In this episode, the crew reminisces on the origins of the Buzzsprout YouTube channel, we discuss several updates to Facebook Podcasts (Google Podcasts), Spotify introducing video podcasts, and reveal the podcast setups that each person uses to record Buzzcast.
YouTube videos we mention:
Boom Arms we mention:
Alban's Podcast Setup:
Kevin's Podcast Setup:
Travis' Podcast Setup:
Review Buzzcast in Podchaser or Apple Podcasts to let us know what you think of the show.
Contact Buzzcast
Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!
In this episode, the crew reminisces on the origins of the Buzzsprout YouTube channel, we discuss several updates to Facebook Podcasts (Google Podcasts), Spotify introducing video podcasts, and reveal the podcast setups that each person uses to record Buzzcast.
YouTube videos we mention:
Boom Arms we mention:
Alban's Podcast Setup:
Kevin's Podcast Setup:
Travis' Podcast Setup:
Review Buzzcast in Podchaser or Apple Podcasts to let us know what you think of the show.
Contact Buzzcast
Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!
There's really only one thing that I have an issue with with the new PSA one plus, and that is the NASCAR sized road logo. neoprene socks.
Kevin:Yeah, it does seem like one of those things where somebody was like copping up what this could look like, and somebody else walked in, they're like, Well, what the logo could be bigger, could be bigger, make it bigger, make it bigger, and they just ended up with a bumper sticker.
Travis:We want to kick off this episode with some fun, celebratory news, at least I think it is. Because I'm personally invested in this particular milestone, the Buzzsprout YouTube channel just hit 70,000 subscribers, just kind of nuts. Because a couple years ago, we had I think, like 65. So really cool that the YouTube channel has grown to that size. And we know a lot of you guys are subscribed over there and watch those videos. And so thank you very much for that.
Alban:Yeah, thanks for everybody who watched our goofy videos and have been along with us for the journey, obviously, huge shout out to Travis, who has spearheaded a ton of the YouTube stuff. And Jonathan, who also does a ton YouTube as well. You know, when we first started, we were like, Oh, can we get to 1000? Can we get to 1000 subscribers. And now $70,000 thinking about is when we're going to get our little silver plaque at 100.
Travis:That's right. That's right. And then we'll be official YouTubers. Once we hit
Alban:that, you'll know that we're official YouTubers, if we do like the the plaque review, right? Isn't that like the YouTube thing? They get their silver play button and they're like, Alright, let's do a review. And like, oh, it's made out of silver or something. I don't know,
Travis:we'll do an unboxing video because that really fits with the theme of our channel. You know, funny enough, the very first video that we did for the YouTube channel, once we really started focusing on it had an unboxing segment in it. We did an unboxing of the Rode pod mic as a part of that video. And when we first recorded it, we didn't have like, hardly any gear. So the first time I filmed it, I used a Logitech webcam. Do you remember this Kevin, and I recorded the whole thing on a Logitech webcam in my phone. And I just had like a like an iPhone. It wasn't even like a XR it was like an iPhone eight or something like that. And so recording it, editing it putting it together. And I finished the edit and sets to Kevin. And the problem with using a webcam like four feet away is that you have to do a focus on thing where it can't really find your face because it's too far away. And so like the whole video is going in and out of focus the entire time. So Kevin's like here just use my phone re recorded do the video over so we filmed it twice. And then the video that you see is actually from Kevin's iPhone, we need to go back and look at
Alban:some of these videos.
Kevin:And that Logitech webcam is now sitting on my desk and I'm looking at
Travis:Riverside, what was your what's been your favorite video that you've been a part of so far Alban?
Alban:Um, I don't know the one that definitely was not was our re recording of how to start a podcast where I was running behind a car for half of it.
Travis:I mean, you lost at least two pounds recording filming that video. Because that was was like a two hour, two hours and trying to try to get a three second segment for that video. Yeah,
Alban:we had a three second segment where I think I'm just running and making the point that you can listen to a podcast while running. And we spent an entire afternoon with you and Jonathan driving by me in a car note run to catch up yell my line and then like fall behind.
Travis:Yes, it was it was full production. So we were driving Jonathan's Nissan LEAF because an electric car so you wouldn't have like the car noise like the mufflers, right exhaust noise in the audio. And we had the tailgate up and Jonathan was sitting in the back with the camera filming Alban and I was driving the car so I would drive at like 11 miles an hour album would come over for a lot. It felt a lot faster. 11 miles an hour. That's like a blow a six minute mile. That's pretty, that's pretty quick. And so but then if you watch some of the outtakes, it was tough like trying to nail the speed where Alban was actually running, but you could still hear him. And then for the first hour, every time we tried to do a three point turn, the car would freak out, because it had obstacle avoidance on and we couldn't find figure out what it was trying to avoid. But Jonathan's legs were hanging over the back. And so every single time we backed up the car thought we were running into a tree, and so turn a three point turn into a 17 point turn to like go back to where Alban was and re record that was definitely a memorable video shoot for sure. Anything you want to add to that, Kevin just how proud you are of all the work that we do and how valuable we are to the company and you know, just just on public record,
Alban:Travis they're hoping to get to sit before reviews.
Travis:We get reviews coming up in January.
Kevin:When I think back of the all the videos that we created, I can't help but remember the one of the first videos that Alban and I did after we started all working from home, Alan and I went to the office and no one else was there was just the two of us. And we're trying to figure out how to film this best microphones for under $100 video. And we were trying to be as responsible as possible and have like, at least six feet between us at all times or whatever so Alban is on camera on behind camera and we're like how do we get all these mics on and off stage and we just decided that he would just throw them over to our period you know, we probably tossed back and forth I don't know $15,000 worth of equipment, but we did a good job. didn't drop anything we hit a few lights didn't break anything. It turned out to be one of the really funny video
Travis:Well didn't you have to record it twice?
Kevin:Yeah, I was recording I had the I think we're running it through the road caster Pro was on the boom arm, but we were just we weren't recording from that. So yeah, we did like want to have time so we had to redo all those throws.
Alban:But then Jonathan, like save he said he saved the footage. He almost killed the whole video because he was like the it was so overblown.
Travis:Yeah, it was the exposure was was off the I gotta say,
Alban:this is another this is a good example of content matters a lot more than, you know, the actual techniques. Sometimes that videos got 607,000 views. Oh, that's, yeah, those are complete amateurs filming and growing microphones.
Travis:That's like the population of small countries right there have watched that video of you throwing microphones,
Alban:very small countries. I actually there have been comments on there from like, people that I knew in college. They were like, Yeah, I was watching a video about a microphone and is that Alban? What do you do? I did. Well, thanks to all 607,000 of you who watched that silly video, Kevin Knight throwing antique microphones and into the lights Kevin caught and cry, didn't drop any, which was a surprise. pretty surprising. On my side, knowing how far off the mark I was throwing some of them.
Travis:Yep, so if you want to take a trip down memory lane, we'll put links to those videos that we mentioned in the shownotes. And you can go and watch Alban right behind the car. And there are some microphones and you know, see our very first and our only unboxing video that we've ever done. But all that has shown us Facebook podcasts dumped into the thing that everybody is really interested in and wants to know about. And information just kind of like trickles out. They aren't even really announcing things. We're kind of discovering them on the fly, and trying to make sense of it. So we do have a small update for you as far as Facebook podcasts and how it may or may not show up in your stats. So Alban, what's the what's the new change on the stat side, and then we can talk about the submission process and how that has changed?
Alban:Sure, I mean, the the stats thing is something you discovered. So I will just relay what you have told me, which was one of Travis's podcasts that he does himself, he all of a sudden started seeing more and more plays from Facebook, not insane amount, but they started started seeing more, it was like nine or 10 per episode. So Tom starts digging into the actual plays that were being attributed Facebook, what do we know how many of those plays are unique? Is there anything fishy about them, because Travis hadn't been actually promoting these any differently. He wasn't posting audio grams, or links or anything like that. And they're all legit plays, and they were all at different places around the world. And they were all Facebook doing those promotion posts. So one of the things that Facebook does is you publish a new episode, and then they push that episode out, kind of like its own newsfeed update, maybe that's a good way of putting it as people could play in the newsfeed. And apparently, enough people were that those starts showing up inside of Travis to stats. So you know, it's good to see Facebook is pushing more updates and getting more and more people involved in the rollout for Facebook podcasts. One is that we were seeing it ourselves, too. We looked at the Buzzsprout global stats which come out at the beginning of the month, and we just published a new set of those and Facebook podcast is up 44% month over month, so quite a few more people are listening. You know that that's a pretty big difference, where they're not down like 20th. They're now like 12 or 10 on the list as far as largest podcasting apps, and we're starting to see more countries and more people get access to putting their podcasts on Facebook.
Travis:So Kevin, before the new Facebook podcast feature rolled out, there were ways that you could actually have Facebook show up and your Buzzsprout stats for the last few years. What's what's been the main way that Facebook would show up as a play instead of your Buzzsprout stats, like how would we actually attribute that?
Kevin:So historically, what has happened is you can drop links in Facebook. And if you're, I think regardless of whether you're on a desktop browser or the mobile UI, if you click a link that goes to A podcast, a webpage that has a podcast player on it like an embed player or something, then since that's happening inside of a Facebook web view, then I think what happens is that, since the referring URL is Facebook, it would still be counted in your stats as a Facebook play. It's different than what's happening now. Now that podcast can play natively with inside of Facebook, but it's going to be reflected in your stats the same way whether they land on your Buzzsprout webpage, for example, click play in the embedded player, and then play it. Or if you're using Facebook's player. Either way, we're counting those as a Facebook play. Since Facebook is the source of that play, we felt it was the most accurate way to represent it.
Travis:And I think Instagram works in a similar fashion. Yes, that if you have like a swipe up, Instagram story that goes to a podcast, or if it's the link in your bio, that that would also that would be attributed to Instagram for the same reasons. That's correct. Yep. And then the other thing that is new about Facebook, other than them starting to actually attribute plays from inside of their podcast feature is the way that you can claim your podcast and Facebook's and talk about what they rolled out initially. And then what is the the current way that you can do it?
Alban:Initially, Facebook was doing something special, I've no idea how they were doing it. I don't know if this is a totally manual process, or they had some algorithm trying to figure it out. But they were finding podcasts on the internet, and then guessing what podcast page they could be connected to. And in the beginning, they were you know, they did well, they found two of our shows, and they said, Hey, Are these yours and they attached to the Buzzsprout page and was great. And just today I went and removed about 45 other podcasts that nothing to do with us, except that they were hosted on Buzzsprout. And those were connected to our account. So it wasn't a perfect process. Then Facebook just you know, ultimately decided to add RSS compatibility so that you could submit your RSS feed. So now if you go to a podcast page, and you click on the podcasts tab, over on the left, there's actually a add a podcast button. And you can drop in your RSS feed and add it to your page. So we've been waiting for this for like six months, and is really excited to see this rolling out. And you will then confirm your podcast, every podcast feed has like an email address in it. And so they'll send you a code and then you'll go and you'll grab that code and you'll confirm. But once that's done, the podcast is attached to your page and will automatically generate these little shareable posts that, you know, encourage people to listen on Facebook. I think it's great. Go ahead and do it. And now that this is out, we're finally ready for Travis Knight to go and create a blog post and create a video and talk about it some more here and start getting this content out to the world. Because I know for a long time everyone's been asking how do I get on Facebook? And the answer was so kind of mealy mouthed that we didn't have anything to say. We're like, Oh, if they email you, you'll get in now that you can actually go and proactively do this. And you could start seeing if maybe some of your potential audience is on Facebook. This
Kevin:brings up a question that a lot of people have asked over time, should I create a Facebook page or a Facebook group. And typically, our recommendation has been a group because Facebook does a lot to drive interaction on groups. But this is a great reason to start a page. And so would our advice now change to both, you should probably do both. You should have a page that you can list your podcast, and then you can share those posts. But if you're really looking for interaction and community, then group is the way to go. It's kind of a question. I'm kind of answering it. But I want to hear you guys thoughts on
Alban:there's a few ways you can do it. I think you're 100%. Right, Kevin, you've got to have a page and a group. That's the ultimate way to go. They don't have to be both named after the podcast. You know, when you've had Facebook for as long as you know, Travis and I probably have now having started on when we were in college. And now I don't know about you, Travis. I met like 15 years at Facebook. And that's enough for me, right? So people have recommended they're like, Hey, if you're not really using it to communicate with people you knew in high school or something, maybe go ahead and delete your Facebook account, create a Facebook page. And it's a way for you to interact with people but you're not really doing as many it's like poking and tagging and photos and
Travis:stuff. That's my favorite is poking. Why they don't plug back.
Alban:Right? Exactly. So creating a Facebook page for your yourself is a way of kind of starting fresh, but also now have a presence on Facebook get people need to reach out. So you could do that and attach your podcast to your personal page. And then you could have Facebook podcast Facebook group for the podcast community and you could engage as yourself. So that's maybe a way to get around having like The Buzzcast Group and the Buzzcast Facebook page, and then the Travis Albritton page, like, all that combined could be a little bit much. So maybe look at creating a professional page for yourself, and then a group for the podcast. So you can leverage all of the benefits of these different Facebook features.
Travis:Yeah, and you can connect pages and groups to each other. So like, you can connect a page to a group, the way that we have in the Buzzsprout, community, like will interact as Buzzsprout, the page inside of the Buzzsprout group. And so those are linked together. And then on the page, you can also see the list of Facebook groups that are connected to that page. So they do kind of connect to each other. And so like, if you haven't created a Facebook page to this point, but you have a group, you can connect the page and like point people in that direction, and vice versa. So something else that you can do, especially if you're like just creating a page, and nobody's following you yet, then this Facebook strategy isn't really gonna work. Nobody is following the page where they're creating these these shareable audio episodes. Does that answer your question? Kev? Yeah. Okay, listen, all
Kevin:this. I'm like, Oh, my gosh, man, I'm so old. Because I would not do all that stuff. That sounds like,
Alban:yeah, me either. I would do this.
Travis:But if you want to, this is how you do it. This is how you do it.
Alban:All right, well, Facebook's in a weird spot, because you have to be simultaneously old to want to do it and like young enough to have the energy to do it. And I just don't know who's in that target market. I feel like Facebook was made for my generation. And we're over it. And if Kevin's generations not into it, and no one younger than us is into it. Like who's, who's using it?
Travis:That's a great question. I don't know. Great question. Maybe
Kevin:that's what's the thinking behind the big shift? Like they're not going to be Facebook anymore. They're going to be meta, and they're moving in a whole new
Alban:direction we need to get on meta podcasts.
Travis:That's right. Can you imagine virtual reality Buzzcast Just hanging out with the three of us in the studio, our virtual avatars talking to each other? Great.
Alban:That's the last thing I want to do.
Travis:Because video Buzzcast was such a hit. Let's let's make fake versions of that. Do that instead.
Kevin:You know, I was just this morning, I was just listening to the dithering podcast, which is a great podcast, if you haven't heard it, it's a subscription only podcast. So I like putting the name out there. And when people check it out, I want to support people who are making money in podcasting. And so the guys on dithering were talking about, they think their take on it was the most interesting thing from that Facebook presentation was the idea of solving the problem of presence, like the idea that we're in Riverside, right now, we can see each other, but it doesn't feel like we're in the same room. And one of the big problems that the Facebook team Zuckerberg, under the new corporate name of metta is looking to solve is this problem of presence, so that you can actually go into a more virtual environment, an augmented reality environment, and you actually feel like you're in the same room or space as the people that you're interacting with. That could be amazing for podcasting. And it's probably yours out. But it is a very interesting problem. It is something that they seem to gloss over pretty quickly. But that might actually be the most interesting thing of all these big problems that they're they're trying to solve. I mean, can you imagine if you had the ability to sit down and interview somebody for your podcast, but it didn't feel like I'm talking to them on a screen, it actually felt like I'm sitting in the same room as them. So you get to see body language and all this stuff. It's just it's just it would feel different. Right? And it would open up a whole new world of possibilities, especially, you know, in the work that we do in the podcasting space.
Travis:Yeah, well, once we figure out how to add blockchain to the Buzzsprout product somehow, then we'll add AR, and then we'll just be will be futurists will be cutting edge podcasting, tech,
Alban:it is surprising to me how much wearing some goofy Oculus classes can make you feel like you're somewhere else. I mean, you put them on for like a minute, and you feel like you're somewhere that's not your living room anymore. And it's just, it's a weird experience to do it for just a minute. And so I could totally see, like trying to interview somebody and have these glasses on, and it could actually make for a much better feeling of engagement with somebody else. You know, when you're on a camera, it's very easy, like you've got the internet right there. And it's easy to pull up email and kind of get into something else or look at your phone and not feel as engaged. When you've got those AR glasses on. You're totally immersed in the moment. And you could feel like you were in a professional recording environment sitting right across this, you know, the table from your guest or the other host. It could make for a cool way to record a podcast. And I mean, that's what I keep hearing from anybody uses any of the I think Microsoft has a solution for this. That everybody who's uses them actually says it kind of feels like I'm in the same office like these meetings aren't as I don't have as much like zoom fatigue when I'm in a VR space with somebody else kind of just chatting throughout the day. So maybe, maybe someday we will be in the metaverse recording podcast. But until then, we will be using squad cast and Riverside. Not the metaverse yet, but we're on our way.
Kevin:I was in the Facebook group the other day, and somebody asked a question about Apple podcasts. And I guess they were browsing, subscribe to a podcast. And they were surprised because the podcast started playing video. And they had not seen that before an apple podcast. So they hopped into the Facebook group and throw a question out, hey, is this new? How do I do this is this invite only, and there was some dialogue back and forth. And so I popped in and provided some color around it. So Apple has done video podcasts for a very long time. I don't know exactly when they started, but they built it on the RSS spec just the same way that audio podcasts exists. So we've linked in your RSS file through Buzzsprout. We link to an audio file, you could link to a video file. And then the video would play when somebody follows you and Apple podcasts. It's just something that's never really caught on. And we can talk about, like different theories for why it's come on or why it hasn't. I think what was so interesting about this is that or why it spurred interest in the in the Facebook group was that Spotify has recently added video. And this is different. So the way that they're doing it is not following the RSS spec. It's their proprietary implementation of video podcasts. And I speculated that I believe it probably had something to do with the Joe Rogan deal. So when Spotify signed Joe Rogan, he had a very popular YouTube presence. And when Spotify wanted that exclusive agreement with them, they wanted that exclusivity to cover video as well. So they want to take down all of his content off of YouTube. And I'm sure him or hers people's response to that was, where are we going to put our video content, we have to put it somewhere. Spotify said, oh, we'll build it into our app. We'll move all that video content over. And so it began that Spotify now can play video content. And so since I imagined since they built it for him, they now want to roll it out and give it to some other popular shows as well. That right now is invite only. We don't I haven't heard anything about how successful it is like how many people are actually engaging in video there. But I do know this, that just within the past few months, Joe Rogan's video content has started reappearing on YouTube. Not full episodes. Of course, those are still exclusive to Spotify. But the clips, which I think was like the most popular of all the Joe Rogan content that lived on YouTube, those clips are coming back. So anyway, I thought it was interesting that I throw it out to you guys see what your thoughts are?
Travis:Well, it brings up the old you know, to record video or not to record video discussion, right? Everyone wants to know, should I use YouTube to expand the audience of my podcast, and it really depends on how much time you want to invest in it. We have a video podcast, Podcasting Q&A. And then we have this one which we, you know, played around with doing video and then ultimately decided the format's better suited for audio only. And so this is just like, the newest version of that question is should I start recording video for my podcast, to potentially try and get it on to Spotify. And there's not a lot I could say that would give you confidence that it would be worth your time. Especially if you're thinking about a listening app that now has video versus a video platform where you're posting video, it's just a completely different user experience. And so I have a hard time thinking that someone's going to sit there and stare at their phone, watching a video podcast on Spotify. I just have a really hard time seeing that kind of consumption behavior on that platform.
Alban:Yeah. And the reason that that seems unlikely is not because people won't stare at their phone. The reason it seems unlikely is because what is the job? What's the thing you're looking for? And the thing you're looking for is a video, or people pull up YouTube. If you're thinking I'm going to listen to something you pick up Spotify. And so if you want to watch a interview between two people, well, you're expecting that to be on YouTube, if you want a longer video that's going to be on YouTube. And so it's what are people already doing when they want to engage with the content you're creating, and to go through all this work to record video to edit video to do everything with these heavy files. And then for the ultimate thing for you to throw it up on an app that isn't really for video, at least right now. And if Spotify makes a big push for it, maybe someday, in the future, it will be also thought of as a video app. But in the short term, it's not. And so if I was we're ever going to reengage doing video content for our podcasts, it would 100% be on YouTube. So we just rewrote our guide on podcasting on YouTube. And you know our recommendations here haven't changed a whole lot. The way to do it is the way that h3 Does it that Joe Rogan did. It's the way that similar to even how think media does their podcasting channel. It's how waveform MKBHD does this podcast, you have a main channel, that is for the visual video of your podcast, and it's edited, it maybe has a quick little intro and outro. But it's the full video. And then you know, people are unlikely to watch a full 45 minutes or up to in some cases three hour video. So you find the most exciting parts and you chop those into five minutes, and you put those on a separate clips channel. And then both them anytime that you have those you link out to a normal podcast. And that is still kind of the gold standard. There's probably things you can do better than some of these other options that, you know, making really good thumbnails, making sure that people understand what kind of content they're engaging with, that all is really valuable. But kind of setting up those two separate channels. And then linking out to the podcast itself is really the way to run a podcast on YouTube. So what I'm more interested in is the moves that YouTube has kind of been making around podcasts, we know that somebody inside of YouTube was just promoted to like running all their podcasts. And I don't know if that means that this will be a person who's kind of a liaison with just all of the major podcasts that are kind of YouTube primary shows, or if there will be new offerings from YouTube. So I'll be interested to see what they do. Because it seems like going from the heavier video side, and then moving into the audio actually makes a lot more sense than the other way around. Going from, hey, we're Spotify, we do audio, maybe we'll do video two, that feels like a heavier ask not just for the company, but also training your existing user base. So I would maybe say, make sure you're on YouTube, but then also kind of keep an eye out for what moves we see from YouTube in the future.
Kevin:Yeah, I think that's a really interesting point that you brought up the idea that right now on our mobile devices, which is where most of this content is consumed, whether it be audio or video, we're very much living in this world, still, where apps have like a primary role, right, a primary job to be done. And so I think that's, that's very interesting. And I was just racking my brain as you were talking, trying to think about an app that's kind of made the jump, and not necessarily just switched from one to the other, but one that does, both. I haven't been able to think of one. But the idea that when I launch Spotify, it's because I'm getting into some, some circumstance in which I want to listen to something but not initially watch something. And the opposite applies when I load up YouTube, right? But I rarely find myself like popping down on the couch, and then firing up Spotify. That's just not where I engage. I don't engage Spotify at all. But it's not where I don't plop on the couch and fire up my podcasting app, or fire up a music app. I do those things when I'm getting ready to go walk the dog, or I'm getting in my car to go for a drive or I'm going to the gym and I'm gonna exercise and it's just very different. Like this the same thing. I'm not gonna go out to walk the dog and fire up a game on my phone because that requires too much attention. Right? Like, that's where I want to listen to something instead of engaging something with my eyes or hands. So you're
Travis:not playing Frogger as you cross the street. I'm not miss an Alice Braga. That's that's the AR VR blend right there. You are the frog.
Kevin:Yeah. And so another interesting point is that like Apple podcasts, and I'm sure, maybe some of this exists in Spotify as well, like in Apple, not Apple podcast, but Apple Music. I'm sorry, you can watch music videos, but I don't ever watch music videos in there. I only listen to music. I don't watch music. I don't know if Spotify has music videos or not. But I imagine it would be a similar type of shift, right? It's this cognitive shift that you have to make. What am I doing that I'm going to engage this app? And then what are my expectations from it? So it'll be interesting to see if Spotify can pull off the shift. But I would have to agree with Alban and Travis both that if you're doing video content right now and you're looking for consumption, you're looking for the largest audience and the most engagement then it has to be YouTube first. And then I mean, I guess there's no harm in putting it in other channels, but I just wouldn't expect to see big numbers there.
Alban:And the value always seems to come when you make stuff native. I mean, this is something we are going to struggle through I'm sure when we try launch this tic toc channel, if we ever do is probably re filming all of the hundreds of videos that we've made as Tiktok native video, spent an afternoon trying to see, you know, how can I get the dimensions right? Can I edit these videos down. And by the time I'd done it, I'd gone Oh, even easier just to refilm this native to Tic Toc, you know, the benefit is every medium wants slightly different content. And so you really want to make sure you're making the content for that medium. And sometimes that actually means the medium is actually different inside the same app. And so in Spotify, saying, Hey, we have this medium of audio listening, now we're going to try this visual medium, that's a pretty difficult shift, and the people aren't there yet. And so, as a podcaster, you're trying to make that jump as well make the jump with somebody who's already figured out exactly how this works, like a YouTube, or let you know, like many of the social media platforms that have figured out how to make visual content work, I would invest where it's kind of our unknown quantity, because you're gonna have to learn it, rather than learning along with the platform.
Travis:So we don't do very many gear review segments on Buzzcast. Because typically, that's more of like a visual thing you want to see the gear, but most of you listening have seen a boom arm. It's like an articulating arm that holds your microphone and you can use it to position the microphone close to your face. Alright. And there's a lot out there. And Rohde just sent us their newest one throat POC one plus, and we thought that'd be a good excuse to talk about the various boom arms that we use in the studio, and then maybe even talk about our podcast setups at large. So Kevin, you're the one that has the box for the PSA one plus, what what stands out to you between that and the PSA one, which is the the boom arm that is probably the one we recommend the most and the one that we see a lot of podcasters using?
Kevin:Yeah, well the PSA one has been our at least my favorite boom arm, I think you guys like it a lot as well. For$100 It's it's really hard to find a better boom arm in terms of like the utility of it, it is not the most beautiful boom arm. So if you're worried about the aesthetics, or if you're doing a video podcast, taking pictures, or if you're really just into how your desk looks, it might not fit your aesthetic. But I have a hard time I don't think I've ever come across anybody who said it doesn't function perfectly. Like you can put any mic on this, whether it's a super lightweight mic, or very heavy mic, anything in between, you clamp this thing onto your desk, and then it stays exactly where you put it. It doesn't have built in cable management, but it comes with these little Velcro strap velcro straps. And it just works. Like I've had this thing sitting on my desk. This thing's probably three years old. Now. It doesn't creak. It doesn't make noise, it doesn't drift. It does exactly what you need to do, and stays out of the way. Now, what they've done is they've introduced the PSA one plus, which is, in some ways, you know, you look at it, and you're like, Yeah, it's pretty much the same old PSA one. So I think there was a slight level of disappointment, when I first saw what they were announcing, because they've done such a great job with the PSA. One original, not the plus the original version, I was like, oh, whatever they make next is just going to be better, right? And they knocked it out of the park on the original. Well, what they did is they just added these, we were joking, we're calling them like socks, they're like neoprene sleeves that go around the arm itself, just to make it look a little bit better, give you a little bit more cable management, they've they've improved the springs that are inside of it. So they've just made these slight improvements, and it does look a little bit better. But at the end of the day, it's kind of the same thing. And so at first I was kind of like, Oh, well that's that's not super exciting. But then as I reflected on it a little bit more, I landed in this place of like I might have been upset if they tried to do too much different because really, for me anyway, they already had the perfect boom arm they had the best boom arm. And so if they had drifted away to something that, you know, was more a tube like structure with internal cable management or something like that. I'm sure they tried and tested all of those things. There's probably reasons why we have issues with those types of boom arms, because at the end of the day, they do have mic drift, they do make more noise, they are a little bit more heavy. They don't you know, travel as easy or whatever. And so I've kind of landed in this place of well, this isn't as exciting as I kind of hoped it would be. I think it was probably a really wise move. And they were able to keep the price point low. So now the original is $99 and the new one I think is how much is it? 129 or 139? Yep, 129 us 129. So for $30 more, it's a nice improvement. To what I would consider to be my favorite boom arm available for podcasting.
Travis:It's kind of like when Apple releases a new iPhone, but it's the same hardware like the same shell, the same casing, same dimensions, and they're just updating the chip, updating the camera, that kind of stuff. There's really only one thing that I have an issue with with the new PSA one plus, and that is the NASCAR sized road logo. neoprene socks. So if you want to, like show off and be like, yeah, like, I may or may not be sponsored by Rode Microphones, then it's wonderful. But if you're really trying to promote your own brand, maybe get like some electrical tape or some black gaffers tape, and cover up that giant road logo. And then even if there was like different color socks, like that could be that could be interesting. But yeah, that's that's my only beef with it is the very, very prominent road branding.
Kevin:Yeah, it is, it does seem like one of those things where somebody was like, comping up what this could look like. And somebody else walked in, they're like, Well, what the logo could be bigger, could be bigger, make it bigger, make it bigger, and they just ended up with a bumper sticker.
Travis:A double bumper sticker, because it's on Yeah, both it's on both sides, both sides and on both, because it's essentially like two arms with the joint in the middle. And so you actually have the road logo four times, it's hard to miss hard to miss. So that's the road. Now there are other boom arms that we have tested, that we've tried. And they all have various pros and cons. So the other one that's at that $99 price point is one that Blue Microphones makes. It's their blue compass arm, and that one is different from the PSA one, the one that road makes, because it just looks like a tube, it kind of has that. That aesthetic of those professional radio broadcast boom arms where all the cable management is internal, and it's really clean looking. And it's designed to go with like the Blue Yeti in their line of microphones. But it doesn't actually have internal cable management. Instead, it has this little like channel that runs along the top that you put the cable in. So it kind of looks like internal cable management, but not really. But the big drawback of that boom arm is compared to the PSA one, it's really hard to get the tension, right, yeah. So if you have a really heavy microphone, then it travels a lot. It's like you'll keep it in one place. And then over time, the springs will like gradually shift the position in the microphone. And then if you have a lighter microphone, like a cue to you, it's hard to crank it down hard enough to get it to stay put. So like you'll position the boom arm, and then the microphone will go up by six inches when you let go. And so that even though it kind of looks nice, it's hard to really get it to stay exactly where you want it to stay, which is, you know, you gotta you gotta cross the bar of doing what a boom arm does before, it's something we'd recommend.
Alban:I think that it was initially created to be the boom arm for the Blue Yeti, which is a pretty dang heavy microphone. So I imagine that they designed it with that in mind. And then we're not using a Blue Yeti. And so we're using much lighter microphones. And so even though we release the tension out of springs to make it not bounce as much, and then crank down the little knobs, it still wasn't working. So I like the aesthetic of that one. But over time, like you know, the Instagram shot, you took one time to look good, that mattered one time, the fact that the boom arm keeps moving away from my mouth, that lasts forever. So you want to make sure that yeah, it looks cool. But the PSA one for a long time was kind of the best option we had because it least it performed that job of the boom arm, boom arm job really, really well. And no matter what the weight was, it always seemed like you're able to get it in the exact right position.
Kevin:Yeah, and following that line of thinking if the if the blue campus arm was designed for the Yeti, which it probably was, that makes a lot of sense. Then it was designed to hold a condenser microphone, which is not what we all use. We all use dynamic microphones dynamic microphones need to be positioned, you know about four inches from your mouth. And condenser microphones can be much further away, you know a couple of feet and it doesn't really matter if once you put it in that position if it moves an inch or two if it drifts doesn't matter. So it might be a perfectly fine boom arm for people who use condenser microphones, especially if you use the Blue Yeti specifically. But that's not no that's not any of us. We all use dynamics we need him in this specific place and he didn't stay there. So wasn't a boom arm that works for us.
Travis:Now Kevin last year, you stumbled onto a new boom arm that I hadn't seen before. By Gator frameworks which looks similar to the yellow tech, kind of high end, boom arms FB, professionally installed and like cables soldered into place where it had that internal cable management had the nice tube aesthetic. What was your experience using that one?
Kevin:Yeah, so I like that one a lot. It was somewhere in between the the blue boom arm and the PSA one, in that it had the great aesthetics and looks of the blue boom arm. As you mentioned, the yellow tech arms are like, they look amazing, and it kind of had that same look. But it functioned more like the PSA one, like it didn't drift as much it held in a position that you want it to, but it wasn't as nice as the PSA one. And so I used it a couple times in the office. And then at the end of the day, I ended up just coming back to the PSA one because although it was close, it wasn't as nice. So you'd put it in a position and then over 10 minutes, you might see that it has drifted an inch or two. Again, the Kompass arm might have drifted six inches or it would drift immediately. It was just maddening. This does better but not as nice as the PSA one. The other issue I have with the built in cable management is that it was like completely embedded in the arm. So it came with its own XLR cable, and you could never change out that XLR cable. And I don't believe it was the highest quality XLR cable. So while we never ran into this issue, an issue that could creep up over time is that that cable degrades from you know being bent or wrapped or twisted or something like that, or breaks completely. And as far as I could tell, there was no way to replace that cable without cutting it, pulling it out refurbishing a new one through and then soldering it together yourself. So unless you're, you know, really good at soldering or into that or that's a fun weekend project for you. That might be something that you want to think about before you go that route.
Travis:Yeah, and then we have the new bougie boom arm. I call it that because it's it's not what we would recommend for most podcasters because it's the price is a bit obscene. But it is a very beautiful low profile boom arm though Joe Rogan actually uses nowdays Alban, you're actually using it right now why don't you talk about the OSI white?
Alban:Yeah, I don't know who found this. I think maybe Kevin did the ultimate OSI white, boom arm, somebody found it. And it is awesome. So a lot of boom arms, the way they work is there's like a mount on your desk. And then it shoots almost like, I don't know, 3540 degree angle, or almost a 90 degree angle, sorry, straight up, and then it goes down back to your mouth. So you have this thing is going way up into the sky, and then it comes back down. And then you can make that go a little more parallel to the table to get it a little bit further away. But it always has some height. And that isn't great if you're shooting video. And so a lot of the highest end microphones like they use it right on radio stations, like the yellow tech, those setups are all low to the table. And so yellow tech for a long time was kind of the top line and is what all the radio stations use. But you had to go work often with like somebody who is a seller, and you're working with them and coming up with an order and it was a long process. And then ultimate came out with the OC white boom arm. And this thing is awesome. The Boomer itself is super low to the table. So you know the first I don't know arm of the blue arm. The first one is maybe like two inches, maybe an inch off of the table. And then the second one is on top of that and can go you can change the angle but it can come all the way up to your mouth. And what's really nice it stays perfectly still. It's low to the table. It brings the mic right where it should be it never moves and all the cables are internal to the arm. They're not locked there it's not like one cable that can never ever be replaced you can easily swap these in and out so we had him in the office. I think it would be got them when we thought we might start recording Buzzcast in person when we decided not to I grabbed one and brought it home and I think it's the greatest boom arm I've ever used. I was talking to Travis before this and I was like oh that's the one I would recommend for sure Travis is like you know that's a $400 boom arm that doesn't include the microphone the cords the interface or anything. So it's expensive. But I think kind of top top line Yeah, it's it's the best boom arm you can get.
Travis:Yeah, and the reason that you would want a low profile boom arm for video is so that way you don't have to worry about the arm like coming in front of your face. Yeah So it comes up from underneath you so it, it features your face much better. If you're talking to camera, doing video interviews, that kind of thing. One caveat, for that ultimate boom arm, the stand the the desk mount that it comes with, is not fantastic. It's not amazing. We had the jerry rigged solution to be able to use it for the table because the table was too thin, like most of them have a threaded kind of metal screw with a plate that you can use for attention attachment on the edge of a table. But it doesn't go all the way up to the plate. And so if you have a really thin desk or a table, then the desk mount that comes with the microphone won't work. We were using like carpet squares like kind of carpet squares to try and get it to work.
Alban:My solution was I grabbed two pieces of Brio of my daughter set. So it's like the wooden train. Yes railroad pieces. So I grabbed two of those made the desk a little thicker, clamped it on, and it works perfect. Highly recommended. So by this $400 boom arm and two pieces of Brio railroad set. And you're good to go. Yeah, there
Travis:is a what they call like a premium desk mount attachment that cost 80 bucks, but it will work on any table. It's the one that we have set up in the studio right now. So we'll leave links to it. You can check it out maybe as a as a treat yourself gift. If you want a really elegant, wonderful boom arm, then we definitely recommend the OC why we think it's fantastic. But for everybody else, either the PSA one or the PSA one plus is going to be our recommendation. But now that we've talked about gear, and Alban, you just talked about how much you love your new OC Waiapu arm? What's the rest of your podcast setup? What are you recording on nowadays? That something people are always interested in? Right? Like, what's your podcast setup? So walk us through what you're using to record Buzzcast?
Alban:Alright, what am I using to record Buzzcast? So are we doing just the the audio setup, are we doing video stuff as well,
Travis:let's just do audio. Let's just do it.
Alban:As I'm looking at this, this is not the setup that I would purchase. This is the setup, I put on a wish list. And if you work for a podcasting company, and you buy stuff to review it and you have it in the office, go and grab it all about that. When I start looking at the price points, though, I'm a little shocked. So starting with the mic, I use a Shure SM seven B. This is like one of my favorite microphones that we've ever purchased. We bought them a long time ago. They're great mics. And I love the way they sound. So use the SM seven be on Amazon right now. It's a $360 microphone so it's not cheap. Then I have that on the ultimate OC white, blue arm, which Travis tells me is even more expensive. It's a $400 boom arm. And what I really like about it is it's low profile, and it kind of folds up out of the way so I have it set up on the side of the desk. And then I could just kind of collapse it together and slide it away so that all of it is kind of off the desk it off to the side, which is really nice. All that hooks directly into a focus right to i Two I used to run all of this through a cloud lifter to increase the gain that newest focus right to i to actually gets enough gain on its own that I don't think you really need to have the cloud lifter, or what's the other alternative called Travis
Travis:you can get it's like a Triton FET head fat head. Yeah.
Alban:So both of those help increase the the gain so that the tech This is not the technical Isaiah, but it makes the mic louder.
Travis:It gives you a stronger signal. It gives you a stronger sense the technical lingo so you actually have nicer waveforms, instead of like there's little itty bitty guys that you then have to boost in post production.
Alban:Yes, so the the focus right to it to third generation, which is the audio interface that I use. That one does well enough with the game that pretty much almost maxed it out not all the way and that gives us a good enough waveform for the audio so a Shure SM seven B ultimate OC white focus right to ITU and it's all hooked up with some basic XLR cable up to my computer so that's my setup and the headphones are just some headphones that I already have I'm definitely not using some sort of stereo headphones. I don't think I would ever notice the difference
Kevin:by Sir You mean like monitoring headphones right?
Alban:Yeah, I I know that there are headphones I mean I'm what I'm using are probably the audio files are gonna hate this. They're old Bose headphones that are are supposed to be run with batteries, and I don't have it turned on. So they're just like, again. So this is like the premier setup. If you're on an airplane with like really loud jet engines right next to you, this probably isn't the best for knowing exactly how my voice sounds. But I'm in my own head anyway. So I don't really hear what my voice sounds like. All I'm doing is I'm relying on Travis, who edits this to make it sound good. And in my experience, he does a great job. So thanks to Travis. I don't need some expensive monitors or to learn how to monitor my own voice.
Travis:Yes, so I think altogether, your price tag, you're running close to $1,000 for your one person setup.
Kevin:So I,
Alban:I think I'm probably just north of $1,000. Honestly, I again, would not recommend this is like you've got to have this setup. I think if I were buying this myself, I would be using a pair of ear pods or something like the basic little earbud and going into a Samsung Q to you. So my entire setup would be $65. I think that's where I would feel comfortable if I was buying this myself. But when you work for a podcasting company, this is one of the perks.
Travis:Very nice. All right, Kevin, walk us through your setup. What are you using to record Buzzcast nowadays?
Kevin:Okay, we'll start with the microphone. The microphone is a Heil PR 40 Fantastic mic, I love it. It has a little windscreen on the end of it because it does not have a pop filter built into it. So you add a little filter on the front, I get the little metal one, I think that was you know, like 30 $30 or something like that expensive in terms of pop filters. And then I do have the shock mount the prfm shock mount made by Heil, which is the one you have to get if you have this mic. So as you get into higher end gear, then things become more proprietary, so you can't just grab a $20 shock mount from Amazon and throw this on it. It's a special one that goes with this mic and you have to get that one. Same with the pop filter so that that's all on the front end stuff. Then it hooks into the PSN, PSA, one boom arm, all of that runs through pig hog XLR cable, which is the XLR cables that I like, they're fantastic. Not too expensive. Those are like $10. And that runs into a road caster Pro, which that's the absolute unnecessary part of my setup. I do not need a four channel, you know, professional podcast mixing board just for myself here. I don't run any other mics into it. But we had it at the office, no one was using it. And so it lives here now on my desk. And it's fun when we get on Zoom calls and stuff. Sometimes I use sound pads and playing crazy things. But really at the end of the day, I've got my level set a scarlet two, I too would be just as effective. So that's what I have. And that's why I have it.
Alban:So Kevin, we're looking at like 320 for the microphone 100 for your shock mount 100 for your boom arm, then what is the road cast? The road caster pro cost?
Kevin:That's $610 for the cable and $60 for the windscreen. So I'm probably a little bit more expensive. Yeah.
Travis:But it's all on the road caster.
Alban:Yeah, the road caster definitely definitely bumps you up there, though. The PR 40 is a pretty high end microphone.
Kevin:Mm hmm. Yeah,
Alban:it's definitely a really nice mic. And thank you to Heil, who I believe sent that over for you.
Kevin:Yep, they did. And I've just fallen in love with it. So I wouldn't hesitate to buy it again, is it's a fantastic mic, and I recommend it. And they've got lots of different versions. They all sound good. They bring them to all the podcast conferences. So if you're ever at a podcast conference, and you're considering a Heil microphone, make sure you find their booth and go put on headphones and listen to the different options. Oh, and I didn't talk about my headphones. I've got the cheapest headphones, probably about three of us. I have these headphones called one oto which completely off brand company that I found on Amazon. I think they're $30. We bought them on a whim just to see if they were any good. And they are Yeah. And so I use them. I love them. We bring the podcast conferences. My son is a musician, he's fallen in love with them. He's bought a couple pairs because the dog chewed up the first pair but they're fantastic because if the dog chews them up 30 $30 You get a brand new pair. So I love these headphones, we should put a link to those in there.
Travis:Yes, I'll link all the gear setups for everyone's set up in the show notes. So if you want to go and poke around and vote for your favorite over on Twitter or Facebook, that'd be great. I guess I'll I'll round it up with my personal setup. So this is all the gear that I'm using except for one piece I personally purchased. So my microphone of choice. This is even after using the SM seven V and the pier 40 is the road Procaster I just like how it sounds my voice because each microphone has its own kind of like profile of different frequencies that emphasizes over others. And I've just found that for my voice and my sibilance in those kinds of things. The road Procaster does a really good job. I'm using the I think it's the WS two foam cover, like this just giant $20 piece of foam To throw in the front, the pro caster does come with a pop filter, but it's not amazing. And so I like having the extra pop filtering. And then I'm using their shock mount, PSA, one boom arm. So I'm like full road setup on my microphone. And then I have a second gen. Scarlett to it that I've had for years. And for the longest time, I just ran the microphone right into it. And then a month and a half ago, I was in a zoom call. And the person I was talking to was like, I can't hear your microphone. Like I can't hear you, you're really quiet. And so I went to turn it like all the way up and they still couldn't hear me. So then what I think happened is I simply just use this audio interface so much I recorded like over 1000 podcast episodes through it, that the driver is just finally starting to give out. So now I run it through a cloud lifter first, and then into the to it. And that fixed it for now. And then when it finally poops out, I'll have to replace it. But I just got a second gen two IQ that's been humming along for a few years now.
Kevin:That's interesting. I've never heard of like preamps like wearing down like that.
Travis:Yeah, I don't know how else to explain it. Because even when I would go to record afterwards, like in Hindenburg, same thing like a really weak signal. So I don't know, I do podcast quite a bit. Maybe that's maybe that's the that's the thing. You just kind of lifecycle on some of these pieces of gear, but everything else has been stellar and haven't had any issues. And then for headphones, I actually do have a set of studio headphones. They're the Audio Technica 80 H M 50x. Headphones are about $150 on Amazon. And what I love about them is they have a flat or neutral sound profile. So if you get like a pair of Bose headphones or just headphones off of, you know, Amazon, there's a good chance that they'll emphasize different frequencies based on what they're trying to do. So for music, those tend to emphasize the low end frequencies. And you don't want that when you're editing podcast episodes, and you want an accurate picture of what you're recording and what you're editing. So I really like these headphones. They have worked for me for years, and I've had no complaints with them. So if you want a really good set of affordable studio headphones, I really recommend the Audio Technica M 50x headphones. We'll leave links to all of our gear that we use at home in the show notes if you wanna go check it out, put together a wish list for Christmas coming up, all that kind of stuff. Thank you for tuning in. And we'll catch you the next one. Keep podcasting.
Alban:Everybody, thanks for sticking around to the end of the episode. This is Alban here dropping in some dynamic content to tell you about some updates to our dynamic content features. We're continuing to move forward with all the tools allowing you to trop ads and announcements into all of your episodes, so that you can record something once and automatically have added to the beginning or end of all of your episodes, the new updates that we've made to dynamic content. Number one, if you have an announcement that's maybe only applicable for a short period, and you replace it with something else will now that announcement stays in something we're calling our dynamic content library. The library is a list of all of the different announcements or advertisements, or just little pieces that you've dropped into your episodes over time so that you can reapply them whenever you would like. The second piece is that now those are tracked for how many times they've been played. So if you have an ad read, and you want to report back to your sponsor, and tell them how many times it's been downloaded. Well now you know, because that content may be spread across 30 different podcast episodes. You want to be able to count the stats for all of those for the entire time that it was out in the world. Reach out to us on Twitter, let us know how you were using dynamic content and the new dynamic content library. We'll see you in a couple of weeks. Bye