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Behind The 2025 Playbacks + Buzzsprout Ads Giveaway!

January 09, 2026 • Buzzsprout • Episode 210

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This episode is a behind-the-scenes look at Buzzsprout’s most ambitious yearly recap yet! Learn how it was built, why it’s animated, and how it’s designed to help podcasters celebrate their work and share it easily. We dig into favorite stats, surprising listener data, and creative ways podcasters are using playback on social media.

Podcast Playback Breakdown

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Alban: 0:00

I've got a new pet peeve. New pet peeve just dropped.

Jordan: 0:02

Oh no.

Alban: 0:03

There's something weird to me. When someone posts online a theory, just an idea, they'll present it as this person just revealed the answer. So one was somebody who's like, someone just revealed the answer to like longevity and living a long time. And it's like some woman who's just like, I think the jumping on a trampoline is like the most important thing for health. And they're like, they just revealed it as if it was like a secret the whole time. They've been people have been keeping the trampoline secret. And this lady was like, you know, enough with this. I'm not gatekeeping anymore. It's trampolines. But it's really just like one person thinks trampolines are really important.

Jordan: 0:40

I mean, this is clickbait.

Alban: 0:42

Anyway, that's a new pet peeve. There's something about that phrase, like they revealed the answer. So maybe we need to use this. I'm revealing the secret to podcast success in this episode. I'm about to reveal it.

Jordan: 0:53

Ooh, click, click, click.

Alban: 0:54

It's actually also trampolines.

Jordan: 0:57

What is it, Alban?

Alban: 0:58

I mean, the real secret to success, I can't even say it in a joking way. One thing I really like is podcast playback. And we just got our podcast playback. And this is the summary of everything that we accomplished in 2025. I know Kevin, I know the development team, they've all been working on this hard for a month, but Jordan and I are off creating podcasts and doing blogs and doing all sorts of stuff. And so we get to see the finished project. And it's just so much fun for me to click through here and just see like everything that we accomplished with Buzzcast this year.

Jordan: 1:32

Yeah, I think in like years past, I had some sort of access to the process of creating like the recap sort of thing for Buzzsprout. And so I always knew what was coming. And then this year, I got to experience it exactly the way that our podcasters experience it. And it was really magical. So I'm excited to talk about this today.

Kevin: 1:51

Good. I'm glad y'all like that. It is a big project for us this year because we decided to go in a new direction. So in the past, it's been more like an infographic, like one long page with a whole bunch of stats that you just scroll down. And that's served us well for six. This is the sixth year that we've done it. And this year we decided let's stretch ourselves, let's push things, let's try to make it animated, let's try to make it a little bit more story-like with the, you know, like kind of we set up like a, you know, you've published and then like how many episodes you publish, like a reveal, sort of like a setup and a reveal. And anyway, it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of new tech for us. And I think it came together pretty well. But now we're rolling it out to thousands and thousands of people, and we're just hoping nothing breaks.

Alban: 2:37

We're also recording this as it's being rolled out. Yeah. So this is like the perfect opportunity to get Kevin's uh real anxiety levels maxed out, and it could either go really, really well, it's going to go very well. Yeah. But you've still got that little bit of fear.

Kevin: 2:52

Yeah, I need to do a little disclaimer real quick that Alban and Jordan said they're going to ask me questions about like the stats and stuff like that. We are like my mind is so in this right now that I might I might get something wrong. There's a high probability that I'm going to say, oh, this is how we calculate this number. And it's actually how we were calculating it yesterday, and we changed it today. So I'm not sure how helpful this episode is going to be. But I will tell you that we do have a help article, and I will make sure that help article is accurate, if nothing else.

Jordan: 3:18

Yeah, we'll link to that in the show notes.

Alban: 3:20

Kevin, let me reveal the secret to podcasting success, and it's saying everything with 100% confidence. Okay. It doesn't need to be right. You just say it like it is. I've listened to a lot of podcasts, and that seems to be the through line. Yeah. Okay. Well, I can do that.

Jordan: 3:37

I will say when I first saw our playbacks, I immediately thought this is so ambitious and so well executed. And I get to say that because I didn't have a part in it.

Kevin: 3:47

Well, thanks. That's nice to say. It does feel ambitious. Uh, people who don't know the team at Buzzsprout is pretty small comparatively. And we were trying to do something more on the scale of like what Apple Music or Spotify or some of these bigger companies that do year in review type things do. And we're like, can we push ourselves to try to do something like that, even though we have a much smaller team? And I think we did a really good job. I mean, there we really only have two full-time designers who are working on this and then two programmers. You know, but we also have an infrastructure team and they have a big part to play in this. But the tech that they've been building on the infrastructure side that allowed us to be more ambitious this year, they've been working on that over the course of the entire year.

Jordan: 4:25

Yeah.

Kevin: 4:25

And then we got to the end of the year and we're like, hey, we have a more robust database setup now. We can run queries faster. We can do like real-time queries and stuff. We might be able to do something more in line with what you're seeing. And uh sure enough, we did it.

Alban: 4:40

So I'm clicking through, and the first thing is like the podcast history, and it's all animated. So it's telling me all the episodes that we published, showing me like all the stuff that we did throughout the year. How are we animating that? Who did that? Oh, you actually want to get into how the sausage is made.

Jordan: 4:58

Tell us your secrets.

Alban: 4:59

I want a little bit because all these people are my co-workers, and yeah, it's a pretty big difference between last year when it was cool images, but with just like text on images. And now there's an animation.

Jordan: 5:11

And there's literally like texture moving in the background and yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kevin: 5:15

So it does all HTML. In the last couple of years, a new HTML technology came around called Canvas that allows you to animate things. You can animate text and images and uh like uh vector graphics and stuff. And so we're using that technology to power all this animation. The reason we used Canvas is because we wanted sharing to be a big part of this. We want people to be able to find a screen or something that they're excited about, that they're proud of, and be able to share either an image of that or a video of the whole section and share that to whatever social media they want because we want we think it's an opportunity for people to promote their podcast and share what they're excited about and hopefully grow their show a little bit. And so Canvas allows us to take like screenshots on your behalf. So you don't have to figure out like what are the hotkeys again on my computer to take a screenshot and then where did that file just get saved to? And now how do I share that on X or whatever? So we wanted to make sharing super easy. And also with video, it can be difficult to get a video capture of something. So we wanted to automate all that. And the Canvas element allows us not only to do the animation, but then programmatically do a screen capture recording of either a video or a static image.

Jordan: 6:18

That was something that I was actually going to bring up was the sharing aspect of this. So when I got my Spotify wrapped, the thing that annoyed me was when if I wanted to share something, their actual share screens weren't the information that I was seeing in the animation. So I wasn't getting like the whole picture and what I was trying to share. But on the Buzzspart one, I noticed that if you see something you like and you click the share, it will actually share the exact thing that you're looking at. Right. The way that you're looking at it. And it's so cool because you can just save it to like photos, or like you said, save the video because it's sort of in like a story element. And what I've noticed on social media is a lot of people are actually like downloading all of the slides that are included in their playbacks, and then they're uh putting them together as like a single video and sharing it as like a reel or story. Yeah. It's so cool to see how people are creatively using the tools that we've provided to them to create their own content for like social media promotion.

Alban: 7:20

The first I saw was somebody who took all the videos, stitched them together, put them on Instagram, and then did music over the whole thing. Right. And I was like, when did we add music to this? Did we get like the copyright for these good music? Then I went, oh no, somebody like creatively took that. And obviously you can do that on Instagram because the copyright holders are getting paid. Yeah. I love when like somebody takes something we've made and takes a little bit further.

Kevin: 7:46

We wanted to put music in there so bad, and we could actually have licensed some music for this use. The problem is exactly what you're saying is that when you go to share it, then it could get flagged because you wouldn't have the license for each individual to share on their Instagram or their TikTok or their something else. And so we had to can the music idea. But when you create your video, and then if you hit, you know, share to TikTok or share to Instagram, you can always choose one of their stock music things right behind it. And that's what people have been doing, and it's been great.

Jordan: 8:12

Yeah.

Kevin: 8:13

All right. Favorite stats.

Alban: 8:14

We've done Buzzcast for seven years. Well, according to the playback. According to playback, I hope that's uh accurate. Yeah. We've been podcasting since 2018. Wow. All right. Second stat 2,113 minutes of content released.

Jordan: 8:32

Yeah.

Alban: 8:32

Which means like 4x the amount of time recording and 10x the amount of Jordan editing. But just 2,113 minutes, that's a day and a half. Oh, is it? I never ended up. If you listen to every buzzcast that came out this year, you listen to us talk for a day and a half.

Jordan: 8:51

That's crazy. That's just for stuff we released this year. We we know for a fact that there's listeners that have gone back and binged old episodes once they're caught up.

Alban: 9:01

You did that. You've listened to us more than any of our spouses.

Jordan: 9:05

That's true.

Alban: 9:08

A day and a half. That's a lot of that's a lot of time.

Jordan: 9:10

It is.

Kevin: 9:11

I mean, who thought that we would have that much to say about podcasting?

Alban: 9:14

I mean, there's a lot of off-topics to be there. Oh, man. Jordan, what did you what did you get out of this? What were some of your favorite stats?

Jordan: 9:22

Um, a stat that I always really enjoy seeing is the listener locations because you get to see how widespread your podcast is. We had 163 countries. What I thought was interesting is the United States was our most popular country, but our most popular city was Sydney, Australia. So maybe we need to like, you know, perform a live show in Australia. We need to make a little trip. This isn't our excuse.

Kevin: 9:47

I've never been, but I would be excited to go.

Jordan: 9:49

Yeah.

Kevin: 9:50

You know, Americans on the whole probably think that the Australian accent is pretty cool. Do Australians think Americans' accent is pretty cool?

Jordan: 9:57

No.

Kevin: 9:58

No. That's my question as well.

Alban: 10:00

We could ask uh late Bloomer active or uh James Cridlin what they think, but I think they'll say, no, we're tired of listening to you again.

Jordan: 10:11

Nar, thank you.

Kevin: 10:15

Did you see our most popular episode in 2025 was an episode that we published in 2019, which is what makes a good podcast. It was like classic, very early episode. And I'm wondering, is that do we still have that on like on the marketing site somewhere? Is that why a bunch of people shows? No, that's my fault.

Alban: 10:33

So we embed that episode on the features page for Buzz Sprout so people can see this is what the embed players like. Here's how you know chapters work, everything like that. So we are artificially inflating our stats with that episode.

Kevin: 10:47

No, you're not artificially inflating it, it just goes to show that embedding episodes on websites is effective. That's true.

Alban: 10:54

Like people listen. It is surprising to see that that gets so many plays. I mean, it's nice for people to be able to see how the embed player works, but I'd love to see how long people play that episode.

Kevin: 11:04

Yeah, well, it doesn't count it unless you listen to a minute or more.

Alban: 11:08

Yeah. So but we've never surfaced playthrough data for the embed player because it's totally different than the way people listen in apps. In apps, people listen to 80% plus. On the embed players, we know it's way less. So we don't surface that data because it's kind of deceptive. Right. But I still would be interested. My guess is that it's a couple minutes. I wouldn't think it's gonna be too long, right? I don't know.

Kevin: 11:32

I think that there are some people who have jobs that allow them to listen at work, and so they might stumble across a web player or a blog post or something, and it has a podcast episode in it, and they're just like, oh, I can just listen at work. So I'll just throw on my headphones and listen to that in a different tab while I'm doing something else. But I think generally you're right. Like you're not gonna have your your loyal like subscriber base are probably not firing up a web browser every time they want to listen to your podcast.

Jordan: 11:56

Yeah.

Alban: 11:57

I've actually found myself looking for podcast episodes lately with Chat GPT where I'm like, I want to find an episode on a particular thing and it'll pull up some episodes and it regularly pulls up episodes in a browser. And so I have listened to a handful of full episodes lately in a browser just using that embed player. So honestly, there might be a little bit more of an opportunity to lean into using the embed player on websites, doing a bit more SEO optimization.

Jordan: 12:24

Yeah.

Alban: 12:24

Anecdotally, I've found myself finding new episodes that way over the last few weeks.

Jordan: 12:29

That's interesting.

Kevin: 12:30

All right, Albin, tell me about a way that people can grow their show a second way through what we're doing with uh podcast playback 25.

Alban: 12:39

We want to celebrate everybody. Uh, we know the incredible amount of work everyone puts into making their podcasts. And so we love celebrating them with playback. And we love seeing when people share it because it's a way for them to thank the audience without being kind of embarrassing about promoting your show. You're just saying, hey, thank you for showing up and showing all you accomplished. So that's a great way to grow your show. And then you had the idea, what if we did some sort of promo behind getting more people to share? And so, well, if we're trying to help people grow their podcast, what if we did something with Buzz Brow Ads? So, what we're doing is every day for the next eight days, first eight days of this being out, I'm picking five people on social media who share their podcast playback. And we're gonna send them $100 in BuzzBrow Ads credit.

Jordan: 13:30

Every day?

Alban: 13:32

Every day I'm picking five.

Jordan: 13:33

Ooh.

Alban: 13:34

Knowing how many people share this, if you share every day, you're probably gonna win. Like I think you've got a very good chance of winning. Yeah. So it's just a little bit more of an incentive for people to continue to promote their own podcast. You can do it on TikTok and YouTube and Instagram and Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook. I'll be looking around all those different channels to try to find people, especially ones who are unique and kind of sharing the data in an interesting way. It's not a contest. This isn't a sweepstakes. This is a Albin is gonna go on social media and pick ones that look cool and send them $100.

Jordan: 14:09

This is awesome. So does this mean that maybe our Buzzcast listeners can get a little leg up on the competition with a little like hashtag Buzzcast Superfan or hashtag Buzzcast Forever?

Kevin: 14:21

I think you just have to butter Albin up.

Jordan: 14:23

That's yeah, I just butter Albin up.

Alban: 14:25

All right, let me tell you, I think that a lot of contests are run this way. It just seems like the people who win contests seem to be people who buttered up the judge a bit. So I'm being honest, this is a we're trying to pick ones that are special and unique. So that's really what I'm looking for. I'm gonna go across all those platforms, probably try to find different people every day, but really it's not about likes, it's not about the massive numbers. Yeah. What we're excited about is people growing, people sharing something that's important to them, an important message, sharing their podcast and just getting something cool out into the world. I mean, we talk about all of the stuff we did with playback this year. My highlight of the podcasting year has been showing up and hanging out with the two of you and then going to the meetup and meeting, you know, 15 of our listeners. That is what this is all about. So I guess if I was to share it, I'd probably just talk about all the people that we connected with because to me, that was the most fun that I had.

Jordan: 15:26

Yeah.

Alban: 15:26

I agree.

Kevin: 15:27

The meetups are fantastic. I love connecting with people. And we get a chance just in uh what just a week or so from now, we're gonna be in Podfest, right?

Jordan: 15:34

That's right. Look forward to it.

Kevin: 15:36

Yeah. So uh I I think we've given out all the tickets for people who have requested tickets, but I'm super excited to meet a bunch of Buzzsprout customers and hopefully Buzzcast listeners next week in Orlando.

Alban: 15:47

Yeah. And if you have not requested a ticket and you'd like one, just an email and ask for one. We probably have a few left and we can figure out a way to get you one.

Jordan: 15:56

Awesome. Well, make sure that you check out your 2025 playback on your Buzzsprout app on iOS and Android. And also, I wanted to repeat a call to action we had from last episode. We still need submissions to help with our episode next week on setting podcasting goals and basically what your measurement of success would look like for your podcast at the end of next year. So to send that in, tap the Texas show link in the show notes, and we will feature you on the next episode. Until next time, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.