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Transcript

Why Your Podcast Stats Don't Add Up (And What Metrics Actually Matter) · Buzzcast

• 0:00
  Kevin: Breaking news, breaking news.
• 0:01
  Kevin: There is a new Buzzsprout app coming for your iOS devices.
• 0:05
  Kevin: If you're on Android, you already have it.
• 0:07
  Kevin: I think it's the first time we've ever released an Android before an Apple release.
• 0:12
  Kevin: I want you guys to take a guess at what happened and why Apple has rejected us twice.
• 0:18
  Kevin: I'll give you some clues.
• 0:19
  Kevin: It has nothing to do with the functionality of the app, it has nothing to do with the code.
• 0:22
  Kevin: Personality issue.
• 0:25
  Kevin: No, I think I think the Apple team likes us.
• 0:28
  Jordan: I think sometimes the weirdest things that can trip up these sort of like technical things are like dates, like fat fingering a date on something.
• 0:37
  Jordan: That's what I think.
• 0:38
  Kevin: You're close.
• 0:39
  Kevin: Am I you're close.
• 0:40
  Kevin: It wasn't fat fingering a date.
• 0:42
  Alban: No, we misspelled our own name.
• 0:43
  Alban: No.
• 0:44
  Alban: Okay, well I have cleared up 200 typos across Buzzsprout over the last week, and we misspelled our own name.
• 0:54
  Jordan: No.
• 0:56
  Alban: All right, that was Kevin.
• 0:58
  Kevin: I think it was actually sabotage.
• 1:00
  Kevin: Sabotage.
• 1:01
  Kevin: Is there a more fun way to say that word?
• 1:04
  Kevin: Sabotage.
• 1:04
  Kevin: Your deploy was sabotaged, or this is what happened.
• 1:09
  Kevin: The first rejection, Apple wrote back and just said, hey, we can't log in.
• 1:12
  Kevin: Like when you give a submission to an app that requires a login to test the functionality, you have to give them a username and password so they can log in.
• 1:19
  Kevin: And so they tried to log in and it failed.
• 1:21
  Kevin: And so I went and I reset everything and I was like, that's weird.
• 1:25
  Kevin: Go ahead and try again.
• 1:26
  Kevin: And then, you know, it takes them a few days.
• 1:28
  Kevin: So they tried again and they just sent back another screenshot.
• 1:30
  Kevin: Here we are trying to log into your app.
• 1:32
  Kevin: And again, it's not working.
• 1:33
  Kevin: And so I'm like, oh, what the heck?
• 1:35
  Kevin: I could log in fine.
• 1:37
  Kevin: And so I go ahead and check the uh the logs, do a little investigation, and the password was reset.
• 1:44
  Kevin: Who reset the password?
• 1:47
  Kevin: The Android team.
• 1:49
  Kevin: Oh bum, bum.
• 1:52
  Alban: Oh, you gave the same login to the Android reviewer and the Apple reviewer?
• 1:57
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 1:57
  Kevin: I just made an app review user so that anybody doing app review, whether you're from Android or Apple, would use the same login to be able to run the full test suite and make sure everything's good.
• 2:08
  Kevin: So Android went through it, tested everything, and passed the app.
• 2:11
  Kevin: And so I was able to release it.
• 2:13
  Kevin: But somewhere in that process or at the end of that process, they decided we're going to reset the password.
• 2:18
  Kevin: And then so Apple, when they went in the next day, got rejected.
• 2:21
  Kevin: But how did it happen twice?
• 2:23
  Kevin: I don't know, but they did it both times.
• 2:25
  Kevin: It came from the Android test lab.
• 2:26
  Kevin: Like I looked in the logs.
• 2:27
  Jordan: It's coming from my gosh.
• 2:31
  Alban: All right.
• 2:32
  Alban: I've got, I think I can give you a little more color to this, Kevin.
• 2:35
  Alban: So there was a big thing that was uh somebody found a security vulnerability in Rails.
• 2:41
  Alban: Do you think it's related to that?
• 2:43
  Kevin: No, no.
• 2:44
  Kevin: This is literally somebody's clicking the reset password link on the log.
• 2:48
  Jordan: Like an intern.
• 2:48
  Jordan: Like just something random.
• 2:51
  Kevin: They're probably like, I don't know, maybe just it could even be automated as part of their um automation test or something like that.
• 2:57
  Alban: They're just like, hey, just can you reset password?
• 3:00
  Alban: Good to go.
• 3:00
  Alban: Yep.
• 3:01
  Alban: And they're like, we got them.
• 3:02
  Alban: If that's part of the thing they test, you know this has happened thousands of times before.
• 3:07
  Kevin: Well, now Apple has their own login unique from Android's.
• 3:11
  Kevin: So Android can reset all you want.
• 3:12
  Kevin: You're no longer blocking the Apple team.
• 3:15
  Kevin: So that app should be out soon.
• 3:17
  Kevin: Uh I doubt by Friday, by the time that this episode drops, but if not, shortly after.
• 3:21
  Kevin: What's what's in the new release?
• 3:23
  Kevin: Uh yeah, I can talk about it.
• 3:25
  Kevin: Do you want to talk about it right now?
• 3:26
  Kevin: Or do you want to start the show and then talk about it?
• 3:29
  Jordan: Here we go.
• 3:35
  Jordan: Welcome back to Buzzcast, the podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout.
• 3:40
  Jordan: Now we're just going to continue our conversation from earlier news.
• 3:46
  Kevin: Okay.
• 3:46
  Kevin: So uh there's two really great updates in the in the native app.
• 3:51
  Kevin: The first one is you can now create sound bites right from your mobile device.
• 3:55
  Kevin: So for any episode that you have, uh either audio or video episodes, you can create a soundbite.
• 4:01
  Kevin: Now, the the soundbite for a video episode is still going to be like um the style of an audio soundbite.
• 4:06
  Kevin: We're not actually using the video yet.
• 4:08
  Kevin: So you're creating audio sound bites.
• 4:09
  Kevin: It'll have like the waveform, it has your podcast artwork, has the ability to put captions on it now.
• 4:14
  Kevin: Those captions are generated like right on your device, real time.
• 4:16
  Kevin: You can edit them.
• 4:17
  Kevin: It's really slick and it's it's easier than ever to like choose the right segment for your soundbite.
• 4:22
  Kevin: And so I'm really excited about that because the idea of creating sound bites from your phone is so amazing because uh sharing from your phone is so easy.
• 4:32
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 4:33
  Kevin: Like one of the things that is a little bit of a bummer when you create a soundbite from desktop is desktop apps aren't totally optimized for social sharing, but all the social apps you're already like logged in on your phone.
• 4:43
  Kevin: You already have your Instagram there, you already have your X account there, you already have your Instagram and your threads and whatever social apps you use, they're all right there on your phone.
• 4:51
  Kevin: So if you hit share, the little sheet pops up with all those options and you can just push it right to there.
• 4:56
  Kevin: And so we've wanted to get a really good sound bite experience for people to do right from their phone to make sharing a whole lot easier.
• 5:02
  Kevin: And now you can.
• 5:03
  Jordan: Yeah, this is one of the things that is requested all the time.
• 5:06
  Jordan: Like I've seen it for like years.
• 5:08
  Alban: Requested by Jordan.
• 5:09
  Jordan: I totally understand it because I am one of those people who I do not log into my social media on my computer.
• 5:15
  Jordan: Like I hate being on social media on my computer.
• 5:17
  Jordan: There's something about it.
• 5:19
  Jordan: And so, yeah, basically what I would do in the past is I would like create my sound bites and then I would like download it and then email it to myself, which is really stupid.
• 5:28
  Jordan: And then I would like download, open my email on my phone and download it to my phone and then share it to social.
• 5:33
  Jordan: So you're literally taking away like six steps of the process for me.
• 5:38
  Alban: And they're quite a bit better.
• 5:40
  Alban: Uh, the ones Kevin showed me, it's easier to get the right spot, but then you're transcribing all the section that people want to create the soundbite from.
• 5:48
  Alban: So there's a nice transcription there, there's a nice waveform, and it just feels to me like it's a much better soundbite.
• 5:56
  Alban: And so I think I would see myself sharing this much more than the version we have in the web app.
• 6:03
  Kevin: You know, and we try to do that.
• 6:04
  Kevin: Anytime we're gonna go and make an update to something, we want to like, you know, find areas for for polish and just to make stuff better.
• 6:10
  Kevin: So always the newest platform that we roll it out to should have something a little bit better, a little bit more optimized, look a little fresher, look a little newer.
• 6:16
  Kevin: And so the best soundbite experience is now on mobile devices.
• 6:21
  Kevin: And the next thing, which also kind of plays into that same arena or pushes into that same area, is uh achievement sharing.
• 6:29
  Kevin: And so while we were solving how do we gonna how are we gonna share sound bites in the native apps, how are we also gonna share achievements in the native apps?
• 6:36
  Kevin: And it was a natural flow, and so we went ahead and tackled that as well.
• 6:39
  Kevin: And so we have this new thing.
• 6:41
  Kevin: Uh conceptually, I've been calling it the Share Studio because there's a lot of customization you can do around your achievements.
• 6:47
  Kevin: Historically, you would just get one achievement, it was one graphic.
• 6:50
  Kevin: Uh, you'd get an email, you'd get a push notification, you could go log into Buzzsproute on your desktop, and you could take a look at this one graphic.
• 6:57
  Kevin: But everyone has different sensibilities.
• 6:59
  Kevin: Some people like progress rings, like, oh, look, I've made the progress.
• 7:03
  Kevin: And so we have this little progress ring animation.
• 7:04
  Kevin: Some people like, you know, I earned a medal.
• 7:06
  Kevin: So you could choose like the metal thing where you have like a 3D animated metal thing.
• 7:11
  Kevin: Some people like like typography.
• 7:12
  Kevin: There's one called type, and there's another one that's like a stacking.
• 7:16
  Kevin: Like if you publish 25 episodes, like you get 25 little episode cards that fly on top of each other.
• 7:21
  Kevin: Or if or if it's a download achievement, it shows uh like a world map and all these like podcast app pins dropping all over.
• 7:27
  Kevin: Anyway, they look they look pretty cool.
• 7:29
  Kevin: I'm pretty excited about them.
• 7:30
  Kevin: I still they're still obviously we'll continue to optimize them and make them look even better.
• 7:35
  Kevin: But just the fact that you can create all these different looks for your achievements now.
• 7:39
  Kevin: So achievements are few and far between.
• 7:41
  Kevin: They are milestones.
• 7:42
  Kevin: They're things that you have to earn over time, but now you could share that same thing a couple different ways, maybe on different platforms or maybe even to the same social platform in between.
• 7:52
  Kevin: Just be like, oh, remember, like we did 100 episodes, our next achievement isn't till, I don't know, 125 or 150 or whenever the next one comes.
• 7:59
  Kevin: But here's like a different look on that same achievement.
• 8:01
  Kevin: Then you can publish them every couple weeks or something just to let people kind of know where you are in your podcasting journey.
• 8:07
  Alban: You know, it reminds me of like when you go for a run with Strava, that at the end of it, you've got a ability to go through and say, if I want to share this on social, I can kind of customize it to my brand and how I want to share with people that I went for a run and I did whatever mileage or this timing and I didn't think of it while you were building it, but now that I you're explaining it, I'm like, it's kind of the same thing.
• 8:29
  Alban: And it feels much more natural when I don't want all the data in my run.
• 8:35
  Alban: I really just want like the you know, the map or something.
• 8:37
  Alban: Okay.
• 8:38
  Alban: And so that's the only version I ever would share.
• 8:40
  Alban: When I can go through and pick out which milestone I want to share and then what type of format I want to put in, then it feels much more like mine rather than just like I got handed something by Buzzsprout, could feel a bit generic if I've, you know, already shared five of the same one and customize it, make it my own, and then send it out to everybody who follows me.
• 9:01
  Jordan: You talked about how they're animated, and that's one of the really fun things about the wrapped or the like backtracks or you know, the rewinds that we all get at the end of the year, like regardless of what platform it's on.
• 9:13
  Jordan: What's so fun about it is you get all these stats that are like animated and it's fun to share.
• 9:19
  Jordan: And you you have like, I don't know, it's just a little bit more enjoyful.
• 9:22
  Jordan: Like I love our little cards with like the confetti, but this is so elevated that it feels like every single milestone is that like big year end sort of thing.
• 9:32
  Jordan: And one of the things that you mentioned, we kind of like glossed over it, is that when you have like new locations, you have like the updates with the locations, but that's not an achievement for like a shareable card that we used to have, right?
• 9:45
  Kevin: Um, it's not.
• 9:46
  Kevin: It's the podcast downloads achievement.
• 9:48
  Kevin: And so as you reach new milestones in your download numbers, that's when you would get that achievement.
• 9:53
  Kevin: This one like visualizes it in a totally different way.
• 9:56
  Kevin: So now it is showing, it's representing downloads that are happening all over the world.
• 10:00
  Kevin: That's cool.
• 10:01
  Kevin: It's not really an Easter egg.
• 10:02
  Kevin: It's just like a feature that we built into it is that you might be podcasting from the United States.
• 10:07
  Kevin: And so the map kind of rotates.
• 10:08
  Kevin: It's I don't know.
• 10:09
  Kevin: It's got I'm explaining it, but people wouldn't know this unless we tell them.
• 10:12
  Kevin: The map rotates to like wherever the region is of the device that you're using.
• 10:16
  Kevin: And so on your iPhone, on your Android device, that is locked.
• 10:20
  Kevin: It's not locked into a region, but it's set on a region.
• 10:22
  Kevin: When you set your phone up, it knows that you're in the United States or it knows you're in the United Kingdom, it knows you're in Australia, it knows you're in Asia.
• 10:28
  Kevin: And so the map rotates and it ends.
• 10:31
  Kevin: The end of the rotation is wherever you are.
• 10:33
  Kevin: And so if you're a podcaster out of Australia and you get an achievement and you choose the map one, that's how you want to show off your achievement.
• 10:39
  Kevin: It the map will rotate and it will end in Australia.
• 10:42
  Kevin: And that's where your podcast artwork drops.
• 10:44
  Kevin: So it feels very, I don't know, I think it feels very personal and I don't know, very exciting.
• 10:49
  Kevin: Like Alban said, you can you can make them look however you want.
• 10:51
  Kevin: You can put at the bottom, it says, you know, you know, like find us on, and you can put badges on there.
• 10:56
  Kevin: You can put on, you know, Apple Podcasts or Spotify or YouTube, or you can put all the badges and get a whole bunch of other third-party apps too.
• 11:01
  Kevin: You don't have to put any badges if you don't want to.
• 11:03
  Kevin: You can turn them all off.
• 11:04
  Kevin: They all have the option to give credit to Buzzsprout, like Buzzsprout says, congratulations from Buzzsprout at the bottom.
• 11:08
  Kevin: But if you don't want to put Buzzsprout on there, you don't have to.
• 11:10
  Kevin: You can just turn that off.
• 11:11
  Kevin: And so I think more than ever, it's it's an opportunity for you to get an achievement, for you to find like the representation of the achievement that matches your style, your personality, your show best, and then share that on the social networks that you participate on or that your audience would find you on.
• 11:28
  Kevin: And it all happens on your device.
• 11:30
  Kevin: So you don't have to be in work mode when you do it.
• 11:32
  Kevin: You can just be sitting on the couch or stuck in traffic.
• 11:34
  Kevin: Don't do it, don't do it when you're driving.
• 11:36
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 11:36
  Kevin: Any other time.
• 11:37
  Kevin: Totally fine.
• 11:38
  Jordan: Kevin, you'd mentioned how it's a little bit of an Easter egg, and that actually reminds me that we had an Easter egg in our last episode, and we need an update for that one too.
• 11:47
  Alban: All right.
• 11:48
  Alban: So a couple weeks ago, I post in the Facebook group there's an Easter egg in Buzzsprout.
• 11:54
  Alban: Go find it.
• 11:54
  Alban: We talked about it last week.
• 11:56
  Alban: The first person to find it that I know of was Alex San Filippo.
• 12:02
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 12:02
  Alban: And it puts us in an awkward spot because outside looking in, I would think there was some self-dealing.
• 12:11
  Alban: You know, if I was if I was a BuzzProwl customer and I'm like, okay, there's a contest in like your buddy from Jacksonville found it, I'd I'd go, I'd look on that with suspicion.
• 12:21
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 12:22
  Alban: In all honesty, he did not get a hint.
• 12:24
  Alban: We didn't help him.
• 12:25
  Alban: He really did find it on his own.
• 12:27
  Alban: I think friends and family are no longer eligible for this contest, and Alex is a friend.
• 12:33
  Kevin: The real way Except I like to think that all of our BuzzRat customers are friends.
• 12:36
  Kevin: So that's that's also difficult.
• 12:37
  Kevin: And that's why we don't have to give a prize.
• 12:40
  Kevin: The real prize is friendship.
• 12:43
  Kevin: I'm gonna give Alex free pickleball lessons for life.
• 12:49
  Alban: But then Steven McLain in our Facebook group confirmed other people had theories of what it was and he found it.
• 12:56
  Alban: So are we ready to reveal the Easter egg?
• 12:58
  Alban: And I think Steve is our official winner.
• 13:00
  Alban: I've got a are you guys in agreement with this?
• 13:03
  Jordan: I agree.
• 13:03
  Jordan: That's the first one I saw.
• 13:05
  Kevin: Yeah, I agree with you.
• 13:06
  Kevin: I'm not I'm not sure we should reveal it.
• 13:08
  Kevin: If everybody starts going and playing around with this Easter egg, our servers may crash.
• 13:11
  Kevin: Like I don't know what's gonna happen.
• 13:15
  Alban: I think we gotta reveal it.
• 13:16
  Alban: The Easter egg is since the rebrand in like 2016 or 18, Buzzprout has had the Buzzprout logo up in the top left.
• 13:27
  Alban: And as you tighten up the page, the Buzzprout logo collides with the podcast artwork.
• 13:33
  Kevin: Right.
• 13:33
  Kevin: Alban is talking about resizing your your browser window.
• 13:36
  Kevin: So if you're on a desktop computer, you can make your browser window bigger or smaller by dragging the corner.
• 13:41
  Kevin: And if you make it just to this awkward size in between, it hasn't kind of like switched to a smaller mobile type view yet, but it's not also quite wide enough to be a regular desktop view, your podcast artwork would cover the Buzzsprout logo.
• 13:54
  Alban: And if you're like me, who mostly has two windows open on my monitor that are both kind of tall and thin, like you know, like it's a piece of paper size, well, you often ran into that.
• 14:06
  Alban: Yeah.
• 14:06
  Alban: And so every time we worked on something, I'd be like, Dave, Kevin, could we let's let's figure out a better solution?
• 14:12
  Alban: And I showed one to Kevin, I was like, look, we could make the Buzzbroute logo go here and then it's cleaner.
• 14:18
  Alban: And you're like, okay.
• 14:20
  Alban: And then a few days later you go, I've got something way better.
• 14:23
  Alban: Go ahead and delete what you had.
• 14:25
  Kevin: I said, Are you fixing this?
• 14:26
  Kevin: Because if you're not, I really want to fix this.
• 14:28
  Alban: Yeah.
• 14:29
  Alban: I said, I don't have like uh I just want it to be fixed.
• 14:33
  Alban: I don't need to be the owner of it.
• 14:35
  Alban: And you're like, I've got something better.
• 14:36
  Alban: And what it is now is when you go and bump it, the world BuzzBroth is don't tell them what it is.
• 14:42
  Jordan: Yeah, I was gonna say, let's just let's just tell them, like, hey, why don't you go play with the window sizing and see what happens?
• 14:48
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 14:49
  Kevin: But I will tell you, don't just don't just make it do what it does like once.
• 14:54
  Kevin: Keep trying to agitate it.
• 14:56
  Kevin: You want that logo frustrated.
• 15:01
  Kevin: Keep playing around with them until he gets angry and see what happens.
• 15:05
  Jordan: It's very fun.
• 15:06
  Alban: In the code base, this is called Rampage.
• 15:09
  Alban: So keep going.
• 15:11
  Jordan: Is it really?
• 15:12
  Alban: Yeah, it is.
• 15:13
  Jordan: That's funny.
• 15:14
  Jordan: One of the things I really want to talk about here on Buzzcast is how much podcasting stats and metrics have changed this year and how podcasters can even like begin to navigate it.
• 15:32
  Jordan: Because in the last year, YouTube uh changed what they count as a view, and then Spotify changed what counts as a podcast play.
• 15:42
  Jordan: And then a few weeks ago, IB released that they have like updated measurement guidelines.
• 15:48
  Jordan: And then at the same time, we have HLS video that is going beyond YouTube and Spotify.
• 15:54
  Jordan: Now it's an Apple, probably pop up in some other apps, but now it's like really feeling like the Wild West, and there's a huge like gold rush of video podcasting, and then everyone wants to be like the sheriff of their own town, and like nobody can agree on the rules that we're gonna abide by.
• 16:10
  Jordan: Doesn't it feel that way to you?
• 16:12
  Alban: Everyone wants to be the sheriff of their own town, and everybody wants their number to be the biggest number.
• 16:18
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 16:18
  Alban: And I think this initially started when TikTok started putting view counts on all videos.
• 16:23
  Alban: Like that wasn't common until TikTok that I remember anybody else doing it.
• 16:27
  Alban: And they're like one second of TikTok view, and all of a sudden we're gonna put that on there.
• 16:32
  Alban: Well, that very quickly made Instagram videos look small because you're only seeing the likes.
• 16:39
  Alban: It made Twitter views look really bad because it was all uh, you know, likes and retweets, you didn't see views.
• 16:45
  Alban: And it made everybody move towards views, not because it's the best uh metric, but because it was the biggest metric.
• 16:53
  Alban: And what I see is the trend across all of these is people say, we're gonna measure things our own way and we're gonna measure it in a way that we look very big.
• 17:02
  Alban: And the thread I think I will keep uh, you know, the theme I will keep coming back to through this whole episode is these numbers are not even close to the same.
• 17:13
  Alban: And we really need to be comparing, they're not apples to oranges.
• 17:17
  Alban: Sometimes we're comparing apples to uh radios or tires or something.
• 17:22
  Alban: There's something totally different.
• 17:23
  Alban: And it's like these are not the same thing, and yet they're all like, hey, we've got the biggest number, but the biggest number could be something that's totally measured differently.
• 17:33
  Jordan: Everyone forever has been saying like YouTube's the biggest like podcasting platform.
• 17:36
  Jordan: And we were like, I don't think it actually is.
• 17:39
  Jordan: And then YouTube went, Oh yeah, well, I'm gonna change it.
• 17:42
  Jordan: And now our views are going to count within the first frame that is played.
• 17:47
  Jordan: And it's going across all different mediums that are on there.
• 17:51
  Jordan: So it counts for like the videos, it counts for podcasts, it counts for shorts, and they're putting it all together, which is so wild to me because it's all so different.
• 18:01
  Kevin: Let's do this.
• 18:01
  Kevin: Let's do, let's do like a um a state of the mess.
• 18:04
  Kevin: Like help me wrap my head around this.
• 18:06
  Kevin: You know, I'm not into uh I'm not into, I'm not a big numbers guy, and I certainly don't care about all the different ways platforms measure numbers because I feel like they're just kind of like Alban said, trying to get the biggest numbers they can because at the end of the day, they appear to be content uh publishing platforms, but really what they are are just like a local TV station or something like that.
• 18:28
  Kevin: They're they're providing content because they want to sell ads against it.
• 18:31
  Kevin: And so all of them are trying to figure out what are what are the best numbers that we can present to be able to attract as many advertisers to a platform as possible.
• 18:37
  Kevin: So let's get a sort of state of the podcast number economy.
• 18:42
  Kevin: Like how does YouTube measure?
• 18:44
  Kevin: How does Spotify measure?
• 18:45
  Kevin: How does Apple measure?
• 18:46
  Kevin: How do the stats that you look at in Buzzsprout measure?
• 18:48
  Kevin: And then at the end, I think we'll be able to sort sort of wrap this up and give our audience at least something to um to help them understand why everything is different, how each one is different.
• 19:00
  Kevin: And when somebody asks you about numbers, how do you respond in the context of each kind of question or who's asking?
• 19:06
  Kevin: Let's let's go for that.
• 19:07
  Kevin: Let's see what happens.
• 19:08
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 19:08
  Jordan: So if we do start with YouTube, so what this view is, is actually just like a rebranding of what they previously counted as a view, because a view will count if you start autoplaying.
• 19:21
  Jordan: So if they're scrolling and it autoplays on their feed, or if they start up like a new video, the second it autoplays, that counts as a view.
• 19:29
  Jordan: And what they did was they changed what was previously thought of as a view to an engaged view.
• 19:35
  Jordan: And I think that you're right that this is definitely something to do with like advertising, because engaged views sounds a lot nicer when you're trying to get advertisers.
• 19:45
  Jordan: And then if they have like a thumbnail that never starts playing, then that's what they count as an impression.
• 19:52
  Jordan: So like I guess that makes sense.
• 19:54
  Jordan: But the thing that is kind of weird with this, if you think about it, is that when YouTube autoplays a video in the first frame and they're counting that in the first frame, wouldn't that hurt your algorithm on YouTube?
• 20:09
  Jordan: Because somebody, if if a bunch of people are like exiting out shortly after you get like that play or that view, wouldn't the algorithm think that you had a thumbnail that was like kind of clickbaity?
• 20:20
  Jordan: And so it's going to like hurt your podcast.
• 20:23
  Alban: It's certainly not a good signal that somebody watched one frame and instantly was like, I gotta get away from this guy.
• 20:30
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 20:31
  Alban: Can I try to uh say these back to you and you tell me if I'm right, Jordan?
• 20:34
  Alban: I'm going through YouTube's for you page and I'm on the home page and I scroll by 15 videos, they all got an impression.
• 20:42
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 20:43
  Alban: I click one short and I watch it, that's an engaged view.
• 20:47
  Alban: I swipe and immediately as fast as I can, swipe, swipe.
• 20:51
  Alban: The video in the middle that got like a tenth of a second, that gets a view.
• 20:58
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 20:59
  Alban: And so those numbers all went up and they feel very different from oh, I engaged, I watched a three-hour episode of Modern Wisdom, the podcast on YouTube.
• 21:11
  Alban: I watched that whole thing, or I went flip-flip on a YouTube short, those both are showing up as an engaged view.
• 21:18
  Alban: Or excuse me, they're both showing up as a view.
• 21:21
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 21:21
  Alban: Yeah, they're both showing up as a view.
• 21:23
  Jordan: Yeah, because the view count includes the engaged views, but then the engaged views doesn't include the views.
• 21:29
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 21:30
  Kevin: So it's just well, it seems like I bet this is going to be a pattern as we move into Spotify next.
• 21:35
  Kevin: But as these platforms go ahead and create all these different I shouldn't, I don't want to use the word views to confuse it with the metric views, but they they create these different screens.
• 21:44
  Kevin: And on the screens are content and you can look at them different ways.
• 21:48
  Kevin: And so you might just be scrolling past some.
• 21:50
  Kevin: You might scroll past some and they might start auto playing, usually without sound.
• 21:54
  Kevin: Then you click on it and the sound comes on.
• 21:56
  Kevin: Then you might click into a different view of that.
• 21:59
  Kevin: But Every time you look at that a different way or presents a different way, YouTube wants to put a name, it's like associate a name with that, and they want to track a stat against it so that you have a full picture of all the different ways that people are interacting with your content.
• 22:14
  Kevin: I think the challenge is that that language is not standardized across the industry.
• 22:19
  Kevin: So a view, an engagement, an impression, those could mean very different things in the YouTube world than they do in the Spotify world, than they do in the podcast world, than they do in Apple Podcasts with video now and everything like that.
• 22:32
  Kevin: And so if you're if you're really into this, like I would put like the platform name in front of the thing that you're saying.
• 22:39
  Kevin: So you wouldn't say like how many views does your podcast get?
• 22:43
  Kevin: That means a lot of different things.
• 22:44
  Kevin: How many YouTube views does it mean?
• 22:46
  Kevin: How many engaged users do you have on YouTube?
• 22:48
  Kevin: How many Spotify views do you have?
• 22:51
  Kevin: How many Spotify plays do you have?
• 22:52
  Kevin: How many Apple Podcast listens do you have?
• 22:55
  Kevin: I think you if you really want to understand the numbers, you have to be platform specific at this point.
• 23:00
  Alban: I think that's why YouTube for so long has said, I mean, I think this has always been the case.
• 23:05
  Alban: If you are going to take stats out of YouTube, they need to be displayed separately from everybody else's stats.
• 23:12
  Alban: Correct.
• 23:13
  Alban: And it's because they know that our stats are not the same as TikTok, they're not the same as Apple Podcasts, they're not the same as anything else.
• 23:20
  Alban: And we want to protect the YouTube brand.
• 23:24
  Alban: And the way we do that is by saying we have a definition of what a view is.
• 23:29
  Alban: We don't care what your definition is of because we want ours always separate.
• 23:33
  Alban: And that's going to make it pretty confusing for everybody who's a content creator who wants to give out some impression of how big they are or how much engagement they're getting.
• 23:46
  Alban: Right.
• 23:46
  Alban: Because you're kind of collecting all this different data that's measured differently and then is defined differently.
• 23:52
  Alban: And you're trying to come up with one thing to share, like, oh, here's my level of influence.
• 23:58
  Alban: If you did a marketing deal with me, if I you ran some ads with me, here's what you should expect.
• 24:04
  Alban: And the platforms are not in alignment on giving you all that data in a way that's easy to package as a as a group because they all want you to see, oh, it looks like TikTok's the biggest thing for me.
• 24:16
  Alban: I'm going all in on TikTok.
• 24:18
  Alban: Oh, YouTube's the biggest thing.
• 24:19
  Alban: I'm going all in on YouTube.
• 24:20
  Alban: They're all going to keep their own definitions.
• 24:23
  Kevin: I feel like this has already happened in this in the social media space.
• 24:26
  Kevin: And social media influencing has become a pretty big thing.
• 24:30
  Kevin: A lot of social media people have found that the best way for them to generate revenue to make money off of their influence is to be, is to do brand deals.
• 24:37
  Kevin: And so they pushed into it pretty hard.
• 24:38
  Kevin: Most of them, however, will not give you like a combined follower number.
• 24:42
  Kevin: They will say, My Instagram followers are this, my TikTok followers are this.
• 24:47
  Kevin: On threads, I do this, on X, I do this.
• 24:49
  Kevin: They'll break all that stuff down.
• 24:50
  Kevin: That probably means for somebody who's in the know, like in the media buying space, they will know how to interpret all those numbers.
• 24:56
  Kevin: But what they don't do is they don't, they don't say, oh, I got a million followers on Instagram and I got a million followers on TikTok.
• 25:01
  Kevin: So I have two million followers.
• 25:03
  Kevin: I don't think anybody talks like that in the social media space.
• 25:05
  Kevin: They say a million and a million.
• 25:07
  Kevin: And I think that's the way that podcasters probably need to start thinking about their numbers, is that we can't just take all the platforms and add them up.
• 25:15
  Kevin: When we do a media sheet or when we present our podcast or our brand to somebody to do a brand deal or to do a sponsorship or something, you're gonna have to probably start breaking them down.
• 25:23
  Jordan: It feels weird because we don't really get to see how many subscribers or followers we necessarily have.
• 25:29
  Jordan: I mean, I guess we do on YouTube and on Spotify, but it sucks when if you were to have um most of your uh podcast listeners were on um, I don't know, like I'm trying to think of one that like overcast or something like that, where you can't actually see your, I'm assuming you can't actually see your uh subscribers.
• 25:48
  Jordan: It would suck to have like less subscribers.
• 25:50
  Jordan: You can't, okay.
• 25:50
  Kevin: Well then just with overcast, but overcast is a bit of an outlier.
• 25:53
  Kevin: Uh overcast is the only one that actually tells you the follower number when you request the RSS feed from them.
• 25:58
  Kevin: Oh, or when you request uh like that podcast information through their API.
• 26:02
  Kevin: But most third-party apps don't.
• 26:03
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 26:04
  Kevin: And so I do think that you're gonna get to a place where if you want to represent yourself to a potential sponsor or brand, you're going to say, here's what I my numbers look like on YouTube, here's what they look on Spotify, here's what my RSS numbers look like.
• 26:14
  Kevin: And any other, you know, significant platforms that you're on that you want to represent yourself, if you're on X or something like that, you'll give those numbers separately also.
• 26:22
  Alban: It does occur to me that over the years we have had a bit of frustration, or just like I think we've had critiques for the way the podcast industry has tracked stats and not loved everything that the IAB has done to define uh, you know, what's a view.
• 26:38
  Alban: We we can poke holes at it.
• 26:39
  Alban: Maybe that's the right way to say it.
• 26:41
  Alban: And yet now you see what the true Wild West is, which is everybody defining things in a black box or totally separately.
• 26:50
  Alban: And they say, and don't even try to add the numbers up because we're not even measuring the same thing.
• 26:55
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 26:55
  Alban: And in podcasting, especially with the IAB and the PSP, we're all trying to measure it as closely as possible.
• 27:04
  Alban: And we're trying to, you know, block the same type of bots, even if we're not all exactly the same, everyone's trying.
• 27:11
  Alban: That actually does count for quite a bit because I do know that if I get a download in Overcast and a download in Apple Podcast and a download in TrueFans, that all three of those the same action was happening when those files were requested.
• 27:28
  Alban: That is the same where I don't have any sort of cross-platform comparison between any other platforms.
• 27:34
  Kevin: The Buzzsprout stats dashboard, if you happen to be on a video plane with Buzzsprout, you can see how we're trying to solve this problem.
• 27:41
  Kevin: We're we're starting to work through these platform-specific issues with and combining them or showing them, at least in context with like RSS downloads for video.
• 27:50
  Kevin: It's not an easy problem to solve.
• 27:52
  Kevin: As Alban said, like some of the platforms, YouTube specifically, says you cannot combine RV numbers with any other metric.
• 27:59
  Kevin: Because, first of all, they're probably different than any other metric you're combining them with.
• 28:03
  Kevin: And YouTube isn't super transparent or clear about how they calculate them anyway.
• 28:08
  Kevin: So, like, how would you even sort of reverse engineer it because they don't tell you?
• 28:12
  Kevin: And so if you are on a video plane with Buzzsprout, if you go to your stats section, there's a like a sub-navigation thing for video if you're publishing video, and we will tell you how many video downloads we're counting.
• 28:22
  Kevin: And that is from video that's been published into I want to say RSS feed, but it's mostly going out through this um special Apple relationship that we have, and it's using their API to push that into Apple.
• 28:35
  Kevin: So let's just talk about like Buzzcast for a second.
• 28:37
  Kevin: Over the last five episodes of Buzzcast, we've had 637 video downloads.
• 28:43
  Kevin: The majority of those came from Apple Podcasts.
• 28:46
  Kevin: There was almost 400 straight from Apple Podcasts.
• 28:48
  Kevin: There were 83 views of people who went and looked at it in a web browser.
• 28:52
  Kevin: We actually use the YouTube embed player, so we count that as a web browser play, but we break that out as a separate thing because we also show YouTube views.
• 29:02
  Kevin: And it so it's like a separate column.
• 29:05
  Kevin: It says 637 video downloads plus 500 YouTube views.
• 29:09
  Jordan: Is that YouTube views or YouTube engaged views?
• 29:12
  Jordan: Do we know?
• 29:13
  Kevin: It's just what YouTube calls views.
• 29:15
  Kevin: We're we're literally just hitting their stats API and saying, whatever number, however you calculate views, give us that number, and that's the number we display.
• 29:23
  Kevin: We don't change the terminology.
• 29:24
  Kevin: And so I think when they change, they made a change that they're counting a view, is now anything that you know plays one or more video frame, even I think if it's an autoplay, it counts.
• 29:35
  Kevin: Right.
• 29:35
  Kevin: Which is very different than what we count as a video download.
• 29:38
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 29:38
  Kevin: Because we only count a video download if you played, if you've downloaded at least 60 seconds of the audio file and made one video frame request.
• 29:46
  Kevin: So you have at least seconds, 60 seconds of audio, and somewhere in that range, you requested a byte or more of video.
• 29:55
  Kevin: Then we'll say, okay, well, you're you were looking at video.
• 29:58
  Jordan: Thinking about this like 60 seconds versus like one frame and whatever, Spotify also changed how they count plays.
• 30:06
  Jordan: And they changed this to go along with what the Alliance for Measurement and Podcasting's play definition was.
• 30:14
  Kevin: That's a very fancy sounding organization.
• 30:17
  Jordan: I and I thought, who's that?
• 30:20
  Jordan: And so I looked into it.
• 30:22
  Jordan: And Alliance for Measurement and Podcasting is Oxford Rhodes' version of like IAB.
• 30:29
  Jordan: And this might be one of the things where like maybe they didn't think that it was done correctly.
• 30:33
  Jordan: So they're also trying to find standardization.
• 30:36
  Kevin: It's not great when people are like, we're gonna create standardization by creating a totally different organization and coming up with a totally different set of metrics.
• 30:44
  Jordan: Yes.
• 30:45
  Kevin: This is this is the renaming of stuff.
• 30:47
  Kevin: It's it's not fragmentation, it's standardization.
• 30:49
  Kevin: We just create, you know, we'll bring everyone together by creating more.
• 30:52
  Alban: This is uh this is the XKCD.
• 30:54
  Alban: Have you ever seen this comic, Kevin?
• 30:56
  Alban: It's a guy gets on stage, he goes, There's a problem, there's 30 competing standards, and he goes, So what my solution is this standard?
• 31:03
  Alban: And then it goes back to the problem is there's 31 competing standards.
• 31:07
  Kevin: Right.
• 31:08
  Alban: Spotify.
• 31:09
  Alban: So what they're gonna do is a play is now the number of times an episode has been watched for at least 30 seconds.
• 31:16
  Alban: And they say 30 seconds is a reliable indicator of intentional consumption, and it filters out accidental plays and low intent activity.
• 31:24
  Alban: That sounds great until I think about everybody else in the podcasting industry does a minute.
• 31:31
  Alban: It's a minute of downloaded data.
• 31:34
  Alban: That's what the IAB wants.
• 31:36
  Alban: And so you go, okay, they wanted the number to go up.
• 31:39
  Alban: Maybe they think this other standard makes more sense.
• 31:41
  Alban: Then I remember Spotify is now making a lot of money selling ads on their own podcasts.
• 31:48
  Alban: So they want the play comp number to keep going up.
• 31:51
  Alban: The mind-blowing piece is there's another measurement that Spotify has internally, which is is something streamed?
• 32:00
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 32:00
  Alban: And if something is streamed, just think about the incentives here.
• 32:03
  Alban: How many seconds do you need to listen to a song before it counts as a stream?
• 32:08
  Jordan: I'm pretty sure it's 60 seconds.
• 32:10
  Alban: Right.
• 32:11
  Alban: Exactly.
• 32:12
  Alban: So just get these in your head.
• 32:14
  Alban: Spotify says, Look, man, we don't know if you intended to listen to that or not.
• 32:19
  Alban: But if it's a podcast, ah they're like three hours long on average.
• 32:23
  Alban: You know, they're really long.
• 32:25
  Alban: We think like 30 seconds, you definitely you definitely enjoyed it.
• 32:28
  Alban: Yeah, that counts.
• 32:29
  Alban: Now, songs, some of those are as short as a minute and a half.
• 32:32
  Alban: You gotta listen to that whole minute though, before we count it as a stream.
• 32:35
  Alban: Well, why?
• 32:36
  Alban: Well, look at the incentives.
• 32:38
  Alban: Spotify sells ads on one and they pay for the other, they pay for music, they pay the labels, and they go, okay, yeah, we actually owe you some money for that.
• 32:48
  Alban: And so they're hoping for those streams to go down and they want the podcast number to go up.
• 32:54
  Alban: I'm like, this does not feel good.
• 32:55
  Alban: That you're holding these two definitions at the same time.
• 32:58
  Jordan: Yeah, I didn't even think about that.
• 33:00
  Kevin: And I think really it gets it gets a little worse because really it's just paying the artists.
• 33:04
  Kevin: Like the labels pretty much own Spotify anyway.
• 33:06
  Kevin: So they're not paying the labels, which means they're keeping the money, but the labels own Spotify.
• 33:11
  Kevin: So they're just keeping money.
• 33:13
  Kevin: When they pay out, they have to they do pay a portion to themselves and they pay also pay a small portion to rights holders, usually the musicians and anybody credited on the songwriting and all that other stuff.
• 33:23
  Alban: I do feel for Spotify because I know that there have been many scams uncovered where people were auto-playing their own music for, you know, half a second to try to rack up the plays, and then they're trying to get paid on their fake plays that they were running on 40 iPhones all at the same time.
• 33:38
  Alban: I know Spotify deals with that stuff, but I feel like all of the efforts they put into filtering out bots and a malicious activity, all of that should be translated over to the other side of the business where they sell ads.
• 33:55
  Alban: And to do right by the advertisers, I feel like they need to say, Hey, we're actually experts in tracking all this behavior.
• 34:03
  Alban: We want to see a full minute of behavior before we think it's legit.
• 34:07
  Alban: But then over a podcast, if anything, it should be more strict.
• 34:10
  Alban: It should be longer than a minute, if anything, because they know these are not on average two and a half minutes.
• 34:16
  Alban: Like a song is the average is two and a half minutes.
• 34:19
  Alban: Over on the podcast, the average is like 48 minutes.
• 34:22
  Alban: So it just does not feel good for that to have moved to 30 seconds with a whole new standard.
• 34:27
  Alban: I'm like, we had a good standard, and now it feels kind of gross for it to go to 30.
• 34:33
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 34:34
  Alban: Anyway, off the soapbox again.
• 34:36
  Alban: But that I saw that those two next to each other, I was like, oh, I did not like this.
• 34:40
  Jordan: Well, I didn't yeah, that didn't even like occur to me.
• 34:42
  Jordan: But now that I'm thinking about it, it's almost like some of their uh like new features or new updates are sort of directly in conflict with that theory because they've now made it like super easy to skip ads, even Spotify ads, like they're making it easier to skip ads.
• 34:57
  Jordan: So I don't know.
• 34:58
  Jordan: I want to hear what our listeners think.
• 35:00
  Jordan: Like, what what are their opinions on that conspiracy theory?
• 35:03
  Alban: So I just I gotta know now.
• 35:05
  Alban: If I was to uh start an episode of Joe Rogan, which instantly leads with an ad, and I click the skip ads button, the Spotify counted as a play.
• 35:15
  Alban: I would consume nothing.
• 35:18
  Alban: And yet I have a feeling that they're like 30 seconds of quality activity there.
• 35:24
  Kevin: Yeah, you have to wonder.
• 35:25
  Kevin: I mean, Spotify's been pretty quiet about this.
• 35:27
  Kevin: Is I'm just following the pod news reporting.
• 35:29
  Kevin: They've been pretty quiet about the skip ads button.
• 35:31
  Kevin: I think you know, James broke the story months ago.
• 35:34
  Kevin: I think they denied it or said, you know, we're just testing, we test stuff all the time.
• 35:38
  Kevin: It's not a big deal.
• 35:38
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 35:39
  Kevin: Now somebody else reported it and like shouldn't sent a screenshot.
• 35:42
  Kevin: He saw it again, reported it, brought it back up again today.
• 35:44
  Kevin: I still don't know if we have any official word from Spotify that they confirm the existence of this thing or what they're doing with it.
• 35:51
  Jordan: It does exist because like I've seen it, I've seen it on so many things, but yeah, it's it's starting to skip people's like call to actions.
• 35:59
  Jordan: Like the guy that was um reported on, I think it was it today or yesterday, it skipped his thing where he was talking about like a free newsletter, like signing up for free newsletter, and he's like, it's free, it's not even like an ad.
• 36:11
  Alban: Jordan Jordan talks about this skip thing now, like the way she talks about UAPs and UFOs internally.
• 36:16
  Alban: She's like, guys, it's all behind closed doors, but like we're getting reports all over the place.
• 36:22
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 36:23
  Kevin: I wonder though, as they hone it in, will they turn it off for the for their own shows?
• 36:27
  Kevin: Like for the Joe Rogans or the the deals that they have put together for like their in-house podcasts.
• 36:32
  Kevin: Will they will the rules work the same way?
• 36:34
  Kevin: Will they not apply it all?
• 36:35
  Kevin: That would be interesting.
• 36:36
  Jordan: That will be interesting because I have seen it.
• 36:38
  Jordan: Like I've I've watched a couple uh Joe Rogan since they like put it in there, and I have seen that skip pop up.
• 36:44
  Jordan: And I was like, okay, so it's on Spotify Podcast too.
• 36:48
  Jordan: That may be like a little less salty about it, but yeah, it's gonna be interesting to see.
• 36:52
  Jordan: They're probably using it for data, and then we'll see what they they think about it later.
• 36:58
  Jordan: But it'll be really interesting if it disappeared off of those and then they kept it for everyone else.
• 37:02
  Jordan: Be like, wait a second.
• 37:04
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 37:05
  Kevin: Can I can can I brant for just a second?
• 37:07
  Kevin: I mean, this is like my podcast, too, right?
• 37:08
  Kevin: Like I can I can say stuff.
• 37:10
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 37:11
  Kevin: Spotify is so aggressive in their UI towards podcast hosting companies.
• 37:17
  Kevin: I was helping out with a support case this week, so I had to look at uh customers.
• 37:22
  Kevin: I wasn't actually in their account.
• 37:23
  Kevin: They sent me screenshots of their account.
• 37:24
  Kevin: And right under the settings where you're setting up your Spotify for podcasters account so they can get metrics and they can publish video and they can do all that stuff.
• 37:32
  Kevin: Screens that we have to push them to to enable video.
• 37:35
  Kevin: Like you have to go in here, you have to turn this on, you have to get this thing so that we can authenticate you, so that we can start pushing your video.
• 37:41
  Kevin: They are they've got banners that just say, like, basically, why are you hosting with somebody else?
• 37:46
  Kevin: Host with us for free.
• 37:47
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 37:48
  Kevin: Dude, that is so like not a good partner.
• 37:51
  Kevin: But then we get on the phone with them, they're nice people, they're easy to talk to, they're happy to work with us.
• 37:56
  Kevin: We want to just support podcasts, you want to do all this stuff.
• 37:58
  Kevin: But why do you why are you oh, it's such an abusive relationship.
• 38:02
  Kevin: It's not nice.
• 38:07
  Jordan: I've seen that every single time I love it.
• 38:08
  Jordan: And it doesn't go away.
• 38:10
  Jordan: Like, you can't dismiss that banner.
• 38:11
  Jordan: I know.
• 38:12
  Jordan: It is there forever.
• 38:14
  Jordan: And whenever I go in there to look at like listener retention data or anything like that, and or look at our comments, I see it.
• 38:20
  Jordan: It's just like it's plastered there at the top of the menu.
• 38:24
  Jordan: They're just like, switch to us for hosting.
• 38:26
  Jordan: Like, post for free.
• 38:28
  Kevin: Like, I'm I'm I'm I'm fine.
• 38:29
  Kevin: Like, I'm confident in our product.
• 38:31
  Kevin: People leave all the time, try Spotify.
• 38:33
  Kevin: And then it's a it's just a lot of work on the podcaster and it's a lot of work for our support team because they come back and they're like, oh yeah, I had a problem.
• 38:39
  Kevin: I didn't get the support I wanted, or they don't have a good mobile app for me to check my stats, or you know, when I ran into an issue, I could never get resolution for it.
• 38:46
  Kevin: Like I'm confident in our product.
• 38:48
  Kevin: What annoys me is like it's this is just it's not a it's not something a good like a good partner should be doing, and it's not even something they take seriously.
• 38:55
  Kevin: Like they don't even take the hosting side of their business seriously.
• 38:59
  Kevin: It's just a way for them to like pick off podcasters that start to have some level of success to move them into your ad program, which you don't even have to be hosting with them to participate in their ad program.
• 39:08
  Kevin: What I'm gonna let it go.
• 39:09
  Kevin: I'm gonna take a breath.
• 39:10
  Kevin: I'm gonna get calm again.
• 39:12
  Kevin: But what every time we have conversations with Apple, Apple is always like, uh, we want to help support you.
• 39:18
  Kevin: We want to be a good partner to you and you you guys be nice to us.
• 39:22
  Kevin: And like, how can we strengthen our relationship?
• 39:24
  Kevin: And we do get that from the Spotify team in person, but then I log into their UI and it's like the opposite of that.
• 39:28
  Kevin: Whoever's like writing these things in their app are not the same people who kind of understand podcasting and how it works and how we can all make each other better and stronger and help ultimately support the creators who none of this exists without them.
• 39:41
  Kevin: And so stop trying to get them to go to your junky podcast hosting platform and then go through all the pain of having to switch back when it doesn't perform.
• 39:50
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 39:50
  Jordan: And, you know, talking about Apple, when they added HLS video, that added kind of like an extra layer of confusion for a lot of podcasters that especially, you know, hadn't dipped their toes into, you know, Spotify video or YouTube video.
• 40:05
  Jordan: It's funny.
• 40:06
  Jordan: I want to talk about this, and it's a little bit for me too, because I know that HLS video is treated a little bit differently than just like regular podcast downloads, but I don't know exactly how.
• 40:16
  Alban: The the way that Apple has implemented this is the most aligned with the way the IAB and podcasters expect stats to be tracked.
• 40:28
  Alban: And so the way that they're presented in Buzz Browser is as soon as you hit that minute of audio content has been downloaded, there is a download.
• 40:39
  Alban: We see that it's Apple Podcasts and it's assigned to Apple Podcasts.
• 40:43
  Alban: And then we watch to see do they request the video in the HLS playlist, any of those video segments.
• 40:53
  Alban: And the minute that the podcaster flips over to video and the video starts to play, Apple is requesting that video from us, and as soon as we get any video, we say this one counts as a video play.
• 41:08
  Alban: Oh so it's always a download, it's always an audio download, but at some point it gets, and I'm kind of putting it in quotes, upgraded or moved to video as soon as some video has been consumed.
• 41:24
  Alban: Does that make sense?
• 41:26
  Jordan: Yeah, that totally makes sense.
• 41:28
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 41:28
  Kevin: So a video download is always an audio download, but an audio download's not always a video download.
• 41:33
  Kevin: I was hoping that would simplify it, but it probably made it more confusing.
• 41:38
  Jordan: A little bit.
• 41:38
  Jordan: I was like, okay, yeah.
• 41:40
  Kevin: Um well, we we would never want to count it twice, right?
• 41:43
  Kevin: We would never want to register an audio download and a video download because then if you looked at those two numbers, people would be like, well, do I add those together to get my total download number or what?
• 41:52
  Kevin: And so everything starts as an audio download.
• 41:56
  Kevin: And as Alban said, it can kind of upgrade.
• 41:58
  Kevin: You can move categories, it can jump over to a video if they request video.
• 42:02
  Kevin: But if it never, if you listen to 59 seconds of the audio or 59 seconds of the video, it's not going to count as either.
• 42:10
  Kevin: It has to be a minute.
• 42:11
  Kevin: Once it's a minute, then we make the determination of which category it should fall into.
• 42:15
  Kevin: If we don't see any video data, it will always fall into the audio category.
• 42:19
  Kevin: And if we see video data, then we'll go ahead and put it in the video category.
• 42:22
  Jordan: I've noticed that a lot of these podcasting apps, when I'm uh like listening to a podcast that has a video component to it, it will automatically play the video, even though I'm only intending on listening.
• 42:33
  Jordan: And so I'm wondering if that's going to sort of like inflate video numbers.
• 42:38
  Jordan: And I could see maybe podcasters are a little bit like, oh, my um my downloads are 50-50 on video and audio.
• 42:47
  Jordan: So I think I'm gonna go all in on this.
• 42:48
  Jordan: I'm gonna like order like a new camera.
• 42:50
  Jordan: I'm gonna get like a new lighting set up, you know, get a new studio set up.
• 42:54
  Jordan: And I could see people being like, oh yeah, I've got so many people watching the podcast.
• 42:58
  Jordan: And in reality, maybe it's like a few people or they have it like on the counter while they're cooking dinner or something like that.
• 43:04
  Alban: You know, if I'm to take one lesson from this episode, it would be these numbers are all interesting, but to be useful, you have to have the context of how are these things measured.
• 43:16
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 43:17
  Alban: And if you look at, I don't know for sure, but let's just imagine Pocket Casts and I pull open pocket casts and their default behavior was to flip to video.
• 43:26
  Alban: If you don't actually open the app and learn that that's the default behavior, then you're going to look at it and go, wow, people, whatever pocket cast is doing is great for video and people love video there.
• 43:38
  Alban: So I need to go all in.
• 43:39
  Alban: You need to go in and actually look at the app because you would interpret that data very different from Apple, which is always defaulting to audio and saying, Look, we'd love for you to have a video experience if you want it.
• 43:50
  Alban: Uh YouTube, it's always video because they always lead with video.
• 43:55
  Alban: So I would encourage people like when you see numbers, you don't want to just Go after the big number.
• 44:01
  Alban: You want to look at these numbers in some with some type of context.
• 44:04
  Alban: And I think that means digging into what do these measurements actually measure.
• 44:09
  Alban: And sometimes for uh myself, the way that I can figure out how to judge numbers is just with some qualitative data.
• 44:19
  Alban: Not looking at the numbers, but actually hearing some stories from our customers.
• 44:23
  Alban: Like, how'd you find out about Buzzsprout?
• 44:25
  Alban: And they'll tell you something totally off the wall.
• 44:27
  Alban: And you go, it's interesting that I've heard this story a few times.
• 44:31
  Alban: And I kind of now have an intuition about how people are finding Buzzsprout, even though in my tracking software or something, I don't have it all right there showing me that's the big marketing channel.
• 44:43
  Jordan: Yeah, I fully agree.
• 44:44
  Jordan: I kind of feel like that is the big takeaway from this episode and from talking about like how everyone is just kind of like running around saying, like, my standard's better.
• 44:54
  Jordan: No, my standard.
• 44:54
  Jordan: We're gonna standardize it this way, and then we're gonna standardize it this way.
• 44:58
  Jordan: And it can feel a little bit overwhelming and a little frustrating as a podcaster.
• 45:04
  Jordan: And so I think it's really important to maybe just focus on like your Buzzsprout stats.
• 45:09
  Jordan: We have it very, it's clean, it's understandable, and it's it's easy to read.
• 45:16
  Jordan: So just like look at that.
• 45:18
  Jordan: If you want stats that actually matter, I agree that like the engaged views or you know, people listening for at least like 30 seconds or a minute is going to be so much better.
• 45:28
  Jordan: But you can go into Spotify or YouTube or even Apple Podcasts.
• 45:33
  Jordan: You can see the listener retention or the episode consumption graphs.
• 45:38
  Jordan: By far the best data that you can look at are those graphs of like how long people are are listening, where they're dipping off, where they're skipping the episode content and Fan Mail engagement, things like that, participation from your listeners, them sharing it with like other fans is going to be the biggest metric that you can look at.
• 46:00
  Alban: Yeah, it's actually why I really like things like Fan Mail or getting emails or people following you on social media and writing you.
• 46:06
  Alban: As soon as you hear from a person, you're like, we've closed the loop.
• 46:10
  Alban: Yeah.
• 46:11
  Alban: And everything in the middle, the YouTube plays, the TikTok views, the Apple podcast video download, all that you can park on the side and go, but I connected with Steven and he wrote in and I heard from him.
• 46:26
  Alban: That's awesome.
• 46:27
  Alban: And you don't need to know all the other stats in the middle.
• 46:31
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 46:31
  Kevin: And for most podcasters, I think you're 100% right.
• 46:34
  Kevin: There are there are a small percentage of podcasters that are at the point where they're trying to monetize or trying to find sponsors.
• 46:39
  Kevin: There's ways to do that even with small audiences.
• 46:42
  Kevin: And I'm I'm not saying you shouldn't do that, but I'm saying for the majority of podcasters, none of this matters.
• 46:46
  Kevin: The thing is, the podcast industry has sort of been on a quest to not only standardize, but also like they they've wanted the numbers to be as accurate as possible.
• 46:59
  Kevin: And I think that's at odds mostly with what the platforms want.
• 47:03
  Kevin: If you notice, most of the times when the platforms make a change, it's to make the numbers bigger.
• 47:07
  Kevin: And that's what we talked about at the beginning of this episode.
• 47:10
  Kevin: Anytime you do anything to make the numbers, like I'm doing air quotes here, more accurate, the numbers are going to go down.
• 47:16
  Kevin: And that's usually not what the platforms want.
• 47:20
  Kevin: Again, they are, you know, presenting as a podcast hosting platform or a video distribution platform or something, but really what they are at the end of the day are ad agencies and they sell ads.
• 47:30
  Kevin: And so they need those numbers to be as high as possible.
• 47:32
  Kevin: So when the podcast industry comes in and says, yeah, but that's not accurate.
• 47:36
  Kevin: They're like, what are you talking about?
• 47:38
  Kevin: Like, why?
• 47:39
  Kevin: Accuracy.
• 47:40
  Kevin: We don't like you're talking crazy talk.
• 47:42
  Kevin: That makes no sense to us.
• 47:43
  Kevin: But that's not what you want.
• 47:45
  Kevin: Accuracy lowers the numbers.
• 47:47
  Kevin: Um, bot detection lowers the numbers.
• 47:49
  Kevin: Engaged views lowers the numbers.
• 47:51
  Kevin: I know as a creator, you're like, don't give me false numbers.
• 47:55
  Kevin: Give me real numbers.
• 47:56
  Kevin: Real numbers are smaller, they're always smaller.
• 47:58
  Kevin: And the more accurate we make them, the more they're going to go down.
• 48:00
  Kevin: This exists everywhere.
• 48:01
  Kevin: What's the distribution of your magazine?
• 48:04
  Kevin: I don't know.
• 48:05
  Kevin: Like, how many people get the magazine?
• 48:06
  Kevin: How many people read the magazine?
• 48:07
  Kevin: How many people saw my ad on page 37 of your magazine?
• 48:09
  Kevin: That's a really hard number to give.
• 48:11
  Kevin: Oh, well, we sell magazines to doctors' offices.
• 48:13
  Kevin: So that's not just one subscription.
• 48:14
  Kevin: There's 300 people that come in the office and read that magazine every month.
• 48:17
  Kevin: So that's that one subscription is really 300 subscriptions.
• 48:19
  Kevin: Okay, like how do we track that?
• 48:21
  Kevin: Uh my TV in my house comes on for about six hours a week now because it's football season.
• 48:26
  Kevin: It comes on for three hours on Saturday when the Gators play, and it comes for three hours on Sunday when the Jaguars play.
• 48:30
  Kevin: But you know what?
• 48:31
  Kevin: I don't watch any of those games.
• 48:32
  Kevin: I kind of listen to them as I'm roaming around the house doing other stuff.
• 48:36
  Kevin: I'm somewhat interested, but I'm not an engaged viewer.
• 48:38
  Kevin: Okay, well, how do we fix that problem?
• 48:40
  Kevin: Let's turn the camera on on the TV and make sure the eyeballs are pointing at it and how many eyeballs are on there?
• 48:44
  Kevin: And let's let's count the eyeballs.
• 48:45
  Kevin: And let's say, well, that's very privacy invasive.
• 48:47
  Kevin: Are you sure we want to do that?
• 48:48
  Kevin: Well, yeah, maybe some TVs are doing that.
• 48:50
  Kevin: Some TVs are like, again, if you start getting accurate, the numbers are going to go down because I'm not an engaged viewer of that game.
• 48:57
  Kevin: You know, I'm standing in the kitchen talking to my wife while the Jaguars are playing.
• 49:01
  Kevin: So it's a mess.
• 49:03
  Kevin: And it will always be a mess.
• 49:04
  Kevin: And there'll always be competing interests.
• 49:06
  Kevin: So I don't know where that leaves podcasters, other than we are trying to solve these problems in the best way inside of BuzzBrout.
• 49:13
  Kevin: We're trying to make the number simple and easy to understand.
• 49:15
  Kevin: And I think the more questions you ask, the more confused you're going to get.
• 49:18
  Kevin: But it's the best one that we can give you is that this is hard work.
• 49:23
  Kevin: And we're trying our best to simplify it for you and give you numbers that you can just say, like, as long as I check this number and I'm measuring against this number, at least I know it's consistent.
• 49:31
  Kevin: And if we change that number radically, we would communicate it to you.
• 49:33
  Kevin: And we're trying our best to pull numbers from different platforms and bring them into one simple UI that you can sort of look at.
• 49:39
  Kevin: Now, if you're a big podcaster and you're doing 20, 30, 40, 50,000 downloads an episode, maybe you need a system that's a little bit more sophisticated than what Buzzsprout offers you.
• 49:49
  Kevin: And we'd be happy to help you find that more sophisticated system.
• 49:52
  Kevin: But that's not who BuzzSpread is.
• 49:54
  Kevin: We are not enterprise podcast hosting.
• 49:56
  Kevin: We are not Spotify.
• 49:56
  Kevin: We are not signing up exclusive podcasts.
• 49:58
  Kevin: We're not doing multimillion dollar deals, and we're definitely not an ad agency.
• 50:02
  Kevin: But what we are is a really good solution for people who are passionate about podcasting, who love podcasting, who want to connect with their audience, who want to reach as many people as possible.
• 50:10
  Kevin: But the reality is that it's probably never going to be 50,000 people per episode.
• 50:14
  Kevin: And there's a lot of people in that space.
• 50:16
  Kevin: And I don't want those people to get overwhelmed with numbers or feel like I'm not successful because I don't have a million followers here or there or somewhere else, or I'm not getting enough views.
• 50:26
  Alban: At the end of the day, it's coming back to people.
• 50:28
  Alban: And these are all something between you and the people.
• 50:31
  Alban: And it's only going to get worse with more AI agents downloading podcasts and all this junk that's going to happen.
• 50:37
  Alban: But at the end of the day, like, are you connecting to real people and are they writing you messages?
• 50:42
  Alban: If you go to an event, do they show up?
• 50:45
  Alban: And that's what we're trying to build.
• 50:47
  Alban: And that's what we want to get closer and closer to.
• 50:49
  Alban: And the stats are all just a representation of the people who are engaging with the thing that you want to share with the world.
• 50:57
  Alban: But the stats are not people.
• 50:59
  Alban: The stats are interpretations of people's attention.
• 51:02
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 51:02
  Kevin: I want you to enjoy podcasting.
• 51:04
  Kevin: I want you to have fun doing it.
• 51:05
  Kevin: I want you to reach your people.
• 51:06
  Kevin: And whether that's 10 people or it's 10,000 people, we're a great place for you.
• 51:10
  Kevin: And don't get wrapped up in the numbers.
• 51:12
  Kevin: Connect with your audience and find your purpose and passion in the people that you can influence and you can connect with.
• 51:18
  Kevin: Find local sponsors.
• 51:19
  Kevin: Do your own deals, support your own hobby your way.
• 51:22
  Kevin: And don't worry too much about all the noise in the industry and what's a download and what's a this and what's a that and what's happening in pod news and what's megaphone doing and what's Spotify doing and what's YouTube doing.
• 51:34
  Kevin: You know, let's just have fun, right?
• 51:37
  Kevin: Let's just enjoy it.
• 51:38
  Kevin: Um maybe that's too simple.
• 51:40
  Kevin: Maybe it's not.
• 51:41
  Kevin: I don't know.
• 51:45
  Kevin: Keep podcasting.
• 51:51
  Jordan: All right.
• 51:51
  Jordan: So let's get into some Fan Mail.
• 51:53
  Jordan: First up, we have a message from Brian from Brian's Run Pod.
• 51:56
  Jordan: And first he says, I just want to add my take on getting guests on your podcasts.
• 52:01
  Jordan: I know Podmatch are a sponsor and they are a good good source.
• 52:05
  Jordan: Podmatch is not a sponsor, are they?
• 52:08
  Kevin: They do run ads on BudSpread ads, and once in a while they get accepted into this podcast.
• 52:11
  Kevin: So technically, they are a sponsor.
• 52:14
  Kevin: But don't worry, they pay us very little.
• 52:15
  Kevin: So we would we wouldn't be influenced by how much we're getting paid for those ads.
• 52:22
  Jordan: Brian says, however, I have found success on Instagram and also Facebook.
• 52:26
  Jordan: Also, I've used ChatGPT for suggestions on topics to cover and who to contact.
• 52:31
  Jordan: Yes, that's very smart.
• 52:32
  Jordan: Great use of uh AI.
• 52:35
  Kevin: I will tell you whether Podmatch was a sponsor or not.
• 52:37
  Kevin: I love the team at Podmatch.
• 52:39
  Kevin: I love the solution.
• 52:40
  Kevin: And I think uh Alban has said this.
• 52:42
  Kevin: Um I'm gonna steal it as mine right now.
• 52:44
  Kevin: But like uh spaces like this, there will be most in most situations like this, there's gonna be one winner.
• 52:50
  Kevin: It's a two-sided marketplace, it's a very hard thing to build.
• 52:52
  Kevin: And in podcasting, PodMatch, at least right now, and I think is they keep executing at a high level, so I don't see it changing.
• 52:58
  Kevin: They are the winner.
• 53:00
  Kevin: They have the best podcast, they have the best guests, they've got the best software, and I think they have the best team as well.
• 53:05
  Kevin: So, sponsor or not, I love Podmatch.
• 53:07
  Kevin: But you're right, that's not the only solution in town.
• 53:10
  Kevin: You can definitely do uh find find things other ways.
• 53:13
  Kevin: I think what they are is sort of a compliment to Buzzsprout.
• 53:16
  Kevin: And like you could host the podcast yourself, you could create your own RSS feed yourself.
• 53:19
  Kevin: We're aspirin.
• 53:20
  Kevin: We're we we we take away that headache.
• 53:22
  Kevin: And I think podmatch also is aspirin, takes away the headache of you having to do all this stuff manually.
• 53:26
  Kevin: They just make it easy for you.
• 53:27
  Alban: But there are people who are on Instagram and Facebook who are not on PodMatch, at least not yet.
• 53:32
  Alban: And especially if you there's people you really want to find in a space, you can search LinkedIn, you can search use ChatGPT.
• 53:40
  Alban: I think those are great to find the person you want.
• 53:43
  Alban: And if they're not on a marketplace, um, for the best guests, you're gonna have to go out and do some legwork.
• 53:48
  Alban: So I a great point from Brian.
• 53:51
  Alban: Yep.
• 53:51
  Jordan: Brian bringing this up has made me think that maybe we need to actually do a sponsorship deal with Podmatch so they can pay us because it sounds like we're pronoting them up.
• 54:03
  Alban: Yep.
• 54:03
  Alban: Uh Brian actually sent in two messages.
• 54:06
  Alban: The other was can I ask if you'll be reviewing the Rodecaster Studio software?
• 54:11
  Alban: I've been using it for the past few weeks and it's definitely helped reduce my production time.
• 54:15
  Alban: I just got accepted into the beta like three days ago, and I sent it over to Jordan.
• 54:21
  Alban: Jordan, have you looked at the Rodecaster Studio software yet?
• 54:24
  Jordan: Not yet, because like we literally just got that, and I was thinking this is so timely, but yes, this is on my list.
• 54:31
  Jordan: And so Brian's saying that it's a huge help.
• 54:34
  Jordan: I'm that makes me very optimistic and it makes me very excited to test it out.
• 54:38
  Jordan: So I think I'm gonna have to do that this week.
• 54:40
  Alban: All right.
• 54:40
  Alban: Well, former formal request from me, Brian, leave us a voicemail with a short review of the Rodcaster Studio software.
• 54:50
  Alban: And if we when we do a segment on it, we'll include yours.
• 54:53
  Alban: But if we haven't done one by next uh episode, we'll include it for anybody else who's accepted into that.
• 54:59
  Alban: I want to know what's good about it.
• 55:01
  Alban: Uh, what do you like?
• 55:02
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 55:03
  Kevin: Did you notice, Jordan, in the um in the Fan Mail message it came in?
• 55:07
  Kevin: It usually tells us the city that they're from.
• 55:08
  Kevin: Do you know where Brian's from?
• 55:10
  Jordan: Brian's in the UK, right?
• 55:12
  Kevin: Oh, all right, not too far away.
• 55:14
  Kevin: We're doing a team meetup in Charleston and we're gonna do a run club in the morning.
• 55:18
  Kevin: And since Brian has a running podcast, I was like, hey, maybe you can come run with us in Charleston.
• 55:22
  Kevin: That was a long shot.
• 55:24
  Kevin: Grab a plane ticket.
• 55:28
  Jordan: In like two weeks, just like hop on.
• 55:31
  Alban: Yeah.
• 55:31
  Alban: All right.
• 55:32
  Alban: Well, speaking of plane tickets, we got a Fan Mail from Fernando, and he said, I'm checking my Virgin Atlantic air miles balance, and it's enough for return flight from London to Florida.
• 55:44
  Alban: So I'm holding on to them to attend the Buzz Brout Podcasting conference.
• 55:48
  Alban: I just need a date, please.
• 55:50
  Alban: Do you notice that it's a return ticket?
• 55:53
  Alban: So that sounds to me like Fernando moved off to London and is about to come back to Florida to stay.
• 55:59
  Alban: He's here forever after this Buzzsprout Podcast conference.
• 56:05
  Jordan: He's moving to Florida for the conference.
• 56:09
  Kevin: We got a Fan Mail message from David from No Stroke Podcast.
• 56:12
  Kevin: Please do more with the Fan Mail audio feature.
• 56:15
  Kevin: I would love to be able to create an audio embed player with Fan Mail with a skin that I can build right inside of Buzzsprout.
• 56:20
  Kevin: Interesting idea.
• 56:22
  Kevin: Hadn't had that thought yet, but we'll definitely file it away and kick it around, see if we can come up with something.
• 56:27
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 56:27
  Alban: Yeah.
• 56:27
  Alban: Um, I mean, Dave did a lot of work.
• 56:29
  Alban: Dave on our team did all this work on the embed players, did a bunch of work on Fan Mail.
• 56:34
  Alban: So that might be one we send from David to Dave as a feature request.
• 56:39
  Jordan: And then finally, we have a message from Fletch from the Mango Times saying, Your episodes earlier this year about starting a second podcast and finding a co-host were all the encouragement I needed.
• 56:50
  Jordan: This week, my daughter Abby and I launched just one more thing: a Columbo rewatch podcast.
• 56:57
  Jordan: Yes, other shows covered the topic, but we're bringing our own father-daughter dynamic, a 30-year age gap and two perspectives on this classic 1970s detective.
• 57:06
  Jordan: Thanks for all the advice.
• 57:07
  Jordan: And in this case, the nudge to make it happen.
• 57:10
  Jordan: I love this so much.
• 57:11
  Jordan: My mom used to watch Columbo when I was a kid, like all the time.
• 57:16
  Jordan: It was like Columbo, Murder Shiro, Poirot.
• 57:19
  Jordan: And I loved it when Columbo would be like walking away in his trench coat and he's like, just one more thing.
• 57:27
  Alban: That's good.
• 57:28
  Alban: We need to find this podcast and link it.
• 57:31
  Jordan: That's super fun.
• 57:32
  Jordan: So if you have a topic that you'd like us to cover in a future episode, go ahead and tap the send us Fan Mail link in the show notes.
• 57:39
  Jordan: And until next time, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.
• 57:47
  Alban: All right.
• 57:48
  Alban: Have either of you followed the golden ticket debacle?
• 57:52
  Alban: No.
• 57:52
  Alban: Yeah.
• 57:53
  Alban: No idea what you're talking about.
• 57:54
  Alban: Okay.
• 57:55
  Alban: I don't know if they're called, I think that's actually called timeless tickets, but get your story straight.
• 58:00
  Alban: In 2015, the Milwaukee Brewers sold 1,000 timeless tickets for $1,000 each.
• 58:07
  Alban: And they raised a million dollars.
• 58:10
  Alban: And what they gave were these like plaques, like a brass ticket.
• 58:14
  Alban: And they said, okay, this is good for any future brewers baseball game.
• 58:21
  Alban: And it could be, I think it even says like in the promos, it could be a Thursday night or it could be game seven of the World Series.
• 58:30
  Alban: Well, the Brewers have not been to the World Series since before I was born.
• 58:35
  Alban: I think it's like early 80s.
• 58:37
  Alban: So when they sold these in 2015, and they're one of the smallest market teams, and they were not doing that great, some thousand true believers bought these tickets and they held on to them.
• 58:51
  Alban: And Kevin might know this.
• 58:53
  Alban: Jordan, you know what has happened with the Milwaukee Brewers in the last few days?
• 58:57
  Jordan: No, but I know what happened with inflation and a thousand dollars.
• 59:03
  Alban: All right.
• 59:03
  Alban: Well, they were promised the best available seats when redeemed, subject to availability, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 59:10
  Alban: 2016, the second time in the row, the Brewers have it looks like a the best team in baseball, and they're this small market team, and they go up against the juggernaut of the Dodgers who uh have just more money than anything, and they sweep the Dodgers in the NLCS to go to the World Series.
• 59:33
  Alban: And so now, for the first time since 1982, the Brewers are in the World Series and they are good, and they are the most fun I have had watching baseball in a long time.
• 59:47
  Alban: And like it is, they're just an awesome team.
• 59:50
  Alban: And they've got guys on the team who one of them he was gonna he'd retired and he decided I'm done, it's not gonna work out.
• 59:58
  Alban: And then his wife found out she was pregnant, and so he goes, You know what?
• 1:00:01
  Alban: We need healthcare.
• 1:00:02
  Alban: He got back into baseball and he's like helping them go all the way to the World Series.
• 1:00:08
  Alban: He's having the best games of his life.
• 1:00:10
  Alban: This team is awesome.
• 1:00:12
  Alban: And now there are a thousand fans, and a lot of them held on to these brass tickets, and they're showing up to redeem them.
• 1:00:20
  Alban: And like the brewers are like Willy Wonka going, we gave out too many of these tickets.
• 1:00:26
  Alban: I don't know what we're gonna do.
• 1:00:28
  Alban: And it is uh crazy because now people are like they're going, they're saying, We bought tickets, we're not getting redeemed, and there's this huge controversy.
• 1:00:39
  Alban: And the brewers are saying, Well, it's actually are the is there availability and there's not availability for a thousand of you to redeem the tickets all at once.
• 1:00:50
  Alban: And so basically they sold these this like premium experience.
• 1:00:56
  Alban: It's once in a lifetime, but they sold a thousand of them.
• 1:01:00
  Alban: And now they're looking to add a thousand uh once in a lifetime experiences to like a baseball stadium that's something like uh 40 it houses like 40,000 people.
• 1:01:12
  Jordan: Oh no.
• 1:01:13
  Alban: Now it'll hopefully be spread out.
• 1:01:16
  Alban: The brewers will be the home team.
• 1:01:19
  Alban: So they may get four games at home, but they may only get two.
• 1:01:23
  Alban: So they're basically gonna have 500 people at each of these games going, I want my premium experience.
• 1:01:29
  Alban: And it's like the baseball version of Fire Festival, basically.
• 1:01:33
  Alban: Like everyone's like, I bought the ticket, I better get that premium experience.
• 1:01:37
  Jordan: Yeah, I want to know who fun.
• 1:01:40
  Jordan: That's a fun problem.
• 1:01:41
  Alban: It is a fun problem.
• 1:01:44
  Jordan: It is not a fun problem.
• 1:01:45
  Jordan: I wonder who like lacks the foresight to see that this is a huge issue.
• 1:01:50
  Jordan: The second you start telling me that like it was like a thousand dollars, you can go to like games in perpetuity.
• 1:01:55
  Jordan: I was like, oh no.
• 1:01:58
  Alban: But it's but it's only one game.
• 1:01:59
  Alban: It's not like they get to go to every game forever.
• 1:02:04
  Jordan: Oh, I thought it was like a past where you could just like had a season pass forever.
• 1:02:08
  Alban: No, you just it's one ticket.
• 1:02:10
  Alban: And so I don't feel like this is a problem for the Brewers, it was only due to complete lack of foresight.
• 1:02:18
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 1:02:18
  Jordan: I mean, it's not as bad as the city.
• 1:02:23
  Alban: They I just don't think like it's such a great story.
• 1:02:26
  Alban: And if I looked I went and looked at the tickets a few days before they went to they got into the world series going, how much would it be to go to one of these games?
• 1:02:35
  Alban: And it was like two grand.
• 1:02:36
  Alban: And I was like, that's for the worst seat to get in, is two grand.
• 1:02:39
  Alban: And as soon as they got in, I went and looked again.
• 1:02:42
  Alban: It was like up to four grand, like it skyrocketed.
• 1:02:45
  Alban: And I feel like the brewers better be buying a lot of these tickets themselves because they need to be able to get these uh timeless tickets in there.
• 1:02:53
  Kevin: I'm trying to read an article on I don't understand.
• 1:02:55
  Kevin: They sold a ticket for a thousand dollars, but it's it's you can go to whatever game you want, but only one game one time.
• 1:03:02
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 1:03:02
  Kevin: These tickets are over ten years old.
• 1:03:04
  Kevin: They sold them over ten years ago, and they still have like roughly a like no one has pretty much used them.
• 1:03:11
  Kevin: They've all saved them.
• 1:03:13
  Alban: The the controversy, Kevin, is one, I don't know how many people these tickets are really out there.
• 1:03:17
  Alban: Some of them have been redeemed, I'm sure.
• 1:03:19
  Alban: Some have been lost.
• 1:03:20
  Alban: Uh, some people may not uh you know want to go, they may not live in Milwaukee, maybe you can't get there.
• 1:03:27
  Alban: But it's supposed to be for best available.
• 1:03:29
  Alban: Well, what is best available?
• 1:03:31
  Alban: Right.
• 1:03:31
  Alban: Best available isn't the worst seat in the stadium if the team has an inventory of $20,000 seats.
• 1:03:39
  Alban: You know, when you watch the game and the Marlins man is sitting right behind home plate every game.
• 1:03:44
  Alban: Right.
• 1:03:44
  Alban: Well, who's selling in that seat?
• 1:03:46
  Alban: The Brewers.
• 1:03:47
  Alban: And they're gonna make a lot of money off selling those seats.
• 1:03:50
  Alban: And now they've got a thousand-ish people, you know, maybe it's 800 lining up going, I'm pretty sure I'm supposed to get that Marlins man seat.
• 1:03:58
  Alban: I don't think I'm you're supposed to be selling that off to somebody else.
• 1:04:01
  Alban: Ariana Grande can go to a different World Series.
• 1:04:05
  Alban: You give me that ticket because I've been in line for 11 years.
• 1:04:09
  Kevin: Okay, so if if I understand the conundrum, we don't know exactly how many of these thousand tickets are still like redeemable.
• 1:04:15
  Kevin: Like maybe let's just say half of them have already been used for random games between in the last 11 years or so.
• 1:04:20
  Kevin: But let's say so 500 of them are still available.
• 1:04:22
  Kevin: So they want now, those people want the 500 most expensive seats, probably for game one or two.
• 1:04:30
  Kevin: Like who's gonna roll the dice that they're gonna go more than because the next two games are in Tampa?
• 1:04:34
  Alban: Right.
• 1:04:34
  Kevin: Like three in Tampa.
• 1:04:36
  Alban: Yeah, the next three will be.
• 1:04:41
  Kevin: Right.
• 1:04:42
  Alban: Did Tampa did Tampa win?
• 1:04:44
  Jordan: Yeah, because they can't deem at another location, right?
• 1:04:47
  Jordan: It has to be at the home game.
• 1:04:50
  Alban: It has to be at the brewer.
• 1:04:51
  Alban: So they'll do two in Milwaukee, three inches.
• 1:04:53
  Alban: Right.
• 1:04:54
  Kevin: So who's gonna roll the dice that we're coming to a game five or coming back to Milwaukee?
• 1:04:57
  Kevin: So it's gonna be game one or two, and it's gonna be the best seats.
• 1:05:00
  Alban: Now here, Kevin, you could roll it over to next year.
• 1:05:03
  Kevin: Do not endeavor.
• 1:05:04
  Kevin: I you would have to go this year.
• 1:05:06
  Alban: You have to go to game one or two.
• 1:05:08
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 1:05:09
  Kevin: And I think, I think just go to game one because why not?
• 1:05:12
  Kevin: Like that's the energy is gonna be off the charts.
• 1:05:15
  Kevin: So, like the let's say the 500 most expensive seats that they can sell for game one, they don't get to sell now.
• 1:05:20
  Alban: And it's gonna be the 500 most diehard fans.
• 1:05:24
  Alban: Like, do you know how intense of a fan you have to be to buy a thousand dollar ticket for your hold on to it for 11 years and hold on to it for 11 years going, I believe.
• 1:05:35
  Alban: You believe more than people signing long-term deals for the with the Brewers.
• 1:05:40
  Alban: You believed more than Braun did when he signed his deal.
• 1:05:43
  Alban: Like you're in line and you're ready to get in.
• 1:05:45
  Alban: They're going, so we've got some really good seats up in the nosebleeds.
• 1:05:48
  Kevin: You know how they make their money back, though.
• 1:05:50
  Kevin: They should just blow this up into a huge story.
• 1:05:51
  Kevin: They need to put a bunch of cameras, like, put all the people in a section, like right behind home plate, the most expensive seats, put cameras on them, interview them during the game, like make it into a huge thing.
• 1:06:00
  Kevin: Just I don't know, draw a huge fan base that just watches the game just because these 500 people are going to be there, or a bunch of them are gonna be there.
• 1:06:08
  Alban: Oh, I like that idea.
• 1:06:09
  Kevin: How fun.
• 1:06:09
  Kevin: I would love to be there.
• 1:06:11
  Jordan: Can you imagine being one of the fans that like got rid of, or maybe they're like a family member or something got rid of the brass ticket?
• 1:06:19
  Jordan: Because it doesn't look that fancy.
• 1:06:20
  Jordan: Like it literally looks like a plaque that you would get at like a bar.
• 1:06:24
  Jordan: And can you imagine?
• 1:06:26
  Jordan: It reminds me of um that one guy that had like bought Bitcoin on a USB and he's been like this.
• 1:06:32
  Kevin: This would be my life.
• 1:06:33
  Kevin: I would have bought one like for the for the Rays or something, and I'd be like, hey, you know, Keno, my wife, I'd be like, where's that thing?
• 1:06:41
  Kevin: And she's like, You've been looking that thing for years.
• 1:06:42
  Kevin: I threw that out years ago.
• 1:06:43
  Kevin: I'd be like, Where the what don't you do?
• 1:06:46
  Kevin: Go find it.
• 1:06:47
  Kevin: I'm digging through the landfill for sure.