Is Clubhouse Dead? + Apple Podcasts Update

In this episode we discuss three brand new features you can find in your Buzzsprout account, an update on Apple Podcasts Connect and the buggy app rollout, and reminisce on the good ol' days when Clubhouse was a thing.

Links from today's episode

• See every new feature Buzzsprout has added recently
• Watch Alban's interview with Katie Piper from Canva
• Learn about the new Canva artwork integration
• Watch our Apple Podcasts Announcements Playlist
• Clubhouse users on the decline

Review Buzzcast in Podchaser or Apple Podcasts to let us know what you think of the show.

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• Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods

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Transcript

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Kevin: 0:00

So do you have to click into each country individually? That's kind of silly, isn't it?

Travis: 0:04

If they were to make a press release, they would say, why would you ever want to do it any other way, like, this is the best way to look at your ratings and reviews going through every single country.

Kevin: 0:13

This is the apple way. It's like in the same event that they talked about podcasts, they also announced air tags, and the new remote for the Apple TV that doesn't have like a built in air tag, we think you're really gonna love the new Apple TV remote.

Travis: 0:27

Today on Buzzcast, we're going to talk about Apple podcasts last month, the things that have gotten better things that are kind of still the same toilet, you know, kind of what's going on there. And then obviously, we're gonna talk about clubhouse. And even if it has slowed down, is it still worth investing time in But first, we just rolled out some new features on Buzzsprout. So we'll talk about those, the big one being the new Canva integration. So if you go into your podcast settings, and scroll down to artwork, there's a new button that says design with Canva, which allows you to design your podcast artwork right there inside of your Buzzsprout account. So I know that this was a really big project for us and the scope of the kind of products we take on. Kevin Albert, I know you guys were really instrumental in making that happen. So walk us through the just the whole process of putting that feature in there. And then just the reception i Alban, you're our resident Twitter person, how has it been received from from people that use Buzzsprout, and have tried out the feature so far?

Alban: 1:22

Well, I definitely didn't do any of the work on actually building it. My job is to mostly be the person to tell everyone that we built something and then they're like, Thank you out, but not like Kevin, and Dave, and Brian, and the whole dev team is the one they're the ones who built it. But yeah, the receptions are really good. I mean, what you do now is there's a button inside Buzzsprout, where we upload artwork, it says design with Canva. And now you can just click it. And Canvas, this really beautiful integration where just pops open, you can design some artwork, I've done a piece a few pieces myself using the integration, and then you click Send to Buzzsprout. And it's boom, right inside your Buzzsprout account. And we've just got a ton of really great feedback for it. Lots of ideas for ways it can be improved, and some of those ideas have already been in there. And so it's been it's been a lot of fun.

Kevin: 2:16

Yeah, it really helps three groups of people. First is the group of people that were already using Canva to do artwork. And so if you, if you had a Canva account, you'd already created podcast artwork, there is a way it's a little bit hidden. But there's a way to go into like all folders and and find your artwork and make a little update, if you wanted to. The other group of people it would help would be people who don't have any artwork at all. So they're just starting a podcast and they don't know how to use it don't have access to or know how to use Photoshop or another design application. Canva is really great in that they have hundreds of professionally designed templates for you to start with. And then you can just customize to your liking. So you find a template that looks great that you'd like and you can just switch out photos and they have a full stock photo library and switch out the words for your words, your title, your podcast, your name, and then you hit send to Buzzsprout. And then the third group is is for people who do like no Photoshop and stuff. But there's, there's a whole bunch of overhead that comes with that workflow of trying to load up Photoshop and keep track of your files and all that kind of stuff. So Canva is a really great graphic creation program. And again, with professionally designed templates and stuff, maybe they have something that you like better than what you created on your own. So kind of regardless of what camp that you fall into, you can use this now to update your podcast artwork. And our idea was to roll it out originally just for the podcast artwork updater and see what the response was see if people like it and use it. And the reception has been great. So now we our plan is to roll that into more areas of Buzzsprout. Because there are other places we create graphics like Chapter Chapter marker images, and episode specific artwork. We also do visual sound bites, there's artwork there. So slowly but surely, probably over the next couple months, you'll see the Canva button appearing in more and more places within Buzzsprout.

Travis: 4:08

Kevin, are you telling us about a feature that doesn't exist yet?

Kevin: 4:11

No. I'm just telling me what are our hopes are? no commitment. Oh,

Alban: 4:19

yeah. Well, we started getting all the positive feedback on it. I started I put up a pitch inside of our internal software and said like, Hey, can we put this button everywhere else and build it out? So it does these things? So that was the first I heard from Kevin just now that that might be happening at some point. What's I think what I didn't realize about Canva. Kevin, when we started this was I'm used to starting with just a blank sheet of paper. And then you're like, Okay, what's the background color? What's it going to say? And you're slowly like building yourself. And if you're not a designer like me, then what you do is you end up making something and you just No, it doesn't look good, but you have no ability to improve it. And what Canva does is because they have 250,000 templates for free, you just go ahead and you like with this integration, we actually are automatically pulling up all of the podcast, artwork templates, and they have a ton of them. And then you can just look through and say that one looks close. The image isn't what I don't love the image in the center, so click it and switch it out for a different image. And I make the font, you know, say like the word, say, my podcast name. And like, it's very easy to take a template and make it your own way, because it's already got all these design principles baked in. So we actually have created a ton of content now and helping this feature get out to the world. When I interviewed a senior designer at Canva, Katie Piper, and she talked us through how to design our work for your podcast, Travis did a really good video talking about just standard design principles. But let's just be like going back to it. Like what's so powerful about this is Canva already has all these templates built. And unless you're a designer, this is going to get you such a better result than trying to build something from your mean by scratch yourself.

Travis: 6:23

Right. And the templates are actually good. So like, that's the other Yeah, you know, like, so many of these, these, you know, online graphic design software's, it's, it's fine. But you can tell like a professional did not design that, like some is like one step beyond Microsoft Paint. But the fact that they're like legitimately good templates, that you just like, change a couple things. And it's like, wow, who did you pay hundreds of dollars to make that, and it's all free. And it's all right inside of Buzzsprout. Like, cuz I know, for a lot of podcasters. Especially when you're getting started. There's like so many things you're trying to learn and take care of and do. And the podcast artwork could be a really overwhelming piece. It's like, wow, I finally figured out what microphone to buy. And I finally interview my first guest. And now I have to be a graphic designer or figure out how to hire one. It's like, it could be a huge obstacle for people. And so I think the magic there is you don't have to stop using momentum. Just open up that little pop up inside of Buzzsprout. Pick one you like change the text, add an image, put your name in there, hit save, and you're done. And it legitimately looks great. And so I think it's a huge game changer. awesome feature. I tend to overhype things, but I don't think that it's it's too overhyped to say that this really is a phenomenal feature. That's gonna help a lot of people. Albin, what were some of the big takeaways that you remember from your interview with Katie? Because we'll link that in the show notes. It's a phenomenal masterclass on graphic design, and like how to make things look aesthetically pleasing. What were the big things that really jumped out to you or stuck out to you from that conversation that you think everyone that's designing any kind of artwork in a podcast setting would really benefit from? Well, she

Alban: 8:02

talks a lot about hierarchy, and how to make sure you know that I feel like a lot of the design tips I was taking, were on the front end, before you're designing, you really have to think like what am I trying to get across here? Like, what's the tone? What's the message, and what are the words I've got to have. And so I feel like it helped me understand a lot of that design work is happening on the front end, when you're really clarifying your message, here's the name of the podcast, here's some of the things I need to have. And then here's the tone that the artwork should have. And then basically, when you have those two things tone and what needs to be in there, then she was helping say, well, that means that I'm going to use these type of this color palette, here are some ways that you can find colors that work together, I'm colorblind, so I have no idea. So it's very helpful to hear from her like, you can go to Canva I think I'm just gonna be a Canva commercial today for you. But she's like it Canva they have all these color palettes already built, or you could go to dribble. And there's tons of color palettes there that are, you know, put together by people who actually understand color theory, then hierarchy, how to make sure that the biggest and boldest things are actually getting first billing that the thing they really need to get across is the main title. And then one that I personally will be very happy about is we talked quite a bit about typography, that if you're going to use one of these kind of wacky title fonts think they're called, if you think of this is how I put it to her. Like, if it's a font that gets used in like an Instagram promotional like picture or something like it's like you can do it sees the date today and it's like handwritten or something, or it looks like a stamp. That's a title font. It's just like, if you're gonna do that, that's cool. But then your subtitles got to be like A sansara font really clean, really minimal. And so we talked a little bit about typography. But you watch the whole interview, a lot of the things that she was talking about are similar to the principles that we have in our blog post about podcast artwork or in the video that you made, where you're doing kind of a Quick Hits into what you need to make sure you have. I found it very valuable, it was really nice to be able to discuss it with her and we've got a another video that's going to come out that is just be pulling up tons of artwork and saying, okay, what's good here, what's bad here, what could be improved. And that was really helpful in clarifying for me, when we could have a piece of artwork and she says, This is working. But maybe this part isn't, here's how to tighten it up. Here's how you can make it a little better. So that was really useful. But again, I go back to this, like, Don't let the artwork be the piece that's holding you back from starting. I've caught myself in a lot of projects, that if I don't have the title, and I don't have the artwork, I don't really want to get started on the actual work yet. And what Canva is allowing you to do by getting all these templates is, let's get something going. Let's get started. And if in three months, you want to rebrand the podcast name slightly, that's totally doable. We've got a bunch of I think we've got a video on rebranding, if you want to rebrand a podcast, because it's super easy to do that. And in a few months, you'll have such a better feel for what your show is about that, you'll be able to come up with something really awesome. So Canva allows you to get 90% of the way there with minimal effort and trouble. And then yeah, if you want to hire someone, a professional later on, if you could use something, or you could contract that out to somebody to actually get that done.

Kevin: 11:53

Yeah. And I do want to mention that as a special bonus for Buzzsprout customers Canva has, I think normally they do 15 days or 30 days, a free trial on their Canva pro accounts, which gives you access to all their premium templates as well. So as we said they have 1000s and 1000s of templates, and the majority of them are free. But some of them have I don't know photos or higher level of graphic design or something that makes them pro level. And so they've given us a special code, if you sign up for Canva through your Buzzsprout account that you can get 60 days of free Canva pro access instead of just the regular I don't know what the regular is 15 or 3030. Okay, so twice as long.

Travis: 12:35

Well, there you go, it pays to be a Buzzsprout podcaster. The next feature that we want to talk about. And by the way, you can find all these on a new page that we just put on our Buzzsprout website. If you go to buzzsprout.com slash new, you can see all these features that we're rolling out and little blurbs about them so you can stay up to date on new things in your Buzzsprout dashboard. The next thing we want to talk about is the sound bytes editor we made a small tweak to the sound bytes editor that we think is going to make it a lot easier if you find yourself making a sound bite for each episodes promote on social media to save you some time. And to keep that that brand dialed in. So Alban, what's the small tweak that we made to the sound bites editor,

Alban: 13:12

the small tweak that we aka john Pollard made it's just that the sound bites are smarter. Whenever you go back and you know sound bites are these audio grams they share on social media, they've got a nice waveform for you to share something about your podcast. And we have always allowed you or not always, but for quite a while allowed you to pick colors and make them your own. And somebody wrote in and said, hey, it's kind of annoying that I have to remember my colors. And we're like, oh, you're right. That is kind of frustrating to have to remember the colors that you use to make sure you have them consistent. And I don't think we thought of this as a big feature. JOHN just went in one day, it was like, Hey, I saw that support email. And now it's done. So it will always remember. And we were all like, Oh, that's awesome. So that anybody that uses that. Now, this soundbites will remember what colors you're using. And you have john to thank for it.

Travis: 14:10

Alright. And then the last feature we want to let you guys know about is a small update to submitting your podcast to amazon music. So before it was what a two step process, Kevin. And now it's just a one step process.

Kevin: 14:21

Yeah, when Amazon launched, they did API submissions, which is just basically gives Buzzsprout away our systems a way to talk to their systems to push your RSS feed to them. What they didn't have is kind of that, that loopback. So they after we push the podcast to them, they would say great we got in our system, then what we need to know is what's what's like the direct amazon link to that podcast so that we can display the Amazon button on all your Buzzsprout pages, and then your embed players and stuff like that. They didn't have that built. Now they do. And as part of them rolling that out. They also rolled out a whole new API which makes submissions much faster. So it used to be You'd push to them and there'll be some delay between them actually getting adjusted in your system. So they had a whole new and improved API. And, again, the biggest difference to you guys is that you don't have to come back and put your Amazon URL in manually, we can now get that from them. The other advantage is that it's faster. What it meant for us is that Tom had to rewrite the entire API, Amazon submission process, but he was happy to do it. And that's all live. And it's much easier to get into Amazon. Now. The benefit of that is,

Alban: 15:59

it's one clicks admission, you're in Amazon that's done. That callback, getting the direct link, we use that on public websites, and embed players, anywhere that you're sharing your podcast, you want to be able to have one place like your Buzzsprout website, or the embed players on your own site that has links to all of your directory listings. And so now, if anybody is actually listening to the podcast, and they go, I really want to listen to this, but I use amazon music, as my go to podcast player, well, boom, that is automatically updated for you now. So you don't have to be managing URLs, or finding the exact URL for a specific episode. All that's managed for you in the back end, where it's totally taken care of, which is a big, it's just one of those nice life improvements. I heard it quality of life improvements for all of your podcast listeners, because you don't want them to go through 12 steps of googling to try to find your podcast on their favorite player.

Travis: 17:00

So if you want to learn more about those three features that we just talked about, and all the other stuff that we've rolled out recently, in Buzzsprout, just go to buzzsprout.com slash new, and you can see everything we've been working on behind the scenes in your dashboard to help you succeed as a podcaster. So about a month ago, Apple made this big announcement Well, they made a lot of announcements about new products and computers. And Tim Cook while he was walking in from his car to the Apple headquarters, talked about the new Apple podcast updates. And and we made really almost an entire episode about that four weeks ago, and there were some things that were true, then that aren't true anymore. And some things that we want to make sure that you're aware of about the new updates, the app, podcast Connect, so we're gonna get you up to speed on all of that. The first one being, it is now to our knowledge, safe to claim your show in podcast connect and start interacting in there. Before there were issues with people's podcast, getting apps accidentally removed from Apple podcasts and all the third party apps that pulled from that, which is like a no bueno situation, right? You don't want your podcast just disappearing. And but they've since fixed that. And so that's a good thing. And so as we're talking about these features, you can now go in, log into your podcast, connect your new podcast, connect dashboard, and see some of these things and follow along for your own show. And the first thing that I thought was cool that they just introduced was the ability to see ratings and reviews from other countries other than the country that you live in. So before that, you'd have to use a service like chargable, or my podcast reviews in order to pull different reviews in because if you just pull it up on your phone, it's only going to show you reviews from the country that you live in. But now you can go in and see other ratings and reviews. So Alban, I know that when we were able to get on a call with Apple to learn more about the new podcast platform, they gave us this tip on which countries to look at to see all of your ratings reviews to remember to remember what that that was, I think it's really helpful.

Alban: 19:00

It's like a quiz. Yeah, when your podcast is probably getting reviews where you're getting plays. And so if you look at your Buzzsprout account, or in your Apple podcasts dashboard, where you getting a lot of plays, Apple is has specific storefronts for 170 countries. And so if your podcast is primarily being listened to in the United States and Canada, check out United States and Canada, when you're looking for reviews, you know, you may not have as many in Russia, or Uganda, you know, anywhere that your podcast doesn't have a lot of listeners, it's probably not getting a ton of place. So that's where I would start. And I mean, you can't flip through all 170 countries who you'd like. The valuable part of this is, you want to be hearing from everybody how your podcast is resonating. And so if you know we were only looking at the US mean our reviews, we actually made mess about half of our reviews, because they'd be spread across other countries. So check them out, see what people are thinking. And you know, I love highlight them on your podcast if people are doing you the service of leaving you a nice review and letting you know what they enjoy about the podcast highlighted on the show. Maybe read some off and thank people and I guess I should do that now. Thanks to everybody. Have you has rated and reviewed Buzzcast ACOs, cross pod chaser, and Amazon or Apple Music,

Kevin: 20:37

Apple podcasts. There we go.

Travis: 20:38

I just pulled up Buzzcast. If you're watching this on YouTube, you can see it. If you're listening on the podcast, I'll walk you through, I just pulled up Buzzcast on in our apple podcast connects dashboard. And if you just go, if you go from the homepage, where has everything to the the show level, what they call a show, which is an individual podcast, and then you got ratings and reviews on the left side. That's where you can find everything. And so you have this little drop down with every country that you're in. And so if I go to Canada, I can see that, you know, we recently had the nutrition junkie leave us a glowing five star review, saying I recently launched a podcast with the friends and this show has been so helpful in teaching me the ins and outs of the podcasting world. Great guests. And the host asked really well thought out engaging questions. Keep them coming.

Alban: 21:29

Definitely a set. Travis was like, oh, let's just pick a random country Canada, the host for his great question.

Travis: 21:40

That was completely unscripted, completely unscripted, other than the fact that I knew we had at least one review in in Canada. I did check that part before the show.

Kevin: 21:49

But so do you have to click into each country individually? Like if you clicked in the country with no reviews? Then you got to keep going through them all?

Alban: 21:57

Yeah, which is why you want to at least have I know that I've got a good amount of place in these countries before you start clicking through, or you are really going to be clicking like Cambodia, Canada, you know, just kind of going through the whole Cameroon, and kind of gluggy through that whole list. So make sure you've got some place there and then go find them. That's

Kevin: 22:19

kind of silly, isn't it? Like they don't have an all countries option?

Travis: 22:23

We asked them that specifically. Right? And and the answer was, they didn't really set it up for that they were very coy about you know, maybe we'll think about it do something in the future. But you know, for now, this is the way to do it. And, you know, if they were to make a press release, they would say, why would you ever want to do it any other way? Like, this is the best way to look at your ratings and reviews?

Kevin: 22:45

Yeah, this is the Apple Watch. The Apple way. It's like the same event that they talked about podcast, they also announced air tags, and the new remote for the Apple TV that doesn't have like a built in air tag. Why not? We think you're really gonna love the new Apple TV remote.

Travis: 23:01

So another cool metric that's relatively new, that that came out with this new podcast Connect. dashboard is the engaged listener metric. album, walk us through what that metric does. So if we go to analytics, we choose Buzzcast. You can see right here in the middle, this new engaged listeners number.

Alban: 23:21

So a big part of this announcement. Obviously, everyone knows his podcast subscriptions inside of Apple podcasts where people can pay for your show. And one thing that you need to know is not only how many downloads are you getting, but how many downloads? Are you getting an apple podcast that are people who are really engaged? And so if Travis hovers over that little question mark will tell you is, is either somebody is a engaged listener, if they listen to 20 minutes of an episode, or at least 40% of the episode. And then we know like our number here is is a bit lower than our actual listeners, which means that about 200, people didn't make it to 20 minutes, that they listened to a bit less, no big deal, maybe we can work on making the show a little more engaging. But 549, those are probably the only cohort of people that are actually interested in paying for any content. And so that's a good number for you to use. When you're thinking, what is my potential audience, in case I were to decide to launch an apple podcast subscription show, it would be you know, probably the biggest number we could hope for would be half of that number. So maybe we would get out of the roughly 2000 plays we get across all channels. I wouldn't be shocked if we got over 250 people to actually pay anything for these podcasts. Because remember, it's only people on Apple podcasts. It's only the people that are engaged. And that is probably the only people that are engaged enough that they're willing to pay for some of the content. So it does get quite a bit smaller, but it's a useful metric. And as we learn more about maybe what the conversion rate from engaged listeners to paying subscribers is we'll definitely share that because that'll be useful to decide if that's a path for you to go down or if you should just continue focusing on open content is available to everybody.

Travis: 25:20

Yeah, and quick update. So I don't believe that they've rolled out the new subscriptions feature yet. It still have all these banners saying it's coming Soon Get ready. It's gonna be awesome. But you know, TBD on when you can actually create premium content inside of Apple podcasts,

Kevin: 25:38

but you have a date? Or did they just say like June? I think they said

Travis: 25:41

early May. And it is Oh, I

Kevin: 25:43

said early May.

Travis: 25:44

And now it's mid May. So I thought

Alban: 25:47

it was late May. It's funny that we all have such different memories.

Travis: 25:50

Well, hey, if they spent that time cleaning up the bugs and podcast Connect, I think that's time well spent.

Kevin: 25:54

They probably were not anticipating spending the next month working on bugs. But

Travis: 25:58

yeah, and then, if you want to see like, other, you know, me talking about this more in depth, we have a ton of videos on our YouTube channel we posted recently. So if you want to go like specifically into each one of these things we're talking about and some of the other features are rolling out, go and check out the YouTube channel have a lot of good resources for you there. But along with that, you can now submit new shows to Apple podcasts again, because there was a period of time where, you know, I believe they weren't actually accepting any new shows is that is that right? Kevin? There was,

Kevin: 26:26

I don't know, if they'd shut it down. They did shut it down, like two days before the event. And then they supposedly opened it back up again. But there was all these bugs. So very few people were actually able to submit a new show, but I think they opened it up shortly after the event. But then it was just, it was mostly validation errors. People like errors from your artwork doesn't meet the right specs, too. You've got too many categories selected, I mean, all sorts of crazy errors that didn't really exist. It was just their validator was making up errors and not letting people submit shows. But I think most of those are worked out.

Travis: 26:58

Yeah, so you can now submit a new show to Apple podcasts. And we actually updated all the screenshots in the instructions. So if you create a new podcast on Buzzsprout, and you go to Apple podcasts, we have step by step instructions on how to get in, we've updated all those screenshots. So you can follow along with that, to submit your show. And like, just to like a weird wording thing that they do is when you submit a new show, they ask you Is this a new show, or even existing show, and even if you have are just getting started, and all you have is a trailer episode, and it's in your mind the new podcast, they want you to choose existing show, because then they're gonna ask for your your RSS feed, or a new show, I believe is for their new premium content, subscription model, right,

Alban: 27:41

your you select new show, if it's a podcast that you're creating, just for Apple podcasts. It's a podcast that you're creating. It's brand new as of the minute that you're logging in, and you're gonna start uploading content right there. If it's a show that you have created on Buzzsprout, or another podcast host, and it's going to be available to everybody, then you click existing show and give them the RSS feed.

Kevin: 28:05

That's another funny we love. We love Apple, we'd love mean, everyone we work with that Apple is awesome. But they all have the same response. We gave them their like any feedback on the new system. So we gave him some feedback. And that was one of the feedback points we gave like that wording could be confusing. And they're like, duly noted, anything like

Travis: 28:22

they're like, like fake taking notes on the pad. And they just like come on up and put in the trash bags.

Alban: 28:28

feel really bad if they update that wording, and then you update it. You're gonna be like, Oh, wait, they were listening. And I was giving them great,

Kevin: 28:36

you know? Well, I will say in all humility. I mean, they are Apple, and I am not. So it's like they invented the iPhone and the iMac and the iPad and everything. I mean, they're obviously very smart people. So I'm not saying I'm smarter than them. But yeah, I think that word is confusing. They think it's not maybe they're right. I mean, they are apple. I'm not, but

Travis: 28:55

seems weird to me. We talked about podcast connects that now. You can actually submit podcasts again, we talked about some of the new stuff you can do in there. Along with that was this new rollout of a new Apple podcasts app that's supposed to be amazing, biggest updates since the invention of podcasting back in you know, 1994 or whatever they say. And Travis, I'm in rare form today. Apple

Alban: 29:25

podcasts you started in 2001. There you go. 2006. Apple, long has iTunes stores or supporting podcasts. This is your podcasting history Tip of the day.

Travis: 29:35

Thank you, Alban. Thank you for the fact check. Got our internal Snopes review. So Kevin, you've been downloading the beta versions of the software as they're coming out. And we've been hearing a lot about the the not so great rollout of these new versions of Apple podcasts, things like HTML formatting, getting stripped out links, not working numbers randomly appearing and disappearing in episode titles. What are some of the things that we've been hearing in support? As far as like the new Apple podcast app? And like, what are some best practices in the immediate future to make sure that you know you're set up for success and your listeners are not gonna have a problem listening to your show?

Kevin: 30:15

Yeah, so I'm not gonna I'm gonna do my best to stay away from all the technical stuff of what's happening, but there was a pretty major change in how the apple podcast app works. It used to be pretty much standalone app from the when you would launch The app, and you would browse for a podcast, it would use the apple podcast directory to help you find the show that you were looking for. And then once you subscribe to that show, it would cut off the relationship with Apple podcast directory, and then work with the host from that point forward. So check directly with the host for new updates to your RSS feed. If it found an update, it would download all the information from your RSS feed, it would download the episode directly from the host. That's what's changed is what it seems like it's changed in this latest app. The Apple podcast directory is hitting the Buzzsprout servers much more frequently, and the app themselves are hitting Buzzsprout servers less frequently. So it seems like what they're doing now is they're trying to add a like a server level and keep up to date with what all the changes are on the host and so that their Apple podcast app can speak directly with Apple servers instead of podcast hosts totally fine. A lot of apps work like that. It's just a big change. And it seems like there's some struggles with the change. One of the biggest struggles is that the apple servers are now taking RSS feeds and parsing them so that they can pass that data into the apps. And it seems like they're having some struggles as they're parsing that data. They're stripping most of the HTML, they're interpreting tags incorrectly, sometimes. And so while they work that out. It's not a great experience right now. So in my testing, what I'm seeing is that I feel like the app is working pretty well, the app is working just fine. Because you can manually subscribe to an RSS feed like you can make the the new Apple podcast app, you can make it work like it used to work. And the way that you do that is you say add a show by URL, you put a URL in of an RSS feed, and then the app is checking directly with the host. It's not going through Apple servers, and like parsing that feed. When you do that. They work great. All the HTML, is there, the formatting is there, the links are there, bullets, numbered lists everything. So that tells me the app is capable of doing it right? What's happened, the so the problem must be somewhere like on the apple side. Because when you run through the apple directory and find a show and follow it that way. Now it's getting the data through Apple servers, which is an interpretation of the data that like Buzzsprout is serving up. And somehow that interpretation it's getting, it's losing all of its formatting. This is a very long way of me telling you that I think this is something Apple can fix on the server side. I don't think we have to wait for like a big iOS update to get a new version of Apple podcast app to make this work. So hopefully, they're working on it. Hope again, we've let them know. I've let him know everywhere. But I'm no one emailed let him know. And conversations albums. A lot of people know I've let them know on Twitter, we will let them know privately and publicly. I think they're aware of it. And it's just kind of a waiting game. James Cridland at pod news has let him know has asked for comments multiple times. This is not it's not uncommon for Apple to not comment on things while they're working on. So it's not like Oh, they think podcasting is you know, second class citizen in the apple world. That's why they're not commenting. No, it's just the how Apple kind of treats everything is that they're probably aware of it. They have to prioritize it. They're a big company. They've got a lot of initiatives, they got a lot of things. So a fix will come when a fix comes. And we just don't know if that's next week or next year. We hope it's sooner than later. But we'll let you know when soon as we see it.

Travis: 34:00

So there's a recent report looking at clubhouse. And how many downloads has been getting in the App Store recently, compared to February, and noticing that there has been a sharp decline from its heyday when you know Elan musk and Mark Zuckerberg are like jumping into rooms and chatting with people. And you know, I know that we've covered clubhouse here on Buzzcast before. So we just kind of want to talk about where it's at right now. What to do moving forward and you know, our plans for using clubhouse for Buzzsprout and interact with you guys. And then just thinking through like best practices for using clubhouse and apps like it, especially now that Twitter has a similar feature. Facebook's rolling out a similar feature. Like how to really leverage these things to grow your podcast, engage with your listeners, all those kind of things.

Alban: 34:46

The first thing I want to kind of remind people and so when this happens, the next round we all maybe don't stress too much. There was a time when periscope was just going to dominate the podcasting industry. I remember being a podcast movement, people are periscoping their entire time at the event and his 2015 everyone was like is this going to like kill the podcasting industry. And then when Spotify came into the podcasting industry, we are all scared that Spotify was going to take everything over. And then clubhouse was going to kill the entire podcasting market. And then Twitter spaces, we're going to do it and now what Ever Facebook is building is going to kill podcasting. I think like the one lesson I want to take away is we podcasting has been affirmed time and time again since 2001. That we have a 20 year track record now of people creating great audio content. And it's working. And people really enjoy the content that probably many of you are actually creating, and all this new attention each time when it's clubhouse, and when it's a new fireside app that's going to come out from Mark Cuban's group, whenever these new things are coming out. It's really just validation that this audio format is working. And what you're building is already, people are already like interested in that content. And don't be too stressed when you think maybe these other things are going to take over. Because like we've seen with clubhouse, like we saw with pure Periscope and Meerkat and Spotify and everything in the past has been, we get a lot of hype when things are new. And they get very exciting. And for a second, they seem like it the trajectory launches, it'll pass podcasting. And then it cools off and it settles out a little bit better. So yeah, so the story there is that, like Travis, you just said clubhouse has cooled off quite a bit. They, you know, I think the the fact that kind of really got that, to my mind, besides not feeling personally like I wanted to be on clubhouse as much was, they finally launched their Android app. And it never hit number one in the Android store. It charted up to I think, number three, but it never got to that number one spot. And so yeah, with the amount of like, when we would do a clubhouse room a few months ago, the first few we were getting over 100 people in every time. And we would go for two hours. And people would constantly email and DM me say please do this somewhere else. Because I'm on Android, I really want to be on clubhouse. And then to hear that, even with all that interest that was there a few months ago, when they launched an Android app that it didn't even chart number one helps kind of illustrate, you know that that's kind of cooled off. But there's still ways to use clubhouse and to use what I'm calling just social audio, clubhouse, Twitter spaces, Instagram, live Facebook Live, if Facebook launches just an audio only version, you know, all these like live social engagement thing, platforms. podcasting is one way, you know, you're really you're talking into a mic, and you're hoping there's people on the other end listening to it. And you often can feel a little bit lonely or disconnected from your audience, because maybe they're not actually talking back, they might leave a review. But maybe they're not sending emails, and you're definitely not hearing their voice. So what I've seen that's worked really well, Kate Casey does this for her podcast. And what she does is she has her podcast, but then she also does clubhouse rooms, where she has a lot of people just in the room to talk about the podcast. And I think that they're a great way to have a community feel for your podcast, as kind of a supplement, or a nice bonus for people who really enjoy the podcast to be able to go and discuss it with other people who really enjoy it. And maybe they get to engage with the podcast host herself. So it's I think that's really valuable. And I would really look at testing that out for your shows. I just wouldn't feel the anxiety that maybe a lot of people were feeling a few months ago that clubhouse maybe was going to totally take away everything that they built in podcasting.

Kevin: 39:26

So would you put clubhouse now in the category of if you think social audio is the right way is a channel that you could use to grow your podcast? Would you put it in the same category that we do with other social networks? Like where we say, find the one where your audiences? So if you're already doing a lot of interaction on Twitter, then look at Twitter spaces, not clubhouse, like don't just try to find the most popular one or whatever, try to find where are your people and meet them there.

Alban: 39:53

There's this period in the beginning of every social media where there are ads, they're the weird marketing guys like me aren't there yet. And it's just like, cool. It's just like people and it's so much more fun. And things work so much better. And so if you see so there's always this moment where it's like, tick tock is amazing. Like oh my gosh, Instagram is so much fun. I clubhouse is incredible. And it's because you could go into a room and it's somebody who you never would have access to One of the more established platforms is just in the room, and now you're having a chat with them. So I think clubhouse had that moment for a while, where tons of big creators were testing it out. And I think Yeah, what you just said, Kevin is it's kind of gone through that hype cycle. And while there's a ton of really interesting people still on clubhouse, the, the demographics now are back to normal, you know, where it's lots of people who are just like me on most social platforms are not really creating content or just kind of slightly engaging. And there's the super creators, the top 1%, who are on every platform, and that's their, you know, their full time job. And they're still there, but maybe their concentrations not as high. And so your chance of like, ending up at a room and like, Oh, my gosh, you know, Ilan musk took my question, that's probably not going to happen as likely. So we got to your question, I always say, pick the one social media that you personally enjoy, and that your audience is already there. And so if your audience is on Instagram, Why be on Instagram Live. And if your audiences in a Facebook group, then do stuff on Facebook, if your audience is on Twitter, then Twitter spaces is probably where I would go because you get a lot of benefits from doubling and tripling down on one platform, much more than trying to spread yourself thin. And try to figure out what works on LinkedIn versus YouTube versus Instagram, etc.

Travis: 42:05

So Alban, you just mentioned Twitter spaces, which are pretty new. Walk us through what that feature actually is, what it does, and kind of your thoughts on it. In general,

Alban: 42:16

I actually like Twitter spaces probably quite a bit more than clubhouse, it's pretty much clubhouse, where it's audio only conversations, you have speakers on stage, you can bring people up to speak, people can have reactions in the moment. So you can put up, you know, different emojis and stuff, just so you kind of see engagement from the audience, even people who aren't speaking, it's just as well, if not a little bit more feature heavy than clubhouse, or at least features that I would use. So it's pretty comparable. The big upside for me is, if you already are on Twitter, it's so much easier to just build on Twitter. Because if you've got a few 100, I think you have to have 600 followers to be able to start a Twitter space. So if you start a Twitter space, all 600 of your followers start seeing, hey, you're having a conversation at Twitter space, and then they can join the conversation. And when they join, then all their followers see that they're in a conversation. And so it's you have this really awesome ability to reach a lot of new people and have your space, not go viral, but get a good amount of attention pretty quickly, where I never had that happen in clubhouse before. And you can just see all these interesting people that kind of show up, you can have a conversation with them. And what I found was at least a few of them, that where I talk for, you know, maybe an hour and a half we're on there, you end up getting quite a bit more Twitter followers. So people come to the conversation if they enjoy it, they might decide to stay and maybe follow you and that has that really awesome effect of stuff, the you know, tweets they're putting out if people those resonate with people, you're getting followers, then they may show up for Twitter space. And as Twitter seems like lately, they're really investing in a lot of new features. I'm more and more inclined to just consolidate there rather than trying to build clubhouse and Twitter separately, at least personally, since that's where I find you know, I enjoy the internet that most so yeah, especially if you already have a Twitter following. I think it's quite a bit better for clubhouse

Kevin: 44:34

there's no part of you that says this is clubhouses idea and Twitter came in and rip them off. And what about these you know four or five people who built clubhouse in the first place and now this big Goliath Twitter's coming in and trying to smash them none of that plays into your decision making at all your happiness to go with the bigger better product.

Alban: 44:55

When you put it like that Kevin makes me feel a lot of guilt. clubhouse was just valued. They just raised money at a $4 billion valuation so once poor guys, once the valuation starts with a B, then I'm not like you know, like a billion. The underdog

Kevin: 45:14

starts with a B in valuation.

Alban: 45:16

Yeah, they're not truly, underdog. Now Twitter's quite a bit bigger. But like I'm just engaging with the internet in the spaces that I enjoy. I know people that go to there. specific spot. I think that this is a good thing for me to remember though, when like Facebook launches a podcast player inside the app, I will personally be like, all the podcasting industry has been here for 20 years. And then Facebook showed up and they're doing this stuff, and I don't like it. And I'll be kind of the, you know, get off my lawn guy, the Facebook, maybe I need to remember, you know, the Facebook has built, they have way more people on their platform than anywhere else. And for probably billions of people, it's still their primary social media. And so when that happens, the only listens this if I start complaining about Facebook, maybe just like, send this little clip to me be like you remember, like, there's billions of people that are now getting access to podcasts, maybe you shouldn't be so worked up?

Travis: 46:20

Well, in so much of the world experiences the internet through Facebook. Right? Yeah, Facebook is the internet browser that they experienced the world through. One thing you said though, that I want to circle back to you real quick. You talked about how, when you go live in a Twitter space, it sends a notifies your followers. And then if they join in and notifies their followers, is it still is Twitter, like currently pushing the feature to that extent, because I know, algorithms are always trying to filter what you should what they think you should look at versus kind of a chronological feed. But is this like still new enough of a feature, but they're really trying to push it and it's really a great growth engine for your Twitter account,

Alban: 47:00

what you get is you get your timeline. And then at the top, anybody who send a fleet, which is just like a story on Twitter is at the top of the little circles, and you can see those, but then there's also this, hey, there's a conversation happening between these people that you follow. And they're not sending at least I don't get notified notification saying like, since I was going live jump in. Instead, it's like you open up the Twitter app and you see, somebody that you admire is having a conversation, you click in, and you listen to it for a while. And maybe it's for a minute, or maybe it's for an hour. So I don't think that they're just pushing it now and it's going to go away. You know that they'll downgrade it because that feels like it's already not too intense. I think just people that use Twitter a lot, probably pull it up to check what's happening 20 times a day or something, it's probably quite a few, probably more than I would care to admit for myself. And you see that a conversation is happening. And you've got 15 minutes, maybe you jump in and you chat for a while. So I don't know give it a try. give anything a try and see what works for you.

Travis: 48:10

Well, thanks for tuning in to another episode of Buzzcast. If you want to watch all the other videos that we did on all the new Apple podcast features and channels and subscriptions and podcast connects, make sure you go and check those out on our YouTube channel. And if you have not listened to it yet, make sure you listen to the last audio episode of Buzzcast where you got to hear the origin story of Buzzsprout where it came from the story about how Tom stole Kevin's motorcycle, all that fun stuff you can listen to in that episode, but thanks for listening to Buzzcast we'll catch in the next one. Keep podcasting