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Contact Buzzcast
Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!
No lactose! It doesn't make sense. Like milk, the definition like, however God made this animal, it produces this white fluid that has lactose in it and they have some sort of genetically modified animal that...
Alban:It is like one little protein. It's so easy to get it out.
Jordan:I don't think it comes out of the cows lactose.
Kevin:In my world it does.
Alban:It's a GMO cow.
Jordan:Oh, we've gone so far off the rails.
Kevin:Alright, we have to move quick. We've got to mooove.
Jordan:Because we're never gonna get this done.
Kevin:Moooving on.
Jordan:I know I should wait until the end of the year for this. But I need to do like a quick victory lap. Do you guys remember when we were doing our 2023 predictions? And I said that there would be more podcast channels on Roku and Amazon. And you guys were like, that's crazy. Berber, Berber Burr. You remember that?
Kevin:I remember saying, Berber, Berber, Burr.
Jordan:That's absurd.
Alban:I don't think you said there'll be more like people will actually make them. What was your prediction?
Jordan:So my 2023 podcast prediction is that there's going to be a rise in podcasts and network channels on Roku, and Amazon Fire TV. And this is kind of a weird one.
Alban:That's way out there. This is unlikely to be true. More than what?
Jordan:Well, then zero, I guess. I don't know. No.
Alban:You just said there'll be more than zero. There's very little chance I'd have gone no way are like that one. But
Jordan:I think I thought that there would be more. And the first thing that I saw when I woke up this morning, I was so excited about I opened up my email. And Podnews had a headline for a newsletter saying Wondery launches three TV channels. And I felt vindicated. Because you guys made faces at me like I was crazy for thinking that this is going to be a thing. And I Yeah. So I just had to do a little quick victory lap.
Alban:Yeah, I honestly don't feel like you get to take this victory. You prediction was there will be more than zero Roku channels. And there were three.
Jordan:I feel like it's trending that way, though.
Alban:It's trending.
Jordan:Just let me have this.
Alban:I think Kevin can take a victory lap for his prediction that he hates predictions, and they're never fun. I think it's been borne out right now.
Kevin:What is the story I'm looking at it, Wondery is turning its podcasts into three TV channels on Amazon freevee. I don't even know what Amazon freevee is.
Jordan:As well as like channel apps. You know, like, Vizio has this
Alban:Wait, these aren't Roku channels
Jordan:I said Roku and Amazon. I did it. I said it.
Kevin:Yeah. So I'm assuming if you have an Amazon Fire TV setup thing, then you get Freevee, which is a clever name on TV for TV. And this is some section of channels that they have.
Jordan:Yeah, they're doing three sections, they have the Exhibit C, which is like a true crime channel. So they'll have, they'll be showcasing their true crime podcasts on that channel. And then they also have sports. And then also Wondery, which is just going to be showcasing, like their popular podcasts on that channel.
Alban:Is the idea that they're just playing podcasts 24/7? So you turn on this channel, and you've always got a stream of podcast. Exactly. Yeah. This isn't the new trend, right? Wonder is owned by Amazon. And they're like, Okay, well, let's just throw our podcasts on a loop. And we'll put it on this Amazon thing we're kind of trying to experiment with and build out a little bit. And free V. If it catches on, then the wondery channel might be some of the more exciting channels on there.
Jordan:Yeah, I think you're right. I think it I mean, it is that is wondering, it's owned by Amazon. And so like, I get that, but I did say maybe not indies, but it's gonna be like major networks. I went back and listened. I did say this.
Kevin:I'm wondering, are these shows already on YouTube? If they have a video component, or if they're going to be audio only? If you go to the Freevee app, which looks like a video first app, if it's going to be video or if it's going to be audio?
Jordan:Yeah, they do have these in? Yeah, I'm seeing American Scandal, British Scandal, Doctor Death. So they have them all queued up on YouTube in the podcast. It looks like most of them do have a video component even if it is a static image. So I'm curious to know, like if the they'll be playing the static images or if they're only doing the podcasts that have the actual live video component to it. It's just one of those things like it's just like another way for people to consume podcasts another way for people to discover podcasts. It's like how podcasts are starting to move into the radio space, too. So it's like, they're just slowly infiltrating into all these different channels and mediums, and it's very exciting. Last Thursday, YouTube held a private demonstration for podcast hosts to share how their RSS ingestion will work. And you both were in that call. And though I want to ask you for every detail, I know it was private for a reason. And you probably can't disclose too much information.
Kevin:I can't tell you anything.
Alban:Actually, I can tell you that it was not private. And they intentionally tried to make I think they had a public link. So I don't think it was super secret.
Jordan:What? I thought this was super secret.
Kevin:No, I think there was a bit of misinformation. I think it was like it was an invitation event. But it wasn't invite only. So think about it. Like, what's the type of party that's like this, like a graduation party, where the whole class is invited? Like it's an open party, but certain people are going to get invited? And then those people tell other people like, oh, you should come to this party. And then people are like, Well, I wasn't invited. And you're like, No, it's open for everybody. You should come. But nobody asked me. Well, I'm asking you. Well, it was like one of those things.
Alban:I'll be honest, Kevin, it's endearing to hear the father of high school aged children try to explain how high school parties work.
Kevin:No, you guys should definitely go.
Alban:You're like, no, no, you get invited to the party. But some people are really invited. Everybody's allowed to come.
Kevin:And I'm going, I go to all the high school parties.
Alban:Well, Kevin and I are in the cool kids that were invited to the secret YouTube party. I think it was pretty much they invited anybody who works on the podcast hosting side. And I think it was a pretty wide. I mean, we knew a lot of people. But there were enough people that there are people I'd never seen at a podcast conference before. So it was interesting to kind of see some new faces. And they just talked through, hey, we want to bring more podcasts on to YouTube. We're shutting down Google podcasts. We're bringing podcasts into mute YouTube music, and we're going to talk about exactly how this will work. And so as part of the YouTube team, we've met before, and they went through it. And then they answered, you know, tons of questions. And I guess for our site, it was nice to have somebody kind of try to lay out all of it and answer all the questions. Some of the ways they're implementing it, though, got quite a bit of pushback. Yeah.
Jordan:Rob Walch from Libsyn, he spoke to Hot Pod, which is a podcast newsletter that I really enjoy from The Verge. And he has some hot takes on how it went saying that during the webinar, a podcasters, Slack channel was, quote, filled with expletives. And he's also quoted as saying, no one I talked to is going to recommend you to music to podcasters. And nobody will accept ads on their content that they have no control over. And what he's referring to regarding the ads is that you cannot upload your podcast to YouTube with ads that are not host read and baked into the episode they need to be baked into the episode. So I think what I was wondering here is if you guys had as many negative feelings about this meeting as he did, or if you maybe feel that differently about how it went?
Alban:Well, I can tell you this, I need an invite to the Slack channel. Because Kevin, no, we're not there. That's the super secret Slack channel with all the podcast expletives. So we didn't have that. And we did chat, but there were no
Kevin:That's the party within the party. And Alban and I are expletives in our chat. not that cool. We don't get to like, go to the private room. Oh, yeah. We were just at the public party. Yeah, we were at the block party. We were hanging out in the front yard. Now there is a VIP section room in the back. We didn't have access to that. But evidently, that room is just filled with expletives. So we probably wouldn't want to be there anyway. I mean, that's kind of ridiculous, right? Like, if you're that upset about something, that's why YouTube had this meeting, like they want to hear the feedback from the community. So don't just like back, talk it with your own private group, like they need to hear the feedback. And I will say that there were some hosts in the public YouTube meeting that were giving the feedback like this is this is not gonna work for our customers. We know our customers really well. They're not gonna like this. Of course, it was professional and nice. It wasn't filled with expletives. But YouTube did get some of that feedback. And it sounds like YouTube is very aware of these issues. Even like, they've had conversations, lots of them leading up to this point. I think the YouTube team is in a position where they are, they're not kind of going all in with podcasting. And so I don't think that they're at a position in a position where they want to make a lot of changes to the phone fundamentals of how YouTube works. So YouTube is primarily and fundamentally a video first platform. And so their step into podcasting is that we're going to take audio files, and we're going to convert them into video. And then they are going to very much act like any other video in the Youtube ecosystem. And so they know that that's not like a one to one with podcasting, and it's a change and not everybody's excited about that. But at the same time, they're like, Well, this is this is how we're stepping in this is phase one, this isn't the ultimate. And I think if they see some traction, and people enjoy podcasting on YouTube, and it becomes something that they want to invest in more, maybe they'll lean more into RSS or more traditional forms of podcasting, maybe they won't, I don't know, but they are positioning this as a, we know this is a different thing for you we know this is requires some change in the way you think we know that you might not love it. But this is how we're coming to podcasting. And we hope that you can figure out your way of best supporting it and implementing it for your users. Now, having said that, we have a lot of decisions to make each individual host has to decide how they're going to support YouTube, or if they are going to if they're going to recommend it to their customer base or not. I think Buzzsprout is very much in a position where we have a lot of people who use Buzzsprout, who want their podcasts on YouTube. So we have to figure out how to best support that, at the same time without undermining things that we strongly believe in. Like we very much believe in open podcasting. We very much believe in the work of the podcast index, podcast, namespace to podcast standards group. And a lot of what YouTube is doing pushes against some of those values. And so we have a lot on our mind about how we're how we're going to do this. And I think I actually hesitate to say this, because we haven't made any like real decisions yet. But I think what we're going to do is is figure out how to offer YouTube in kinda the same way YouTube is doing it like YouTube is taking like a half step into podcasting and seeing how it goes. I think what Buzzsprout is approach is going to be is like what is our half step into allowing anyone on Buzzsprout to get their podcast into YouTube. But I don't think we're looking at building a lot of tech to support this new YouTube way of podcasting, because it could all change tomorrow, or it could go away tomorrow. I mean, YouTube has not YouTube, but the parent company, Google and Alphabet have a history of trying things. And then like abandoning them completely. what could potentially happen is like what happened with Facebook last year, like Facebook's Like, Oh, we're all in a podcasting. We're launching it everyone jumped in, get your podcasts listed in Facebook. And then what was it four months later, six months later, we're shutting it down, no more podcasts and Facebook. So that same thing could happen here. It feels like a really big opportunity. But these big tech businesses like they have to see significant engagement, or it's not worth their time to continue to invest in it. So let's see, let's see how you know, let's all take a half step. Let's maybe get some shows into YouTube. Let's see what the results are. Let's see the engagement numbers. Let's see if YouTube and Google are interested in continuing to further their investment. And if they are, we'll be in lockstep with them. But if they're not, we shouldn't throw all our eggs in that basket. Right?
Alban:Yeah, I'd like to get a little bit of color about I think, as the listener, I'd be wondering, why is it being set up this way? Why isn't YouTube kind of going all in? Doesn't it feel like this is not the best step? And I think Kevin, you started to allude to this YouTube as 10s of 1000s of people who work there. And I think I've met four or five people on the YouTube podcast team. I would not be surprised if it wasn't much larger than that. You know, maybe there's 10 People who've worked or working on this project. It's not that these are people who are undermining podcasts intentionally. It's people who love podcasts. And they're trying to figure out how do we get the stuff we love to be part of YouTube, inside of this massive organization? Well, part of what makes that a little bit easier is if you say, Hey, we don't want to rewrite the entire YouTube terms of service for podcasting. We don't want to change the way we handle files. One of the big concerns that I had was, if there's music in podcasts will, what do we do because we have all these very specific contractual agreements with all the music rights holders. And so they have a lot of things that they've figured out for video. And the more that they can treat podcasts like video, the easier it is for that individual team to get podcasts to happen on YouTube, the downstream effects of that. So I don't think that there's any one who's bad. I don't think that any of this is ill willed in any way. But the downstream effects of that are a lot of weirdness that will make it confusing for podcasters, who have shows on YouTube. So let's talk about a few of the things there'll be a bit weird. One stats will be very different. Your YouTube stats will be on YouTube as views which are very different than downloads. If Buzzsprout or your podcast host help bring those stats back. We can't combine them because they are not the same. Literally YouTube's terms of agreement say you cannot combine Our stats with your stats, you have to break them out. That's gonna be pretty confusing inside of the UI, just bringing the stats back will be pretty cumbersome. Managing the stats pretty cumbersome.
Kevin:So Alban very quickly said something that's very important. And that is that YouTube views and like podcast downloads are very different. This isn't just Buzzsprout people being technical, or like nitpicking the differences between these it's not even like an IAB thing. This is a YouTube terms of service thing. So YouTube does now have an API that we could tap into to pull down the number of views that you have from any YouTube video, right? So it's an OAuth process. It's a process like many people have probably seen before, where you're logged into one website, and it says, oh, let's Brett wants access to your YouTube channel. And then you say, Yes, you approve that. And then when you come back, then Buzzsprout can go to your YouTube channel and pull down the video views. What you would think that we would do then is be like, Oh, you had 100 plays on your YouTube podcast episode. And you had 500 downloads from your RSS feed, so that 600 Total downloads or listens, or whatever term, we'd want to call these. But we cannot do that. And YouTube called this out specifically on the call and said, You cannot do that. Because a YouTube view is very specific to YouTube. And they define it, it's actually a lot of it is like completely opaque, you don't actually know how they figure out what is a view and what is not like how long somebody watches, whether they determine you're a bot or a real person, how you skip around in that video. And YouTube often changes that all the time because they always want to protect against, you know, fake views or illegitimate views, because they're trying to provide a real view count, so that any advertiser on their channel can feel confident that when they're buying impressions for their advertisements that they're getting legitimate numbers, but it's different than in podcasting. So in podcasting, the bass standard is the IAB v2 certification of what is download, I think it's 60 seconds sound right to you guys. 60 seconds of downloaded audio, there is like a blacklist. And there's bot filtering that you have to do. And it's only one every 24 hours, there's all these conditions, but they're public, they're open, most IRB will every IRB certified host has to play by these rules. And even those that aren't IRB v2 certified, pretty much still play by these set of rules. So in the podcasting world, a download is a download, we all kind of follow the same set of rules, YouTube's got their own, and we cannot put these two numbers together. So then there becomes this big technical question of, well, that would take a pretty large, it's pretty heavy lift to go ahead and hook up, oh, auth, to be able to get Buzzsprout talking to YouTube. And then you have to work with the API to pull down stats. And then you have to update your UI to display these two numbers differently all the time. And you can't combine them. Like in all the podcast statistics that we show, we have all these charts and graphs, and yada, yada, yada, they all have to be separated, and only for podcasts that are listed in both. So it's a huge, huge lift. And you think about, well, you know, as a podcast creator, that's not my problem. That's Buzzsprout problem. But any, anytime that we invest in something like that, that's time taken away from other stuff that we can investing in, that would be maybe more beneficial for everybody. And so that's not just a question that Buzzsprout has to answer every podcast has has has to answer that. And those numbers are still available in YouTube, and probably with a greater level of detail than we could provide with the limited amount of data that we have available to us in the API. So that leads me to a position where I think we're Buzzsprout is going to start anyway, is that we're going to say you can listen YouTube if you want. But if you want to see statistics on how your episodes are performing on YouTube, then it's probably best just to go over to YouTube and look at him there.
Jordan:I mean, it would be anyway because YouTube's only going to access the RSS for that one episode like that one time. So if you have recurring listeners, that information wouldn't be transferred to Buzzsprout. Right?
Kevin:Correct. What you can do with the information that you can get through the API is that you can log in and get the number of views that that video has. So let's say it goes from 100 to 120, in 24 hour period. And let's say we ping that API every 24 hours, and we'd see that there was plus 20. Now it's plus 30, the next day and plus 40, the next day, and we can keep adding those numbers out. But we cannot combine those with any other download numbers from your podcast RSS feed. And it's limited. It's very limited. Like I think it's pretty much just the view count of how many views that video has. It's not all the demographic information that YouTube has about the people who are actually consuming it. So again, YouTube being a platform, much like Apple and Spotify, they have access to a lot of information that Buzzsprout would never get. And they display some of that. And they tried to do it in a privacy centric type of way to protect anybody who's watching your content, like you want to respect their privacy. So YouTube has spent a lot of time figuring out what can we show what's appropriate and what's not appropriate, but they're not sharing that with anybody else to the API. They're just sharing the big numbers, the big chunks, but if you actually log into YouTube, if you have a YouTube channel and you log in, you can see there's a lot of data that you can get about the types of people that are consuming your content because they're using YouTube to do it. And everyone for the most part is signed into YouTube while they're doing it. So they know a lot of information about them.
Alban:So the next category of things that are kind of raise people's ire a bit is managing podcasts. And the really wonderful thing about RSS is that you have a central place where you manage your content, you upload a Buzzsprout. And then you realize, oh, my gosh, the episode I uploaded yesterday, actually, I flubbed a line. And it's kind of embarrassing. And I went and fixed it, and I uploaded a new episode. Well, the great thing is, instantly, anybody who downloads that episode is going to get the new updated version. And if you update your title, probably within an hour, Apple, Spotify, everywhere else is going to have the updated title there. But anything that's downloaded after you've changed our Buzzsprout is going to show up on new downloads on people's phones. With YouTube, what they're going to be doing is re hosting the files. And so the best way to think of it is they find out that you have a new episode, and they just copy it into YouTube. And now they have their own version that lives there. Kind of like a YouTube video. Well, where that starts getting a little dicey is you upload it, you flub the line, it's embarrassing. You go back in, you update it, everything's fixed. Now you see YouTube never fixed it, because yeah, they have the old version still. Okay, well, maybe if you force them to change it, the way it works, is, it's a totally new video now. So now you've got two videos on there. Or maybe you archive the old one, and you've got the new one up. But that can be a real bummer. We had a video for a pretty big release that I had the audio to quiet. And we probably had 3000 views before I noticed you had the audience too quiet on other people's computers is fine on mine, but it was not great on theirs. So I fixed the audio, I archive that old video and I put up the new one. Well, the difference is that video looks like it now has 2500 views, I would prefer that had 5500 and had all these positive indications that people enjoyed the video. Instead, you kind of kneecap it when you make an edit.
Kevin:I know all the rules that apply to any video that you're putting on YouTube, they just kind of one for one applied to YouTube podcast episodes that are imported from your RSS file. So the way that YouTube showed us how this is working, is that any new thing that you publish into your RSS feed is going to automatically be imported into YouTube. within about five minutes or so now there's processing time that happens after that. So they're kind of pinging your feed every five minutes roughly. And when they see a change, then they're going to start the import process. Now the import process is gonna take more than five minutes, because you've got like a 45 minute audio podcast, they have to create a video version of that. And so that's going to take maybe five or 10 minutes on its own, again, depending on like the load on YouTube at the time. So they said could be 10 minutes, it could be an hour, it just depends. But your new episodes showing up on YouTube are going to be a little bit slower than they are on audio first podcast applications. So think Spotify, Apple, and all the third party apps, they'll show up there probably first before you'll have any video on YouTube. Once it shows up on YouTube. If you make a change to that audio file from that point forward, there's going to be a button that says like refreshed from RSS. And when you click that this whole automated sequence kicks off, the first step of that audio sequence that kicks off is a brand new video file is going to get created. And again, that's going to maybe take another hour or so. And once it's done, that video is going to go live and your old one is going to be archived. So this drives me crazy, just from like a, I don't know, type a everything in its place type orderly person. But I think it's very normal for YouTube creators, YouTube creators probably have lots of unpublished videos in their channel. Because they made tweaks, they made adjustments, they republished a version of this video, and they keep the old version around. So they have any statistics and analytics that were a part of that old video before they replaced it. But for me being like, you know, kind of a little bit of a neat freak, it drives me crazy. Like I don't want this old, ugly stuff cluttering up my channel. I only want the pristine public live version. So I think that would just depend on the type of person you are and how comfortable you are in the YouTube ecosystem. You can always delete the old version if you don't care about statistics that were associated with it. But if you do, then that stuff's gone forever.
Jordan:Yeah, it's interesting because you know, looking at the YouTube Help article about podcasts, you know, they have like the Edit podcast details where you can just go into your Creator Studio and edit the details like the title description, visibility, stuff like that. And then down at the bottom it says re upload an episode if you want to update an audio file through your RSS feed follow says below and they say to hover over the podcast and select the video and then hover over the video to readjust and you can readjust it and to me that sounds like it replaces the Video, but you're saying no, it creates another one? Correct? Yeah, weird. That's so cumbersome.
Kevin:Yeah, and it's very different than what anybody any customer Buzzsprout is used to, which is we have a replace audio feature, where you can go in, click to edit an episode, and there's a replace audio button, and you can upload a whole new audio file. So even if your original episode is wildly different, doesn't matter. If your original episode was an hour, and the new one that you're replacing is 30 minutes doesn't matter. You're telling us this is the exact same podcast episode, here's just a new audio file. And we let you do that completely seamless. And I think it's very much what you would expect to happen happens. But in the YouTube world, they have their own definition of what that means. And it's a very different experience. One of
Jordan:the other things that seems to be recurring in the criticism with YouTube podcasts is you know, the ads, they are saying, you can't have ads in your podcast for your and upload it. And it's not like a hard and fast rule. But it seems to be another one of those features that's bothering people.
Alban:Well, it is a hard and fast rule, but it's a little bit different than maybe what we're used to. And so it's probably good to dive into what the exact rule is. Again, this is gonna work exactly like a YouTube video. On YouTube, you are not allowed to have any advertisements you are allowed to have, I think what they call like creator endorsements, we would just call this a host red ad. If the host, the person who's actually creating the content is on the video, and they say, Hey, I really love athletic greens, here's what it is, here's why I love it. Now back to the content. That's an endorsement. According to YouTube, that's okay for you to source you, the Creator can record your own things, you couldn't include a McDonald's commercial that you did not endorse, it was just something you dropped into the middle. And they say anything that is a different type of content that's dropped in. That's something that YouTube's allowed to sell. That's something that YouTube will split the money with you on. And you don't have as much control on YouTube, you do have some control, but not all of it. Now, in podcasting, we do have kind of a similar thing, lots of people you host read ads, if you're on Buzzsprout, you might use dynamic content to put those host read ads into episodes, which is kind of in the middle, right, you are creating some of the toast read. That's okay, by YouTube's standards, but now you're dropping it in yourself when it's not. So what will work for YouTube will be if you have a host red ad that's baked into your episode. And I mean baked in like only one time when you upload to YouTube, there it is inside the episode and it lives there forever, very different than selling something where, hey, I'm selling this to an advertiser, you get 10,000 impressions and I take it out of my episodes, you'll never be able to take it back out. Once it's gone to YouTube. YouTube will also give you the opportunity to sell advertisements around your podcast, we saw last year they started accepting audio only advertisements. I'd imagine these will be primarily what they want to include with all these podcasts listens. So this creates a little bit of confusion again, for podcasters. And I think quite a bit of confusion for the podcast hosts. Is it confusing for us? Because we have to figure out when YouTube is the person coming in asking for the audio file, not just a random person. And then we have to verify, hey, there aren't any fun allowed advertisements in this episode. There's no Buzzsprout ads being dropped in. And the podcaster probably needs to tell us, hey, the only ads in here are ads that I did myself. So that's a bit of a technical hurdle. But it will be a bit confusing, I think for podcasters when they're like, Oh, I updated my dynamic content. And I see it's still in YouTube, what's going on? It's gonna be confusing for them to understand that will not ever be removed. It's kind of baked into YouTube forever.
Jordan:Yeah, there's gonna be a lot of education having to go on with the podcasters if they decide to do that RSS ingestion.
Kevin:And one other thing that YouTube pointed out, was that while you can do these, these hosts read sponsorships or endorsement type advertisements in your podcast that is allowed. What they want you to do is after you upload an audio file to Buzzsprout, it's going to get ingested into YouTube. And then like I said, within 30 minutes, 60 minutes, it's now live on YouTube. If you do have a sponsor endorsement promotion in there, they then want you to go log into YouTube, click on that file and then check the box that says this contains a you know, host endorsement. There's paid promotion in this episode. That is not something that is a part of your RSS feed. So it's a it's an additional manual step that they want you to do. If you do stuff like that, because then they tag it when you if you've ever watched a YouTube video and you see the little I think it's like a little rectangle it shows up in the bottom left or so of your video in the first few seconds of it playing it says contains paid promotion, they need to be able to display that. And again, this is like FCC guidelines and stuff that they're trying to adhere by. But since they have no automated way of pulling it, now, there's an additional step in your workflow. So if you do your own host, right ads, or sponsorships, or whatever, every episode that you do is sponsored, like, here's, here's a great example is that Buzzsprout sponsors, pot news, weekly review. And so that's a sponsorship. And every episode, James and Sam say something about Buzzsprout is are proudly hosted and sponsored by Buzzsprout, yada, yada, yada, they say something nice about us, they have to now log in to YouTube every time they publish and check that box. Now, we don't know how strict YouTube is going to be about enforcing that. I imagine, again, this isn't isn't that no one said anything to me. But I imagine that they're going to be pretty gracious. In the beginning, when they're first rolling this out. Maybe some like email warnings and stuff that we detected this, you didn't mark it off, please start doing that. But after a while, I imagine they're going to start moving into their strike system, which if you're not familiar with YouTube strike system, is if you do anything that violates their terms of service, they give you a strike. And after three strikes, I think you lose your monetization. And if you continue to violate beyond that they might ban or close your channel altogether. And so we should probably dig into a little bit about like, what does it mean to lose monetization, or in the first case, be eligible for monetization. And that is like YouTube videos, all of them are monetized by YouTube, whenever they deem it appropriate or they they say, Okay, we see an opportunity to sell it out against this content. That does not mean that the content creator is eligible to receive any of that money, it just means they see an opportunity to make money. So anytime they see an opportunity to make money, they're gonna make money.
Alban:Is that 100%? True, Kevin, I know when we upload videos, now I do have the option to say whether or not I want to monetize, am I still forced? Even if I say, No, I'm good. I don't want to monetize.
Kevin:Yeah, so my understanding of that checkbox means that you're saying, Hey, I would like some of the money that you make from this content. That's all it means. It doesn't mean that I give you permission to run ads or on my content. The YouTube terms of service says they have the right to run ads or on your content whenever they want. What that checkbox does is it says if you do Would you share some with me, that's what that checkbox means.
Alban:So I should not be leaving that unchecked. There's tons as we upload YouTube videos for Buzzsprout that I'm like, Man, this is like a three minute video about how to upload my podcast to Buzzsprout. I don't want people to have to watch it ad, leave it unchecked. But really, the ads are still showing up. And we're just not getting our 50 cents.
Kevin:That's correct. And that same thing is true for channels that haven't met threshold to even get that checkbox. So I don't even want to quote what this what the current things are because they change all the time. But there's a certain minimum threshold of engagement that your videos have to reach, before you even get the checkbox of Do you want to set up monetization? And again, if you say no, I don't want ads or on my content, that doesn't mean that you're going to not have ads or on your content, you are absolutely going to have ads, all you're really saying is if you serve ads are on my content, can I have some of it? That's what you're saying. And so YouTube's not super clear about that. And again, this is my interpretation of how the system works. So I wouldn't want to be quoted on it. But my understanding of how it works, based on my own research and reading and emails I've gotten from YouTube, is that they're going to monetize regardless of whether you said you want it monetized or not. What you're just saying is that if you do, then you can share it with me.
Alban:I would say if you do quote anything, also, quote, we reserve the right to change our opinions on this drastically as things change. I know YouTube is for feedback, they're making updates, we will make updates, we will update our opinions as the facts change. And we will also update our opinions when we realize we said something woefully stupid. Our apologies for any mistakes that we have in here, but we're doing our best.
Jordan:Did YouTube confirm whether or not the ads we placed before and after the podcast episodes? Or if they are going to be dynamically inserting ads in the middle of a podcast? Did they confirm that?
Kevin:Yes, a little bit. Okay. I think YouTube is very much like most big tech companies that we've ever talked to anyway. And that they answered the question, like with their prepared statement. So it's almost like a White House press briefing doesn't really matter what you ask. They're gonna tie it to the closest prepared statement they have and they're going to read that. And so we did ask that question. And they said that audio files that are ingested through the RSS ingestion process will be treated like any other video uploaded to YouTube. And so the way I hear that answer is that any other video file that you upload to YouTube, they will do mid rolls whenever they feel it's appropriate whenever they can sell it, basically and they would treat your audio, your podcast audio episodes the same way. So I'd gosh, I have no idea what that experience is going to be like, like if you're listening to us talking right now. And then there's just boom, a cut off and it goes to an ad, that can be very jarring. Maybe they're thinking about a nicer way to handle that experience in the video world. And we've talked about this before, when we did Buzzsprout ads, we took a lot of extra steps to make sure the transition, that the when you're just listening, and you're not watching it, that we gave enough audio cues to make sure that the listener understood that we're taking a break from Episode content, and we're transitioning into something else. The YouTube video world does not do that right now. And I don't know if they're planning on doing it for these audio only, or audio first experiences. But if they don't, it could be jarring. And so I think we're just gonna have to wait and see what happens.
Alban:Yeah, and I think it's important to draw that distinction. On YouTube, they do this exceptionally well, you know, when you're in a video, they're very good at finding the spot for the ad. And then you've got the little yellow bar on the bottom, you can tell you can't skip it, or has the button to skip if you're allowed to. And you watch this ad, it's very clear, this isn't the same person that I was just watching. This is a different audio, it's for a product. But when you're listening, you don't get the visual cues. You don't get the visual cue of Oh, I see a yellow bar and a non skippable button. You don't get the visual cue, there's different person, all of a sudden you just hear a new voice. And so when we started testing Buzzsprout ads, if he came pretty clear, people would get so confused. They'd be like I was in the middle of an episode. And they were doing an interview with somebody about the murder. And all of a sudden, then they were talking about like a medical device. That doesn't make any sense to me. Well, yeah, because that was a commercial. But there wasn't a cue to let you know, we were in a commercial now. And so on Buzzsprout, as we did the rolling in audio, we say let's take a break. And to make it very clear, we've ended content, we've started commercials. If YouTube treats podcasts exactly the way they treat video, they won't have developed any sort of audio cue to help you realize now we're moving into commercials. And I think that could be really confusing. I know, YouTube's smart enough to fix that if they have the time and resources to add the audio cue. But I think we could be in for some growing pains for a few months when people are having ads dropped in. And there isn't a clear transition between this is podcast content. And this is commercial content.
Jordan:You know, there was a time where I didn't click the skip ad button because I was busy and 20 minutes into an ad. I hit the skip. I'm not even exaggerating. 20 minutes, I think it was like a 26 minute ad. And I was like what is this? And it just it was like a an episode within an episode. Can you imagine in the middle of your podcast if a 30 minute ad is dropped? I
Kevin:wonder what the rate for that is? What is YouTube selling infomercial ads?
Alban:I don't know. But I've seen this as well. And I remember I caught one of these when my daughter was really young. She was watching some kids YouTube show. And I walked back in I was like, this isn't a kid show. What How did you get this video? And it was like 12 minutes into a commercial. And I was like This is so strange. Maybe these are for like if a restaurant puts up a video and it's just on autoplay, and or maybe somebody's got a video kind of playing all the time while they're working. I don't understand exactly who it's catching. But yeah, very strange. I want to see the rates. And also, is that actually getting people to convert? Or is it just playing to empty, right? Do we we've talked all about here are some complications. Let's talk about what's good. 2 billion people watch Youtube every month, 2 billion. That's more than I've ever listened to podcasting and a year. So all of a sudden, this is a really big audience. This has been what was exciting about Facebook podcast. What was exciting about every time that a new app has launched with podcasting is the audience. And this is the biggest one yet. Edison Research has done these surveys every year. And since they started asking you about YouTube, YouTube is one of the most common answers for where do you listen to podcasts? Not like what's your primary app, but if they say, list all the apps you use to consume podcasts. YouTube is at the top. It's higher than Apple. It's higher than Spotify, because a lot of people will say, Well, I use overcast because I love it. But I actually also listen to some on YouTube because there's some that just kind of get recommended. That's really exciting. The opportunity to reach a new demographic. We know that Gen Z watches YouTube more than they watch Netflix. That's really exciting. This is an audience that is underrepresented in podcast listening In audiences, and they're on YouTube, and they might want to listen to your podcast, that all is just the possible thing that could happen is we're tapping into a new market, which is why I think it's going to be important for us as YouTube is making a step into podcasting, that Buzzsprout makes a step back and says, let's try to figure this out together, we can point out all of the negatives. And yet, the possibility of getting all of our podcasters in front of all of these potential listeners is huge. And there are ways we can make it better and better. But sometimes you can only make things better if you're involved. And you're actually trying to make it better. Just washing your hands of it. And complaining, I don't think is really the right way for us to move.
Kevin:Yeah, those are good points. You know, I'm still torn. And I don't know exactly how big this is going to be for podcasting, I think I'm leaning more towards, it's going to be big for some shows, and it's not going to be a huge difference for the majority of shows. So I say that for a couple of reasons. One, YouTube has a lot of great content on it. And a lot of people have a lot of success there. An overwhelming majority of people do not get a lot of engagement on the content that they upload, and they don't have a lot of success there. And so YouTube is big enough now, where there are 1000s and 1000s of content creators in the YouTube world who have found a massive level of success. But that is I think it's just like this, it's a numbers game. You know, when you have millions and millions of people playing the Powerball lottery, chances of one or two people hitting the numbers and winning are really high. If you only had a couple 100,000 people playing the lottery, no one would ever win, ever. And I think that's the lewer of YouTube is it's like oh my gosh, all these YouTube creators have gone full time YouTube. And they're making a great living doing YouTube, because there's 50 million people trying it. Right, right. If there were 400,000 people trying it like there are 400,000 active podcasts in the world. Nobody wouldn't hear the success story. Nobody would be winning, they would all be losing. And so do I think it's gonna be huge for podcasting. I think it's gonna be huge for a few podcasters. And I think the majority of people, us included, like we will probably list the show in YouTube, we may already have it listed there. I don't know,
Alban:maybe I should add that we're in YouTube. Well, there you go. But they're not published anymore. Because we were trialing this for a while. And if you're on YouTube, you probably would have seen some of the Buzzcast episodes pop up at one point, our experience was that people didn't really like it. And they were only getting a few 100 downloads. Now few 100 downloads are correct myself. They're few 100 YouTube views. But that was pretty low numbers compared to our YouTube videos that we were publishing at the time. And so we decided to stop publishing them, unless we were eventually going to put Buzzcast up to a Buzzcast only channel. So we will probably do that just so that we can learn along with everybody else. What does this mean? But I think Kevin's intuition that it'll be really big for some people in the same way. That apple podcast is really big for the Apple insider show, in the same way that Spotify is really big for Jordans podcast, in the same way that tick tock was really big for marked safe podcast. But yet each of those channels was not big for most people. And so I think it's going to work for some and I think it's probably worth it once. It's all built out for everybody to create a channel and see, because if people are looking for your show, absolutely want to be there, but really stake if they heard about this great new podcast, and they use YouTube music, and they don't see it there. And they'll automatically think I guess I got the name wrong. And now they don't listen. That'd be a real bummer.
Kevin:Yeah. And let's take 30 seconds quick to clarify. I think we got a little bit of clarification on the YouTube versus YouTube music stuff like how that works. So Alban, correct me if I'm wrong. But my understanding is that there's not like a place to upload specifically to YouTube music. YouTube makes the decision themselves based on the content that you upload to YouTube, whether it's appropriate to display in YouTube music or not. And my understanding, again, is that anything that you use the RSS ingestion tool for that is already defined as a podcast, right? You know, by setup process, you define it as a podcast. And if it's defined as a podcast, then it will be available and YouTube music. The benefit to that is that they then recognize it as audio first content. And when it is available in the YouTube Music app. The really nice thing is that you can like put your phone to sleep and it continues to play in the background without having to have a YouTube premium subscription. And so that is that is something that's really important for podcast playing and listening. This is long form content so you don't Want to be staring at your screen or having phone on the whole time you want it to be able to put your phone to sleep and it still plays? Normally in YouTube, you have to be a premium subscriber, which is, you know, close to $20 a month now to be used to premium. So most people are not YouTube Premium subscribers. But if they want to listen in the background with their phone turned off, that experience will be available to them at no additional cost through YouTube music.
Alban:Yeah, a couple additional pieces to that. We know Google podcasts is going away. And that's also part of this YouTube Music transition. Everything that is in Google podcasts, all the subscriptions people have any shows that are listed there. The shows will not have new listings in YouTube Music unless you go through YouTube. But YouTube music is going to have the ability for you to add an RSS feed. And this is a feature that is in every single podcast app except Spotify, the ability to say hey, I want to subscribe to the show, but it's not listed in your directory. Sometimes those are shows that aren't listed yet. And sometimes those are private shows, or shows that you have a unique URL just to you. So you can add that inside of YouTube music. And if you right now have a Google podcasts set up. And that's how you listen to shows, all of your subscriptions will pour over, even though many of those shows will not have their own directory listing. Oh, interesting. So it's going to work for the listeners, they're not going to lose the connection to their show. And what will happen for somebody like Buzzcast If you are listening to us in Google podcasts, which like 2% of you do, you will now show up to us as YouTube music. And we will get that the old fashioned RSS weigh, the confounding variable will be at some point in the future. There will also be the ability for us to log into YouTube with an API and find out that YouTube saw a bunch of YouTube video place. So to make everything as complicated as possible, you could end up in your Buzzsprout stats with Apple, Spotify, YouTube music, and YouTube video plays some of which were in YouTube music.
Kevin:Yeah, as you were saying that I was like, Oh, here's an opportunity for me to take a complicated explanation and try to simplify. And unfortunately, there is no way to simplify what Alban said, he just said it the most simple way, it is insanely complex. So I'm not even gonna try to restate it. I was gonna try to but he's right. This is just, it's, it's massively confusing. I think the beauty of it is that you don't have to really understand all the complexities the anybody who's listening Google podcasts, and then they they migrate over to YouTube music, that's gonna work like anything else we are going Buzzsprout is gonna display those downloads, just like we do from overcast or Pocket Casts, or Apple podcasts or Spotify. Those are just being your download numbers. So don't worry about it. But publishing to YouTube is its own unique thing. And to see those views and those plays and all the analytics associated with those videos that YouTube creates, on your behalf, you're going to have to log in to YouTube to see that and manage that. And again, if you do host read stuff, make sure you log in and check that box so you don't get strikes against you. Well, this is
Alban:a story I'm sure we will be talking about for years, we will absolutely look back on this conversation with just some huge embarrassment. I'm sure I'm sure plenty of this, these predictions and our thoughts will age some will age well, some will age very poorly. So we'll have to check back in.
Jordan:Yeah, I'm gonna clip this for Kevin's prediction in December. That's a good
Kevin:prediction. So you got to catch him throughout the year. Oh, that's
Alban:great.
Jordan:A fun update to our last episode. When I asked Tom, what the highlight of his Rails world experience was, he responded that it was getting to talk to David Heinemeier Hansson, who is the creator of Ruby on Rails and the co founder of Basecamp, which we use. And because of that conversation, 37 signals is moving their podcast to Buzzsprout. Yeah,
Kevin:I mean, I'm over the moon, because it's just a company that has been so influential in how we run our business. And so much of our success, I think, aligns with the things that they've they've taught us strategies about how they run their business, how they do software development methodologies that they have that That being said, we are a very different company than they are. But at the same time, the way that we develop software, the software frameworks and stacks and a lot of the technology that we utilize a lot of that has been invented by them. And so we've always felt very thankful and indebted to all of the stuff that they've given to the community that we've been able to take advantage of and help grow our company. And so we look at this as an opportunity to give back to them. They've given us so much and it's an opportunity to get back to them. So are we over the moon because it's an extra, you know, $12 a month account. For us, absolutely not. That's not what we're excited about. We're excited that we think we built a really great tool for podcasters. We're really excited about them using that tool to help get their message out to the world and maybe helping influence more companies like us. And we're proud of the work that we do. And so we're excited to be able to share that with them. We help it helps them grow their business.
Alban:This is a podcast that a long time ago, I mean, I think nine years ago, when I started working at Buzzsprout, they had a show called the distance about businesses that had been in business for something like 20 years plus. And I remember listening to that show, and I continued listening when they rebranded it as rework. As a company. We read multiple of the books that David and Jason wrote. So they've been big influences on us. Can I tell a bit of a funny story con? Sure. They moved their podcast hosting once before because of you. What?
Kevin:Oh, this isn't fun. This is painful.
Jordan:Oh, no.
Alban:It's funny now that it's been redeemed. I want to hear the story. Years and years ago, like 2018. They were hosted on Lipson, and they're based in Chicago. And so we were in Chicago for Podcast Movement. And the host of their show was at Podcast Movement. And so I tweeted at her and said, Hey, come by the Buzzsprout. Booth, we'd love to meet you. We are fans of the show. And she came by and Tom talked to us. Oh, I'd love for you to host on Buzzsprout goes, You know what? We just moved to art 19. We're really excited about some of the stuff they had. And we moved there. And I was like, Oh, that's a bummer. Well, if it ever doesn't work, I want to get you on Buzzsprout. Okay, they leave I kind of fan girl a little bit that I was so excited about the show, then art 19 Did some weird stuff with privacy. At the same time that 37 signals as a company was talking about privacy is really important to us. And so Kevin being Kevin, he's just on Twitter. And so he tweets like, What the heck is this? I mean, you can't talk about how much you love privacy. And yet this is your host and goes into a meeting. By the time Kevin gets out of the meeting DHH David who Tom that retweets it and is like, this is terrible. I can't believe we're doing this. We're moving to another host. We're moving to transistor today.
Kevin:It's like What? What? I forgot to mention in my tweet that we'd be happy to host you. And we also agree with your, you know, privacy concerns. I didn't mention that should but I did
Alban:that. I mean, it's just a tweet, Kevin just tweeted years ago saying, hey, this doesn't align with your values and moved on didn't think this was a marketing ploy. This was just a Kevin giving feedback. And I think there's good feedback. It's just they moved to a very privacy centric host. And so it was fun. Years later, we've courted this one podcast for $12 a month for something on the order of at least five years. And it all came to a head because Tom just hung out with DHH. And they had a great time. And
Jordan:he didn't just move his podcast, he also wrote a blog about why he moved his podcast, which is, you know, just icing on top of the cake.
Alban:I really love it, because it's an opportunity for us to showcase Tom. Everybody who's on here knows Tom has heard him on the podcast, but we know him as a person. We know that better. And this is such a wonderful honor to him. So this is from the blog, we just moved the 37 signals podcast and Buzzsprout. Podcast hosting is to some extent a commodity market. So this is less about pining for specific feature, or even working to reduce the bill. This was about buying from Tom Rossi, the technical co founder of hire pixels, who makes Buzzsprout and his team because we prefer to do business with him, known Tom for years from the Rails community, but at Rails world a few weeks ago and got to know him better. He was there as a supporter of the conference sponsoring a podcast booth for Rails podcast recording on site. We talked about bootstrapping, managing a small company and working with Rails, we literally saw eye to eye. I just love that. Yeah, in some way. Podcast hosting is a commodity market, there is a lot of similarity between the feature set that they were getting with their last host and what they're getting now. I don't think there is a feature that we have that they were like, we've got to get it. That's why we're moving. Instead, it was just getting to talk to Tom and learning about him as a person and they connect that they're very similar, at least from somebody who's read DHH his books and worked with Tom for nine years in a very positive way. And so it's just it was wonderful to read that and it made me very proud of Tom.
Kevin:I agree. I like that he said that podcast hosting is to some extent a commodities market. He's right you know, at the end of the day, or at the beginning of the day, let's say this way, the beginning of the day podcast hosting the table stakes for that are the same across the board. Every podcast host has to provide the same base level Other features which is recruiting RSS feed for you, we let you populate that. Now there's there's a lot that we tried to do. And each host has their own flavor that they put on top of that. And that's what makes us a little bit different. That's why Buzzsprout is right for some people and Captivate, Transistor, Libsyn, and Blueberry is, right for other people. It's not a completely commoditized market, just like milk isn't. I mean, there's, you know, your storebrand milk and and there's Fairlife. And Fairlife has kind of figured out their way to make milk, you know, a non commoditized version of that as the same thing that we...Jordan's laughing
Alban:but Kevin and I both are Fairlife advocates for sure.
Kevin:It's a high in the milk, it's $1, more than your storebrand. And I don't know somehow
Alban:high society, no lactose milk.
Kevin:I don't know how they get the lactose out. I feel like it probably has something to do with cruelty to animals. But I don't want to know, we gotta get back back to the podcast. All right, well, but I'm excited that David recognize that that it is, you know, in some parts commodities market, but he's also open to the idea that I'm sure there are differences, it's just hard to figure out what all those differences are until you go and try and use a product and moving from one host to another every couple of months. So that you can try them all out is a big lift, like it's a lot of work for somebody to do. So really, what you try to do is you kind of jump in with one and if they meet your needs well enough, even if you don't absolutely like over the moon in love with them, then you just kind of stick with them for a while. Now, what was the over the moon moment? For DHH? It was this conversation they had with Tom. And that's, that's so great. We get to have conversations like this at podcast conferences. And it's one of the reasons it's the well, let me say it this way. It's the reason that we go to podcasts conferences, we like to connect with people in person, because we recognize that we're competing in a very highly competitive space. And it's very hard just through a marketing site, because everyone knows this is the sales pitch now and they're on your marketing site. So everything you're going to say about your product, of course is like has this marketing spin on it, you're trying to convince me, but in person, you can actually just connect with the person. And if they connect with you, then they are more willing to support you or try out your thing. Regardless of like that most people don't when you come up and have conversations are not about like, well, sometimes it starts out is like do you have this feature? Do you have this feature? What makes you different was and then oftentimes within a few minutes of that conversation, you start connecting with the person and you realize that, hey, they think about podcasting the same way I do. Or they actually really care about me as a podcaster. And so I will trust the software that they built. This is the story of that this is how it comes to life and how it works out. It's really hard on somebody like Alban, whose job is marketing, to like, how do I scale this? How do I take this relationship marketing, and do this times, you know, a million on the internet, it's a tough challenge. But he does a really good job of it. And again, this was this was a long sales cycle, like Alban said, is a five year sales cycle to sell the $12 account. But it's great when it works. It's great when we make those connections, and it's really great to be able to give back support a company that has helped us a lot. It's why we're talking about it. So thank you to 37 signals, and thankful to Tom that he was able to connect with DHH make that connection. And thank you for anybody who uses Buzzsprout. And we hope it blesses you and supports you and helps you get your message and story out to the world. And that's why we build the software that we do.
Jordan:So Apple made a change in iOS 17 that is being reported in my impact podcast downloads. And I thought that this might be kind of a big deal. And you guys are saying no, it's not. And I'm seeing this everywhere on the internet. So is it a big deal? Is it not? And what is it about iOS 17 that could potentially impact downloads,
Kevin:I'm gonna take a swing, then Alban can correct me.
Alban:I think take a swing at it.
Kevin:So the changes I understand is that if you follow the show, in the previous versions of Apple podcasts, if you followed it, and then you didn't listen to anything to like, took off for six months. And then you came back and started listening again, that would like retrigger, Apple podcasts out to go and figure out like, Oh, you haven't listened to the last 20 episodes, I'm gonna go ahead and download all of those on your behalf so that they're ready, because now you're listening to the show again. And in the latest version, they've changed that code a bit. So they're not going to go down. If you've missed 20 episodes, they're not going to go download all 20 of them. They're just going to like start the app up again, and follow probably whatever rules you have, if you've customized them have customized for yourself or if you haven't customized them at all. It's just gonna go with the defaults, which is probably just like download the most recent episode. Is this a big deal? Or is it not a big deal? It's a big deal for again, probably some shows, but not most shows. So I think the people who do a lot of downloads and sell advertising like on a CPM basis around these download numbers, they probably got a pretty good chunk of their downloads by people who were like, it doesn't matter if you miss a week or two on my show because as soon as you catch up again, as soon as you're back from vacation and start listening again, I'm still gonna get those downloads as an independent podcaster that doesn't make a living off selling podcasts advertising or on my show, it's not a huge deal to me, because it just looks like my show took a little, you know, little dips here and there, and then it kind of catches back up. Not alarming, not a big deal, not changing my life. But for somebody who makes a living doing this stuff, I need those downloads, I need those to come in at some point, whether you actually listen or not, I need them. This is a good change, because it's actually getting more accurate numbers. If somebody missed 20 episodes of your show, and then listens to one, it doesn't mean that they listened to all 20, they actually missed them. And unless they click to listen to them, it shouldn't register as a download. So the numbers are getting, again, better, more accurate. But mostly when this happens, people don't like you know, I don't care if they're accurate, I just want the highest numbers possible. And so again, my analogy is like you can go to the gym and put foam weights on the side of your like, it doesn't mean you're stronger.
Alban:I think you're right. Some shows this will matter what shows this metaphor, it matters for the daily, it really matters for a daily news podcast, because it's not uncommon. Somebody would pull up an apple podcasts think I'm gonna listen to some shows. And they go, the daily is like one of the top three shows, it's a daily show about the news. And then they kind of didn't think about it. And all of a sudden, there's like a big thing in the news that they kind of want to check in on. And they go back and they pulled open the daily and they go what's going on, and they click follow again, because they haven't looked for a year. Well, the dailies released 250 episodes, if it downloaded 250 episodes instantly, and it looked like the daily was like manner, numbers just didn't shoot up. But they went up a teeny bit for them 250 downloads, that's a real number. And if that was happening to 1000s of people will now that starts to impact the ads that are sold on the daily. But for somebody like us, that releases an episode every two weeks, and we probably don't have a ton of casual listeners, somebody who thinks I should listen to the show. And then they show up six months later and go, I've got to get back into it, we probably don't have many of those. It's not the habit isn't the same as it would be for a new show. And even if it was, you would only really be triggering 26 episodes, not 250 Because we only release every other week. So I don't think for an indie show, this is very likely to be a big deal. I don't think if you're even an advertiser, you should be too surprised. Because what's going to happen, it's maybe going to impact download numbers by a percent. We know that this is not a perfect science as it is now. There's bigger areas to fix. So I'm not worried about it. I'm not worried about it at all.
Jordan:We're gonna talk about Spotify, and Kevin usually doesn't let us do it. But Kevin, you're gonna love this one. You're gonna love it. Okay. So back in Podcast Movement, Spotify gave a presentation about some features that were coming down the pipeline. And one of these features is a sort of like person tag. And the example they used in the demo was Martin Short. So if Martin was on a podcast, you could click his name, and all the stuff he's tagged in would come up in the app. And it's one of those things like if you blinked, you'd miss it in the presentation. It happens so quickly. So they didn't go into much detail about it. And we had a post in the Facebook group last week, Taylor Johnson, he said that he was recently on a pretty big podcast and the name tag on Spotify wasn't correct. So if a listener clicked on that name button, it would show someone else's content. And we're all saying, Okay, well maybe get in touch with the host. And they maybe they, you know, host on Spotify for podcasters. And, you know, we're giving all these like things of like troubleshooting on how to fix the wrong name being tagged. And so he posted an update. And he said, I chatted for a bit with Spotify customer service about this and got transferred around until finally someone really knew what was happening. Long story short, these auto tags are new Spotify feature that the hosts and guests cannot control. So the Spotify software automatically does this based on who it thinks the guest is. And then tags that guest in other episodes and shows that it thinks is the same guest. And sometimes Spotify gets it wrong right now for people with similar names. And there is no way even for the Spotify support people or engineers to manually change these tags. Go Kevin.
Kevin:I love the marketing spin on this response. This is a new Spotify feature. No, this is a new Spotify bug. Let's be realistic. It's not only a feature, if it does what you want it to do, it's helping you. It's not helping. It's putting the wrong person's name on your content so that when somebody clicks on it takes them to totally different stuff and away from your stuff. That's not a feature. That's a bug.
Alban:Have you ever seen these like every once in a while they're out on Twitter, like somebody famous does something terrible. And then there's a person like a normal person with the exact same name and they're like, I'm not the guy. I'm not the guy who did that. Oh, yeah, that's what's gonna happen to all these podcasts is gonna be like, I had somebody on the show and it was I don't know, like type Kaczynski, then all of a sudden, it's like connected to the Unabomber. You're like, I didn't know the Unabomber right here. Like, let people fix it at least it's not a feature until it can work. Yes. And guess what this already existed. This is the person tag. This has been out for two years, it's been part of podcasting to Dotto. Spotify could just implement it or pull it in. But they decided to build it themselves in a way that is going to be pretty cumbersome and pretty, pretty broken, until they get really sophisticated on it.
Kevin:Right. And this is how we know that Spotify is not really being authentic when they say things like, oh, embracing open standards is too slow for us. And in order for us to move as quickly as we'd like to, we have to innovate in our own walled garden and build proprietary things. If we wait for the open world to agree on things, we would not be competitive because they move too slow. Well, here's a perfect example of this is already out in the open, there's a spec, people are using it. Buzzsprout is supporting it. There's plenty of podcasting apps that are supporting it, they could have just used that. Now, here's the argument. Well, anybody could just put I had Joe Rogan on my show. And he's like the most popular podcast in the world. So it's going to shoot my podcasts to the top of the charts. And so they're like, Oh, well, we can't support that, because it could be abused. Well, their system that they're building is alleviating that or they're trying to weed that stuff out and take a guess anyway. So why not use the tag that the podcaster puts in their thing as like the number one signal. So this person said, Joe Rogan is on the show, now run it through your proprietary algorithm to try to vet and verify that you're building it anyway. And then if it matches on both will be listed as tag, and if one of them doesn't match, or whatever, then fine, we can't match this one. We can't tag it. But to just completely ignore this very strong signal that exists in a lot of podcasts feeds today, where the person who's hosting and publishing the podcast says, This is who I am. And this is who my guest was to ignore that completely, is just Spotify, just like spitting in the face of open podcasting and open standards. Sorry, is that too strong? No, it's just annoying, annoying.
Alban:faces is annoying. It's also a level above annoying.
Kevin:Alright, retraction. Maybe they're not spitting in anyone's face. But it's annoying. Because as a podcast creator, we take the time to label these things and mark them program put nice made metadata around it so that podcasts listening apps can display it to the people who are listening to our show, and to just pick and choose and ignore certain things. Because it doesn't match with your business model, or whatever is it's just petty. It's just like, come on Spotify, get on board, we welcome Spotify with open arms, all they have to do is just get on board with supporting the open podcasting ecosystem, that technology that we're building and trying to advance it and keep it open. At the same time guess add on to it, make it better, and make your app listening experience the best in the world and compete that way. But don't compete by just building anti competitive stuff that breaks podcasting compete by taking the open stuff and making it better. Yeah, a way
Alban:that this could work would be we say we had Joe Rogan on the show, and we tag it as Joe Rogan. And Spotify could run it and go, I don't hear that voice on here at all. So we're not going to respect the fact that that tags in there, or they could even have something that they alert Joe Rogan through his Spotify for podcasters dashboard and say, Were you on the show? And you could just disavow it say, No, I wasn't.
Kevin:Community notes works great on x. Like if you see something in a podcast app that you're like, that's not accurate. They said Joe Rogan's on the show, and it's not just hit the reporter concern and you know, say guest not accurate. And if they get a little signal around that, oh, 5% of people listening to show say that's not the right guest then remove the tag. Like there's there are solutions. The problem is that they're not looking for them. They don't want to implement that way. They want to stay in their own closed proprietary world. That's not good for podcasting overall, which is why I don't like talking about Spotify. But here we are talking about Spotify.
Jordan:It's time for sound off the segment where you our listeners, send in your tips, tricks, podcasting advice. Last week, we had a question, have you taken a break from your podcast and how'd you go about it? And we got a couple tweets in response. The first is from Andy Lehman, Lehman. I'm sorry, if I say this one, it's gotta be Lehman. Right, Lehman. Lehman at Buzzcast podcast. Last time I took a break was December our show setup and seasons and the season ends the end of November and a new one starts in January. We let our listeners know we will be off for a month. That's a perfect way to do it.
Alban:We got another X from Owens Thanks Buzzcast for the episode currently off podcasting for a little bit, and taking care of my mental health and strategizing and what topics to cover when I bounce back. This has been insightful. Thanks. Glad that you were able to be part of the conversation and that it was useful for you
Jordan:And mental health is very important. So take that break. All right, next up, we have a response from Claire.
Unknown:Hi, it's Claire from Creativity Found thanks for my mention on the last show. I took a break from releasing episodes in the summer. By doing some feed swaps with you'll be pleased to know shows that align with the creativity found ethos. So I reached out to a few of my indie podcasting buddies chose episodes with guests that were relevant to my show. And we did some swaps, I managed to catch up on a bit of editing. So I didn't have a complete break from podcasting, but a break from releasing.
Jordan:That's awesome Claire. Yeah, that's my favorite way to do it. Because it's like, not only are you taking a break, but you're also you know, it's like the rising tide raises all boats, you're lifting other podcasters up in the process. So it's kind of two birds with one stone. Next up, we have a response from Brian.
Unknown:Brian from Brian's wrong pod. Well, I haven't exactly taken a break. However, when I started this podcast journey nearly a year ago, I said to myself that I would have at least four episodes in the can before I published my first one. My podcast is about running, and I set my goal to have the first episode come out on the first of January 2023. But in the month of December, I recorded four episodes, this has enabled me to have a break and feel refreshed each time I plan to record. So far, I've done 48 episodes, and I love it. Thanks, Buzzsprout and keep up the good work.
Alban:Yeah, I think that's a great way to do it. The way to make sure that you have space that if you need to take a break is to have a little bit of episodes right when you launch party set. The only reason I don't recommend this more is because this can also get people to procrastinate on ever releasing the podcast, they you know, end up recording 10 episodes and never releasing any of them. But if you can have a few kind of saved and ready to get published at any time. So if you ever need to take a break, you can without there being an interruption for your listeners.
Jordan:Alright, Kevin, you're up for our question for next episode.
Kevin:I've got a good question. I think so I mean, we're coming into the holiday season, holidays being like gift giving season that is right around the corner. And so I this type of year, I always like to hear from podcasters like what's on your wish list, your holiday wish list to improve your podcasts. So what type of gear are you looking for? How are you looking to level up? What is the piece of gear that you're hoping that someone gives you this season or you get for yourself to level up your podcast?
Jordan:What if we were to pick a listener to give them the item that's on their wish list? Yes.
Kevin:Oh, I love that. Jordan. I love that. I love that. So I'm gonna get the most responses from my question ever now. Jordan, you absolutely are promised, you can enter the Buzzcast Lottery by submitting your holiday wish list item. And we will choose one of them to be the winner and we will send you that
Alban:can we be clear this is not randomized. We are going to pick one because we're not going to randomly find somebody who said I want a $10,000 studio makeover and commit to that. So
Kevin:I need a Tesla Model X to level up my podcast.
Jordan:All right to have your response featured on our next episode and to enter our Buzzsprout holiday sweepstakes. Leave a 30 second voice message at podinbox.com/buzzsprout, Send us a boostagram, or tweet the answer at BuzzcastPodcast. And as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting!
Kevin:What if we don't run a post show?