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
Podcast App Recommendations For Chapters, Transcripts, And More!
We tackle common podcast listening problems and explore the evolving landscape between native apps and web players based on listener questions about missing features and playback issues.
Send us messages about something stats won't tell us about you for our next Sound-Off segment!
Contact Buzzcast
- Send us a text message
- Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods
Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!
All right, Kevin.
Kevin:Hey,
Jordan:hey, we're back for another quick cast, this time Alban's out. You were out last time, I think.
Kevin:Y eah, it's like spring and late summer seem to be all the time when different Buzzsprout employees are in and out of the office. Lots of vacation time around those two times of the year.
Jordan:Hey was seeing a lot of out banners across profile images in our company chat so I was like, wow, I don't know if anyone's in the office today.
Kevin:Are your kids out of school this week?
Jordan:Yeah, they're out of school this week.
Kevin:Are you guys doing anything?
Jordan:We have done a few things, but today is actually my daughter's 13th birthday. Oh fun, oh my. Yeah, so I'm officially a parent of a teenager and yeah, so it's been a busy week because it's spring break and also my daughter's like big birthday, and so what about you? Have you had anything going on for your spring break?
Kevin:I did. Last week was my kid's spring break and luckily they all had the same spring break, which hasn't happened since my daughter went to college. So we took advantage of it and we headed out West and did a little skiing, which was a lot of fun. Weather was great. A lot of fun. You went to Montana right, I did, and I can't believe. It's the first trip I've taken in since, like the pandemic hit where all of our flights were on time.
Kevin:Oh really, yeah. No delays, no like maintenance issues. No crew didn't show up. All the stuff that's been going wrong on every single flight I've taken For some reason. I think they're finally getting the kinks worked out. Maybe, hopefully it's been at the same time we're seeing like planes flipping over on runways and I was going to say catching fire and all that, so a different set of problems, but luckily I was never affected by any of that stuff.
Jordan:Yeah, I was going to say, of all the years for you to finally not have something go wrong, I'm surprised it was this one.
Kevin:Right. So spring break is a lot of travel happens. It's a great time to listen to podcasts, and I saw on the outline that you want to talk about podcast apps.
Jordan:Yeah, so this quick cast was really inspired by listener feedback that we've gotten. Got a couple of family messages about podcast listening, so I thought you know what? We'll take our 10 minutes, We'll hop into this and give some feedback and ideas on how to fix issues that some people are experiencing. Okay, I think the first one that I actually want to get into Peter McCauley from British Columbia. He wrote in a couple episodes ago and we addressed this on SoundOff, but I don't know if he stuck around for SoundOff. So he wrote in again and said I appreciate subject matter, but there are no chapter markers nor a transcript in this podcast over an hour. And, yeah, the podcast is long, which is why we use chapter markers and transcripts. So I'm thinking Peter must be using a podcast listening app or web player that does not have chapter markers or transcripts on it.
Kevin:Yeah, that sounds right. The most common one you know for Buzzcast listeners is the Apple podcast app, which does show chapter markers. It's a little bit funky how you get to them. It's not a real obvious thing that you could tap on and I don't even use Apple podcasts enough to tell you offhand how to get to it, do you?
Jordan:Um, yeah, so when you have the episode playing and you're on like the now playing screen screen, there's a little menu on the bottom right hand corner of your listening app. You can click on that and then it'll show the chapter markers. And then there's also a little on the left hand side of the bottom menu bar. There's like a little quotations thing and you can see the transcript that Apple generates, because they don't take our transcript that we edit. So if you're on Apple, you can do that. However, it's a little bit tricky because if you use the Apple web player, they don't have chapter markers or transcripts.
Kevin:Yeah, well, here's the thing that really confused me about the message that Peter sent in, and it's that he's aware of chapter markers and aware of transcripts.
Jordan:Oh yeah.
Kevin:Which makes me think that other podcasts you listen to you are seeing them.
Jordan:I didn't even think about that.
Kevin:I really want to hear back from Peter, Like what app are you using to listen to Buzzcast?
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:And why are we not seeing chapter markers and transcripts? Because, again, presumably you're seeing them with other podcasts. So in Apple Podcasts we see them In Pocket Casts, we see them In Overcast, we see them Spotify we're. This show is not actually on Spotify, but we do have lots of shows that are hosted on Buzzsprout that use chapter markers and we see them on Spotify. So, almost all the apps. Of course, we fully test and everything. So, yeah, I'm curious what app are you using and why are you not seeing them?
Jordan:This actually reminds me. Pocket Cast also released a new web player. They announced it, I think, a few weeks ago or something like that, and I was really excited because I was like, oh good, so Apple has a web player, pocket Cast has a web player, and it's another podcasting 2.0 supporting application that is going to be open to a lot more people. However, when I went to their web player, they also don't have chapter markers or transcripts, and so I'm not sure what's going on with these web players that they're not supporting that. I don't know if it's that much extra effort or I don't know.
Kevin:Yeah, I mean, everything's some level of effort. The transcripts, like getting it to follow along with the audio I could see how that could be a pretty big hurdle. That along with the audio I could see how that could be a pretty big hurdle. And taking that on in your native app first and then bringing it to your web player later, that could make a lot of sense. For a lot of teams the chapter marker stuff seems simple enough, but again, these companies all work different ways and so they have to prioritize stuff.
Kevin:I imagine chapter markers for sure would be coming to both web players at some point for Apple and Pocket Cast. But the transcripts in Pocket Cast, the app, don't even follow along with the audio right now. Now Apple Podcast does, and it's a really beautiful experience. I could see them saying we really want to get this right before we bring it to market and so it's going to take us a little bit longer. But Pocket Cast, it should have been a pretty quick thing. But maybe Pocket Cast is just like let's put out a web player, let's see what sort of traction it gets, how many people are using it, and then we'll take the next step of investment if we see it's a popular thing.
Jordan:Yeah, All right. So the other family message that I want to talk about is from Alan from California, who said how come your player stops when I navigate away and does not let me resume. It starts from the beginning and I have to find where I left off.
Kevin:That one is a puzzler Again. Unless he's using, he's going straight to the Buzzcast website.
Jordan:That's what I'm inferring.
Kevin:Yeah, that's what you're thinking.
Jordan:I'm thinking so.
Kevin:And so if you have that player open in a tab and you click play and then you open up another tab and continue to browse the web, it should continue to play just fine, unless another tab starts taking over the audio. So if you went to YouTube or something, that might take over the audio and pause it, and then you could flip back to the tab and hit play again, in which the Buzzcast episode would take back over. If you close that tab, though, and then you open that another tab later and come back, it's not going to remember where you were. There probably are some ways that we could accomplish that technically, but, as far as I know, no web players do it Like it would involve us, you know, dropping cookies on your screen or on your computer and then trying to resume from that location, and it would be technically challenging. And, again, it's not a big thing that web players do.
Kevin:This is a great area, for if you want that type of experience. This is where native apps really start to shine. They're just set up. The technology is a little easier to implement stuff like that, and which brings me to this other thing, which is like native apps in general. Do you remember like okay, iphone comes out around 2007 or so. App stores launched roughly two years later 2009, ish. And everybody wants native apps for everything. So all the software that they use, they're like where's the native app for my phone? I don't want to use the web view. I don't want to use the mobile website, I want to use a web app. It's a better experience and I'm feeling like things are starting to shift now.
Jordan:They don't want the app, so you don't want another app on their phone.
Kevin:People don't want to install another app on their phone. They have so many apps on their phone already.
Jordan:That's how I feel.
Kevin:I just want to use the mobile web. I just thought that was so interesting and so unfortunately, like these companies, apple and Google with their Android platform have invested so much in making the native app experience is so great that it's hard to mimic a lot of that same exact functionality through a web app. But we are starting to see I think the companies are starting to see that people more and more want a really great mobile like web experience just as, and they want that to mimic the functionality you get from a native app without having to install an app.
Jordan:And so they are starting to give us more tools that we can use to make those experiences better, but they're not all here yet, so I think that this is why Apple started doing like the stacking of the apps, and now you can have like folders, and so instead of having like a million apps on your screen, you can now have them all individually organized and stuff. But yeah, it's, it is starting to shift to where you have to have an app to order, like McDonald's, and they push it. Every single time I go through the drive-thru, or like every when I travel, I have an entire folder full of travel apps that I have to have just to get through a freaking airport. It's so funny because it is getting to the point where, like, I'm resisting using apps. I mean, even if I watched YouTube, I will go to Safari and type in youtubecom to use that experience instead of the app which is installed on my iPhone. I just I don't know, there's something about it. I just don't want to get on the app. Yeah.
Kevin:Well being in the podcast business. I do have a folder dedicated to podcast apps and I've got 30 podcast apps in there, but I do take the one which currently for me right now is Pocket Cast. That's my daily driver podcast app and I do break that out of that podcast folder and it sits on my home screen and so I get that. People don't necessarily always wanna install another app you already have. If you're on Apple, anyway, you already have the Apple Podcast app. That's loaded on the phone by default. I think you can hide it. I don't even know if you can fully delete it, but you can hide it if you don't want it. On Android, I don't think there is a native one anymore. They got rid of Google Podcasts so now it's like YouTube Music, I think is kind of their default podcast app.
Jordan:Yeah, I think that's the one that's going to be stock on, like Google Pixel and stuff like that.
Kevin:Yeah, so if anybody's listening and wants a recommendation for good podcast apps, the Apple Podcast app is great, so I really like Pocket. Cast I also like Cast-O-Matic is a great one. It's a very small, not very popular podcast app, but I like it a lot. Yeah, overcast is a popular one that a lot of people like. It wasn't a good fit for me, but I know a lot of people like it.
Jordan:Yeah.
Kevin:True Fans is a web app that you can install, and so it kind of functions like a native app after you install it, and I think Sam has been talking a lot about actually making a native version of it. Oh, really so that might be native soon. Those are the top of mind ones that come to me. Yeah, do you have any that you like.
Jordan:Much to Kevin's dismay. I love using Spotify for podcasts. I really enjoy it. I also love using Apple Podcasts. True fans was top of my list, especially as a web player, if anyone is wanting to listen on your web browser. And then the other one that I really highly recommend, especially if you have an Amazon prime account, is Amazon music, and this is specifically because they have a deal with networks like Wondery. They have a deal with networks like Wondery where, if you have an Amazon Prime account, you can get the bonus, premium content and ad-free listening in the Amazon Music app, which a lot of people don't know, but it's kind of a cool tip.
Kevin:Yeah, that's a good bonus feature. I'm surprised that the Amazon Podcast app is still not a very popular app. Yeah, but you would think there's so many people who have Prime. Almost everybody has Prime or uses somebody's Prime account. Oh yeah, you would think that it would be more popular.
Jordan:Yeah, my husband. He's recently been on a huge smart list kick and he told me he's like I binged through all their stuff. So I think I'm going to have to go and subscribe and I'll get all the bonus ones. And so I think I'm going to have to, you know, go and subscribe and I'll get all the bonus ones. And I'm like, no, no, no, we pay for. Amazon Prime, get on Amazon Music and, sure enough, we have all the bonus episodes, so it's pretty cool.
Kevin:Okay, so you mentioned Spotify, and I think you're right. Spotify is doing a really good job of making a better podcast listening experience within the Spotify app. I don't look at it all that often, honestly, but here's what you should know about Spotify is not every show is listed on Spotify.
Kevin:Not every show is listed on Apple, and, of course, there'll be exclusions, but specifically this show that you're listening to right now is not on Spotify, no. So if you want Spotify to be your daily driver, you're still going to need something else, because, of course, you don't want to give up Buzzcast.
Jordan:But no, absolutely not Like Spotify Buzzcast. It's easy, easy choice.
Kevin:All right. So there's our our quick cast roundup on podcast apps. Hopefully y'all find that helpful and if you have any more questions about podcast apps, shoot them over and we will talk about them in the next episode.
Jordan:Sounds good. Also, we're seeing some more messages roll in for our last sound off question, where we asked you to tell us something about yourself that stats will not tell us, and we're really enjoying seeing those. But we want to get some more, so be sure to get those in over this weekend and we'll talk about it on the next episode. So until next time, keep podcasting.
