Podcast Movement 2021 Recap + Apple's Woes Continue

In this episode, Kevin explains the new custom RSS tag feature inside of Buzzsprout, the crew recap the big news coming out of Podcast Movement (especially pertaining to a certain Mark Cuban-owned Clubhouse clone), and we talk about what all of Apple's problems mean for indie creators.

Links from this episode:

• Check out Podcast Index
• Alban's slides from his talk on podcast artwork and Apple's New & Noteworthy criteria
• Submit your show for promotion consideration in Apple Podcasts
• Check out our marketing series over at Podcasting Q&A
• Apps that support the new podcast namespace

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

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Transcript

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Alban: 0:00

iHeart had a huge presence.

Travis: 0:01

Number one Podcast Network is that their marketing slogan?

Alban: 0:05

No, their actual marketing slogan was number one in podcasting. I'm not really sure what that refers to their number one, according to a lot of the signs that I saw there.

Travis: 0:16

Number one, they're number one in our hearts.

Kevin: 0:23

So, within the last couple of weeks, we now have the ability to do custom RSS tags in any Buzzsprout produce feed. So what why this is cool, is that if you I mean, the biggest use case the reason that we we did it is because we're trying to support all the podcasts, namespace to Dotto stuff. And so, are podcasting to Dotto with the podcast namespace, confusing long names,

Travis: 0:47

they should really make an acronym make it easier to remember,

Kevin: 0:50

one of the cool things they're doing is they're they're trying to be they are like way ahead of the curve with being able to support podcasters. And one of the ways that they're doing that is called value for value. And it's it's using cryptocurrencies to be able to stream payments to many different people who are involved with the podcast, whether it'd be the podcast or the podcast, hosting company, producers, anybody who works in the show, you can set up your value tags, so that all of them get a small percentage of whatever the listeners are donating to that show. And it's pretty cool. It's a little bit too new and cutting edge for us to build a big UI around it right now. I hope that it catches on enough that we will be able to do that someday soon. But we still wanted to support it while it's still young in its infancy, because the only way this stuff grows is by more and more people using it. So what we did is we said let's set up all of our feeds so that they can take custom RSS tags,

Alban: 1:43

guys, hey, who is this for? It's for someone if your Twitter profile photo has laser eyes, this is for you if your laser eyes? No, it's, I'm not sure you're setting this up just yet. It will there'll be a couple more iterations before the non laser eyes crowd get access.

Travis: 2:02

I mean, as soon as they start trickling out Dogecoin as a part of this value for value, I'll be all over it, man those to the moon. But until then, what because what's the what's the cryptocurrency? They're they're currently using for this value for value.

Alban: 2:16

It's satoshis which is just like a millionth of a Bitcoin it is Bitcoin is really tiny, tiny pieces

Travis: 2:23

of Bitcoin. So it's like you took $1 bill and cut it up into a million pieces. And you have like one little piece of that dollar bill.

Kevin: 2:30

Right? If your dollar bill was worth $42,000, which is what a Bitcoin is worth right now. Sure. So I mean, that's part of what's what's tough about this stuff for the everyday like non cryptocurrency podcaster, his satoshis are hard to wrap your head around, like I'm like, if you set it up, so I'm streaming 100 satoshis, every minute I listened to how much is how much am I giving them? You know, am I giving them? You know, if I listened to an hour episode, did I give him$1? Or did I give him $20? Like, and so are two cents, or 20 cents, I don't know. And so that complexity is taking a while for everyone to work out. And so and as it gets worked out, more and more people will jump on board. But right now, it's not super popular, but it doesn't mean that we don't believe in or we don't want to support it. And so that's why we did customer service tax. So how do you get set up for your podcasts if you're interested, go to podcast index.org search for your podcast, and then click on the title of your podcast. And then when your podcasts like listing is displayed on the podcast index website, there'll be a little lightning bolt icon. And if you click on that little lightning bolt icon next to your podcast, you can go and claim your podcast on the podcast or wallet, walk through all the steps is not super easy. It's not for everyone. But if you get through it, it'll give you some code at the end. And that code needs to go in your RSS feed, you can email that to our support team. We can now add it to your feed. And for apps like pod friend and I think hyper hyper catcher, there's a few others that support it. If anybody listens there and has donation set up for your podcast, you can start getting

Alban: 4:00

some crypto payments, but I just want to correct myself 100 million satoshis equal a Bitcoin. So okay, that'll become more pertinent as we all move towards a Bitcoin maximalist world.

Travis: 4:14

Hold on, I have a calculator app on my computer. Let's just do what 42,000 right now for Bitcoin divided by 100 million. So he said correct. 123123. So it's just point 4% of a penny. So, so if you get 1000 of them, then you would earn four cents.

Kevin: 4:36

Yeah. It's a little it's a little complex, right? That's what we're everyone's trying to figure out how to make it less complex. And the other thing that adds complexity to this is that the value of Bitcoin is changing rapidly, right? Like it's it's 42,000 or 44,000. Today, it was $46,000. Yesterday, it might be $20,000. Tomorrow, who knows? And so you might feel good that you just sent somebody you know $1.50 Did you listen to this great episode, and you boosted it a couple times, but then, you know, tomorrow, it turns out that you only getting 75 cents. So

Alban: 5:07

well, you always gave them the same amount of Bitcoin. So someday, when we all use the lightning network to, you know, buy stuff during the post apocalyptic meltdown, then you'll still have the satoshis from your podcast,

Travis: 5:21

you'll be able to transfer them to the people that were hoarding gold in their their fireproof safe. So we talked about the custom RSS tags, and how they kind of aligned with this future value for value. cryptocurrency sharing thing that we're setting up, are there any other custom RSS tags in particular, that if you're a super tech savvy podcaster, you might be interested in adding onto your feed.

Kevin: 5:48

Right now, I'm not aware of any other tags that that people would want to use, like, I don't know, a use case for adding a whole bunch of other tags. But the great thing is that there's flexibility if if something happens, so like, if there's a new app that comes out and they say, Oh, hey, if you have this tag in your RSS feed somewhere, we'll do this cool, special thing with your podcast. Now you can do that. As far as I know, right now, there's not a great use case for it. But it's like future proofing. And it's there if something pops up. So right now, we designed it and implemented it because we want to support value for value. And we want Buzzsprout podcasters, who are interested in setting that up, they have a way to do that. And now we can. And going forward, I hope that there's there's more tags, and there's more people who are using specialized stuff or specialized apps, that's the great thing about working in an open ecosystem where somebody can come up with an app tomorrow, and say, Hey, this would be really cool. If podcasts had this, they could submit to the podcast namespace. It could get adopted because people could start using it, apps can start using it. And we can add it into your feed immediately without having you without you having to wait for us to build a big UI around getting that tag into your RSS feed.

Travis: 7:00

Since the last time we released a episode of Buzzcast podcast movement 2021 happened it was in Nashville, Tennessee this year, we had a nice contingent from our Buzzsprout team there. We had a booth, it was great to see a bunch of you. So let's talk through what's significant happened at podcast movement, other than the fact that a lot of people from Buzzsprout got to actually give keynotes and talks and discussions and Alban and you're going to share some tips from one of yours later on. But were there any high level observations or things that you took away from this particular podcast movement?

Alban: 7:32

Well, I mean, we're back. The last conference that we went to was very end of February, March of 2020. And this is the first conference that I've been to anyone from Buzzsprout team has been to since then, it was good to see people in person. It was, it's just a different vibe when you're watching things at home on a computer. You know, these virtual conferences are very different than when you're in person. And so it was very nice to be able to see people face to face even if you couldn't see their mouth moving Charlemagne to God was there. I saw

Travis: 8:06

the I Heart Radio party. Well,

Alban: 8:09

I mean, I had a huge presence. I had an incredible presence

Travis: 8:13

number one Podcast Network is that their their marketing slogan?

Alban: 8:18

No, their actual marketing slogan was number one in podcasting. And I'm not really sure what that refers to. But um, you know, I don't know, they are their number one, according to a lot of the signs that I saw there.

Travis: 8:34

They're number one, they're number one in our hearts.

Alban: 8:39

But like Mark, Mark Cuban had a talk, there was just there a lot of like, you know, it's kind of the podcast movement, they had some really big names, but then you go to all the other stages, and it's just tons of podcasters, who have grown up in the industry and are just teaching, you know, what they know about podcasting, and it was pretty cool to be able to get back to that and, you know, learn more about this industry.

Kevin: 9:06

I was only there for 24 hours. But I will say this that Dan and Jared and the whole team at podcast movement just did a great job putting event an event together. Under the circumstances, like the first big again, like Alban said podcast event that we've been to live in person since the whole COVID outbreak. And I think they just did, they just knocked it out of the park. It was the venue was huge, which really, I think helped everybody space out. So like, even though you go to a room that could have held maybe 1000 people, there was about 250 300 people kind of in that room. And I don't know how much like logistical work went into planning all of that and making sure everybody was space, but oh my gosh, I can imagine it was a ton and they did a really great job. The day I was there, we had good traffic to our booth like it was a steady stream but it was not Can podcast conferences in the past, there would be hordes of people around every table. Yeah. And it just didn't feel like that there were still a good number of people there. But I think the scheduling, and the room sizes and the booth spacing, just I mean, they just did a fantastic job, they always put together amazing events that are very thoughtful and how they do everything. But this year was just a whole new set of circumstances that they had to think through. And they just did a fantastic job of doing it,

Travis: 10:27

were you guys able to go to any talks other than ones that you gave or participated in?

Alban: 10:32

So we, we had a lot of people who are, you know, from the Buzzsprout team, or Buzzsprout, adjacent, you know, we had a lot of the Buzzsprout creators there. But, you know, with with my role, I spent almost all my time at the booth. So I had to catch little pieces of talks. I was hoping to be there for the whole thing, but got to see like clips of Tom Webster's talk at the beginning, I was able to like sneak into the keynote room for a few minutes to try to get to listen to a bit. But unfortunately, the only two talks that I saw the whole way were the talks that I gave. So I do wish that I you know, if we had a bigger team, and if less of the people who we took were speaking, then I would have been able to go to, you know, more of the sessions.

Kevin: 11:19

The one session that I was able to watch was the fireside introduction with Mark Cuban. It was a it was kind of a big deal. It was early morning, Thursday, I think. I don't know, unfortunately, I felt like my, my takeaway was, I think the whole thing fell a little flat. Normally, keynotes are, I don't know, I don't, I don't want to sound like I'm negative or coming down. Like I don't know exactly what they were asked to do, or the type of talk that they were planning to give. But they were it wasn't so much adding value for the participants, it was introducing a new service. And so there wasn't a whole lot of takeaways in terms of Oh, like I could do this, or here's a great idea for my show, or this is how this person built this audience. And that's something that I could maybe implement myself, it was more like, here's what we're doing. Here's why we're doing it. It was it was a lot of information. But I don't know how much of it was practical to the audience. So overall, I think we're all excited. Because you know, Mark Cuban is a, he's a big name big celebrity, and has done a lot of great stuff in tech. And so we're interested to see, you know, he's going to get into podcasting in some way or some form, and how is that going to help us? Or how are we gonna be able to use those tools? And I don't know, that really delivered on the hype, but it might not have been their fault or might not have been. anybody's fault might just been, you know, like, my my fault or other people in the audience in terms of our expectations were off.

Alban: 13:17

Well, I can tell you, I mean, being at the booth that day, I probably had four or five different people. And I was like, oh, what do you think fireside? And I'm like, Yeah, I just felt like an infomercial. So I got like, three or four, maybe even more than that, like people who used that word without me prompting it. Yeah. And I was like, that's a bummer. Because I guarantee that was not what podcast movement invited, like, hey, come and just do you have a stage for 45 minutes to market your thing? I'm sure they wanted to be like, hey, come, like tell how this is gonna help podcasting. And there's some phrases that, you know, people relate, like, hey, podcasting hasn't really changed in 15 years, but firesides gonna change it. This is podcasting. 2.0. And it's like, there is a podcasting. Dubois. Oh, actually, it's this thing that the open standards had pushing for nearly two years now. So it was a bit of like, marketing, stuff that was like, hey, check out why firesides gonna be the next big thing. And instead of like realizing you're in a room with kind of speaking to most of the, I mean, the most connected people in podcasts and people who are creating a lot of the big shows people are building the tech, the people who are buying the ads, like it was a lot. I mean, that's what podcast movement is. It's bringing this entire industry together. And it stinks that part of Mark Cuban's talk is kind of saying, Yeah, you guys haven't really been doing a whole lot. So my new apps definitely solve that problem.

Kevin: 14:54

It was definitely a bit of a no your audience problem. Yeah. Right. Like, you can absolutely criticize the podcast industry at large. And there's might be a place where that's appropriate for you to express your frustrations with how fast things are moving and stuff. The place to not do that is probably a conference where people who are really passionate and excited about where podcasting is and the movements that have been happening over the past couple years. And people who love podcasting, like some of the criticisms, I think that they were saying some of the criticisms that they were throwing out about podcasting in general. Some of the things that make all of us who are in that room love podcasting. Right. And so I think it Yeah, in my mind just been the wrong message for that crowd.

Alban: 15:42

It feels to me like we've just heard this so many times that it falls flat for me, like the first podcast movement I went to I remember everyone was walking around with their phones, recording, and they're like, I'm live on Periscope. People are like me, and this is kind of kind of kill podcasting. And then Spotify launched and everyone's like, oh, they're trying to own podcasting. This is gonna kill it, and then clubhouse, and then everyone's like, there's gonna kill podcasting, and then Twitter spaces, and then this Facebook thing that's kind of almost barely launched. And now it's clubhouse. And

Travis: 16:14

you mean fireside?

Alban: 16:15

Sorry, now it's fireside, it's a clubhouse club called fireside, all of it combined. I'm just like, it's a lot of centralized platforms that are like, hey, if we owned this, and we controlled it completely, there would be some benefits because there are benefits to a single platform. But the obvious downside, there's a lot of obvious downsides. And they're just focusing on Hey, the positive would be, we could recommend content, we could really surface the best stuff, we could broker relationships with you to the best advertisers if you had the best content. And obviously, it's a very attractive business model for a platform because then they're like, and we get to skim off a bit of the revenue that this thing generates, rather than it being this open ecosystem. But what they're missing is like, there's people who have now been podcasting for near 20 years, the iTunes directory was 15 years ago, this has been going on a long time. And there's a lot of people who've been working in this space. And each one always kind of feels like, Hey, we're we raised a bunch of money. And now we're gonna come because we see that you guys have done something cool. And we're gonna run over it, and we're gonna build our own thing. And I think it misses like what makes podcasting different. It is the guaranteed download, you know that if people subscribe to your podcast, they're going to download it to their phone when you release a new episode, high bar bugs that we'll probably talk about at the end of this episode. But it is more akin to email, that you feel confident that there's not someone getting in the way, like a Facebook or Twitter saying, that wasn't really the best tweet. So I'm just gonna go ahead and not let that out there. It's your listener, or the person who sent the email to deciding, hey, do I really want to listen to this episode? The last two have kind of stunk, and or do I really want to open this email, they mostly send me a bunch of spam, you want that that decision point to be with the person you've connected to, not with a algorithm run by a platform. So we keep getting this pitch over and over? Like, what if we centralized it? And oh, we would be the really good landlord for this whole industry. And they're not really offering the most compelling case. I mean, the the, the fireside pitch is, hey, it's going to be basically clubhouse. It looks a lot, the app itself looks a lot better. I mean, it looks really pretty, but it's like, okay, so it's going to be a better clubhouse. It's a destination to get to listen to live video, or audio, excuse me. And then they now have a partnership where they will distribute all of this as podcasts later on. And I'm like, well, no one's really using clubhouse anymore. And if clubhouse was so successful, why wouldn't clubhouse build out that podcasting piece? And so they've got a few audience engagement things that they're working on, which, which sounds kind of cool, but I'm like, why would clubhouse build that out? And I think we're seeing clubhouse has really taken a huge hit. Because, you know, they're this format of audio, live audio is was really compelling. When everyone was stuck at home for a year. It's a little bit less compelling now that people are starting to go out and do things again. And it's less compelling when you it's been copied by everybody. So especially by places like Facebook and Twitter, where they're basically copying it and they already have your social graph they already know who wants to follow you and wants a giant check with your conversations. So as soon as it's been copied in this places, I don't see how clubhouse gets everyone back. And I'm very confused about how something like fireside will be able to say Actually, let's all do this again. But do it with us because we've got a couple extra features. I don't think that clubhouse is missing features. I think clubhouse is missing the followers and that connections to people that you've already built on Facebook. Instagram or Twitter.

Travis: 20:31

It's almost like they're saying, Hey, we know you guys have iPhones but we made this fantastic. Am FM radio. And we think you're gonna love it.

Alban: 20:40

Like, I'm missing. I'm missing the connection

Travis: 20:43

They're gonna get li e audio like, it's gonna be mazing. It's gonna be the most b autiful execution of an am FM ra io ever it is the future of a dio and you're thinking and got an iPhone with Apple M sic and Spotify on it. Why do I Why do I care about your am M radio over there? I guess Listen, listen to stuff whenever want to it's like, to your poin Alban, it's like that model of live audio. And then, oka, cool. There's a new feature w ere you can turn it into a podc st, the number of completely nedited unmixed podcasts that re long form content with lots of contributors that go n to be successful or zero. ike I'm trying to think of any hat fit that bill that are l ke, Oh, yeah, that's a rea ly good podcast has leg. Great following people love it. And it's going to contin e to do well, especially in 2 21. I'm just not se

Kevin: 21:36

Let me say this. So I've got a little bit of a rant that I'm just running through my head in terms of live stuff, right? Live sounds cool. It sounds like oh, that's, that's fantastic. I can click a button, and I can be live broadcast all over the world. anybody anywhere can hear me That sounds fantastic. And lives kind of been a thing. It's kind of come and gone on YouTube a little bit. It's kind of come and gone on Instagram and tic tocs. Like they're all kind of experimenting with it. Because I think on the creator side, it's attractive. It sounds fun. It sounds easy. Like I'm just gonna click a button. And I'm going that I think the challenge in that is that there's a very rare talent that can actually pull off live content that's engaging in quality, high level content on a consistent basis, like you might get lucky. And in, click a button and do a great 30 minute episode, right live. And it was fantastic. Being able to do that on repeat every day, or every week or every month, or however often you do your show. That requires a very, it's a it's a rare breed. Who can do that, right. And these are people like we know the people that can do it, people do the nightly cop shows and the people who do you know, Howard Stern's and the real big professional broadcasters of the world, they do this and it feels a little bit like something that the everyday person can do. But it's kind of like watching Olympians do their thing like like when you're performing at such a top level, you're doing it so well that it makes other people feel like I could, I can maybe do that too, because they make it look so effortless. But it's not effortless, is really hard. And there's a lot of talent and training and time and dedication that goes into honing that skill. The luxury that we have as podcasters is that we're not the best broadcasters in the world. And so we can record like today, we're probably record for over an hour. And I bet this episode at the end of the day is probably gonna be 30 or 40 minutes, because Travis is going to take all this and cut out all the garbage and all the mix ups and all the you know, mispronounce words and, and make it more engaging and more compelling. So he like on the editing side, you make up for a lot of the imperfections and the amateur hour stuff that happens on podcasts. What happens when you go live is that you don't have that, right. So if you if you get on a show with somebody and you talk for three hours, and it's all rambley. And there might be 20 or 30 minutes of really great engaging content there. But it's it's missed because it's hidden inside this three hours of nonsense that should be cut, and should be edited. So I think that's the problem that all these platforms are going to have to battle is that it's fun and exciting upfront, but I don't know that it has the staying power because the staying power comes from being a really good editor and honing it down and tightening up the show so that non professional broadcasters can sound more professional. There are these rare breeds, like I just watched I posted on Twitter a couple days ago. There's a YouTube video that hit somehow it hit my for you the page or whatever, on YouTube. The other weekend I started listening to is Elon musk. And he was doing a tour of his starbase. Right? where he's building all these rockets. The audio was terrible. It sounded awful because he's walking around a construction facility like there's trucks beeping everywhere. There's cranes lifting big heavy pieces. A lot of times you could barely understand what he was saying. But he was dropping the I mean super engaging knowledge, right, not from how they run the business to what they were building and what makes sense to put on a rocket and what doesn't the objectives they were trying to. And so I watched and listened to the worst audio I've heard in years for over an hour. And so to like the video had 2.4 million plays or something within the first couple days of being published on YouTube. So if you're Ilan Musk, if you are someone that has, like a crazy amount of information or knowledge or something that massive audiences is interested in, can you get away with it? You know, some rambley content, some bad audio, some terrible video? Yeah, you can absolutely get away with all that. If you're not an Elan musk if you're not a Howard Stern, if you're not, who are some other like really great broadcasters, think of your favorite broadcaster, then I think what you need to do is like what we do on this show, we ramble for an hour and a half, Travis cuts it down to a really good 20 3040 minute episode. And we put out our best stuff. That's what I think is going to be workable and sustainable for average podcasters. So I'm not super bullish on this fireside stuff. I'm not super bullish on the clubhouse stuff. Is it fun to hop in there once a month? Yes, but I don't think it's got legs to have the staying power of podcast

Travis: 26:14

when it comes back to? are you solving problems for the creators want? And are those problems overlapped with what consumers want with listeners and viewers wants? Right? Right? Because you can say we're gonna make it really easy for you to go live and make an episode and publish it. It's gonna be awesome. You're thinking, Man, that is so great. I just turned my five hours of weekly work into one hour. Sign me up. But if none of your listeners want that version of your show, is that actually better? Yeah, I

Kevin: 26:42

mean, it I think it applies across all the different mediums that are that are working, like look at what's happening on Instagram reels Tick Tock YouTube shorts. So these short term term short form, what are they short, short, short for? word I'm looking for? Thank you guys. Short Form video content. If you've seen like, if any, I don't know if y'all have any teenagers in your house, but if you don't, you probably have seen the bloopers or outtakes or something on these other things. But like, in order to do a little 32nd Tick Tock video, these creators are setting up and they're doing, you know, hundreds of takes before they get the exact facial expression that they want. Or they get the dance move that they nail it. Like the idea of being able to go live, do it the first time on demand, like real time is so low, like none of them would ever have a following. This is a commitment. It's a craft and they practice and they get better and they rely on editing doesn't happen

Alban: 27:34

live in what was being brought by clubhouse. And in the the audio space was serendipity. It was the opportunity to connect to somebody probably wouldn't connect with normally. And so the magical moments for a lot of people are you go you would go into a clubhouse room talking about negotiations, and all of a sudden Chris Voss the I wrote, never don't split the difference. But he shows up and he's like talking to people and you're like, Whoa, and then he answers your question. You're like, Oh, my gosh, this is crazy. Well, that went away. As soon as they let everybody into clubhouse, especially all the marketers, and now they're all promoting, you know, their own, you know, courses and masterminds and brainstorms and whatever. And that, you know, you're not going in there and connecting to your favorite author, you're going in there and connecting with someone who's trying to sell you something. And there needs to be the ability for you to have these like serendipitous connections with somebody, you know, pretty regularly. And I think that's very, very difficult to do for people to have those moments. And it's more likely for those moments now to happen on Twitter spaces where I follow the whatever 1000 people that I think are interesting, and they pop up whenever they're in a Twitter space. And I could just jump in. And maybe if it's a topic that I know that I can chime in and talk, it's so much easier, because I'm opening up Twitter app anyway. And then I see that there's a conversation happening. And it's of the, you know, of the people in the world is the people that I'd be most interested in trying to talk to. It's just a totally different experience when it's like open up a separate app, kind of skim around like 3040 different rooms, that clubhouse is kind of trying to promote to you see if any of those are ones that I would want to be a part of. It's just a much larger commitment. And now, you know, the best thing for fireside would be like, they're like, Hey, I'm recording my podcast here, come and check it out. And then they post a link on Twitter, which Twitter's never going to promote because it's a link out to another competing service. Like it's always going to be getting pretty bad. You know, engagement signals, people leave the app that looks really bad to Twitter. And so they share it on wherever your other platform is. I've just confused like, what is the play to get people to go to this new app to try to have this serendipitous connections. And if you have those if they're bringing you on stage, you're asking questions, like Kevin saying, Now this podcast has become way less valuable, not way more valuable. I mean, how call in shows used to be the thing on the radio, even the radio figured out. Oh, Most of the column shows, though the ones that weren't for column shows are where it's like a local sports team, and everyone's calling in to complain.

Kevin: 30:40

And I go through a screener, usually, like they had, yeah,

Alban: 30:43

they go through a screener. So it's like, oh, this, isn't he working super well, on radio radio has moving is moving away from this. And I'm just not sold at all that it's going to work in this digital medium, always open to being proven wrong there. But yeah, if you're nervous that, hey, my podcast is probably struggling, because I'm not engaging with all these new platforms. And I'm not trying to do live audio and stream and take live questions. I wouldn't stress it. I feel like we've heard this story many, many times, and hasn't turned out to be true yet. And they often are conflating This is a great business model for us with this is a great idea for creators and listeners, like, Yeah, everybody wants the business model, which is I put together the marketplace and all the people who buy ads come to me and all the people who create cool content come to me, and all the listeners come to me. And for the benefit, you know, we created YouTube, or we created Facebook, and everyone comes to us. Everybody wants that business model. Yeah, that's not rocket science. What is rocket science is like, how do you make that so compelling, the app and the marketplace? And the thing you're bringing together this network? How is that so compelling that everyone's actually okay with you taking a big portion of the money out of this equation? And right now? Yeah, I don't think that anyone, at least in the audio space is making that argument very well.

Travis: 32:24

Yep. Now, if you do want some good advice, some good ideas for growing your podcast, if you really resonate with Alvin just said, we just wrapped up a 12 part series on podcast marketing over on Podcasting, Q&A. 12 different strategies to grow your audience that actually work, no matter how big your show is. So that's a great place to get some ideas. Now, Alvin, before we wrap up this segment, you gave a talk on podcast artwork at podcast movement. So walk through some things that you share there that we haven't shared here on the show some new things that you've learned that you think could be relevant, important helpful for our listeners?

Alban: 33:01

Well, on the podcast artwork side, I think we Everyone, this, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably set on most of the stuff. We talked about the basics, what should be included, how to think about your artwork, while blah, blah. If anyone wants the slides from the talk, I can share them with them on Twitter, I think we've probably linked to where I put them up before. But that stuff we have videos for. I did learn some stuff from Apple that was new, about Apple new and noteworthy. So Apple new and noteworthy and how to get in has been kind of an enigma for a lot of people for a long time. There were a lot there's lots of advice that was not accurate. And there's a lot of people claiming they could help you get in, but then they turned out to be a scam. So we got some truth out of it. I least think I found like this. These are the true ways and weight things that can you can do to help your chances of getting into Apple new noteworthy. First off, the main criteria they're looking for is that your podcast, subject matter is timely. If we're wrapping up the Olympics, talk, they want to probably now Olympic episodes are not as good as they would have been two weeks ago. Your random skateboarding podcast. There's nothing special about that right now. But if you have Tony Hawk on the most famous skateboarder of all time for an interview, well, that episode might be noteworthy. If it's also during the Olympics, the first Olympics where we have skateboarding as a sport, then if you have an episode about skateboarding, the Olympics, yeah, that would have been brilliant. That would have been the one that you could have submitted right, then, you know, they're not just highlighting random shows, submit episodes and submit your show when it's timely. Another

Kevin: 35:04

What do you mean when you say submit?

Alban: 35:07

Oh, so this is part two, maybe should be part one. There's a submission process. This is not just a hope and pray that Apple notices you. There's a page on kind of is a little bit buried and then it takes you to I think it's like an air table page or we can share the link to it where it says Yeah, submit your show for Apple to consider. And especially if you know, you know, hey, this is going to be timely, and there's some relevance will Yeah, definitely go ahead and promote it. Another is, you've got to have excellent artwork. That's how it tied in with this talk. Apple is a design focused company. And they're so focused on there being good artwork. Apparently, there's some people on the apple team that sometimes will work with indie creators to redo or improve their artwork before being included. So that was kind of shocking to me that they're putting that much thought into it. If Apple ever comes to you, and says, we'd love to include you, but we need to update your artwork, do not argue and say, Okay, sounds good, thank you. Let me know what the new artwork is, and get that promotion. Another thing is, there's a section on that form that talks about promoting Apple podcasts. And it just, you know, I would want to reiterate, if you're trying to get featured in Apple new noteworthy, at least go out of your way to say, Hey, I will actually promote that on the new noteworthy, I'll actually drop my apple podcast links, I'll use the embed player that Apple provides things like that. It Apple I'm sure wants to see if we're going to promote your podcast, you're not dropping Spotify links all over the world. And promoting, you know, that number one. And then there's some particular there's special artwork that Apple creates, they call it their featuring artwork, that's totally different than any other artwork that's in your RSS feed, it's much wider. And it's pretty much so that your artwork could be on Apple TV, or any number of spots inside of Apple podcasts. So I can share it, you know, I'd say particular file size. And I think just go ahead and make it. Because if we're really thinking about timely material here, you know, if you submit and say, Hey, this would be good for while the Olympics are going and then now Apple has to reach out and go, Okay, let's get this artwork, and now it takes a day, then they say oh, it probably should be updated. A little cleaned up a bit. Well, now you might have missed the window. So I think creating that artwork up front and submitting that as well is a really great idea. Just make it easy on the apple selection team to go ahead and pick your artwork. And then they also apparently keep these submissions around. So you may submit a podcast that maybe it's a history podcast, and it's talking about black history, well, they may say that for Black History Month. So if it's not what you're talking about now is not timely, it might be in a few months, and it might get picked up later. So don't be bummed if you aren't picked up. And maybe you'll find a big spike in your stats at some point in the future. But you know, I can share all this, we can put a link in the show notes. I just thought it was super interesting. I mean, this does not feel like a lot of people are talking about there being this way to submit your podcast for possible inclusion. And we have a video Travis just finished editing it with Fatimah Zaidi, who is the CEO of quill. And I talked to her about this a little bit as well, where they have pretty much a tried and true method where they get most of their shows featured now. So we can you know, we'll link to that as soon as it's released. Because I think that's gonna be really valuable. That's probably next Friday will come Oh yes.

Travis: 39:18

And we'll drop the audio here in the Buzzcast feed. So if you are subscribed, then you should, quote unquote, get that episode depending on the app that you listen to Buzzcast.

Alban: 39:32

So that sounds like a nice little transition to why Travis says should get that up.

Travis: 39:38

Yes. So the last thing we want to talk about is the ongoing, updated super cool, awesome fresh looking Apple podcast app that seems to find new ways to break on a consistent basis. Probably the most prominent public facing recent one is that podcasts like XML tech podcast, Mark ramen, Mark Marin are seeing that new episodes are not showing up in Apple podcasts. Even if you subscribe to the show, and you're technically supposed to get it directly to your device. As soon as it's released and you open the app. They're not showing up, but they're showing up everywhere else. And that's just kind of the latest in a long line of things that have been happening with the apple podcast rollout that has a lot of people scratching their heads and a lot of people wondering, is this actually something that's going to get fixed anytime soon.

Kevin: 40:29

Yeah, um, gosh, it's a mess, right Apple podcasts is, is a mess. It's super unfortunate. Again, I've said this before, and I will, I will always say it because everyone who we interact with in app at the app on the apple team, are amazing people, they are all super nice. So this, this brings us no joy to say that this mess is happening. But at the same time, it's it's hard for us because we are podcasters ourselves, we care about a lot of podcasters we build our livelihoods around serving podcasters. And so it's just heartbreaking to see that there's, there's the most popular podcast listening app in the world is having this amount of trouble for this amount of time is it's it's brutal. I mean, there's there's a lot of lessons to be learned here, right? Like the the idea that we are all like that, there's always going to be a most popular app, but the fact that the most popular app is somewhere between 40 and 60%. of most people's listening base is not great. Right? We need, we need more diversity. So as much as I, I'm not a huge fan of everything that Spotify does, I'm glad that they're making waves in the space because we're getting more and more listeners in more places. So that's, that's something I can be excited about Spotify is doing. I love the fact that we've got a lot of small independent podcast listening apps on the market. They're not super popular for most people, it's less than 5% of their listeners listen to one from somebody other than Apple, Spotify or Google. Right. So what can we be doing as podcasts, I think we can be informing our audience that there are other places that they can listen, there are other apps that they can get. And for the most part, they're probably better. And maybe not just because they got better programmers or something. But I think at the end of the day, and again, this is not a fun thing for me to say, but but these people care more. Like when Marco is working on overcast, he cares a lot. This is how he feeds his family and pays his bills. It's 100% what he's invested in, and he invested his life and he wants it to be the best out that he can be and he wants it up and running well all the time. Not that the team at Apple doesn't have that same level of care for the craft that they do. But I think I mean, again, it's hard because I know that I know those people care about what they're doing. But it's not a huge priority in the big world of apple. So I wonder how many resources they get or how much you know, we've got this server issue, well, Apple might have 15, other server issues that are higher priority right now that they can't dedicate resources to or throw more power at. And I don't know, I don't work at Apple, all I know is that there's been a massive amount of problems for a massive amount of time. And it's impacting a lot of podcasters. And these are people that we serve and that we care about. And so it's very frustrating to me. And it's very, like I think, I think I'm just ready to be to say like, I'm gonna start. My wife uses Apple podcasts. That's what she listens to most of our podcasts on. But like I'm done with it. Like it's time for her to get on another app, like pocket casts or overcast or maybe pod friend, maybe she's gonna start streaming satoshis to podcasters. So I mean, maybe overall, this is good for the podcasting ecosystem. I just know a lot of podcasters are are taking a hit for it right now. And I feel bad for him as

Travis: 44:01

well. And I know, one of the before we even get to this bug about episode is not showing up in people's feed even when they're subscribed. The one before that people were asking about is like, all of a sudden, my apple podcast numbers just drops, like a rock. Yeah, like 40% of my listeners went away overnight that were there before, what's going on? And yeah, there were some issues with, you know, reporting that data back down. And so yeah, you know, and there's other stuff going on behind the scenes. There's other reasons for that, for sure. But like, at least as a podcaster, you see that and you think, What is going on? Like what did I do wrong? That this many people just stop listening to my podcast, and that has an effect on you as a creator. Especially if you're not in the industry, and you don't know like, Oh, it's not you. It's this other entity over here. That just happens to be the biggest player in the space. It's, it's tough. It's really hard as a creator to see not only what's happening with Apple, but just how it's affecting podcasters as well.

Alban: 45:04

I always kind of go back to like, what is the overall support that the apple team is getting to actually deal with some of these issues? Because like, there's no way that they're just sitting there going like oh, no, there we go, well headed home it you know, it's it's, it's five o'clock, so I'm headed home, like you know that the team is working as hard as they can to fix it. And so it just Makes me wonder like, how many people are over there? How, what kind of server resources? Are they dealing, you know, do they have access to if you are a independent podcasting app like overcast with only one person, if you know, the market goes, Oh, all of a sudden, there's some bugs. He just say, Yeah, I need to have twice the amount of servers, he can go ahead and just say, Hey, I'm using AWS or whatever servers he uses. Let's just double it. I wonder like, does the apple team have that ability? Are they going there? Is there a bunch of red tape around this? Because it feels like it takes way longer than it should to fix stuff? And knowing the people we know, I don't think it's there. That's the issue is that people? So it makes me think there must be some sort of organizational? Yeah, we're not. We like podcasts. We've basically had been the steward of the podcasting industry for 15 years and really helped it grow. But it's always been a kind of backburner thing. You know, I'd love to see Apple take a bit more leadership and be like, Hey, we're going to make sure that this app never breaks again. And we're going to make sure it's the fastest app, and the most reliable app, because everything that they're doing now is the hard stuff. It seems like like they're doing the human review of every single podcast. And pretty much the rest of the industry relies on that. You know, most of the other apps are just going Hey, whatever Apple says is a good show. We, we trust that and we'll put it in our app. Apple's doing that painful, that painstaking work to make sure that they get the right shows in and the stuff that should be easier for Apple seems like it isn't. So I'm just it makes me think that people are doing their job. I'm wondering if the organization is really supporting it in the way that they should?

Travis: 47:24

Yeah. So if you've noticed, your downloads are down in Apple podcast, specifically, if you are wondering why people are reaching out saying they can't find your episodes, if you are one of the individuals that are like, okay, I just released an episode. Let me refresh my feed, make sure it's there and make sure everything is exactly how it needs to look up. It's missing. But it says it's published in Buzzsprout. This, this is some of the stuff that's going on. It's not you. It's not something that Buzzsprout can fix, unfortunately. Because your show is getting in other apps as well. It's just kind of the nature of things at this point. But if you wanted some recommendations, you have listeners that use Apple podcasts that are like, Hey, I can't get your show, I can't get your episodes, where else can I find you. I mean, we're all big overcast fans, as far as an iOS app that they can go to pocket casts is another app that is really well reviewed, highly recommended. There's a paid version, I believe, I think it's like $5 to get the to get the app, but it also crosses over if you have Android devices, it's cross cross device cross platform. So you can do that. And then good pots, you know, if you want to be able to link it up with your friends, see what they're listening to what they're promoting. read reviews on specific episodes. Good pods is a really cool app that's much more engaging, interactive. And we think really blends the social element the right way. So those are three recommendations, if you want to push your listeners to a different app, so that they actually get your episodes when they come out.

Kevin: 49:00

Yeah, let me let me add to that recommendation list. Because those those are great apps. They've been around for a long time. They work well. There are a lot of other apps that are doing a bunch of really cool work with podcasts index and supporting the podcast namespace. I love them. They're not as polished and refined as the ones that Travis just gave. So they might not be the ones that you want to recommend to. I don't know your mother in law, for example, just yet, but for podcasters, we should be knowing about these apps, we should be using these users like well, podcast addict is is a very popular app for Android but pod friend pod verse mountain pod station, Sphinx chat, hyper chaser, or hyper catcher sorry, breeze antenna pod. If you go to podcast index.org and click on apps at the top, you're gonna see a list of all these apps. And they're very cool. They're very different. They're not doing the same things in the same way as every other app. And so try them out. Like there's no reason apps are they all have like apps in the app store or web versions. They're all free. Download it, load up your podcasts and see if you like it, if you do tell other people about it. We need to support independent app creators. We need more and more of these right now. Apple has a huge amount of our listeners are coming through Apple podcasts. And it's it's we're seeing what happens when that breaks right when they fail us. Spotify is trying to do the same thing Spotify is a lot of people have a huge percentage of their listening audience comes through Spotify. Again, that in and of itself is not bad. But we have to make sure that this independent app ecosystem stays healthy and stays strong and developers are incented to develop new apps, because when Apple podcast breaks when Spotify breaks, or when they change the rules, they change the game or they say, we're not interested in doing this anymore. How are people still going to get your content like we're doing this stuff, because we love it. We're doing this stuff to support our businesses, we might be doing this because we're monetizing, and it's part of our income. And we're, we cannot be dependent. Or the only source of distribution of our content cannot be these huge corporations that can change on a dime or break overnight. And so support these independent podcast creators. These are people who love podcasting, that's why they're building this stuff, they're passionate about it, you might find an app that is not super popular, but you love or aligns with your interests or supports your podcasts in a way that others aren't. And you might want to tell your audience about it so hopeful. Hopefully, that's helpful.

Travis: 51:14

And not only that, but these apps, all these third party apps, they take advantage of features that you have in Buzzsprout, that apps like Apple podcast, don't, right. So like if you use the transcript feature inside of Buzzsprout, whether you edit and descriptor run through otter, or rev, and you add a transcript to every single one of your episodes to make it more accessible. There are apps that will actually show that transcript. And even some that use it as closed captions if you upload it as an SRT file, which is a better experience for your listeners. And so it's not just a benefit to you, as a creator to say, you know, download this third, this third party app because it helps me, but it's actually a service to your listeners, as well when you point them to better opportunities to engage with your content. Well, that wraps it up for this episode. And we'll catch you in the next one. Keep podcasting.