it.

Kevin: 39:05

I got it.

Jordan: 39:06

That's the magic of podcasting.

Kevin: 39:08

I'm gonna close my eyes and envision this. Here we are.

Jordan: 39:12

Alright, so our first story comes from Angie. I work with podcasters so this one day I was recording an online training like an hour into it. My throat was absolutely killing me. And I was like pushed through. The training ended up being an hour and 40 minutes. But when I went to review the recording, I realized my mic was off the entire time.

Alban: 39:36

Oh no,

Kevin: 39:40

I don't understand how that can happen. How did they she was talking to them they didn't hear?

Alban: 39:44

This wasn't live?

Jordan: 39:45

She was doing like a recording before it was like one of those like training recording things where you like do the video and you record yourself. The mic was off for an hour and 40 minutes.

Alban: 39:57

I think I've got a horror story that might even be worse than,

Jordan: 40:01

Oh, I want to hear it.

Alban: 40:02

When I first started working for Kevin, this is before I was doing any work on Buzzsprout. I think it was working on our time tracking software tick, I started doing these things where I would have people come in and do a little webinar and demo the product. But if you have the chat going during it, like, you just get distracted. So I turn off the chat. And I'd start. And then at the end of like, the 20 minutes, you come back, and then you go through the q&a. What do you think the top question was? Got back?

Kevin: 40:31

Yeah, why can't we hear you?

Alban: 40:32

Can you turn on your screen and share it for all of us? It's a running chat room. I'm not not like one person, like 10 people stuck it out. And they're all commenting. Yeah, I definitely doesn't have a screen on his show screen on. Why doesn't anyone hear us? Why Does anyone see these? And then I just came back. And it was like, wow, okay, I'll restart from here. And we just did it all again.

Jordan: 40:58

Oh, my gosh, that's really bad.

Alban: 41:03

It's really bad.

Jordan: 41:05

Alright, so next we have one from podcast brown Park. We were in the middle of interviewing Clint bone lead singer of the Australian band, The Butterfly Effect went out of nowhere. The picture behind him started to wobble, fell off the wall and smashed. All the windows were closed, and there was no wind. That's like a true spooky story.

Alban: 41:27

Next is a ghost.

Kevin: 41:29

The ghost story. Oh my god. That's weird. So there was video and they could see it. But the podcast I had no idea this was happening and see it wobbling.

Jordan: 41:37

I think it was like a it was a video chat. And like, yeah, they were looking at the guy. And behind him this picture just started wobbling and then it came off the wall. That would spook me a little bit.

Kevin: 41:47

I've seen some of those, like on YouTube and stuff. I mean, they're probably like, set up fake videos where you know, like your shit. They're chatting with somebody and there's somebody moving behind them or something. And they have no idea. Yeah, but they see more set up.

Alban: 41:57

Yeah, like that documentary Paranormal Activity 2.

Jordan: 42:05

Okay, so next up, we have one from Diane. I was in the middle of recording an episode of my podcast, and felt something landed my hair mid sentence. I touched it. Oh, and it stung me. Twice. Oh, it was a Yellow Jacket.

Alban: 42:25

Why is there a yellow jacket in their house?

Jordan: 42:27

And then she said, Yep, I got all the screaming and cussing recorded. She sent me the audio clip of it actually. It's very funny.

Kevin: 42:36

That is funny. I would listen to that show. Yeah.

Jordan: 42:39

Poor thing. It was like a baking show, too. So she's talking about like, how to set the oven temperature and stuff. And then all of a sudden, like she's just like Ow! Ow!

Alban: 42:49

oh, cooking, yeah,

Kevin: 42:50

that adds a whole nother level of complexity to it. It's like you're gonna your kitchens gonna get shut down. Now for health code violations. You should not have Yellowjackets in your kitchen. Don't

Jordan: 42:57

think Yellow Jackets are violation. I think they're more of like a safety hazard. This is from Adam. He says, I record a food podcast for a client. And he had a southern food legend on for an interview. She is quite old, like early 90s. So after the interview, the host went off on how she's so old and out of it and how it was such a bad interview. She had it actually disconnected. And she had heard everything he said, Oh, we had to back the interview. And of course, apologize. That's a horrible, horrible story.

Alban: 43:37

Yeah, that was the worst by a mile. That's not even funny.

Jordan: 43:41

No, it's not funny at all. Like that's like horror story. Oh, that's like secondhand embarrassment. And the sad story

Kevin: 43:48

that's so bad. I'll give you my tip for success. I mean, you try not to do that in the first place. Right? Like keep your emotions to yourself. But if you do have to have a hard conversation with somebody afterward about like, that wasn't good for this reason. That's about somebody in particular, I always switch methods of communication. Like if if we're in a text chat, I will call them. If we're talking on the phone. I'll be like, I'm gonna text you my feedback on that later. Like I do totally no other method of communication that the other person I know part of, because I don't want to risk hurting anybody's feelings if I have to say something hard.

Jordan: 44:18

Yeah, that's not even like a podcasting tip. That's just like a life hack. Yeah. So okay, so Adam actually had another one. He says, I had a famous actor surprise me in the studio for a first time meeting. And as he came in, I was currently looking at his Wikipedia page with his picture on it, trying to see what he's done. He totally saw it. That's embarrassing. I can look at that. You could I'd be so embarrassed. No.

Kevin: 44:47

I know. I'd be like, I'm just doing my research on you. You've done some interesting stuff. This is great.

Alban: 44:53

I'd be proud of it. Yeah, I feel like I can live with all of these except for insulting a 90 year old famous A baker that say like, oh, you're totally out of it, I would do the others and cringe that one would be next level,

Jordan: 45:08

I'd be mortified.

Kevin: 45:09

But you know what I feel like that should have happened. That's the right outcome for that, like, nobody should tear somebody down because they were they obviously I'm thinking this person came on your show and gave him your best effort. And if you didn't like it, like it's totally within your rights to back the interview, but don't talk bad about him. That's not cool. Yeah, you deserve to

Jordan: 45:26

be clear. This was not Adam. This was a client of his that often the lady was not. He's he's in the clear.

Kevin: 45:34

I gotcha. Thank you for sharing. Adam. Good story.

Alban: 45:36

Yeah. Thank you for the horror stories, if you want to submit other horror stories for next year. Oh, yeah, we won't have another recording before, October 31. So maybe in the next year, we will collect podcast horror stories. Yeah, and make a whole episode out of it

Jordan: 45:52

would be fun. That'd be really fun.

Kevin: 45:57

You know what time it is. It's time for Mazouz. So we don't talk a lot about how you boost once in a while we do. But I think it's a good chance to give a good reminder, somebody asked Jordan about it this week. So I want to remind everyone that if you want to boost our show, there's two really great apps that are available you can download on your phone to listen to podcast and boost through one of them is fountain. I think it's fountain.fm. I think is that right? Can somebody confirm that for me? Yes, fountain.fm. But you can definitely just go to the App Store. And whatever phone you have, I think it's iOS and Android search for fountain podcast, or fountain podcasting, you'll find the mountain app, download it, and then you're gonna, they're gonna have pretty good like tutorials of show you how to get a little bit of money in there, that money, your dollars are converted to sets, don't worry about that, like the conversion thing, just like if you put $10 in, you're gonna get a certain amount of sets, it's probably going to be like 20,000 sets or something like that. And then you can start sending those sets out. So as you're listening to shows shows that are value for value enabled, we'll get a little boost button that'll light up next to them. And when you see the button illuminated, tap it, you can send a message, you can change the number of sets that you want to send. And that's how you boost a show. The other app that we recommend is cast thematic CAS T A ma T IC cast ematic. You can search for that in the app store of your choice. And same type of thing. You put that into the podcasting wallet and then you look on shows you listen to them. There's buttons light up, you tap it, that's how you boost the show. We've got a few boosts this week, and I'll kick it over to Alvin and Jordan to read their own.

Alban: 47:26

Alright, first boost is from Jean been, y'all should send 1% to LB and view your boost with Saturn Saturn dot fly dot Dev, and now shows the full boost amount.

Kevin: 47:39

Yeah, I like that idea. I'll check out Saturn and give it a shot that dot dev extension it's like that d v instead of you know.com or dot biz or.fm That makes me a little nervous makes it sound like development. Like it's still in development, but whatever. I like new things. So yeah, I'll give it a shot. We'll check it out for next week and we'll follow up thanks Jean been G means

Alban: 47:58

actually got some follow up. So I'll just read all three of his together. The second Arby's Saturn has a leaderboard stuff for booths as well. He said Arby's. Like RV, who made an app called

Kevin: 48:14

RV roast beef sandwich and look at your stats at

Jordan: 48:17

St. Louis does the roast beef sandwich that'd be great actually.

Alban: 48:21

Business boost does an Arby's roast beef sandwich. And then followed up by the way all three of these boosts are for 1337 aka leet boost numerology wise, I don't know that

Kevin: 48:36

is I don't know what elite means either.

Alban: 48:38

You don't know elite means no,

Jordan: 48:39

no. Oh,

Alban: 48:40

both of you have really missed out on like Halo to 4004

Jordan: 48:46

Oh, I guess yeah, like I play Halo, but I don't recognize late at all.

Alban: 48:51

So Leon is like the opposite of a noob. Do you know what a noob is?

Jordan: 48:56

Oh, yeah. Gotta pull in all those noobs Yeah, so

Kevin: 48:59

that's somebody who's new to the game?

Alban: 49:01

Yeah. Okay, so poan and leet. And all these words is called leet. Speak. Lee is a leet. Like, you're extremely good. Latos you see, like, leet hackers. For somebody who's really good at breaking into something. It's mostly used ironically. But if you ever see that, like letters and numbers mixed together, and like internet speak, that is called leet speak interesting, totally useless, but it's funny. So thank you GV for our elite boosts. That's

Jordan: 49:31

awesome. And then we have 2000 sets from at mere mortals podcast, and oh, they're saying pretty much same thing gene being there just supporting what Gene mean is saying here, maybe you should try out including an lb address split and link it to Saturn dot Dev. This will give you the ability to quickly and by quickly I mean, it will still take 2030 seconds to see where the boost occurred with the audio track right below. So I think that they're calling out Kevin's resistance to checking timestamp Same thing it takes too long.

Kevin: 50:03

Yeah, I'm picking up on that. Yeah, I need systems. So this is good. I need systems. Because this, the system I'm using now is it doesn't work to be able to track it back to a specific timestamp, or see who's given the most boost. We don't have like a leaderboard or anything like that. So I like it. I'm gonna check it out. Maybe in two weeks, I'll have some better information. For booths that come through, I would like to add,

Alban: 50:24

we've had quite a few people talk about being able to give us booths and send in stuff, I wanted to open another avenue for people to give feedback to the show or comments for the show. That's not tied to crypto. So if you just don't like crypto or you're not, you know, technically savvy enough, or you just are like, I'm not getting into a whole nother app, if anybody ever wants to reach out to me on a DM on Twitter, and just include the fact that this is something for Buzzcast. We'll go ahead and we'll commit to starting to include those as well. So to have a second way, maybe we could put an email address at some point, but wanted to provide an alternative way that you could submit comments for the show without

Jordan: 51:04

opening up a whole nother podcasting app. Yeah, why don't we have a Buzzcast email?

Alban: 51:08

I mean, that could be something we do as well, I think that they're able to do the phone number, so people can leave voicemails. I'd like to have other ways for people. We could do a pot inbox. We could do a pod inbox, hot inbox

Jordan: 51:20

is fantastic for that. All right. I think that wraps up our show. So with that, thank you for listening and keep podcasting