Apple Clarifies the New and Noteworthy Section + How to Earn Cryptocurrency From Your Listeners (and maybe a little Spotify news)

In this episode, the crew discusses Spotify's recent murders and acquisitions (*sorry* mergers and acquisitions), how to submit your show to be featured in Apple Podcasts, and why streaming cryptocurrency to your favorite podcaster may be the future of monetization.

Shoutouts to Dave Jones at Podcast Index and Kyrin from the Mere Mortals podcast for sending us our first Satoshis!

Value 4 Value:

• See which podcasts support "value 4 value"
• Download Castamatic from the iOS App Store
• DM Kevin on Twitter to earn some free Satoshis
• Use CashApp's refer a friend referral link to earn some free Bitcoin/USD

Updates from Apple Podcasts:

• New instructions for submitting to Apple Podcasts' New and Noteworthy
• Using chapters on Apple Podcasts

Other Links Mentioned in this Episode:

• Spotify Acquires Podsights and Chartable
• Complete the Podnews podcast platform survey

Chapters

• 0:00 We're professionals
• 0:37 Spotify acquires Chartable and Podsights
• 11:08 Podnews Survey
• 14:13 New and Noteworthy Update
• 26:07 Chapter Markers in Apple Podcasts
• 30:41 Value 4 Value

Transcript

Travis: 0:00

So Alban What is What do charitable and pod sites do?

Alban: 0:03

They bring I know that that's the question.

Kevin: 0:05

He's gonna cut out him asking the question, right,

Travis: 0:07

I just read you in. I'm trying to give you a clear question to the answer precisely.

Kevin: 0:11

This is the most unprofessional podcast I've ever been a part of.

Alban: 0:14

This is definitely not the most unprofessional podcast, I did a podcast interview, and somebody was like, oh, we gotta make sure sounds perfectly and then he recorded it in his car. And he was like, holding up his video like he was doing a tick tock reaction video and I was like, oh, but that

Kevin: 0:29

was also your podcast

Travis: 0:37

Alright, are you feeling better Alban?

Alban: 0:40

Am I feeling better? You guys feeling better? I'm

Travis: 0:41

pumped, man. I'm ready talking about Spotify acquiring charitable and pod site.

Alban: 0:45

I don't think energy means louder noise blowing

Travis: 0:49

out my eardrums gotta stop using such excellent technique.

Alban: 0:53

I like, oh, we need to get some energy drives just start screaming. No, that's not energy. That's just loud.

Kevin: 1:00

We're clearly procrastinating because I don't think any of us have anything to say about charitable and pod sites being acquired by Spotify. I mean, evidently, it's huge news. It's all over Twitter and pod news. And I don't know, people are like, Oh, this is a big deal. I don't I don't understand why is it a big deal?

Travis: 1:15

Let that Spotify acquired companies 11 and 12. And it's, you know, arsenal of acquisitions and mergers.

Kevin: 1:21

Yeah. Its next move to own the entire podcasting universe. Spotify has acquired charitable and pod sites. What does that mean for anybody?

Alban: 1:30

Well, charitable, I guess you should tell people at those companies do. charwoman pod sites are third party analytic software, it's really important for a lot of these companies. They're selling dynamic Lee inserted ads to be able to see, alright, the ad was putting that episode, do people actually make purchases. And so what is happening is they're trying to tag the phone and say, like, oh, that's the guy who listened to the podcast. And then they're later on going, Oh, it looks like that same person made a purchase on this website. And so they're just trying to provide the tracking. And so it's much easier to do this when you're like Facebook, and you're like, oh, Travis Albritton, saw this exact ad. And then he clicked it. And then the tracking pixel, we have on the website actually said he made a purchase. That story is much easier. Pod sites and charcoal, we're trying to do something a little bit more difficult by tagging the person twice. So they're providing all this back end. And it's pretty important for a lot of people who are selling a ton of ads to have that tracking. And now Spotify owns not like one of the best companies. But really like, I think the two that were the most well known, the most used now are both being acquired by Spotify.

Kevin: 2:42

Right. And I think I could be off on this, but I don't think I am I think this is accurate. Spotify already has this technology, for podcasts that are listened to through the Spotify app, I think they've already been doing this. What pod sites and charitable bring to the table is the ability to do this for podcasts or listen to like off network. And so if they are inserting advertising and podcasts that are getting played through third party apps, whether it be Apple podcasts, or overcast Pocket Casts, cast ematic, which we'll talk about later, any of these third party apps, they I don't know that they had the technology to be able to do the attribution the same way that pod sites and charitable have developed. And so by acquiring these two companies, now they can have a similar level of tracking on or off network. So I'm sure it's still gonna be better. If you're listening through Spotify, they're gonna have more data, they know exactly who the users are, you have to create a user account. They know if you're a premium or not, if you upgrade to premium, I think they ask additional questions like they get your billing address and all this other stuff, that they're still gonna have that level of data, but they have more than they had before. By making these two acquisitions.

Alban: 3:37

Yeah, if you're trying to use pod sites are chargeable, what they have to do is they have to figure out kind of who you are based on your download. And then they have to kind of figure out who you are, during the purchase. Spotify at least has that first part locked up. They're like, we have your credit card. We have your name, we know who you are, for sure. We've locked that part in. So they're really only solving for that second. But the bigger issue, and I think Travis kind of mentioned this off air could be for people who are using the services, but aren't with Spotify hosted shows. So Muse a big deal of I don't know, maybe it was like three or four months ago, when pod site says we won't renew our contract with Lipson. And that was like a personality issue that they had. But that is not good for anybody who is using Lipson sold ads, because then they weren't able to use one of the two trackers. Well, you could see this these acquisitions, especially since they bought to not being as much like hey, we need to beef up our own internal tracking, but instead being a little bit value destructive and saying, Hey, these are maybe going to not develop as hard and as fast as they were. Instead we're going to maybe limit the growth of outside tracking.

Travis: 4:51

Yeah, well, and I know in the press release, try to believe in said like, hey, in the near future, the premium features of charitable that you For, which is like the more accurate attribution that's going to go exclusive to megaphone, which is Spotify Premium podcast host in the near future. And so to this point of kind of playing defense a little bit, instead of having independent third party companies that can compete feature to feature with Spotify, his own internal tracking, they said, we're just gonna buy that up. So if you want this kind of tracking, we're the only game in town to again, just continue to build up their arsenal of tools to make them more attractive for advertisers. And then eventually, to be able to turn around and make the pitch to independent podcasters that if you're gonna be serious about podcasting, we have all the things that you need. And there's really no sense of going anywhere else. Like that's what they're trying to create.

Alban: 5:44

Yeah, it'll be interesting for companies like art 19, who are owned by Amazon, I don't know what they're using for their ad attribution. This is not as applicable to the Indy podcasters is more applicable to big shows that are tied in with a podcast host that isn't a Spotify one. So think of selling ads on smartlace. Right now, I don't know what they're using for attribution. But if I was using one of these two tools, I'd be going Yikes, we might need to try to build our own thing quickly. So that we, in the future have access to be able to do this tracking me you see these acquisitions a lot where they are valued, destructive. So Amazon at one point bought a robots company, and they were like, and now the only customer is Amazon, we will only build these robots for Amazon. And it costs a lot of money to buy a company and then cut off happier customers. But it was because they were like these robots are actually so far ahead. That we only want us to be able to have it. I don't know if like hot sites or charcoal actually had any patents that are going to be critical to this tracking. But yeah, it'd be interesting thing to watch, especially for people who are on big shows that are associated with Spotify.

Kevin: 6:52

I think the elephant in the room here that hasn't quite hit yet. I mean, the story just broke late yesterday, we're recording this morning. So we've had less than 12 hours to go through it. But both chargeable and pod site, they do some controversial stuff. We haven't dug into it too much, because it's not neither one of those services or services that we really promoted or recommended too often. But there are other companies that Alban just spoke about one he's you know, he mentioned that they didn't renew their contract with Lipson. And the reason for that is that some people that Lipson had been very critical of the tracking, specifically to his pod sites was doing. And they felt as though it was a it was privacy invasive, wasn't necessarily GDPR compliant. These are some of the claims that this person that lives in made against pod sites. And I don't know exactly where everyone listening stands on this stuff, or how much research has been done. But the point exists that these companies were developing technologies that we haven't as a podcast community completely embraced yet. Like, we're still trying to figure out how much data is it appropriate for us to collect about our listening audience? And how much is too much? And what should the privacy standards be? And I thought it was interesting. I mean, who knows when these acquisitions rectly actually made, they decided to announce it yesterday. But I feel like Spotify just came off a pretty rough two weeks. And now you're gonna announce the acquisition of two companies that are kind of controversial. I mean, maybe not hugely controversial, but at least there's some people in the podcasting space who are critical of these two companies. I wonder if the acquisition happened a couple of weeks ago, they held off on the announcement, or if they just don't really care about if anybody don't like these companies or not?

Travis: 8:22

Well, mergers and acquisitions take time. Right? So this is probably months in the works of negotiating back and forth terms,

Alban: 8:29

like mergers, right? Yeah, I keep hearing murders and acquisitions. I know you mean, you're saying, Sure. But like in a

Kevin: 8:37

true drive spin in the world.

Travis: 8:40

And so I almost wonder if the news is, as a response to the last couple of weeks was saying the people that you know, our investors, the people that are buying our stock on the stock market, the people that are giving us money, they care that we continue to make forward progress in this particular revenue stream. So we're going to change the narrative here, not really caring about what the indie podcaster people necessarily feel about these two additional companies coming into our fold. Right. But that's all kind of our speculation at this point.

Kevin: 9:11

Yeah. When we talk about the technology itself, I don't think the technology has been the barrier. You know, when you look at some of the larger podcast hosts in the space, I'm talking about us, and I'm talking about Lipson and whatever, any other any other large host developing the technology to be able to do more accurate attribution hasn't been the barrier for us being able to get into that game. What's been the barrier or the concerns around privacy? Sure. Right. That's why we've stopped short of pushing into the technology. So I don't know that the the fact that Spotify acquired these two companies, I don't know that there's going to be podcast hosts that respond by building the same talk technology even though the technology itself isn't super hard. I think what we're seeing from Spotify is that they are interested in controlling as much of the ad spend in the podcasting world as possible, and they don't necessarily have a huge audience. and getting into the politics around it, they're just trying to move fast and acquire as much of it as they can. Right. And I think, you know, as the world figures out where they stand on issues like this, Spotify will probably adjust accordingly, if that means that they can one of these companies that they bought, or they just change the technology or do things slightly differently, I don't think they I don't think it matters. Again, I don't love the way that Spotify is moving. But it's hard for me to criticize them in terms of it's smart, and it's strategic. And they're making the moves that I think if I were a Spotify shareholder, I'd be excited about their ability to make music long term and be a very profitable company, for shareholders, and just the the streaming music side of things was not looking good. They saw the end where that path was going. And it was not a happy place. And so they're they're making adjustments there. I think doing well in terms of looking out for their shareholders. But it doesn't seem to align with what's in the best interest of podcasting space staying open. And a healthy ecosystem for anybody wants to come in and play doesn't necessarily want to maximize the return on their content, or be at the mercy of somebody who owns the space like a YouTube. And what video creators have to live with.

Alban: 11:08

Odd news is doing a report card for 2022. And what they're doing is they're asking you come and put in some information, tell us what you think about the major podcasting apps, what features you like, what things are not doing well, what's working. And, you know, as we have these conversations about bigger companies getting more involved in podcasting, that Spotify is a major player, like actual podcast player, Apple podcasts, there's people who are very highly critical of just the way the app works. Anybody who's using these apps, like go and fill out this report card, it's going to be interesting, I think, when we get all this feedback, and we kind of aggregate it together. And we've got a bunch of people are saying, here's what's working in Spotify, here's what's not working, here's what I like about Apple, here's what I don't, here's what I like about overcast. So if you're using it podcasting app, and you have thoughts and opinions, click the link in the show notes or in the chapters right now where you can go and give your feedback and James Quinlan, I think you have till the end of beginning of March, and February, so two weeks, so you'll put in your thoughts, and then all that information will be included in some sort of report in the future.

Travis: 12:13

Well, and what will be interesting to me is to see how much of what we surmise, or think is the general consensus around things that people like and don't like about podcast apps. How true that is to just the general community, because the people filling out this report card are not going to be your average casual listener, it's gonna be like, people plugged into the podcast industry, people that are personally invested in one app or another. And so it'd be interesting, interesting to see out of that audience, the things that bubble up to the top as far as being important, not important, big problems, not a problem at all. That's the thing I'm interested in saying,

Alban: 12:48

yeah, there's obviously going to be some sampling bias here. I mean, 28% of the plays across all Buzzsprout are on Spotify. 37% are on Apple podcasts, I highly doubt that those are the main drivers for most people who are going to fill out the survey. People who are working in the industry who are heavily involved are either building apps, or they're using, you know, multiple apps, they're testing things out, and they're making sure things work. Like you have picked all the podcast nerds and ask them, Hey, will you give feedback, so the feedback said it'd be very different. So take that with a grain of salt when you get it. There's high high selection. A selection bias. Yeah.

Travis: 13:28

But I don't know how different it would be then, you know, like phone interviews where they like call up people and say, Hey, do you want to answer some questions for the survey we're doing? Like that, in itself is a selection bias? Because who answers the phone anymore?

Alban: 13:39

Well, there's selection bias, everything, but then there is somewhere the it is very, very intense. And it's very unlikely to match the general demographics.

Travis: 13:48

It's like I can't believe that when we only advertise this on this one subreddit that we got these kinds of responses, right? All right, cool.

Alban: 13:55

The people who read pod news are not the typical podcast listeners. So we will take it with a grain of salt. But it is interesting to pull together all these thoughts and opinions about the major podcast apps. And if you have thoughts and opinions, let your voice be heard fill this thing out.

Travis: 14:13

Apple has released some new guidance on how to get listed into their new and noteworthy section, which is something that I know a lot of podcasters are interested in. So we want to make sure that we cover it. And first and foremost, I think the benefit here is if you've ever thought about considered submitting your show to get featured in Apple podcasts. There's now an article on Apple's website, we'll link it in the show notes. That gives you an idea of what you can expect of the kind of thing you're looking for the process involved in submitting your show for a possibility of being featured and just create some more transparency around a process that had been pretty opaque and kind of behind closed doors for quite a while.

Alban: 14:51

Yeah, so main three things you got to do get lots of reviews and listens launch three episodes and it's only available in the first eight weeks. Everybody got your podcasts They said the myths that have been sitting around for the last entire time that I've ever been in podcasting, those are the three things.

Kevin: 15:05

Yeah, maybe there weren't myths, I think what has happened is the process has changed. There was a time in which following that guidance would have actually increased your odds of getting listed in new and noteworthy. Unfortunately, it was years ago, but the information hasn't changed. So the process changed two years ago, but the information around it hasn't changed. And so it sounds like Apple has finally said, you know, what, we're tired of seeing people launch with three to five episodes and trying to get all their friends and family to review as quickly as possible. And then, you know, complain about not getting featured, we should just tell people that there's a new process around getting featured.

Alban: 15:37

Yeah, so I don't know how true those old claims were, it does seem like those are definitely more true. In the past, they're not true. Now. Those are notably absent from this document. So Apple lists for things about how getting featured in new and noteworthy actually work. So we can kind of walk through number one, use this actual promo request form, there is a real form you need to fill out and you ask Apple, I'm sure that if a big podcast that's really important to Apple knows about comes out, maybe they will highlight it, but they want you to put it in the forum. And they're looking for stories and interesting insight on niche topics. And they want fresh perspectives such as entertaining. And they say, and like we talked about before, it's not stuff this just like brand new recently launched. That's not one of the criteria they want to pitch to well, this is typical stuff, but like, write a good subject line, give a good overview, and make sure you use artwork that follows APA guidelines. And they specifically say Tip number two is like actually follow our artwork guidelines. So they need two pieces of artwork. And one is that main show art that needs to be high quality, the 3000 by 3000 image. But they also do these more landscape pieces of artwork. And so they're a bit wider. And they're a little more strict about that artwork, they have explicit like they put this template out there. But they also say things like, don't put your sponsor logo or network, if that's in this artwork, we're not going to feature it. So you'll

Travis: 17:11

notice that even shows that are promoted in the featured section at the top banner and browse that podcast artwork may have a network logo on it. But that landscape graphic will not run. That's what we're talking about.

Alban: 17:24

Exactly. Number three, optimize your episode title. So Apple has asked everybody forever, like stop putting the number of the episode in the title. So if this is episode 70 of Buzzcast, like don't put that in the title, because that's not likely to get people to click More, use a good title, don't put your date, don't put the number. If you want to put that information, you can submit that information with the Apple podcasts number tag or whatever it's called.

Travis: 17:54

Right. So we have season an episode number fields when you're uploading a podcast episode. That's what we submit under their season and episode tags. And so like in Buzzcast, if you open an apple podcast, you'll noticed for this episode, it'll be like 70 period space, and then the title that is using Apple podcasts tax. That's not actually in the episode field episode title field. That's a different field. And that's what they're saying.

Kevin: 18:21

And that's the way that we recommend all podcasters do it, we recommend that you use the season and episode tags that we have in the UI for you to use and don't put the number in the title of your episode itself. Now, some people will say, oh, you should do it in both, because some third party apps don't support the apple tag for seasons and episode numbers. And what I say is, well, they should that is on these, this tag was introduced years ago, it's ridiculous that you have third party apps that are still haven't picked up on these tags. Now that's an iTunes specific namespace tag. Shouldn't that be more generic? Shouldn't it? Yes, it should. And the podcast namespace project is going to take that on, there will be replacement tags for all of those. And for a while we're gonna have to have support both in your feed. But at this point, that tag has been around forever. Stop putting numbers in the title of your episode, start using the season and episode fields that are specific in the UI and third party legacy apps. If they aren't getting on board. Let's force them to get on board. Like we're going to format these tags correctly and apps need to pick up on it. Rant over. I don't rant on third party apps very often.

Alban: 19:19

A bunch of rants get ready.

Kevin: 19:21

I had coffee. I'm a little spicy this morning. Number four

Alban: 19:24

is timing is key. So Apple is refreshing these like every week. And so they're always putting up new podcasts into the new and noteworthy banner carousel thing. Monday seems to be when they update them the most. So if you say hey, the right day for me to start promoting this episode is on a Monday, that's going to line up with Apple's editorial calendar, which is great. Make sure you're actually talking about what you're going to do to promote Apple podcasts because I used a bad example I kind of hinted it Barack Obama's podcast that was done with Spotify. I doubt Apple actually put that one in there because it's exclusive and it's highly promoting it a certain service that's not Apple, no, they're not gonna go out of their way to put you at the top of their app. So make sure you're saying like, Yeah, I'm actually pushing people to Apple podcast. This is a two way relationship that they're looking for not just one, and then line up with the new cycle stuff that's happening right now. So if you go, look, it's February is Black History Month, they actually have some podcasts about black history. That makes sense. There may be a podcast up there about the Olympics that are going on right now. In a few months, there will be new things in the top there right now. There's a bunch of podcast around Coronavirus and COVID.

Travis: 20:36

And in beginning of January, they had like, New Year New you mindfulness thing being promoted, like, Hey, you're trying to do some new year's resolutions, here's some podcast help, I can guarantee in October, there's gonna be a bunch of politics podcasts popping up about the midterms that are coming up in November, right. So like, I know, so excited about more politics in my life. So be mindful of that. So if you already planning for something in the future, like let's say there's something really important in your particular niche coming up in the summer. And you already know you're going to create that kind of content, try and time your promotion, and your request to be featured in apple with that particular newsworthy thing.

Alban: 21:12

Yeah, that's a good piece of advice that was giving you it's this free marquee advice from Apple, like, maybe lineup your podcast with actual events in the real world. So people want to listen. And that's when you should be submitting to them. So keep all that in mind as you're doing this. And then they say, if you aren't selected, that's okay. Resubmit in six, eight weeks, and maybe when it's again, relevant. So if you launch something now, it doesn't have to be like, it came out today. And now I have to get Apple podcasts new noteworthy today, you can submit again, in two months, when it actually is relevant. So resubmit, you don't need to send them follow up emails, and like, all sorts of DMS and try to blow up the entire apple podcast team, like, let them live their lives, guys, so they'll reach out to you if they need anything, but try to put everything together and give them the package. But also remember like this is a decent amount of work for indie podcaster and it's not critical to your podcasting success to actually be listed in new noteworthy when you launch Oh, good

Kevin: 22:17

good. Alban picked up that bucket of cold water poured for him. Like, that's how I feel about all this, this is, is great, right? It's, it's totally fine. But you know, this is a lot of work for independent podcasters. And I think what you're doing at the end of the day is you're, you're buying a very expensive scratch off lottery ticket, there are very few podcasts that end up getting this sort of feature treatment within Apple podcasts. And there's probably a decent number of submissions. Now I imagine they want more. That's why they put this guidance out and created this form and everything like they want more to be able to choose from, but you're probably competing against 1000s of podcasts that are constantly looking for a feature space. And so the chances of you getting picked up is probably low. And it's the cost is pretty high in terms of all the steps that they want you to go through to be able to get featured. And so if we're looking at like, you know, risk versus reward, I think I'd put this strategy, you know, pretty low on my list of promotional growth tactics to be able to grow my podcast,

Travis: 23:13

can I play a little devil's advocate here, you can tell. So I think something that Alban touched on is that not only are these good things that Apple is looking for, for their promotion, but these are also really helpful things to even just have an immediate kit at all. And if you just take this one piece at a time, and say, Okay, over the next three weeks, I'm going to start pulling these pieces together, I'm going to create a really interesting bio about myself, I'm going to update my artwork, I'm going to really sketch out my own marketing plans with dates, you know, then you start to put these pieces together that you could package together for an apple podcast promotion. But then when you go as a guest on another show, and they're wanting to promote that interview, you say, here's all these assets that I've created to talk about my podcast to your audience. And so if instead of trying to sit down and crush this all in an afternoon, you see this as a long term investment in being able to have things at your disposal to help promote your show. And then every six to eight weeks, saying, Let me refine that a little bit and resubmit it to Apple. Let me change this thing over here. Let me let me update this artwork and resubmit it to Apple, then it doesn't feel as big if you see it as more of a long term project instead of let me see if I can get this done in the weekend to try and get 10,000 listeners next month.

Alban: 24:32

Yeah, most of the stuff in here is stuff I'm going to say, Hey, make sure you're doing this. Try to promote your podcast about the Olympics during the Olympics. Sure, like make sure you're lining up with big events that already have buzz, write good titles, and don't put the numbers in there and make good artwork. All those are totally correct. The only one that is an additional lift for Apple for you to do to submit to Apple is that special artwork and so on. If you feel comfortable

Kevin: 25:01

while I'm filling out their very long form,

Travis: 25:03

and talking about how you can promote Apple podcasts.

Kevin: 25:06

Well, that's fine. This is good advice. I'm done with the cold water advocate for

Travis: 25:11

that kid. Yes, yes.

Alban: 25:13

So it just depends on where you are in your podcasting journey. This is now something to have in your toolkit, many of these things should be you should be following. This is a little bit more for like PRX and the bigger wondery. And some of the bigger shows like I know Apple loves the indie shows. But a lot of what Apple wants you to be doing are things that the bigger companies are doing, they want it to be professional. But for you to be that level of professionalism might be a little bit much.

Travis: 25:41

Well, it also helps to have a podcast that is in a particular kind of content. So like Buzzcast doesn't really make sense to be featured in Apple podcasts, if it's like, very niche specific to people that produce podcasts, of the millions of people, hundreds of millions, people who have iPhones, how many of them are interested in Buzzcast? Not very many, we're not making the show for them, right? It's all the stars have to align. But if they do for you, it could be good. Now Apple has also released a new guidance on chapter markers, how to use chapters. Now this is something that we currently do.

Kevin: 26:15

Yeah, it's old news, new documentation. Yeah, is what it is. So Apple has supported chapters for a very long time. They supported chapters, there's two different chapter standards for podcasts right now. One is to basically take the chapter information and embedded in the audio file itself. And the other is the podcasting to auto namespace spec, which says you should list the chapters in a separate json file, which is linked in your RSS feed. So technical info aside, just think it's in the audio file, or it's outside of the audio file and more like available in the RSS feed. Apple only supports it when it's embedded in the mp3 file, which is the old way of doing things. There's good and bad with that what the good is that it's been around a long time. So if you do that, you have a better chance of it working across more podcast playing apps. The downside is that the more information you put in your audio file, the bigger that file gets, so it takes your listener more time to download it. And it takes up more space on their device, it's not great. The new way of doing it to be able to get rid of the Get rid of the bad and keep the good is that we'll link them in a separate document. And then so players that can display chapters and want to show chapter art or anything else that's available with the chapters, they can request that file only if they need it. So they only download it if they need it. And if they don't need it, there's no additional downloading happening that's unnecessary.

Alban: 27:29

That really is for the artwork, that's the issue there. Because to say, hey, chapter two starts at this section, that's almost no data that's really tiny, right? The issue is when there you also want to have that picture in there. And now you've got five pictures inside of the mp3 file that now has gotten way bigger, and you want those to be high quality images. Well, now everybody downloading across the world. And you know, the US is the anomaly where we have lots of high speed internet connections all the time. People are downloading in a lot of other places. Or maybe like, Oh, this is a really heavy audio file, and it's crushing the two gigs of data that I have a month. So it's really important for

Kevin: 28:10

them. Yeah, and five images in my experience is on the low end, like people who get into chapters, and especially people who put images with their chapters. It's like watching a flipbook. Sometimes you listen to it, 30 minute podcasts, and it will have, you know, 36 chapters and 36 images, like a keynote presentation. Yeah. And so you can imagine taking 36 pictures from your phone and trying to mash them into an audio file, it can make the audio file double in size. And so it's not insignificant. Now, of course, that's an extreme example, it's not all podcasters use that many chapters and that many images, but a lot of them do. And so it becomes problematic. So it's not scalable. And so what we did is in Buzzsprout, we've supported chapters for a very long time, we have a chapter creation tool. Last year, we added the ability to attach images to your chapters, since that was part of the new spec, and it did it in a way that didn't completely inflate your audio file. And so we followed the new way of doing that the podcast namespace way of doing that Apple doesn't support that yet. I hope they do. At some point, it seems like they're kind of rallying around this idea of, hey, chapters are good, and people should use them. But it also sounds like like the documentation team, which is doing a good job putting out all this new documentation for Apple is a little disconnected from the development team, or at least they don't. Maybe their priorities are different are there the timelines to get stuff done is different. But I'm hoping that the documentation team who's excited about chapters can get into the ears of the development team and saying we should really support these chapters as well. Not necessarily dropped the old ones but to support these new ones as well. It's, it's a really great implementation of chapters, and gives you all the benefits, but none of the drawbacks so that's the future. So that's the reason that for images anyway, Buzzsprout only supports the namespace way of doing things. But for general chapters without images, we'd support both ways. So if you create your chapters one time through the Buzzsprout chapter tool, you will get chapters in Apple podcasts, they just won't have your images, but then you load up an app Like, podcasts addict is like the biggest one that supports the new version. Like when you're doing new stuff, even though it's better, not everybody supports it. But we'll see more and more apps coming online. And we

Travis: 30:09

put chapters in all of our podcasts. So like Buzzcast, you'll see chapter markers.

Kevin: 30:13

We don't do images, usually with chapters. But listen, let's for Travis for this chapter of our podcasts, let's have you find an image. And then so people who are listening, you can see if your app is displaying it, you know, they support the new namespace chapters. And if it's not displaying it, you'll know that you're an app that doesn't support that yet, so you can reach out to the developer and tell them please support the new chapters. I want to see what artwork Travis chose for this chapter.

Travis: 30:34

Let's let's see how much influence we really have.

Alban: 30:37

That'd be good artwork drafts.

Travis: 30:41

So Kevin, people started sending us money. This is a new development.

Kevin: 30:44

This is huge. This is it's been a really fun week. So I decided last week to dig into Super Value for value is and get caught up on all the latest news and happenings around the ability for podcasters to receive donations in cryptocurrency, which the cryptocurrency that is being used is Satoshis. And everyone just calls them SATs saps, they are fractional percentage of Bitcoin. They're one 100,000,000th of a Bitcoin. So it's very small amount of actual money, right? Like once that is worth nothing like less than a penny, way less than a penny. But roughly, I think it's like roughly 10,000 SATs is roughly five bucks, you know, and that changes it fluctuates from day to day. So there's two different ways that we should talk about this. One is from the podcast Alban, you put on that noisy jacket again, this is what happens. Ryan Alban is wearing an aluminum foil jacket and just put it back on. It's terrible for recording.

Alban: 31:40

You guys met AC going, and I've got some sort of cold that makes me feel cold. And so we had this long interlude. And so I had to put my jacket back on,

Travis: 31:49

Are you warm enough? Now? No, take it off.

Kevin: 31:51

Okay, well, I will continue, I'll sit still. So there are two different ways that we're going to talk about value for value. One is on the podcaster side, which is being able to receive donations from your listeners. And then the other is on the listener side, which is being able to support podcasters that you love. And I'm going to mostly focus on the listener side today, I think that's that process has become easy enough that I think anyone who's listening to the show is going to have fun and enjoy the opportunity like to be able to support podcasts that you listen to. And so I know that you're also all podcasters. And you're like, I want to be able to receive these donations. And you can do that it's just a little bit complicated still. So the stuff is getting easier and easier all the time, when it's easy enough that anybody with no crypto experience can do it in 20 minutes or less, then I would recommend that you go do that. But that time is not quite yet. And so if you are interested as a podcaster, in setting your podcast up to be able to receive donations, I'm going to tell you to go to the podcast index.org website, find your podcast, click on the lightning bolt and then follow the instructions. It is not necessarily for the faint of heart, it's going to take you a little while you're going to probably run into a question or two, there are places that you can get support, our support team is not going to be able to support you very well on this stuff yet. But there is a community out there. And if you want to dig into it, it's very possible. So I figured it out. And I'm not a huge crypto person, but I figured out how to do it. And it took me probably 30 minutes, maybe 45 minutes, and I was able to figure it out and get everything set up. Once you get your tags, you can then send those tags to the Buzzsprout support team. And we'll add them to the feed for you. But that's a step that you don't even have to do. That's like an optional step. Once you're listed in the index, most of these apps that allow listeners to send donations directly to your podcast, they will reference the podcasting index API's, they will get your tags for you whether they're in your feed or not. But it's still a good thing to do. So you can send those tags, this port will add them. What I want to talk about what I really want to focus on is as a listener, first of all, which podcast apps do we recommend if you want to be able to send Bitcoin payments to the podcast you're listening to? And then what's the process of getting it set up? Alright, so what changed? I'm going to ask I'm gonna interview myself, Kevin, what changed over the past week that made it, you know, easy enough for podcast listeners to go ahead and start sending payments. Glad you asked Kevin, glad you asked to answer that one. Yeah. It's very interesting that you asked that. So what changed in the last week? Was that the Cash App?

Travis: 34:12

The Cash App, literally, it's called Cash App. Yeah, that's the name. Yeah. Yeah.

Kevin: 34:16

You can open the App Store on I think Android. I think it's got it's got to be on Android and iOS devices, right? Mm hmm. You can now buy crypto that's on that's available on the Lightning Network. Now, what does that mean? I don't know necessarily. Like the technological

Alban: 34:33

interview yourself. You stopped interviewing.

Travis: 34:37

What does that word mean?

Kevin: 34:38

I don't know. It just works. I'm not gonna do invoices. So I can't do like the questioner in desert. So Kevin, what does that mean that the cash app is now in Lightning Network? That's another great question. What that means is that you can now easily buy cryptocurrency through the cash app that you can fund a listening apps wallet with. I think I said that correctly.

Alban: 34:55

You can buy Bitcoin with cash app is the only crypto they support There's two networks, there's like Bitcoin, the normal network that's expensive and time consuming to send things, right. But there now is the second layer protocol called lightning. There you go. It's very cheap and very fast to send money, right? The name lightning. Yes, yes. And that's been around for at least five years, but has not been supported by any major wallets, at least in such a seamless way. And now we've got cash app, which has added that support, right, so

Kevin: 35:29

now what you can do that you couldn't do two weeks ago, but you can do now is you can open up the cash app, you can scan like your bank card, like a debit card, and you can buy bitcoin very easily. And then once you have some bitcoin in the cash app, you can pay a lightning invoice with that Bitcoin, okay? It was Trust me, I don't want to go through why it was much more complicated two weeks ago, but it was much more complicated two weeks ago, being able to pay a lightning invoice straight from the Cash App is fantastic, because now it's just just two apps, you just need your podcast listening app and the cash app and you can fund you can move money from that cash app into your podcast listening app. Once you have money in your podcast listening app, as you're listening to podcasts that support value for value, you can stream as you're listening. So I can spend like 25 cents a minute or 40 cents a minute or 50 sets a minute. Um, so I think I said since I meant SATs, yes, that's terminology, right. So you can stream SATs as you're listening. And you can also boost so like a regular boost. I think the default is like 500 sets. And booster gram is like the default is like 1000. But again, you can customize these, like how much you're sending. Anytime you send a booster um, if you want to send 5000 sets instead of just 1000. You can totally do that. And with a booster gram, you can also send a message. And so we hooked this up. I hooked this up just last week, and in the one week that we've had it live we already have. What did I say in the pre show? You said 11,000 like

Alban: 36:50

480 Satoshis, which we went and did some calculations. And we have something like

Travis: 36:56

$5 $5.01. Yeah, yeah, my dogs didn't have a week ago.

Kevin: 37:01

Right. And that is with zero promotion. We haven't talked about it yet. We didn't tweet about it. We didn't put a blog post out, we didn't do anything. All we did was hook it up. And just let's see what happens. And we started getting Satoshi. So there are people out there you know, in our audience is more podcast centric, so they're going to be more cutting edge. If you're doing you know, a children's podcast or homeschool podcast or real estate podcast, you're probably not gonna have as many people in your audience who are using these apps, but it doesn't hurt.

Alban: 37:26

I noticed some of the names of the people who have sent us the tissues. Four of these have come from the person who invented the protocol. Unless people who have been working on the podcasting namespace or listening to your podcast, you may your results may vary.

Kevin: 37:42

Yeah, he was helping me out quite a bit. And he sent me quite a few test books. But all that aside, this is exciting. I'm very excited about this. Here's here's why I'm so worried. Here's why I'm bubbling over with excitement, because I'm finding it so much fun to listen to podcasts that I can support directly. So I don't have to jump through subscription hoops, whether they be on Apple, or you know, Spotify subscription solution or a third party subscription solution, and commit to paying them $5 A month or whatever. I can just set a very reasonable streaming set value that I think is a fair amount to send them as I'm enjoying the show. And so for me, that's around 4050 sets per minute, roughly, and I'm listening to the podcasts to show I'm listening to pod land. I'm listening to I listened to Buzzcast I sent myself some sets,

Travis: 38:28

right? That's good. I'm glad you you like

Alban: 38:32

what's the information for this? Like? Travis I are on this podcast. So

Kevin: 38:37

yeah, so that you can set that up. Now. I didn't sell it to be transparent with you guys. I didn't sell. But you can sell shares. And so if you guys gave me your address for your lightning wallets, I can set a split so I could go into the podcast index and I can edit our tag. And I could say, you know podcaster Kevin gets, you know, 30% podcaster Alban gets 30% podcaster Travis gets 30% And then there's 10% leftover, which you could do to a donation to like the podcast namespace I could put there I could put everyone's wallet in. And then the apps will automatically figure out as Satoshis come in, whether they come in through streaming or booster booster grams, how to divide those and how many to deposit into each Wallet. So that's all there. Another really cool thing is that Tom and I were guests on the podcasting to auto show last week. And at the end of the show, they asked us for our wallet to send them our wallet ID so they could put that in and they created a split for their guests. So just by us guesting on their show, people who listened to their show, not even our show are now get supporting us, you know, so they're saying if somebody doesn't matter how the studies come in, again, streams booster booster grams, however they come in, we get a share of that. This is super fun, and it's fantastic. And I encourage you guys to explore it. The app I'm going to recommend that you start with is start by being a listener and supporting podcasts that you listen to that have value for value setup. And so the app that I want you to get is only available on iOS right now. So if you have an Apple phone Go out and download cast ematic it's ca sta ma T IC cast ematic we'll put a link in the show notes to put a link in the show notes right. And you find search up Buzzcast Because that you know is a value for value enable podcast, start playing an episode and then you'll see at the bottom, when you're playing an episode, you'll see a button that says Create a wallet, tap that you can encrypt it if you want to, which just means you're gonna put a password on it, you don't have to if you don't want to, because it's it's really not a lot of money that you're gonna be putting in this wallet anytime this is all experimental too. So don't go ahead and find your wallet with like $500 Don't put any more money in your wallet than you're afraid of losing because the possibility certainly exists that you want to pass on that automatic tomorrow, or cast ematic tomorrow, and all your SATs are gone. So just put like $5 in at a time.

Alban: 40:42

I love how high this segment is. And it's very quickly you're like, Oh, you could lose all this money easily. I don't know how but I bet you could. Yeah.

Kevin: 40:52

Yeah. So don't put any more in than you'd be you know,

Travis: 40:56

this is a disclaimer, we're not promoting a pump and dump crypto scheme no on like a meme coin that we're telling all of our followers to go have fun up.

Kevin: 41:03

Yeah, instead of spending$5 on Clash of Clans or Candy Crush, spend $5 and fund your podcast while this week, and then support some podcasts. And so what I want to do is I want to help our listeners who want to be able to fund their wallets like do that easily. So I'm going to take the cash app step out of it for the first 10 people that send me a lightning invoice to my Twitter, like DM me a lightning invoice for 5000 sets. I'm going to pay it for you. I'm going to find your wallet. I just did it for Travis in the pre show. Travis, walk us through the steps that you went through, and that I paid your invoice and then you had 5000 sets. Sure. So

Travis: 41:39

when you open up the cast ematic app, there is a link where you can copy essentially a QR code that's linked to the lightning wallet that you set up in the app.

Kevin: 41:49

Right when you say fund your wallet. There's a button that says fund when you say fund it's gonna say how many sets do you want to fund looking like you're creating an invoice to send to somebody. And so you have to type 5000 If you send me a 6000 set invoice, I'm not gonna pay it gotta follow instructions. I'm only paying 5000 or

Travis: 42:03

lower. And if you're gonna ask for SAS, why not ask for 5000 That's right. So you're gonna say 5000 It's gonna create a QR code with a bunch of random texts and letters and numbers and stuff like that. Just copy that. You just copy it to clipboard. Open Twitter DM Kevin Finn K fin Kayfun. Yep. And then paste it in there and send it as a DM. Then Kevin can open it up and say, okay, allocate fulfill this invoice. Yep. From the Buzzcast Lightning wallet, your personal lightning wallet. You funded

Kevin: 42:31

this. It's personal. Okay. Don't worry about who's funding I'm just gonna pay your invoice. So if I get a Twitter DM from anybody's listening, the first 10 that I get for 5000 sets or less, I'm gonna pay them. And so then you're going to after I pay it, you're going to relaunch cast ematic and you're gonna see that your wallet now has 5000 Satoshis Alright, walk

Alban: 42:48

me through this. I have now downloaded cast dematic first yet

Travis: 42:51

to subscribe to the podcast. I did. Alright, open it and start playing an episode. Okay, on that single episode playing screen at the bottom underneath the label.

Alban: 43:01

Oh, it says no. Okay, so I started playing one of our last Buzzcast episodes and now both neath it says no wallet available. Create wallet. Yes. That. No encryption. Okay. Remember you guys saying that? Yes. I missed this part. You were wrestling your jacket. Yeah, it was definitely rustling the jacket. Mount of funds. 5000. Okay, and now I've got the copy. No, I AirDrop that to Kevin

Travis: 43:27

Finn. No, no, you have to DM them on Twitter. That's how this works. Just

Alban: 43:32

Alright, so I'll send this to Kevin. And then he would send me money to this wallet. Yes.

Travis: 43:37

Like you just send it and then the next time you open the app after Kevin has fulfilled the invoice it would just show up

Alban: 43:43

and then can actually send the booster grant with the message. Yes, but

Travis: 43:47

we're not calling him booster grams. We haven't gotten that segment yet. You're gonna have the outline.

Alban: 43:52

Oh, man, I'm under the weather today. So I'm operating at like 40% speed right now.

Travis: 43:57

That's alright, we'll carry you out. And we'll carry you through the episode. Hopefully that was transparent enough. Clear enough.

Kevin: 44:01

I think we're crystal clear.

Travis: 44:04

Value for value works. Yeah,

Kevin: 44:05

if this works. We'll try it again next week. I hope I get more than 10. But I'm gonna pay the first 10. We'll see how it goes. And we might try it again next week.

Travis: 44:11

Yeah. Now one thing that's interesting, because Cash App is an element of this. Yeah. Where you're using cash app to convert dollars into Bitcoin, which you can then send to your lightning wallet, right? Cash App has a refer a friend program, okay, where if you sign up for cash app, and then send your referral link to someone, you both get $5 in your cash app wallet, free money. That's like 10,000 Satoshis. Right. It's so 10,000. And so if you create a cash app profile, and then add a link, that referral link in the show notes of your episodes, and say, Hey, if you want to support this podcast, all you have to do is click this link to set up a free cash app profile. You get$5 I get $5 you can convert that into Bitcoin and use that to stream Satoshis to your favorite podcasts. Maybe even this one is genius. Now Not only are you the podcaster, making $5 for every listener that does this, but now they have $5 worth of Satoshis. They can stream to you and other podcasts they listen to, right.

Alban: 45:09

So go to the description and click on Travis's referral code.

Travis: 45:14

So I mean, whenever we can get a VC funded company to give free money to people to support podcasting, we're gonna figure it out.

Kevin: 45:21

Yeah. So next question is once you have the 5000 Satoshis in your wallet, at least 10 of you. What do you do with those, now you have the option to decide how many Satoshis you want to stream per minute, you can put zero in there, you can put one but like the default I think is 40. And it's you can start you can type in sa t to USD conversion in Google and kind of figure out how much you know how many pennies or dollars or whatever you want a string the minute I think I use, you know, typically I use around somewhere between 25 and 50. Depending on the show I'm listening to. It gets really exciting because there's a couple buttons down there. Also, you can boost and you can boost a gram so boost is just you know, throwing $1 in the tip jar. Set the amount for what you want your boost to be a booster gram allows you to type a message that gets included with your boost. So it's like a telegram boost. Yeah, and I call them booster grams.

Alban: 46:09

Why is it called a booster gram sounds like Instagram, but with boosts Yeah, I

Kevin: 46:13

didn't come up with the name but I like it. Like it's fun thing to say and at least in cast ematic when you send a booster gram, you get the confetti pop on the screen and you know I'm a sucker for competitive I

Travis: 46:22

love this. Any animations, man?

Kevin: 46:25

Yeah. I love it. So we again first week we set this up we have a good number of booster grams that were sent to us. Now, truth be told somewhat a lot of these were from Dave Jones because he was helping me set this up. And Dave Jones runs the podcast in this index project along with Adam curry. And so it's nice to have friends in high places. And so Dave's shot me a bunch of boosters, we're testing this out. But I'm gonna read some of them. We're gonna call this segment buzz boosts. Travis is going to work on a cool bumper to lead us into the segment from week to week. So if you set this up and you listen to Buzzcast and you send us booster grams, we will read your message on the podcast within reason. Yeah, within reason.

Travis: 47:01

Yeah, no profanity, you know, keep it clean.

Kevin: 47:04

Yeah, nothing controversial. We're not a political podcast. It's gonna

Travis: 47:07

only say nice things to us. We're not going to read a lot. Oh, no, we might read a well written stingers but you know, yeah, I

Alban: 47:13

think that's totally reasonable. Yeah, we'll read negative comments within reason there's some stuff that is not gonna be reserved

Travis: 47:21

the right to decide what is we'll figure this out as we go along. Yes. Anyway, we didn't read yours and you gave us a boost. Maybe it's because of the the telegram you sent us this program.

Kevin: 47:29

Okay, let's get into it. So Kieran from the mere mortals podcast send us a booster gram for 7400 SATs. Very nice, very generous. Thank you, Karen. And he said sending you a buzz boost. Eight to to to for your great appearance on the podcasting to Dotto show. So that was a show that Tom and I were on last week. This is 100% The reason why I switched my three podcasts on your platform you get it value for value is the future and solve so many problems that we are seeing not only with the podcasting industry, but also with negative comments on social media spam and emphasizing real connection with your audience rather than arbitrary growth. So fantastic. Karen, thank you so much. That's very generous.

Alban: 48:07

What's a buzz boost? 8222

Kevin: 48:10

I don't know what the 8222 is. But buzz boost. I love like that's what we're gonna call the segment. We're gonna call it the buzz boost segment.

Travis: 48:17

Absolutely.

Alban: 48:18

Okay, I'll read some more. Dave Jones. Test boost. Dave Jones. Hello. Dave Jones. First booster Buzzcast Dave Jones. Congrats guys love having Tom and Kevin on podcasting 2.0 show last week. Here's some bonus sets.

Travis: 48:35

Well, he also give us a shout out for the global stats update. Yeah, for

Kevin: 48:39

the 100 million downloads. So that was very generous. That last boost from Dave Jones was for 2129 cents. We really appreciate all not not just the SATs, but all the help along the way. And all you're doing for the podcast index, Dave. So thank you so much for being a fan and supporter of the show and the podcasting industry on a whole.

Travis: 48:54

Well, and Kevin, just to kind of wrap this segment, there is one little marketing angle that I know you want to talk about. Because this is relatively new. And the people that are putting time and investing into setting up value for value on their podcast are like excited when it works out. These are getting a lot of airtime. I mean, we have already given Kieran and Dave some big props here on the show. Yep, for a relatively inexpensive investment.

Kevin: 49:16

Right. And I did the same thing last week. Once I got my cast ematic app set up and I got some sets in there. I was listening to pod news and a question popped into my mind as they were talking. And so I went ahead and gave them a booster Graham, I boosted them and I gave asked a question. I said basically like do you get the timestamp of the boost of when it sent and they not only read out during their their? I think they call their segment booster gram corner. So they're reading out their boosts. They read the question and then they answered it live on the podcast. So this is a great way as a podcaster. If you find especially other podcasts that are in the same niche or category that you're podcasting in that have this set up, go ahead and boost them ask questions, give them props, thank them for what they're doing. And you might get some airtime if they choose to do it. I would suggest anybody that sets us up for their podcast. Give a shout out to anybody who's supporting our show at least like right now, because it's we're trying to get more and more people to do it. And hopefully one day we get to the point where we can't do this anymore. But like right now it's low hanging fruit for being able to send some boosts, which are, they're not expensive. I mean, you're talking about $1, or $2, to be able to get a call out on somebody's show. That's fantastic.

Travis: 50:15

And this is not too dissimilar from like YouTube live streams, we have the super chat, and you can like pay money to get your comment, like pinned to the top of the chat. Or if you have a Patreon account, and you're giving shout outs to your patrons on your show. It's like that. But again, relatively new, it can be a lot of excitement around people getting SATs in their wallets. And so take advantage of it for sure.

Kevin: 50:35

And if you want to find podcasts that are value for value enabled, so you can try to find new shows to listen to new shows that you might want to give a boost to Graham to ask them a question or possibly get a shout out, go to podcast index.org. And then right in the top nav, there's a button that says value for value. And if you click on that, they have a directory of all the podcasts that have value for value enabled. So once you get some stats in your wallet, you're gonna say hey, we want to find shows, you know, beyond just Buzzcast that I can send money to and I can boost and all this stuff. That's the directory to go to the value for value directory on the podcast index.org website.

Travis: 51:08

So we look forward to giving shout outs in the next episodes, everyone that takes Kevin up on his offer and get some some free SATs. We hope you enjoyed it. Until next time, keep podcasting.

Alban: 51:24

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 weeks.

Unknown: 52:50

Bye