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Get Your Video Podcast On Spotify Without Changing Hosts · Buzzcast

0:00
Kevin: Did Alban?
0:00
Kevin: Did you listen to um sharp tech this week?
0:03
Kevin: Yes, they were actually talking a little bit about in the dot-com bust.
0:08
Kevin: Uh, one of the most like strategic moves that google made during that time was buying up all the dark fiber yeah, they bought it all up from.
0:16
Alban: Was it cisco or who put it down?
0:18
Kevin: oh, most mostly from the telecom companies.
0:20
Kevin: Oh, the big bells and stuff, and then they, they all got broken apart and a lot of them shut down.
0:24
Alban: and then then Google was like, yeah, I'll buy it all up.
0:26
Alban: And it just sat around, sat around, sat around, and now it's like, oh man, that's still really valuable.
0:33
Kevin: They bought it for like next to nothing.
0:34
Kevin: That's what they were predicting.
0:36
Kevin: The same type of thing might happen with graphics card processing chips.
0:41
Kevin: Yeah, Nvidia is making so many of them and other companies are coming in and trying to make chips to do AI processing and they're manufacturing so many of them and then most of these companies are probably who are buying them.
0:52
Kevin: All are probably going to end up going out of business.
0:54
Kevin: All these AI startups that buy thousands and thousands of processors.
0:56
Kevin: They're going to go out of business.
0:58
Kevin: Who's going to come and buy up all the chips?
1:00
Alban: There was actually a AI company that raised a bunch of money, got a ton of NVIDIA GPUs and then was acquired.
1:08
Alban: Everyone was like, oh, they sold Good.
1:10
Alban: But when you looked at the acquisition, it was pretty much an acquisition of chips.
1:15
Alban: They were not buying the company, they just got the chips.
1:18
Alban: And then they were like, yeah, the software running on the chips actually stinks.
1:22
Kevin: They're just going to do Bitcoin mining with them or something.
1:25
Alban: Well, it was another AI startup.
1:27
Alban: It's just that the AI work they'd done was boring, but the thing they'd done that was really smart was raise money and buy chips with it, and everyone was like, oh, that turned out to be really smart.
1:37
Jordan: It's like the people that were farming websites and selling them like for way more down the road.
1:42
Alban: Oh yeah, the guy who bought Delta.
1:45
Alban: com?
1:45
Jordan: I didn't hear about that.
1:46
Alban: The guy at Delta.
1:46
Alban: com was like oh, I have something.
1:49
Alban: I care about Deltas Also.
1:51
Alban: If you want to learn about Delta Airlines, click here or Delta Faucets, click here.
1:55
Alban: And then he was getting like ad revenue every time you clicked on one of those two and eventually Delta Airlines bought it.
2:02
Jordan: For a lot probably.
2:04
Jordan: Yeah, and eventually Delta Airlines bought it For a lot, probably, yeah, for millions.
2:11
Jordan: Welcome back to Buzzcast, the podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout.
2:15
Jordan: Alban, you're back from pretty much a week-long East Coast tour with Podcast Movement.
2:21
Jordan: Why don't you tell us how it went?
2:23
Alban: It started off with just a few meetups for Podcast Movement.
2:25
Alban: Why don't you tell us how it went?
2:25
Alban: It started off with just a few meetups for Podcast Movement and by the end of it we were getting tons of suggestions for places to extend the tour.
2:32
Jordan: It wasn't a full tour.
2:33
Alban: It was three nice meetups.
2:35
Alban: We went to DC, philly and New York and met a bunch of Buzzcast listeners.
2:41
Alban: Met three different people who all said they recognized me from my voice, and all three three for three had the same comment immediately after it.
2:51
Alban: Either you want to take a shot at this.
2:52
Jordan: You're taller than they thought.
2:56
Alban: Yes, is that it?
2:57
Alban: Are you for real?
2:57
Alban: Is that really just a shot in the dark, jordan?
2:59
Alban: Yeah?
3:00
Jordan: Well, I remember I was shocked at how tall you are.
3:02
Jordan: You're really tall.
3:04
Alban: I think online I come across extremely short because I've gotten that a handful of times from other people who've met me in person.
3:12
Alban: They're like oh, I would have expected you to be short, so I have the personality of a short Alban.
3:16
Alban: That's funny.
3:19
Kevin: Online, you come across as short.
3:20
Alban: I think it's that I take offense at everything.
3:27
Alban: I fight you know it's kind of the short guy syndrome.
3:28
Alban: I must have that Like a chihuahua.
3:29
Alban: Yeah, a little bit, but we had a lot of fun.
3:31
Alban: I took a little bit of swag and threw it out.
3:34
Alban: People are loving stickers and stuff.
3:40
Alban: I wish I'd been able to take some bigger things like t-shirts.
3:41
Alban: But it's just like phenomenal to meet new people.
3:42
Alban: There are a handful of people you see at the big podcast movement or podfest conferences, but then there's so many people who have been podcasting for 10 years or something.
3:52
Alban: I think I met somebody who'd been doing a podcast since 2003 or 2004.
3:55
Alban: So I mean first few thousand podcasts in the world and they're not going to all these big conferences.
4:02
Alban: So it's not the same people.
4:03
Alban: You meet totally new people and it was just a blast.
4:07
Kevin: And there's another one of these meetups in Orlando next week, right.
4:10
Alban: Yeah, next week we're going to be in Orlando.
4:12
Alban: That'll be June 12th, so a Wednesday, and Kevin, tom and I are all going to drive down there.
4:18
Alban: It looks like it's at the Gravity Taproom.
4:21
Alban: It looks like it's just off I-4, so we'll be there from 7 to 9.
4:26
Alban: I think we should send out an email to everybody who's in the Orlando area to let them know.
4:31
Alban: But if you're listening to Buzzcast and you're nearby, we'd love to see you.
4:37
Alban: It'd be a lot of fun to meet up with more people and give Kevin your first impressions of what strikes you about Kevin when you see him for the first time.
4:42
Alban: Yeah, I'll be interested to hear.
4:44
Alban: I did have people give me their guesses.
4:47
Alban: I was like all right.
4:48
Alban: So if you've only ever heard the show, but you know the personalities, I'm like what is Jordan like?
4:53
Alban: What is Kevin like?
4:55
Alban: And get people to try to describe you.
4:57
Kevin: Oh no, it was funny.
4:58
Alban: I got a lot of Jordan's blonde, so that one was on point.
5:07
Kevin: I blonde, so that was uh.
5:07
Kevin: Yeah, that one was on point.
5:08
Kevin: What do I know?
5:08
Kevin: I remember at pod fest somebody came up and they said they listened to buzzcast and albin and I were standing next to each other, I think we did.
5:13
Kevin: We take our name tags off or something.
5:14
Kevin: We covered them and we said which one is who, like who's who?
5:17
Kevin: Yeah, I think they.
5:18
Alban: They mixed us up, they thought I was, didn't they say oh, you're kevin.
5:21
Alban: You seem like you're angrier or something.
5:25
Kevin: Because you said something angry.
5:26
Kevin: You were trying to be.
5:29
Alban: I was trying to come across as Kevin.
5:31
Alban: Well, these are the kind of games that Kevin and I enjoy, that the people who meet us are like okay, this is less exciting than I'd hoped.
5:37
Jordan: Yeah, so you can enjoy those kind of games in person.
5:42
Alban: Next week I did meet one person, John, who had gone back and listened to every episode of Buzzcast.
5:48
Alban: He said that he started, I think, pretty recently and then went back and listened to all of them.
5:53
Alban: That we did with Travis and we dealt with all our guests and all the way up to the present.
5:58
Alban: So he might be our true super fan.
6:00
Jordan: Yeah, that's commitment.
6:01
Kevin: Yeah Well, for anybody who uses Apple Podcasts, please go back to at least February and get caught up.
6:06
Kevin: I think some of the best episodes that we've done happened February, march and April, and all of our Apple Podcast listeners missed them.
6:13
Jordan: No one heard them.
6:14
Jordan: They were the best.
6:16
Alban: It was a real test of whether or not it's all about the content for us or if it was about the listener numbers.
6:22
Kevin: I think they're worth going back and getting caught up on, or maybe we should just take some of those.
6:27
Kevin: Jordan, this is what we should do.
6:29
Kevin: You should do a supercut.
6:30
Kevin: You should do an Apple podcast supercut catch up episode, in case you missed it.
6:33
Jordan: Yeah, but like cut it way down, so it's just like the CliffsNote version.
6:39
Alban: No, just one five hour episode Just straight through.
6:41
Jordan: We five hour episode just straight through.
6:42
Jordan: We're gonna go Joe Rogan on this.
6:44
Kevin: Yeah, I think it's Tim Ferriss who does like recap episodes and he does super cuts from like I don't know every month or something.
6:53
Kevin: He'll do them.
6:54
Kevin: I don't know how frequently he does them, but I've done that before.
7:00
Kevin: I've listened to those episodes and then I've heard like the Maui New Venison podcast episode that I love.
7:03
Kevin: I think it's one of the greatest podcast episodes of all time.
7:05
Kevin: I heard that from one of his recap episodes.
7:07
Kevin: They just did like five minutes of the interview.
7:09
Kevin: The whole interview is an hour and a half but he just did five minutes in one of his recaps.
7:13
Kevin: And then I went back and found the original episode, listened to the whole thing and it's one of my favorites.
7:16
Jordan: I got to be honest.
7:27
Kevin: I'll probably just do like a super arguments just screaming about socks.
7:29
Kevin: Download numbers through the roof.
7:30
Jordan: Maybe there's an audience for that too.
7:31
Jordan: Let's move on to some Buzzsprout updates.
7:33
Jordan: We actually have a handful, the first being Buzzsprout backups, so you can now back up your podcast locally by bulk downloading your episode, audio files, artwork, the RSS feed and transcripts.
7:48
Kevin: Yeah, so we've had this feature in Buzzsprout and it's a slightly different form for years and years and years.
7:54
Kevin: We've always believed it's important for anybody who's in the podcasting space Like you're uploading your content, you're creating all this stuff and it's your stuff, and so you should be able to have a local backup if you want, if you want to move to another hosting solution, if you just want to be done podcasting but you still want to keep a local copy of everything that you created over the time that you were podcasting.
8:13
Kevin: There's tons of different reasons why you might want to back up, and we wanted to make sure that we made it as easy as possible to do that.
8:19
Kevin: Now, backing up the audio files is kind of like the biggest, hardest part of that, and so there are lots of different tools that have existed over the years to be able to do it.
8:30
Kevin: Itunes, the old school Apple iTunes, used to have a way where you could click a button and it would download an entire podcast, download every single episode.
8:38
Kevin: So for a while, we just said that's a great way to back up your audio.
8:42
Jordan: So locally iTunes would download the entire podcast.
8:45
Kevin: Yeah, if you ran iTunes on your desktop computer, you could click on a podcast and I think you can right click or something like that and just say download the entire podcast, and it would do that.
8:54
Kevin: But nobody uses iTunes anymore.
8:56
Kevin: It's kind of gone the way of the dodo, and so there were some other tools that we found that would let you do that, like the podcast archiver.
9:04
Kevin: That's a Mac only app.
9:09
Kevin: There's some other tools that are on windows and stuff.
9:10
Kevin: But pointing people to all these different tools and sometimes sometimes they were maintained well, sometimes they weren't it just got kind of tiresome and so we just said how about we just give our customers an easy way to do it, just right within Buzzsprout?
9:20
Kevin: And so that was a small project that we took on this cycle and it's now rolled out and deployed.
9:25
Kevin: So I think it's a good thing to do once in a while.
9:29
Kevin: Again, you know Buzzsprout is a very robust platform.
9:31
Kevin: It's very stable.
9:32
Kevin: We maintain backups.
9:33
Kevin: All your data is safe here.
9:34
Kevin: I'm just not rolling out because things are not stable here, but just because you're creating something and you might want to have local backups and copies of your own stuff, I would suggest backing up your podcast, you know, at least yearly or something anyway, regardless of whether you think you're going to continue podcasting or not, or moving to another host or whatever.
9:52
Kevin: So now, just with a click, you can download a zip file of all your audio files.
9:56
Jordan: And Kevin, in the last episode you sort of dropped a hint about Spotify chapters.
10:01
Kevin: Yeah, so we talked about that.
10:03
Kevin: Spotify is rolling out a couple new things One automatic chapter, ai stuff.
10:09
Kevin: So for episodes that don't have chapters, they're using AI to go ahead and try to find chapters for episodes and they're doing the same thing with transcripts.
10:17
Kevin: Now, with transcripts we talked about that they don't have any controls over like letting you manually update your transcript, and we're kind of bummed about that.
10:25
Kevin: But with chapters they do.
10:28
Kevin: They do have a way because they have supported I don't really call it a standard, but they support a chapter format called Podlove Simple Chapters, and they have for a long time, and there's now saying in their documentation that if you don't like the chapters that we're automatically creating for you, then you can provide your own using the Podlove Simple Chapters format.
10:46
Kevin: So that format has never really caught on that well.
10:51
Kevin: It's really kind of only Spotify being the only big podcast player that uses it.
10:55
Kevin: So we've kind of been hemming and hawing about.
10:59
Kevin: Do we really want to support another way to do chapters?
11:02
Kevin: But this is a compelling reason to do that, because now Spotify is going to not just not show chapters at all, but they're going to be showing their own chapters, and if they're showing their own chapters and you don't like them.
11:12
Kevin: We feel like you need a way to be able to override those chapters without just turning them all off completely.
11:19
Jordan: Yeah.
11:20
Kevin: And so we have tools within Buzzsprout to be able to create chapters for your podcast, and if you use co-host AI, you automatically get chapter suggestions that you can just edit.
11:29
Kevin: And those chapters show up in almost every podcast app, from Apple Podcasts to Pocket Cast to Cast-O-Matic, to Podfans to I mean you name it.
11:39
Kevin: They show up everywhere that you can listen to a podcast, almost except Spotify, which is one of, if not the largest for a lot of podcasters place that can listen to a podcast, almost except Spotify, which is one of, if not the largest for a lot of podcasters place that people listen to your podcast.
11:48
Kevin: So, finally, we're kind of done hemming and hawing over it and saying, okay, we're going to support this format that really nobody else uses, but we're going to just call it the Spotify format for now.
11:59
Kevin: It's the pod love simple chapters format and we're putting them into your feed.
12:04
Kevin: So if you use chapters for your podcast, you don't need to worry about the whole technical implementation of how this happens.
12:09
Kevin: Your chapters are actually being created three different ways now, but that's fine.
12:13
Kevin: You just create them one way and then we'll translate them into all the different formats that are appropriate so that they display properly, regardless of where your audience is listening, and so that's a long way of saying chapters that you create in Buzzsprout.
12:27
Kevin: Now we'll start showing up in Spotify as well.
12:37
Alban: This is one of the features that came out of our support shifts.
12:38
Alban: I got an email when I was doing my support shift from somebody who was like my chapters don't show up in Spotify and I was trying to write them a really nice response about how to do it.
12:44
Alban: And I knew about the YouTube kind of style way that you just put in a timestamp and that Spotify would pick it up.
12:53
Alban: So I pull up their documentation and I'm writing out like, oh, here's exactly how I would do it and there's like a little mention we also support these pod love chapters.
13:02
Alban: And for like the last two hours of my support shift I messaged the team and I'm like, hey, can I leave the support inbox now I've got an idea and I went down this path of trying to find.
13:13
Alban: I found one show I could only find one in all of podcasting that was using this format and getting their chapters into Spotify.
13:23
Alban: But when I found one I was like all right, well, if this works and they say they support it and I can see they do maybe we should do it.
13:31
Jordan: How did you even find it without going through like thousands of podcasts?
13:35
Alban: I went and I was like, all right, first I have to find a podcast host that supports this pod love thing.
13:40
Alban: And so I found one and I was like, all right, I need to find a show that you know that's on that host and that seems like it has chapters, and so I don't remember exactly.
13:50
Alban: I think it was, I don't know.
13:51
Alban: It was one of the foreign podcast hosts who might've been like Asha or something, which are based in France.
13:56
Alban: But I found somebody who supported it.
13:59
Alban: I found one of their shows and once that was there I was like, all right, this makes sense because it makes a lot more sense than the other Spotify format, the one that's YouTube style, will break very easily and it breaks because somebody adds dynamic content or they add an ad.
14:16
Alban: Well then, those timestamps don't get updated On YouTube.
14:21
Alban: It makes total sense because YouTube is inserting the ad and they can update the timestamp accordingly, but for Spotify it doesn't work very well.
14:31
Alban: But it was just fun that back in January that was my little project.
14:36
Alban: I went and did it and it didn't make sense.
14:38
Alban: It didn't make sense and then at some point it was like, oh, this is probably a pretty short project.
14:43
Alban: It starts making sense.
14:44
Alban: It makes a lot more sense once Spotify is going to do automated chapters, and so Kevin snuck it into the cycle, and I'm excited for everybody now who's doing chapters, that they're supported everywhere.
14:57
Kevin: Yeah, you know, with YouTube they don't even have to go through the trouble of updating the timestamps in the description of the video, because when they play a video ad they just cut away exactly.
15:06
Kevin: So you could be five minutes in and then a video cuts in and you come back and it's at 501.
15:13
Kevin: So no updating necessarily there.
15:15
Kevin: But podcasting works differently.
15:17
Kevin: The biggest problem with doing timestamps within your episode description is that it's not widely supported.
15:24
Kevin: So, like the most popular apps like Apple Podcasts will not catch those hyperlinks within your description and let you jump ahead to use them as like chapter markers.
15:32
Kevin: Some other apps will, besides just Spotify, but not Apple Podcasts.
15:37
Kevin: So if Apple Podcasts doesn't support it, you end up having a bunch of timestamps in your description and it's confusing for a big chunk of your listeners because they don't actually link anywhere.
15:47
Kevin: And the other thing about it is that Apple Podcasts does enforce a 4,000 character limit in your description.
15:55
Kevin: So if you end up filling that a big chunk of your description with chapter markers, then you've just significantly reduced the amount of like helpful content that you could really put in there for your Apple podcast listeners.
16:06
Jordan: Spotify enforces 4,000 as well.
16:08
Jordan: Oh, do they I wasn't aware of that, yeah.
16:11
Kevin: Yeah.
16:11
Kevin: So some podcast apps do follow Apple's guidelines around the 4,000.
16:15
Kevin: Some don't.
16:16
Kevin: So I guess Spotify does, apple does for sure.
16:18
Kevin: Now Apple does it in very weird different ways, because if you subscribe to a show directly, like if you just copy the RSS feed and then you paste it into your Apple podcast app, they don't enforce it.
16:30
Kevin: But if you run through the Apple podcast directory and follow a show from there, then it is enforced.
16:35
Kevin: Ideally, I would like to see that limitation go away or at least like just get bigger.
16:41
Kevin: 4,000 can be tight sometimes for people who put a lot of stuff in their episode descriptions, but the vast majority of shows have very short descriptions, so I actually don't see this probably changing in the long term.
16:55
Kevin: So for those reasons we chose to go the Podlove simple chapters route.
16:59
Kevin: But again, the technical implication doesn't matter.
17:02
Kevin: The takeaway for people who have a lot of followers, listeners on Spotify, is that your chapters now show up.
17:08
Kevin: So big win, yeah.
17:10
Alban: I went through my phone and started pulling up all the different podcasting apps and I kind of just went down the list and kept seeing okay, chapters are showing up, this one chapters show up here, chapters show up here.
17:22
Alban: Between us putting the chapters in the MP3 file, putting them in with the podcast standards, project specification and then putting them in with Podlove.
17:31
Alban: I think anybody who uses chapters at all any app will pick up at least one of those.
17:37
Alban: So if you aren't already doing chapters, now is a good time to start, because way, way more of your podcast listeners probably something like 99% plus are going to have access to those chapter markers.
17:50
Alban: So it's a nice way for people to be able to skip ahead.
17:53
Alban: If a segment's working out for them, they can jump to what they're really excited about.
17:57
Jordan: And another update this isn't really a buzzsprout update, but this is a sneaky little something that we found in Spotify's help articles that you can now add videos to Spotify while hosting on another platform.
18:11
Jordan: So this is really cool, because it used to be that, unless you were hosted on Spotify, you could not add video to your podcast, so you would have to have like a separate podcast.
18:22
Jordan: You know, if you were hosted on like Buzzsprout, you'd have to create like a Spotify for podcasters account to have video on it too, and so now they have added the ability for you to go into your Spotify for podcasters dashboard even when you're hosted with another hosting company, and there's like these three little dots next to your episode and you are able to replace the audio episode with a video episode.
18:47
Jordan: So, yeah, this is pretty cool.
18:48
Jordan: I think they're only rolling it out for a few podcasts, or maybe they're slowly rolling it out, because one of my podcasts that I have it didn't come up with the notification to add video, but then the other one that I have did come up with like a little pop up that you can replace my episodes with a video.
19:06
Alban: I saw a conversation on Twitter between somebody at Spotify and somebody with a really, really large podcast like top 100 podcast, and they were saying you know, we are doing great numbers over on YouTube with the video version of this podcast, and then the Spotify person comes in and says, hey, let's get this on Spotify too, and so I like that they're adding support to host video there as well.
19:31
Alban: Again, I don't find Spotify to be a super compelling place to watch video, and so I don't think this will work into my podcast listening habits.
19:43
Alban: I'm listening to podcasts, I'm not watching them, and if I watch clips of them it's probably on YouTube.
19:48
Alban: But I like that Spotify is adding support.
19:51
Alban: So they say, if you're doing video, we actually would like to have the video file for anybody who's on Spotify and would like to watch it, wants to see the emotion, and so they're adding that for everybody, regardless of if you're hosted on Buzzsprout, libsyn or any number of places you can also get your video into Spotify.
20:12
Kevin: Yeah, I think it's probably a good thing, like in the interest of podcasters and just the world in general, that somebody the size of Spotify is making a move to compete with YouTube.
20:24
Kevin: So I don't particularly have anything for or against.
20:28
Kevin: I don't really have a dog in the online video space, but I have been kind of bummed out over time as YouTube has just become the de facto default solution for all online video.
20:39
Kevin: You see a little bit of what X is doing.
20:43
Kevin: X is trying to get more into the video space.
20:45
Kevin: There are some other networks, like Rumble, I think, is another one.
20:49
Kevin: I'm not super familiar with it, but I like the fact that somebody the size of Spotify is coming in as well as a challenger, because it's just, I believe, better for the world if there's lots of options.
21:01
Kevin: Now, ideally they would be more open so that you could publish your video one way, one place and then it can get ingested in all these different places.
21:11
Kevin: So then, if somebody, if Rumble works for them, great.
21:14
Kevin: If X works for them, if YouTube works for them, if Spotify works for them, it gets picked up in all those different places without the content creator having to go to every single platform and upload it over and over and over again.
21:24
Kevin: But that's the world that we live in, and so, just to be, as you know, glass is half full.
21:31
Kevin: It's nice to see another big company come in and challenge YouTube in the video space.
21:37
Kevin: I think that it has been very difficult to run a if you want to do a video show, a video podcast.
21:45
Kevin: Specifically, it has been very difficult to host your audio anywhere else besides Spotify.
21:50
Kevin: If Spotify was an important platform for you to be able to have your video content on and so I also glasses half full here this is optimistic Kevin day.
21:59
Kevin: I also am very encouraged by the fact that Spotify is now saying hey, if you like where you're hosting your audio files, great, you can still put a video version of your show and make it available on Spotify.
22:11
Kevin: So I think these are really good things.
22:14
Kevin: Again, usually I'm highly critical of Spotify, and today I'm I'm not.
22:18
Kevin: I think this is good.
22:19
Kevin: I want this.
22:20
Kevin: This feels a little bit more open.
22:22
Kevin: It's not open, but it feels a little bit more like you don't have to move all your eggs into the Spotify basket now to be able to have a video version of your podcast in Spotify.
22:31
Kevin: So I really like that.
22:33
Kevin: It does require a couple of hoops to jump through.
22:35
Kevin: Like again, if you're a video podcaster, you're probably on YouTube already.
22:39
Kevin: If you want to create an audio version of that show, then you probably have a podcast hosting solution somewhere else like maybe somewhere like Buzzsprout.
22:46
Kevin: And now if you want to take that video version and put your show on Spotify as well, now it's another place to go and upload to, but at least you can do it.
22:54
Kevin: Before you couldn't, you had to maintain really two completely separate feeds for your show and then which listing took priority and Spotify and stuff could have gotten confusing if you didn't set it all up exactly right.
23:04
Kevin: So this is a much more simplified workflow for people who run video podcast shows and also want an audio version.
23:10
Kevin: So I think it's a win for the podcasting space and I'm glad to see Spotify did it.
23:14
Jordan: So, kevin, if one of our podcasters was to, you know, do this and put their video podcast on Spotify and their host on Buzzsprout, would they see the stats from Spotify show up for their video podcast on Buzzsprout then?
23:28
Kevin: I don't think so.
23:29
Kevin: I don't think for your video plays, you would not see it.
23:32
Kevin: So the way that this works is that you publish the audio version of your show first through Buzzsprout and then about five minutes later.
23:40
Kevin: It takes about five minutes for Spotify to ingest something new that hits your feed.
23:43
Kevin: You log into your Spotify for Podcasters dashboard, you click on the episodes tab and refresh, and then you'll see the new episode pop in, and that's when you click on the three little dots and upload a video version.
23:54
Kevin: So there is going to be some lag time.
23:56
Kevin: It's possible that somebody gets a notification from their Spotify app that you just dropped a new episode and it's in the first five to 10 minutes when you haven't uploaded the video yet or you're in the process of uploading it, and they only get the audio version.
24:07
Kevin: But shortly afterward you know, within five, 10, 15 minutes you can have the video version up as well.
24:13
Kevin: So then they can see both versions in Spotify.
24:15
Kevin: But that seems to be the workflow that Spotify has made available to people and it would work pretty good.
24:21
Kevin: Now.
24:21
Kevin: Your audio plays would still be coming through your audio podcast hosts that would be Buzzsprout in this example so we would still be able to show download data for that If they play the video version.
24:31
Kevin: The video version is just being served by Spotify, so we're not going to get statistics on that and so that you're going to see in your Spotify for podcasters dashboard.
24:38
Kevin: So it's, like I said, a little bit janky still but it's moving in the right direction.
24:48
Alban: Yeah, I think when you say it feels a little bit more open, kevin, it's because what was closed about Spotify was this idea of hey, we're going to try to own this podcasting space and create a YouTube style thing for podcasting.
24:59
Alban: You know where YouTube is the platform, but it's also the app that people consume it on.
25:03
Alban: It's also the recommendation engine, it's everything, and so YouTube controls it completely, and Spotify, at least for a period, seemed like we're going to do that for podcasting, and in this instance, what we're seeing is Spotify say hey, we're actually going to try to challenge some of the dominance YouTube has in the video space.
25:24
Alban: It's still not an open standard, but it is trying to breed some competition rather than snuff out the competition that exists now in podcasting, and I don't find it to be the most compelling thing in the world to go watch video there.
25:40
Alban: But I'm sure there's lots of people who already watch all the music videos on Spotify.
25:45
Alban: If you listen to a song, you can swap over to the music video version and watch that, and I know there's some people who do listen to a podcast and eventually swap over to the video version if they want to see something, and now that being available to everybody is going to make it a little bit more likely that people will click to flip over to video.
26:07
Alban: So I like that Spotify is adding it.
26:09
Alban: It, I think, challenges YouTube's dominance a very, very tiny bit, but having at least a little bit of somebody else trying to move in your space, a little bit of competition, is always a good thing.
26:21
Kevin: Yeah, that's a good point, Alban.
26:23
Kevin: The part that rattles me the most about like open versus not around podcasting is that podcasting is born out of this idea that you can publish initially anyway it was audio, but then some video, podcast content too.
26:37
Kevin: But you'd publish it with the use of an RSS feed, which is inherently open in that anybody can then build a website, an app, a native app, progressive web apps.
26:49
Kevin: You can basically build all this different type of consumption technology that would utilize this publishing format, which is RSS, and then display it back, and so that works great for blog posts, it worked great for podcasting.
27:02
Kevin: It could potentially have some use around video, although it's not as one to one, but that's the open nature of podcasting.
27:09
Kevin: That YouTube is very different than that YouTube is very much like.
27:13
Kevin: This is a big platform for video hosting that we built and it's very expensive and yada, yada yada.
27:18
Kevin: So if you put your video here, it's not open.
27:21
Kevin: We don't allow anybody to come take our video content and build their own YouTube style player.
27:26
Kevin: It rightly so, because they've spent a lot of money to build this huge network that allows high quality video streaming, and they bought a lot of fiber all over the world and they put all these agreements in to get you know first class data throughput and stuff like that.
27:40
Kevin: And they put all these agreements in to get you know first class data throughput and stuff like that.
27:42
Kevin: Like if?
27:43
Kevin: Here's a simple example, have you ever noticed that you might be in a place where the wifi is not great?
27:48
Kevin: One of the things like here's a perfect example for me.
27:51
Kevin: I go to swim meets often because all of my kids are swimmers and if you're in a swim meet, there's thousands of parents and we're all sitting around for hours doing nothing, waiting for the 30 seconds for our kids to swim in their event.
28:04
Kevin: Okay, and so in the hours you're waiting for that 30 seconds, we're all on our phones and the internet is terrible.
28:10
Kevin: It's struggling.
28:11
Kevin: You know what I can always do?
28:13
Kevin: I can always open up YouTube and get beautiful HD stream because they have arrangements with ISPs where they have priority internet throughput.
28:22
Jordan: I didn't know that.
28:23
Kevin: And that works for YouTube TV.
28:26
Kevin: So I pay $80 or something a month for YouTube TV.
28:29
Kevin: I can log in.
28:31
Kevin: Everyone else is like I can't even pull up my email and I'm streaming an HD basketball game.
28:36
Kevin: And they're like, how are you doing that?
28:37
Kevin: I'm like, yeah, I'm not doing it.
28:39
Kevin: Youtube has done it.
28:40
Kevin: They've invested in Google.
28:40
Kevin: They're like, how are you doing that?
28:41
Kevin: I'm like, yeah, I'm not doing it.
28:41
Kevin: Youtube has done it.
28:41
Kevin: They've invested.
28:41
Kevin: You know Google, so they've made massive investments and so, rightly so, like the content, when you put it onto their platform, they have massive investment, and rightly so, that you can't pull it out and distribute it everywhere else but it's not open.
28:52
Kevin: It's not open and Spotify is kind of doing the same thing and into their platform.
28:58
Kevin: They're not going to allow an overcast to pull the video out of Spotify and then play it.
29:02
Kevin: The numbers just don't work.
29:06
Kevin: They have to control the entire experience.
29:08
Kevin: They have to get eyeballs and attention into their platform so they can serve ads, so they can monetize the ways that make sense for their business.
29:16
Kevin: I get all that.
29:16
Kevin: That's also why video is harder.
29:17
Kevin: When you're talking about open podcasting, as soon as we jump from audio to video solutions, I do think it's going to be harder for us to win the open fight the more that video comes into.
29:28
Kevin: Podcasting video is a whole different ball of wax.
29:31
Kevin: Um, it's not super expensive to stream high quality audio podcasts around the world and they don't take up a lot of storage space on your device.
29:38
Kevin: Podcasting is built around RSS and it's very open and it's wonderful and you can move audio files high quality audio files around pretty inexpensively and they don't take up a ton of space on your device, so that you can just plug your phone in at night and in the morning you've got 50 new podcast episodes and it's fine.
29:54
Kevin: It didn't like delete all my photos because it needed to download podcast episodes, but if you're downloading 50 large hour long video files, it is going to have to free up some space.
30:03
Kevin: It is going to have to dump all your photos to do that, and so it's probably the best solution is for video, at least for now.
30:11
Kevin: Until you know, bandwidth gets less expensive and devices get more and more storage and yada, yada, yada.
30:15
Kevin: At least for now, it is best that YouTube's exists.
30:19
Kevin: I also think it's really good that you have platforms like X and Spotify and other people who are challenging them.
30:24
Kevin: So if we can't have open, the next best thing is competition, and I think that's what we're starting to see more and more in the video.
30:30
Kevin: Space is good, healthy competition, but for podcasting, open all the way needs to stay open.
30:36
Kevin: The technology exists, it's not super expensive, it doesn't take up a ton of space.
30:39
Kevin: So that's my viewpoint.
30:42
Jordan: All right.
30:42
Jordan: So our final update for Buzzsprout is that our transcript editor now has the ability to find and replace words and phrases, so this is going to be so great for the people who have co-hosts named Albin.
30:57
Jordan: That is always spelled the same way incorrectly.
31:00
Jordan: I'm very excited about this.
31:09
Alban: Sometimes there's a benefit to working at the company that makes the product that you use that you can go.
31:11
Alban: Okay, I'm getting tired of this, Can somebody help out?
31:13
Jordan: And sometimes, it helps Enough's enough.
31:14
Jordan: So.
31:15
Alban: Jordan.
31:16
Alban: This is ready for you.
31:17
Alban: You can find and replace Albin.
31:19
Alban: It works with other names too, so we added that functionality as well.
31:24
Jordan: Yeah, works for city names.
31:25
Jordan: I think we had a listener that wrote in saying that it just always spelled like their city incorrectly, so this is going to be incredibly helpful for podcasters that run into these kinds of things.
31:36
Jordan: Pocketcast has announced some new updates to their platform as well that are very exciting.
31:45
Jordan: Alban, do you want to talk about some of these updates?
31:48
Alban: Yeah, I listened to Pod News Weekly Review.
31:51
Alban: They had a really good interview with Ellie Rubenstein.
31:54
Alban: Ellie is the head of Pocket Cast.
31:57
Alban: I met her at Podcast Movement Evolutions earlier this year and Pocket Cast was a good app and eventually was acquired by Automatic, which is the company that has WordPress.
32:10
Alban: For a while we were wondering what are they going to be able to do?
32:13
Alban: How are they going to improve on the podcast apps?
32:15
Alban: And Ellie seems like the perfect person to lead the team and they've really embraced open podcasting Really more than anybody.
32:25
Alban: They have a WordPress open source license and they open sourced all of Pocket Casts so that anybody who's building an app can see the code and use pieces or use a lot of it.
32:38
Alban: But they've also adopted podcast standards.
32:42
Alban: I know that they're adding transcripts.
32:45
Alban: That's the transcript tag.
32:46
Alban: They're adding pod role.
32:48
Alban: It looks like there's other things.
32:50
Alban: I mean at least the amount that she's talking about.
32:53
Alban: They're excited about adding to the apps.
32:55
Alban: It sounds like there could be even more coming.
32:57
Alban: They're adding clip sharing so you can grab your favorite clips from the podcast similar to I don't know, I use Overcast for that, but it's just gotten.
33:07
Alban: There's so much action on Pocket Casts I was like I really need to go and use this as my daily podcast driver for a while.
33:17
Alban: I want to support the team.
33:18
Alban: I just want to support what they're doing and also support Ellie.
33:22
Alban: So I downloaded it and started listening to podcasts and it's just a good, solid app and it's on iOS and Android.
33:32
Alban: So if you're somebody who's been using Google podcasts, which I actually think was a really good Android app, I really would recommend checking out Pocket Casts.
33:42
Alban: Really simple UI, very easy to navigate and it looks like there's just a lot of excitement over on the Pocket Cast team in improving and adding to the app.
33:53
Alban: So high recommendation from me.
33:54
Alban: Good people, good app.
33:56
Alban: I'm excited to see what they do next excited to see what they do.
34:05
Jordan: Next it's time for sound off, the segment where you send in your responses to our podcasting questions.
34:08
Jordan: So first off, I have a roundup of fan mail regarding our Apple podcasts downloads.
34:12
Jordan: So we had a lot of people write in saying you're back, marvin the American in Buenos Aires, and a podcast manager said I just saw the May 17th Snapchat.
34:24
Jordan: I've been looking for the new episode for weeks and the last episode in my Apple podcast was April 26th.
34:29
Jordan: Until today, I see.
34:30
Jordan: May 10th, now Geez.
34:32
Alban: Marvin, thanks, we're glad you're listening.
34:34
Alban: It's a Snapcast though.
34:35
Jordan: Yeah, we're trying not to get sued here.
34:38
Alban: So we hope you enjoyed the Snapcast.
34:40
Alban: It's totally different than Snapchat.
34:42
Alban: I never even considered that they were similar, so yeah, we got another one from Springfield, illinois.
34:49
Kevin: Hey, I'm here, apple podcast user, and it looks like the episodes are populating.
34:53
Kevin: Now I was wondering if you guys were taking a break, since it had been a month or so since I saw your last episode.
34:57
Kevin: No, we did not take a break.
34:59
Kevin: We dropped some of the best content we've ever produced, so go back and take a listen, I think you'll like it.
35:05
Jordan: We do not rest.
35:06
Alban: It's always the husband podcast wrote in and said they think they've had the same issue.
35:10
Alban: They noticed a dramatic change suddenly, yikes.
35:13
Alban: So it'll be interesting for us to see your numbers start jumping back as well.
35:19
Alban: If they do, let us know.
35:20
Alban: I think we've made it a little too enticing for people to imagine that this happened to your show, because with iOS 17, everybody saw a pretty big decrease in the numbers across Apple podcasts and I think it was smart.
35:35
Alban: Apple said look, if no one's listening to these episodes, we're not gonna auto download them, and it hurt a little bit to see our numbers drop.
35:42
Alban: We saw our numbers drop, but then we saw this drop to near zero almost overnight.
35:49
Alban: Very quickly they just went down for Apple Podcasts and so that one was pretty clearly a bug.
35:54
Alban: If you see that happen and then a rebound right about now, then let us know, because I'd like to hear that if this bug was more widespread than just something we might've done on Buzzcast.
36:06
Kevin: George Lennine wrote in from podcast DB that, in regards to Apple podcasts, I've also um haven't been seeing the latest episodes, and I've also seen this behavior in the desktop app as well.
36:16
Kevin: I've had to follow and unfollow and refollow and all that, but it seems to be working now.
36:20
Kevin: So thanks, George.
36:22
Jordan: Pat Kothi from Mastering Medical Device said I had the same issue with Apple not pushing your episodes to me for the last month.
36:29
Jordan: Keep up the good content, Thank you.
36:31
Alban: Somebody in Ontario said the same thing.
36:33
Alban: They said they're glad we're back, because they thought we were on hiatus, but now they just got the last two episodes.
36:39
Alban: All right, we're in Canada again.
36:41
Kevin: Yeah, and we got a similar message from the United Arab Emirates.
36:45
Kevin: Hope you're doing fine.
36:46
Kevin: I had the same issue of buzzcast episodes not coming through, assumed you were taking a break.
36:51
Jordan: It's so funny.
36:52
Jordan: It feels like, um you know when.
36:54
Jordan: Twitter will be like RIP this person and the celebrity is like not actually dead.
36:58
Jordan: You know what I mean.
36:59
Jordan: Like it's a false alarm.
37:00
Kevin: It's kind of extreme.
37:01
Jordan: It feels like someone said like RIP Buzzcast.
37:05
Jordan: And it went around and everyone was like, well, I guess they're gone.
37:07
Jordan: I'll miss them.
37:10
Alban: We also got a really, really sweet message from the United Arab Emirates.
37:15
Alban: Again, thank you, guys.
37:17
Alban: I listened to episode 126 and you made me cry about the MKBHD tweet.
37:22
Alban: Thanks for the motivation to achieve my dreams.
37:25
Alban: Despite that, I'm on the verge of quitting my dreams.
37:27
Alban: I was so depressed for not achieving my dream where I went into a spiral for sadness.
37:31
Alban: The text is filling me with tears.
37:33
Alban: Yeah, very emotional to get that text, and we're really thankful that we were able to be part of this journey and to support you in creating this podcast.
37:43
Alban: I think it's very common for people to feel like, okay, I haven't hit success in three episodes, in five episodes, in 10.
37:52
Alban: And that's just common.
37:54
Alban: That's how we all work.
37:55
Alban: We start off slow and we build momentum over time.
37:59
Alban: So this is the kind of message I mean.
38:01
Alban: This is what we are hoping is why we launched Buzzcast, because we don't want to just start podcasts, we want to help you keep podcasting, and so thanks for reaching out to us.
38:10
Alban: That means a lot.
38:11
Kevin: Yeah, thanks for reminding us of that.
38:13
Kevin: When I first found out that we did have actually was a real problem and that a lot of people who were listening in Apple Podcast weren't getting our latest episodes, I was most upset about, like that MKBHD segment.
38:24
Kevin: I think it's one of the best segments we did in a long time.
38:27
Kevin: So if you haven't heard it, please go back to episode 126 and listen to it.
38:31
Kevin: It's really.
38:32
Kevin: It's motivational for me just to see all that data and the data that we walk through and tell the story of some of the largest creators that exist on the internet and how long it took them to get successful.
38:42
Kevin: So don't quit on yourself before you give yourself a real chance at becoming successful.
38:46
Kevin: It takes a long time.
38:48
Jordan: Yeah, all right.
38:49
Jordan: And then we have some questions and messages from listeners.
38:53
Jordan: Paulette in Louisiana said definitely keep introducing yourselves.
38:57
Jordan: Roll call is a good idea.
38:58
Jordan: I don't know, is the roll call dead?
39:00
Kevin: I think it's dead.
39:01
Kevin: I think it's dead.
39:03
Jordan: I think it's dead.
39:03
Jordan: Sorry, Paulette.
39:05
Kevin: Yeah, I'll take this one.
39:06
Kevin: There was an awkward ad placement.
39:08
Kevin: A question was asked of Kevin and before he got a chance to answer, the ad was inserted.
39:12
Kevin: I agree, I did not love that ad placement either, and so shortly after the episode went live, I went in and just unchecked that ad placement and the system moved it to a different place.
39:22
Kevin: So you must've been one of the first listeners to listen to that episode and caught that as well.
39:26
Kevin: But we do have the tools in Buzzsprout to be able to quickly make changes to your ad placements.
39:31
Jordan: I thought we were just building suspense.
39:35
Kevin: Yeah, I mean there's definitely a line of thinking that says some of the best ad placements are right after somebody asks a question, because then whoever's listening is not going to stop listening.
39:45
Kevin: They're going to stick around and probably want to hear the answer to that, and so they might just listen to the ad.
39:49
Kevin: I don't love it from a listener's perspective because it is a little bit disruptive, but from an advertiser perspective it actually is probably a pretty good ad placement.
40:01
Alban: The other day my wife and I sat down to watch a movie and we pull it up on Apple TV and we're like searching, like where can you watch this movie?
40:05
Alban: And it says oh, you can watch it inside of Tubi.
40:07
Alban: And I was like do we pay for Tubi?
40:09
Alban: My wife's like I don't think so.
40:11
Alban: And I'm like, well, I start playing it.
40:13
Alban: I was like I wonder why this app is free.
40:15
Alban: Never used it before.
40:17
Alban: And it's like middle of an action sequence, it skips to an ad and it's like the most discordant ad and I was like no, no, no, no, we're not doing this.
40:28
Alban: Alternative is like rent for $4 from iTunes or movies or whatever.
40:33
Alban: And I was like we've got to do this, come on, we can't, we can't watch this thing jumping into the middle of scenes.
40:38
Alban: So I agree with this.
40:41
Alban: Sometimes the ad placements are awkward and that's not the goal.
40:45
Alban: The goal is not to drop in in the middle of a question and cut you off from the answer.
40:50
Jordan: All right.
40:50
Jordan: So we got another message from Joe from Arkansas.
40:52
Jordan: Another question about Buzzsprout subscriptions.
40:55
Jordan: Based off the way YouTube handles episodes and won't update an episode unless you make the change within YouTube, how will that affect people who subscribe to the show?
41:02
Jordan: Will YouTube change the audio file from saying this subscriber only episode.
41:06
Jordan: Please subscribe below to the actual episode content?
41:09
Jordan: The way that Buzzsprout subscriptions works is that when someone subscribes to your premium content, they get a private RSS feed that they can put into the app.
41:21
Jordan: So YouTube Music has the ability to add a private RSS feed to the app.
41:26
Jordan: So in theory, they would really be subscribing to your podcast on using YouTube Music, so they would not have that audio.
41:34
Kevin: Yep and for your non-subscribers, they will get the audio preview that says this episode is for subscribers only, and in the description of the YouTube video there should be a link for them to subscribe if they want.
41:46
Alban: The John from Delaware asked.
41:47
Alban: I have a technical question Does the number above need to appear at the start of all messages or can I send SMS and then a second without the need to include your number every time?
41:57
Alban: I actually answered this question in person at the DC meetup where I met John.
42:03
Alban: We have now rolled out an update that if you send a message with just that little bit of text at the beginning of the fan mail message with those numbers and then you follow it up with a message or a second or a third, yes, we will route those to the right place.
42:22
Alban: We'd recommend that you always leave it on there because if you want to message multiple different shows, you're still sending it all to the same phone number, but they all are going to use that prefix.
42:34
Alban: But if you leave it off, we'll do our best to find the right podcast and get it there.
42:39
Alban: So, john in Delaware, yes, it came through to us.
42:43
Kevin: We got a question about fan mail from Italy.
42:45
Kevin: Hey, I've been a Buzzsprout user for a couple of years and just checked out fan mail before we activate it.
42:50
Kevin: I've just clicked on the sends us a text.
42:52
Kevin: I'm wondering if this is SMS only, right?
42:54
Kevin: So do I need a dedicated number, or is the number offered by you and WhatsApp is not working right?
42:59
Kevin: Okay, so I think what you're saying is do you need to get your own number or does Buzzsprout provide one?
43:03
Kevin: Buzzsprout provides the number so you can just turn it on.
43:05
Kevin: There's nothing else that you have to do.
43:07
Kevin: It starts working right away.
43:08
Kevin: Whatsapp is not currently supported.
43:10
Kevin: Right now, whatsapp is its own system.
43:12
Kevin: It doesn't run on the SMS network, as far as I know.
43:14
Kevin: I think there might be some way to do some SMS stuff within WhatsApp.
43:17
Kevin: We have not explored that yet.
43:22
Kevin: If that changes in the future, we'll be sure to let everybody know, but for right now it is SMS only and you do not need a number.
43:26
Kevin: Works out of the box.
43:27
Jordan: All right, and we have another question about the fan mail link.
43:32
Jordan: Tim from Interpreters Workshop wrote in and said the fan mail link does not work in Apple Podcasts.
43:36
Jordan: It only shows as text.
43:38
Jordan: Why?
43:39
Jordan: Well, tim?
43:40
Jordan: I pulled up my Apple Podcasts app and it does show as a link.
43:43
Jordan: So I'm not sure why it would not show as a link in your app.
43:47
Jordan: Do you guys have any ideas?
43:49
Kevin: Are you calling Tim a liar Jordan?
43:52
Jordan: Well, tim you're a big liar.
43:57
Kevin: No, I did the same thing.
43:59
Kevin: I can't figure it out.
43:59
Kevin: So, being on the, you know the text of putting on our tech support hats.
44:03
Kevin: The one of the first things that we always try to do when we're trying to solve a tech support issue is replicate the issue ourselves, and unfortunately, none of us have been able to replicate this issue.
44:10
Kevin: So we checked on Jordan's phone my phone.
44:12
Kevin: Some people on the support team looked on their phones.
44:15
Kevin: I've looked in the desktop app.
44:16
Kevin: We've not ever seen this happening.
44:18
Kevin: So maybe you can drop an email to our support team with a screenshot of what you're seeing.
44:22
Kevin: But we usually have to start step one, replicating the issue, and then we can work backwards from there and try to figure it out.
44:28
Alban: I had a theory on this, Kevin.
44:29
Alban: I remember quite a few Apple podcasts updates ago.
44:34
Alban: There was a point where links were not supported.
44:37
Alban: Isn't that right?
44:37
Alban: They had to be like a naked URL.
44:46
Kevin: I don't think that was ever true in Apple podcasts might've been, but I know in Spotify it was like that for a while, but pretty much all the apps.
44:50
Kevin: Now, again, I don't know what version of iOS you're running, what version of Apple podcasts you're running, Um, if it's a desktop client or if it's a running on an iPhone or an iPad or an iPod touch I don't know any of that stuff.
45:02
Kevin: So what we've been able to see in the devices that we've tested on is it works across the board, and so we just need a little bit more information so that we can reverse engineer the problem and figure it out.
45:13
Alban: Somebody in Maine reached out.
45:15
Alban: I'm confused by podcasts on Pandora.
45:18
Alban: Are they such a small part of Buzzsprout's stats because they rehost files?
45:21
Alban: Do they just not approve many podcasts, or do their customers not use it for podcasts?
45:26
Alban: They're a small part, I think, for a few reasons.
45:30
Alban: One is Pandora does only approve some podcasts.
45:34
Alban: It's also.
45:36
Alban: Pandora is just not as big as it used to be, I think back in 2006, they were massive and a lot of people were using them for listening to radio online.
45:46
Alban: At least that's kind of what they were doing, I think.
45:49
Alban: Just Pandora has gotten smaller and I don't think a ton of people are using it for podcasting.
45:54
Alban: But what's interesting is the few people who seem to get picked up by the Pandora algorithm do seem to do very well.
46:02
Alban: So it's worth submitting, I think.
46:04
Alban: But I wouldn't imagine too many of your plays are going to come through Pandora, but you might be one of the lucky few who get it.
46:12
Alban: So they're not rehosting.
46:13
Alban: They're just not as big of a player as you'd expect.
46:17
Jordan: All right and our sound off question for last episode was if you're using fan mail, how big is your podcast and have you been getting messages?
46:24
Jordan: Alaska said my Steelwatching podcast gets around 100 downloads in the first seven days for each new episode.
46:30
Jordan: Have fan mail active and made an announcement about it shortly after it became available and so far only one fan mail.
46:36
Kevin: One of the tips that I've mentioned to a few people has been not just mentioning the feature but like prompting with questions.
46:43
Kevin: So it's that's what works best for us on Buzzcast is that we have a sound off question at the end of every episode and we say here's how you can participate in the conversation.
46:50
Kevin: So just tap the link to send us a text and here's what we want you to write in about.
46:53
Kevin: There are going to be a few people that just pick up on something you said during your episode and they have a thought about it and they want to share it with you, but you're really not giving them like a call to action, and so I would encourage anybody who's using fan mail and you want interaction from your audience.
47:08
Kevin: Give them a call to action, say, hey, here's something I want you to think about, or ask me this question, or tell me how you're doing X, y or Z, um and and give them something to do.
47:16
Kevin: Give them a reason to tap that link and drop your note.
47:19
Alban: We got another message from Marge from Bite Me the show about edibles.
47:23
Alban: I opted into fan mail right away and was thrilled that I started getting messages almost immediately.
47:27
Alban: I get around a couple hundred downloads per episode and the engagement has been fantastic.
47:32
Alban: Super happy with this new feature.
47:34
Alban: Great, it's awesome to hear when people are getting a lot of new messages.
47:38
Alban: Marge must have been asking some pretty good questions in her call for people to send them in.
47:42
Alban: Yeah, good to hear.
47:44
Kevin: And when Charles, from when at life wrote in said I haven't received family yet, but I do have it turned on.
47:49
Kevin: Well, I saw that in real time.
47:51
Kevin: And then, when I looked at the win at life podcast with with when, charles and I listened to an episode and I sent you a fan mail.
47:57
Kevin: So you should have at least one.
47:58
Kevin: Actually, you should have at least two, because I listened to another episode a few days ago, because I'm a subscriber now and I heard your follow up and I sent you another message.
48:05
Kevin: So I know you have at least two.
48:06
Kevin: Hopefully you get more.
48:07
Jordan: That's awesome, and Kyle Pickens from Pocket Parley podcast said I got one message and it was from myself.
48:13
Jordan: Testing it out works perfectly.
48:15
Jordan: So their downloads are anywhere from 40 to 80 downloads per an episode and they have not made the announcement of the text feature yet, so we'll see if that helps.
48:25
Jordan: I hope it does.
48:27
Alban: I mean, I think, like Kyle, if you're doing a pocket parlay podcast, you've got to tell people like tell me about the most ridiculous parlay.
48:35
Alban: I think this is probably like a betting podcast Tell me the most ridiculous parlay you've ever won.
48:40
Alban: You know what was it, or what did you almost win.
48:42
Alban: Tell me a story and you know that anyone listening to it is probably got some ridiculous betting story and they'll write it in and then that's how we start kicking off all of the stories.
48:53
Alban: I think that would be super interesting for your listeners and super fun for them to be a part of the show.
48:59
Jordan: Yeah, and then Nadie and Katie from At the Movies said they turned on fan mail and haven't had any response yet either.
49:06
Kevin: So oh, I've got a question for Nadie and Katie.
49:09
Kevin: Yes, I'm going to look up that show and shoot them a text.
49:11
Kevin: Okay, all right, before this episode drops, you should have one Perfect.
49:16
Jordan: So the sound off question for our next episode is have you ever lost your podcast files because you didn't back them up, or maybe the backup was lost, and how did you handle it?
49:27
Alban: Yeah, that's a really good one.
49:29
Alban: I've got a story about not backing stuff up.
49:30
Alban: I was writing a pretty long brief when I was a lawyer and I was so frustrated that I couldn't get it right.
49:38
Alban: I hit my notepad down and hit my computer and my computer shut off.
49:43
Alban: No, and when it booted back up, microsoft Word had not saved it.
49:47
Jordan: Oh no.
49:48
Alban: I'm sure there was a good lesson there about being like all right, calm down, Because if you're whacking a computer with a notepad, things aren't going to go well.
49:57
Alban: So I wish I'd backed up that brief.
50:09
Jordan: It would have saved me a couple hours of work.
50:10
Jordan: I actually have a story too.
50:11
Jordan: About a year into making my podcast, I had this honestly brand new Asus laptop and the thing just failed so hard and I thought that I was syncing all of my files to my Dropbox, but it was not automatically syncing from the desktop to my Dropbox, so it was local and I lost all of my podcast episodes and my theme music and my podcast artwork.
50:31
Jordan: All of it was gone and luckily, when I first started, one of the first episodes had synced to Dropbox and I was able to extract the theme music from that episode.
50:44
Alban: And.
50:45
Jordan: I was so scared because it was a custom song that, like my husband had just plucked out on the guitar and we didn't have another copy of it.
50:52
Jordan: So, yeah, that's my story for it.
50:56
Alban: Have you ever heard the story of like Toy Story?
50:58
Alban: When they when Pixar was making Toy Story?
50:59
Alban: Have you heard the story of like Toy Story?
50:59
Alban: No, when Pixar was making Toy Story, they had a big server meltdown and I think it's Toy Story.
51:05
Alban: They lost like all of the original files, oh, and everything failed.
51:10
Alban: And there was one woman who was doing work from home for a little bit and this is like the 90s Work from home is not a big deal, but she's an animator, so she'd taken home all the files on her computer and they were able to restore them all from her work from home computer.
51:26
Alban: So backing up files sounds like it's a good idea.
51:30
Alban: I want to hear some more ridiculous stories.
51:33
Jordan: Yeah, so to have your response featured on our next episode, go ahead and tap the link in the show notes to send us a text and, as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting in the show notes to send us a text and, as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting After you say thanks for listening and keep podcasting.
51:52
Kevin: did either one of you guys?
51:54
Alban: play the little ending theme in your head.
51:56
Alban: Yes, oh, absolutely Every time.
51:56
Alban: I do it between every segment.
51:59
Jordan: So now that I'm doing other podcasts, I've noticed that even when I'm doing like happy to help or like the newer one that we're like working on, when we're done recording, I'll do the dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun-dun and I'll be like that was great guys.
52:13
Jordan: It's like it has nothing to do with these other podcasts, I just say it.
52:23
Kevin: So it's it's habit.
52:24
Kevin: Now, Do you work any of the bits that we do in buzzcast?
52:25
Kevin: Do you work them into your other shows?
52:26
Kevin: Are you doing post shows on?
52:26
Alban: any of them no no, there's no post show for happy.
52:29
Alban: Happy to help is much more professional than this show.
52:32
Alban: It's very crisp.
52:33
Alban: It sounds really, really good.
52:36
Alban: I mean we.
52:37
Kevin: this sounds good too, I think that's only because my episode hasn't dropped yet.
52:41
Alban: Guy's going to throw just a complete wrench into the system.
52:44
Jordan: That's next week.
52:45
Kevin: Yeah.
52:46
Jordan: It's going to be a good one.
52:47
Kevin: It's going to be the least professional happy to help.
52:49
Kevin: Episode to drop.
52:53
Alban: Only because I've not been invited to have an episode.
52:55
Alban: No, because I was like I'm good, I'm not going to invite Alban into this.
53:00
Kevin: All right, so my happy to help.
53:01
Kevin: Episode drops what day next?
53:02
Jordan: week, it's next Tuesday.
53:04
Kevin: Next Tuesday.
53:05
Kevin: I need an exact date.
53:06
Kevin: Yeah, what does that work out to be?
53:08
Kevin: So that would be June 11th.
53:10
Kevin: June 11th, it's going to be a big day for me.
53:13
Kevin: I'm going to promote it.
53:14
Jordan: Yeah, you should.
53:15
Kevin: Well, you're promoting it right now, aren't you?
53:17
Kevin: Yeah, but I might get like one of those daily billboards or something.
53:25
Kevin: Put it up on the highway.
53:25
Kevin: I really want that to be the most popular episode by far.
53:28
Alban: What you need to do is we promote it here.
53:31
Alban: Go listen to this episode with Kevin, send in some fan mail just about how much you love it we won't let Priscilla know why all these messages are coming in about Kevin's episode and then maybe we take some like QR codes, kevin, down to the podcast meetup, because that's the day after your episode drops, and we just get people to scan it and be like you got to listen to this episode.
53:53
Alban: It's going to be amazing and we'll just do a little guerrilla marketing.
53:56
Jordan: The best one they've ever done.
53:58
Kevin: I really love this podcast.
53:59
Kevin: It's happy to help.
54:00
Kevin: So this is.
54:02
Kevin: We've talked about it a little bit on the show before, but if you're a longtime listener of the show, you've probably heard Priscilla.
54:08
Kevin: She's been a guest on the show a few times and she runs our support department and she does such a great job.
54:13
Kevin: One of the things that Buzzsprout is known for probably one of the things we're most proud about Buzzsprout being known for is this remarkable customer support that we strive to be able to deliver for any one of our customers who interacts with us.
54:25
Kevin: And so Priscilla decided that she was going to take her expertise and go just beyond the experiences that she's able to offer with Buzzsprout customers and try to share whatever knowledge that she has gained through the years and years of doing this with the world.
54:40
Kevin: And so Jordan and her teamed up Jordan's producing the show and Priscilla puts all the episodes together and then she's been interviewing people and it's really a fascinating podcast.
54:52
Kevin: It's fascinating for me to listen to it and I've had a lot of firsthand experience about being a part of watching this all happen, but just hearing how thoughtful she really is about everything from hiring to interacting with customers, to having empathy, to striking the right tone.
55:09
Kevin: Um, just on and on and on.
55:10
Kevin: And so, even if you are not into customer service, like if you just appreciate just like thoughtfulness that goes into doing things really well, it's a really fun show to listen to.
55:19
Kevin: Um, if you are in customer service, I mean, like, what are you doing?
55:26
Kevin: You have to be listening to the show.
55:27
Kevin: Or if you're running any sort of small business where you feel like service is part of this, like what you're offering to the world, I think it's valuable there.
55:31
Kevin: So you might not be at the point yet where you have a customer service person on your team or you're building out a customer service department, but that might be in the future.
55:38
Kevin: This she does a really good job of saying, hey, here's where we started, like.
55:41
Kevin: But everything that she goes through she says here's where we are now, but remember, we started way back here and here's how the seeds that were planted and cultivated over time and how it's grown.
55:50
Kevin: Um, just an excellent job.
55:53
Kevin: Jordan, again, probably the best producer in the podcasting business.
55:56
Kevin: I said this at the end of my last episode that I recorded with them.
55:59
Kevin: I kept it in last episode that I recorded with them.
56:05
Kevin: I kept it in.
56:05
Kevin: Yeah, Priscilla is just this hidden podcasting talent, like a cornucopia of podcasting talent that she's been.
56:08
Kevin: She's been running our support team and hasn't been like doing podcasting, yeah, and I'm like what are you doing?
56:14
Jordan: She's incredible at it, yeah, so you know, and for me, I mean I have to be honest, like I wasn't expecting to learn a lot because I'm not.
56:22
Jordan: I have to be honest, like I wasn't expecting to learn a lot because I'm not.
56:24
Jordan: I do some customer support, but I'm not on the customer support team.
56:28
Jordan: So I was just thinking, you know, I was going to be a little bit separated from this and, honestly, I feel like this podcast has substantially helped my interactions on social media.
56:38
Jordan: I'm not taking things as personally as I used to.
56:41
Jordan: I'm able to handle people that are a little bit grumpier on social media.
56:42
Jordan: I'm not taking things as personally as I used to.
56:42
Jordan: I'm able to handle people that are a little bit grumpier on social media, and I feel like this is.
56:47
Alban: So it's helping with this podcast too.
56:48
Jordan: Yeah, yeah, I'm able to handle you guys, no problem now, but it's honestly made my life a little bit better and I feel like that's pretty cool for a customer support podcast.
56:59
Kevin: Yeah, it's really good.
57:00
Jordan: Yeah.
57:01
Kevin: I saw it.
57:01
Kevin: There was just an interaction in our Facebook group where somebody wrote in and was a little bit grumpy about something.
57:05
Kevin: Little yeah, and Jordan came in with this really really like beautiful response.
57:10
Kevin: Just totally empathetic, not pushing blame anywhere, not pointing any fingers, just gonna do my best to help you with your problem, because I know that maybe that's probably not who you are, you're probably just frustrated situation.
57:26
Kevin: So I'm not going to take it personally and like just did a great job with it.
57:29
Kevin: Before I read Jordan's response, I had my own internal response, which wasn't nearly as nice.
57:34
Kevin: I was like oh no, this is not making me feel good.
57:38
Kevin: And then I read Jordan's response and I like wow, that was, it was just perfect.
57:42
Jordan: You know it's funny.
57:43
Jordan: My favorite response to that post was this guy that just said don't dis buzzsprout.
57:52
Kevin: I think I liked that one.
57:53
Kevin: I think I heard of that.
57:54
Jordan: That was the best one, yeah.
57:56
Alban: Wait, jordan, you actually said podcasts.
57:58
Alban: You said it's been helping on the other podcast.
58:00
Alban: So, uh, you're doing this show.
58:02
Alban: You're doing dreamful.
58:03
Alban: You said it's been helping on the other podcast, so you're doing this show, you're doing.
58:07
Jordan: Dreamful You're doing, happy to Help.
58:08
Jordan: What is the other podcast?
58:08
Jordan: I'm not going to tell you yet.
58:09
Jordan: I'll let you know next episode.