Latest / Buzzcast / Apple’s Big Changes For Podcast Chapters And Links

Transcript

Apple’s Big Changes For Podcast Chapters And Links · Buzzcast

• 0:00
  Jordan: All right, Apple is putting out one of its biggest updates in years.
• 0:05
  Jordan: They had an announcement.
• 0:06
  Jordan: They said with iOS 26.2, we're excited to introduce even more ways for your audience to interact with your show with the new chapters and timed links features.
• 0:17
  Jordan: So they're going to be adding um automatically generated chapters and expanded chapter support and time links.
• 0:24
  Jordan: So I'm really excited about these.
• 0:27
  Jordan: I think that some other people are very excited about them, but I think that the there's others who have different opinions that might not like the idea so much.
• 0:35
  Kevin: We'll see.
• 0:36
  Alban: I don't know who would dislike this.
• 0:38
  Alban: Chapter markers are really nice.
• 0:39
  Alban: You're listening to a podcast, it's rambling.
• 0:42
  Alban: You might be listening to this podcast and think it's rambling and you want to jump to the next section.
• 0:46
  Alban: And you can just click next section.
• 0:48
  Alban: They're great on YouTube.
• 0:50
  Alban: They're great on podcasts.
• 0:52
  Alban: Now they're going to be great even on podcasts that don't want to specify the chapter markers themselves.
• 0:58
  Alban: And it seems like Apple did this with transcripts before, where they said, hey, we're going to respect the transcript if you have it.
• 1:04
  Alban: But if not, we're going to generate it for you, unless you say you don't want it.
• 1:09
  Alban: And I think it lowered the barrier to entry so much.
• 1:13
  Alban: You actually had to go out of your way to say no transcripts for my episodes.
• 1:17
  Alban: That pretty much everybody was excited about them and people were willing to create their own to make sure they got it 100% accurate if they really wanted it that way.
• 1:25
  Alban: And I think we're going to get that the same with chapter markers.
• 1:28
  Alban: You know, I think it just makes Apple Podcasts a better app.
• 1:31
  Alban: Uh, Spotify does some of these things, YouTube does some of these things.
• 1:34
  Alban: It's going to be really nice to have an ecosystem where chapters are expected in most major podcasting apps.
• 1:42
  Kevin: This is a little bit surprising to me because it seemed to me that Apple was moving away from their affection for podcast chapters.
• 1:50
  Kevin: In between, I think OS they used to be called like 15, 16, 17, and then it went to 26.
• 1:56
  Kevin: Is that right?
• 1:57
  Kevin: 17, the last low number, and they jumped to the years.
• 2:00
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 2:00
  Kevin: Somewhere in there, they kind of deprioritized like access to chapters.
• 2:04
  Kevin: It used to be pretty easy to get to chapters for episodes that had them, and now it's a little bit more difficult.
• 2:09
  Kevin: And I thought, well, the Apple team must not like chapters very much because they're making it a little bit harder to get to them.
• 2:15
  Kevin: And then lo and behold, it's the complete opposite is true.
• 2:18
  Kevin: So what I'm hoping is that maybe we're going to see them getting all the pieces in place to really fully support chapters in a great way.
• 2:27
  Kevin: And then once all that's working, all the kinks are worked out in an updated version.
• 2:31
  Kevin: Hopefully down the road, chapters are going to be more front and center again.
• 2:34
  Kevin: But either way, I'm not trying to spoil this update.
• 2:38
  Kevin: This is a fantastic update.
• 2:39
  Kevin: As luck would have it, we just rolled out full like chapter image support for Apple Podcasts in the ID3 tag a couple weeks ago.
• 2:47
  Kevin: And it's not a wasted effort because they still do read those, but they will also now read these JSON chapters, which is the podcast namespace chapters tag that we're using.
• 2:56
  Kevin: So we didn't kind of like have to do that to get Apple Podcast support since they're supporting both now, but it's still a nice update because there are some other third-party apps that are very popular, like Overcast and Pocket Cast, that are still lagging behind a little bit.
• 3:10
  Kevin: And so the ID3 images now provide chapter artwork for Overcast and Pocket Cast, even though Apple Podcasts doesn't require that anymore.
• 3:20
  Alban: Do you remember there's like this XKCD comic that's like a problem?
• 3:24
  Alban: There's 17 standards in the world, and someone's like, we have to figure out a solution.
• 3:28
  Alban: And the guy's like, here's the new standard.
• 3:30
  Alban: And then it's like problem.
• 3:32
  Alban: Now there's 18 standards in the world.
• 3:33
  Alban: And like, whenever we come up with a standard, the idea is this will be the one.
• 3:38
  Alban: But the problem is that everyone needs to coalesce.
• 3:41
  Alban: And I think with JSON chapters are by far and away the best.
• 3:45
  Alban: But then we've also got these pod love chapters.
• 3:47
  Alban: We've also got some people who do it in 93 tags.
• 3:49
  Alban: We've also got some people who now are doing it through descriptions.
• 3:53
  Alban: And really what we've done is Busprout will support all of them, Apple will support all of them.
• 3:59
  Alban: And you're not a hundred percent sure, even people who are as in the industry as much as us, everyone's not a hundred percent sure off the top of their head which apps support which of the three, four versions that are out there.
• 4:11
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 4:11
  Alban: And it would just be really nice if everybody would just get on board with JSON chapters, because there's so many benefits there over and above all the other options.
• 4:21
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 4:21
  Kevin: I agree.
• 4:22
  Kevin: It would it would make our lives a lot easier for sure.
• 4:24
  Alban: So does this would make the second uh thing that Apple has adopted from uh podcasting 2.0, right?
• 4:32
  Alban: Um, well, third, if you count the uh TXT tag.
• 4:36
  Alban: Oh, that's right.
• 4:37
  Alban: So TXT was the like way to authenticate the you own a podcast.
• 4:41
  Alban: Right.
• 4:42
  Alban: And then transcripts.
• 4:44
  Alban: Yep.
• 4:44
  Alban: And then now here are chapter markers, which is funny because I remember when podcasting 2.0 happened and podcast standards, and we were working with the podcast index, and what we kept hearing was, well, it doesn't matter until Apple supports it, and Apple will never support it because they hate stuff like this.
• 5:03
  Alban: And Apple's not only just supported it, they seem to have improved by saying, look, even for people who are podcasts that don't go out of their way to improve their uh listeners' experience, we're gonna figure out an automated solution on top of it.
• 5:18
  Alban: Right.
• 5:19
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 5:19
  Kevin: It's a very similar approach that they did with transcripts, right?
• 5:22
  Kevin: They said transcripts are great, and some podcasters are providing transcripts.
• 5:28
  Kevin: And for those that do, we're happy to support those and display those in the app in a beautiful way.
• 5:32
  Kevin: But if you don't, we want everyone to have transcripts.
• 5:35
  Kevin: And so we will auto-generate transcripts.
• 5:38
  Kevin: Of course, you can turn this off if you don't want a transcript for whatever reason.
• 5:41
  Kevin: But every podcast will get a transcript.
• 5:43
  Kevin: I'm sorry, every episode will get a transcript.
• 5:46
  Kevin: You can provide your own if you want.
• 5:48
  Kevin: And they're taking the same approach with chapters.
• 5:50
  Kevin: So every podcast episode will get chapters.
• 5:53
  Kevin: Now I know you can turn these off just like you can transcripts.
• 5:56
  Jordan: Yep.
• 5:56
  Kevin: I think that you they're separate toggles.
• 5:58
  Kevin: Am I right, Jordan?
• 5:59
  Kevin: Like you could turn off the transcript and you could still get chapters.
• 6:03
  Jordan: Yeah, and and you can do it on the show and the episode level.
• 6:07
  Jordan: Right.
• 6:08
  Jordan: So if you want chapters turned off for like a specific episode, for so for example, if uh Apple goes bananas on our quick cast and adds like 10 chapter markers, and I go, This is a nightmare, I can turn it off for the quick cast because we don't normally put chapter markers in our quick cast.
• 6:24
  Jordan: So that would prompt Apple Podcasts to do that for us in lieu of us having our own chapter markers that we've provided.
• 6:32
  Kevin: If you turn them off at the Apple level and then you provide your own, do they still show up?
• 6:37
  Alban: Yes.
• 6:37
  Alban: You're just turning off the Apple auto-generated version.
• 6:41
  Jordan: Yeah, they still show up, but you can turn off the automatically created ones.
• 6:44
  Jordan: So especially if we're probably gonna have to turn ours off because we have the quick casts that I don't do any chapter markers for because it's a short episode.
• 6:53
  Jordan: It's it doesn't make sense to have chapter markers.
• 6:55
  Jordan: But our main huge podcast, like it's an hour long.
• 6:58
  Jordan: And so we do have chapter markers in those ones.
• 7:01
  Jordan: And so it would make sense for us to turn off the automatically generated chapter markers for our podcast.
• 7:08
  Jordan: Um, I think that there's some podcasts that it's not gonna matter to them because they have chapter markers for all their episodes, or maybe they don't have time to do chapters and they're like, great, someone else is gonna do it for me.
• 7:19
  Jordan: That's awesome.
• 7:20
  Jordan: Um, and so they might want to leave it on.
• 7:22
  Jordan: But there are some things, I'm not sure exactly how it works, and I probably won't know until it's implemented.
• 7:28
  Jordan: But I think that you could potentially in the episode level edit the chapters.
• 7:33
  Jordan: I know with the transcript, you can't edit the transcript that Apple provides.
• 7:38
  Jordan: But I think the chapters you will be able to edit, but I don't think that you can have add like chapter images or anything like that.
• 7:46
  Jordan: So I think you need to have Buzzsprout if you want chapter images.
• 7:49
  Jordan: And then also if you have dynamic content inserted, I don't think that it will be properly reflected in Apple.
• 7:57
  Jordan: I think you would have to have that in Buzzsprout, right?
• 8:00
  Alban: Yeah, I would just say if you're going to do something that's dynamic, yeah.
• 8:03
  Alban: Then I would use the system that's inserting the dynamic content should be in control of the chapters.
• 8:10
  Alban: So in our case, that's Buzzsprout.
• 8:11
  Alban: We're the ones sticking in a piece of dynamic content.
• 8:15
  Alban: So we know it's 30 seconds long, thus, we need to shift all the chapters after it 30 seconds back.
• 8:20
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 8:21
  Alban: That's why, you know, YouTube style chapters works for YouTube because they know we know how long this ad is, so we can shift everything around.
• 8:29
  Alban: It doesn't work for podcasts in YouTube uh as well.
• 8:33
  Alban: But technically, I'm a little bit off right there, but the the point is still the same.
• 8:38
  Alban: Like you want the system that's inserting the content to also be the ones in control of the way the timestamps work.
• 8:44
  Jordan: I mean, that's the same thing with uh Spotify.
• 8:46
  Jordan: So, Spotify, you can do those timed chapter markers in the episode description and they support that, but it doesn't work if you have dynamic content in Buzz sprout and it gets updated in Spotify too, because then those are gonna be all wonky.
• 8:58
  Alban: So I was talking to Steven Robles about this because he was concerned with some of his subscriber only episodes that are ad free.
• 9:07
  Alban: And so he was thinking maybe ad-free versions because they're shorter, wouldn't have the right chapter markers.
• 9:15
  Alban: And I was like, Yeah, it sounds like that doesn't work.
• 9:17
  Alban: But Jordan, you have it here in the outline, Apple has announced additional support for episode chapters in subscriber-only episodes as well.
• 9:24
  Alban: So what does what does that mean?
• 9:26
  Jordan: So they are saying that they are supporting chapters in subscriber-only episodes.
• 9:31
  Jordan: They didn't support them before for whatever reason, but I think it is limited when it comes to ad-free episodes because ad-free episodes, when you do the ad-free version of it, it's basically like you're uploading two different versions of an episode.
• 9:47
  Jordan: So you have two files for one episode.
• 9:50
  Jordan: And so I think that is what breaks it.
• 9:52
  Jordan: But the rest of them should be fine.
• 9:53
  Jordan: If you have like bonus episodes or early access, those should work with the chapters as well.
• 10:00
  Alban: Yeah.
• 10:00
  Alban: So I think what we've come to is that chapters were never supported in subscriber-only content in any format.
• 10:08
  Alban: And now they're supported, but they may not have as much support as we'd want because I think they can break if you've got different audio files for a subscriber version or a uh free version.
• 10:22
  Alban: So, like ad-free versions won't be as good, or extended cuts may be off.
• 10:27
  Alban: So I don't know if Apple will try to figure that automatically and they will run it themselves and come up with chapters, or they'll provide a way for us to differentiate.
• 10:37
  Alban: Hey, the subscriber-only audio should have this version or that version.
• 10:42
  Alban: It's a little wonky.
• 10:43
  Alban: It's also something only people like us care about because I think we're really talking about the 0.01% who have ad-free versions of episodes anyway.
• 10:53
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 10:54
  Alban: Um, so the New York Times and NPR, they can reach out to Apple and try to figure out this one out.
• 11:00
  Alban: I don't think we have too many people, um, probably besides Steven on bus route that are dealing with this.
• 11:05
  Alban: Yeah.
• 11:06
  Kevin: Let me talk about one thing though.
• 11:08
  Kevin: There are three different ways, correct me if I'm wrong, three different ways to get chapters to display an Apple Podcasts according to this new update.
• 11:14
  Kevin: One, the new chapters tag, two, the ID3 tags.
• 11:17
  Kevin: That's the one that's been there forever.
• 11:18
  Kevin: The third one is putting timestamps in your description.
• 11:21
  Kevin: Okay.
• 11:22
  Kevin: This is mostly popularized by first YouTube, and I think Spotify adopted it as well.
• 11:28
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 11:29
  Kevin: Now, Spotify, we do support chapters in Spotify, but we don't use that method.
• 11:33
  Kevin: We use a standard called the the Podlov Simple Chapters, which is very similar, except instead of displaying it in the description, we display it in an RSS tag in your RSS feed.
• 11:42
  Kevin: So it's not junking up that description.
• 11:44
  Kevin: And that's the key point that I'm trying to make here is that uh this third option of putting timestamps in your description really does junk up the description, in my opinion.
• 11:54
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 11:55
  Kevin: But I don't like this.
• 11:56
  Kevin: I like the idea of separating the stuff out.
• 11:58
  Kevin: Now I can see a benefit that if you push your podcast into YouTube and I think through the RSS integration, it then brings in the description.
• 12:08
  Kevin: And if you have it in the right format, this you know, timestamp, is it like timestamp colon and then whatever the name of the title or whatever is?
• 12:15
  Kevin: Then when your podcast goes over to YouTube, those link up, right?
• 12:18
  Kevin: Uh-huh.
• 12:19
  Kevin: And they work.
• 12:19
  Kevin: But in the podcasting world, there's a better experience, which is you can keep the description field clean and it can just literally be a description of your podcast.
• 12:28
  Kevin: And then most really good podcast apps have a really nice interface to be able to display the chapters and let you jump around.
• 12:35
  Kevin: I don't know.
• 12:36
  Kevin: It just feels confusing.
• 12:37
  Kevin: Like as a podcaster who wants to create content that is uh displayed best in the podcasting apps, but then also I want to push it to YouTube.
• 12:46
  Kevin: What do I do?
• 12:47
  Kevin: Like, what's the best solution here?
• 12:49
  Alban: I I think the best answer is I would put it in the JSON.
• 12:54
  Alban: I would do it through the Buzzsprout chapters.
• 12:56
  Alban: I'd keep my description clean and then I would just accept that YouTube will figure it out on their own and they'll come up with the chapters.
• 13:06
  Alban: I wouldn't try to control them over on the YouTube side.
• 13:09
  Alban: I'm not as against the YouTube ones because of the format.
• 13:14
  Alban: I kind of like that's all there in plain text, and it you could just put the timestamp and then put the chapter title and then put all the information about that chapter and that section of the podcast all together.
• 13:26
  Jordan: So you can integrate it.
• 13:27
  Alban: Yeah, I'm I actually like that.
• 13:29
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 13:29
  Alban: But it doesn't work for podcasts where the audio file is changing.
• 13:34
  Alban: And the audio file might change because we changed it on your behalf by putting in a buzz brow ad.
• 13:39
  Alban: It could change if you're on another host and you've got like some vast tags, so you have no clue what's in there by based on different listeners.
• 13:48
  Alban: It could change because you put dynamic content or you upload a new audio file.
• 13:52
  Alban: There's way too many ways the audio changes.
• 13:55
  Alban: That's a huge benefit we have in podcasting that you don't have in the YouTube world.
• 13:59
  Alban: And so I like where we're at.
• 14:02
  Alban: I don't really hate it because it looks cluttered up.
• 14:05
  Alban: I just hate it because you're specifying here's where the chapters markers are, knowing 50-50 chance they're not going to be correct when someone starts clicking on it.
• 14:14
  Alban: And now it just is a bad experience because they expect it to go to the right spot.
• 14:18
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 14:18
  Kevin: I love the fact that in Buzz sprout, we do shift the chapters depending on which dynamic content clips are getting put in or put out.
• 14:25
  Kevin: But at the end of the day, to me, it doesn't even, I don't know, it doesn't, it's not terrible if I click on a chapter and I'm off by like 30 seconds.
• 14:33
  Kevin: Like it did the bulk of the work for me.
• 14:35
  Kevin: It got me in the ballpark.
• 14:37
  Kevin: And so there are a lot of podcasts that use chapters that I know have these programmatic ads and stuff.
• 14:43
  Kevin: And when I click a chapter, I'm like, oh, that's they're not starting the topic right away, or I'm already 20 seconds into the topic or something.
• 14:49
  Kevin: I get it.
• 14:50
  Kevin: But again, I'm in podcast tech, so it doesn't bother me as much as it might bother just a standard typical listener who doesn't understand why it doesn't go right to the right spot.
• 14:58
  Alban: Yeah, but if you're a podcaster who took the time to specify a chapter and say, here's where it is, here's exactly when I start this section.
• 15:05
  Alban: And then your tech solution breaks it because there was an ad, and you're like, Well, you knew I was gonna use an ad.
• 15:12
  Alban: Like I'm trying to make some money here.
• 15:14
  Alban: Yeah, I would just I'd be pretty frustrated about it.
• 15:17
  Alban: It's one thing if it's YouTube that's doing its best guess and it's pretty close.
• 15:22
  Alban: I'm like, oh, good job, YouTube.
• 15:24
  Alban: Thank you for that.
• 15:25
  Alban: But it's a totally different thing when I took the time to create it and somebody else broke it.
• 15:30
  Jordan: Yeah, it it could take like an hour.
• 15:32
  Kevin: I mean, YouTube is spot on because they like literally jump you out of your video into an ad video, and then they come right back and resume your episode.
• 15:41
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 15:42
  Kevin: The problem with the way that programmatic ads work in podcasting is they go to these um sort of like auction sites where they're dynamically on the fly trying to find an ad for you and they're trying to find the best ad that's the best match for your audience at the highest CPM, and they're trying and sometimes they find one and sometimes they don't.
• 15:58
  Kevin: And so you can't even plan in advance of, oh, this is a 30-second ad spot if you can find one, but sometimes they find one and sometimes they don't.
• 16:04
  Kevin: Right.
• 16:05
  Kevin: So there's no good way.
• 16:06
  Kevin: I think we just have to be okay with it being a little bit janky sometimes.
• 16:10
  Jordan: While we're on the uh topic of timestamps in the show notes, there's another feature here called timed links.
• 16:18
  Jordan: So if you include a timestamp with a link to content that is in the Apple ecosystem, so it's like Apple Music, Apple News, Shazam, Apple Podcasts, anything like that, the link will appear as a banner below the episode and podcast title on the now playing screen.
• 16:35
  Jordan: And it also will show on the transcript as a link and then on the episode detail page.
• 16:42
  Alban: Yeah, I thought you were gonna say, uh, speaking of kind of janky.
• 16:47
  Jordan: What?
• 16:48
  Alban: Okay, this is just Apple, like pure Apple.
• 16:50
  Jordan: I love it.
• 16:51
  Alban: The links look great, it's really nice that a link pops up.
• 16:55
  Alban: It looks beautiful.
• 16:56
  Alban: It only works for things that uh help other Apple related sites.
• 17:02
  Alban: And, you know, I love Apple.
• 17:04
  Alban: I've got tons, I've had all these iPhones and all this.
• 17:06
  Alban: I spent way too much money there, but I'm not referencing Apple News URLs.
• 17:11
  Alban: Um, if I'm linking to a podcast, I'm trying to link to their website because not everybody uses Apple Podcasts.
• 17:17
  Jordan: Uh-huh.
• 17:17
  Alban: I don't use Apple Music.
• 17:19
  Alban: And so if we were to drop links in, and you're just not going to get these are only going to show up for people who are super Apple centric, talking to people that are completely Apple centric.
• 17:30
  Alban: And it adds like, I don't know, a hundredth of a percent of market share to Apple Books, and it's really useless for everybody else.
• 17:40
  Alban: It looks really good.
• 17:41
  Alban: I just wish that we could do it for everyone.
• 17:43
  Alban: But I also get why they don't do it for everyone.
• 17:45
  Alban: And so I don't think we're gonna end up using it at all.
• 17:48
  Jordan: I mean, Spotify did the exact same thing.
• 17:50
  Jordan: Remember, this was like a year or two ago.
• 17:53
  Jordan: Like you can link to Spotify artists or you can link to Spotify audiobooks, things like that.
• 17:59
  Jordan: They did they did the exact same thing.
• 18:00
  Jordan: And I actually think that I prefer Apple's way of doing it just because it's more varied in what kind of, I don't know, sites they offer.
• 18:10
  Alban: Yeah, I think that probably I'm sure if we went back and found if we ever talked about it on the podcast, I would have said the same thing and then like yeah, I understand this is the way platforms always work.
• 18:21
  Alban: They want to keep everyone on their own sites forever and ever.
• 18:24
  Alban: Amen.
• 18:26
  Alban: And like the way that the web would be better is if we could link out.
• 18:30
  Alban: And so it's nice for the people who are extremely Apple centric.
• 18:34
  Alban: I'm probably not gonna think about it again.
• 18:35
  Alban: I'm gonna be positive about this.
• 18:37
  Alban: You guys thought I was gonna be negative, I'm gonna be positive.
• 18:39
  Kevin: No, you just saw that I did the negative.
• 18:41
  Kevin: So you can see Alban already took on my negative.
• 18:43
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 18:44
  Kevin: Here's the positive side.
• 18:45
  Kevin: Like, if we were going to link to a podcast episode in our chapters, we are certainly going to find the most universal way to link to that that we can.
• 18:54
  Jordan: Right?
• 18:54
  Kevin: Alban just described that.
• 18:55
  Kevin: And it's he's right.
• 18:56
  Kevin: But here's what we can also do we can also just talk about the podcast.
• 19:00
  Kevin: We can talk about dreamful bedtime stories available in Apple Podcasts and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
• 19:06
  Kevin: And according to this release, Apple will see that we talked about that in the description.
• 19:11
  Kevin: They will automatically link to it.
• 19:13
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 19:13
  Kevin: They will automatically create one of these time links.
• 19:15
  Kevin: We don't have to.
• 19:16
  Kevin: So we can in our chapters, we can go create a link around the same time and put a link to Jordan's website, Dreamful Bedtime Stories website.
• 19:24
  Kevin: But I think Apple Podcasts will still display, because they found it in our transcript, the link.
• 19:30
  Kevin: So for people who are listening in Apple Podcasts, you're gonna get that benefit of the timed link.
• 19:35
  Kevin: For anybody listening outside, you're gonna get our chapter link.
• 19:38
  Kevin: And I think that's gonna be very cool.
• 19:41
  Kevin: So any, any if we mention a book, Apple's gonna pop up a link to that book.
• 19:45
  Kevin: If we talk about another podcast, they're gonna pop up a link to that podcast.
• 19:47
  Kevin: If we talk about a news story that's available on Apple News or Oh, and by the way, Shazam?
• 19:51
  Kevin: What the heck is Shazam like Apple bought Shazam?
• 19:54
  Kevin: Okay, but why haven't they renamed it yet?
• 19:56
  Kevin: That's the one weird, crazy product name in the whole Apple ecosystem.
• 19:59
  Kevin: Shazam.
• 20:00
  Alban: They still have like beats, they still call Beats Beats.
• 20:02
  Alban: It's still a little bit more Apple y than Shazam.
• 20:05
  Alban: Shazam just doesn't sound Apple to me at all.
• 20:08
  Alban: Okay, so wait, this actually sounds better.
• 20:10
  Alban: I'm gonna give Apple a bit of credit back.
• 20:12
  Alban: So I'm never going to go make these links.
• 20:16
  Alban: But if what's happening is I'm listening on Apple Podcasts and I hear a like advertisement for another podcast, you know, kind of one of these promo swap, and it finds the URL in links and it puts it on the screen.
• 20:32
  Alban: Yes.
• 20:33
  Alban: As a banner, that's gonna be nice.
• 20:35
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 20:35
  Kevin: Think about with Buzzsprout ads.
• 20:37
  Kevin: We sell two types of ads, product ads and podcast ads.
• 20:39
  Kevin: So if you're advertising your podcast in Buzzsprout ads and it gets dynamically inserted into somebody else's podcast, and then somebody's listening to that, the ad comes up through the Apple Podcast app.
• 20:50
  Kevin: Hopefully now the link to that podcast should pop right up when your Buzzsproud ad plays.
• 20:56
  Alban: Okay, so this is something that makes sense for it to be automatic.
• 20:59
  Alban: And I would then recommend don't put them in yourself, let them be automatic.
• 21:04
  Alban: Right.
• 21:04
  Alban: Because it's only going to show up for somebody who's listening in Apple Podcasts.
• 21:09
  Alban: If they're listening to Apple Podcasts, they want the link to the other show in Apple Podcasts.
• 21:13
  Alban: Right.
• 21:14
  Alban: They want it to pop up in the player right there.
• 21:17
  Kevin: Yeah, you're hoping it shows up.
• 21:19
  Kevin: I mean, it sounds like, I mean, just like with all transcription technology, sometimes it's going to find it, sometimes it may not.
• 21:24
  Kevin: If you want to guarantee that it shows up, you would create the link yourself directly to that posting in Apple Podcast.
• 21:30
  Kevin: Then it's sure to show up.
• 21:31
  Jordan: Especially if there's a podcast that has a similar name, such as BuzzCast, where there are other Buzzcasts in the Yeah, it's the Buzzcast Podcast by Buzz Sprout.
• 21:44
  Kevin: I want to go back and listen to this episode now in Apple Podcast and see if all these links are popping up.
• 21:49
  Jordan: Okay.
• 21:49
  Jordan: So, and and also to be clear, the linking to uh other podcasts is going to be a limited beta within just like English speaking podcasts in like the US.
• 22:01
  Jordan: I think they're just testing it out with only podcasts.
• 22:05
  Jordan: They're not testing it out with news stories, they're not testing it out with music or anything like that yet.
• 22:09
  Jordan: I think the podcast linking, like the automatic podcast linking is kind of like a sandbox thing that they're doing.
• 22:15
  Jordan: The other ones, if you do want to link to like a news story or anything like that, you will have to manually do that.
• 22:20
  Jordan: But my hope is that this could be a really good stepping stone to linking to things that are outside of the Apple Podcast ecosystem.
• 22:30
  Jordan: I'm hoping that at some point when we do a link in other podcast players, maybe they pick up this sort of thing.
• 22:35
  Jordan: I know you guys are shaking your head.
• 22:36
  Jordan: No, I get it.
• 22:38
  Jordan: But my optimistic little hope here is that at some point we will be able to link to something.
• 22:44
  Jordan: And even in like Overcast or Pocket Cast, a nice little banner will pop up.
• 22:49
  Jordan: It'll be gorgeous.
• 22:50
  Alban: Overcast will let you do this now with chapters.
• 22:52
  Alban: That's true.
• 22:53
  Alban: When you have a chapter with a link, it will just give you the title and then that's a URL.
• 22:57
  Alban: Yeah, you can just type the channel.
• 22:59
  Alban: I don't think Apple will do it for two reasons.
• 23:01
  Alban: Reason one is it's Apple, and they are very good at saying, hey, we provide a great experience, we're going to keep you inside the ecosystem.
• 23:10
  Alban: But the big reason that they're never going to get over is people are going to link to their spammy websites to something that's inappropriate, that's not on brand for Apple.
• 23:20
  Alban: And Apple does not want to be involved in your casino business.
• 23:25
  Alban: And so if someone screenshots it and thinks Apple is supporting this or they're platforming this gross speech or something, they're just gonna Apple takes the hit and they can't really explain.
• 23:38
  Alban: No, this podcast actually wasn't even in our directory.
• 23:41
  Alban: It's just someone got a URL.
• 23:42
  Alban: They can't, it's just like a Safari.
• 23:44
  Alban: It doesn't matter.
• 23:45
  Alban: I don't know, it doesn't look good for them.
• 23:47
  Kevin: I mean, they they let you link in the description.
• 23:49
  Kevin: So you can link to your spammy uh casino site in your description.
• 23:53
  Kevin: And I do.
• 23:54
  Kevin: And Alban does all the time, and he drives a ton of traffic.
• 23:58
  Kevin: The difference here is that they're sort of highlighting certain links, right?
• 24:02
  Kevin: They're they're promoting them a little bit, making them a little bit more obvious, sort of trying to draw more traffic in this direction.
• 24:08
  Kevin: And I think it makes sense for links that benefit them.
• 24:11
  Kevin: It doesn't make sense for every link that you might have in a chapter or something.
• 24:15
  Kevin: I think it's fine.
• 24:16
  Kevin: Let's like wait and see.
• 24:17
  Kevin: I don't want to steal Jordan's wish.
• 24:19
  Kevin: Uh, I know that at the end of the year we always do a holiday wish episode because we don't like predictions.
• 24:24
  Kevin: So maybe that will be your wish for 2026.
• 24:27
  Kevin: But I don't think Apple has any hard, fast rules like we're not gonna allow you to link to any other website, and they certainly let you do that in your description.
• 24:33
  Kevin: It's just which ones are they going to sort of elevate?
• 24:36
  Kevin: And they're not gonna elevate.
• 24:37
  Kevin: Yeah, they're not gonna elevate a link that they're not confident is safe.
• 24:41
  Alban: Right.
• 24:41
  Alban: Okay, so what if uh I mean now when people write in, I'm now I'm really talking myself into these links because they do look nice.
• 24:48
  Alban: All right, what if when people write in to fan mail and we talk about it, we should make an effort to clearly say the name of the show, and it'd be cool.
• 24:57
  Alban: So if when you know Sparkling D writes in, you can get her podcast pop up with a link to it.
• 25:04
  Alban: So anyone who does listen to this and has heard the same, you know, names a few times, then go, oh, that's D.
• 25:12
  Alban: Oh, okay.
• 25:13
  Alban: I gotta go click the Late Bloomer Actor podcast.
• 25:16
  Alban: I need to go check and they can just go flip through everybody who writes into the show.
• 25:20
  Jordan: That is so cool.
• 25:21
  Jordan: I love the idea.
• 25:22
  Jordan: All right, so you've heard our takes on chapter markers and timed links.
• 25:27
  Jordan: So if you decide that this is not for you, you can actually disable both features on the show level on your Apple Podcast Connect dashboard.
• 25:37
  Jordan: Um, I don't know when this is gonna be available.
• 25:39
  Jordan: I don't think it's available yet, but you just go to your show's availability tab and then deselect the option to display the links or the chapters created by Apple Podcasts.
• 25:48
  Jordan: And then you can also do it on the individual episodes too.
• 25:51
  Jordan: And that's just going into the episode editing and select which you want to use.
• 25:55
  Jordan: So um, well, this is a very long quick cast, I think.
• 25:59
  Kevin: So I think we're gonna need chapters.
• 26:01
  Jordan: I think we're gonna need chapters.
• 26:03
  Jordan: So until next time, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.
• 26:12
  Alban: All right, I bought a new microphone.
• 26:14
  Alban: Is this a little Olympus LSP five, just a handheld recorder?
• 26:20
  Alban: And I love this.
• 26:22
  Alban: So I bought it initially because if I go for walks and I want to not take my phone when I'm trying to think through a problem, but sometimes I want to take notes or take voice memos.
• 26:32
  Alban: And so I have this and I record stuff for when I come back and I start typing up my notes.
• 26:37
  Alban: And a week ago, I had it and my daughter saw it, and I went, Oh, let's record a podcast.
• 26:44
  Alban: And we just grabbed it and held it between us and told like some story that had just happened.
• 26:49
  Alban: And they were so cute.
• 26:52
  Alban: It's so cute to listen back to five minutes of a story with your kid.
• 26:56
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 26:56
  Alban: And I was like, Oh, I'm gonna love these.
• 26:57
  Alban: I should do more of them.
• 26:58
  Alban: And so what I'm doing is I'm gonna take this to Thanksgiving this year.
• 27:02
  Alban: When I first started working at Buzz Sprout, I don't know, three of my four grandparents were still alive and all lucid.
• 27:09
  Alban: And I remember thinking I should record podcasts with them and never did, and missed out on them telling a bunch of stories that I really loved.
• 27:18
  Alban: So, what I'm doing this year is I'm just gonna try to sit down with everyone in the family and get little five-minute stories and go, oh, like there's this family story of my grandfather in Korea.
• 27:30
  Alban: And so I'm gonna ask my dad to tell it.
• 27:32
  Alban: And I'm gonna ask my mom a story about her mom who I never met.
• 27:35
  Alban: And I was just thinking of all these little family stories, and I was like, wouldn't it be fun?
• 27:39
  Alban: Not heavy, like get them on for two hours, but just like, hey, we're having coffee, give hand them the mic and say, tell that story for three minutes, and you just got these little clips.
• 27:50
  Jordan: That is such a fun idea.
• 27:51
  Alban: Yeah.
• 27:52
  Alban: And Thanksgiving is like the time because we're all kind of hanging around each other for a few days.
• 27:57
  Alban: You've got halftime in the middle of the football game or whatever you're doing, or just having coffee in the morning, and just say, Let me hand you this.
• 28:05
  Alban: We're not setting up mics, we're not doing a big thing.
• 28:07
  Alban: I'm not no production value because it's only for really the seven people in my family.
• 28:14
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 28:15
  Alban: And I don't know, maybe I'll throw it on a podcast and just send them the URL so they could listen to it.
• 28:21
  Alban: But that would just be it.
• 28:22
  Alban: It would just be a podcast that wasn't out there in the world except for people in the family.
• 28:26
  Alban: And whenever my daughter and I record a little story, or I get my dad to record a short one, I could just throw it on there for anyone to listen to.
• 28:35
  Jordan: I love that.
• 28:36
  Jordan: There's those services and it's super expensive, but there's those services where you can gather stories from the family and have it like put into a book.
• 28:45
  Jordan: And I think that this is an even better option because it's literally hearing the person's voice as they tell the story.
• 28:54
  Jordan: I I much prefer this because I've thought about doing the book thing.
• 28:57
  Jordan: I've thought about it, you know, you all always around the holidays, you hear these podcast ads talking about I some story service where they email a thing and at the end of the year they get a book and it's horrendously expensive for good reason because I'm sure it's gorgeously done.
• 29:12
  Jordan: But if you're on a budget, I mean, this is a much better option.
• 29:17
  Alban: I think it's actually better.
• 29:18
  Alban: So I played the podcast I did with my daughter for my wife, and it's so much more powerful with the voices.
• 29:26
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 29:26
  Alban: And I noticed this listening to videos of my daughter years ago, where you just where you film something and you were like, Oh, I forgot the baby talk that you used to do.
• 29:35
  Alban: Right.
• 29:36
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 29:36
  Alban: And I have old voicemails that my grandfather left me before he passed.
• 29:40
  Alban: And the voice is so powerful, it takes you right back to the story.
• 29:45
  Alban: It's what we we talk about this on every podcast.
• 29:48
  Alban: And story worth for what they do is cool.
• 29:52
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 29:53
  Alban: Uh, my sister bought it for my dad and mom a couple years ago.
• 29:57
  Alban: My mom, there's a book.
• 29:58
  Alban: My dad, there are two really Really, really well told stories in a book.
• 30:02
  Alban: That's it.
• 30:03
  Alban: He wrote two back and he was putting so much effort in that he didn't do any more.
• 30:08
  Jordan: Yeah.
• 30:09
  Alban: Um, but you know, I'm hoping to record a few of these.
• 30:11
  Alban: I'll let you know uh what the updates are after Thanksgiving.
• 30:15
  Kevin: This is this, I love the audio format.
• 30:17
  Kevin: One of my favorite things that we have from when our kids were young is when my oldest child, she's a girl, was teaching my middle child, her younger brother, how to pray.
• 30:26
  Kevin: The audio is wonderful.
• 30:28
  Kevin: I don't know why they recorded it, they just recorded a voice memo of her doing it.
• 30:31
  Kevin: She did it on her own, but she's teaching him how to pray, which is the sweetest thing ever, but he won't say what she says.
• 30:36
  Kevin: She's like, please say this.
• 30:37
  Kevin: And then he says a little bit, and then she says, Say this.
• 30:40
  Kevin: And then he's saying stuff completely different.
• 30:42
  Kevin: And then she gets getting so mad.
• 30:43
  Kevin: And so she's screaming at him.
• 30:45
  Kevin: She's trying to teach him how to do something so sweet.
• 30:48
  Kevin: But but their voices, like their voices change, kids' voices change.
• 30:53
  Kevin: And and as adults, we don't think about this because we interact with other adults all the time, and whatever, it just happens slowly over time.
• 30:58
  Kevin: But capturing those voices, like once they go, they're gone.
• 31:02
  Kevin: Like you won't hear that voice again.
• 31:04
  Kevin: And so I love the idea that you're capturing some of this on audio.
• 31:07
  Kevin: And as a business benefit, I'd be remiss not to mention Buzzsprout has multi-podcast plans now that are so perfect for things like this.
• 31:16
  Kevin: Yeah.
• 31:16
  Kevin: Like pop on the $39 five podcast plan, set up your one or two podcasts that you do, like as a real hobby, as something, and then you still have more podcasts that you can use to do fun family things or experiment with starting a podcast with one of your children or whatever.
• 31:32
  Kevin: That is so fun.
• 31:32
  Kevin: That is one of the things that we wanted to do when we created these multi-podcast plans is give people some flexibility to play without having to pay a whole bunch more.
• 31:41
  Kevin: Like it's already included in your multi-podcast plan.
• 31:43
  Jordan: So that would actually be a really fun challenge.
• 31:46
  Jordan: I would love to hear if other people have been inspired to start podcasts with their family or if they already have started podcasts with their family.
• 31:54
  Jordan: Uh, we love to hear about it.
• 31:55
  Jordan: And you should tap the Texas Show link in the show notes to tell us all about it.
• 31:58
  Alban: Yeah.
• 31:58
  Alban: And I would, I would really just say it doesn't have to be good audio.
• 32:02
  Alban: Like this is not don't clean the audio up.
• 32:04
  Alban: It can just be, you know, hold your phone up and do a voice memo level audio because all you're trying to capture is just like the memory of their voice, how someone sounded on the phone, and them telling the story in their own words.
• 32:18
  Alban: I don't know.
• 32:18
  Alban: I've I've got two of these with my daughter now.
• 32:20
  Alban: I love both of them.
• 32:21
  Alban: I'm gonna try to do a lot more.