Latest / Buzzcast / 15 Years Of Buzzsprout: The Story Behind The Rebrand

Transcript

15 Years Of Buzzsprout: The Story Behind The Rebrand · Buzzcast

0:00
Jordan: Welcome back.
0:00
Alban: Kevin, you know today is sorry, jordan you go.
0:03
Jordan: What are we doing?
0:04
Kevin: Why are you walking all over the producer of the show?
0:06
Alban: I'm trying to help the show.
0:08
Jordan: No, you're not.
0:09
Jordan: You're ruining it.
0:17
Jordan: Welcome back to Buzzcast podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout.
0:22
Jordan: We have a very special episode for you today.
0:25
Jordan: Buzzsprout is coming up on a big milestone and with that we have made some changes to its branding.
0:31
Jordan: So now if you go to the Buzzsprout website, you'll see a bold, refreshed look.
0:37
Jordan: So Kevin wrote an outstanding blog post reflecting on the last 15 years of Buzzsprout and explaining the intention behind the rebrand, and of course, I will link to it because you really must read it.
0:50
Jordan: It was really good, but I was honestly really surprised by this blog, Kevin.
0:54
Kevin: Yeah.
0:55
Jordan: Yeah, I knew like, yeah, we're going to need to address, like, why we rebranded, but I wasn't expecting this heartfelt love letter from the company's co-founder to the podcasting community and I know it sounds like super hyperbolic, but I mean, there really was so much like heart and soul put into it.
1:12
Jordan: And I think that a lot of people view a rebrand as a company just keeping up with the times and, you know, just put together like a more modern look and color scheme.
1:22
Jordan: And it made me wonder, like, was that how the rebrand announcement turned into a reflection on 15 years of Buzzsprout?
1:29
Kevin: We actually wrote this blog post a couple times.
1:31
Kevin: Alban did a really good job of writing a blog post very similar to this, and a lot of what he wrote is incorporated into it, but both of us were a little bit uneasy about approaching it from like a company perspective instead of a personal perspective.
1:45
Kevin: So our company is still pretty small.
1:48
Kevin: I mean, we have 20 people working on the Buzzsprout team now, but that's still not a very big company.
1:53
Kevin: We all know each other very well, we're very friendly in and out of the office and we all share the same passion for not only help podcasters create podcasts but also keeping podcasting as an industry open and healthy.
2:04
Kevin: And so when we kept reading this thing over and over again, we just kept thinking like it feels like the company is saying these things and that didn't.
2:13
Kevin: It wasn't feeling as authentic as we were feeling about it.
2:17
Kevin: And so I asked Alban I was like I know you put a ton of work into this and it's it is great, but can you give me a shot at just writing it just from my own voice, from my own perspective, and telling the story of what it's been like to be on this journey with the Buzzsprout team for the past 15 years, and so that's what I did.
2:32
Kevin: And, yeah, he liked it and we went with it, and so, yeah, it was a lot of fun.
2:37
Kevin: And I started off with this perspective of I'm kind of just writing this for myself and we'll see if it ends up being something that we put out in the public or not.
2:44
Kevin: And Alban liked it a lot and we decided to roll it out for everyone.
2:48
Alban: Yeah, whenever we see a rebrand, I'm always excited to see like oh cool, these colors look good.
2:53
Alban: I like the typography.
2:54
Alban: Oh, interesting, new logo, maybe it'll grow on me.
2:57
Alban: And then you see the company be like this is a revolutionary step forward and it's going to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah and I go what a load of junk.
3:13
Alban: Because it's just like you did a new, cool logo and then you made up a reason why you did the logo and so with Buzzsprout.
3:19
Alban: We're looking at it and we actually went down some paths of different messaging for Buzzsprout and none of them ever felt exactly right for us.
3:27
Alban: And it was funny because a few months ago Kevin was like we're talking through stuff that wasn't working, stuff that felt good but it wasn't there yet.
3:35
Alban: And Kevin's like what about start podcasting, keep podcasting.
3:39
Alban: And we've been saying that since the beginning of Buzzcast.
3:44
Alban: We've been saying it since the beginning of all of our shows.
3:46
Alban: Over five years we've been putting it at the end of blog posts and in newsletters and everywhere, and it organically grew up.
3:53
Alban: And then we just in employees, but also in this mission towards, we're not going to just help you start because, to be honest, technically starting has been available to you for years, but we will be the company that, if we do our part right, we will help you keep podcasting.
4:18
Alban: We will be the community and the support system and we'll provide the guides and the expert tools and everything to help people.
4:25
Alban: And then, kind of the last little bit I'd say is we keep moving as a company towards.
4:30
Alban: We don't want to be Buzzsprout.
4:32
Alban: We are people who work for a company.
4:34
Alban: You're people who do a podcast.
4:36
Alban: We are trying to be more personable.
4:38
Alban: Obviously, you see, with this show we have three people on it.
4:41
Alban: Megan does our newsletter and it's from Megan.
4:44
Alban: Support is from real people.
4:45
Alban: And then to write a post that was talking about you know, here's what we're doing as a company just felt so hokey and so I was very happy with Kevin's like yeah, this isn't us, let me.
4:57
Alban: Let me write it from me.
4:58
Alban: And now it's from a person, not from a faceless brand.
5:02
Kevin: Yeah, let me comment on the on the back up just a second.
5:05
Kevin: When you were talking about the keep podcasting thing, we've always said not always, but for years and years and years we've been saying, like Buzzsprout is, the one thing that makes us different is that we care about our customers and we want to help you achieve your podcasting goals.
5:16
Kevin: So why did you start podcasting?
5:18
Kevin: What is it that you want to accomplish and how can we we help you achieve your goal?
5:20
Kevin: That's true, it's 100% true, but it doesn't work as a good marketing message because it's like a sentence and a half, two sentences, and so you can't just like throw a Buzzsprout logo out there and then three sentences underneath it and expect that to resonate with people.
5:34
Kevin: We've been trying to figure out how do we get this down to a couple of words that works as like a tagline, that is, a statement that embraces and captures who Buzzsprout is and what differentiates us, and so, as often these things go, the answer has been sitting in front of us the whole time.
5:49
Kevin: We've started saying keep podcasting as a way to sign up this podcast.
5:52
Kevin: Since gosh, when did we start the podcast?
5:55
Kevin: We're almost at five years, right Today, today, five years, Today five years.
6:00
Kevin: I didn't know that what.
6:01
Alban: Today is the five-year anniversary to the day of our first episode that we released, kevin and I, july 2nd 2019.
6:09
Alban: We were talking about Apple Podcasts, made some updates, and so that was the first episode.
6:14
Jordan: No way.
6:16
Kevin: Yeah, and so I don't know if it was from the first episode, but somewhere very early on we started signing off this podcast with Keep Podcasting and then Alban started doing putting it into the YouTube videos and he started putting it into I don't know blog posts and t-shirts.
6:33
Kevin: And Jordan made stickers a couple of years ago that said keep podcasting.
6:34
Kevin: And so this it's been in front of us for a ridiculous amount of time and we just kept saying, oh no, that's just how we like sign off things.
6:41
Kevin: That's not really our tagline or whatever.
6:43
Kevin: We can't really.
6:43
Kevin: That's not really our tagline or whatever.
6:49
Kevin: We can't really.
6:50
Kevin: That's not the story.
6:50
Kevin: But then we started thinking about it and we're like it is the story, that is what we're doing.
6:52
Kevin: There are lots of great places and pretty easy places now.
6:54
Kevin: There haven't been, historically, forever easy places to start podcasting, but now there are.
6:58
Kevin: There are enough easy places to start podcasting.
7:00
Kevin: The difference between them and us are now we're working hard to make sure that you're a successful podcaster, to make sure that you can keep podcasting, and so software is a part of that, for sure, but so is community, and so is motivation, and so is encouragement, and so is being able to connect with other podcasters and on and on and on, so you can read the post and I go into all of those things.
7:23
Kevin: But yeah, that's the refinement of the messaging, and then there's a look and feel that should probably change to capture some of that as well.
7:31
Kevin: So that's where the new logo comes in, and the new color scheme and the slight adjustments that we've made to the user interface when you're logged in and using Buzzsprout, and on and on, and on.
7:40
Jordan: Yeah, I think one of the things that you touched on in the blog that I was like, yeah, that is part of like the keeping podcasting is also keeping podcasting open.
7:51
Jordan: You know, because Buzzsprout has been such a major player in that.
7:55
Jordan: Just at our core, we want people to keep podcasting.
7:58
Jordan: We want to keep the podcast industry like healthy and thriving.
8:04
Kevin: Yeah, thanks, we have talked about this ever since 2017, 2018, buzzsprout really started to kind of hit our stride in terms of growth.
8:17
Kevin: We went from kind of a small to medium player in the space to we were starting to gain enough traction that we were a major player in the podcast hosting space, and at that time some of us who were on the team started talking about like there is a level of responsibility that comes along with this, and it starts to extend beyond just serving our customers and serving ourselves.
8:31
Kevin: What responsibility do we have in the greater podcasting ecosystem and how can we help nurture and help serve that as well, so podcasting stays healthy and thriving and available for whatever the future holds?
8:45
Kevin: And so that includes things like finding other people in the space who are doing really great things and figuring out what resources do we have that we can share with them, make available to them to continue their growth?
8:55
Kevin: What conferences are doing great things and how can we support them?
8:59
Kevin: Can we show up and just present our wares?
9:01
Kevin: Yeah, we can do that, but can we also bring other people who might not otherwise have an opportunity to attend these things?
9:06
Kevin: Can we bring some people?
9:07
Kevin: Yeah, we can do that.
9:09
Kevin: The podcast namespace project, podcasting 2.0, the podcast index.
9:13
Kevin: These are all really good things for the industry overall.
9:16
Kevin: How can we support them?
9:17
Kevin: How can we participate in them?
9:18
Kevin: Can we give them some money?
9:19
Kevin: Yeah, we can absolutely give them some money.
9:21
Kevin: Can we promote them?
9:22
Kevin: Can we do awareness stuff to bring more attention to them?
9:25
Kevin: Yeah, we can do that.
9:26
Kevin: Do we have some technical minds that might be able to dedicate some time to helping advance some of these new tags and technologies that we're working on?
9:34
Kevin: Yeah, we can do that.
9:35
Kevin: Do we help adoption of all this stuff that is happening in podcasting 2.0?
9:39
Kevin: How do we get other I mean realistically mostly competitors on board with this stuff?
9:51
Kevin: Like, should we use these technologies as a competitive advantage?
9:52
Kevin: Well, that might be good for Buzzsprout, but is it the best thing for podcasting overall, the whole space?
9:57
Kevin: Not really.
9:58
Kevin: The best thing is for more and more companies to get on board and adopt these.
10:02
Kevin: So it's not just one company that's using it as an advantage, but it's one company joining hands with another company who's a competitor and saying if we work together, the rising tide lifts all boats.
10:10
Kevin: So, like, how many other companies can we get to do this together so that we all get a lift instead of maybe just one of us getting a lift, and so we love that project.
10:18
Kevin: We jumped in on that.
10:19
Kevin: Lots of great things, but that all comes from this place, of the responsibility that comes along with the blessing that we have to be able to be one of the larger players in the space.
10:30
Alban: Yeah, there's certain things that only ever move one way.
10:33
Alban: We talked about this a lot with the brand, and one of the things that only ever moves one way is things do not become more open.
10:40
Alban: They often get more and more closed off and it's only by happenstance that the web is so open.
10:48
Alban: But I mean, I remember getting online for the first time in I don't know, probably 1994, 1995.
10:55
Alban: And it was a totally different world.
10:57
Alban: There were all these little companies and startups and message boards and all sorts of things.
11:02
Alban: There was no such thing as social media and once we started getting the really big players Google and Facebook and YouTube and all these things things start closing down more and more and really since, like 2007, these last 15 years or more than 15 years, 17 years.
11:22
Alban: The last 17 years, things have gotten so much more closed off and we're very fortunate that podcasting is one of these few things that's held out.
11:31
Alban: That said, we're going to try to stay independent.
11:34
Alban: We're going to try to make it so people can reach directly to their audience.
11:38
Alban: You can use a podcast hosting company or you can just do it totally by yourself.
11:43
Alban: You don't need to have the permission from some big company to get your message out to the world.
11:49
Alban: There doesn't have to be a middleman charging rent on the whole industry, and it's wonderful that we have it and we've been put in a privileged position to be one of the companies that can actually make money from this setup, and part of that is a responsibility to help ensure that it stays around.
12:10
Alban: And that doesn't just mean try to make as much money as we can, but it means supporting the conferences and supporting the newsletters and trying to find people who are doing interesting work and help their work and make sure that we're leaving this a better place so that in 15 years, podcasting will continue to be going strong and it will be a much more vibrant, much more competitive, much more interesting space, not just one that's overrun by one or two big giant companies.
12:38
Jordan: Kevin, you said, I love this.
12:40
Jordan: It says Buzzsprout is 15, which is like a hundred in internet years, and it feels like there's been such like a snowball the last few years with Buzzsprout, like we had talked about before.
12:52
Jordan: You know, the main mission at first was to help people like start their podcasts, and so we have all of these guides and we have all of these things for people to get started and make it easier for them to start Montage.
13:05
Jordan: But then, with the keeping podcasting, you know, now we have this iOS app and we have the Android app and we have fan mail and co-host and magic mastering and just like all these things just to make the experience so much better, and it feels like there's just been this like big movement with Buzzsprout and so I think that is really fitting, that like at this point, now that we've done all this work and it's just this like wonderful tool for podcasters to use.
13:35
Jordan: Now we get to like go wow, look at what we made and let's make it even better with, like a rebrand, with refreshing the logo, you know, just making it look nicer and really fitting in with all of the features and stuff that we offer to podcasters.
13:54
Kevin: Yeah, I agree with you.
13:55
Kevin: I feel the same way, like I feel like things are accelerating when I look back over the past 15 years.
14:01
Kevin: It was a good exercise for me to go through because it's like look how much we've done in 15 years, but the bulk of that work does seem to have occurred probably in the past five, and it was just a good reminder of how long it takes to actually build momentum Right.
14:16
Kevin: And there's a parallel there between, like a podcaster's journey as well.
14:19
Jordan: Exactly.
14:20
Kevin: So hard to start and continue to push and grind when you don't feel like you're getting the traction that is equivalent to the effort that you're putting in.
14:29
Kevin: And that is very much the story of Buzzsprout.
14:32
Kevin: Buzzsprout was not an overnight success, by any stretch of the imagination.
14:35
Kevin: It was years and years and years before we.
14:38
Kevin: You know even, Alban, what number on the team were you Four, five, three, I think.
14:44
Alban: Yeah, three, well, five, three, I think.
14:47
Alban: Yeah, three, well, three after you and Tom, so I'd be five if you and Tom are included, but John and Dave were ahead of me.
14:52
Kevin: Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
14:53
Kevin: Yeah, so the team total size when Alban joined was five, right.
14:58
Kevin: So Tom and I and then three other people joined, and that was 2017?
15:03
Kevin: 2014.
15:06
Kevin: 2014.
15:06
Kevin: Okay so five years.
15:08
Alban: I love all these like date quizzes because things feel like there's certain amount of time and then when you know the actual date, you're like God.
15:15
Alban: That doesn't sound right, like I'm doing math in my head.
15:17
Alban: I'm like yeah that's probably like 10 years.
15:18
Alban: Right now it's 17.
15:21
Kevin: Yeah, when you sit and write it down, you realize how long it actually took.
15:25
Jordan: Yeah.
15:25
Kevin: But five years to go from two employees to five, and then I don't know.
15:29
Kevin: I'm not going to do the math, but in that amount of time then things started, you know, picking up and growing at a little faster clip.
15:35
Kevin: 2018, podcasting started taking off really.
15:39
Kevin: On the creator side, more people are interested in creating podcasts 2019 and 2020.
15:43
Kevin: We have a pandemic hit pretty much worldwide, and a lot of people are at home more often and interested in maybe creating content from their homes.
15:52
Kevin: That also helps podcasting a lot.
15:53
Kevin: So there's another inflection point there, and there's lots of inflection points in podcasting.
15:58
Kevin: We don't need to go through them all, but it does seem as though this was not just a linear growth curve.
16:04
Kevin: There were some exponential jumps and inflection points, but you never would hit them if you would have given up early, if you would have said you know what we've done, what we can in podcasting.
16:12
Kevin: We're going to put this thing on the side burner and pursue another idea or something, and there were times when we were certainly tempted to do that.
16:18
Kevin: What kept bringing us back, though, and continuing to invest, was just our love for podcasting.
16:22
Kevin: We're like we don't have to be building the next multi-billion dollar business.
16:27
Kevin: There doesn't have to be an exit strategy.
16:29
Kevin: We don't have to get VCs involved and build the team out and do all this crazy stuff.
16:33
Kevin: Like we love podcasting and we can help it and we can help creators, and that was fun and that was fulfilling and, as long as we were able to continue to feed our families and pay our bills, that was a great place for us to be in, and so I do feel thankful and blessed that we did have enough growth to be able to sustain it and continue to invest, but just from a purely business mindset.
16:53
Kevin: We probably had people around us and we certainly had our own thoughts.
16:56
Kevin: There might be some better business ideas to pursue, but sticking with it and having a long-term mindset really got us to this place that, like I said, we couldn't have imagined in our wildest dreams.
17:06
Kevin: So I don't know, it's been encouraging for me to look back and relive some of that, and I hope it's encouraging for podcasters also, because the effort doesn't always equate to the reward.
17:17
Kevin: But at least for us in this instance, sticking with it and pursuing it and continuing to invest in something that you really believe in over time has, for us, been a real blessing and returned way more than we ever expected.
17:30
Alban: Yeah, just to give people a sense of numbers, when I started, there were a few thousand podcasts on Buzzsprout.
17:36
Alban: I think less than 2000.
17:38
Alban: And so we're somewhere in the order of like 60 times bigger now, and that's five years of good growth, rolling out features, good promotion, being involved in the industry and, I think, a lot of podcasters.
17:53
Alban: That's what their journey can look like too.
17:55
Alban: You're laying the groundwork over and over, you're building up your systems, you're learning more, you're getting more passionate, you're learning how to edit, you figure out, mastering, and you're going through it over and over.
18:08
Alban: I'm seeing around me there's other people who are doing better and they're doing something over on TikTok.
18:14
Alban: Maybe I should be doing that, but if you're into it and you love it and you haven't set yourself up with unrealistic expectations, you can stick with it.
18:24
Alban: You can get unbelievably fortunate, like Buzzsprout did in 2014, when Apple says, hey, we're going to put this podcast app on everyone's phone by default, and then Sarah Koenig does Serial that same year and all of a sudden, podcasting goes mainstream and there's a bloop.
18:40
Alban: And that was the year that podcast movement started on Kickstarter.
18:44
Alban: There's a little bloop, oh, really, yeah.
18:47
Alban: Then John went to podcast movement and came back and goes.
18:51
Alban: I only met one customer and we went oh wait, there's more podcasters out there than we knew about.
18:57
Alban: We thought we had them all.
18:58
Alban: We thought they all used Buzzsprout and we started realizing, you know, maybe the industry's a little bigger and you know, there's just these moments that are these opportunities for things to grow, and if you're not in the game, if you're not creating content or creating a product or doing something, those just pass by.
19:15
Alban: But I think with Buzzsprout, one of the great things that Tom and Kevin did was starting lots of little projects and working on all of them and not taking venture capital money.
19:27
Alban: So there was never this.
19:28
Alban: We have to 100X or else it blows up.
19:31
Alban: And so they're able to slowly grow.
19:34
Alban: Work on the ones that had traction, let them take a break when they weren't meet customers, pursue the things that they're interested in, and then hit these moments that were like, ooh, everything's clicking for podcasting right now.
19:47
Alban: There was a point when everything was clicking for the time tracking software they'd built, and so you can go all in on that.
19:53
Alban: And I think for podcasters there's a similar thing If you're putting out content every once in a while, one of those is going to catch fire and you caught the moment and where everybody else now is trying to play catch up and they're like, oh, I see what you did, I'm going to go and copy it.
20:08
Alban: Well, the moment might've already passed and if so, if you're the person who's putting out these seeds, some of them will sprout unintentional pun, I guess, but you have the opportunity to really grow.
20:19
Alban: And so one of the things I love is I saw somebody today on LinkedIn when I was posting about the rebrand and they shared.
20:26
Alban: They just hit a million downloads.
20:28
Alban: But it's somebody who's been podcasting for like eight years.
20:31
Alban: You know there's slow, slow growth and then boom.
20:35
Alban: Then things catch on.
20:36
Alban: So if you're out there and you've been working at it for a while and things have started to catch a little bit, I would encourage you to remember you're just trying to make improvement month over month, because those raw numbers of being massive, those come through compounded interest added up over and over and over throughout the years.
20:58
Jordan: One of the things I wanted to go into was sort of more of the details on the rebrand itself and sort of like how that came about.
21:06
Jordan: So I guess probably one of the first things we should address is why did we decide like now is the time to do a rebrand?
21:15
Kevin: Well, yeah, let me get Alban to talk a little bit about where the spark of this idea came from, because I really value Alban opinion and his expertise on stuff like this.
21:24
Kevin: Alban is not a designer by trade, but he has a really good eye and has great taste and, especially like he's a little younger than I am, he picks up on trends a little faster than I do.
21:33
Kevin: But I also had this history with our brand and I had this I did mention something about like an old, worn t-shirt in the blog post and I kind of felt that way.
21:42
Kevin: Like I knew, looking at the old Buzzsprout logo, like it wasn't the hippest thing, it wasn't the coolest thing, but it was like this comforting symbol for what Buzzsprout was to me and it took me a very long time to be able to understand that that's going to go away.
21:55
Kevin: You're going to have to be done with that, and I was hard and so, just like as a founder, I started to just remove myself and starting and it sounds dramatic to be like you have to mourn the loss of the symbol but it just felt weird.
22:08
Kevin: It felt weird that we were going to be talking about Buzzsprout and it was going to look different.
22:11
Kevin: It was going to have a different mark.
22:12
Kevin: I was going to be talking about Buzzsprout and it was going to look different.
22:14
Kevin: It was going to have a different mark.
22:15
Kevin: I was going to be wearing t-shirts around the office that had a different thing on it that represented Buzzsprout.
22:18
Kevin: So let me hand it over to Alban and talk about what your thoughts were about how we should look and what the symbols are, colors and everything that should represent Buzzsprout.
22:26
Alban: Well, the first thing is I remember probably the first blog post we wrote that ever got serious traction was a post I wrote about designing your podcast cover art and I wrote out a bunch of lists and I was breaking down what makes good artwork, what doesn't, what you should be considering, and one of them was you've got to avoid these tired symbols and putting like microphones in your artwork and putting headphones.
22:51
Alban: People know it's a podcast.
22:52
Alban: Movies do not have DVDs and cameras in the movie poster.
22:57
Alban: They have pictures of what the movie's about.
23:00
Alban: Get rid of it.
23:01
Alban: And I'd get snarky comments from day one.
23:04
Alban: They were like why do you have a microphone in your logo?
23:08
Alban: And I was like, yeah, it's kind of a good point.
23:11
Alban: It was a little on the nose, I think at times in the beginning People didn't know what podcasting was at all, but once we'd been fully understood as a podcasting company, then we started going okay, yeah, it's a little goofy, but we love it.
23:24
Alban: This is a symbol that we love.
23:26
Alban: And so every few cycles, I think Kevin's like oh, I think I'm working on this, I'm working on this, and I'm like what about a rebrand?
23:32
Alban: Kevin's like you have no idea how much work that is.
23:35
Alban: I'm like, ah, what's it going to be?
23:37
Alban: Like a month, that's not a big deal.
23:40
Alban: And I'd be like, look, you make a new symbol, pick out some colors.
23:43
Alban: I'm colorblind, so I'll say I'm excited about whatever.
23:46
Alban: And then I'll pick out some fonts and like we're done and Cameron's like this is so much more work than you think and it happened a few different times.
23:55
Alban: And then when Cameron joined the team, cameron first thing was like you know, what I'm excited about is doing a rebrand and Cameron has been through rebrands and Cameron has branded companies, branded products that are very high level, and right off the bat he did like a little at a very high level and right off the bat he did like a little mini presentation to us about what was working at Buzzsprout, what's not working, what parts of the brand we love, what parts are just kind of accidentally that's the way they are and I remember seeing that presentation and going that looks like it was more work than what I expected the entire rebrand to take.
24:33
Jordan: Just the analysis of like where we were falling apart on the branding Exactly.
24:37
Alban: Right, yeah.
24:38
Alban: And we ended up meeting with quite a few different companies that all they did was they focused on rebrands.
24:43
Alban: And I remember looking at some of the work going gosh, this is so much work.
24:49
Alban: And so very quickly realizing, oh, kevin was right when he said this is much more than you expected.
24:55
Alban: We ended up with a company called Goal.
24:58
Alban: They did this wonderful job with us.
25:02
Alban: The way they started was really trying to understand what is Buzzsprout, what's the Buzzsprout voice, what are the characteristics that we have?
25:11
Alban: What do we care about?
25:12
Alban: Characteristics that we have, what do we care about?
25:16
Alban: And it was very interesting to see how quickly they honed in on characters and archetypes that matched the way we thought of Buzzsprout.
25:21
Alban: They showed us for other brands that they'd done as specific as like.
25:27
Alban: I don't remember what the brand was, but it was some like Star Wars.
25:29
Alban: They were like our brand is like Han Solo and they listed out what Han Solo was like.
25:34
Alban: And I remember thinking like, oh, that's so helpful If I was writing copy for a brand and I said to myself would this character say this?
25:45
Alban: It becomes very clear if something's on brand or off brand.
25:48
Alban: And we went through that whole process with them and we come up with a few archetypes and we're like these are characters from pop culture that we think we're similar to.
25:58
Alban: Here's the words we would use, here's the way we want to communicate with our customers.
26:03
Alban: Then we're able to find colors and we're able to find typography and all that match it.
26:08
Alban: And so now this is a unified brand that hopefully will bring more pieces of Buzzsprout together into kind of a tighter, more focused mission versus.
26:21
Alban: I think where we've been for a while was Kevin's vision, but then sometimes the way that my team or the design team or the support team, where we'd all kind of push out our own vision and they could at times end up being at odds.
26:35
Alban: Now we're going to be able to pull it all together into a more cohesive brand.
26:40
Jordan: Okay, so we started working with Goal.
26:42
Jordan: How long did we work with them on this?
26:45
Kevin: Yeah, it was probably about eight months.
26:47
Jordan: Wow.
26:47
Kevin: There was times where we were more engaged and there were times when we were less engaged.
26:51
Kevin: There was times where they would go off for four or five weeks at a time and just work on a whole bunch of stuff and then bring us back in, and then we'd be intensely working with them for a couple of weeks to give them feedback and then send them back out.
27:01
Kevin: It was a long process.
27:02
Kevin: That was.
27:03
Kevin: One of the things that got us over the hurdle was that Cameron joined the team, and so he had worked with agencies like this before.
27:11
Kevin: He had worked with agencies like this before he had the experience and he led the charge, and so the thing that I was most scared of from what Alban was saying was how much time this takes and how much that would take me out of being able to do things that are really important for Buzzsprout.
27:25
Kevin: And so when Cameron joined the team, he was saying not only am I willing to do it, but I also have the expertise, and that would free me up to not have to drive this project.
27:33
Kevin: And so that was huge.
27:35
Kevin: It was massive.
27:36
Jordan: Yeah, if we didn't have Cameron, I mean, we wouldn't have been able to simultaneously work on the rebrand, the iOS app, the Android app.
27:43
Jordan: I mean, all this was happening at the exact same time, behind the scenes, exactly.
27:48
Kevin: Yeah, one of the things that you know no one will ever see unless we bring it out of the vault at some time just as a fun thing.
27:54
Kevin: But the number of ideas and iterations of this logo are like hundreds and hundreds of rough sketches and ideas, and that's something.
28:04
Kevin: This is really a luxury project, like Buzzsprout had gotten to the point where we're able to justify working with people who are really experts in this field.
28:14
Kevin: We're able to justify working with people who are really experts in this field, and so, like the original logo was just myself working with a graphic design, a freelance graphic designer, and we iterated on a few different ideas, but I think maybe we had five or six that were in contention.
28:25
Kevin: I think I've shared some of those with the Buzzsprout team.
28:28
Kevin: At some point I brought out the original five or six and we're like this could have been our logo Now, like if we do that again in the future, like we're going to have to have, you're going to show hundreds and hundreds of slides.
28:37
Kevin: We saw all these different icons that represented different things, and where we landed is actually very close to one of the earliest ideas that they presented, but it's just a highly refined version of that.
28:49
Kevin: So the new sprouts with the lightning bolt representing the buzz that they probably showed us, I think in one of the first design reviews they did with us.
28:58
Kevin: Now it was a rougher version.
29:00
Kevin: We actually really there were some things that were really off putting about the proportions of that and like if you pulled back and squinted you would see things that boat yeah, you'd see boats and stuff.
29:09
Kevin: So it's stuff that we didn't want to represent buzzsprout.
29:13
Kevin: But then we went through this process of looking at all these other wild off the wall ideas some things very similar, some things very wildly different and we had a lot that we really liked and refined and refined and refined.
29:25
Kevin: And as they were doing that, they were also refining this original idea and got the proportions right, got the weight right and the balance right and it felt very much like Buzzsprout was kind of growing up and maturing and picking up on current trends in design, but also paying this homage to its roots, and so it really started to grow on us.
29:44
Kevin: We really fell in love with this new shape, this new icon to represent Buzzsprout, and so I just got the latest iOS update on my phone.
29:52
Kevin: I had it last week and so it's been living on my phone for about a week now, but I'm still smiling Like I'm grinning ear to ear.
29:58
Kevin: Every time I tap on a little folder that holds that icon, I'm like, oh, that is a great mark.
30:02
Kevin: I really do love it.
30:03
Jordan: I love it, it's so great.
30:05
Jordan: And I remember the first time I saw it I think it was like I saw an iteration of it last, like September, and I remember just being like, oh, that's it, like that looks so good.
30:18
Jordan: And I wasn't, I wasn't like in the process, I was just in the room while you were discussing it, but that's the one that I saw and I was just like, oh man, I hope they land on this, cause it feels so good.
30:26
Jordan: Um, and a fun fact about the bolt logo is if you look at the two Z's in Buzzsprout you can see sort of like a negative version of that between the two Z's and it reminds me of like the FedEx.
30:39
Jordan: You can see like the arrow between the I think it's like the X and the E or something.
30:44
Jordan: So that's just like a little fun Easter egg that's right Logo.
30:48
Alban: Yeah, one of the iterations we went through that I fell in love with, that we did not pick, had like a little bit of an arch over, like leaves, with a circle in the center and I was like this is perfect, looks so good, I love this.
31:03
Alban: And Kevin looks at it and goes the minion.
31:05
Alban: And I'm like what are you talking about?
31:07
Alban: This one's great.
31:08
Alban: And he's like it's a minion.
31:09
Alban: And then he pulled up like a picture of the minions, like the show, and it's the exact same shape.
31:15
Alban: And I'm like, oh no, if it had been me, I'd have been like we're rolling with it, we're going.
31:23
Alban: Cameron and Kevin are like no, thank God, there's some checks and balances here.
31:29
Kevin: Well, and Alban returned the favor because one of the early ones that I liked, I liked a lot.
31:33
Kevin: And then he said, oh, that's like a Grateful Dead album cover.
31:36
Kevin: And Alban pulled up a Grateful Dead album cover that was like an alien head thing, and then I could never look at that logo without seeing that again.
31:44
Kevin: So I was like, okay, well, that one's off the shelf.
31:46
Alban: Wait, was it Grateful Dead or what was like?
31:48
Alban: I thought it was Grateful Dead.
31:50
Alban: Yeah, now I remember that one.
31:58
Alban: It also is very similar to the Alienware PC logo.
31:59
Alban: There's so many good logos, jordan, that you see them and you're like we got it.
32:01
Alban: And then you start looking through other logos and they're so similar.
32:05
Alban: One of the things I love about this one is that we kept the leaves.
32:09
Alban: If you look, the leaves are actually, they're shaped slightly differently.
32:12
Alban: They're a little bit more symmetrical than the old leaves were, but the leaves staying the same helps the logo seem more similar.
32:21
Alban: Obviously, keeping the brand name helps a lot.
32:26
Alban: They're both San Sera font, so they're similar.
32:29
Alban: We have a capital B now.
32:31
Alban: A lot of things stayed the same, but it felt like enough the same and different that we're able to take a step forward without leaving most of what we love about Buzzsprout behind.
32:44
Alban: A lot of times I see rebrands that look so different and I'm like but I really liked the brand that I've been working with for so long and all of a sudden you're totally changing it and you're probably changing it because you company got bored with it, because you work on it every day.
33:00
Alban: I customer only ever see this once every month and so to me it's great, and so we were trying to a lot of times balance that.
33:09
Alban: You know we see these constantly, and so for us it can be like all right, this is getting stale.
33:14
Alban: But that can be very different from the experience of our customers, which are like oh, I'm using this once a week, twice a week.
33:22
Alban: To me it's a new brand, it feels good.
33:25
Alban: I don't want to get a ton of different change, so I'm sticking with the name similar typography, but not the same.
33:32
Alban: Similar logo shape, but not the same.
33:35
Alban: We're able to try to carry over a lot of what we still love.
33:39
Jordan: Yeah, it's like what Kevin was saying about how he felt apprehensive about changing.
33:45
Jordan: He had to mourn it and it was just like you don't want to change it.
33:49
Jordan: It hurts.
33:49
Jordan: And I was thinking that's probably the same feeling that a lot of our podcasters are having.
33:55
Jordan: They're just like no, I love that logo.
33:57
Jordan: That was comforting to me, I was familiar with it and so I think that, um, you know it's, it's grown on Kevin, it's grown on us.
34:05
Jordan: I remember seeing the capital.
34:06
Jordan: This is so silly, but I remember seeing the capital B for the first time on Buzzsprout and I hated it.
34:11
Jordan: I hated it.
34:12
Jordan: I'm like why would we do that?
34:13
Jordan: And I hated it.
34:13
Jordan: I'm like why would we do that?
34:14
Jordan: And now I love it and I'm like, well, we should have just had a capital B the whole time, because there's something about it that just feels right and it does take some time to get used to.
34:24
Kevin: Yeah, I mean that gives you a little bit of a mark to when Buzzsprout launched.
34:28
Kevin: It was kind of like a trendy thing at the time to not capitalize brand names and logos, and so that wasn't necessarily something that I felt passionately about at the time.
34:37
Kevin: It was just kind of whatever that's in style right now, we'll go with that, and then over time it just starts to become that that's your logo, and so one of the first questions they asked us from goal was what's your reasoning behind not having a capital B for Buzzsprout?
34:49
Kevin: And we're like we don't really have a good answer for that no-transcript if we are maturing as a brand, that does feel more appropriate.
35:26
Jordan: That's so funny.
35:28
Kevin: He didn't mean it as a burn, but oh my gosh, it cut.
35:31
Alban: One of the reasons I love having the capital B is that it's clear the B is capitalized and the S is not.
35:38
Alban: So when we were all lowercase, I'd see online people would do camel case, which is where you capitalize random letters in the middle of the word.
35:46
Alban: So they do capital B, capital S.
35:49
Jordan: Sorry, camel case that's awesome.
35:53
Alban: You think of like a camel.
35:54
Jordan: Yeah, I've never heard of that.
35:56
Alban: And that also was a trend at some point, like YouTube or TuneIn.
36:00
Alban: You see it in our industry and I hate it.
36:05
Alban: I mean it makes sense for me when I say YouTube.
36:08
Alban: That does seem right.
36:09
Alban: But when I would see it for Buzzsprout, I'd be writing writing to people who wrote a blog and be like thanks for the update.
36:16
Alban: Oh, by the way, buzzsprout doesn't have a capital S and they're like I don't care man, like why are you emailing me about this?
36:22
Alban: But personally I think that having a capital B will make it clear that S is lowercase.
36:29
Alban: So yeah, huge win, huge win for my OCD.
36:34
Jordan: I didn't even think about that.
36:35
Jordan: Well, and hopefully it'll help with um we.
36:37
Jordan: We get a lot of people doing initials in, like the on social media and the Facebook group, and they'll call it BS, and I think it's maybe related to that.
36:47
Alban: I don't know if people know this, but that's actually used for many other things and some we don't want to be associated with.
36:54
Kevin: Yeah, If you have to shorten Buzzsprout, just go with Buzz.
36:57
Jordan: Yeah.
36:58
Kevin: Don't go BS.
36:59
Jordan: I was surprised at the amount of people that didn't understand the Bolt logo and they're like why would they have a Bolt?
37:06
Jordan: Why is there a Bolt there?
37:07
Jordan: That doesn't make any sense.
37:09
Alban: One of my favorites was somebody who said oh, it's for like charging right, like green energy leaves and a charge symbol, no, it's buzz sprout.
37:21
Jordan: Oh yeah, cause we see it and we're like, oh, that makes so much sense.
37:27
Jordan: And then, yeah, I guess you don't think about that.
37:30
Kevin: Yeah, when we think about buzz, I mean obviously there's the sound of a buzz, a buzzing noise, and and electricity does make some noise, sometimes in the right conditions, but also like more.
37:39
Kevin: So it's kind of like the energy and excitement and power, like empowering things and sprouting, like that's you know growth.
37:46
Kevin: Yeah, but anyway it made sense to us.
37:48
Kevin: One of the really fun things about it is now like you can.
37:50
Kevin: If you have to shorten it when you're texting or something, there are emojis that are there's a lightning bolt emoji and there's a sprout emoji, so you can just do the little lightning bolt and sprout emoji next to each other and you got a sprout.
38:01
Kevin: That's really fun.
38:02
Jordan: Yeah, I favorited those emojis for that very reason, right.
38:07
Kevin: I did yeah, so you'll.
38:08
Kevin: You'll probably see some of those showing up in our maybe some of our buzzcast tweets and stuff.
38:12
Alban: Yeah, it was a very fun project.
38:15
Alban: I am infinitely grateful and really sad that Cameron couldn't be with us today.
38:20
Alban: He's on vacation on PTO, well deserved or else we would have had him kind of coming through and probably talking about this much more detail, much more eloquently than I have.
38:30
Jordan: Yes.
38:30
Alban: But Cameron and the team at goal, chris and Chris.
38:34
Alban: It was really wonderful to work with all of them and kind of be I don't know, be able to shape what we ended up coming out with, and it's been a really long journey.
38:44
Alban: It's been a ton of fun.
38:45
Kevin: Yeah, and make sure we give a shout out to Dave Ditches from our design team, who worked hand in hand with Cameron to really bring all this stuff to life.
38:52
Kevin: So, like we said, cameron led the charge on getting the new branding elements in place, but then all of that stuff had to be implemented and Dave's our lead designer on Buzzsprout and just worked tirelessly to bring this stuff to life and make it happen.
39:05
Kevin: So thank you so much to Dave, thank you to Cameron, thank you to Brian, john, Alban Jordan, like the whole team, of course, but there are a couple people who really carried the heaviest parts of this lift and made it happen for our customers, so shout out to them.
39:22
Jordan: It's time for sound off the segment where you send in your responses to our podcasting questions.
39:27
Jordan: We have a lot of fan mail to get through because we recorded early, so we're going to try to do this in a timely manner.
39:35
Jordan: So I'll start off with Steph from AIM Podcasting.
39:39
Jordan: She said how did you include a send us a text message message twice in your show notes?
39:44
Jordan: I want to do this.
39:46
Kevin: So you enable it in the fan mail settings.
39:48
Kevin: Then just go look at one of your episodes now that it has that link, like on your public Buzzsprout website, and then just like right click on it, hit copy link and then you can.
39:59
Alban: All right, we got another one from Richard, friend of the show.
40:02
Alban: Hey, buzzcast crew, I really enjoyed your Snapcast about video podcasts.
40:06
Alban: I had a different take on some of the positives I wanted to share.
40:09
Alban: This is the one that Jordan and I did on our own.
40:12
Alban: When I first started my podcast, I remember trying to get people to listen those that didn't understand what a podcast player was.
40:18
Alban: They would always ask if I was on YouTube.
40:20
Alban: So when I did my second podcast, I incorporated some video using Riverside and put the video version on YouTube and the audio on podcast directories as normal.
40:29
Alban: Doing that allowed me to keep my normal audience but also bring in new people that may never use a podcasting app.
40:35
Alban: I quote unquote watch some podcasts that have video versions, but for me I find more listening than watching and rarely look at the screen, but sometimes it's just easier to use YouTube.
40:46
Alban: Just my two cents.
40:47
Alban: Thanks for making great content I think I agree with like everything in here.
40:52
Kevin: Yeah, For me.
40:53
Kevin: I'm not a video podcast guy and I can't ever like if there's.
40:55
Kevin: If there's a podcast only available in video, I can't do it because I won't watch it, I'll just listen to it, and it just feels like.
41:01
Kevin: I'm working in the garage and I'm leaving the hose running out in the water, like I don't understand that analogy at all.
41:07
Kevin: Is that a weird analogy?
41:08
Kevin: I get it.
41:09
Kevin: I can explain it.
41:10
Kevin: I feel like I'm just like wasting bandwidth, like something is playing but I'm only consuming half of it and the rest of it is just being wasted and so that's like the hose running analogy.
41:19
Kevin: It's just probably because I'm a tech guy or something.
41:21
Kevin: I'm just weird about stuff like that.
41:22
Kevin: I get your use case.
41:24
Kevin: I don't think there's anything wrong with it for me.
41:25
Kevin: I'm just a different person and everyone tells me that they're like you're a weird, different person.
41:29
Kevin: Don't feel like you should try to be.
41:33
Kevin: And we got a message from Chattanooga, tennessee, talking about fan mail, said I love this new feature.
41:39
Kevin: I just activated about an hour and I can't wait to tell our audience about it.
41:42
Kevin: Thanks for the continued innovation.
41:44
Kevin: Thanks, chattanooga, one of my favorite cities in Tennessee.
41:47
Jordan: I like the sound of it.
41:48
Jordan: Chattanooga Jared from the hey Chaplain podcast said I was just at a convention and spent an inordinate amount of time trying to help non-tech savvy potential listeners to find my podcast.
41:59
Jordan: I use the Buzzsprout app every day but I didn't realize I could share my podcast straight to their phone.
42:04
Jordan: I should have it just didn't occur to me.
42:06
Jordan: I wish I had known that because it would save me so much time with novice users so happy to be on Buzzsprout.
42:11
Jordan: Jared same.
42:12
Jordan: I had no idea that that was a thing.
42:16
Alban: We got a message from Kristen who said I'd love to host a podcast meetup in Tucson, love to connect to discuss what worked for y'all.
42:25
Alban: I couldn't really tell you too much.
42:26
Alban: I mean, we could put you in contact with the podcast movement team to put together all of the meetups that we went to.
42:30
Alban: Or maybe with Potter Milligan who set up the one in Jacksonville, florida.
42:36
Alban: But I'd love to find a way for us to collect some of the best practices for how these meetups are run well, because we've seen them run well many times but we've also seen sometimes that they're run poorly.
42:48
Kevin: So maybe we should connect and try to pull together some of these best practices for you Longmeadow, Massachusetts, writes in and says I find it hard to listen every week because you're not on Spotify.
42:59
Kevin: Why is this?
43:00
Kevin: You have a feed on Spotify, but it's from years ago.
43:02
Kevin: Please bring the podcast to Spotify, Please, please, please.
43:05
Kevin: Welp Longmeadow, that's not going to happen for this show.
43:10
Kevin: We're not going to go to Spotify and we've had past episodes.
43:12
Kevin: Maybe Jordan can find one and link to it in the show notes from today about why we're not in Spotify.
43:17
Kevin: But there's a lot of reasons, but Spotify is not the right place for this show.
43:20
Kevin: We do have some other Buzzsprout podcasts on Spotify, but just not Buzzcast.
43:23
Kevin: So this podcast is specifically talking about what's going on in the podcast industry and it's something that we put out to the podcast industry because we want to help sustain the healthiest podcast industry that we think is possible and we don't believe that Spotify is acting in the best interest of the podcast industry all the time.
43:39
Kevin: So right now we're not there.
43:41
Kevin: If things change, maybe we'll be there, but that's why we're not there today.
43:44
Kevin: Thanks for writing in.
43:46
Alban: Same logic applies also to YouTube, which is why this show is not on YouTube as well.
43:50
Alban: It's just.
43:51
Alban: This is our show, and this is the one place for us to say here's how we think podcasting should be done the best way, and so part of that is maybe we take it on the chin just a tiny, tiny bit and have fewer listeners so that we can maintain the health of the ecosystem and put our vote for the world of podcasting that we want Denver.
44:13
Jordan: Colorado says I'm a buzzsprout peep with an Android.
44:16
Jordan: This morning I get to view my account on my phone.
44:18
Jordan: Thank you, you're welcome.
44:20
Kevin: Astoria, Oregon, writes in and says I'm listening to this podcast not only for the interesting banter, but new ideas about things and just love Jordan's laugh.
44:28
Kevin: Let me hear it, Jordan, that was not it.
44:33
Jordan: It's like Jordan impersonating my laugh.
44:34
Kevin: I know she can't fake it, it just has to happen.
44:38
Jordan: Astoria.
44:39
Jordan: I love Astoria.
44:40
Jordan: Have you guys ever been there?
44:41
Kevin: No, no, it's a beautiful name for a town though.
44:43
Jordan: That's where they filmed the Goonies.
44:46
Jordan: You can see the Goonies house there.
44:47
Jordan: I have been there.
44:48
Kevin: Well, I haven't been to the house, but I've been to the beach, isn't it Cannon Beach, with the three rocks out in the water?
44:57
Jordan: Yeah, the Haystack rocks.
44:58
Alban: Yep, yeah.
44:59
Alban: So I've been to Cannon Beach, which I believe is James Cridlin, the editor of Pod News.
45:04
Alban: He said Pod News Daily takes about 15 minutes to record, not an hour.
45:09
Alban: Fun fact, there's a reason to have a podcast and it's to give the newsletter a final run-through and to spot typos.
45:15
Alban: Interesting.
45:16
Alban: So this is in reference to us doing Buzzsprout Weekly.
45:19
Alban: We were bragging that it probably takes about an hour for Megan and Jordan to record it and then Jordan to edit it.
45:25
Alban: Sounds like James one-upped us a little bit.
45:28
Alban: He's got it down to 15 minutes.
45:30
Jordan: Yeah, I will say in the most recent recording we had the entire recording done in about 11 minutes, so I don't want to brag.
45:39
Alban: But we have a recording challenge.
45:42
Alban: It's not a race, but if it was I'd be doing pretty good.
45:49
Jordan: No, that's great, James, thank you.
45:51
Kevin: We got a message from Seattle.
45:53
Kevin: We're big in the Pacific Northwest.
45:55
Jordan: Got to do a meetup.
45:56
Kevin: I like this.
45:56
Jordan: Got to get together.
45:58
Kevin: Seattle wrote in and said buzzcast weekly does not auto download on Apple podcast.
46:02
Kevin: I've added it to my cast thematically.
46:04
Kevin: Oh no, so I saw this message come in and I checked it.
46:08
Kevin: It is updating for me.
46:09
Kevin: So if it is an issue with some Apple Podcasts, it's definitely not all because it is working on mine, but we will monitor it.
46:15
Kevin: So thanks for putting that on our radar and hopefully it's not a big problem.
46:19
Jordan: So this is in response to our sound off question to two episodes ago have you ever lost podcast files due to a lack of backup?
46:27
Jordan: And Oscar from the pod discussion said I was editing one day without a care in the world when I accidentally deleted a section from the episode in my logic format.
46:36
Jordan: I didn't panic and just hit undo, but my fingers slipped and hit my key bind for do not save and close for the next hour.
46:43
Jordan: I went on a quest in my finder to find it and he says you'll be glad to know that I did in the end.
46:49
Jordan: That is great because I felt my stomach drop just in reading that, felt that my soul then we got a ton of feedback about what speed do you listen to podcasts?
47:02
Alban: So this is our debate we had a few weeks ago between Kevin and I Kevin, who likes to speed listen to everything, and me who one X is the absolute max that you live life.
47:14
Alban: This person in Chicago wrote back wow, Kelvin is such a Philistine.
47:19
Alban: Chicago totally agree, Did you say I totally?
47:22
Kevin: agree?
47:23
Kevin: Yeah, I don't think I am, you know, I don't think I'm a Philistine.
47:32
Kevin: That, and do we have to like resort to name calling at this point?
47:34
Kevin: Can't we just be have different opinions on things?
47:37
Jordan: I mean, it's just a person who doesn't like appreciate the arts.
47:40
Kevin: So oh, so you're saying it's not bad to be a Philistine?
47:45
Alban: There we go.
47:45
Alban: That's the arts.
47:46
Alban: So so you're saying it's not bad to be a Philistine there we go, that's the definition.
47:49
Kevin: There it is.
47:49
Kevin: I kind of recognize that you don't want to be one.
47:52
Kevin: Um, I do appreciate the arts.
47:54
Kevin: I do appreciate and respect it, at least, and, and I and I don't necessarily, I don't necessarily feel like I'm disrespecting it by speeding it up a little bit, because I'm speeding it up so I can consume more of it, because I love it so much, I want more of it.
48:06
Kevin: There we go.
48:07
Kevin: I almost slipped into Trump mode there.
48:10
Kevin: I'm probably the greatest listener of podcasts that there is, because I listened to so many of them.
48:16
Alban: Continuing on Kevin speed listening with the Philistines.
48:19
Alban: I think the difference in listening speed preference is a bit like the difference between parents and kids on a family vacation trip.
48:26
Alban: The kids are like are we there yet?
48:29
Alban: Are we there yet?
48:29
Alban: The parents are like, calm down and just enjoy the trip and the scenery along the way.
48:33
Alban: We'll get there when we get there.
48:35
Jordan: So Kevin's the kid this is from someone in Alaska.
48:40
Kevin: Yeah, I'm not feeling the love yet I think I have to read this next one.
48:42
Kevin: Oscar from the Potter discussion says so.
48:45
Kevin: Here's the deal.
48:45
Kevin: Kevin is wrong.
48:46
Kevin: Podcast at 2X is one thing, but movies freaking movies Absolutely not.
48:53
Kevin: I listen to every single piece of media at 1X and there's nothing you can say to change my mind.
48:57
Kevin: A podcast is a conversation with friends, not a broken record that gives your soul the freaks in the car.
49:02
Kevin: How?
49:02
Kevin: A conversation with friends, not a broken record that gives your soul the freaks in the car?
49:04
Kevin: How about I build an app that only plays the right opinion so I never have to hear Kevin's voice?
49:16
Alban: Oh my gosh, that's harsh, that was worse than the Philistine comment.
49:21
Jordan: Kevin, I think you have some haters.
49:23
Jordan: Oh my gosh, kevin, I think this is going to get get you canceled like you're listening.
49:28
Kevin: Speed preferences.
49:28
Kevin: Evidently I had no idea this opinion was so offensive to people.
49:31
Kevin: I'm so sorry.
49:32
Kevin: I did not mean to offend anyone personally.
49:36
Alban: Well, let's keep this going.
49:38
Alban: Uh, holy cow, I think all that talk about speeding up podcasts and movies gave me some chest pains.
49:44
Alban: All you speed listeners are a little cray cray.
49:48
Alban: If you ask me, I'm sticking with listening to podcasts at one X AKA how the content creator intended.
49:54
Alban: Love the show.
49:55
Alban: Keep up the awesome content.
49:57
Alban: Columbus Ohio.
50:00
Jordan: All right Next up, hi.
50:01
Jordan: Buzzcast team Aliyah here from the prolific hub podcast.
50:04
Jordan: Huge fan.
50:04
Jordan: Love listening.
50:04
Jordan: Buzzcast team Aaliyah, here from the Prolific Hub podcast.
50:05
Jordan: Huge fan.
50:05
Jordan: Love listening to your episodes Currently listening to the Introducing Buzzsprout Weekly episode, and I can't listen to podcasts on anything higher than 1x.
50:11
Jordan: I love listening to podcasts too and learning and absorbing information in that way, so listening any faster feels super disruptive to me.
50:18
Jordan: Listening to long TikTok videos, on the other hand, is different.
50:21
Jordan: Some of those I refuse to listen to on anything slower than 1.5 to 2x Not my podcast, though 1x only.
50:27
Jordan: I'm also like Kevin, though Sometimes I want people to get to the point and speak in 1.5x.
50:31
Jordan: So agree on speeding things up.
50:33
Jordan: Can make a little patient in real life.
50:35
Kevin: That's good.
50:37
Kevin: Grimajo from Behind the Scenes podcast wrote in and said I listen at 1.25.
50:41
Kevin: Hey, the scenes podcast.
50:42
Kevin: Right in and said I listened at 1.25.
50:43
Kevin: Hey, that's pretty good.
50:43
Kevin: Two X is nuts and speeding through movies is nuts.
50:45
Kevin: So I'm sticking with my 1.25.
50:47
Kevin: I do this for audio books when I run as well.
50:50
Kevin: Hey, 1.25.
50:52
Kevin: That's good.
50:52
Kevin: That's all I'm asking for is a little bit.
50:53
Kevin: We don't have to go 1.5, 1.75, just a little bit.
50:56
Kevin: Just open your mind to the idea that you can consume content a little bit faster.
50:59
Kevin: Oh, and it helps if you drink an energy drink before you listen to any of these shows.
51:03
Kevin: So that message brought to you by Jocko Go, the healthy energy drink Get your Jocko Go.
51:13
Alban: I just love the idea of Kevin like downing a monster energy drink, like smoking a pack of cigarettes, just amping up to listen to a podcast at 2x before watching a movie at 2x, before watching a movie at 1.7.
51:26
Kevin: You'd be amazed at what your body can do.
51:29
Alban: Well, warren from Jaded HR, I think it might be with you as well.
51:35
Alban: Kevin, I now have to fast cast when listening to podcasts or audio books, at a minimum of 1.5x, my man.
51:41
Alban: I don't feel like I miss any content.
51:44
Alban: I can't listen at 1x anymore.
51:46
Alban: When I'm in the car, my wife listens to one of her podcasts at 1x.
51:49
Alban: I get frustrated and want to yell at them to hurry up.
51:51
Alban: Well, I don't skip in movies or speed up.
51:54
Alban: Like Kevin, I watch most YouTube videos at 1.5x too.
51:58
Kevin: So, warren, is with you, Kevin.
51:59
Kevin: You're my people.
52:00
Kevin: Keep it up.
52:02
Jordan: Oh boy, here's another one of your people.
52:03
Jordan: Vancouver, british Columbia.
52:05
Jordan: I listen to pods at 2.7x speed right now and love it.
52:10
Jordan: Oh my gosh.
52:14
Jordan: It's purely a way to listen to as many as possible during commutes and runs.
52:18
Jordan: I think it's important to note that you might not have a good experience if you jump straight to 1.5x or 2x.
52:23
Jordan: It's important to note that you might not have a good experience if you jump straight to 1.5x or 2x.
52:26
Jordan: I've just got up by a tenth of a second.
52:27
Jordan: Every time my brain adjusts to a speed and a speed sounds normal to me.
52:29
Jordan: Love your pod platform and support.
52:31
Jordan: So they're talking about like a slow fade, like you know, adding weights to your workout routine.
52:37
Kevin: You're adding speed yep, that's great advice.
52:40
Kevin: You have to build up, you can't just jump straight in.
52:44
Alban: Yeah, you can't just start doing cocaine right off the bat.
52:46
Jordan: You have to do a little bit, you need a gateway drug first that's great advice this is so horrible we've got so many more of these.
52:57
Alban: Uh, I listen at 1.25x on overcast smart speed on.
53:01
Alban: Okay, overcast smart speed I will admit I am a huge fan of, so that was just shortened the silences.
53:08
Alban: So if you're listening to someone like me with long gaps and you don't have an editor like Jordan who's cleaned those up, it'll clean them up for you.
53:15
Alban: So I listened to 1.25x with Overcast Smart Speed On.
53:19
Alban: I'm with Kevin on this.
53:21
Alban: 1x is painful.
53:23
Alban: I think it's a personality thing.
53:25
Alban: Some of us like to listen fast and some of us like to listen slow.
53:32
Alban: I do everything else slowly, though, so I suppose it all evens out.
53:34
Alban: Sarah Rosset, sarah, with the best take of all, which is it's a personality thing.
53:38
Alban: Some of us like one thing, some of us like the others.
53:42
Kevin: Lamar's Iowa wrote.
53:43
Kevin: Wrote in said I usually listen to podcasts between 1.25 and 1.75.
53:47
Kevin: I have found that I'm more attentive when it's faster.
53:50
Kevin: I like that take.
53:51
Kevin: I get distracted from listening.
53:53
Kevin: When podcasts are too slow, I do too.
53:55
Kevin: That's what I do.
53:55
Kevin: I zone out, I start thinking about other things.
53:57
Kevin: So yeah, lamar's iowa, I like that take matthew from girl down nation.
54:01
Jordan: I listen to podcasts at 1.25x speed, but I listen to audiobooks at 1.2.
54:09
Jordan: I like getting through more content per hour while trying to also retain information.
54:11
Jordan: I use Libby for audiobooks Me too.
54:12
Jordan: Libby's great.
54:13
Jordan: So often I also take notes within the app.
54:15
Jordan: If Apple Podcasts has a notes feature I haven't found it I might try other podcast players.
54:20
Jordan: I've heard good things about Pocket Cast.
54:21
Jordan: Do you guys know of any podcast apps that have like a notes feature?
54:24
Jordan: I haven't heard of that.
54:27
Alban: I think that I used one called I think it was Snipped was the one that I used that could take notes, so they transcribe the episodes and then you could like grab little clips from them and I think you could even put notes in there.
54:40
Alban: So I think it was like S-N-I-P-T.
54:43
Alban: So you might look at that to see if it's still around.
54:46
Kevin: This comment made me think two things.
54:48
Kevin: One thing I think right off the bat it would be great for a podcasting app.
54:52
Kevin: So I listen when I'm doing other things.
54:54
Kevin: Podcast listening for me is very passive activity so, like normally, I'm driving the car, it's my main place.
55:00
Kevin: I would love to just have like a button that's like I like what they just said that I could just tap, like that was a cool part, and then at the end maybe it would do like a super cut where it would just kind of grab 30 seconds before where I tapped in 30 seconds after and it would like clip them all together and make like super cuts of episodes that I could listen to.
55:14
Kevin: That'd be very cool, you could figure that out.
55:16
Kevin: And another thing that made me think of is do you, any of you, ever time?
55:20
Kevin: Well, you guys don't, because you only listen at 1x.
55:22
Kevin: But if you get in a car and you punch in where you're going and it's like 30 minutes and then you queue up a podcast episode and it's like an hour.
55:28
Kevin: You know you have to listen at 2x to get that done, but like if the podcast episode is only 30 minutes, or you could just continue it on your drive back.
55:35
Kevin: No, no, no, no, no.
55:35
Kevin: We're multitasking.
55:36
Kevin: No-transcript.
55:47
Kevin: Like do you guys play these games in your mind and like just figure out how we're going to sync all this stuff perfectly?
55:52
Jordan: No, I hate math.
55:53
Kevin: No.
55:53
Jordan: I hate this.
55:56
Kevin: This is terrible.
55:56
Kevin: Your life would be better doing this figure out where you're going and then how long what you're listening to is, and then figure out the math.
56:04
Kevin: But you should be able to put that right in the in the podcast app too, like you should be.
56:11
Kevin: Like you start the podcast and like be done in an hour and then it would just figure out what speed it has to play it.
56:14
Alban: Yeah, kevin, I I gotta correct the math here.
56:15
Alban: 45 minutes left one hour episode.
56:17
Alban: You got to listen at one.
56:18
Alban: No, I said 30 minute drive 45 minute episode.
56:21
Kevin: So that's 1.5, right?
56:22
Kevin: Oh, okay, Dude, I got this dialed in.
56:24
Kevin: Don't, don't try me.
56:28
Alban: Don't test me on my math, my speed up math.
56:30
Jordan: You could have told me it was like two hours into 30 and it was like 1.5 and I'd be like, okay, it checks out, that makes sense.
56:38
Jordan: Honestly, the most horrifying thing to me about all these responses is that we have listeners listening to my laugh at more than one X, I mean.
56:48
Kevin: I know Kevin's heard it.
56:49
Jordan: It's horrible.
56:51
Alban: I love it.
56:52
Alban: I've heard it once in Kevin's car and I was like what was that?
56:57
Alban: And he's like that's Jordan, it's awesome.
56:58
Jordan: Why would you listen to this?
57:00
Alban: Oh, it's my favorite how do we have listeners?
57:02
Jordan: How?
57:02
Alban: This might be why they've been dropping off because of all the speed listening.
57:06
Jordan: I think so.
57:07
Jordan: Yeah, Stop it guys.
57:09
Alban: All right, one more in the great speed listening debate.
57:12
Alban: Sander from the Netherlands.
57:14
Alban: Hi Buzzcast team, your sound off question triggered a different question for me.
57:18
Alban: On which speed do you edit your podcast?
57:20
Alban: Editing can take a big amount of time.
57:22
Alban: To speed this process up, I tried to edit my podcast at 1.5, but that didn't feel comfortable for me.
57:32
Alban: Are there podcasters out there who edit their podcasts at greater speed than 1x, or is that a regular thing that I'm not aware of?
57:36
Kevin: I don't edit a lot of podcasts anymore, but when I do I always edit quickly and that is I use Hindenburg and Hindenburg allows you to have a playback speed and then like an edit speed so you can listen at 1.5, 1.75, where you set that, and then you just like tap the space bar and it goes back down to one.
57:51
Kevin: When you want to make an edit and then you tap space bar again, it like speeds back up again and so I use the fast speeding through just to find the edit points.
57:59
Kevin: I'm not sure what Jordan does.
58:09
Jordan: I edit points.
58:09
Jordan: I'm not sure what Jordan does.
58:10
Jordan: I have the same thing with Adobe Audition.
58:11
Jordan: So usually when I do a rough cut and I'm cutting out any breaks that we have, or if we sidebar on a story that is just personal, you know, cause we get off track so often I'll just put it down to about half speed and then chop out all the stuff that doesn't matter.
58:18
Jordan: And then what I do is I go through into our individual tracks after chopping out that stuff and I listen at one X and it's just like the normal speed, and then I clean things up to a normal listening speed.
58:30
Jordan: So it is carefully curated to be consumed at one X people.
58:38
Alban: I have one more piece of fan mail that came in.
58:41
Alban: This was a Twitter DM.
58:43
Alban: Those are no longer accepted, but I will make one exception for Tom Raftery, who wrote in and he had just a small correction.
58:51
Alban: He said Alban, I'm not based in the UK, I'm Irish, so I'll forgive you.
58:55
Alban: Hopefully the unintentional egregious insult.
59:01
Alban: Now I need to read this, because the reason I mentioned where Tom was from was because he had sent in a message and he didn't leave us a voicemail.
59:11
Alban: And we said we're only accepting voicemails from Tom and people like to have people with good accents and my memory was that it was from the UK because he'd been writing in so long I'd forgotten.
59:22
Alban: So Tom is Irish, he lives in Spain, he's a great podcaster and we would love for Tom to send in voicemails.
59:30
Jordan: All right, Alban.
59:30
Jordan: So what's our sound off question for the next episode.
59:33
Alban: Well, we talked a little bit about Buzzsprout's rebrand and the process we went through trying to find characters that we thought embodied Buzzsprout.
59:40
Alban: So to you podcast listener that we thought embodied Buzzsprout, so to you podcast listener, what character does Buzzsprout best embody?
59:46
Alban: Jordan offhandedly I don't know if this will make it into the final said for her it was Kramer.
59:51
Alban: She thought she was like oh, it's always Kramer for me.
59:54
Alban: I figure I hopefully Jordan is joking a little bit there, but like what character do you think best embodies Buzzsprout?
1:00:00
Alban: Who should we try to emulate in our marketing going forward?
1:00:05
Alban: So to have your answer featured, send us a text.
1:00:09
Jordan: All right, and with that, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.
1:00:17
Alban: All right.
1:00:20
Jordan: It's go time.
1:00:21
Jordan: Was that like a protein shake?
1:00:25
Jordan: All right?
1:00:25
Alban: We got it.
1:00:26
Alban: What were you drinking?
1:00:28
Jordan: Yeah.
1:00:28
Alban: This is water and I've mixed in one of those gator lights.
1:00:34
Jordan: Gator lights.
1:00:35
Kevin: It's like yeah, Kevin, I mean pretty much if you say it Gator lights.
1:00:39
Kevin: Alban and I have all the same stuff.
1:00:40
Kevin: If Alban says it I have to change it.
1:00:41
Kevin: Sorry, I got it.
1:00:41
Kevin: Yeah, I have all the same stuff.
1:00:42
Kevin: If Alban says I have to change that, I got it.
1:00:43
Alban: Yeah, yeah, kevin, guess what's getting delivered today.
1:00:45
Alban: What's getting delivered For the first time?
1:00:47
Alban: I've never had it before, but I'm guessing L-Arginine powder.
1:00:51
Alban: No, the thing that's getting delivered today is carnivore snacks.
1:00:58
Kevin: Oh, Maui Nui.
1:00:58
Kevin: Yeah, I got my box last week.
1:01:01
Alban: No, not Maui Nui, I've got.
1:01:02
Jordan: Oh, are you doing a carnivore diet?
1:01:03
Alban: No, but there is a type of like beef jerky that's called carnivore snacks that I think Kevin told me about or I told him about, I don't think I told you about it, so you must have found this.
1:01:15
Kevin: So yeah, bring me a sample.
1:01:16
Jordan: Is it snacks with an X?
1:01:18
Alban: It is carnivore snacks but it's like salt and meat and it's supposed to be like expensive beef jerky.
1:01:25
Alban: It's supposed to be expensive, or it just happens.
1:01:27
Alban: It is, I found out.
1:01:30
Jordan: Yeah.
1:01:30
Kevin: Well, I can't be more expensive than Maui new.
1:01:33
Jordan: Oh, joe Rogan says quote my favorite snack.
1:01:36
Alban: Does he spell snack with an X?
1:01:38
Jordan: No, it was just snack, my favorite snack.
1:01:45
Kevin: Just to clarify Jordan, the Maui new beef jerky sticks.
1:01:46
Kevin: If you are familiar with the Slim, Jim a typical Slim Jim stick.
1:01:48
Kevin: Yeah, it's about the same size as a regular one, not the jumbo super slims, just the regular.
1:01:53
Kevin: And they're $5 each.
1:01:54
Kevin: And my kids love these things, oh no, and they like eating 90% of them and then giving the best last bit to our dog who loves them.
1:02:05
Jordan: And I'm like that's a dollar.
1:02:07
Kevin: You just gave her a dollar.
1:02:08
Kevin: That's a whole dollar there.
1:02:10
Jordan: Right, what are you doing?
1:02:11
Jordan: That's an expensive dog treat.
1:02:13
Alban: Yes, this is what happens in our house.
1:02:15
Alban: The one fish that for sure is just so much worse when it's farm raised is salmon.
1:02:21
Alban: Wild caught salmon tastes absolutely different than farm raised.
1:02:26
Alban: So we always have salmon and it's always like wild caught and so it's expensive.
1:02:32
Alban: But then my wife and daughter both give bits of it to the dog and I do the same math and I'm like you can't let the dog have, like I'm done eating, and I'm like then you shouldn't have made so much salmon All right In office samples next week, sponsored by Cardboard Snacks.
1:02:51
Jordan: I was going to say is the company paying for that?
1:02:53
Jordan: Holy crap.
1:02:54
Kevin: Well, the kind of what the company did pay for Alban Maui New yeah.
1:02:58
Kevin: So the way that Kevin got, first time he ordered he put it on his wrong credit card.
1:03:01
Kevin: And the first time he ordered he put it on his wrong credit card.
1:03:04
Kevin: And so he just brought them in as office snacks.
1:03:06
Alban: He's like company bought these on accident, so now they're off.
1:03:09
Alban: To be clear, it's because they all these stupid login things.
1:03:12
Alban: Now it's like log in with your phone number and then it like auto populates a credit card, which is great, except that the same people who are using it for their like hey, get some like expensive venison sticks are the same people, or it's the same payment processor that's being used for all sorts of like company things.
1:03:32
Alban: So my company card is associated with a lot of these and it popped up.
1:03:35
Alban: I messed up.
1:03:36
Alban: I messaged Kevin.
1:03:37
Alban: I said what should I do?
1:03:38
Alban: Should I reimburse the company or just bring it in as a company snack?
1:03:41
Alban: Kevin goes yeah, bring it as a company snack.
1:03:43
Alban: And boom, like two days later, $150 of beef jerky are gone.
1:03:50
Jordan: Bunch of animals Jeez.