Buzzcast helps podcasters stay informed, inspired, and excited to keep podcasting.
Each week, Jordan, Kevin, and Alban break down the podcasting news, trends, tools, and creator debates that actually matter. We share what we’re seeing at Buzzsprout, what we’re testing ourselves, and what podcasters should pay attention to without chasing every new thing.
The goal is to help you keep podcasting without burning out. Expect honest opinions, practical takeaways, occasional rabbit trails, and a reminder that podcasting should be fun!
Your podcast can’t grow if listeners can’t find it! It's surprising how many of us never submit our shows to a directory and how many established podcasts are still missing from at least one listening app.
We're talking about Buzzsprout’s latest improvements, including one-click submission to 16 podcast directories, smarter reminders for unfinished distribution steps, video players on Buzzsprout websites, faster and more searchable transcript pages, and new customization options for embedded players.
These improvements help us reach more listeners by making it easier for people to find and listen to our shows wherever they already spend time.
So whether you're launching a new podcast or have been publishing for years, it might be time for to check our directories page and make sure your shows are truly available everywhere!
We have some big improvements that have come out recently. Are we going to talk about those on this episode?
Alban
Yes, I hope so. The first one is we totally redesigned our podcast directories page. And the big piece is now with one click, you can get listed in 16 different audio directories.
Jordan
And you mean one click? It's not, it's not 16 one clicks, right? It's it's just one to 16.
Alban
When I wrote the brief for this project, I said, we actually have nine directories that are one click submission. But to click the one click, you have to click three times to get to the one click. So it's like, so these the one click takes 27 clicks. And I said, let's get into all 16 audio directories with a single click. And like we can actually do that. I think this whole project came out of we did a little bit of research, and two things that were just shocking to me. The first was I just looking at like overall, 100 people sign up for Buzz Pro. How many of those people are actually going to update their artwork and their title? How many of those people are going to upload an episode? How many of the people who upload the episode actually submit to a directory? How many of those ever pay us any money? And I'm like going down that funnel. And it's not always exactly that path, but it's often that path. And I went, of people who upload episodes, maybe I'll ask you this question. What percentage of them submit to a podcast directory?
Jordan
You always play these number games with me and I fail miserably.
Alban
Okay.
Jordan
I mean, I would guess probably like 95% at least submit.
Alban
And there's like, you'd think there's a few people in there who are testing it and they are just uploading a bogus file and then they delete the account or it's a test account or something. That's what I expected. I expected somewhere in that like 95%. And the real number, now there were more test accounts than I expected. The real number was like one third of people who upload an episode never submit to a directory.
Jordan
Whoa.
Alban
I realized there's some people who they'd upload the episode and they'd go, I'm done. You know, they imagined that it's they're in all the directories. And every once in a while you'd hear from somebody who's a little confused, and we'd go, Hey, it looks like you haven't gotten listed yet. Can we do it for you? Uh, so that was like the first shocking piece. The second was even more shocking.
Jordan
You won't believe what happened next.
Alban
Exactly. The the second one was that of all the active podcasters on Buzzsprout, 70% of them were missing at least one directory they could get listed in.
Jordan
That was me. It was so funny because we we updated how everything kind of like triggers the alerts, right? And I was working on a podcast episode the other day. And when I uploaded it, I got like this little running figure of the directories. And then like I saw there were a couple with like a little alert on it, like you need to pay attention to these. And like, I don't know, they're they're smaller directories, so I haven't worried about it ever because it's just like whatever. Like, you don't, you don't have to be in like all the directories. So I I haven't paid attention to it in like years.
Alban
Well, let me let me make the uh the argument. It does matter. And here's the reason: two reasons. One is just like a principled standpoint. The whole point of podcasting is like RSS. It's getting your podcast content out to all of these different apps. Some are indie apps, some are big platforms, some are like a niche app, some are in a foreign language and you've never even heard of it, some are totally different. We tell our listeners, hey, listen to my podcast wherever you get your podcasts. And if we're not in the podcast app they use, they're just gonna go whatever and move on. All the big podcasters, they're either exclusive to like only Netflix or they're everywhere. You want to be everywhere. And so that's the whole point of podcasting. So just one is a philosophical purpose. The other is like sometimes this actually really matters for small podcasts. Um, when I was digging into it, have you know YOTO?
Jordan
No, I don't know what that is.
Alban
All right, maybe your your kids might be a little too old. Yodo is this like millennials. We figured out maybe giving our kids like iPads all the time was a bad idea. Yeah. But then we went, you know, it would be nice if they could like listen to audiobooks like we did, listen to music like we did. And so what we have now is YOTO, which is this little like speaker player thing that connects to the internet and can play music, it can play all sorts of stuff. It could be podcasts, and you buy these little like cards that when you put it in the YODO, it like goes, it knows where that content lives online and it plays it.
Jordan
Oh, crazy.
Alban
And I only found out about it because Yodo starts skyrocketing up the Buzzprout Global uh platform stat leaderboard. And when I dug into it, it's not that every podcast shows up in YOTO. Like there's not kids, unfortunately, who are four and five listening to BuzzCast. But somebody will go and create the YODO card for a kid podcast and say, this is approved content. We've listened to it, we like it, it's appropriate for this uh age range, and they'll sell them or you can program them yourself. And some of these podcasts are getting like over 50% of all their downloads, like hundreds of thousands of downloads from Yodo players.
Jordan
That's wild.
Alban
Yeah, and they're legit. It's just that they have content that is targeting this niche, and you know, if they weren't available for YOTO, it wouldn't work. But because they're available, this opportunity is there. And it's the power of this truly open ecosystem that we have with podcasting.
Jordan
There, there was actually another thing I noticed on another podcast I have that's it's on like a video plan, but I haven't like submitted any video yet. There was some steps that I still needed to take with YouTube, with Spotify, and with Apple that I hadn't seen before of the way we like previously had it planned out.
Alban
Yeah, I think it's so easy since we work for a software company to imagine that everybody else is like as deep into the world of podcasting and software as we are. And so we know, like, oh, I've got to go through the five-step process to get my podcast into Apple and the four-step process for Spotify. And you know, we we know that. And I was looking at all these podcasts, and there's just a lot of people they kind of stall out. They go claim their Apple Podcast Connect account, but then while they're waiting for it, it takes a day, they kind of forget there's another step. And so then they don't notice it for like a week and like, why mate, my video is not working yet? Why isn't it working yet? Because you've got to come back and there's another, you know, step after that process. And so what we've done now is every step along the way, we will keep those alerts there. Hey, it's time to come back. Here's your next step for you. Um, if you ever upload an episode, we will keep letting you know, like, hey, we've got you distributing to these 14 directories, these two more, one click will get you in. You know, we don't want to submit for people who don't want to be in a directory. Some people don't want their podcast available everywhere. And so we don't do it automatically. Uh, but we'll let you know these two are you're not listed yet, unless you want to be. And then for the video, we're going to keep letting people know hey, you're uploading video and we just added another video directory. You know, you've been putting it in Apple for a while. Now we want you to see Spotify's available, YouTube's available. You know, hopefully in the future, more video destinations are available. And so we just want to keep like that nudge going. We really don't want people to be in the spot where for months they've been uploading content and they've been kind of missing out on the opportunity of growth through wider distribution.
Jordan
All right. Well, I'm I'm really excited about all the work that has been done on our directories page. So if you are a new podcaster wanting to get your show listed everywhere, it's now as easy as one click. And if you're an already established podcaster, go ahead and take a look at the directories page and make sure that you aren't missing any steps yourself.
Alban
Yeah, exactly. If you're you you might not be a player FM or Pie Chaser somewhere, it's better just to have all the listings and get the benefit from each of them.
Yeah. So in addition to the directories updates that we have, I also noticed that there was an update to the Buzzprout website when I went on to Buzzcast the other day. I was looking for an episode and I clicked into it and I saw a video on our website. And I was like, what's this?
Alban
Uh we actually we made a lot of updates to the websites.
Jordan
Oh.
Alban
The more that we're leaning into this world of video, the more that I want to prioritize websites for Buzzsprout. And there's so many YouTubers, like, you know, where's their presence online? It's 100% YouTube. Sometimes they'll also have an Instagram, but like they're kind of living on these two or three places online, but they don't really have a web presence. And so I think it's more important for podcasters to invest in building their podcast website, whether that be the website we provide, something like PodPage, or something you build custom. I think whatever path you go, it's better. So as we were talking about this internally, uh few things we rolled out. So the first one is video is now on your Buzzsprout website. So if you uploaded a video through Buzzsprout to YouTube or Spotify, we see we're the ones who sent it there. So we have those URLs. So you can either embed the Spotify player or the YouTube player on your BuzzProut website instead of the audio version.
Jordan
Is there anything that I need to do as a podcaster to enable that for my website?
Alban
I mean, you you don't because I turned it on already.
Jordan
Just get yourself an album.
Alban
I went for YouTube because my thinking is there's three options. One is a like Buzzprout uh video player. We did not build that because we found years ago when we used to have a video on the Buzzsprout homepage, and this was like to market Buzzsprout. It we originally used like um, I think it was Vimeo.
Jordan
Oh yeah.
Alban
And then I exper I ran an A-B test where we dropped the Vimeo player and we put the same video up, but as a YouTube player, and we got like three times as many clicks because people are so like used to seeing YouTube players and knowing exactly what to do that they just click it. And so just by default, I went, okay, I definitely want to have the YouTube player as an option. And then somebody else advocated, well, there's an argument for Spotify as well. We included Spotify. My thinking was I want YouTube to get this constant signal that people are watching these videos, and so YouTube is more likely because they are the discovery platform to continue to promote this podcast around the web. So if you go to the BuzzCast Pod or whatever our YouTube channel is now, you'll see like there's a handful of plays on each of these videos. And at least in the beginning, before we announced that we had this channel at all, we were getting plays because someone's going to our podcast website, they're seeing it, they're watching the video there. And now that counts as a YouTube play, which is just another strong signal to YouTube. People want to watch this video help find its audience out in the world.
Jordan
I think that's really smart, especially since video, like one of the biggest arguments for video is the discoverability aspect of it. Like it adds so much of discovery. So, what else have we added to the bus rep websites?
Alban
The other one is like my personal pet project that has been out there forever. Um, transcripts and SEO. I feel like my my heart is with the open web. And as I dug into our uh those pages, there were a few things we could do better to surface our transcripts, especially the transcript page inside of Google. I was finding more and more. I was doing things with like ChatGPT where I'd say, hey, we talked about this on Buzzcast. And it would go find it, and it would find the episode, and it would always be pointing me to a transcript. But at times it was finding like the SRT transcript, or it's finding like just the uh text version. It wasn't finding the website, and so we were able to clean that up. Uh, we made the pages themselves load a lot faster. We include stuff, fix some stuff with the images, just overall, the transcripts are better. Uh, they've got a nice copy button, so you can just like copy the entire transcript if you want to use it with, you know, if you're somebody who wants to go find pull quotes or you want to throw it into Chat GPT for something.
Jordan
That was one thing that I saw before I even knew that we had done any updates to the transcripts. And I was like, yes, the copy.
Alban
I I couldn't tell you're making fun of us because you posted um what did you you posted? I think it was something like, oh, this is nice. Now I don't have to scroll through the entire page and hit copy. And I'm like, geez, Jordan. That's a good thing, right?
Jordan
It's a really good thing. It's great.
Alban
We we also had some people who they want their episodes transcribed so that they can do stuff with it and they can come up with chapters and they could go through and maybe write a blog post, but they didn't want that transcript to be live in podcast apps or on their podcast website. So we've added a feature so you can turn off transcripts if you prefer them not to be available everywhere, which to me, the whole point of the transcript is to get it out there. Uh, but you hear it enough that people they have some reason they don't want the transcript out there. Maybe you know they want to send people to a blog post or something else. They don't want the verbatim piece out there. So we added that option in there. Uh a few other things. If we rolled out that transcripts are included on all of the new plans, um, but we still have a good amount of podcasters who are on the old plan. I mean, we still have some podcasters who are on the plans that haven't been around for over a decade. So if you're on one of those legacy accounts and you upgrade, one of the things we're doing now is we notice that and we go and we transcribe your entire back catalog. And that way, if you're upgrading for that SEO benefit, then the entire back catalogs transcribed, all of that sent to Google, Google search is more likely to pick it up, AI search is more likely to pick it up, and you're more likely to get those recommendations.
Jordan
Well, okay, so I had mentioned um Podpage earlier. So does any of this like really matter if you already like I have a Squarespace site myself, and like I know other people might have their own version of like a website or something like that. Like, does this matter for that?
Alban
Jordan, you work, you do know you work in buttrop. Sorry. Uh yeah, I mean, I I I just love you're like, oh, Squarespace, use 10% off with code JordanPod. Oh good. Um, yeah, so if you're using Squarespace or I'm not 100% sure if this works with Podpage, but I do know it will work with Squarespace, uh, WordPress, any other kind of custom-built site. But Dave went in and he updated the embed players. If you're in BuzzProut and you go to like episodes, embed players, he's added some more customization options. If you want your player to look a little bit cleaner, you want to change colors, things like that. You can customize them a bit more so that when you embed them on any website, but specifically the website you're building yourself, then you're gonna get those benefits.
Jordan
Cool. I'm excited to tinker with that.
Alban
Yeah, for your squares. Jordan, I think we should we need to try to build out the Buzzsprout websites to a point that you're excited to move back.
Jordan
Yeah. We need I I only have one podcast that is separate. All my other podcasts, my my plethora of other podcasts are all on Buzzsprout websites. So all right.
Alban
So real-time user research. What is Squarespace giving you that Buzzsprout doesn't?
Jordan
Yeah, I mean, to be honest with you, like I think I just had like a couple things, like maybe a list, like a sponsors page, and then I had like um a listener survey page, but I could ditch those pretty easily. Like I'm not tied to it.
Alban
Well, I still, like I said, I want to find more ways to improve the websites because it really is true that the more that video starts to take more precedence, the more I want to counteract that with how do podcasters stay independent? And I think that is gonna be obviously distributing everywhere, all these audio directories. But the other piece has to be you're building a home online that you fully control. And that needs to be, you know, a WordPress, WordPress.com, a pod page page, a buzz brought page, something. It could be even be Squarespace. I shouldn't hate on Squarespace.
Jordan
You know what? I actually think this is a perfect question for listeners who are podcasters, and we could ask them directly what kind of stuff that they need in a website.
Alban
Jordan, I love this question. Do you know the history of Tom's first company that he built?
Jordan
No.
Alban
So, Tom, one of the co-founders of BuzzProut, who uh this is how he met Kevin, is they built a website builder. And now Tom did this in the 90s when like the internet just didn't work, basically. Like, so I I imagine right now, if Tom listens to this, you're like hitting him, triggering him so hard with like all this PTSD of building websites in the 90s. So if you send in what you want us to do, that's just a suggestion box, no promises, like on promises about any of this. Um, Tom's gonna hear this and go, what did you guys promise?
Jordan
All right. Well, with that caveat in place, send those in. Tap the send the spam Link in the show notes. And until next time, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.
