Buzzcast
Buzzcast is a roundtable discussion about podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. We'll cover current events and news, podcast strategy, tools we are using, and dip into the Customer Support mailbag to test our podcasting knowledge. If you want to stay up-to-date on what's working in podcasting, Buzzcast is the show for you.
Buzzcast
How To Record Remote Podcast Interviews
Forced out of the same room by COVID-19, the hosts prove you can still make a high-quality podcast from home. In this episode, we breaks down remote podcast recording basics: gear, software, and workflow, so beginners and pros alike can keep turning out studio-quality shows.
We also cover what to do when your internet connection or wi-fi flakes out, why headphones matter, and how to salvage quality recordings from a shaky recording session with remote guests or a phone call.
Expect practical tips for remote interviews, video conferencing, video recording, even a quick nod to live streaming or launching a video podcast if that fits your podcast production goals. We run through podcast recording software settings, transcription options, and a smooth podcast editing workflow so your podcast episodes still sound like the best podcast you can make.
Then we pivot to Google’s brand-new Google Podcasts app for iPhone—why it launched on iOS first, how the search function handles show notes, links, and Spotify-style limitations, what’s missing (CarPlay, playlists, gated RSS feeds), and what this means for podcast hosting, discovery, and cross-platform listening.
Highlights:
- Remote podcast recording 101: mics, local recording, remote recording software, and quality recordings without the studio.
- Double-ender explained (and why SquadCast automates the hard parts).
- Quick fixes for echo and background noise when you can’t be in-person.
- Managing audio files, post-production, and keeping high-quality audio with limited internet.
- First impressions of Google Podcasts on iPhone—and how podcasters can use it to reach new listeners.
If you’re adjusting your workflow, dealing with remote recording tools, or just trying to keep your intro tight while your kids crash the call, this episode will help you keep creating a high-quality podcast that serves your audience.
Affordable sound treatment to improve your audio quality:
Remote recording software solutions:
Blogs to help you podcast from home:
- How to Record Long-Distance Podcast Interviews
- How to Record Phone Calls for Podcasts
- Acoustic Treatment for Podcasters: How to Prepare Your Home Studio Without Spending a Lot of Money
Review Buzzcast in Podchaser to let us know what you think of the show.
Have an idea for something we should talk about? Submit a topic in our Listener Suggestions form or post it in the
Contact Buzzcast
- Send us a text message
- Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods
Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!
We're still answering emails there. We're still working on new features that we hope to push out in the future.
Kevin:Let me go handle this.
Alban:The main change for Buzzsprout right now is that randomly you'll hear some kids fighting in the background of a podcast episode. Oh, man.
Travis:you lay down the law?
Kevin:I laid the smack
Alban:You just ruined my podcast.
Kevin:It was perfect up until that.
Alban:Everything was flowing. Travis has a great transition to Alban. It was awesome.
Kevin:All right. Welcome back. Welcome back. Welcome back. This is Buzzcast coming to you live from our individual homes during COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. I'm your host, Kevin, joined with Alvin and Travis.
Alban:Dude, this is way more intense than when we're in the studio listening to our boring, normal music.
Travis:Oh, that's paying it. Oh, we are totally using that intro. Absolutely. We have to communicate the joy and the fun that we are currently having with our 15 loyal podcast listeners.
Kevin:That's harsh. We're the most popular show on the internet, but we're doing something.
Travis:It is more than 15. I'll grant you. It's at least 18.
Alban:We've got like a thousand listeners, Travis. Get out of here. I've seen the stats. You weren't the only one with a login here. On
Travis:that note, yes, we are at home. Each of us are in our respective home offices. I definitely put out the... Please make minimal noise request in my home. However, looking out my window, a lawn care maintenance truck just rolled up with a bunch of lawn mowers. So we'll see how long this lasts. How are you guys doing in your home offices?
Kevin:I'm doing good. I notified my family earlier that we were recording around, you know, between three and four. But it doesn't seem like they've remembered because I hear children running around, tearing up the steps and... Whatever. Just turn the mic down a little bit. I think we'll sound all right.
Alban:I didn't tell anybody. So I'm about to have a four-year-old pop in and we might have a special guest.
Travis:We're going to have a classic BBC moment. Now, one thing that we're super grateful for is the nature of our work allows us to work remote. And we actually, on a normal basis, I think all three of us work remote to some extent. But this has certainly kind of shifted that into the full-time job. But we wanted to let you guys know that Buzzsprout is still up and running. We're still answering emails and support. And so if you have anything that comes up, we're still here to help. We're still working on new features. So Buzzsprout is fine. And so you don't have to worry about that. Any issues with your podcast, we'll be able to help you guys out.
Alban:Yeah, I definitely feel very fortunate. I feel like the we closed the office like almost two weeks ago, and everybody's been fully remote since then. I've gone in one day to film a video, but was like the only person there. You know, I feel very fortunate because I've got a lot of friends who are the kind of people that can't work from home, you know, nurses or doctors or people just delivering packages or, you know, taking out the trash or anything like that. Like there's a lot of people right now who are either out of work or not, you know, or basically have to be around people. So we definitely feel very fortunate if, you You, listener, one of those people, we very much appreciate you and all the work that you're doing. Yeah, we want to support you in any way we can. Yeah.
Kevin:So one of the things that we did in response, we set it up a couple weeks ago, was we started offering free Buzzsprout Pro hosting accounts to anybody who has a need for podcasting in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. pandemic. And so, um, this was, this was Alvin's idea. We moved quick and tried to get it up and online. Um, but Alvin, tell us a little bit about how you came up with that idea and how people can take advantage of it. If they know of anybody who needs to, um, you know, get some audio content online in response to education or good information or, um, governments, municipalities, all the different categories that we're covering.
Alban:Yeah. There's a professor and author, Alan Jacobs that I follow on Twitter and he, posted something about like some frustration with some new tech that they're setting up. And he's a college professor. He's very smart. And as soon as I saw that, I was like, man, he should be doing a podcast. And then it like kind of the wheels start turning. I'm thinking, you know, if you're a professor, you know, or a third grade teacher, imagine how difficult it is on Friday to find out schools will not be open on Monday. And we're expecting you to have something going. And you've probably got students who don't have great Wi-Fi. Heaven forbid, you're trying to get something paid for through the school right now and getting paperwork done, which is difficult normally. So I was like, we should try to do anything we can to lessen that burden. So we rolled out the main focuses for schools that are trying to do classes online. We will cover the costs so that you don't need to deal with all of that piece of it. Obviously, you get full support in any blog posts or any content we've created, but we want to make it as easy as possible for schools to get info online. We've run into some government groups that need schools. There's some nonprofits who I wish I had permission to say the exact nonprofits, but there's nonprofits that are very important that mostly do in-person meetings that need to now be online. So we've kind of got this general group of people who are doing good work. mainly schools, governments, nonprofits, in response to COVID-19 pandemic, we want to help take care of you and help you fulfill your mission. And to the extent that a podcast fits into that, we definitely want to help. So we've got a blog post, maybe Travis, we could link to it in the show notes, but we have a blog post outlining who this is for. It's not for your tennis podcast that people may enjoy listening to now. This is for schools that are affected. But you follow the instructions there, you'll apply for account, and we're upgrading people on a nightly basis.
Travis:Yes, I will definitely leave a link.
Kevin:Yeah, and you make a good point there because it's not so much about these organizations being able to justify the cost. That was the problem that we're trying to solve. It wasn't that a $12 podcasting account isn't worth it for a teacher who's trying to educate or continue education during this crisis. The problem is that in order to... like budgets have already been allocated for the year and now paperwork has to happen and has to get approvals and all this stuff. And the same thing with like, you know, local cities or municipalities or governments or first responders who are trying to get information out to people because people need to be informed right now, need to know what's going on. And even whether it be your school or your city or, uh, you know, your church or organizations that you're involved in or whatever, they're all trying to get information out. And, uh, They're pushing it all different ways, which is great. They're pushing some on Facebook and some on Twitter. A podcast is a fantastic way to do that, but quality podcast hosting is not free. And so how can we make it free and support their efforts in order to get good information out? Well, we can do that. And so that was the point. So hopefully, I mean, we have. We've had, I think, over 250 or so organizations take advantage of this so far, and we hope to get more. But as Alvin said, the spirit of this is in serving and giving good information out to people who need it. We absolutely value all of our podcasters who create content for entertainment or for learning and all that kind of stuff. And we're not devaluing that in any way. But this offer is specific to the response for the COVID-19 crisis and people who can't get the funds released in time. to be able to make this information available to the people who need to hear it.
Alban:All right, so if you're hearing, there's maybe a little bit of a lag or maybe some of the jokes don't seem to be landing as well as normally. That's because we're obviously recording this long distance. It's not as natural as it is in person, but it's actually pretty good. We got good quality video. I hope the audio quality works out pretty well. So
Kevin:we actually live studio audience. I don't know if you guys
Alban:have, you might hear in the background. So kids are running around all of us. All three of us have children,
Kevin:right? Have you seen any of these late night talk show guys doing their, um, their monologues and stuff? Like Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Fallon, right? He's doing these jokes that, I mean, normally you would think these are pretty funny jokes, but for some reason, like they were just landing really flat. And it's cause there's, I mean, there's no studio audience. There's no laugh track or anything.
Unknown:Yeah.
Kevin:We need to maybe keep some background laughter.
Alban:I think I was talking to Priscilla and she was like, man, I was watching. I don't remember which one it was, but she was listening to what I'll say Jimmy Fallon, but I don't think it was. She was saying I was listening to Jimmy Fallon and like he was bombing and it was terrible. And then I realized, oh, it's because there's nobody in the audience listening to it. And she was like, oh, okay. It makes a lot more sense, but it has a totally different vibe when there's no one there.
Kevin:Right. So this is a different feel for us because normally we're all in the same room sitting around the table. I mean, we can still see each other because we're using Squadcast, which is a really great experience, but it does still feel a little bit differently. So we're adjusting.
Alban:Yeah. But one of the things we put out in the newsletter yesterday that actually did really well is I went back to our blog and grabbed three blog posts. We put out one on long distance podcasting. how to actually set these type of calls up and what you need to know. Then I grabbed another we had on how to record phone calls. So there's a whole bunch of people that just have someone call in to Skype or their phone or to a Zoom or something, how to record those. And then the third was kind of just basic, how do I get good quality audio by doing some soundproofing my room? So I thought it'd maybe be cool. We could talk through a couple of the main points from those posts. Because a lot of people, I mean, a lot of podcasters right now are used to in-person stuff and now are transitioning online.
Travis:Yeah. And one question that I see often when people are kind of getting into remote interviews is like, what gear do I need? Because there can be this sense of like, oh, I'm recording it differently, so I must need some new podcast setup. But the good thing is, whenever you're doing long distance interviews, you essentially just need... whatever you would normally do to do a narration by yourself. You just have a microphone plugged into your computer somehow, and that becomes the audio interface that you use. So that's nice. You don't have to go buy a new microphone or a new anything.
Alban:You do need a friend. I mean, there's some upgrades that are needed, Travis.
Travis:But yes, but we're assuming that you were already doing interviews, so you already had some friends easily accessible.
Kevin:And one thing you absolutely need that you might not normally use if you're interviewing in person, although we would still recommend it, is headphones. Headphones are critical because the sound is going to be coming out of your computer otherwise and then feeding right back into your microphone. So that's Go
Alban:ahead. This is the, the perils of remote. I'm running over Kevin. Um, yeah, I mean, if you don't, we, we had no headphones on one of us when we first hopped in here and you just get this perpetual feedback sound where everyone hears echoes of their own voice and it totally throws you off. Um, yeah. So you definitely want headphones for everybody who is recording.
Kevin:The, uh, the other thing is. is the soundproofing of the room, which I don't know if my audio sounds any differently than Alban or Travis's, but it does to me. Like in my own ears, I hear the echo in the room right now that I'm in. So I would like to get some sound treatment stuff. And Travis, you did a great little five minute video walkthrough on this on our Facebook group this week, right? Can you tell me about what we should have to make these rooms sound a little bit better?
Travis:Yes. So the video that Kevin's referring to, I just shot something real quick in my home office because I do a good bit of podcast recording here. And so I just have some relatively inexpensive sound treatment stuff that I do that really helps control how the big thing is getting rid of the reverb, getting rid of the echo. That's going to do wonders for your sound quality. So number one, if you have hardwood floors, get a throw rug or an area rug or a runner, something to make it softer. Because what you don't want is your sound, your voice bouncing off the floor and then back into your microphone and hardwood floors or tile floors. Like those are just the worst for recording environments. The other thing you want to do is if you have windows, get some curtains, right? Get some curtain for your windows. So those are just some very simple things you can do. And then as far as getting into like sound treatment, like things that you hang on your wall, there's a couple different kinds. Typically, the cheaper ones are going to be foam. like pieces of foam that you stick to the wall. I'll leave links to a bunch of stuff that I use in my home office and that I recommend for other people. So if you want to go and poke around and see what I use, it's essentially like these one foot by one foot foam squares that are two inches deep and they're like broken up. So that way the sound wave hits it and it bounces off in a different direction. So it's kind of diffusing the sound waves. And then the other thing you can get are like sound panels that actually have foam basically inside of a frame or inside of a blanket, which is what I actually have. So you could use a moving blanket to cover objects or put pillows around your microphone or different things like that. You're
Alban:I was like, you know, this is not sounding that great. We had all the normal panels up. You're like, well, wait for the bass traps. And I'm like, all right, I doubt those like four things are going to make much of a difference. And it was like eerie. You could like, it almost felt like the sound is being sucked out of the room because there is all this reverb that I guess, you know, is a lot of the actions happening up at the corners of the room. So these are just big triangles that go up in each at the roof at corners and at the floor at corners. And just those is like an insane difference. Now they're not cheap. I'm sure Travis can try to find the best ones we would recommend for Amazon, but they are good. And I've always been pretty surprised by how much of a difference they'll make.
Kevin:And this week I saw, was it Ira Glass? Yeah. He was recording This American Life or something, but he had somebody take a picture of him in his closet at home. He put his suit on and he sat there with his laptop and his microphone.
Alban:With no shoes, right?
Kevin:No shoes. No socks, no shoes. But a suit. Very professional, except for the feet.
Travis:I'll leave a link to the video as well. So you'll see like a video tour of my recording space. I do have bass traps installed in the corners. So I'll leave a link to the ones that I use. They're considerably cheaper than the ones that we have in the Buzzsprout studio, simply because they're not as thick. They're not as deep, but they still do the job pretty well.
Alban:Yeah. And then the other thing that we use, we recommend a lot is... just software for recording your podcast interview. So what we're using right now is Squadcast, which basically is, it's like a live video where I can see both of you right now in different panels. And then each of our computers are recording our audio locally. And at the end of the episode, Travis will actually get three separate audio files that are uncompressed because for us to talk back and forth, there has to be quite a bit of compression done. But what's nice about Squadcast is that it's actually saving all of our voices separately to our own computers. So we're able to then later on piece the audio together and get no compression. So it is, you know, this is probably our number one recommendation, right, Travis?
Travis:Yeah, this is going to be the closest that you'll get to recording in person without actually recording in person.
Alban:And then there's a few others. I mean, I know a lot of people are very comfortable with Zoom calls. Zoom's a little bit cheaper, but you can get, you can record while you're doing a Zoom call and they will record the audio separately though. If I'm not mistaken, they actually are doing some compression on that. So it's not to the same level, but if you're talking to someone on, you're setting up an interview and they go, oh, I love Zoom. You can go, okay, I'm not going to try to teach you a new thing. The both I think are, I mean, I would consider them fairly easy. You just need to make sure that, The thing you've really got to make sure is that you set your microphone correctly. So you've got the microphone actually being used and you set your headphones to actually be the output. But if you get that set up, it's pretty good. I mean, I feel like those are the two main things that I'd watch out for.
Travis:Now, one disclaimer that I will make is that no online remote recording software can save a poor internet connection. It's just not possible. So if you have bad internet or like you live in the burbs and you don't get Google Fiber and you're like, okay, well, I have like five megabit per second upload speeds. So how do I get good audio? Something you can do. This is a little bit of a rabbit hole, but you want to research what's called a double ender. And that's where you essentially are recording locally to your computer and And then you have your guests do the same. And then it's more of a manual process than what Squadcast does. Squadcast kind of does this in the background automatically, but you'd be doing it manually to try and simulate the audio quality you'd get through a software like Squadcast if you had a strong internet connection.
Alban:And so how are you, if you're doing a double ender, how are you actually talking to someone? Are you like calling them on your phone and recording your own voice into the computer? And then you're going to later on piece those two audios together?
Travis:So typically the way that I've done it is I'll use Zoom because it's a pretty stable video platform. And so I'll have the Zoom recording and I essentially just use that as like my landmark. So when I'm bringing everything into GarageBand or Hindenburg or whatever I'm editing in later, I can match the different audio files up and I know that they're going to be timed correctly. And then you can either record to hardware. So if you use a mixer that has a micro SD card built into it, or if you record into like a Zoom H6 or an H4n Pro, then you can record directly to your SD card while using it as an interface for your computer. And then you would just choose your podcast microphone as your audio inputs on Zoom. And then you'd walk through the other person doing the same. Now, if the person you're interviewing doesn't have that, then you can get them to download either GarageBand if they have a Mac, or Audacity if they have a Windows computer, and they record their audio as if it's just them recording by themselves. And then I will typically have them share their screen with me on Zoom, look at their levels, make sure everything's set up, make sure everything's recording, leave it going in the background, and then at the end, again, share their screen, walk them through how to export it, how to give it to me in a Dropbox folder, and that's how you can do a double-ender.
Alban:So... You did a very good job explaining that, but I would posit that that may have been about the best commercial you could have ever done for Squadcast. Just explaining that process, I was like, oh my gosh, I can imagine getting that to work. I can also imagine... finishing the interview and the person's like, wait, no, no, the red button stops the podcast, right? That start, you're like, no, no, what do you do? You didn't get it. So I mean, Squadcast has a free plan, right? And they are not that expensive. So I think that's a great thing to use. Zoom is pretty inexpensive. My recommendation for most people is that's mostly the best way to go is to minimize the technical aspects of podcasting so that you can focus on what you're good at, which is hopefully the content.
Kevin:Yeah. And we don't talk about it a whole lot, but Skype is not a terrible option either. There's pretty easy ways to record from Skype and you can very easily, if you have a flakier internet or not as strong on one side or the other, you can turn off the video. And so then it would prioritize more of that bandwidth for your audio. And so if simplicity is key, that might be a simple way to go for people who don't have strong internet connections.
Travis:I do know that Zoom and Squadcast also let you turn off your video. So if you're having trouble with your internet, you can turn the video off and that should help with being able to get good audio. So if you have any other questions about how to do long distance recordings, how to set that up with your co-hosts or guests that you want to interview, I'll leave links to several very helpful blog posts and tutorials and stuff that we have on how to do all of this so you can be squared away and continue podcasting.
Kevin:So I don't know if you guys got the new app yet, but Google has released an app called Google Podcasts, and they released it first on iOS.
Travis:Maybe they're trying to make us believers, Google believers, and get us out of the Apple ecosystem.
Kevin:So if you are an iPhone person, there's a new podcast app you can check out. Just open the App Store and search for Google Podcasts. You can download it and check it out. We record on Wednesdays, show drops on Friday. So Wednesday the 25th, it just dropped this morning. So I downloaded it and checked it out. You guys have done the same, is that right?
Alban:Yes, I feel like we've got a little bit... It's quite possible that some of my comments will be outdated by the time that this is out just due to only having a few hours with it. It's a pretty basic app though, right? There's not a ton of functionality though with a podcast app. It doesn't have to be the most complicated thing in the world. I've got some nice things to say and I've got some things that I hope come out sooner rather than later. And
Travis:just to clarify, this is the same app Right. Right.
Kevin:One of the nice things for people who don't run Android phones but are podcasters is it was always kind of hard to find your own podcast in Google Podcasts. And so now you have an app that you can find your own podcast in and you can share that with other people. So if you have friends who are on Android devices and they don't have a third-party podcast player installed, that might be a great link to share with them. So if you say, hey, listen to my podcast and you know that they have an Android phone, you could load up Google Podcasts, you could find your podcast in there and then just share straight to their phone from your phone and then you know it'll work seamlessly on their phone. So that's a nice benefit for podcasters.
Alban:Yeah, the big thing that they are really pushing, which I actually think is the nicest feature, is they're trying to be totally cross-platform. So you can find a podcast by searching in Google Find it, start playing it. Or then you can go and finish it on a Google Home or something. So I could see for somebody who is really deeply a part of the Google ecosystem, that it might be a pretty nice app for you to be using.
Kevin:So it's version one, and it's really bare bones. Again, we haven't had a ton of time with it, but I couldn't find any way to set up custom playlists or I couldn't find a way to import. I have a couple different podcast apps on my phone, and I couldn't find a way to pull in any of the podcasts that I'm subscribed to from other apps into this one, so I'm kind of starting from scratch. I didn't love the fact that when I launched it, I had to sign into my Google account before it would even let me start playing with the app or listen to a podcast. But it's brand new, and so we're going to give them some grace and figure out. They've got... obviously plenty of opportunity and room to improve, but it's encouraging that Google is getting serious and excited about what's happening in podcasting.
Alban:Yeah, and I know there's a few features that are not here now that I'm sure will be here later. So these are not even my own observations. I'll level with you that these are me reading the reviews that people got in within a few minutes. It doesn't look like there's any iPad support besides that it can be kind of a blown up app. It can just be larger. It looks like there's not CarPlay yet, which I definitely hope they add that because one of the really nice things about podcasts is you're driving. Ooh, this is a nice segue, Travis. When you're driving around, you can pull it up on Apple CarPlay and just click and listen to a podcast. So I would hope they would add that to the iOS version at least. And then... one of the things I really love are these podcasts that may be gated content. So I've got a few that one on Patreon, one that is a totally separate homegrown solution, but they have these unique RSS, uh, security features and those don't look like they work in Google podcasts as well. So for those reasons, it doesn't work for me now. Um, but it's V1, like they're getting something out there and they're doing something that's totally different, which is this is now, these are the exact same podcasts that are showing up in your Google results. So listening to something probably will impact the results you get when you are searching something on Google, which has its benefits. Kevin, I could imagine this to you would be maybe a negative, but they're attacking this problem from a different way.
Travis:Right. Well, and even when you go and you look at the info for an episode, that's typically the first thing that I look at. Weirdly enough, when I open a new podcast app as a podcaster, I want to know how are they displaying my show notes, for instance. So it looks like if you have a bare URL, then they're pre-populating it with a link, with a hyperlink that you can click out. So like if you just put www.buzzsprout.com in your show notes, they would turn that into a hyperlink. But if you use the embed feature, which works on Apple Podcasts and Overcast and Pocket Cast and all the apps that really do a good job with their interface, it does not look like Google supports that currently.
Alban:Oh, so if you do, like if you're actually using HTML, I'm looking at this now, all the links are broken. Correct. So this is actually the way that, correct me if I'm wrong, this is what Spotify does in their app, right? Like if there's a naked URL, they will link that. But for... some reason they don't allow you to link to things. Somebody at Spotify got burned by like being Rick rolled too many times. And so they're like, forget this. We've never did this again. Naked URLs only
Travis:full transparency and ugliness.
Kevin:You can, I can understand why they're doing it. They want to make sure you could say, you know, click here to check out my whatever webpage and it could go to some other third party site. And that site could do all sorts of malicious stuff or not be at all what you thought you were clicking on when you clicked on it. I understand the argument, but it's also the nature of the web. Any website on the internet could do that same thing. Usually in web browsers, when you hover over a link, in the bottom... left corner or somewhere in your browser, it kind of shows you the URL you're going to go to before you click on it. And on a phone, we don't have that luxury. So I wonder if that's what the engineers at Spotify and Google are thinking by saying, hey, if you tell us the bare URL, we'll go ahead and let people click on that. But if you use HTML, to link words that may or may not go to what those words are describing, we're not going to allow that for now until we maybe figure out a better way to solve that problem. I get it. It's a bit of a bummer though because most podcasters are not doing stuff like that and it just makes it more difficult for their listeners who want to follow the link to find out more information about what they were talking about in that podcast. So again, the majority of really good third-party podcasts Podcast players do this really well, like Overcast, Pocket Casts. What are some of the other ones? Like Deezer. There's so many great podcasts. CastBox. Yeah, CastBox is a great one.
Unknown:Yeah.
Kevin:But I don't think these app makers are necessarily targeting the hardcore, parkour. Hardcore, parkour. I'm watching too much of The Office. Hardcore podcast listeners. So again, this might not be an app that I use as my everyday podcast listening app or Alban or Travis or maybe you as a listener. But it is good for the podcasting world overall that it's going to expose more people to podcasts. And then as they get into them, then they might be able to say, you know, I don't love this listening experience and they go find a better app. Yeah, we are definitely in the power
Alban:user category. I mean, we're like, I'm like, what about CarPlay when I'm trying to listen to my secret URL podcast? Like, of course, that's not the main thing that you're building when you're building an app. Google has bigger things in mind where they're thinking, how do we get the 3 billion people that come to our website every month to actually start listening to podcasts? They've got bigger fish to fry than us. my podcast that has 12 listeners. But yeah, I mean, it is exciting. This is out. I hope us as power users saying, you know, our opinions is not coming off as like poo pooing it because we're not. I think that it's very easy for me to get caught up in, you know, my edge case isn't working.
Travis:Now, a couple of things that I'm noticing that I just want to give Google their due. They do support paragraph breaks. So unlike Spotify, which if you Introduce a new paragraph in your show notes. They just mash them together. Google does support some formatting, which is very nice. And then at the bottom of the show notes, I think this either is coming directly from the show notes or from the episode metadata or they're transcribing these episodes. There's actually links to particular topics that were discussed in that episode. I
Alban:saw that.
Travis:Yeah. So like on my homepage, it was like, hey, do you want to go listen to How Did This Get Made, which is a comedy podcast about really weird movies. And if you go to the bottom, there's a section that says search topics on Google and you can click links. And when you click a link, for instance, this one's about an underworld movie. If you click the link, it opens up a Google search browser with that search term pre-populated and the results. So as you're listening to something, if they mention something, like a particular movie or an event or a topic, Google will then say, oh, do you want to learn more about that while you're listening to this episode? You can click it and open
Kevin:it up in Google. In the example that you just brought up, was that exact topic mentioned in the description, like in the show notes section, or was it not?
Travis:It was. It was specifically laid out in the show notes.
Kevin:Yep. And so I saw those as well, but I haven't seen any yet that haven't been. So I don't know if they're actually transcribing the audio yet. Have you found an example?
Alban:I'm literally right now going in it. I think I found one because this is the top, the number one podcast is Joe Rogan. I'm clicking through and at least in the description, it says this guy is a standup comedian. Here's his new special. And oh, you know what it is? They grabbed the wrong word. So they used the word special, I think, to pull in a different TV show, but they did not pull in the correct one. Hey, big boy is the name of the special of this episode. So it looks like that maybe they're trying to scrape out of this description. Though I do know they've said in the past they're going to be transcribing episodes. I don't know if that'll be live, but they will be doing that to improve search results.
Travis:So big picture, what would we say that this means? I mean, from my perspective, it just... makes it that much more important to make sure you're in Google Podcasts, that your podcast is listed in that directory. In the past, the reason that it's been important is because of how Google Podcasts have been populating their search results. You want your podcast to show up prominently in Google. And we were just kind of like hoping that eventually they would make a proper app that they could start pushing in front of Android users. And so this feels like they're taking that step to say, we're taking it beyond just a desktop application. And now it's something we're really pushing in our mobile devices. So there's more Android users than iPhone users. And so the potential for this to really grow podcasting and just the listening audience in general is really quite
Kevin:awesome. And I imagine, I'm not an Android user myself, but much of this similar functionality, this seems to be a little bit more. But Google Podcasts has been available on Android for... last year and a half or so. It was just kind of baked into the OS in kind of a weird way. So now it looks like they, again, I don't know if they're going to pull that out and replace that with this or whatever, but they're first releasing this on iOS and they said it'll be on Android later in the week. And so I imagine by the time you're hearing this, there'll already be an app that you can download for your Android device and check it out and let us know. Yeah, since we're not Android users, I don't think that any of us have an Android device, do we? No, everyone's shaking their head no. So none of us have Android devices, so we don't know if they're going to pull this out and replace or pull it out of the OS itself and replace it with this app or what. But yeah, I think overall, positive thing for the podcasting space and certainly a lot easier for podcasters who use Apple devices to verify that their podcast is an app, is in Google Podcasts and it looks good and it works good and share those links with their Android friends.
Alban:And like we said, the biggest benefit here is Google has said their main goal is to double the amount of people listening to podcasts worldwide. I know they are well on their path to doing that. They've introduced a ton of people to podcasting. This is only going to expand their reach. And that's important. Because our next topic that we're going to talk about is changes in listener behavior that we've seen over the past couple of weeks. And Travis, I know you've got You've talked to quite a few people who've seen numbers change in their podcasts.
Travis:Yes. So I've made a video in our Facebook group kind of asking people, what do you want us to cover on this episode? And about half of the responses were, I'm seeing fewer downloads than normal. Is anyone else experiencing that? Or why is that happening? Or what's going on? And so while I wasn't able to pull any specific data from our database in time for this episode, we can say quite confidently that just about universally, podcasters are seeing a dip in their download numbers. And there's a couple anecdotal reasons for that. One is that essentially everyone's daily routines are dramatically different than they were two weeks ago, right? So even if you have people that listen to podcasts all day, every day, it's not just whether they're going to and from work or whether they're going to work out at the gym or not. It's that now they're having to reorganize everything in their life to figure out, okay, how are we going to function as a family unit for the next few weeks or few months? And so that just kind of throws a wrench in passive listening to podcast episodes. So it's certainly not something unexpected considering the circumstances.
Kevin:Right. At least my personal experience is that your patterns and habits have been disrupted. And so the normal places where I would listen to podcasts and the habits that I've formed around listening to podcasts are different now over the past two weeks. Again, exactly what Travis said. I'm not driving to and from work, even though it's not a long drive, but I'm not driving my kids to their sporting activities. I'm not running errands on a normal basis. So my car listening is zero when two weeks ago, 80, 90% of my podcast listening was done in the car. I'm not going out in the car anymore. And the same thing with working out and stuff like that. Like it just looks different when my wife and I go for a walk after dinner, which is a pretty normal activity for us. Like we're not, um, this sounds silly, but like you're seeing somebody else coming on you on the sidewalk. And normally you would say like, Oh, I'm going to say hi to them. Or do I recognize them? Or can I, when am I getting, how am I going to interact with them? And now you're wondering, well, how do I stay six feet apart from them? Like, are they moving off the sidewalk or am I? And so it's just a disruptive time. We're all figuring it out. And so I think we will start to generate and formulate new habits and patterns and we'll figure out ways to work things that we're passionate about. And we liked as part of our, you know, life two weeks ago back into what life looks like now and maybe for the next couple weeks or months going forward so we just have to know that as creators as podcast creators who are putting out content it's not that people don't like what you're doing it's just it's a disruptive state right now and so I think your listeners will come back Podcast listeners are very loyal. Hope you don't get too discouraged. And if you enjoy podcasting, please keep doing it, even if your numbers dip, because we all need to be aware of our mental health, and we all need to be doing things that are healthy for ourselves, regardless of how many people on the other end are listening or downloading.
Alban:Yeah, I think podcasts are maybe the numbers have gone down, but the importance could easily have gone up for a lot of shows. I mean, you think... Podcasts are this kind of community feel where people are listening to you and they are connecting to you. And it has this sense of normalcy. And if someone's at home, totally isolated right now, hearing your voice and listening to your show might be the most meaningful thing they could do. I mean, I've noticed a difference between my wife and I in that I get to get on work Zoom calls every once in a while. And I realized she had not seen a podcast besides my daughter and I in a few days. And I was like, you need to go get on a Zoom call with somebody because there's something beneficial about just seeing and listening to other people. You might be serving that purpose for somebody with your podcast.
Travis:Well, and I think it really speaks to the testament of the connection that we can have with our audience that anyone is listening to your podcast right now, right? Like my podcast consumption is totally tanked because like Kevin, most of my podcast listening happens in the car. But the ones that I really care about, the ones that are really important to me, I'm still listening to those episodes. And so I think what it's showing you in a silver lining way is, yeah, your downloads are fewer, but now you're seeing who your loyal, passionate fans are. The people that are really counting on you, that look forward to your episodes every week, and where you really make a huge impact in their lives.
Alban:Speaking of loyal, passionate fans, Listeners, do you know what we need to do? What do we need to do? We need to go read some of the reviews of Buzzcast on Podchaser.
Travis:Yes, we do. Last
Alban:time we asked for some reviews. We had zero. Okay, we had zero reviews. We now have 15 reviews. So thank you to the 15 of you. Is it okay if I read a couple of these?
Travis:Yeah, absolutely. And then make sure that you read our contest winner at the end.
Alban:Okay. Oh, then I will skip the first one. Wayne, just started my podcast last year with Buzzsprout and your show has given me many tips to improve my reach and quality. Thank you. Thank you, Wayne. Crystal Prophet, love the transparency and honesty of the Buzzsprout team. Thanks for keeping us updated on the latest podcast news trends and need to know information. Brad Shreve, never miss an episode. The outstanding customer service provided by Buzzsprout is reflected in Buzzcast. Always informative, never dull. I'm starting to realize this is going to take a long time to read them all. Give a shout out to all the names. Channing Smithson, the M-O-P-P, The Making of Podcast. Bob Lawrence, thank you. Six Gun Justice Podcast. Stacey Gross, The Qualified Tutor. Evan Moore, Brian, Julio Fernandez. I love this podcast. I have a podcast of my own. This is the reason I listen and love this show. Helps me every time I listen. Thank you, Julio. Fonda Clayton. Yeah, thank you everybody for leaving those reviews.
Kevin:Commentaries on K-dramas.
Alban:Say that again, Kev?
Kevin:Commentaries on K-dramas. You skipped over that
Alban:one. Oh, sorry. Thank you for catching that. And the winner, the first person who I think literally we put the podcast episode out and it was like hours later, Thomas Townley had left a review in Podchaser. a good source of information about podcasting and the Buzzsprout hosting service. Thomas, thank you. We appreciate you. We got you a bunch of, we got three hearts on that review. And Travis, did you go and leave Thomas a review on his podcast?
Travis:No, not yet. What? I can't believe it. I was going to, and then coronavirus happened. So, but it is on my list of things to do. today. So Thomas, by the time that you are listening to this, I have rectified it and left you reviews in many places. So thank you so much for doing your part. I will now repent and do
Alban:mine. Travis will reach out, find your podcast, do an in-depth review, and apologize. Well, thank you to everybody who did that. We know all the people at Podchaser, and they are very appreciative of the reviews. It was really nice for us because we get to see some really kind things that you wrote and get to reply. If you'd like to leave a review in iTunes, Podchaser,
Travis:or... iTunes? iTunes?
Alban:You're great. I just totally... Mr. Podcast Expert over here. Apple Podcasts. It got renamed like five years ago. Apple Podcasts, Podchaser. While I was in my mind, I was buffering because I was like, wait, is Google Podcasts, they have reviews yet? Maybe we need to try to get some reviews there. I don't think they have the reviews yet. But yeah, thank you so much for leaving those. We do appreciate it.
Travis:So that'll do it for this particular episode of Buzzcast. I will leave links to everything we discussed in the show notes for this podcast episode. But then I would also encourage you, if you're not there yet, make sure you join our Facebook group of podcasters. Um, it's really an incredible group of people that are there to encourage each other, help each other, especially during a time where a lot of us are feeling isolated. It could be great to connect with some other people that share a common interest. Uh, but Kevin, why don't you take us out with that incredible new one-time only outro music.
Unknown:Yeah.
