Put Your Video Podcast On Apple!

We did something new…you can watch this episode as a video on Apple Podcasts! Make sure you're on the latest version (26.4 or higher).

But the bigger story is that any independent podcaster can now publish video directly to Apple Podcasts through Buzzsprout!

In this episode, we break down why this isn’t just “another place to upload video,” and how it’s fundamentally different from platforms like YouTube. We talk through the opt-in nature of podcasting, why that matters for creators who are tired of chasing algorithms, and where video actually fits into a sustainable podcast workflow.

We also walk through how to publish video through Buzzsprout, what happens with your stats, and why this might be one of the easiest windows to get featured on Apple Podcasts.

And if you try it, let us know!

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Transcript

Alban 0:00

Kevin, Jordan, good to see both of you.

Jordan 0:02

Good to see you too.

Alban 0:04

Make sure when you say things with enthusiasm, you gotta smile now because we are on camera for some percentage of our audience.

Jordan 0:11

Is that a note for uh Kevin?

Kevin 0:13

No, it's that's for me as well. I'm not a super smiley person, but I'll do my best. I don't the another one of the reasons I don't love video, but I'm doing it because we've got exciting news to announce.

Alban 0:25

Well, the exciting news is that video on Apple Podcasts now works with Buzz Browl and team pretty much raced to do this. Everybody's been in the office working hard. Um, any day I've come in, I've seen everybody there just working on this and iterating quickly and knocking stuff out, and we are live.

Jordan 0:52

Yeah, so this uh announcement is gonna be stretching a little bit of my skills because I'm not used to doing video. Uh, this is going to be the first uh buzzcast, which thank goodness it's a quick cast that I've been on that's on video, I think, because you guys dabbled on it a little bit like years ago, and then we didn't.

Alban 1:13

Dabble is the right word because what we were doing was we were just recording like Zoom or something, or maybe it was, you know, Riverside backwood. Riverside was about a week old. And then we're recording that and putting it up on YouTube. And a lot of it, I think the first comment we ever got was like, why does Albin always look so mad? Because we were we were definitely recording audio first podcast content and then just putting the video up on YouTube.

Kevin 1:39

Right. Well, I'm assuming most likely this is like a one and done. Like we're we're doing a video episode to show video capabilities of Apple Podcasts. We're excited about that and show the capabilities of Buzzsprout now as a video hosting provider, but this show is not going video first.

SPEAKER_00 1:56

I love this. This is our announcement podcast, and Kevin's already blowing. Just to let you know, we're not gonna be diving into this very often.

Jordan 2:05

Yeah.

Kevin 2:06

I mean, I know I love it for there's so many uh podcasters out there who love to do video and have got it worked out as part of their normal workflow, and it's fun for them and it's part of what they love about podcasting. And I'm very excited that we're gonna be able to support them in their endeavors to do that. But I don't put myself in that group. I don't think either one of you do as well. And I think that that's part of Buzzsprout's message, right? Is that we've always said the most important thing is that you have fun doing this and that it it gives you life and it gives you joy. And if video is a part of that, fantastic, because now BuzzSprout can be a part of the solution that helps bring your video podcasting to life. And if you want to do audio, then BuzzSprout's the same as it's always been and continuing to get better with every release that we do. So wherever you land on the spectrum now, and so we just happen this show happens to land on the hey, we're we love audio and we do an audio show, and that's fantastic. And I love supporting audio creators, but BuzzSprout and Apple Podcasts and more platforms are embracing video and want to be able to be a home for your show and a distribution platform for your show if you do video as well. And so we're gonna support all of it.

Alban 3:09

Yeah. I really I so I did an interview with um Matthew over at the podcast host. He does a show called Podcraft, and we were talking about HLS video through Apple Podcasts, and it was fun to kind of share with him why this is exciting. I even told him when they first announced it, I was like, Yeah, that's cool. Um you probably can actually go back and hear the that episode where I'm like, this is cool, but I wasn't the most enthusiastic in the world. And then the more I thought about it, I kept realizing everybody who does video is all the platforms that do video online are very much this algorithmically driven content. And now Apple is providing a look, we're not really getting in the middle of this. All we're doing is we're connecting some hosting provider you have to your audience so you get to go directly to them. And everything you send, they it will show up on their phone, and then they can listen to it or now read it through the transcripts or even watch it in the video. Right. And it's really cool that this is available to anybody who wants to put a video podcast out there. You can always put the content also on YouTube, also on Spotify, maybe even put it on your own website as well. But Apple is providing a pretty unique experience as far as being able to get video content into people's hands.

Kevin 4:38

The the point that you're making there, Alvin, is worth saying a couple different ways. So I'm gonna take a stab at saying the same thing a different way. But for years, like we run a pretty popular YouTube channel that helps podcasters learn the ins and outs of podcasting, whether it be equipment stuff or features in Buzz Sprout that you can use to promote your show or grow your show or just new things like making your podcast more accessible with transcripts. Albin just recently posted some video content there. And that channel has well over a hundred thousand subscribers. I don't know exactly how many. Where are we at right now, Alvin?

Alban 5:12

Somewhere like 120, 130,000, 130,000, somewhere. I mean, it's big.

Jordan 5:17

Yeah.

Alban 5:17

And yet I was excited today to see that a video that I'd put up that I was proud of hit a thousand views. Right.

Kevin 5:25

And that's that's the point of these algorithmically hard word to say driven platforms, is that you can have a hundred plus thousand followers. You could have 10,000 followers, you could have a million followers. That has like no indication of how far your next episode is going to go. Like Alvin said, we 100,000 plus followers, we put a great video out and it does a thousand views, maybe 2,000 views. A really good video would do four or 5,000 views on that channel. But 100,000 people have said they're interested in the content. And podcasting works so differently. Podcasting is totally opt-in. So in Apple Podcasts, when you follow a show and they release a new episode, it's going to show up in your what's new for you. It's they're not going to algorithmically decide whether that's the best content to keep you in the app and keep you listening or not. All they're going to do is obey your commands. And your commands are, I want to follow the show. So when they release a new episode, please show it to me. And they do. And so, like, I'm not saying that it's going to change the world of video. What I'm saying is that this is an opportunity for people who've created video content in the past and have kind of had to play the games of the YouTube platforms of the world to try to get as much engagement as they can for every video they've launched, regardless of how big their their following is, that you don't have to play those games in this world. In in this world, in the video side, if somebody says I'm going to follow the show, that show, that new episode will show up in their feed. Now, they still might not choose to engage with it, and that's completely up to them. They might not choose to watch it, but they'll go, they're going to see it. They're going to see that you launch something. And we don't have to do all this. Um, you know, whatever. Subscribe, follow, hit the bell, turn on notifications, do all this stuff. Do hit all the triggers. Please tell YouTube as many different ways as you can that you want to see my content. All you have to do is hit follow.

Alban 7:12

Yeah, Netflix found this years ago. They said that people would often say, I want to watch Citizen Kane. But they would get Citizen Kane, they'd get some great piece of like cinema or something that's known as like a great movie, and they'd also get like the you know, first season of American Idol, and they'd return this first season of American Idol and request season two immediately because they were cruising through the like just I want to sit back and relax, watch this junk TV. And then they were like holding on to the other one because they were aspirational, they'd watch Citizen K, but they never would. And so when Netflix moved to everything is streaming, they took away ratings because they were like, we know you will never rate your favorite shows five stars because you think five stars is relate is reserved for Schindler's list and great cinema. But we know, based on your habits, when we put it all in front of you, you just want to watch like reality TV most of the time.

Jordan 8:12

Yeah.

Alban 8:12

And props to Netflix and YouTube and everybody else in the world who's willing to give you exactly what you want in the moment. But I think it's really important for there to be somebody who says, Hey, you want to be your best self. You say this is the content I want to engage with week in, week out. Here's the stuff that's important to me. We're not gonna tempt you away from that. And we're going to just keep showing you what you say you want until you make the decision to change. And Apple Podcast is going to provide that. And I really think everybody else is leaning so far on the we're gonna tell you what you're gonna like side that we really need that counterbalance. Now, the benefit of YouTube uh is I just watched a video today, it had 60,000 views, it was a review of some video game, and the channel has no subscribers because when YouTube went, hey, you're talking about a popular game and it's really engaging. When people start watching, they watch most of it. Then they said, We know that not many people have opted into your content because you haven't grown an audience, but we are going to keep serving it up because people are watching it. The upside is massive growth. The downside is if he doesn't put out another video just like that for round two, it doesn't matter that he got all that growth because it all disappears. And I think it's good that we have multiple types of content. And if anything is lacking, it's on the delivery side. It's on the here's what I want to watch, and apps that are willing to respect that. We just don't have many in that category.

unknown 9:55

Did you see this?

Jordan 9:56

What is happening?

SPEAKER_00 9:57

This is the kind of this is what happens on video. I hit the thing on my standing desk as I'm going on my rant, and then it uh dropped my video and it moved the whole thing down. Looked like you were getting taller.

Jordan 10:10

Yeah, for those who are uh listening to it and not watching the video version of this on Apple Podcasts, Albin was giving his spiel, and then it looked like he was on an elevator going away.

Alban 10:22

Oh man. Well, it's what has gotten me more excited. The longer we're building it, the more that I've had time to kind of sit with this idea, the more I do think I've always gravitated towards platforms that allow me to tell, say, this is what I want. I really liked Twitter when it was just it's the people you follow. And as it became more of like a feed that was just anything and everything, right? It stopped being as exciting. Yeah, you used to be able to get to the end of your feed. There's no end anymore. Yeah. Instagram too, Facebook too. Every one of them I enjoyed the most when it was just I'm picking stuff to be excited about, and they keep showing it to me. And now that world is like email newsletters and podcasts. Well, Apple Podcast is one of the very few places that says we will give you video content in this format of you opt in, here it is.

Kevin 11:17

I'll tell you, I had this this moment of clarity uh just a few days ago when I was listening to some podcasts. I've transitioned. I don't know if it'll be permanent. I think it might be because it really is a beautiful, wonderful listening experience. But I've I've been listening to podcasts a lot and Apple Podcasts for the past five weeks or so as we've been building out the video capabilities. So I'm using that app and I'm listening to my regular shows and um toggling back and forth between some of the video shows that we're listening to and some of just the regular shows that I subscribe to. And I had this moment where I finished an episode and I'm, you know, walking the dog. And what happened when the episode was over, it was just silent. Like nothing happened. My queue was empty. Everything that I had queued up, I'd I'm now done with. And it like didn't randomly pick something else for me to listen to. It didn't like say, no, don't close the app. You have to keep listening. You like like I was just like met with silence, and I was like, oh my gosh, like, what is this?

Jordan 12:20

It's like when you finish a good book and you just close it and you go, that was nice.

unknown 12:24

Yeah.

Kevin 12:25

Yeah. It was fantastic. And I had the just the clarity in that moment because I'd been going back and forth between video and stuff and and audio, that like that's that felt weird. That I was in a video experience listening and watching and walking the dog and half paying attention, and then the episode was over and nothing else popped up. Oh, you don't no, no one was pointing to the corners of the screen saying click here and do this. And YouTube wasn't like 80% of you aren't subscribed.

SPEAKER_00 12:51

Make sure you subscribe.

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Jordan 12:53

Yeah. All right. So for anyone who is currently making video for their podcast and they want to get it on Apple Podcasts, how do they do that through BuzzSprout?

Alban 13:31

All right. So you go and we have new video plans. So you'll go to your plan page in BuzzSprout and upgrade to any of those plans. And then you'll go over to directories. And under Apple Podcasts, we have a there's a bit of a workflow to get into Apple Podcasts. And now there's a little bit extra to get video in. You have to go into Apple Podcasts Connect, you get a file, you give it to us, we get you into Apple. It takes a couple days, just like submitting your show took a couple days. Only thing that changes is instead of uploading audio to us, upload video. And we'll take that audio and we'll send audio out to everybody who's supposed to get audio everywhere around the world. And video we will send in the correct formats to Apple Podcasts. And it's really nice because you're really not going to be doing any more work once you hand us the file. All that will be in the background.

Jordan 14:26

So I'm I'm curious because I haven't done this just yet, but are the stats going to be a little bit different between the video content and the audio only content? How are we doing that?

Kevin 14:35

Yeah, we have a whole stats package for video. Now, like a download is a download, as far as we're concerned. And every download starts as an audio first download, and we have to meet the IAB like standards to be able to consider it an audio download. But then during that time, we will also watch for any video bytes to be delivered. And if video bytes are delivered at the same time or like after it becomes a true IAB download, if any video bytes happen after that point. So like somebody could start listing on audio and then toggle on video, I don't know, halfway through or something like that. And then they could toggle it off later. But if any video bytes get delivered during that session, we go ahead and count that as a video play. So you can see the difference between your audio engagement and your video engagement. Yeah, and it's really nice, it's seamless, it all kind of fits in. If you have uh the if you're on a video plan, you'll have another tab in your stats section that shows just your stats for your video stuff. And if you don't, it's not there, it's just out of the way. And so um, it's it's I think I don't know for sure because I I'm not a uh an ACAS customer or an art19 customer, but I think Buzz Sprout is today the only way for like indie podcasters to seamlessly be able to deliver video reliably and like efficiently to Apple Podcasts. I know that there's a lot of partners that have said that they're gonna do this and are bringing it on board, but as far as I know, none of them are ready to go. So if you're listening to the show and you're ready to go and you want to do it, you're not hosting on Buzzsprout, go ahead and jump on a uh a video plan, give it a try. If you like it, it's super easy to migrate your whole podcast over.

Alban 16:05

All right. If you convince somebody, Kevin, how much does video cost? Do we have that finalized? Is that out?

Kevin 16:10

Yeah. All the all the plan pricing is set. It's it's ten dollars more per month uh if you pay annually, and if you're paying monthly, it's$12 more per month than a regular audio plan. So it's not bad at all considering like how big video files are compared to audio files. Uh, we've been as aggressive as possible with our pricing, and we want to bring this to as many people as possible. And so I think it's it's very reasonable. Our audio plans, again, annualized pricing paid monthly, uh, works out to about$15 a month for an audio plan for six hours of content, and that same six hours with a video podcast is 25.

Alban 16:45

We've actually, as part of doing the pricing for the video plans, uh went back and went, you know, we I think we can bring down the audio plans a bit too. So all the prices got a little bit cheaper, and we've offered a stronger discount for everybody who ends up on an annual plan. I know that at some point I just start, you know, you use something for a few months. I know I like it, and then I want to go to annual because I don't want that charge every month. I'd rather get the better price. I actually just did this with car insurance where you know you're gonna be there. So you go, okay, like let's just I'll lock this in and move on. Uh, so we've offered a stronger incentive for those annual plans. And I think these are gonna be really competitive as far as being able to help people get video out to the world. Um, and one of my hopes is that we don't just have podcasters on Buzzprout who start using video. My hope is that we also will provide an avenue for YouTubers who want to get their video into Apple Podcasts. Maybe they would have done Spotify, but they weren't doing it yet. And we start helping people who create video content that is a podcast, able to help it get out to the world in a bit of a different format than what they were doing on YouTube. So rather than chasing the algorithm 100% of the time, they're building up a little bit of a base of their viewership and their audience that would prefer to get their content delivered 100% of the time.

Kevin 18:15

Yeah, I love that idea. YouTube being a great place to be able to grow your reach, find new people, and then as they become uh fans of yours and just want to be able to consistently and reliably see everything that you put out there, um, there's a place that you can point them to now to be able to do that. And that's the Apple Podcast app. And it's great. And and we're gonna wait and see. Uh, we're doing an integration with Spotify as well, and so we're gonna be able to see and we'll report back on how that platform is working, but it might work much in the same way. So I just love there's healthy competition going on in the video space. Everyone's not trying to uh compete directly with YouTube at their own game. They've kind of said, okay, YouTube's really good at this, but how can we complement that? How can we offer something slightly different?

Jordan 18:57

Well, it's exciting.

Alban 18:58

One comment I got on one of the YouTube videos that I love to kind of share here is somebody said, We're trying to grow our YouTube channel. So I'm telling everybody who's on listens to our podcast to go watch us on YouTube. And that is the opposite, I think, of what you want to do. You want to leverage social media and YouTube and algorithmically driven platforms. They should be where people find you for the first time. And where they end up connecting with you long term is hopefully somewhere like your website or a course or email or podcast and now video on Apple Podcasts, somewhere where the relationship is not intermediated by somebody else. And so what I would be doing is I'd put it up on YouTube and say YouTube, you serve it up to everybody. And if anything, we're directing from YouTube over to Apple, not the other way around.

Jordan 19:53

Mm-hmm.

unknown 19:53

Yeah.

Jordan 19:54

I mean, yeah, YouTube's so volatile sometimes. Like people just get deplatformed for whatever reason, like their account gets flagged and it's gone. And that's one of the things that we love so much about podcasting is it's decentralized. And so people can continue to find you. I do have a question. Um, are the videos going to be displayed on the BuzzBrout websites as well?

Kevin 20:14

Not today. They are not today. We've made an intentional decision and it's kind of complicated. It'd probably be interesting to go into more depth at some point in the future. But uh, as you guys know, and anybody who probably listens to the show is aware that uh bot traffic and inflated stats and stuff is something that has long plagued the podcast hosting industry, and we're constantly fighting against traffic that's not human because we don't want stats that we're presenting to people to be artificially inflated. If it shows that you got 10 people who downloaded an episode, we do our best to make sure that those are actually like real people who downloaded your show with the intent to listen to it. And so we're being careful as we step into this video space to are there steps that we can put in place that would prevent us from having to fight these same battles that we fight in audio in the video world as we move in. So there is some, there are some great tags that the podcast namespace has developed and the podcast standards project has embraced, and we love them. Uh, they're called alternate enclosure, and it's a way for you to have an audio file and a video file all on your RSS feed. But we're uh we're just holding off for now. Where our full intent is to be able to support that fully, but we want to do it as responsibly as possible. So we've been pushing quickly to be able to support this latest and greatest tech that Apple Podcast has rolled out, and we're doing that today. And our next item on the agenda is to figure out how to responsibly distribute video through OpenRSS.

Alban 21:37

I mean, at this point, BuzzPro has has something like 17 years of figuring out okay, IE8, when somebody loads it for some reason, they're always going to download the audio file. So we need to make sure we account for that. And we've solved hundreds of these over the years. And with video, the stakes are much, much higher. Uh, because these are really big files. And if we're going to be able to keep the costs down and offer it and what I think makes sense for podcasters, then we need to make sure that bot traffic isn't a problem. It messes up stats, one, but it also just inflates the costs that we would pay. So we'd have to raise the prices significantly. So it's just the risk is very high. Um, we're also living in a world where bot traffic isn't just weird bots like it was. For a long time. It's now a bunch of AI stuff, which it's not a big problem for the AI companies because they're just grabbing all sorts of stuff. But it could be a big problem for podcasters who go, Oh my gosh, I just saw a thousand extra downloads. Well, that could end up being a problem. It's messing up their stats because we can see it doesn't look legit. So right now it's not going to be out there. But I think we will be able to find a good solution for this so that your podcast website eventually will be the very best place to send people to consume your podcast. Right.

Kevin 23:03

And and in the meantime, we're going to quickly uh we're we're supporting Spotify distribution, we're supporting YouTube distribution. So if you want to have one place where you can upload your file and then we can push it to platforms beyond Apple like Spotify and YouTube, um, again, you would then log into YouTube to distribute on your own. Um, but we could save you the extra upload. So if you do that, then we can connect to YouTube and then you could grab a YouTube embed player and display that on your website. So that's the direction that we're moving initially. Uh it seems to make a lot of sense. Again, platforms that have the algorithms behind them, you want to get as much engagement engagement with, you know, send as many signals as you can to their platforms in the first place so that they continue to see how popular your content is and then serve it up to as many new people as possible. And so I think that that's going to be the preferred route. Even if we do get to the point where we can safely deploy a video player on your public-facing website, you still might want to opt to use the YouTube player or the Spotify player. Yeah.

Alban 23:59

YouTube's had more experience than anybody in the world at dealing with bots and figuring out when something looks suspicious.

Kevin 24:05

And then it's a little easier when you just can have a completely locked down walled garden. Like they don't let third-party players play their stuff and they don't expose their URLs. Now they are constantly shutting down these weird third-party sites that pop up that says they know download YouTube videos and stuff. They're fighting those things all the time. But just the nature of how they built their business, they don't have as much rogue just bot traffic hitting their stuff.

Jordan 24:28

All right. Well, I'm really excited about this update.

Kevin 24:31

Hang on, I'll drop one quick note.

Jordan 24:33

I was just gonna wrap her up.

Kevin 24:34

Sorry, we only have you know a handful of podcasters that have been in our beta program helping us test things out.

Jordan 24:41

Uh-huh.

Kevin 24:41

And I've been surprised that Apple has noticed their content and has loved it enough to feature some of it. So, like the time is now. If you're if you're creating video content and this is something that you want to do and you want to jump into Apple Podcasts, I would say the sooner the better because Apple is looking for compelling video content and they're featuring it and they're putting it on the new NVIDIA screen and they're highlighting on their homepage. And it's leading to some decent exposure and growth for some podcasters. And I know we just talked a lot about that Apple Podcasts is not the solution to podcast growth, that probably YouTube is still a better platform for that today. But at least right now, like early on, um, and and probably for the next few months, as you know, there's not a ton of video content being pushed into these platforms. Another one of the reasons Buzzsprout wanted to be first, so that we could give our customers the opportunity to be featured and highlighted, that is happening. And so, yeah, don't delay if you're interested in this at all, because um, there's probably a small window where smaller podcasts have an opportunity to be highlighted and featured, and that probably won't be along around for very long.

Jordan 25:42

This might be one of the easiest ways to get featured in Apple Podcasts.

Kevin 25:46

No guarantees that it's going to happen. But I've just said, like out of the handful of customers who we've had beta testing, a good chunk of them, like close to half of them, have already been featured.

Alban 25:55

So that's just a nice proof point that you can say, Oh, we are featured by Apple Podcasts because we were one of the first to do video on Apple Podcasts this way. So really exciting. And again, I would be remiss if we didn't shout out the team again. I mean, everybody's been working harder than I've seen everybody work in a long time, everyone's in the office, lots of in-person meetings. It felt like, you know, 2018 again or something. You know, it's really good to see everybody um just pull together and uh do the very best to get this out to the world as soon as possible. So shout out to everybody who did that.

Jordan 26:29

Yeah. All right. So if you try out video podcasts on Buzz Sprout, send us a fan mail and let us know what you think. And until next time, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.