The Best Podcast Microphones + Where Are My Spotify Stats?!?

This week we discuss what to do if you miss publishing a podcast episode, our favorite microphones, and jump back into the customer support mailbag with Priscilla.

Make sure to check out our new Best Podcast Microphones blog post to see which microphones we recommend and why.

To see in-depth Spotify stats, go to https://podcasters.spotify.com/

Customer Support Q&A Leader Board:

• Kevin - 1
• Alban - 1
• Travis - 0

Have an idea for something we should talk about? Post it in the Buzzsprout Podcast Community on Facebook and tag one of us to let us know!

Have a question? Shoot us an email at support@buzzsprout.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Alban interrupts...
• 0:22 Buzzsprout News
• 1:37 What to do if you miss an episode
• 10:27 Our favorite podcast microphones
• 22:26 Customer Support Battle
• 23:04 Can I pay for Buzzsprout on an annual plan?
• 28:07 Where are my Spotify stats?!?
• 32:25 How long does it take for new episodes to appear?

Transcript

Alban: 0:00

Where are my Spotify stats? I know people listen to my podcast today through Spotify, but I didn't see those plays. Buzzsprout dig[inaudible] like the mouse dinging in the background. That's me shouting.

Travis: 0:22

Welcome back to Buzzcast. Guys. In this episode we're gonna kick off with some cool announcements, some cool buzz sprout news. Alban, you got some fun stuff to talk about.

Alban: 0:30

Yeah, everybody. So we've got a couple events coming up. Um, September 25th, we're going to do something in Jacksonville. Um, at our offices, there's a group of Jacksonville podcasters, the Jacks podcast meetup. They're on Facebook and we're going to meet up at the actual, we're doing it at the bus sprout offices. So if you're in Jacksonville, search for Jack's podcast or meetup on Facebook and join the group. We'd love to have you. And then October 10th through 13th, we're going to be at she podcasts live. We just did a big um, promo and we gave away a bunch of tickets. Um, hopefully some of you listening one those tickets. So a bunch of us are going to go to Atlanta and it's going to be a really awesome time. So it's the first conference, um, for female podcasters and I think it's going to be amazing

Travis: 1:21

it, Priscilla, are you going to be there as well? I am going to be there. Oh, well welcome to buzz cast Priscilla. Yeah. So Priscilla's back to, uh, to give us more support questions at the end just to see how we do. Um, but she'll be, she'll be hanging out with us today. Good to have you. Yeah, I'm excited. So we just had a hurricane pass by Florida. If you're wondering why didn't buzz cass come out last Friday? Well, Hurricane Dorian is why. So I have a surprise look on my face. I didn't know we were supposed to launch last Friday. Oh, you have to publish an episode. We missed it. Yes. Every other Friday. Oh Man. Sorry. That's all right. But sometimes life just happens. And so I thought it'd be a good discussion because a lot of the conversation around publishing frequency and you know, general, you know, best practices for podcasting is be consistent, right? Make sure that you put out episodes consistently so your audience can rely on you. They know, hey, every other Friday you're coming out with an episode. But there might be some instances where you know, it's okay to miss an episode.

Alban: 2:26

Yeah, I think there's a difference between if your show is evergreen content that is not time-specific, it's not important. It's not like a new show. And if it's a little bit more current events focused. So for this show, we always record it right before we release it and we want to be able to talk about, hey, we're doing this in a couple of days. Hey, this is happening in the industry. Oh, this company was just acquired. Um, for us, we kind of have, we can't ever really schedule them ahead. But if you can schedule your show ahead, we always recommend trying to be a few ahead so that you have the opportunity to miss one miss a recording but not fall behind.

Travis: 3:05

Yeah, batching your recordings is a really great way to kind of get a cue built up to give you some, some margins, some space. And uh, I know for all of our evergreen content, like for five minute Monday podcast episodes, for instance, uh, we do those like a month, month and a half at a time. So over the course of two days we'll record five to six episodes and scheduled them out so that even when we do have a hurricane, you know, that Monday still coming out with a new episode, um, what do you think, Kevin? Well, I feel unqualified the answers since I didn't even know that we were supposed to[inaudible] completely missed that. Yeah, I think, I think, like you said, sometimes life just happens. We, the office was pretty quiet last week cause people were preparing for the hurricane that never came. And um, yeah, that stinks.

Kevin: 3:56

It stinks when you miss it. Uh, we have had people write in before posts in our Facebook group, like, um, I can't remember exactly what happened, but we had a, we were doing every two weeks and then I think we were supposed to come out on Friday and I think we missed that Friday for some reason. We're probably the worst at this. So I think the advice that we can give is that there's life after not being consistent. There's life after not hitting your publishing schedule. Uh, I don't know. Again, Travis you might be able to say, but I don't know that it's hurting our download numbers too much. I think it's, it's not a great, it doesn't show a lot of respect for your audience, which I don't feel good about and that's why I'm shocked and disappointed that we were supposed to release last week and it completely fell off my radar. Um, yeah. I don't know what to say. I just feel terrible right now. How have any of you read atomic habits, James? Clear? Clear. I have heard lots of good things about it and I have every intention of someday in the future. So you has to clean up from the library. But

Alban: 4:55

he had this really popular blog and it's all about building habits and a lot of habits are building consistency. And so I think of podcasting as being habit and there's like that old Jerry Seinfeld, like don't break the chain. He would write 15 minutes of jokes every day and put an x on the calendar and he'd say, I can't break the chain. And what James Clear talks about, he goes, you know, one reason that's not a great method for people is when they say, I can't ever miss a day. I can't ever miss a week. What ends up happening is when they break it, once they go, well, I'm a failure, it's all over. And He, I guess he actually has some research backing this up, but in atomic habits he talks about missing one day is not that bad. Missing one week isn't that bad is when you miss two in a row, almost everyone falls off the wagon. It's over. So maybe one of the things is if you miss one podcast episode, really make sure you don't miss two. You want to make sure that you get back to get being consistent. Um, and I think like Kevin was saying, maybe it's a good thing to address it. Say, Hey guys, I'm sorry I missed this. Um, but, and tried to be more consistent in the future.

Travis: 6:04

What are your thoughts about, I know sometimes the podcast that I listened to, um, if they miss a week, they'll replay like an older popular episode. What are your thoughts on that? Like kind of keeping the, so you keep the rhythm even though if it's a replay, you're totally done that before. Um, specifically what I was trying to nail down an interview with somebody and you know, I was being undisciplined and waiting to the last minute and then they had to cancel. And so I was like, well, I need to put out an interview episode. So let me do a Mashup of some other interviews that had like some cool segments and just put together a Frankenstein's monster of an episode. And that, and it did really, you know, relatively well. Um, so there are some different things you can do to be creative like repurposing old podcast content. Uh, if the interview or not having the content available is keeping you from publishing an episode, you can totally do that. And, and there are even podcasts that I know of that they make that a part of their normal strategy, this American life. I feel like they do a lot of kind of, because they have such a big archive, they pull a lot. Yeah. Well, and it's like, I think as podcasters we think everyone has listened to every episode and remembers everything we've ever said, which is actually not true, surprisingly enough. Um, but yeah, so if you have like this really golden gem of an interview, you can republish it on an annual basis and they're going to be new people that have discovered your show that haven't gone back to listen to your archive. That would appreciate that. I know that I've appreciated it when even if I've listened to the interview, it's like I'm really distinct grading at further into, okay, what are the takeaways that I wanted to pull from this interview to apply to my life? And so, so yeah, re-publishing older content, even if you don't freshen it up and you just have a little intro that says, Hey, this interview was amazing and I just want to make sure that every single one gets one of you, gets an opportunity to listen to it. So here it is again. Here are my big takeaways. Enjoy the interview. Like you can totally do that as a, as a fallback, as a plan B if you don't have fresh content to put out. Yeah,

Alban: 8:00

I've seen like new shows do this. Even if the content didn't make sense. I'm a levy. The content is a few months old. What they've done, I've seen this on the daily, it's if there's a show or excuse me, a new story that's kind of coming to a conclusion. So we're recording this right after John Bolton leaves the White House, they would do something like go back to when he was hired and they'd play a little bit of about when he was hired to kind of go, here's something that happened in the past and here's some, here's con, you know, some continuity for what's happening near the end. And so I wonder if maybe you're a new show, you know, we're going to miss something. Maybe say is there something topical in the past that I can pull from because you don't want to just throw in a random show. So like, hey, next week this is going to be a really cool conference that everybody's going to, it's in 2016 feels like

Travis: 8:53

that's in the fee. Yeah, no, I think just like from a 30,000 foot view perspective, um, it's not the end of the world. If you miss an episode. And that's Kinda like what album was talking about with the, uh, atomic habits book. It's not the end of the world. You are not a failure of a podcast or because you missed an episode or you missed a week. Um, and then when you come back on be like, hey guys, sorry I missed the episode. And if you feel comfortable sharing details from your personal life or what happened, you can totally do that. And ironically that makes your listeners fall in love with you even more because they, they're like authenticity. Yeah. It's like, okay this is an actual person that I can relate to cause my life is crazy too. So now, now I know we're both in the same boat. We both have crazy stuff that happens. So it's not the end of the world. I think if you're just upfront about it and authentic and like, Hey, sorry I missed the episode. Here's why. But we're back. Like that is totally a great strategy. Yeah. In hindsight, it makes me think that if I had realized that we last week was a published week for us, I would have loved to come in the studio and just recorded a little two minute thing of Harris, what's going on in the office and no one's here and here's why and we'll be back next week. We'll get caught up, apologize and stick that in the feed for a week. And then when we do get our next episode out, you can always pull that out of your feed. But it's great for people who have subscribed your show and are like, hey, it's Friday. Why is the new buzz cast episode out now would've been nice for them to have something that they could have heard and understood what was going on and, and why we missed. So this past week we published our best podcast microphones, 2019 exhaustive concordance blog, epic guide. I put it together. So that's why I'm adding all these superlatives. Um, but yeah, so we put out a blog post talking about what, what we think are the best podcast microphones right now. Um, and so I thought that'd be a good opportunity for us to talk about just are the things that we liked, the things that we look for in microphones. Um, why we make certain decisions about microphones we recommend or rock phones that we use in the studio. Um, because there are thousands of microphone options out there and there are certain ones that come up frequently that are suggested and recommended frequently. Um, and then there are kind of like our reasons for why we chose the ones we put in the blog. Uh, but I just want to ask, uh, you guys, if you have a favorite podcast microphone and if it's the one you're talking into that's totally fine too.

Alban: 11:24

My favorite microphone is the Shure sm seven B. I think I'm partial to it because it looks cool. It does look really cool. And I saw it in a bunch of Joe Rogan photos before we were buying mikes. And then I was like, oh, this one looks really good. I have no clue. It's actually that much better. But I like it. It does have like a, like a stealth fighter vibe to it. Like this gun metal black. Yeah. We'll need to put a in the show notes so you can go see photos of all the mikes that we're talking about. Hard to go wrong with the shirt.[inaudible] what about you Kev? Yeah, I have got the same mic in front of me and I like it.

Kevin: 12:04

I don't know. I've Priscilla's using a, I don't want to steal your thunder, but using a PR 40, which I've used before and I dunno man. I like, I don't know that they sound that different and I get annoyed at the way things sound sometimes. Like, um, I'm hearing the AC coming through our headphones right now and um, so I don't know that my ears that bad. I just think all of these microphones are really good. Yeah. You know, it definitely reaches a point where the, what separates one microphone from another is like really ticky tack really nitpicky. And it's almost like, well, what sound profile are you looking for that compliments your voice and the mood and the tone of your podcast. Like you can get super granular with trying to figure out what is the perfect microphone. Um, which is always difficult when someone's asked, well, like if Roman should I get, it's like, well I don't know anything about you.

Travis: 12:56

So starting from zero, here are three that you probably can't go wrong with. I think for most podcasters, my, my always, my recommendation is the ATR 2100 it's a$65 microphone that gets you 90% of the way there. It's like, it sounds awesome, it looks great, and it's like you can't break it. It's like this is pretty indestructible. Great. Pretty great pickup for anybody looking to start a podcast. When we set up the mobile podcasting studio, we always set up different microphones so people can, you know, if there's one that they're familiar with or they like, they can just sit down behind that. Or if there's one that they're interested in, maybe buying or evaluating, they can try it. And so I think the last time we set it up, we had an sm seven B. We had, um, a couple of road pod mikes. We had ATR 21 hundreds in there. And so throughout the course of the week at podcast movement, I was behind each one of those at different times. And Gosh, they've ranged from, you know,$65, like Alban said, up to 400 plus. And you can't really tell the difference all that much. Sorry, microphone manufacturing pulling out their hair that I'm saying that right now. Yeah. And it's, it's interesting. So the, the microphone I'm using right now is the road pro caster. This is the one that I kind of cut my teeth on when I was first getting started. Once I graduated from, you know, uh, a USB condenser, Mike that shall not be named. Um, and yeah, when I was doing research, when I was listening to different, a kind of audio clips of the microphones, I was trying to decide between the pro castor and the[inaudible]. And it was like, okay, the SM seven B, if you go and buy on lines about$400 it's a great microphone. You can use it to record literally anything. It'll sound good. Um, you can even put it on like a, like a kick drum and a drum set. You can use it to record a guitar and a vocal like they all sound great. Um, with podcasting you can get more specific and get like a broadcast vocal specific dynamic microphone, save a little bit of cash. And the difference in the audio quality is really negligible. Like the pro caster, you can get online for$230. So almost half the price of the SMB. And if all you're doing is recording your voice for a podcast, it's a great option. Same thing with the Heil. PR 40 comes in under$300. And so, so it is, it is interesting like you think I really want this microphone and then you come up with all these reasons why it's the one you have to have. But at the end of the day, as long as you choose a dynamic microphone, you know how to use it well and you have a relatively well-treated recording environment, then you can really have a fantastic podcast with a$65 microphone. Yeah. What do you think press, what do you use, I know you've recorded a few podcasts, episodes of your own in here. Where do you, where do you set up? Um, usually I use whatever Travis sets up for me. You are welcome and I kind of get, I have a thing, I agree with Kevin. I don't hear a huge difference, but I haven't personally been podcasting long enough. I feel like to have enough of kind of experience in listening to the playback of my own voice through different microphones. Um, but I do like the look of the one you guys are using. The essence of it definitely looks good on camera. That is for sure. That is for sure. And it makes me feel very professional. So I posted this in on reddit yesterday and it got a lot of feedback. Do you want me to, maybe we can do a quick comments from reddit. Oh boy. This is about our bleep all the expletives. This is about our blog post, right? You posted on the blog and just seeing what people like. So here's one. Uh, we bought an ATR 2100 right after we started and it's worked perfectly for two years. Not sure. Forever upgrade. We get a ton of compliments on our sound and that's, that's the$65 microphone that Albin referenced at the beginning of this segment. Yeah. Here's someone who really likes one called the Aston Stealth. I don't, do you know what Mike? That is, I've come across it a couple times. I've never personally used one, so I can't, I can't speak on any authority about how good it is, but I have seen it pop up here and there. This person's really surprised, hasn't been mentioned and thinks it will become more popular as theirs. You don't need extra gear for gain boosting. Maybe somebody who works for us and stuff. Email address.

Alban: 17:19

Oh, you've got a guy who rec loves the Blue Yeti. Um, he says though, you've kind of got to make sure you're doing the soundproofing right. And you know, you've got some opinions on that, Travis. Yeah, well, I mean that's, that was the microphone that shall not be named. And, and um, so that's what I started with, cause I asked my buddy who's a video guy and this was before I knew anything about podcasting and I was like, what's a good microphone? And he was like, this one seems to be good. So I bought it and I was like, this is the best microphone I've ever used. This is great. And then three months later, I'm like, why is it so echoey in this room that I've treated well? Like I'm just having trouble getting the sound to come out right. Um, and I started getting really frustrated with it simply because when you have a condenser microphone, just the way that it's built and designed, um, you're not going to be as close to it as you are with a dynamic microphone.

Travis: 18:10

Right? And so it's naturally gonna pick up more reverb, more echoes, more of that ambient background noise. So condenser mics are beautiful, wonderful microphones when they're in a really controlled environment. Um, but that's not most podcasters. Most podcasters are in a spare bedroom, in a living room, even at a dining room table. And so you want something that's going to be a little more forgiving with the recording environment, which is why we typically recommend dynamic microphones.

Kevin: 18:35

Yeah. I think if there's one product we could take off the market that would make the whole podcasting industry better. Oh boy, I'm going to be the Blue Yeti microphone. And again, it's not that you can't use that tool and get good quality sound out of it. It's just as difficult to do. And so for most people who are getting into the podcasting space, they're not ready to professionals who've been doing this for years, they don't have sound studios all set up. And then they go out and buy a tool that really needs that type of environment in the type of training to get good quality sounds. So it should be off the market. It's a pain for people. It causes more pain and the problems it solves. So, and again, if you use it and you get good sound out of it, then fantastic. And I'm really excited for Molly Tov. Yeah. And I'm not against you in any way. I'm not, I'm not hating on you. I'm hating on the fact that they're selling this product and targeting it towards Newbie intro podcasters and selling it as an intro podcasting solution. And I don't really think it is, especially when you consider that it's twice as much as the 2100 so you can literally buy two 80 or 21 hundreds for the price of one blue Yeti. So yeah, it's, it's, we highly recommend dynamic microphone and if you need a USB option, go with the 2100 right.

Travis: 19:48

All right. Unless you have training in the studio and know exactly how to get great sound out of it and then, and then you're probably not buying a blue yeti right, then you're probably buying something else. So we got some more votes for the road in t one we've got some pro casters people who like that. A, I've got someone down here who is waiting for their pot mix to be delivered. They said they're out for delivery and they're excited to see how they sound. We really like those potlucks are good, but you're going to need the pop filter. The built in ones not quite enough. And we take those to podcast movement. When we set up the booth and people really like it, every time we put them out people were like, oh my gosh that the pod Mike. Um, the only difference if you're by yourself and you're doing a new setup, it's not as good as the ATR 2100 is you can't plug them right into the computer. They've got to run through the scarlet to ITU or some other audio[inaudible] pod mikes or XLR microphones. So if it's just you and your computer, you want to get something that has a USB connection. Um, which is where the 2100 has its strength cause it has both XLR and USB. Um, but yeah, the pod Mike has a really great clean, crisp, bright, uh, tonality to it. Um, especially when you consider that it's 100 bucks. It's like it's a really, really fantastic$100 XLR microphone. Yeah.

Alban: 21:06

So if you want to hear examples of how all of these Mike Sound, uh, one of the cool things Travis did in his post was not only does he review them and pulled together what makes them different, but actually solicited podcast episodes that were recorded on each mic. So you can learn about some new podcasts, you can hear some exact examples of people who picked to those mikes for their voices and you get a feel for how they all sound. Um, so we'll put a link to the show notes to that blog post. Yes, we will. Yeah. And don't be afraid to try before you buy. So if you buy it from a store that has the easy return policy like Amazon, you can try a 2100. And if you don't like it, you can send it back. If you have a guitar center in your local town, you can go there and they can plug in microphones for you and you can put on headphones and listen to yourself. Uh, every microphone is going to interact differently depending on your voice. So don't worry about like Alban and I, we just sit down behind ones that look good. Try to find one that sounds great for your boys. Test as much as possible. Use return policies. They're there, you know, for the customers' benefit. Uh, find what works great for you and, and go with it.

Priscilla: 22:08

And if you're coming in as she podcasts, we'll have the booth there so you can come test them out in the booth. Yeah, good idea. Good plug. Yeah. So you can come and reserve a time to record a, a fun, spontaneous podcast episode or somebody you meet or just to test them out and see which one you like.

Travis: 22:27

So Priscilla is back because we wanted to do some more customer support questions to test myself, Alban and Kevin and our general knowledge. Alban is hovering his finger over the sound pads, waiting for the perfect moment to bring it in. Wow. Everybody's very excited for this segment. Priscilla. We are super pumped. Uh, and just to refresh your memory on the scoreboard, Kevin won our first battle a couple episodes ago. So yeah, it's, it's intense here. Everybody wants to come away with a w. So Priscilla, what is your first customer support question for us?

Priscilla: 23:01

Okay. This first one is a doozy. Can I pay for my Buzzsprout account annually? Oh, Kevin, are we buzzing in? I like the digging in and that's good. So Kevin's is the Ding Ding. Wha what's your sound effect going to be? Okay, I'll do an actual bell. Alban is yours. What's yours? Oh God. All right, Kevin. I think it might also be a ding. I think we could all do digs. Well then he had two, three dings because we got one, two and three. We'll, we'll sort it out in post. All right, so do you just want the answer like cut and dry or most[inaudible] answer. So I want you to tell me if it's a yes or no, but I also want to tell you, I want you to tell me and our listeners why we do it that way and why we don't offer annual, Ooh, Oh yeah, you can get points off this now. Then you can answer the second part.[inaudible]

Kevin: 24:01

okay, so the answer is no. And the reason, uh, well, there's a lot of reasons, so I'm not exactly sure the reasons that you would go into in a, in a support response. But the easiest and simplest explanation for the customer's benefit is that we want you to only pay for what you use. And so a lot of times when these companies sell annual subscriptions, the cancel, if you decide to cancel early or want to stop for whatever reason, it gets super complicated in how we kind of prorate those credits. Um, there's also an expectation of a discount if I pay for a year up front. And then, so then you have to like back out that discount if you try to do a refund or something like that. Uh, so for all those reasons, we're not big fans of complexity at Buzzsprout. And so we just said like if you want to podcast like just pay us a monthly fee and when you want to stop podcasting, you can stop paying that monthly fee.

Travis: 24:54

And we don't have a super complicated relationship that we have to untangle. Um, should we ever decide to stop? Is it, is it not? Also because someone, I'm just throwing this out there, had a terrible experience with a former cell phone provider and was like, I hate getting locked into these two year plans. I want a month. I want boost mobile. Did that subconsciously play into it? I don't know that it did. I thought there was actually going to be a story behind it. You're looking at kind of like, there's some bad that I tell you some story about that. I don't, I don't remember. We all had stories. Yeah. I mean nobody like universal storytelling of being locked into something. Um, so, and we, we don't want to set people up into like feeling like I have to enter into a contract in order to get 10% off or whatever. We try to keep our prices as low as possible and give those, make them available to everybody. All right, so I'm gonna chime in here and say the answer is no, we do not offer annual, uh, annual contract subscriptions, so I just want to get my foot in the door for the, the point system. That's all.

Priscilla: 25:54

Oh, I see. I already, I don't know if you[inaudible] Ding, Ding, Ding. I'm going to chime in so I'll take care of it or chord it. I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to stretch the rules a little bit. I'm trying to come away with a w. Yeah, I think, do you have anything to add, Alban? I think,

Alban: 26:11

yeah, I would add that in all the marketing stuff that I read, a lot of different software companies are like push the yearly plan that locks people in forever and if they cancel, look how much money you got. And it's like, it makes your numbers a lot better. And then I read it and I'm like, oh my gosh, we'd make so much more money. And then we're like, wait, but this one was going to cancel and write in and go, hey, podcasting wasn't for me. And what are we going to do? Write back and say, sorry buddy, those should have thought about that earlier. Like we're just going to write back and go, yeah, that's really not cool. You know, here's your a hundred bucks back. And so, you know, I think that it is sometimes it really is this like trick to lock people in for a year so they can't change to a new provider or they can't change their workflow if it doesn't work for them. Or if they don't like podcasting, they can't, you know, just stop. And so it's really just doesn't fit with what we do. So I don't know if it would ever be something you'd offer. That said, there is a, there is a case where people work for a corporation or an organization where putting stuff on a credit card for a monthly recurring subscription doesn't work well for that organization. And so there are specific people that find it difficult to sign up for Buzzsprout because we don't offer yearly. And so we are thinking about ways to solve that problem, but we want to solve a from a perspective of we're not because we're trying to lock you in just because your organization has a specific use case that's outside of what we currently account for. Yeah.

Priscilla: 27:40

And giving users the freedom to move between plans throughout the year if they end up recording longer episodes than they expected to and they need six hours instead of three not being stuck to the three limit and having to pay overage if they're constantly going over that. That limit sounds a good point. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. So do I have to give a point? We're just going to give that to, I think I'm going to give it to Kevin. He, he chimed in first. Um, okay. So don't forget you have to chime in. Yes, yes. Alright. So the next question is, this is kind of taken from an email that has come in multiple times. Where are my Spotify stats? I know people listen to my podcast today through Spotify but I didn't need, he knows plays, does sprout, dig, dig, dig. You have to wait until the question is over out. Heaven. Heaven like a mouse dinging in the background. That's me shouting. I didn't notice that Kevin and muted you. Its like heard you but I couldn't hear her accident. All right. Albin right now that go for it. All right where our Spotify place.

Alban: 28:40

So let's talk about some stat stuff. So you've got stats coming from all sorts of different places and we aggregate all of this together in our stats package. So you're getting stats from apple podcast and from stitcher and Spotify and Google podcasts and hopefully everywhere else. So where are the Spotify stats? I know someone listened today. The way Spotify does it is they don't act, we can't collect the stats ourselves. They host the audio file. So they are actually tracking all the stats and then they send them to us but they send them with a delay and I believe it is a three day rolling delay. And so if someone listened today we will not know that for three more days. As soon as we know we'll update the stats for you to be able to see. But with apple those are only really on a three hour delay because that's just how we cashed the stats page. So I feel like I'm adding a lot of detail cause I'm a very afraid of not a winning this point. And

Travis: 29:42

I'm going to do, I'm going to dig in here and add that if you want up to date stats as as instantaneous as possible, Spotify just released their Spotify podcasters dashboard that you can go in, claim your show with the email that's associated with your RSS feed and then they have their own set of stats just like apple has podcast connect, right? And so if you want to get realtime stats from Spotify and they track some other stuff that they don't pass along to us, like listeners and things like that, like specific Spotify, then yeah. And so, so that's another place you can go and get stats as well for Spotify. Right? Like if you want to see the gender breakdown of your podcast listeners, you can only get that through Spotify as dashboard. They don't provide that to us in the day that they send. Right. And that might be helpful to you. Like if you're trying to figure out, okay, I want to do an affiliate products that I want to promote, but this one that I really like is really more for, for men or more for females. Well, let me see. Okay. 80% of my podcast listeners are men, so I'm going to go with the one that's more male centric. That makes sense for my audience. So that's, that's where that data could be helpful for you. Um, if that's something that you're doing. Kevin, I saw that you had something to add to Alban's original answer. What was that? Well, I mean, I don't want you losing any points. I think Alban's gonna get the points. Okay. Even with my genius, go ahead and award the points. Genius insight. Good job. I want, I don't want to be a dirty player point, but you did say our stats run a three hour delay.

Kevin: 31:12

Is that right? Yeah. The caching on the staff. I think the caching is still at six hours. Yes. I think as of now it is still six hours. There's still plenty of time between now and Friday to change that, Alban, there are some real time stats within Bose brown that's on your episode page. It shows you real time count, but even those won't show your Spotify, right? Not Spotify, right? Yeah. All right, so Alban, you get that. You get that point. So, all right Matt. Nice question three. Give Travis a half point for his loan. Look at this. No, I am. I am right.

Travis: 31:46

Three hours now. Nice says three hours now. Good job. Good job, Alban. I literally just added the age, edited the html on this page. You could say three hours to get it up on my computer. Edited it. All right. There we go. All right, so many sound effects. All right. This can be a joy to edit. Alright? Yep. You got send them marketing. Well, I mean I felt bad correcting them from three to six, but point away Priscilla[inaudible] genius insight. All right. All right. This is the last question and it's a three part question. So let me write, let me read all three out friends right now. Jumping the gun. Alban. Alright, how did directories update with my new episodes? When will my changes changes? Throw up or throw up

Alban: 32:42

my podcasts? When will my changes show up in my listings and when my subscribers get my episodes immediately, Alban, Alban, Kevin just rolled his eyes. You're over here. Grabbed the first one you grabbed the second one. The polite thing needed to do. We'd be let Travis have a go at it, but if you want to, right? I was dealing in Kevin that this was a battle. Take one of the third of this. Yeah. You know what? Alban had a little league baseball coach. I'm still like every kid gets to bat, everyone's a winner. So when I played little league, the coach one year, let us have one game where we, one of the other kids and I managed and we won. But it was because we, when we looked back at it, we were like, none of the bad kids get to play and feel to their rule of the day. Everyone gets play it field. So a little more competitive than the nice little league coach. Yes. Well, I don't have a great answer for this, so I'll bet I'll actually defer to you. All right, well I'll start off with number three because this is the one that c is so important. If your podcast isn't showing up in apple podcast yet, the new episode, Yup. Your listeners are still getting it because your listeners are just like apple podcasts. They're just connecting to the feed and when they see a new episode, they will download it. So it's often possible that people have already listened to your show even before it shows up in your apple podcasts. Listing Apple podcasts is no longer in the middle. Now for apple podcasts? Well, that's specifically for subscribers, not just for listeners. If you have a listener that's not subscribed and they always go to your listing, then they won't get it right away. Correct. So I'm already down to half a point. I just want to declare if I had that specific to s we want to give, give good answers here. So that was good. Yes. Yes. So someone's already subscribed. They will get the podcast automatically. Now your app updates. Yeah, with the new episode. Okay. Sorry, go ahead. So Apple podcasts mostly takes 24 hours within 24 hours is how often they check the listings. Some apps like overcast, actually use a algorithmic, uh, way of deciding how often to check. So really popular episodes, they're checking a really popular podcast. They checked like every 30 minutes. And as you get less popular than it's back down to a day. So some are a little bit smarter about that. A Spotify is near instantaneous because we will go, hey, here's that new episode. And they'll do it pretty quickly. Kevin is shaking his head, so I'm probably gonna lose zero points. What do you think of it? They are quick, but it's not because we tell them anything it's cause they check every five minutes. Yeah. And I think it's actually chain. When they first started, it was like every five to 10 minutes and I think now it's closer to an hour. It's

Travis: 35:38

still pretty quick, but it doesn't always show up within five minutes to usually closer to an hour. I'm seeing anyway. Google podcasts is the fastest if you use the pop pop hubbub pub sub hub bub pubsub hubbub. I always remember it starts with pubsub because I love public subs hubbub. Um, so it's pub subs hubbub. Yup. Yup.

Alban: 35:58

All right, so what is this a bubbly thing that we're talking about? We probably needed pubsub hubbub. Google wanted to do this thing. Mostly what happens now is everyone who subscribed, so podcast checks and they're like, hey, has a new podcast episode come in and you're always asking over and over new one new one, new one. No, no, no, no. Yes. Well Google said, what if you just came to us and said, hey, Google pub sub hub. Uh, yeah. Hey Google. We just put up a new episode and they go, cool. And then they go to all of the subscribers and they go, hey guys, check it out. New episodes up. Right. Maybe the analogy to simplify it would be like if you're waiting on a really important

Priscilla: 36:40

and you keep, you know, checking your mailbox, checking your mailbox, checking your mailbox, checking your mailbox, it wouldn't it be a lot easier if when the postman put the letter in your mailbox, he does ring your doorbell. Yeah. That's what the pub hub suburb or like how Amazon does it when they put the box down and then they bang on your door and then you notify attacked and then you opened the door and you have the box. Yes. Right. Okay. So, so what, what was the, what were the three part questions? I wanna make sure we actually answer the question. The first one was how to directories update when new episodes. And so I think we, we touched on that and yeah, that just depends. And then will, when will my changes show up in the listings? And so that, like Alban said, varies kind of between different directories. Um, apple podcasts usually is about 24 hours, um, where it will show in your listing. Um, and then some other ones like Spotify or are quicker than that. Um, and then when, when my subscribers get my episodes or when will they, will they get them immediately? And so we talked on that to Alban. Alban got that one. Nice. I actually have a personal question. So this is the place, Travis.

Travis: 37:44

So, so when you go into Buzzsprout., let's say that you, uh, want to update your audio file, like there's something you wanted to change or tweak and see. You have your episode already listed in apple podcast, Spotify, Google podcast, but you want to upload a new audio file and then save that. Sure. What is, what is that refresh process like?

Priscilla: 38:02

Yeah, so it's the same. It's the same as if you were uploading a new episode once it's published or once it's replaced within Buzzsprout, which can take I think like two to five minutes for us to replace the episode or that audio file. Um, then that process starts and the directories, we'll see it when it's changed. It used to be that Spotify, you had to kind of tweak the title a little bit so that Spotify could see the new episode because of the way they check for changes. Um, but recently we updated that and said you'd no longer have to change the title, which is, which is nice and helpful for people who are

Travis: 38:36

updating that. But that audio is audio file. Now remember like if you're replacing an audio file, anybody who has downloaded that episode, it's not going to read, download it for them. So if I subscribe to your show in overcast and I listened to it and I'm like, Hey Priscilla, that was a really inappropriate joke that you made in your podcast. And you're like, oh gosh, you're right. I shouldn't have said that example is very unlikely to happen is the other way around. Hypothetical. Yes. I'm going to replace that audio file and you replace it and then you're like, I got rid of that joke. That was a bad call. And then I play it again. Like, I'm s I still have that episode downloaded so I'm still hearing that inappropriate joke. The only way if that happens and you need to take something down, you need to remove that whole episode. That should pull it from their feed. It should delete it from the app cash and, and replace it with a new episode. Yeah. So awesome. All Right Priscilla, where you keeping track of the points? I think Alban wins this week. I think Alban got two points. Yeah. Job Well done. Well done. I'm really liking all these sound effects. This is great. Hard to tell. All right, so the first battle went to Kevin. Second battle went to Alban. Yes. I know. I'm like the, I'm like the Red Iguanas on David and temple and Kevin are Goliath and you're David gotta gotta fight that doesn't Goliath lose. Well first he wins a bunch and then at the end, yeah, he gets a little over confident, a little cocky. And then, you know, the young upstart, you know, comes in. Um, so if you have any questions about your podcast, about Buzzsprout, um, feel free to reach out to our support team. They're fantastic. Priscilla and Addie do a great job of keeping all of our customers super happy. And uh, you can write it in@supportatbuzzsprout.com and then if you just want to have like some back and forth, talk to some other podcasters about something you're thinking about or wrestling with or a strategy question, then the best place to do that is to go into our Buzzsprout podcast community on Facebook, which is where you can interact with different podcasts, jurors, ask questions, post things, share things. And so it's a great opportunity to do that as well. If you have something that you want us to talk about on a few trips that have buzz cast, definitely feel free to make a post in that Facebook group and a will kit you guys next time.