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Transcript

What's New For Apple Podcasts Subscriptions · Buzzcast

• 0:00
  Kevin: Well, I feel like as part of me stepping in along with Alban to help make Twitter a better place is that people get to go out and make all these predictions of what's going to happen on Twitter and then when you're right they proudly bring these tweets back into the present and show you look and I predicted this three years ago, but rarely do you see people on Twitter who go out and said look, I said this three years ago and I was completely wrong.
• 0:18
  Kevin: So let's make Twitter a better place Alban. Let's go ahead and do a follow up on that tweet
• 0:23
  Alban: will change your opinion if I actually retweeted my prediction and said that it was dead wrong at some point?
• 0:29
  Kevin: Yeah, I think it will. I don't think it would change me I think I would say that you are doing your part to make Twitter a better place you and Elon are like, you know your locked arm and arm. I call it Alban Elon all the time. Because here we go. Almost identical,
• 0:45
  Jordan: just really socially awkward.
• 0:54
  Alban: So Kevin, do you ever read any of our Trustpilot ratings and reviews? No. Okay, well, I get emails, but I was never checked them. And I checked one. And here is the review. From feeling your vote.
• 1:05
  Alban: Love the podcast hosts their training and podcasts and the quick technical support available. I'd love to hear more of Jordan on Buzzcast. So I went in there referring to Jordan Blair, who was on a few episodes ago, and I went through and I started searching. How many references are there to Kevin?
• 1:23
  Alban: Oh,
• 1:27
  Kevin: probably lots.
• 1:29
  Alban: There is exactly zero. Do you know how many references there are to Alban?
• 1:33
  Kevin: I would have guessed zero or higher. So
• 1:36
  Alban: you definitely, you probably would, zero and zero for both of us. So so far, Priscilla from support, there's dozens. So there's something we're actively doing, then people are like, I don't want to write in about Alvin and Kevin, so we need to get Jordan back on the podcast.
• 1:55
  Jordan: I'm back.
• 1:56
  Kevin: S he. Yeah, she's already there. What's what's funny about this whole thing is that Jordan gave us feedback on the episode, the last episode that we did two weeks ago. And one of the feedback I've been, she says, I really don't like it when you guys read reviews on the show.
• 2:09
  Kevin: So what do you think about it now, Jordan? Now the reviews are like singing your praises. Do you still think we shouldn't read them?
• 2:18
  Jordan: I still think it's tacky.
• 2:20
  Kevin: It's tacky. Well, that then affirms our decision.
• 2:23
  Kevin: You're the right person to have on the show.
• 2:25
  Alban: Well, thanks for the review. And we liked your idea so much, we decided to bring Jordan back in Jordan is actually joining the Buzzsprout team. So Jordan, welcome back to the pod.
• 2:36
  Jordan: Super happy to be here.
• 2:36
  Jordan: This is kind of a funny story.
• 2:39
  Jordan: Like I Alban, I told you this the other day, Kevin, I don't think I ever told you this. So the only reason that I know how to podcast is because of Buzzsprout and Buzzcast. Oh, really, it is the only reason like less than three years ago, I decided, like make my own podcast. I didn't know anything.
• 3:00
  Jordan: I didn't know the difference between like a condenser or dynamic microphone like anything like that. And I literally went to Apple podcasts I typed in how to start a podcast. So of course, I found the how to start a podcast, podcast by Buzzsprout. And I was like, these guys are awesome. And so I went and looked if you had more podcasts, and I found Buzzcast and became like, a super fan, and then got to guest on it. And yeah, it's really cool. Because you guys have been like, training me for this without even knowing it.
• 3:31
  Kevin: That's, yeah, that's wild.
• 3:33
  Alban: I love that we did that show. I mean, that was like a two week project and 2018. And we recently archived all of those and redid the whole series, but I think that it was a that was just such a cool experience. We did it really quickly. We put it out there.
• 3:47
  Alban: And hundreds of 1000s of downloads later, it was still growing, and I was still getting lots of lessons.
• 3:53
  Jordan: Yeah, it's a it's a great series. And I can testify that.
• 3:56
  Alban: Well. It's been redone.
• 3:56
  Alban: So if anybody is interested and wants to go learn how to start a podcast, I don't know how you would have found this here first, but we could link to that in the show notes.
• 4:05
  Kevin: Yeah, I love the story. A lot of people ask in the Facebook group, and we see people at podcast conferences they asked all the time, can podcasting be a career? Like how can I make money off my podcasts? How can I turn it into a career? And so this is I mean, not the traditional probably answer that people are looking for. But this is certainly a way this is Jordan's way that she turned podcasting, her love of podcasting into a career choice.
• 4:26
  Kevin: So you can absolutely find ways to monetize your podcast but you can also find ways to get into the podcasting industry more if you're injured. If you just love podcasting, and Jordan, your podcast isn't even about podcasting. You do Dreamful bedtime stories, which is a completely separate you're not teaching anybody to podcast you're teaching people how to fall asleep to a wonderful story. And that tell me if I'm wrong, but I mean, that started off as like something for children but now your audience has grown. The even a lot of adults are enjoying it. It's helping them fall asleep as well, right?
• 4:56
  Jordan: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
• 4:56
  Jordan: You know, I just from all the podcasts vlogs and stuff about like niched down niche down niche down. I was like, Okay, I'm gonna niche down and like the podcast is just for children between the ages of like five and nine. But that's not really what happened, which was unexpected. And it kind of taught me that podcasting is very fluid. There's no one size fits all, there's no advice that's going to apply to everybody. And so, yeah, for me, like inadvertently turned into something for all ages, and I have subscribers that are in their 60s and 70s. And I also have subscribers that are kids that use allowance money, so you never know.
• 5:35
  Alban: That's awesome. When did you start Dreamful?
• 5:38
  Jordan: I started Dreamful in August of 2019, I think is when I dropped my trailer.
• 5:42
  Alban: And so we're not even at three years since you started.
• 5:47
  Jordan: Yeah. And I didn't learn how to podcast until about a month or two before I dropped the first trailer.
• 5:53
  Alban: That's really cool. Can you get for people who don't know, like, how big is truthful?
• 5:56
  Alban: Truthful is really big now.
• 6:00
  Jordan: Yeah, I mean, it's pretty big. Like I've turned it into a business and, you know, an episode can get anywhere from 20 to 100,000 downloads.
• 6:09
  Kevin: Yeah, and you do merchandise T, don't
• 6:11
  Jordan: you? You know, I tried doing merchandise. And then I decided that was not for me at this point.
• 6:18
  Kevin: Like, you didn't have fun creating the merchandise or you tried a few things. And it didn't sell. Oh,
• 6:22
  Jordan: I did, but no one bought it.
• 6:26
  Alban: So now you just have like, dozens of T shirts at your house.
• 6:29
  Jordan: So I tried it first on the print on demand. So I do not have inventory hanging around my house. Thank goodness.
• 6:37
  Kevin: Right? I wonder what numbers have to look like before merchandise starts working?
• 6:41
  Jordan: You know, I don't think that it has to be 1000s I really don't I know podcasters in our Facebook community that have less than 100 downloads per episode and like the first 30 days and they sell merch.
• 6:54
  Kevin: Yeah, I wonder what the audience looks like for podcasts merchandise like that. That demographic, that profile is hard for me to get into them.
• 7:01
  Kevin: That same mindset. Like I listened to a lot of podcasts that sell T shirts. ATP is probably the biggest one they do t shirt runs, like once or twice a year. Anytime Apple does a big announcement they'll do some new ATP shirt that kind of focuses around the new Mac or the new laptop with an iPhone or something. Usually it works ATP logo and I've never been tempted to buy one of those shirts. I've been you listen that show to you ever been tempted to buy shirt?
• 7:25
  Alban: No, they always talk about it as like, we know you're gonna like miss out and then you're gonna ask to buy it. And I was like, I'm confident that problem is not gonna happen.
• 7:34
  Alban: Yeah, and not nothing. It gets the show because like, I will support the show financially.
• 7:37
  Alban: And I like it. I just don't think there's many things besides maybe sports teams that I'm like, I really want to walk around and broadcast to people.
• 7:48
  Alban: This is something I really, really enjoy. Even my favorite podcasts. I don't really want merch for them. But that's just maybe like a more of a personal opinion. Yeah,
• 7:57
  Jordan: I kind of nerd out on podcasts. And there's so many podcasts that I do want the shirts and think about buying a shirt and I don't which is really stupid. But have you bought any of it? I haven't. No.
• 8:07
  Jordan: But that's the that's not against them. It's because I am a tightwad. So it's, I don't spend money.
• 8:17
  Kevin: Podcasts are just too expensive.
• 8:19
  Alban: Maybe YouTube is a little bit more built in because there's a lot of visual elements. And so you're watching people on video. So they're like, again, if you like the shirt I'm wearing like right down below, you can buy it through our integration with Teespring or something. But I've heard like merch sales for the really big channels like that's a big source of their income. So I wonder if there's a way that we could try to figure out for podcasts in particular, you know, what kind of items could you sell as a podcaster that could do as well, because people are really just listening to you. So there's not as much of a visual like constant reminder, like, Man, that's a cool shirt.
• 8:54
  Alban: I would definitely wear that shirt. Or you might be able to get that on YouTube.
• 8:58
  Kevin: Yeah, I like MKBHD merch is great. Yeah, so I was thinking of two they have awesome designs, but I feel like I'm setting myself up for like disappointment if I order one because I buy a t shirt because I like the quality of the t shirt. He's got a pretty cool designs on them. Like they're fine. I would totally wear the shirts, but I feel like I'm gonna get it and it's not gonna fit right or feel right, or it's gonna be like a halter top, or it's gonna be way too long. And so, I don't know, podcast merch, and me. We haven't found our match yet, but maybe I just need to order some stuff and see this podcast merch, something that podcasters we should start talking more about and we should push into
• 9:33
  Jordan: I think that they have better quality shirts, because it's a bigger podcast where they're ordering things in bulk.
• 9:40
  Jordan: And they have several sizes.
• 9:40
  Jordan: They do the whole printing and shipping from their home. But I think it's like the print on demand them a little leery of
• 9:51
  Kevin: Yeah, I agree totally.
• 9:51
  Kevin: When we do t shirt runs to bring to conferences, we make sure it's a good quality t shirt and we print tons the sizes and the logos and stuff don't wash off after 10 Washington But that's hard to do when you're doing print on demand, and you don't want to deal with inventory and then also the markups not great.
• 10:04
  Kevin: So if you're selling a t shirt for 20 $25, you get you know what, $4 of it or something like that. Well,
• 10:10
  Jordan: and I bought a Buzzsprout shirt. From what company do you go through and Bureau hot mural? And it's like, honestly, one of my favorite shirts, because it's so soft. I love it. I wear all the time.
• 10:23
  Kevin: And has whatever logo you got on it. Is it been holding up? Yeah.
• 10:27
  Jordan: Oh, so I have bought a podcast merch I bought.
• 10:33
  Alban: There you go. Those are those are actually print on demand. So the ones we take to conferences and giveaway or print where we buy like 1000 at a time and we print them.
• 10:42
  Alban: Kevin's point like I've seen that happen where people have been at a conference, they've got a Buzzsprout shirt, I can see that the logo has started to peel a little bit or I have one actually that I printed and it started to peel. So there's definitely a difference, especially when you start getting to small print. It's like very tight and detailed. Or lots of colors. Those seem to flake off much more easily.
• 11:06
  Alban: Where if you're getting what are the other ones are screen printed, right, Kevin? Yes. I think there's screen print that those are, you know, stick around forever, you know, hundreds of washes, doesn't matter how detailed it is they stick around. So might be something to think about if people are considering doing shirt runs cotton Bureau has a way that you can get a lot of people to say I will buy the shirt and then once they get enough orders, then they run everybody's shirt order at the same time. So that you get a higher quality screen print rather than print on demand.
• 11:36
  Kevin: Yep, I just dropped the link to our cotton Bureau store in the notes. So Jordan can include it in the show notes of this podcast, I think everyone should go out and buy a copy or shirt for Buzzsprout and report back on the quality. And if you'd like to t shirt, the quality is really good. Yeah, we do not mark them up at all. Like just so everyone knows copiers, prices are probably a little bit high. And you can set your store up so that there's a markup on it. So you can make a little bit of money, which I'd probably recommend you doing. But since we just do them just to let people know about Buzzsprout.
• 12:02
  Kevin: That's not how we make our money, we've got to another way to make money, which is selling podcast hosting. So no markup on the Buzzsprout T shirts, check them out, see if you like him.
• 12:10
  Kevin: And let us know.
• 12:16
  Jordan: The last time I think it was last time that I was on. I had talked about having to premium content platforms already Patreon and Apple podcasts. But I needed a way to get to my Spotify base. And so I signed up for Super Cast, and I use their Spotify integration.
• 12:35
  Alban: How's it going?
• 12:37
  Jordan: Not great album. It's a little wonky. What I was hoping for, I guess I was kind of like setting myself up for failure with my expectations. But my expectation of this whole Spotify integration thing was that it was going to be similar to Apple podcasts where your bonus premium content is seamlessly put in with your regular episodes. That is not what it is at all. And so what ended up happening is when you set up the integration, you actually set up a completely separate podcast. So now I have Dreamful bedtime stories. And then I have Dreamful premium. So now I have to tell people to go find the separate podcast, then when they do find that podcast, they get redirected to supercast to sign up. But the problem is, is that I'm now getting emails from listeners that the integration isn't so seamless.
• 13:38
  Jordan: And so what they're doing is they're clicking the button on Spotify, being redirected to my supercast signing up and paying for a subscription. But the episodes aren't populating into Spotify still. So of course, I've heard it when the listener emails to supercast support. And they tell me, Oh, this happens all the time. They just signed up with a Spotify account.
• 14:02
  Jordan: That's not the Spotify account that they're using on their app.
• 14:05
  Jordan: And so I go back to the listener and I tell them that and she goes, what No, I only have one login, like I don't have another Spotify login. So I think she eventually got it figured out.
• 14:19
  Jordan: But honestly, it took like, a couple of weeks. And I've gotten some exit surveys from supercast of listeners saying this is not working like it's too difficult.
• 14:30
  Jordan: I don't want it and so they cancel their subscription. So it hasn't been too great. But yeah, it was it's a little wonky. So I'm hoping that kind of gets worked out.
• 14:40
  Alban: This is when like if you're going to do stuff with a freemium model, or with like, there's a paid content upgrade.
• 14:47
  Alban: You want it to be as seamless as possible. Like you finish all the episodes. You've listened to all the bedtime stories and you're like I really don't want to listen to like same one again. Oh, this is something new. Oh, I You can see that there's episodes in the feed right there. And it says, upgrade to listen. And then I upgrade in the app. And it already knows all my credit card info, and boom, it's done immediately. And I can listen.
• 15:12
  Alban: And that's the experience with our podcast subscriptions, because it's all managed through Apple, and it's right there. So it makes it super easy. And they have it that premium stuff is we've done with the free episodes. And it's cool to have it with an outside platform that everybody you know, you could, you know, hopefully someday there'll be like six or seven people who are integrating with Spotify is paid subscriptions.
• 15:36
  Alban: But the downside definitely is, if it's so much work, and there's, you know, constant bugs, like then somebody is going to be supporting that and trying to unweave that mess. And it's not like you're gonna have six chances to get it right. And hopefully, people will upgrade and then they'll finally be happy. The sixth time. Most people are upgrading because they're looking for something right now. And if they aren't quickly able to get a resolution, then they'll think, Wow, this was, you know, just rip off or I lost $5
• 16:06
  Jordan: Yeah, and I'm not necessarily saying that it's super CAS problem, either, because I don't know, I mean, it very well could be Spotify, which wouldn't surprise me. But yeah, that's that's kind of the whole problem is that it's just not seamless. It's, it's a little clunky. And then the extra bonus content is not being put directly in the face of my listeners.
• 16:29
  Alban: The other way to do it is what I've done with other shows that you subscribe to the shows premium feed through Super Cast, and totally outside of the podcast app. And then they give you this unique URL, and you add that RSS feed that nobody else should be downloaded. And you know, they can look and see, okay, a bunch of the same, the same feeds being downloaded a ton of time somebody shared their, their URL. Instead, they just say only you use it, hook it up to the one podcast app that you listen to. And it works perfectly as if it was a free feed, there isn't any way to, you know, it's less secure. But it is a really simple setup once it's been done the very first time. So I've done that. And I know some of them are Super Cast feeds, and they work perfectly well. So seems like it's got to be that connection from I'm in Spotify, I want to upgrade and get more content, and then to go out and to set that up. If they can make that more seamless than it could be a pretty sweet solution and long term.
• 17:34
  Kevin: So speaking of subscriptions, it seems like subscriptions with Apple podcast seem to be working well, because they're continuing to invest in it. And they have added a new feature where you can now sell a yearly subscription to your podcast. So guess before it was just monthly, you would pay a monthly fee when you subscribe, now you have the option to add a yearly fee. And so presumably this would be a better deal.
• 17:54
  Kevin: Like you would say in the example that they give you save 16% by subscribing for a year.
• 17:56
  Kevin: So 499 a month or 4999 for a year could be a good thing. I don't know how they're gonna handle refunds or something or somebody who wants to cancel earlier, I guess the term say, if you buy a year like you got the discount, so you can't cancel early. But that works for a lot of like a lot of SaaS companies that charge monthly fees, they go ahead and get sell an annual fee, get more money up front, entice people with a discount people like discounts.
• 18:20
  Kevin: What do you guys think?
• 18:22
  Jordan: I offer an annual subscription plan for Patreon.
• 18:25
  Jordan: And with that, I do this 16% of which is two months free. And I have actually had somebody that jumped from Patreon to another subscription platform, and I was able to reimburse them for the remainder of the year. So hopefully, it's something like that, where you know, if they subscribe for six months or something like that, and then they decide, You know what, maybe it's not for me, or maybe I'm gonna jump to something else, you can reimburse them for the rest of the year. Hopefully, that's the way it works. Because I think that's fair.
• 18:55
  Kevin: Right? I guess the double edged sword here is that when you do subscriptions to Apple, they take control of the administrative burden of all that over for you, right. So if you had a subscriber who subscribed for a year, and then they get two or three months in, and they said, You know what, I'm not listening this podcast anymore. So I want to see if I can get my money back, they're gonna be working with Apple, at least primarily, right? That's probably their first step, when they go to cancel. At some point they might reach out to you, if they don't get satisfaction from Apple. I don't know what type of controls you have then to step in and say I'd really like to do right by this customer, give them a refund. I don't know anything about that. This is all brand new. But it's interesting.
• 19:28
  Kevin: Apple offers a lot of benefits.
• 19:28
  Kevin: Like we hear this from app developers all the time that people who sell to the app store, they have to pay 30%.
• 19:34
  Kevin: That's apples cut for selling your app in the App Store. But they also start becoming the intermediary between disputes.
• 19:40
  Kevin: So somebody's not satisfied with the app or they have a problem and the developer wants to work with their customer directly, but it's not easy to do that because apples in the middle.
• 19:50
  Jordan: Well an apple also doesn't let you see who is subscribing to your podcast. I think that's exactly it is that would probably just go straight through Apple because unless somebody knew what your podcast email was, they probably wouldn't even be able to reach out to you to let you know.
• 20:05
  Alban: Yeah, it's I mean, it's the reason why I'm Buzzsprout.
• 20:08
  Alban: We haven't done yearly plans.
• 20:08
  Alban: lease is one of the reasons that it's cool for us to see, hey, somebody just signed up for a year, we got all that money up front. And maybe we gave a discount to incentivize people to do that. But there's some percentage of people who will say, I know, I signed up for a year or three months, and it's very clear, this is not going to provide any more value for me, I'm not podcasting anymore. I'm not listening to this show anymore. I'm not doing whatever the thing is, and you want to be able to help them out. And so if you do have someone intermediating, that relationship, well, now looks like you're probably not going to be able to do those refunds.
• 20:44
  Alban: And we'll just kind of be, you know, tough luck, you get the podcast for the full year. I know, I've done that with some apple subscriptions, where I'm like, Oh, I didn't mean to really sign up for a year. And I kind of wish I hadn't, but I'm just gonna stick with it rather than trying to get all that refunded.
• 21:00
  Jordan: Yeah, Apple podcast subscriptions I know, like in the App Store are kind of hard to cancel and stuff, it's hard to find them to even cancel. So I can see that being a little bit of a headache for an audience member.
• 21:11
  Kevin: Right. It's the pros and cons like what you were just describing, they have a really elegant subscription solution, right, where they take your bonus episodes and your premium episodes, and they intermix them with all of your free content.
• 21:22
  Kevin: And they make it very easy for somebody who wants access to that additional content to just one click subscribe, they already have payment information like this is all a very elegant, wonderful solution. And it probably the end result is that it's resulting in more subscribers through their platform, because it's so easy.
• 21:36
  Kevin: And it's all works exactly like Apple tries to design all their products that it just works. And it's the kind of as you would expect. The downside, of course, is that you as a creator, you as a business owner, you lose control. If you don't know your customers, you don't have the ability to interact with them one on one and work out unique situations, any small issue that comes up, there's no like, well, we'll deal with that on the individual one on one basis.
• 22:00
  Kevin: That doesn't apply. When you're working in Apple's ecosystem, it follows their rules, their standard operating procedure. So can somebody get a refund? I don't know. It just depends on what they negotiate with Apple.
• 22:09
  Kevin: But the problem is, is that you as the creator, the person who's creating the product for your audience, you don't have any say in it. And so pros and cons, I guess you have to decide if that's okay, I know a lot of app developers have pushed back against it. And it's resulted in lawsuits and everything else.
• 22:25
  Kevin: But it hasn't always just been about the percentage of apples taking more so than at least the more compelling argument seems to be about the relationship between the provider and the customer. And being able to have a relationship and knowing your customers.
• 22:40
  Jordan: So Apple also announced this week that they have new listening reports for subscriptions. Finally, so what has happened since they've implemented that Apple podcast subscriptions is you cannot view the analytics reports until Apple gets to it, which is usually like, you can only view the previous month at the first part of the next month. That's like the first like week ish of the next month is when those analytics will pop up, which is kind of funny that they have you know, like all these analytics, like listener engagement, and it's hard to see what the conversion rate is of engage listeners to actual subscribers.
• 23:19
  Jordan: So they implemented a new listening report. Basically, they're saying that the next day, you can see how many subscribers you have. Because it used to be that you'd have to wait until the next month to even figure out okay, how many subscribers do I have last month. So it'll be a lot easier to just kind of like gauge where your podcast is at with the paying subscribers, which is interesting that it took them this long to put that in, because it seems like the paying listeners are probably the most important listeners that you want to watch. You know what I mean? Like that's, that's the number you really want to watch.
• 23:56
  Jordan: So it's funny that they just now implemented that, like, what a year or so later.
• 24:01
  Alban: So they were just batching all the stats so that you would be like, okay, March looks great. Can't wait to find out what happened in April, but it's April 27. So it may be another 10 days before I find out really what April's gonna look like, who I actually in April gain two subscribers. I didn't gain more than that.
• 24:18
  Alban: That's a bummer. Like that level of fidelity.
• 24:22
  Jordan: Yeah, I had no idea how many subscribers to my premium content I had until the next month and it'd be like, Oh, I gained six new subscribers and then like the next month, I'd be like, Ooh, I lost eight it's it's one of those things where it's kind of like after the fact and I don't know at what point the people dropped like wasn't upset I put down and they didn't like it or, you know, it's hard to gauge that kind of stuff. If you don't get the metrics until like, way down the road.
• 24:51
  Alban: Might even be a healthier way of doing it though because then you're like focused on the content. We see people who log in like five times a day just to check download numbers. I imagine once you start tying money to it, there's people who are probably like, I want to know right now what's happening Apple, what's happening? How many upgrades how many downgrades, tell me right when that happens. And they're like, all right relax. Like once a month we'll tell you
• 25:16
  Jordan: when we get to it, there's a
• 25:18
  Alban: bit more now it sounds like now we're going to be getting a day after. So
• 25:23
  Kevin: yeah, this is reminiscent to me of I think when Apple launched the app store, it was something similar. I remember we put an app in for another product years ago. And I remember the reporting was a little bit underwhelming, when they first launched the app store, I think it was similar, I think you had to wait at least a couple of weeks, if not a month to be able to get reports on your apps. So whatever system they're using, I mean, it looks like at least UI wise that they're trying to build upon the same systems that they use for App Store development and stuff with whatever they're doing and Apple podcast subscriptions. So I imagine it was the same thing.
• 25:53
  Kevin: But there's a way to start off and have reports batched. And then as more and more people are using it, and they seem to be investing more taking it more seriously, which is a good thing. They're now making it more robust. So it's exciting. I think, again, I don't have any inside information. But I mean, they are a for profit company.
• 26:08
  Kevin: And they seem to generate a lot of profit. And you don't really generate a lot of profit by investing in things that aren't like working for people. And so I imagine Apple podcast subscriptions is working to some extent, like it's working for Dreamful podcasts, we've heard from other people, it's where it's working for them, and they have this elegant solution. So again, it's great if this is a potential opportunity for your podcast to be able to offer additional premium content, whatever that looks like for you. Apple podcasts seems to think I would say more than think like it must be working for them to be continuing to invest in it. So that's a good sign.
• 26:43
  Alban: One thing that's not working is live audio. This time last year, it was everything was about live audio. I think clubhouse had just raised around valued at like $4 billion.
• 26:55
  Alban: Facebook announced that they were going to build everything in live audio, Twitter spaces launched LinkedIn audio, Microsoft Excel was going to do something I'm sure everybody was doing chat rooms. And a year in.
• 27:06
  Alban: It just feels like the live audio party has finally started to die. So there was a really good article in the LA Times by Ashley Carmen, who works at Bloomberg used to work at the verge, great reporter who does a lot of stories about podcasting, about Facebook pulling back from its foray into podcasting.
• 27:33
  Jordan: Yeah, they were definitely trying to get in on that. It did seem like an arms race last year. I mean, it was just all this stuff was just dropping back to back to back.
• 27:42
  Jordan: And yeah, now it's it's kind of tuckered out and it's starting to feel like it's on life support.
• 27:48
  Alban: Everyone, all they wanted to ask was, is clubhouse going to kill podcasting. And luckily, we'd been around podcasting long enough that I remembered when Periscope was going to kill podcasting. And when YouTube was going to kill it, and when mirror count was going to kill it. And there's just been so many iterations of this is this sexy new app that involves audio? Is that going to be the end of podcasting? And I think the answer then I was saying was No. And, you know, it's pretty clear now that the answer will continue to be No, you can get some of these apps to work during a special moment. And when everyone was just at home, you know, from quarantines, I think everyone was realizing like it'd be nice to connect to people and clubhouse was just the perfect app at the perfect moment. And unfortunately, you know, it wasn't as great of an idea that it was going to become its own social network. Data kind of talked about the Facebook one in particular. A year ago, I was super excited about Facebook, I was thinking this is going to be Facebook podcasts, and Facebook chat room, and Facebook, all the different audio apps they were making. It was going to be really big, and it was going to help expose billions, literally billions of people to podcasting. But a year in it hasn't launched anywhere outside the United States. And it's only available on iOS. And even the iOS version is still pretty basic. So if you're on iOS in the US, this articles really like they announced everything.
• 29:15
  Alban: And it doesn't look like Facebook is super pumped to continue pushing into the podcasting space. And, you know, I wouldn't be too surprised if what we have in podcasting for Facebook might end up being maybe the pinnacle like this may be the top of the chart for podcasting on Facebook.
• 29:35
  Jordan: Well it's still a mess, too. I mean, it was so so buggy, when they first dropped it that I was just warning people like don't put your podcast on Facebook, don't do it. Don't do it. And even still in our Facebook community. I still get posts of people asking like what's our Facebook podcast?
• 29:55
  Jordan: It's it's cutting off the last 30 seconds or the first 30 seconds of my Podcast Episode is doing this is doing that an episode they haven't been published yet is showing up on Facebook. And it's just all this crazy stuff. And I having seen that in the group just repeated posts of people saying, What is this crazy thing happening with Facebook podcast? I still haven't submitted my podcast to Facebook and I'm doing it.
• 30:23
  Kevin: Alban, you tweeted something last year about like when Apple podcasts first said that they were going to allow podcasters to submit their podcasts to Facebook and they were going to display them somehow you tweeted something about early, like early signs.
• 30:34
  Kevin: Early stats indicate that this could be pretty big. And you were saying like by September of 21, I project that 10% or 20% of podcast listeners are happening on Facebook. Isn't that true?
• 30:44
  Kevin: Oh, yeah, I
• 30:47
  Alban: Okay, so let's go see if I can find this tweet. I'm sure I know. I said it. And I know it was wrong. All right, you're right, Kevin. So June of 2021.
• 30:53
  Alban: My prediction, this is from me on Twitter. Facebook will be the third largest podcast player by September 2021. People listen to podcasts already will stick with their favorite apps, but Facebook will expose hundreds of millions of new listeners to podcasting over the coming months. I thought at the time, that was a great prediction. If Facebook had decided to launch the thing that they said they were going to launch, I don't think it would have been a terrible prediction. In hindsight, completely terrible prediction. I think now it's somewhere in the 20s.
• 31:31
  Kevin: Yeah, Facebook does that, right? Like they push into a lot of things a little bit. And then I guess, you know, run metrics, or just kind of try to figure out how valuable it is to them in the long run. And once they see it's not super valuable, but it's kind of like the same thing. I was talking about Apple, like it's a good sign that Apple's pushing into Subscriptions more because that must mean it's working. They see a future there. With Facebook, we think we're seeing the exact opposite. Who knows. But what's funny is like, again, us being in the podcast hosting space, like how many podcast hosts, including us, there's a lot of conversations that are happening with Facebook and us. And so I imagine all the other host revenues and conversations just basically at the end of the day, are they wasting our time or what? Because they're not super interested in supporting the space or being a big player in the space?
• 32:15
  Alban: I think that it's more kind of covering your bases that there was a point when Facebook felt like is that a good spot?
• 32:22
  Alban: And then all of a sudden, this thing called Twitter started getting big. And all it was was global Facebook statuses and Facebook was like, What the heck, that's a tiny little thing. Why aren't people using Facebook? No big deal. And then this thing called Instagram launched, like, but that's just the image sharing part of Facebook, what the heck, and then Snapchat, they're like, Okay, that's only disappearing messages. Why? Why are people doing all these other apps, they should just stick with Facebook, this is good. And I think that Facebook learned, okay, what we're going to do is we're going to buy all the apps that we can.
• 32:50
  Alban: And then once the SEC started stopping them from buying things, they said, Fine, we'll copy apps. But if there's anything like crypto that starts really getting big, we're going to make an announcement so that everybody realizes we're interested in this space will start attracting talent. And if it becomes big, then we'll keep pushing into it. But if it doesn't, and it kind of fizzles out, then no worries about it.
• 33:15
  Alban: We'll just kind of put it on the back burner. And you know, who cares? In my defense, Kevin, I made my prediction in June. And when it turned out that it was grossly wrong in September, I tweeted, well, this did not age well. Facebook podcasts is around 20th largest. So it's still lower than Instagram. So I'm happy to make the predictions. I'm also happy to eat my words when the wrong
• 33:38
  Kevin: look good for you. You're making Twitter a better place.
• 33:41
  Kevin: But there's a fundamental difference in a technology that is open. Like podcasting is like the tweets are circulating like crazy about Elon buying Twitter right now. And one of my favorite ones is that Elon was criticizing something on Twitter and somebody responded to him and said, Well, why don't you just buy Twitter then? And he said, How much is it? And then like, you know, two years later, he actually bought it. It's kind of funny. But like, if you don't like something that's going on in podcasting now, or you think you want to control it or own it, like maybe Facebook had this idea a year ago, or like we should just step into podcasting on it. Well, you can't like how much is podcasting? Well, podcasts, you can't really buy it, because it's distributed.
• 34:12
  Kevin: And it's open as part of what makes it wonderful. It's also though, like, you can see how these companies are all trying different strategies to figure out how what is our piece of it going to be? And maybe with somebody like Facebook, and this is just me projecting a little bit, I don't really know. But maybe they're saying, hey, if we can't own a significant portion of this, then maybe we're not super interested in it. And so like Spotify has been able to come in, and they've been able to control a pretty significant portion of it, Apple, same to they started a very long time ago. So they're still building upon that very early entry into it. But it's very hard for somebody like a Google or a Facebook or whatever the next tech giant is like Amazon or somebody to come in and start controlling enough of the podcasting ecosystem to be able to, I don't know like drive enough profit or revenue through that division of the business to keep them interested, I think long term where I come from where I'm sitting, I think that's great. But I know a lot of people, you know, have different opinions on that. But I think that's part of what makes it special and unique.
• 35:13
  Kevin: Right? So continuing our Deathwatch, Spotify Green Room has also announced that it will be shutting down, which I don't know. And we could just call this segment in the land of who cares?
• 35:26
  Alban: exists, right, that's still there, or it's just the the Creator fund that is getting shut down. Oh,
• 35:32
  Kevin: I don't know. But that doesn't even matter. I
• 35:35
  Jordan: think it's the fund. But does anyone even use green room?
• 35:40
  Jordan: No, it doesn't matter. I remember when they were first really pushing Spotify green room and they had all the Spotify networks like gimlet parcast, things like that. They had them doing episodes to promote Spotify green room, and then dropping those greenroom episodes into their feed right.
• 36:01
  Jordan: And the audio quality was like horrendous and it completely backfired. It was unlistenable It was awful. And so you'd have the intro of the episode and be like we've recorded this and Spotify green room. And then it's just like it was not a great marketing campaign. I was not a fan.
• 36:23
  Kevin: Right so clubhouse is going nowhere. Facebook is pulling out of podcasting, Spotify greenroom is kind of garbage and Racket, which we talked about like a month ago, like hey, get in early and like go somewhere, it turns out that's not going anywhere.
• 36:37
  Jordan: Racket gate racket, right? What's racket gate? Well, I hopped on the racket this weekend, I hadn't been on in like a hot minute, but I hopped on there to see what was up. And I'm seeing all these racket posts of people being like, what is going on with racket? What is up with racket? Why is racket not working? Right? Where's the racket team? And it was just like, a bunch of children abandoned at an amusement park.
• 37:05
  Jordan: Or just like, what Where is everybody? Where are my parents?
• 37:08
  Jordan: So the founder, Austin finally posted a rocket. And he said that the app unfortunately had not quite taken off as they had hoped. And so they're exploring other avenues for monetization and funding. But I mean, that just seemed so quick to me, because they just dropped their app like, what, five months ago on the Apple App Store. So five months is a pretty quick time to be like, You know what, it's not really doing as well as we'd hoped. So we're throwing in the towel.
• 37:40
  Alban: I mean, it's tough when you spend a lot of time building something. And if you don't have a long time horizon, you may only get to experiment with it for you know, half a year before you find out that this probably is or is not going to be the thing. And when you think about racket versus clubhouse, you realize there's also a high degree of luck involved. You know, the clubhouse team was working on that before the pandemic. And there's no way they could have predicted there will be a global pandemic, where everybody is spending hours and hours at home wishing there was some new app to try. You know, it worked out perfect for clubhouse it worked out perfect for Tiger king. And, you know, sometimes you get lucky and sometimes you don't. Maybe it was just a little too late. Or maybe it's too early, maybe a few years, we will find out that rackets will actually be the future. But you know, wish the team the best. And sorry to anybody that we lead over to racket and who has investing in it too much you were on the cutting edge. But also, but maybe now you're on the cutting floor.
• 38:42
  Kevin: I do have something I want to add because I think it's a good idea like what racket was trying to do. We've seen Alvin's viral Tiktok, or non viral tech talk about how to see something similar that Spotify was doing in there up. It's not a bad idea of taking clips of podcast episodes and stringing them together in order to help people discover new podcasts. But I think in and of itself, that is not enough to be an app. I think that's a feature of an app. So like you see how Spotify is doing it, they're making it part of their existing app. So if the racket team is listening, and if you've got a few more months of development effort in you, I think what you would want to do was start by building like a first class, fantastic podcast player that people start using as their primary podcast listening app. And then from there have this amazing discoverability feature where it's like, Are you out of podcasts to listen to hop over here, and we'll help you find new ones. And then once you find something you like, you can just like one, tap and add it to your list of podcasts that you follow. And so not having that connectivity between those two feels a little bit like a missed opportunity. And I'm not saying it's super easy to develop a first class podcast listening app. But I think you have to start there and then build the discovery piece on top of it.
• 39:49
  Kevin: It's what Spotify is doing. But I still think there's an opportunity to beat Spotify because Spotify is not a first class podcast app. And so I think there are still plenty of people who would rather jump out to an overcast or pocket Kesterson experience like that.
• 40:01
  Kevin: Any of us who use those apps, we do have those moments where we're like driving in the car, we're on a long trip or on a long walk or something like that. And like, Oh, I've listened to all my shows for this week, I'd be interested finding a new one, there's not an easy way to do it, you jump over to the charts, see what other people are listening to.
• 40:13
  Kevin: That's not as great as being able to scroll through and listen to a couple quick clips and just be like, Oh, I'd like to continue listening to that.
• 40:19
  Kevin: So I think there's some opportunity behind the idea. But how you execute matters. Yeah, I
• 40:26
  Alban: think one of the best apps in this space is good pods.
• 40:30
  Alban: They got a good listening app, you can make that your primary app to listen in. And if you are building a community there, you're going to constantly see everybody that you already follow showing up. And you're like, Oh, Kevin, like that episode. Oh, Jordan, like the same one, as Kevin will cool.
• 40:46
  Alban: I've got two people in my life who have both recommended it, this should be something for me to check out. A lot of times, I think that are watching the habits are highly influenced by what the people around us watch.
• 40:55
  Alban: It's not that I knew I would like Tiger King, because everyone else was watching it. I watched it because everyone was talking about Tiger king. And I wanted to be able to be in those conversations. And I think podcasting could be like that, if we had more of this feed that would say, here's what people around you are listening to and what conversations people are going to be having around you.
• 41:19
  Alban: And so you can listen to it. And so you can feel like you can actually tap into the conversation a little better.
• 41:24
  Kevin: Yeah, you know, what's a good parallel to this is like Netflix. But Netflix hasn't done that Netflix hasn't added the social component. I don't think like there's no way for me to go into Netflix and link up my social graph. One way or another.
• 41:36
  Jordan: I think they added watch party during
• 41:39
  Kevin: I do remember the watch party. I don't know how that worked. My daughter stepped into it a little bit. I remember her saying I'm going to watch the show with my friends on Netflix.
• 41:46
  Kevin: And they were doing watch parties or something.
• 41:48
  Alban: Yeah, I would like it if I could see. Specifically Kevin liked this Jordan, like this, Rob joined the same episode.
• 41:57
  Alban: Like I could see a handful of people in my life, who are recommending things. But it would be pretty cool to algorithmically have a lot of ideas queuing up, and to be able to see, you know, 40 shows, but of the 15 people that I like most in the world, which shows are they all watching, because I'm probably going to talk to them about TV at some point, it'd be fun to watch some of the same shows,
• 42:21
  Jordan: that actually would be cool. If you were able to create like, on your profile on Netflix, you remember how MySpace had like a top eight. So you have like your top eight shows, and people could go browse like your top eight shows. Or for them to be able to tell what people are in like maybe your contacts list. If you like sync up your contacts list, like this get like really deep into it. But I still think it'd be cool. Like your contacts list. And then those, it would just like kind of find commonalities between like what your friends are watching and just have like a row of like, shows and movies your friends are watching. And it's just like ones that most of them are watching together.
• 43:05
  Kevin: Right. So I think it's interesting why Netflix doesn't do that. Because obviously, there are a company full of very smart people. They have developers and I would assume plenty of well, at least until the last couple weeks, they've had plenty of money to be able to invest in stuff like this.
• 43:19
  Kevin: But I'm wondering whether they haven't yet. And I think it's interesting to think about in terms of podcasting, because I think it's a similar type opportunity. So YouTube has gotten really good at keeping people on platform. But the focus is like short videos, right? Sometimes a couple minutes, sometimes 10 minutes, but it's not really long form content. But Netflix is long form content. And podcasting is long form content. And I don't think it's a great experience.
• 43:41
  Kevin: When I launch Netflix, like trying to find something new, I can see you know, what's trending and I don't know recommended for you from their algorithms and stuff. But that stuff isn't nearly as interesting as it is when I go into the office. And somebody tells me that they just watched this new show like Alvin just did. So like, that might be something I check out. But I'm much more likely to trust that than I am to trust whatever the Netflix app is telling me to watch next. And I think podcasting is similar. But all that to say there is an opportunity for third party podcast app developers to push into this more. I think good pods is doing a good job.
• 44:11
  Kevin: They're trying something new, they're investing in the opportunity for you to comment on podcasts and leave ratings and reviews and then link up with your friends and see their ratings and reviews and stuff like that, like marrying that with the opportunity to just kind of scroll through short clips of podcasts or something like that. Yeah, there's
• 44:26
  Jordan: there's definitely there's no social aspect. And the thing is, is that people who listen to podcasts, love recommending podcast, other people that listen to podcast.
• 44:34
  Jordan: And like podcasting is just like a really tight knit community podcast listeners are hardcore fans. So yeah, it doesn't make sense why there's not a social element to these podcasting apps.
• 44:47
  Alban: Yeah, and we're kind of touching on there's two different types of social interaction that we're talking about. One is between the host and their community of people who listen to the podcast are those people connecting these are all strangers sort of brought together by the same Dungeons and Dragons podcast or whatever they've decided to listen to. But there's also the people in your real life that you really know that you, you know, are some of the closest people to you, co workers or close friends or family. And those are people that you really you would like to watch or listen or engage with the same content so that you can have discussions with those friends and family. And I would like it, if there was a simpler way to do that. For Podcasting. There are definitely episodes I've listened to because somebody in my life recommended that episode. And I want to listen to it before I see that again, because how someone would actually talk to you about it and share what I thought and hear you know what they got from the episode. I do wonder, though, if maybe the fact that this doesn't exist is that Netflix figured out, we know what you want to watch, and you don't really want to watch what other people are watching. Like, you've got your own taste, and we are pretty good at spotting what that is.
• 45:59
  Jordan: So we reached out to the Buzzsprout Facebook community group and asked if any of the community members had questions that they'd like to be answered.
• 46:06
  Jordan: So here are some of those questions. Courtney Artis asks, when will a feature be available that allows for pre created custom templates for our show notes, so we don't have to manually type in for each new episode?
• 46:20
  Kevin: I think it's a good question. We've thought a lot about templating features for show notes. And so the way that we're thinking about it, and I'd love to hear some feedback, a great way to get feedback, by the way is by sending us a booster grant, the way that we're thinking about it is that you would probably have a similar set of information that is at the bottom of every episode that you create. So maybe you're where people can contact you, your social handles, maybe a link to your web page, or your YouTube page or whatever other places that you're available online, or you're creating content, you might want to put that at the bottom of every episode. Right?
• 46:51
  Kevin: If there's more than that, that's what I'd really like to hear about. So we are exploring ideas of how we might implement something like a show notes footer, or something that's been discussed a lot. And we've got a lot of ideas around that. So that might be something that's coming soon. But if you want something more than that, then I think now it'd be a good time to let us know.
• 47:10
  Jordan: In the meantime, you can always google podcasts description templates, or show note templates, podcast episodes, summary templates, things like that, or you can create your own. I did that just using Google Docs. And I have a template that I created. And I just copy and paste it into the show notes and change the information about the episode.
• 47:34
  Jordan: But it still has all of my show information and links and stuff like that, that I can just paste directly into Buzzsprout.
• 47:41
  Alban: This is a problem I've experienced in a totally different domain. There's this whole area of software that builds documents for lawyers, basically, where you have a bunch of information and it generates letters for you. And there's all you build templates around it. The problem is, there's a trade off when things are really good to have templates. And that's when all the data is known. And it's gonna be putting known places.
• 48:03
  Alban: And then where some things are, like, totally custom for each individual. Thanks. So I don't know, sometimes templates if there's so many fields that actually having a template didn't really do you much help.
• 48:18
  Alban: And I think the podcast footer is a good place that, hey, if there's things that are going to be in every single episode, let's make sure those are there every single episode, we can help you there. But for Buzzcast, the big thing we're putting in are links to all things we talked about, well, that could never be pulled in with the show notes template.
• 48:37
  Alban: Because those are totally custom. We're doing those differently every time. So it's just a balancing act. And it doesn't feel like an area where a completely custom template would be super useful. But like Kevin said, Send us some feedback if there's things that you think we could be doing to make that part of your life a little bit easier. I see another question from Neil Alexander.
• 48:59
  Alban: What's up with Spotify.
• 49:01
  Alban: Buzzsprout favorite directories obviously been listening. My percentage of listeners using Spotify has fallen from number one to 24% to number 10. It 2% other bus riders have reported similar collapses in Spotify share of listeners. That's a super interesting thing to hear now. I mean, we talked about this a bit last episode, where people were seeing Spotify dropping in the rankings. We've seen this across Buzzsprout as an entire platform that Spotify has been dropping. And Kevin called it a conspiracy. But I said, you know, I wouldn't be too surprised if Spotify did start focusing on promoting their own shows. But maybe they're going to pick ones that they have an exclusive deal with to highlight a little bit more than other people's shows, either if you have any other ideas.
• 49:51
  Kevin: I mean, best I can figure is that people are realizing that Spotify is not the best app to listen to podcasts on and so they're they're finding someplace else to listen, that's most likely what's happening.
• 49:58
  Kevin: I'm kidding.
• 50:02
  Alban: I mean, it's not it's possible that people are listening and they're moving to other apps. I would want to know what Neil's exact numbers were like number 120 4%. You know if that's 100 downloads, and now number 10 2%. And that's another 100 downloads, maybe a show just grown. And he's grown primarily through people finding his show in different apps, or is it actually the numbers are shrinking, which might indicate something, maybe there's a bug?
• 50:28
  Alban: Or maybe Spotify is saying, Hey, we're going to actively promote certain shows there in the app over others?
• 50:37
  Kevin: Yeah, that's a good question. Is your show continuing to grow? But Spotify is becoming a lower percentage, or the show is actually shrinking a little bit because Spotify listeners are dropping off, and they used to be such a large percentage of your audience?
• 50:47
  Alban: Exactly.
• 50:48
  Jordan: I had a pretty crazy dip with Spotify about a year ago.
• 50:52
  Jordan: And I remember checking my stats and Spotify downloads have plummeted, like 20 to 40,000 downloads a month from Spotify.
• 51:03
  Jordan: It just tanked. Did you ever figure out why? Nope. And it went back up, but it just tanked for like a couple months. And then it was right back up. It was super weird. I don't know.
• 51:14
  Kevin: Yeah. But that makes you think it's more of a reporting error than an actual listener drop off air. Not error. But
• 51:19
  Jordan: yeah, yeah. Yeah. My followers hadn't dipped. They had actually grown. I had actually gotten more subscribers on Spotify. But the numbers were tanking.
• 51:28
  Kevin: And were those numbers being reported by Buzzsprout?
• 51:30
  Kevin: Are numbers being reported by you logging into Spotify? And looking there?
• 51:33
  Jordan: They both dipped in both? Hmm.
• 51:37
  Kevin: I don't know. I think You've stumped the panel, Neal.
• 51:39
  Kevin: I don't necessarily have an answer for you, we would have to look into your account a little bit more. So if you want us to do that, drop us an email at buzzsprout.com. Ask the support team to flag Kevin, I can look in your account and see if we can figure out a little bit more information for you. Maybe we can follow up.
• 51:54
  Jordan: So Lucas Raz says, are you guys working on any new features in Buzzsprout? Yes, we are. Great. Yeah. All right.
• 52:01
  Jordan: Moving on.
• 52:02
  Kevin: Good question. Thank you.
• 52:04
  Alban: It's actually maybe a bad sign. If something that you want us to build is something we talk about on here. That often will mean that it's not something that's imminent. So like, the podcast footer is something we've talked about for at least a year. But it's never been at the very top of the priority. So we weren't working on it. And it's something we're working on, we probably will not talk about it. Because we don't know exactly how it's going to work.
• 52:25
  Alban: And the minute that it's out, we will make sure you know about it.
• 52:30
  Kevin: Yep. So we've got a pretty good sized staff here at Buzzsprout. And we're all working 40 hours a week, every week. And we're cranking away on new podcast features all the time. So we have been working on a project for a couple of work cycles here. When I say work cycle, it means a six week segment at a time. Oftentimes, you'll see us talk about new stuff that drops and we talked about here on Buzzcast. But we haven't talked about stuff in a while because what we're working on currently has taken more than one work cycle to complete. So there is active development going on and it's super exciting, but nothing to announce just yet. We just don't announce stuff before it's ready to go. Thanks for the question.
• 53:02
  Jordan: Tasha Lindley said my episode artwork isn't showing up in Apple podcasts. Brain exploding emoji. Is this happening to anyone else? It only shows the podcast cover image, not the episode artwork, I created an upload for each episode. So this is actually a common post that we get in the Buzzsprout community. And it is a lesser known bug. With Apple podcasts. Are you guys familiar with this bug? Yes. Yeah.
• 53:31
  Alban: Yeah, it's about is it?
• 53:31
  Alban: It's not really a bug bug, right. I mean, it's just the type of artwork that Apple podcast supports is pretty limited. It's a specific file type where it's embedded, right?
• 53:43
  Jordan: Nope. It's a bug. That's the bug. So the bug is that if you follow a podcast, you cannot see their episode artwork. But if you unfollow or unsubscribe from that podcast, their episode artwork will show up.
• 54:07
  Alban: I don't think I can undo this doesn't make any sense to me. I didn't realize that
• 54:11
  Kevin: right? And if it was the opposite way, you can make a case that it's not a bug. It's like intended behavior, that they're not going to show episode artwork unless somebody follows that podcast, but it's the opposite. And so I think this clearly falls into the camp of bug I don't think that was their intention when they coded it that way but that's the way it's been working for quite a while and we know Apple podcasts historically only updated when iOS updates so you know once a year we hope that this bug gets fixed hopefully when what is it like the fall August September they usually drop the new iOS hopefully we'll see an update at that point where this will no longer be an issue but yeah, for now, if you if you're following the podcasts that you're looking for episode artwork, you're not gonna see it. So you can unfollow it, search for it playing episode and it should appear at least that's been our experience, but that's why it's happening.
• 54:56
  Alban: It is a bummer. We actually had some good album artwork from last episode.
• 54:57
  Alban: relating to Apple podcasts.
• 55:02
  Alban: Remember, Kevin, we had a, some people were criticizing Apple podcasts for changing the Follow button to a plus sign. And I did some goofy mock up where I did a ton of plus signs all over the app, we didn't talk about it, we just put it as the show art and not realizing, you know, that, uh, what I thought was hilarious for me probably was missed out on by everybody who is using Apple podcasts, very niche joke.
• 55:27
  Kevin: Yeah. And that reminds me of something I thought that I've had, like when we're talking about third party podcast listening apps like, and when I say third party, I mean, like, not an apple listening out, not a pocket, not a Spotify. Not not even like an Amazon or Google.
• 55:40
  Kevin: But these independent app developers who are creating their own podcast listening app.
• 55:45
  Kevin: So I think there's some great stuff that's happening in that space. But what the community of podcasters really needs is, and this might sound a little bit nerdy, and also my age me quite a bit, but used to be back in the early 2000s. I think there was a browser war going on on the internet, you know, Internet Explorer was taking over Netscape and opera existed. And what happened was developers, web developers started having a very hard time figuring out how to code their webpages to display properly and all these browsers because they wanted to take advantage of some of the enhancements that were happening in an explorer. But if they did that those were proprietary to Internet Explorer. So what happened was the community started to realize and when I say community, I mean, mostly developers started to realize that in order for the web to really work well, we can't build specifically just for Internet Explorer, because there's going to be people who want to visit our webpages in different browsers. And we have a similar setup in the podcasting space right now. And so there are certain ways that we could code an RSS feed to make sure that it works perfectly in Apple podcasts. But that means that it might not work great in Spotify.
• 56:42
  Kevin: And that means it also might not work perfectly in Pocket Casts, or overcast or Casta Matic or whatever app exists. And so what is happening is we need a similar movement to happen in the podcasting space that happened in the web space with web browsers, we need a set of standards that everyone starts to agree upon, or agree to and code to. And so when we talk about something as simple as episode artwork that shouldn't be hard for Apple to get on board with the same standard for displaying episode artwork as Spotify as Pocket Casts overcast. And so one of the things that's happening in the industry right now, and it's small right now, but I hope it grows, is that the podcast index has started talking more about creating podcast standards, and they have the podcast namespace.
• 57:21
  Kevin: namespace is kind of like this technical term that not a lot of people understand. But everybody understands the word standard.
• 57:27
  Kevin: Now, that word also comes with some baggage, like the idea that what when you have a standards body, that means we're gonna have committee meetings, and people are gonna vote and all that stuff. But it's none of that. It's none of that legacy garbage that comes along with the word standard. It's just the idea that if we all code and RSS feed to this one spec that we all agree upon, and how are we agreeing upon it, because we're all working in this open source project together. So it's opportunity to just voice your opinion, voiced your concerns, and then whatever the group decides on like, we're going to move from there. But if we can agree upon that standard, then we should be able to push on things like Apple and say, Listen, on my episode, our works not displaying because you're not following the standard.
• 58:04
  Kevin: There is a standard for how these things should be coded.
• 58:06
  Kevin: It's coded in that way, but it's not working. So this is clearly a bug. I think it's helpful for the podcast ecosystem overall, to get on board with this. And right now, for any app developers that are interested in this stuff, right now is the time to jump into the open source community start contributing your thoughts and your guidance, because it's valuable, and it's needed. But once we get a standard, that's when we can really start clearly calling these things a bug, whether Apple acknowledges as a bug or not, because if an app is not working, and your RSS feed is compliant with the standard, then we know it's a bug.
• 58:35
  Alban: What I really liked, it's not a question. It was just a statement, but it was really encouraging. Dan Malcolm posted and said, I put out three episodes of my podcast and somebody reached out to me and said that my podcast was just what they needed in their life right now. And that it was life changing. And they were learning a ton. I love hearing that. He kind of almost in a way kind of downplayed, it felt like where he says I didn't just in putting out what I learned. And I think that that actually is exactly what is really cool about podcasting is stuff that is obvious to you that you've learned in your life, that may relate to your favorite business or your hobby, it may be really valuable to somebody else, it probably is very valuable to other people. So Dan went out on a limb and posted three episodes. And it's very cool that he was able to get that feedback so quickly that he was really impacting someone's life.
• 59:25
  Alban: So, Dan, congrats on the success of the podcast. Um, the stats don't really matter when you've got one person reaching out with a message like that. So that's really cool.
• 59:37
  Jordan: All right, well, I think that's it for this episode of Buzzcast. So as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting