Buzzcast
Buzzcast is a roundtable discussion about podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. We'll cover current events and news, podcast strategy, tools we are using, and dip into the Customer Support mailbag to test our podcasting knowledge. If you want to stay up-to-date on what's working in podcasting, Buzzcast is the show for you.
Buzzcast
How We Fixed A Major Drop In Downloads
As we try to solve the mystery of fluctuating podcast downloads, we delve into a more serious conversation sparked by recent trends on the Buzzsprout platform. Could it be the ripple effect of Apple's auto-download adjustments, or is something else at play? We offer up some troubleshooting tips for fellow podcasters.
The discussion continues with a look at Spotify's latest features, including transcripts and chapter markers. We'll share firsthand experiences and management strategies to help podcasters make the most of these updates.
Alban will be at the Podcast Movement Meetups next week! If you want to join in on the fun, RSVP here:
Plus, we pay tribute to an incredible member of our support team, Addie, as she embarks on a new chapter focused on family. Send in your cheers and warm wishes to support@buzzsprout.com as we celebrate her dedication to the podcast community!
Sound-Off Question: If you're using Fan Mail, how big is your podcast & have you been getting messages?
Contact Buzzcast
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- Email us at support@buzzsprout.com
Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!
Before we get into the episode, should we look at some of the feedback that we got after our disagreement about how we start the episode. Should we do introductions at the beginning of the episode or just like cut straight to the chase? Akron, ohio said keep saying your names. It helps the audience know who it is.
Kevin:Okay.
Jordan:And then Jacksonville, florida. I have an idea for the intro Instead of Jordan introducing Alban and Kevin, just do a roll call Welcome to Buzzcast I'm Jordan, I'm Alban and I'm Kevin, and hopefully get the names right, love the show now.
Kevin:You just confused everybody, because you just said you're Kevin and you're Alban yeah, but I was just reading.
Alban:I was reading all right, real time follow-up. I searched the number uh, for this one. This is priscilla, head of support of us, proud. I knew. I was pretty sure it's a Jacksonville number. It's a Buzzcast listener. So, Priscilla, I liked the idea. Thank you for sharing that one.
Kevin:Here's what I think we can do. I think we can just jump straight into the content and then be intentional about like, if I'm asking you a question, Alban, I will say your name. I'll say Alban, like what do you think about this idea of just jumping straight into the content and then when you start talking, people will know it's Alban talking, but I'm sorry who's talking right now.
Alban:I have no idea, I can't. I'm totally flustered.
Kevin:All right, this is Kevin. Hey Alban, what do think about just jumping straight into the content?
Alban:This is Alban, love that idea. Thank you, Kevin, so much. Jordan. Could you weigh in here?
Jordan:Jordan hates this.
Alban:Alban finds this somewhat amusing. So maybe we do this. We don't do a full on intro, but we do try to use some names, a little bit of like signposting. I think that Akron, ohio, and Anonymous in Jacksonville, florida, would both appreciate this. Yeah.
Kevin:Yeah, and you know, honestly, I don't mind if our show isn't like new listener friendly. If you just jump in and you've never listened before and you don't know who's talking, I think that's okay because within a few episodes you're going to get to know who's who. You're going to get to know that this guy who doesn't care about new listeners is Kevin. But then by the time you figure that out, you're like part of the loyal fan base, you're part of the crew, we're part of the family and so we'll figure it out. We're actually more new listener friendly because we're not going to waste your time with intros every week. We're just going to jump right in, give you the podcasting content that you came here for, and regardless of who said it.
Alban:Welcome to Buzzcast, the listener-friendly podcast that disregards the two pieces of feedback that we got regarding the intro. So, Jordan, what do we have here with Jeopardy Masters?
Jordan:Okay, okay, okay. So at dinnertime my family and I we love to watch like game shows and one of the game shows that's currently going on right now is Jeopardy Masters, which is the creme de la creme of the Jeopardy people. It's like the people that are just ridiculously smart and it's super, super hard questions. And I was really surprised because the episode that I watched this week had a podcast category in the double Jeopardy round and I was like, oh man, this is gonna be like obscure podcasts, you know, like stuff no one's ever heard before, right, because it's always like some weird topics. So I was surprised at this category and I wanted to see if you guys would know any of these Jeopardy questions. I'm going to share my screen here and it's really funny because these questions I have like a bootleg version of this Jeopardy game, because I was literally like taking photos with my camera during the show.
Kevin:Okay, so these are the real questions I asked in the Jeopardy game.
Jordan:Yes, this is the real questions.
Alban:These are the real answers. Yeah, you have to ask the question.
Jordan:Okay, so the first question is or the first answer, I suppose, is fitting title of a podcast about 20th century Hollywood, or the first four words of, as time goes by, heard in Casablanca.
Kevin:What.
Jordan:You can't search. I just saw you, you can't search. Look at your keyboard. I can't.
Alban:Google it you can't type.
Kevin:Hands are up. I was going to Hands up. I know I was about to because I know it, but I can't think of the four words A kiss or something.
Jordan:No. Alban?
Alban:I feel like it's got a 20th century Hollywood. Wouldn't it be like the golden years or something about like it's the era? I mean, I don't know what the first four words of as Time Goes by, what were the first words from the song in Casablanca I would have gone? It's probably as Time Goes by. That's probably the first words from the song in Casablanca I would have gone is probably as time goes by. That's probably the first four words. So that's my. That's what is as time goes by.
Jordan:Okay, no, the answer is. You must remember this.
Kevin:That's a fitting title of a podcast about 20th century Hollywood. Is it a real podcast or these are weird?
Jordan:It's a real podcast. This is the 400 because it's Double Jeopardy. So on Crime Stories with Her. This legal commentator and former prosecutor asked tough questions.
Alban:Who is Nancy Grace? Ding, ding, ding.
Jordan:Nailed it.
Kevin:I know her.
Jordan:Nancy Grace.
Kevin:Jesus, she's a nut.
Jordan:She is a nut. Yeah, she's very crazy.
Kevin:I don't feel proud of knowing who Nancy Grace is. I don't mean that in a totally negative way. By the way, A lot of people I find endearing are nuts. I like a lot of nutty people.
Jordan:Nancy Grace is, she's pretty, I don't know.
Kevin:Let me just say this I would hang out with her, would hang out with her, would you yeah? Oh, it would be a fun night.
Alban:I don't know if I could handle it. I think it'd be funny to tell the story afterward. Yeah, I'm hanging out with me, but I think like two times I've accidentally seen part of one of our programs. I've just felt like my blood start to boil and so I know I couldn't do it.
Jordan:Yeah, all right, next one. In 2020, the staff of this Ira Glass radio program and podcast became the first ever recipients of a Pulitzer Prize for audio reporting.
Kevin:What is This American Life? Wow, perfect, very nice.
Jordan:These are kind of easy. Right yeah, that was easy. These are kind of easy.
Kevin:Nancy Grace was easy, this was easy. The first one was hard. Yeah, the first one was hard.
Jordan:I got the first one. I don't know, I thought that this was crazy easy for Jeopardy Masters. All right, next one. You Could Say this podcast, hosted by Jason Bateman, sean Hayes and Will Arnett, is a no-brainer.
Kevin:Ooh, what is Smart List?
Jordan:Last one. This is the. I forgot how much it is. Yeah, this is a $2,000 one. Okay, ready.
Kevin:Alban has one, I've got two.
Jordan:Alban gets first dibs at this one.
Kevin:Okay, I've got two. This happens every time we do one of these games. I know you get to go first.
Jordan:I'm going to be a gentleman. Okay, all right, you go In 2021,. This neuroscientist and tenured California professor launched his popular lab health podcast.
Kevin:Come on, this is like Alban's favorite podcast.
Jordan:Yes, Alban.
Alban:Who is Andrew Huberman? It's not my favorite podcast.
Jordan:You guys. I was shocked. The Jeopardy Masters did not know this one.
Kevin:They didn't know.
Jordan:Huberman, I was screaming at the TV.
Kevin:Yeah, well, that's a legit top 10 podcast. That's a big one.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:And so is this American Life.
Alban:My experience with Jeopardy is that it's not people who know a ton about individual areas, it's that they know a lot about everything. And so if you grow up in the church, whenever they go to the Bible section, you're like all these are easy. And if they talk about law, I'm like all these are easy. And the literature ones, I'm like these are pretty easy. And then they talk about fish and you're like fish and they all know about fish. And then they talk about fish and you're like fish and they all know about fish, and I'm like I don't know one thing about fish, but they just know about tons of different things.
Jordan:Yeah, so I think it makes a little sense. Yeah, but the podcast one, I was just like, okay, like these are going to be tough podcast questions and that was so easy. I was just like I felt a little cheated.
Kevin:Yeah, I have to agree with Alban. I think if you have deep knowledge in any particular areas, then when you get a category you'll crush it. But the people who really do good in Jeopardy, like my wife. She has a broad base of general knowledge and she always beats me when we watch.
Alban:Jeopardy together. Yeah, I like watching the Celebrity Jeopardy because it is the easiest questions. You will feel so smart if you watch Celebrity Jeopardy. It's a good time, really great. But I'm a little bit smarter than them, even though they're a celebrity and they're really pretty and they're dominating in Hollywood. But man, am I smart? Cause I I could have buzzed in ahead of them for sure.
Jordan:Not counting the nerves from like being on television on a competition show.
Kevin:Yeah, yeah, should I ask you a jeopardy question?
Jordan:You want to ask me a jeopardy question.
Kevin:Yeah, you didn't get to play. I played when I watched the TV show.
Jordan:Jeopardy question. Yeah, you didn't get to play.
Kevin:I played when I watched the tv show I know, but you didn't get to play just now, oh okay. So let me ask you a question. All right okay, this is the number of downloads that buzzcast got on our last snapcast from apple podcast what is?
Jordan:let me look down at my keyboard while I think yeah yeah, and log in to buzzcast what is 546?
Alban:no, okay, not even in the ballpark if we're using um price is right numbers, I'm gonna go one download kevin, one download bob.
Kevin:Then you win.
Jordan:Dang it.
Kevin:So Apple Podcasts, we got 83 downloads of our Snapcast episode that we published last Friday, woof. No 83, which is pretty low.
Jordan:No way.
Alban:Yeah, Can we get an idea of how low that is? I mean there were points where episodes on Buzzsprout would get thousands of downloads on Apple podcasts.
Kevin:Okay. So if I grab, if I grab a random episode from like last August and take a look at it now, we still get you know five downloads a day or so roughly from old podcast episodes. But estimating in about the first seven days or so of traffic we got almost a thousand downloads, ouch From Apple Podcasts. Man, that was in August of last year and now this year we are looking at 83 in the first seven days.
Alban:And this episode has now been out there for five days. It's been published for five days since now we're recording here on Wednesday, so there are a couple of theories.
Kevin:One our show has gotten terrible, which is highly likely.
Jordan:We cannot dismiss that.
Kevin:What do you call it when it's like the most obvious answer is usually the right one?
Jordan:Occam's razor.
Kevin:There you go. So Occam's razor would point to our show has gotten terrible, All right. Another possibility is that we know podcasts from Apple podcast app have changed and so they're not auto downloading anymore. So unless people are listening regularly, auto downloads will pause after you have. I think the default is like two unlistened episodes.
Alban:This was my theory for a little bit, because we saw pretty much since iOS 17,. We saw a bit of a dip when that came out in October, but then it really dropped off a cliff after Christmas really the beginning of the year and so my theory was well, maybe people just didn't update their phones. And so two months in, they update their phones and now Apple Podcasts is saying no one's really listening to this show and I wondered maybe people subscribe to Buzzcast and they don't regularly listen. We're more of people's like I probably should be listening to that. If I'm doing a podcast, maybe they think it's helpful, but honestly, the content's not good enough to keep people around. It was a bit of a hit to an ego, but I thought that could be the case that's possible.
Kevin:And then the other possibility that we've explored is that there is some sort of issue with Apple Podcasts updating specifically Buzzcast the Buzzcast podcast. Maybe others is what we don't know, but we knew that we were seeing something with our podcast. So, starting on Friday, we reached out to some people at Apple to help us try to figure this out, and I can report back. There is something wrong with Buzzcast and it's the content.
Jordan:It's us.
Kevin:No, they were super kind. They were super kind. They didn't say that your show is terrible. They said there is some issue. We don't know what it is. They haven't told us exactly what it is, but there's some issue and they know what's causing it and they are fixing it. Okay, that's all we know. So there was a problem with Buzzcast. There still is a problem with Buzzcast. I'm hoping that it gets fixed before this episode drops on Friday, so I'm hoping our Apple numbers start shooting back up Now.
Kevin:As far as we know, we have not seen any other podcasts that are having this problem that Buzzcast is having. There are a few podcasts that I thought might be having this issue, but then I tested them and they're not, and so I don't know if they were having this issue and now it's getting fixed, but Buzzcast isn't fixed yet, or if it didn't exist at all. I don't know. I know that Apple has been awesome in working with us. They've been very responsive. We've been exchanging emails, we did a phone call with them. They're helping us work through the issue For Buzzcast. It's still not resolved For any other podcast that I thought might have had the issue. I've since run tests and the issue is gone. So I don't think this is necessarily widespread, but there has been a drop, at least in the Buzzsprout global stats. There's been a steady drop since, you know, the beginning of the year really picked up in February a drop in the total number of podcasts that we've been seeing across the Buzzsprout platform. Now we just thought all along this had to do with Apple's change in auto downloading, and maybe that still is the case. So I don't want to say that's not the case, but there's a possibility that if this was happening to Buzzcast, that it could be happening on other podcasts. So I don't want to be like a chicken little and say, oh, this is a bigger problem. We have no evidence of that, and so that's not what I'm saying. But what I am saying is I still don't really understand exactly what was going on with Buzzcast, and until this issue is resolved, I don't know.
Kevin:Even after it is resolved, I don't know that we're going to know, and so what I would just recommend is that if you publish your podcast in Apple Podcasts and it's typically a pretty good source of downloads for you I would check it out, check out your numbers and see if there's been a drop, and if there has been. There's a couple things that you can do. When you publish your next episode, make sure you're following it in Apple Podcasts before you publish and you have notifications turned on and you have auto downloads turned on for your podcast and see if you get a notification. And if you don't get a notification within the next couple hours, go ahead and open Apple Podcasts and tap into your library, then tap into most recent and you can pull down to refresh from there and make sure your podcast episode comes in and shows the new episode that you just published. If it does great, you're good to go.
Kevin:If it doesn't, there are a couple of troubleshooting steps that you can do. So the first thing that you can do is you can log into podcast connect and click into your podcast and then click on episodes and make sure it's showing up there. If it's not, there is from the main podcast screen. When you log in, there's a small link to refresh your feed. You can check and see if it's updated since you last published, because it has a time and date. If it hasn't, you can click refresh one time. Click it one time, give it a few minutes, the screen will refresh and you'll see that the time should now be like the time that you click the link Now, give it an hour or two, and if you still don't see it in your podcast app under most recent, then what I want you to do is shoot two emails off One.
Kevin:There's a contact us link at the bottom of Apple Podcasts that you can use to submit an issue with your podcast to Apple so they can look into things from their side. The other thing you can do is you can shoot an email to support at buzzsproutcom so that we can look at the issue and see if there's something wrong on the hosting side, because issues with feeds updating could take place on either side. It could be an issue with Apple Podcasts, it could be an issue with your podcast in general, and so we'll explore that, we'll investigate that. Apple will investigate from their side, but we want to make sure feeds are updating. This has been a pretty big deal for buzzcasts. Like our numbers have been going down and, like I said, we're not blind to the fact that maybe our shows are just not that good. But all kidding aside, like it was, uh, the numbers were going down. We weren't sure why and it, and we had to look into what was going on with Apple podcasts, and so there was an issue.
Alban:The an issue.
Kevin:So again, I don't know what to say beyond that. I don't have any reason to believe that this would necessarily affect other podcasts besides Buzzcast, except some fans did write in from our Snapcast and say, hey, I've seen similar issues with podcasts not updating an Apple podcast and so, like they've moved, a lot of them have said well, some of them have said for specific shows, I just listen to them in other apps, but all the podcasts that they wrote in and said this podcast doesn't update, this one doesn't update, this one doesn't update. I've gone ahead and followed all those in Apple podcasts and they do update for me. So I don't know what to make of it.
Alban:Yeah, the two people who really brought this to my attention. Richard Dodds, a friend of the show and friend of mine, reached out. He was like, oh, I thought the show was on hiatus because I didn't get an episode for a month, but he says he listens every week. And then Family History Drama Podcast reached out on Twitter and thought the same thing. I didn't see your show come in for a long time. I figured something was wrong and I'm like we're still doing the show. And he was like, oh, now I'm able to see it, but it's still not showing up for me.
Alban:And then from the Snapcast I don't know if we have to read all of them, because they're just going to say the same thing I have to pull down the screen over and over but Alessandra from Dom's Sub Living Podcast, somebody reached out from Chicago, somebody else from Kansas City, someone from Seattle. They highlighted a bunch of shows that they thought this was happening for. Unfortunately we weren't able to replicate those. And then somebody else in Anchorage. So thank you to everybody who reached out, because when you hear it once, you know there's sometimes there's user error in there. And then when you hear it from five, six, seven people, it's pretty clear. There's something going on and we'll be able to track it down.
Jordan:All right. So Spotify has been experimenting with transcripts and chapter markers, which you may or may not see in Spotify app. It appears that they're only doing it for certain podcasts and I personally didn't see chapter markers in my Spotify app, but Kevin did have chapter markers in the Spotify app. We talked a little bit about this in the Snapcast, so if you're not listening to our Snapcast, I don't know what you're doing. You got to get with the program here so you can keep up. But it's funny because I was surprised by this. But then I found a press release from September 2023, where they said coming soon to Spotify, we're doing transcripts and chapter markers. Like, they told us they were doing this and I just, for some reason, completely wiped it from my memory. I made room for other things, I guess. Do you guys remember them? Like announcing this.
Kevin:You know, I didn't remember it either. I think it's one of those things If you announce something and then nothing happens in like four or five months after the announcement, it's I'm going to forget it.
Jordan:Right.
Kevin:So note to Spotify if you want to make a big announcement like this, like do it when you're ready, don't do it like when it's still four or five months out, and then when you do it, maybe make an announcement about it, because it's like happening now and people are finding it, but there's no word from you and so I don't know. But whatever, here, transcripts and chapter markers are starting to populate on some shows in Spotify. As far as we can tell from the help documentation, there's no way to control or manually edit your transcript, but there are ways to have some control over your chapter markers.
Jordan:Yeah, I actually looked into my personal Spotify for Podcasters dashboard and it looks like my show. They have transcripts on my details tab on the page and it's grayed out. So I literally can't even like look at transcripts. They're not available for my podcast, but there is a placeholder there for it Chapters. They have been adding chapters automatically for my podcast, which, if you're someone like me and you have like a fiction podcast where you don't want chapters on your podcast, I had to turn those off real quick because I do not want those on my show. So it was really easy to do. It's interesting because you cannot edit the chapters. It's just like either they're on or they're off. So I just clicked update and I toggled the create chapters automatically off and then saved it and now I don't have chapter markers on my show.
Alban:Now, if you did chapters through Spotify does them kind of the way YouTube does that. If you hard code them into your description, would those override these automatic chapters?
Kevin:Yes, I think the answer is yes. Spotify has published a help article said there's like three different ways that chapters can get into your podcast episodes. Let me start with their automatic ones, cause that's what we're talking about. So one is just turn on automatic chapters. They'll find them and use AI to sort of create chapters for you. The second way is for you to hard code them into your description using their format, and they tell you how to format them in your description. They'll pick them up and use them. And then the third way is to use a spec called Podloves Simple Chapters, which was a spec.
Kevin:It's very old. Not too many people use it. In fact, spotify might be the only major podcast app that uses them still, but if you publish your chapters in that format, they will pick them up as well. So if you provide them in either one of those formats either in your description or in the Podloves Simple Chapters format they will override the automatic chapters. If you have automatic chapters turned on, and so it's a way you can do, you can have both. You can be like if I provide them, go ahead and use mine. If I don't, spotify's AI is free to try to do the best it can at finding chapters on its own, or you can just turn them off completely, and so right now, what we're doing is again, we don't talk about stuff before we publish it, but we're exploring, like, what would it look like for us to be able to build some controls into buzzsprout to be able to override some of those chapters? I can't commit one way or another about whether that's going to be a tool that we end up rolling out or not, but since they're doing support for chapters now you know it would be nice to be able to give podcasters control over those chapters.
Kevin:Unfortunately, that spec is they don't have that same viewpoint when it comes to transcripts. With transcriptss, it's like on or off and if you don't like it, it doesn't seem like they're going to give you a way to provide your own transcript, which is very like in contrast to what Apple did. Apple provided transcripts for all podcasts coming into Apple Podcasts and they also gave you the ability to override it with your own transcript if you wanted to, which was really great and very open to you know, open podcasting and they followed the podcasting 2.0 namespace spec to be able to do that. So we talked a lot about that when they did that we thought it was a great move, really good for podcasting in general. Spotify still kind of doing their own thing, not necessarily interested in. I'm saying this with a smile because it's like it's not shocking, but it's still disappointing.
Jordan:I mean it's pretty funny, because if they had just adopted the podcasting 2.0, then they would not have had to wait like six months after their announcement to finally start somewhat rolling out these things.
Alban:So one thing I just find like a little bit sad. I don't know why it's not Spotify only either. A little bit sad, I don't know why it's not Spotify only either. It's like we've finally gotten to where transcribing audio content is getting cheaper and cheaper, and we have had this really good spec out there now for years I mean it's I don't know four or five years since we started adding transcripts into Buzzsprout podcast and we now, it's like, gotten so cheap and yet what's happened is you've got Apple transcribing stuff themselves but they will respect yours if you already did it through Buzzsprout You've got Spotify doing it themselves. You've got YouTube doing it themselves, and then you've got indie apps like Fathom transcribes everything themselves. You've got Fountain, which will let you buy a transcript and pull it in. It's like the total Wild West.
Alban:And yet this has been out there the whole time and it would just be nice to have one place, one central truth of here's what was said on the podcast, and it can be updated and improved over time, because probably what we've got now is like every podcast has got something like two or three different, slightly different versions that are all probably like 98% accurate, but what would be really good would be one version that was almost a hundred percent accurate. That would be like the optimal and that's what we could do through the podcasting 2.0 spec. So I hope more people, more apps, adopt it, because the more apps that do it, the more incentive there is for the creator to go. Okay, if it's going to be used everywhere now there's more of an incentive for me to clean it up. Make sure that Alban is spelled the right way. It's not Alvin. Every time.
Alban:If I know it's going to be in there, I might as well go in and fix it. But I think for the creator, when you're like everyone's going to kind of do it themselves and it's just going to be the Wild West, then we all are just going well, 98% is good enough. But to be honest, if you're reading these transcripts and they're 98% accurate it's a really big improvement from zero not an existent, but it's still that's like halfway there, like there's times where you read it and you're like this doesn't really make total sense because I'm getting a few words wrong in a row. So I still really hope that we can move towards this open standard where the creators have more control. This is their content. Let them tell you this is what we intended to say, and so if there's any ambiguity in what I said like, let me clean it up and make sure it's accurate.
Kevin:Yeah, I agree, I think it's. It's so funny what you just said is so true Also that we went from a podcast that had like no transcripts at all to now every podcast has three or four or five different transcripts. I totally understand, you know, a platform like Apple wanting maybe even more than wanting, but like feeling a responsibility to provide transcripts, regardless of whether the creators are providing them themselves. And I think that they went the right route when they said we're going to provide a transcript for everybody, but if you want to provide your own, here's a way to do it. Now I could nitpick kind of how that's working and how like the bar that they set for quality transcripts and all that kind of stuff, but I'm not going to worry about that right now because I want to push and talk about Spotify's implementation, that they're just redoing the work, like I think what Spotify needs to be doing is following the example set by Apple here.
Kevin:Do the same thing Make sure that every podcast that's on your platform has a transcript, but also give creators a way to provide their own so if they don't like the one that you provided, if you're getting the names wrong, if you know it's possible that automatic transcription software can make grave errors right and in in how it transcribes something. If that happens, you want a creator to be able to go in and correct it so it doesn't say like the intent doesn't get lost, or replacing and whatever. I can't actually say some of the examples we've heard, but we've talked with podcasters who have had grave errors in their transcripts and they're like this is not what I said, but the transcript says this. I have to be able to correct this.
Jordan:We've had that a couple of times.
Kevin:On this one on the show.
Jordan:Yeah, I mean just a couple words changing sounds super inappropriate, yeah.
Kevin:Yeah, and to reiterate what Alban said, there's so many podcasts already being published today with the transcript tag in the RSS feed, so all Spotify has to do is start ingesting that and using it. Hopefully that will happen. We'll see.
Jordan:So next week Alban and Tom will be at the podcast movement meetups. Alban, do you know what locations and dates you're going to be at those podcast meetups?
Alban:Yeah, podcast movement does this cool thing where for every big event they have Jared Easley, one of the co-founders of Podcast Movement, does a handful of meetups, and so they're doing one in DC on May 28th, one in Philly the next day, may 29th, and May 30th doing one in New York. I think that's down the Lower East Side. I don't know anything about locations of DC or Philly, those are just cities to me, but Tom and I are going to all three. We're going to fly into DC, we'll take a train over to Philly, we'll take a train over to New York and we'll be hanging out. We've got a lot of people signed up. So, the first one in DC, we have 132 people going. I think most of those are people from Buzzsprout. And then we will go to Philadelphia. 89 people have signed up in New York just at 200. So lots of people are going to be there. We're really excited to meet everybody.
Alban:I think Podcast Movement is picking up hors d'oeuvres and then, if you go, you get a ticket to Podcast Movement DC the main one in August. And then, if you go, you get a ticket to Podcast Movement DC the main one in August as long as you have not been to a Podcast Movement, yeah, if you have not been to an event yet one of the big events if you go to one of these meetups, you get a free ticket courtesy of Buzzsprout. So we're hoping to bring as many people as we can and support meetups, support the of the local community, and then everybody should be kind of relatively close by so they can jump over to DC in August and that'll be a blast because I think Jordan and I will be there. Kevin, will you be there in August? Yeah, planning on it? Awesome. So the whole Buzzcast team will be there. And yeah, if you go to one of these meetups, you get a free ticket.
Jordan:Oh my gosh, yeah. And those tickets are hundreds of dollars. So even if you have to drive a couple hours, I would do it. Man, secure that ticket.
Alban:I've been to a lot of conferences and some are just so expensive when they're for work and it's like then it's a business expense, and you go, there's some real value, there's some business value, you can justify it. When it's a business expense and you go, okay, there's some real value, there's some business value, you can justify it. When it's for a hobby I mean three, 400 bucks you're like good grief, this is serious money. And then you add on if you have to travel and then you've got hotels and you're like okay, I think this is too much, I'm not taking off work for it. But if you're in the area and you could jump down during the day, go to DC, go to a handful of talks, meet people.
Alban:It is my favorite thing about podcasting. We all can feel a little bit lonely when we're podcasting, but to get around 3,000, 5,000 people who are really into it, they always have big name podcasters. Thousand people who are really into it, they always have big name podcasters. I've been shocked at how many top 20 shows. We mentioned Andrew Huberman a little while ago. Andrew Huberman did a 30-person talk that I went to once a few years ago. So you end up in these rooms and you're like these are big name podcasters and you realize how similar they are to everybody else. You know they're working through it, they're figuring out editing styles, they're experimenting and it's just a blast to learn more about podcasting and connect with other people.
Jordan:I'm excited to see photos from those meetups. It's going to be great.
Kevin:Yeah, I hope they're big venues. Those are big numbers for a meetup.
Alban:Meetups are so tough, man, because you don't know how many people are going, and then the RSVP numbers start to go up. You're like, hey, can we get a?
Kevin:bigger room. Yeah, you don't know if you should get a room for 30 or 300.
Alban:Yeah, when we sponsored it, podcast movement was like, all right, you do this, We'll do tickets. And I went all right, you're going to be mad if I bring a lot of people. No, I want to bring a lot. I was like what if I bring a thousand people? And they're like, yeah, that'd be great, That'd be a great problem to have. I'm like all right, we're now Challenge accepted.
Alban:We're nearing in on 500 registered and we're a week out from the first one, so I think the chance that we get close to that thousand number is probably pretty good. So if you're listening to this and you're in the area, just go register, even if you don't show up. I just want to hit my thousand number. You got to show up, don't?
Kevin:register you got to show up.
Alban:You got to show up to get the ticket.
Jordan:Okay, it's time for sound off the segment where you send in your responses to our podcasting questions. First off, I have an update from our Snapcast in which you guys called me out for not using Buzzsprout features on my own show.
Kevin:What happened?
Jordan:So I finally enabled fan mail on my podcast and I haven't like announced it yet. I just kind of like toggled it on and I changed the URL to instead say like send us a text. It says like send in a story suggestion or just say hi, is what I put. And then I logged out and I left it and I got four messages from like eagle-eyed listeners that just happened to see this and they sent in story suggestions, which was really cool.
Alban:Hey, that's great, yeah, Whoa. So no promotion besides. You just put it up out there, yeah.
Jordan:And I haven't even like released like a new episode or anything like that. That's the crazy thing. I didn't release a new episode, I literally just toggled it on and then walked away and I got four messages, so I was pretty happy with that.
Alban:You should consider recording like a short little dynamic content piece and then adding it to the beginning of episodes and say, oh, if you want to send me a text or a story suggestion, make sure you click the link.
Jordan:I thought about doing that. I actually might just in the next intro say cause I actually chose one of the stories to be my next episode. So I was thinking like, okay, I will say this story was suggested by this person who clicked the link and sent me a text.
Kevin:So I will show that.
Alban:I yeah, so I will show that I did take their input into consideration.
Jordan:We'll see how it goes. I hope to get just an absolute flood of fan mail. We'll see.
Kevin:Yeah, after you release that next episode, for sure.
Jordan:Yeah, all right. So we got a lot of responses on our fan mail, so we're going to try to run through them pretty quick. Kevin, can you get us started on some of these messages?
Kevin:Sure, let me take some of them. Smiles from the English sisters wrote in and said we'd love the fan mail feature. Can't wait to get our first message. And we got a message in from Denver, colorado. I didn't know that I needed this fan mail, but I need this, love it. Dallas, texas, wrote in cool new feature and I love your podcast. Marcos from UX research confidential wrote great idea for the text inbox. Any plans to add a voicemail inbox? A quick answer to that is not right now, but who knows what the future holds. Fayetteville, arkansas, just want to let the whole team know how awesome they are All these features being added to the service, aside from like co-host AI and magic mastering and the price hasn't changed. So I'm extremely satisfied.
Alban:Somebody reached out from Illinois asking when are we going to be able to reply to fan mail? The answer is you can reply to fan mail in your podcast. Right now we don't have plans for adding ability for you to text a reply. Somebody reached out from Alaska and said Ooh, the location of fan mail is not that great. They said that we were off by 150 miles. Well, this is going to go off of the area code for your podcast. So based on your area code it looked like it was that area. But again, that's kind of a feature. We don't want to say it was in this house and this address. We want to just give you a general idea. Yeah, somebody else reached out from Australia saying they thought it might be pretty expensive maybe even $1.50 for them to send a message to a US number. That's definitely high, but we're looking at ways to bring that cost down and see what we can do with getting different numbers in different locations, all right.
Jordan:And then we got a message from Tate Basildon, from Panda Pen, a storytelling podcast. Tate says hey, buzzcast, want to let you know that I really love texting feature. Recently put up an episode to inform my listeners and, within five minutes of it going live, someone texted me. It was the first interaction I received from my show notes yeah, the text is clean, universal and anonymous. If the listener wants it to be that way, that's great. Thanks, tate.
Kevin:Yeah, that's amazing Five minutes. Great job. Tate also followed up with a question. I was wondering about podcasts that fade. Do they still show up on Apple Podcast Feeds? And if a subscriber stops their membership with Buzzsprout, do you keep the episodes on the servers? So they will stay in directories for a little while? So they will stay in directories for a little while.
Kevin:But as soon as your podcast is deleted off of Buzzsprout, then there's no way for those episodes to be played.
Kevin:So even if they're showing up in the directories because the directories haven't purged themselves and cleaned themselves out yet as soon as somebody goes to listen to an episode it's not going to be able to play it because the place it plays it from is Buzzsprout and that account has been deleted or canceled or whatever. So because of that, we do have an archive plan, which is only $5 a month. So if you're like I'm not going to podcast for a while or create new episodes, you can just put your podcast on the archive plan and then your content stays out there for as long as you're on the archive plan. And this is in the podcasting world, remember, like on YouTube and stuff. Youtube rehosts. So if you had your podcast RSS feed being ingested into YouTube and then you cancel your Buzzsprout. Your YouTube stuff will still stay there, but your podcast will be off of all the podcast directories, including Apple podcasts, including Spotify, all those types of things. So hope that helps All right.
Jordan:And then we also got another message from Pell City Great show, thank you. And David from the film podcast, postcut says my former college colleagues and I got together to create a podcast and attempted to incorporate Twitch streaming and YouTube at one point because we heard that video content was important and unfortunately that backfired and we ended up going on a hiatus. Audio podcasts have had a positive impact on my life, especially some with ADHD. So that's in response to our discussion about video podcasting.
Kevin:Yeah, we talked a lot about that. We've heard a lot of stories of similar things happening. As soon as you get into video, it's a whole new world of complexity. So not only do we just love audio because we love audio, but there's a whole bunch of complexity that comes with video.
Alban:And so yeah it happens. Thanks for sharing your story. Picking one or two ways is the best way to stay in the game.
Jordan:Yes.
Alban:One thing is much easier than trying to do six. This message is for Jordan. I've noticed you have multiple avenues for subscriptions for your show Dreamful. What's the thought process behind having multiple instead of just Buzzsprout subscriptions? That's Joe in Fayetteville.
Jordan:Well, actually, Buzzsprout subscriptions came around after the other subscription platforms, so I started with Patreon and then I jumped to Supercast and then Apple podcast subscriptions released and I sent out a ton of emails and messages to my Patreon members saying hey, I'm shutting down Patreon. You got to jump ship and go over to Buzzsprout subscriptions and it's been a year and a half and they are still holding on and I can't bring myself to just boot 60 people from my subscriptions. So I am going strong with all these subscriptions. It's not by choice. If I could, I would just have Buzzsprout, and that's good. So that's that's why.
Alban:George, you sound like Google. Google said we're shutting down Google podcasts and they're going to do it like months ago. And then Kevin yesterday in the office pulls up Google podcast. He goes when's this thing shutting down? He's got it and it says in an email like it was supposed to have shut down a month ago. And he's showing me still working.
Jordan:I think that's all my Patreon members. They're like well, it still works.
Kevin:But you know, later that day they did shut me down. Wait, wait, yesterday, yeah, they did shut me down. So Google Podcast does not work on my phone anymore. But Dave, who was sitting right next to me at the time, then he loaded his up after mine got shut down and his was still working, and so I was like force quit your app and see if it dies. He force quit it and loaded it back up. It's still working, kevin.
Jordan:I think that you're the reason why we're getting banned from all these platforms. I think it's you down one site after another, and our sound off question last episode was where should we go for a Buzzsprout meetup? Let us know why we should come to your town and what there is to do there. And we got so many responses and they're very fun. Claire from Creativity Found wrote in a whole bunch. She knows that we're not leaving the US, but for the team bonding event she would like to invite us to Oxford. I can show you the colleges and the real Hogwarts Grand Hall, which I would love, plus the meadow that inspired Alice in Wonderland one for you, jordan and where Tolkien did most of his writing. And then Claire wrote in again and said I could also take Jordan to Henley-on-Thames where Wind in the Whills was written.
Kevin:It sounds like I just need to go on a trip to Oxford to visit Claire and then she can just take me to all these amazing places. That's perfect. We got one from Orlando, Florida, that just says come to Orlando. Funny enough, we were in Orlando last year. We didn't invite the whole Buzzsprout family to that one, it was just a team meetup. But next time we go to Orlando we'll be sure to open it up to a larger crowd.
Alban:Somebody reached out from Delaware. I heard the podcast movement is happening in DC this year. Yes, you've probably heard that on this podcast. Technically the Gaylord in Maryland and they said shall we do a meetup there? We are doing our best to get as many Buzzsprout podcasters to that podcast movement so we will plan on having a Buzzsprout meetup there. Details to come soon.
Kevin:Someone from Arlington Virginia, wrote in said come to Virginia or Richmond or DC for the meetup. Yep, we will be there in August. So that'll be even before the Buzzsprout team meetup. So August in DC for podcast movement.
Jordan:And I believe, just from the answer, that this one's from Dave Jackson Cleveland for the Rock Hall, which would be very cool. One's from Dave Jackson Cleveland for the Rock Hall, which would be very cool, that's definitely Dave Jackson.
Alban:Yeah, we got one from Salt Lake City, utah, who said come to Dallas-Fort Worth. Is that DFW? Is that Dallas-Fort Worth? Come to Dallas-Fort Worth. There are more people in this metropolitan area than in 37 states and there's tons to do here. Yep, sounds awesome.
Kevin:We got a vote for the Pacific Northwest from Marcos, from UX Research, confidential, this is Marcos the one who sent in the fan fiction about the podcast years ago.
Alban:Oh yeah, and Marcos has now actually started launching his own show.
Jordan:My favorite part of Marcos's response is reasons One it's closer to Jordan. She's probably tired of flying all the way to Florida all the time. Marcos, you get me, man, Plus I love Washington, so I'm down to go to Washington anytime.
Kevin:Sarah Rossette from a co-host of Wish I'd Known. Then she's voting for the Woodlands, which is in North Houston Great restaurant, shopping and a riverwalk area where you can kayak. That sounds good.
Alban:Alaska said if the meetup in Hawaii is off the table, then I'm guessing Alaska is as well. I think so. Pretty long flight up there to Alaska, but beautiful, beautiful state.
Jordan:All right From Oceanside. Hello, buzzcast crew. This is Mike from the Quivercast and Southern California's favorite surf and lifestyle show, the Stinky Booties. I'd be super excited if you guys had a meetup in Southern California. San Diego area will be killer, but Orange County is the middle of San Diego and LA, so that could bring a lot of possible Buzzsprout podcasters to the event. We could have a meetup at the San Diego Zoo. That's what I want to do.
Kevin:I didn't know you'd get so excited about that. I love zoos From San Rafael, california, marin County has Hills Beer and the Boomers, and San Francisco is nearby, so that's an option.
Alban:Matthew from Girl Nad Nation reached out. Come back to Denver for another bus brought meetup. Host it at the Colorado Pinball Pub. That sounds like a fun place. Jordan, would you rather go to the Pinball Pub or the zoo?
Jordan:I'm sorry, matthew, it's got to be the zoo I go to the pinball pub.
Alban:Thank you, Matthew.
Kevin:All right, so before we go on, should we go ahead and announce where we are actually going to do the meetup? Yeah, I want to know where we're going. Yeah, a decision has been made and this year in October we are going to do the Buzzsprout team meetup in Nashville, tennessee.
Jordan:We are going to do the Buzzsprout team meetup in Nashville, Tennessee.
Kevin:Yeah, music.
Jordan:City. Oh, I love Nashville.
Kevin:That's what they call it right Music City, Music City.
Alban:Very cool, all right. What are we doing in Nashville?
Kevin:Well, the whole agenda hasn't been planned yet, but looks like on October 24th in Nashville, Tennessee. The entire Buzzsprout team will be there and we will be doing a meetup that evening. It is Thursday, October 24th, so time and place to be determined, but a date and location has been set and so if you're in the area, even if you're not, maybe you just want to fly into Nashville because it's a convenient airport to fly into Hop on over to Nashville, book your tickets now and the team will be there on the 24th. We will have a venue and a time and we'll be hanging out, so everyone listening is invited.
Jordan:I'm excited, All right. And then we got a couple responses from our post show last time in which I was debating on should I get a Corgi?
Alban:Do we have an update on whether or not you got a dog, or is this people who reached out to give more recommendations?
Jordan:Sorry. Yes, this is just people who reached out. There is no update. My husband flowed the idea by our six-year-old and she said no, we are a cat family, so I think it's going to take a little bit more work for her to warm up to the idea.
Alban:I've never heard of the parents getting vetoed on getting a dog by the six-year-old. I feel like it's always the other way.
Jordan:She's pretty passionate about it. Actually she's throwing a birthday party and it's all cat theme and it's all like cat head cutouts that I let her pick the decoration. So I think she's pretty firm on that belief there. But we got some responses to thataska says tell jordan to check outa shih tzu. They don't shed, so you have to keep them groomed. But so nice not to have to clean up all the fur. My aunt had a shih tzu named miko and it was really cute, but the eyes are kind of weird, like they have buggy eyes. Have you seen a shih tzu?
Kevin:yeah, they're like the. Uh, they're like the gremlins the nice ones, not the mean ones.
Jordan:Yeah, like the mugwai, is that what they?
Alban:were called. Yeah, that's right.
Jordan:And then East Boston, massachusetts, says I have a black lab, corgi mix rescue dog. He's the best 45 pounds of excellence. Basically a black lab on Corgi legs. Wish I could send you a picture via fan mail. Well, I think that you can drop that picture into an email, send it to support at buzzbrowcom and say get this to Jordan ASAP, because I want to see that. That sounds so cute. So thank you, guys.
Alban:My childhood dog was a rescued black lab, had some other stuff in there and was by a mile the best dog I've ever been around. So black lab corgi mix sounds excellent.
Jordan:Yeah, do we have a sound off question for our next episode?
Alban:Well, I personally want to know if you've turned on fan mail. Have you gotten responses? I kind of want to get an idea of how big some of these shows are because, relatively, buzzcast is not a massive show and we're getting a lot of fan mail. I know Pod News Weekly Review they said that they think their show is a little bit smaller than ours and they got a lot of fan mail. Jordan has a very big show and you didn't do any promo and got some. But I'd like to hear from other people Tell us, are we talking hundreds of downloads, thousands or tens of thousands, and did you get any One? We could say what it was and that'd be a ton of fun to hear what you got. And two, if you don't have any and you mentioned the name of your podcast maybe us talking about it on the show will get you some fan mail. So that's what I would like to hear have you turned it on and if so, how are things going?
Jordan:That sounds good. All right, to have your response feature on next episode. Tap the link in the show notes and send us a text message.
Alban:And, as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting, jordan, we're recording a little bit late, so you are going to be on speed when you're on speed. She was speeding through. The edit Did not mean to say that I didn't realize what on speed meant. Maybe.
Kevin:I don't know.
Alban:I might need it to get through this Jordan is not on-speed, it might be both. She's going to be speed editing this episode because yesterday Kevin and I went to a farewell lunch. We had somebody on the team Addy who'd been with us for how many years, Kevin? Almost six, yeah, and that is back when Bus Brow was so much smaller. Back then there were only a handful of people in the office and Addie has been in customer support the whole time, but she also organized all of our company meetups. All the times we did retreats was very analytical and very good at like getting stuff done she was.
Kevin:One of the biggest things that I remember is that she was so instrumental in doing the big buzzsprout bowling party that we did in Orlando.
Alban:Oh yeah, yeah, that was a huge, huge undertaking. I remember Kevin pitching it and me going, no way, I can't handle that. And then it happened and I couldn't believe how good it turned out.
Kevin:Yeah, yeah. So Addie has been a huge part of our team for a very long time and if you've ever written into support, there's a good chance that you've gotten a response from Addie. So she's been supporting podcasters and teaching podcasters and motivating podcasters and just providing all around remarkable customer support for all of you who listen to the show and thousands and thousands of others, for such a long time. So Addie is about to have her second child and she's choosing to stay at home for a while and raise them and be with them while they're young, which is amazing and we're so excited that she has the possibility to do that. And so she's stepping out of her position at least for now, as a member of our support team.
Kevin:So we had a farewell lunch for her yesterday in the office, so anybody who was around came to that and we got to spend some time with Addie. But her official last day it was yesterday, but I'm sure we can still get a message to her. So if Addie has impacted you and you want to drop her a quick you know, thanks for all the years of help and support. If you want to email support at buzzsproutcom and say, get this message to Addie, I'm sure they'll figure out a way to get it over to her. But let's just be grateful and thankful for all the amazing support and I shouldn't say amazing, cause we use the word remarkable remarkable support that Addie has offered to our podcasters over the years. We are certainly going to miss her on that team.
