0:00

Well we can, we can work out our , uh, our

0:02

therapy session

0:03

way higher, like way louder and fuller.

0:05

He turned our big bottom off

0:07

special mic he got that from like Howard Stern,

0:11

it's called Mike technique. Yes...

0:14

Yes. Yes it is. Oh yeah . yes,

0:18

I'm totally recording. There's out there. Travis

0:20

sounds nothing like this when you talk to them in person. So

0:27

this is episode one of Buzzcast.

0:31

We should probably talk about why what we're doing

0:33

here. So we're gonna talk about a couple of things. First, we're gonna talk

0:35

about the apple developer conference that happened

0:38

a couple days ago where they were releasing

0:41

updates on apple podcasts,

0:44

which is nice. It's nice every once in a while

0:46

to hear from the, the giants

0:48

in the podcast player industry to say we're going to

0:50

do things to make this

0:52

podcast app a little bit better. So,

0:55

so I'm curious what your initial takeaways were

0:57

hearing about the death of iTunes

1:00

and the creation of a standalone apple

1:02

podcast desktop app.

1:04

I'm really interested, anytime Apple does something

1:06

in the podcasting space, I get excited

1:08

because Apple has been,

1:11

has had a lot of power in the podcasting

1:13

world for a long time and they've never done

1:15

anything negative with that, which is,

1:18

I mean, I don't know how evil or not

1:20

evil any of these companies really are. Uh

1:22

, I've never worked at Apple. I don't know anybody,

1:25

you know, like on a friend personal level that works

1:27

inside of Apple. So I , I really don't know if

1:29

it's just that they haven't had the opportunity yet or they really

1:31

are good people trying to do good things. What

1:33

matters is that they haven't done anything

1:36

really harmful to the podcast community.

1:38

They haven't tried to figure

1:40

out how they could take the work of independent

1:42

creators and use that to

1:45

, um , sell more products or

1:47

push more online subscription services or sell

1:49

more iPhones or whatever. Not that

1:51

there's not some inherent advantage of doing that,

1:54

of having like a podcast player app built into their

1:56

phones and stuff like this . There's definitely that makes

1:58

their phone better, but they're not doing it at

2:00

the expense or at the cost of these independent

2:02

creators who are creating this content. There's

2:04

the flip side of that. There are some companies that I'm more

2:07

concerned are trying to do that. We don't need to talk about

2:09

them right now. So that said, that's why I get excited

2:11

about when I see apple making some moves in the space

2:13

because all of their motives so far seem to

2:15

be positive and seem to be

2:18

in the best interest of people who

2:20

are creating content and they just want to help get

2:22

it out to as many people as possible. And that aligns

2:24

with what independent podcasters are trying to

2:26

do. They're trying to create good content and get it out to as many

2:28

people as possible. So that's exciting. Yesterday

2:32

the news that came out of WWDC

2:35

was specifically about a

2:37

new podcast categories and they also

2:39

announced some things about searchability,

2:42

findability and podcasts and episodes.

2:45

They had mentioned something about being able to have

2:47

like images of hosts. I

2:49

don't know exactly how they're going to pull that off and images of

2:51

guests. So presumably all of this stuff

2:54

would possibly be like new RSS tags

2:56

that live in your feed and reference images or something like that.

2:58

They probably are going to be doing transcription on their

3:00

side. They might ingest transcriptions to the RSS

3:02

feed. We don't know that for sure. Uh

3:04

, but it all sounds like helpful stuff. It doesn't,

3:07

you know, the, the worry is always like, oh, there's going

3:09

to be a paid podcast

3:11

or you know, apple is doing a lot of

3:14

apple exclusive content, like for Apple

3:16

TV and they're producing shows and movies and all

3:18

this kind of stuff. And so the concern is, well , you can

3:20

start doing that in podcasts . I've got some strong feelings

3:23

about whether that content should really be called

3:25

a podcast or not. Other people are doing

3:27

that. Other companies, apple

3:29

didn't announce anything about that, so I was excited about it. I'm

3:31

happy about it. I think they're solving real problems

3:33

that are, that we're experiencing in the podcast

3:36

community right now, which is discoverability.

3:38

Uh, if I want to find a podcast talking about a specific

3:40

topic I'm interested in, it's kind of hard to do that. They're trying

3:43

to solve that. Uh , I like the idea of

3:45

giving us a place to have images

3:47

to create more of a personal connection with your hosts

3:49

and their guests. So overly,

3:51

I'm pretty optimistic about everything they announced

3:53

yesterday. It sounds like apple

3:55

has a similar vision for moving the podcasting

3:58

community and industry and space forward. Everything's

4:01

up as far as I'm concerned. What

4:03

do you think Alban?

4:05

as far as your first question? Just to like what do we think

4:07

of iTunes? Yeah, that's awesome.

4:10

Like that's, that's really, really good. iTunes has

4:12

been hanging around for years. I loved to like

4:14

the Craig Federighi, any or whatever joke

4:16

where he's, like we're adding mail

4:18

to iTunes. He's like, read notes to it.

4:21

Yeah, exactly. I feel like this

4:23

is the stuff I'd love to add to our podcast, that one

4:26

person at our office was like, there's seriously

4:28

added calendars to iTunes? Yes.

4:32

I think splitting the apps up is great.

4:34

I think as far as like saying Apple's not

4:36

evil, I think it's the opposite. Like we're

4:38

really lucky there's such a big company

4:41

has taken such a strong interest

4:43

in podcasting for a long time and

4:45

not monetized it. Spotify didn't

4:47

get until they thought, hey, we could choose some numbers

4:49

here and we can , maybe we could be the king of podcasts

4:52

and then luminaries like, Ooh , we're going to do

4:54

it, but it's all going to be towards a

4:56

Netflix, a podcasting someday

4:58

and you get Soundcloud. It's like we're going

5:00

to get in there and we're going to do our own thing and like

5:02

everyone gets interested when there's

5:04

money to be had and Google's like, try not

5:07

to search Apple since like,

5:09

I don't know. I mean I was , I feel like I

5:11

remember podcasts in iTunes from like 2006

5:14

and they've been in there forever and the whole time

5:16

they're like, here's a bunch of great shows.

5:19

Hey, we found some good shows. Hey, why don't you

5:21

use iTunes to find them and we'll sync them. Like

5:23

never made any money and

5:26

they'd done it for years. And I feel like they've provided this huge

5:28

hedge against, you know,

5:30

kind of bigger companies just saying like, oh, we're going to run

5:32

rough shot over all the creators.

5:35

Yeah. You know, it's kind of like a , uh

5:37

, you know, they're like the , uh , the, what is

5:39

it, Singapore of like podcasting.

5:42

It's like it's a dictatorship, but it's like a really

5:44

good dictatorship.

5:47

Well, it's , it's fascinating to be podcasting

5:50

like you guys have hit on. It's literally the only thing that they

5:52

don't try to make money on out of like their products.

5:54

I'm trying to think of other things that aren't

5:57

trying to bring you into either like an Apple

6:00

suite of products, like calendar and

6:02

news and everything sinking up or

6:04

Apple Music getting you on a subscription. It is really

6:06

fascinating. iTunes dying has been something

6:08

we have known is coming for a while

6:11

. Like apple said, please stop calling it iTunes.

6:13

Please start calling an Apple Podcasts like a

6:15

while ago.

6:16

The did you get , see iTunes is not going away

6:18

for Windows, right? They're like,

6:21

yeah, we're doing, we're splitting everything up, it's going to be

6:23

awesome. You guys are gonna love it. Not

6:25

updating the Windows one yet. That one is getting a new calendar.

6:28

Priorities, you know. So Kevin you

6:31

hit on a couple things that I think are

6:33

important, impactful for Indie

6:35

podcasters, which are some of the updates they,

6:37

it's coming out later this fall and they're going to phase

6:40

them in starting out with the larger podcasts

6:42

and that eventually rolling them out to everybody and

6:44

they sent out an email to everyone that has

6:47

an iTunes connect accounts. That's

6:49

what it's called. Yeah. Um, so

6:51

the first one is a desk . I mean , so I think the desktop

6:53

app is significant in

6:55

that it shows that apple recognizes that podcasting

6:58

is going to be a part of its future, whatever that is,

7:01

that they see music, they see TV

7:03

and they see podcasts as the three main

7:05

content arms that they are going to be serving people with.

7:08

But as far as like a desktop app, most people don't listen

7:10

to podcasts on their desktop.

7:13

And so, so I don't see it like really

7:15

changing listenership just

7:17

because there's a standalone desktop app. Um

7:20

, but I think it's good. Definitely

7:22

good news. As far as their stance towards

7:24

podcasts in general, I was much more excited

7:26

about the search enhancements that they mentioned.

7:29

And it's one thing when they announced

7:31

something and they were like, we're gonna make this and you think it's

7:33

going to be awesome. And then you just kind of hope

7:35

that it actually lives up to the expectation that we build

7:37

for it. You know, they, they talk about how listeners

7:40

are gonna be able to discover shows based on audio transcripts,

7:42

topics and people. And

7:45

so in my mind, essentially what they're doing

7:47

is they're saying we're gonna expand the

7:50

metadata that is searchable within

7:52

the app. Right . Um, which

7:54

that's something that other podcast players

7:56

are doing. Google podcasts has

7:59

started transcribing audio to make

8:01

it searchable, looking for things via

8:03

tags and hashtags and things like that. It's kind

8:05

of been standard practice for a long time.

8:08

So I think that's going to be really great as far as lessening

8:12

the importance of making sure your title

8:14

is exactly correct and

8:16

then hoping someone stumbles onto it versus

8:18

the totality of your episode is about this subject

8:21

and apple can recognize this is the best

8:23

fit for what this person is looking for.

8:24

Right. Well title tags

8:27

in podcasts are kind of a joke anyway,

8:29

right? Like you record this whole episode

8:32

and then afterwards it's kind of a thing in the

8:34

podcasting space is that, oh, we'll find a funny little

8:36

segment and we'll name the episode that or whatever, whatever.

8:38

Like most of the time episode

8:40

titles are not necessarily reflective of the content

8:42

in that episode. So it has been important

8:44

for a long time to transcribe

8:46

your podcast . We built transcriptions into Buzzsprout

8:49

a year, year and a half ago. We've been encouraging our

8:51

podcasters to transcribe. It's super

8:53

important in terms of people being able

8:55

to discover the content of your episodes,

8:58

but I think what we're seeing now is some

9:01

bigger companies like Google and

9:03

Apple, probably others. Spotify

9:05

with Spotify hasn't said anything about transcriptions yet. Have

9:08

they ?

9:09

I don't know, but they're definitely trying to do more stuff around

9:11

search.

9:12

Right . I've got Spotify cued

9:15

up for a little bit so we can jump into, I want to stick

9:17

to apple right now though.

9:17

Okay. So let me finish that thought. The , I mean the idea

9:20

here is that I think they're recognizing that

9:22

we can't wait around for podcasters to

9:24

initiate transcriptions anymore. We

9:27

need to solve this discoverability

9:29

problem. And that word discoverability

9:32

problem is kind of loaded, right? There's

9:34

lots of different sides. Like podcasts will say there's

9:36

this discoverability problem cause no one's finding my show.

9:39

And that's really different, you

9:41

know, cause like the solution to that is, well how are you

9:43

promoting your show and where do you doing to get the word

9:45

out? Like nobody writes a bestselling book and then just,

9:47

you know, goes and puts it on the shelf. Like

9:50

there's a lot of promotion that goes around that. And then

9:52

there's a discoverability problem of no there are people

9:54

who are out there searching for topics that you covered in your podcast

9:56

, but they're not coming up in search engine results

9:58

or they're not coming up in their podcatcher, or that's

10:00

a real problem, and that's what these companies are trying

10:02

to solve. They're saying, hey, we can't sit around and wait for

10:04

all independent podcasters or everyone who's creating a podcast

10:07

to go and transcribe it because it's not happening fast

10:09

enough and there are enough listeners now,

10:11

there's enough demand. This industry is growing fast

10:13

enough that it makes sense that if somebody can

10:16

solve that problem of, I'm interested in

10:18

this topic, did anybody talk about it on a podcast? If I can

10:20

solve that problem, that's a huge help for the

10:22

community. Maybe it's a huge help for my business. Maybe

10:24

it helps me sell more phones. Maybe it helps me get more subscribers

10:26

if I'm somebody like Spotify. So there might be other

10:28

financial motivators behind this,

10:30

but regardless, it's a good thing for

10:33

the industry.

10:34

Yeah , right. I think that it makes,

10:36

it made me think a lot about like podcasting, SEO,

10:39

like the , the way there are men , maybe

10:41

there's some like parallels between Web SEO

10:43

and how Podcasting has changed. Like when we had web

10:45

SEO the very beginning, it's really basic. It's

10:48

Alta Vista . We're just looking at a lot of like looking at titles

10:50

and just kind of be like, we're maybe curating

10:52

lists with Yahoo at one point and

10:55

then we got a little bit better in Google's actually

10:58

find some on pages but people are just spamming their pages

11:00

with like this is the best church,

11:02

Jacksonville, Jacksonville best church and they're posting

11:04

all this stuff to get, you know , some, there's

11:06

something ranked,

11:07

making them white fonts on white backgrounds

11:09

so you can't see it. But it's actually ranking

11:11

in Google and we,

11:12

and we just lived through that in the podcasting space.

11:14

People were like, check out Travis,

11:17

all Britain entrepreneur life changer

11:19

this, this. And it's like, you know that

11:21

that would be my episode with Travis Albrett and it's

11:23

like 17 tags on the

11:25

end of it and it was just a bunch of trash.

11:28

Like it may have been relevant

11:30

somewhat, but it's mostly just like I

11:32

threw a bunch of stuff in there so that people would find

11:34

it. And now with, if we're going to open

11:37

up like an actual full transcript

11:39

and look through what people are talking about,

11:42

we're going to get a lot better stuff. Right. Once we have

11:44

a lot more data. And I

11:46

was even thinking now in the current world of SEO

11:48

is all about the people love

11:51

the content too . They go back to Google and look for

11:53

something else or do they love what they listened to

11:56

or read? Did they read all of it? Did they bounce?

11:58

And I was like, well you know, if you think about Apple's

12:01

in a good position to learn that stuff, let's

12:03

say, okay you searched,

12:05

you found this podcast, we served it up and

12:08

then you listened the whole thing and listen to it again. You

12:10

loved it. So that was a great find for that

12:12

keyword. So I think there is kind

12:14

of a cool, like I didn't

12:16

expect that transcript stuff that I was kinda like,

12:19

man, that's pretty sweet. We could actually see some

12:21

new stuff in podcasting.

12:23

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. The, you know,

12:25

I was having a conversation with someone the other day and we were talking

12:27

about college and the idea that there is

12:29

a , a bubble around higher education and

12:32

all this stuff. And I know Mark Cuban talks a lot about this

12:34

and I know Mark Cuban appears on a lot of podcasts, but

12:36

there's no great way for me right now to

12:38

find out mark Cuban's thoughts on

12:41

higher education in a podcast

12:43

form. There are some about like, listen,

12:46

there are some people who are trying to solve that problem, but they

12:48

don't have the data like Apple has

12:50

or like Google has, they don't have the resources that Apple

12:52

had them who has this. Some, some problems are

12:54

like I admire the gumption of somebody

12:56

like Listen Notes going out there and saying, hey, this is a

12:58

real problem. I think I can solve part of it and

13:01

they're doing a good job of it. And I loved Listen Notes. Yeah

13:03

. But there are other problems

13:05

and I think this might be one of those problems

13:08

that it's like that is a big endeavor and it

13:10

requires a lot of resources. It requires a big team, it

13:12

requires a massive data set, it requires tons of computing

13:14

power, tons of money, and

13:17

there might not be a ton of money coming back on the other side

13:19

unless you have other product channels to support it. And

13:21

so that's why I think there are certain problems that an

13:23

Apple or a Google or you

13:25

know, I don't want to say the f word, but like a Facebook

13:28

might be a better solution to

13:30

like they're more, they're in a better position to solve these

13:32

problems than like independent people.

13:34

Like the guy who's, who's doing a great job

13:36

on listen notes. But again, there's a massive part

13:38

of that problem that I don't think he's ever going to solve as well

13:41

as somebody like an Apple or a Google could solve.

13:43

Well he is kind of walled off from that. It would

13:45

be tough for him to ever fake your out. Someone listened

13:47

to half of this episode, another person listened to

13:49

all of it, you know, he couldn't figure that

13:51

out. Right ? But yeah, if a

13:54

wade and if you're listening, I love listen notes

13:57

and what this stuff reminded me of,

13:59

not the transcription part but the other parts, it

14:02

definitely reminded me of Youtube

14:04

discoverability, right? With tags,

14:07

with eventually suggestions

14:09

has this problem now so well,

14:11

so it's, it's a lot easier to be found

14:13

on youtube than it is in a podcast because

14:15

youtube is serving up suggested content based

14:18

on what you've listened, watched before. And

14:20

they can see your watch time and they can see is this

14:22

a good video, a bad video? So, so

14:24

I'm hoping that the direction that

14:26

apple goes is they start to incentivize

14:28

good SEO behavior because

14:31

they can choose to say, we're going to lean more

14:33

into the transcription versus the

14:35

tags because we want you to actually have good

14:37

content and not just know how to game our system.

14:40

Right? Because recently they started cutting down on

14:42

the author tag , uh , you know, stuffing,

14:45

where like you were mentioning like, Oh, Travis, author,

14:47

entrepreneur life coach. You know, millionaire

14:49

world changer. Yeah. World or whatever. Um,

14:52

they actually started taking podcasts down that were doing

14:54

that. And so I'm hoping that when they start

14:56

to provide all this extra searchability

14:59

in the Metadata, whether it's in the RSS feed

15:01

or if it's something that January that they generate on their

15:03

own , um, internally that

15:05

it motivates good behavior. It inspires good behavior

15:09

from an industry standpoint. Cause everyone's, as

15:11

soon as you give it to any kind of marketer that they're going to try and figure

15:13

out how to break it for their own benefit.

15:15

And I just hope that the breaking of it is actually in line

15:17

with growth hack . You know, the ethos. Yes.

15:20

Growth hacking. Kevin's favorite word. Yeah.

15:55

Well it's a funny parallel you draw there because

15:57

you know, youtube has its own set of problems,

15:59

right? Like they want to recommend content but

16:02

not necessarily for the benefit of this

16:04

is stuff that you are interested in

16:06

or searching around. You

16:08

would hope and you would think, well that's of

16:10

course where their motivations lie, but it's , it's really not.

16:13

Because what they want to do is they want to just serve up content

16:15

that keeps you on platform. So you might be searching

16:17

for, how do I fix my kitchen sink? But

16:19

they realize that after you watch one

16:21

or two videos about a kitchen sink, the next best

16:23

thing to serve you is a funny cat video.

16:26

And so they will serve you that even though you're trying

16:28

to solve this problem. And before you know it, three hours have

16:30

gone by and you've watched all these unrelated videos

16:32

and your kitchen sink, is still broken. you're watching Nazi

16:34

cat videos at this point and

16:37

the Nazi cat video channel is very grateful for your

16:39

subscription. And so

16:41

they are [inaudible] . It does have a dangerous,

16:46

there's another problem there because they're motivated

16:48

to keep you on platform watching videos not

16:50

necessarily fix your kitchen sink. And so

16:52

I just thought it was an interesting parallel. Our

16:55

hope would be that if we're trying

16:57

to make content in podcasts

16:59

more discoverable and serve up relevant content,

17:02

that it's, you know, at least in Apple's world,

17:04

I don't know that apple cares how long you're listening

17:06

to the podcast on your phone. I think what apple

17:08

cares about is, hey, when I loan find

17:10

a podcast, I can find it easily on my phone.

17:13

And that's one of the reasons I love iPhone and I'm going to go buy

17:15

another iPhone.

17:15

Yeah. Let me ask you this.

17:18

This is something I've kind of thought all these people

17:20

kind of throw out on Twitter all the time, like

17:22

discoverability, huge issue in podcasting.

17:25

I can solve it. You know, like just random

17:27

companies, like every time luminary talks,

17:29

every time anyone talks about it, it's this

17:31

massive problem. And so one

17:34

point I kinda think, I was like, is this even

17:36

a problem? Is it even something you would want

17:39

to solve? I'm sure it just naturally

17:41

think, well of course it's a problem Alban. But

17:44

is there a chance that like maybe

17:46

what's kind of cool about podcasting is it kind of takes

17:48

a while , you kind of dig around,

17:51

you sample tons of stuff and it stinks

17:53

and then he finds something you like and

17:56

then you're in it for like years and you're like,

17:58

man, I'm listening to these, you know this show

18:00

and I love it. And if you find something

18:02

you love, it's, I don't

18:04

share many youtube videos of friends, but I share a lot

18:06

of podcasts and I think it's because

18:09

it's like, yeah, I know these are hard to find. You

18:11

know, this is a, here's a cool podcast.

18:13

Made me think of you. It's kind of a thought

18:15

I've been batting around. I'm like, do we want to , it'd

18:17

be in a world where all that comes up is

18:19

apple. It's like, Hey, check out

18:21

these 25 podcasts you need to listen

18:24

to next. Or maybe kind

18:26

of this is the cool place that you know, kind of this nice

18:28

place in the world right now.

18:30

I mean, my, my initial thought is, I

18:33

don't know. I mean all the

18:35

questions that I guess get asked her, how do I grow my audience

18:37

and how do I monetize? I could, I

18:39

could retire if I got a nickel every single time somebody asked

18:41

me that question. Um, and so

18:43

I think as a podcast here, you naturally want

18:46

as many people as possible to listen

18:48

to your content. And it's, it's, I

18:50

don't , it's almost like there's two schools of thought. There's people that

18:52

have been in it for 10 years that understand like the specialness

18:55

of podcasting and they aren't worried about

18:57

trying to sell, you know, Casper mattress ads

19:00

and so they don't care if they have 4,000

19:02

or 5,000. They just care that they get to do

19:04

something they're excited about. And then you have a lot of

19:06

new players that are like maybe coming

19:09

from more of like a , almost a radio mindset of

19:11

like, we need to hit this mass appeal. We need to get hundreds

19:13

of thousands of downloads so that we can justify these 20

19:16

people audio teams to produce

19:18

these episodes. And so it's almost like a

19:20

, a battle of priorities.

19:22

Yeah. Right. That you have the , the classic podcasters

19:25

that are like, no, we're, we're, we're

19:28

the rebels, we're the, we're the garage bands you've never

19:30

heard of, but you share the mixed

19:32

cds with all your friends because it's awesome. Versus

19:34

these other guys that are like, what were the record labels? And

19:37

we're here to sell millions of albums.

19:39

But you remember the old days of like Travis who may be

19:41

a little too young for this, but like did you ever have a my space

19:43

? Oh yes, you have to. Do you have my space?

19:45

I had my space. I'm very familiar with my space.

19:48

I had a sweet blink when 82

19:50

custom mice page profile that

19:52

played all the small things when someone went on it using

19:55

your top eight, well, I mean yes

19:57

at the top eight [inaudible] there was a day when

20:00

all you do is dink around your my space and you have like

20:02

50 friends and yet top

20:04

eight, it was so much like it was fun to like interact

20:06

with people and you looked at everything. Everyone posted

20:09

and you built a little community. And then

20:11

even the early days of Facebook were like that and it

20:13

was only like your college friends

20:15

and it was like a big deal in you went to a party and then you added

20:18

people later and you talked and you learned about

20:20

each other. And then eventually it was

20:22

like everyone and everything was on there.

20:25

And then Facebook was like, rather than

20:27

learning a lot about 25 people,

20:30

you'll learn a very little bit about 2000

20:32

people and we'll post all

20:34

this stuff. And so you're just sifting

20:36

through, kind of like dropping

20:38

in for a second with a lot of people. And

20:41

I feel like I don't want that

20:43

to be the future of podcasting where it's

20:46

like, here are the top clips from

20:48

2000 podcasts. You could be

20:51

listening to check out a clip from each one.

20:53

Maybe you'll connect with one pod, we'll listen to a

20:55

whole episode once in a while . I

20:58

liked the world I'm in, where on Wednesdays,

21:00

like I know my stupid bitcoin

21:02

podcast comes out and I'm like, yeah,

21:05

I've, yeah, I love listening to it, but it

21:07

would be kind of a bummer. I wouldn't wanna listen like little

21:10

clips of 10 yet .

21:11

Well you just talked about this right on in

21:13

interview, the interview down a Mixergy,

21:15

right? You just talked about this like the idea that

21:18

in the traditional sense, the idea of

21:20

like monetizing through ads in the CPM

21:22

world, you need thousands and thousands of

21:24

listeners. Yeah. You need a lot of M's. You

21:26

need a lot M's and I, I think the number

21:28

they could start on around a lot is like 50,000.

21:31

You need 50,000 plays per episode in

21:33

order to make a living off of

21:35

ads that say that you sell

21:37

on a CPM basis. But that's not

21:39

true at all in the podcasting world. The idea

21:41

that you could have a hundred raging

21:44

fans, you can be just as successful

21:46

as if you have 50,000 casual

21:48

fans. Right. And like you have stories about this. Tell

21:50

me a story about this. Like what that role is .

21:52

There was one guy in our Facebook group, I think his name was Jarvis.

21:55

Yeah . He was like, he had the , uh , it

21:58

was like a call center podcast and

22:01

I was like chatting back

22:03

and forth to them and it was something like he's only

22:05

getting like 150 to 250

22:08

plays per episode. He's done it for

22:10

six months and if you say

22:13

that someone, they'd go, Ooh, that's,

22:15

that's not too hot. 150 250

22:17

he plays, that's below average. He

22:20

was like, it's the best marketing I've ever done

22:22

because I've connected with some industry leaders.

22:25

He, I think he got three paid speaking gigs.

22:27

He got a bunch of like new client

22:29

leads and these aren't like, Hey, I'll pay

22:31

50 buck clients. They're like, I want to hire

22:34

you to help me run my call center clients.

22:37

They're massive clients. That's the

22:39

power of podcasting is connecting

22:41

with 1505002000

22:45

people that really matter because

22:47

that's all you can never interact with anyway. If you could connect

22:50

to the thousand most important people for you,

22:52

you'd be like wildly successful. Right.

22:55

It's like podcasting is saying like, Hey,

22:57

stop focusing on everyone ever.

23:00

Not like your third aunt's cousin

23:03

or your third aunt's like friend,

23:05

like that's like a Facebook's become for me is

23:07

all these people who I don't even know

23:09

if I've ever met. I'm excited to

23:12

maybe be in a world that you're

23:14

only really connecting to a few people, but you're

23:16

building strong connections that matter.

23:18

Yeah. So the

23:20

other thing that apple announced

23:22

was they were reshuffling, redoing

23:24

some categories, which got everybody

23:26

really excited, especially those that have technology

23:29

podcasts like us, because now

23:31

we have to figure out what we're going to categorize

23:33

our podcast as

24:03

since technology is going away completely. Um,

24:07

and so I'm just curious what you think about these new categories

24:10

now. Some of them make sense. True crime.

24:12

That's, that should have been a category a long time ago. That's

24:15

like 30% of podcasts that anyone

24:17

knows anything about new books

24:19

category. Yep . Um,

24:21

and then the renaming some categories

24:24

and then they're discontinuing others.

24:27

Um, what do you think about this? What do you think about

24:29

apple deciding that we're gonna we're

24:32

gonna kind of reshuffle some things based on how we see the , the

24:34

current landscape?

24:35

I think, I mean

24:37

there's definitely some, so I pulled up the list.

24:40

We're getting books. Business

24:42

News is knocked out. We got some that have been renamed.

24:46

Um, there's like a new kids section.

24:49

There's true crime and

24:51

it's not like these are new things. They were

24:53

just fit into bad categories. They're

24:56

fit into the wrong categories and now

24:58

we're apples can be a little bit more explicit

25:00

getting them into the right ones. Apple more

25:02

than anyone knows the landscape

25:05

of podcasting is

25:07

these categories, but people are kind of misusing

25:09

some of them and I think it's great.

25:11

I think they're probably in the best position to pick

25:14

them

25:14

right to. In today's world, there's, there's

25:17

two ways really to find a new podcast

25:19

to listen to you. One, we already talked about

25:21

a friend or someone you know talks about

25:23

or recommends it or you follow

25:25

them on Twitter or something and they say, Hey, I appeared in this podcast

25:27

anyway. Like you hear about it from somebody and

25:29

you end up finding this podcast and listening to

25:32

it. The other way that you find podcasts

25:34

is you open a directory, most likely

25:36

Apple podcast directory, and you start

25:38

sorting through it like new and noteworthy,

25:41

the top 200 most popular across all

25:43

categories, or you dig into a category and

25:45

you see the 200 listed there. Right? And

25:47

so that's, it's , it's not a great

25:49

way of finding new podcasts. So what they're doing is

25:52

you're introducing a little bit, a little

25:54

more fidelity into that process. I

25:56

still don't think that that's gonna make a huge

25:58

impact in the podcasting world. It sounds like

26:00

their big impact is going to come from this transcription

26:02

stuff and, and new tags and

26:04

being able to s like improving search. The

26:07

search is absolutely the

26:09

area where there's the most opportunity

26:12

for us to pick up some ground on this discoverability

26:14

problem with podcasts. It's a good idea. I

26:16

think there's going to be a lot of pushback . Like they didn't,

26:18

they didn't include this category or they killed this one, which

26:20

I loved, but they're doing the best that they can

26:23

and I imagine they're doing it for like very

26:25

scientifically. They've got a ton of data. They

26:28

understand better than any of us. The

26:30

, the podcasts that are in their catalog

26:32

right now and are available, what people are listening to,

26:34

how much they listen to. And they probably

26:36

spent a lot of time and energy. I know that the team at

26:39

Apple, at least the people who we have interacted

26:41

with care a lot about podcasts and they tried to do their

26:43

jobs really well. So I think it's , again

26:45

I'm super excited about what they're doing and I think

26:48

they're moving in the right areas. Categories. I

26:50

don't think it's that huge of a deal even though there is

26:52

probably going to be a lot of controversy and discussion about it.

26:55

Right. Cause cause on one hand you have the people praising it

26:57

because they're like finally the category I've been waiting

26:59

for. And then others are thinking, well

27:01

I had the perfect category. Now it doesn't exist.

27:03

And so if somebody complaints about the removal

27:06

of religion and spirituality,

27:08

dash religion, I'm

27:10

going to , I want to see the person who complained about that loss

27:13

but we'll find them . We'll find

27:15

the right man . So I think that the

27:17

thing that's helpful to keep in mind if

27:19

you're on the losing

27:21

side, quote unquote the the, the your

27:24

podcast quarter category is going away is

27:26

they can't keep all of these categories and keep

27:28

adding to them because then it becomes unwieldy.

27:32

Like you can't even manage it if

27:34

they have 50 categories and then each

27:36

of those have five sub categories. It's like you

27:38

just get lost in it, so they have to keep the

27:40

number at a certain amount to actually make it

27:42

manageable and then you just do the, you

27:44

can. And remembering like you said Kevin,

27:46

that it's a very small piece of

27:49

the larger pie of how people are finding you.

27:51

Search is really the big thing that we're , we're hoping comes

27:53

through and see some marked improvement.

27:55

Right. And word of mouth is the king

28:01

about Spotify. We just started,

28:03

we just got finished heaping praise on apple

28:06

for being a great, a

28:08

third party in the podcasting space.

28:11

Spotify has been making some moves as well, and

28:13

they don't necessarily have the best

28:15

track record of being an independent observer

28:18

of things because they're a

28:20

software company first. They're not a hardware couple .

28:22

But being an independent observer or like as a

28:24

supporter of the independent community? Yes,

28:27

both. Well, so, so apple

28:30

has been kind of like a , a neutral player in the sense

28:32

of they're not trying to force

28:35

certain outcomes that are beneficial to

28:37

them versus Spotify, which as

28:39

Kevin alluded or not, Kevin, Alban alluded

28:41

to, they got into it

28:43

because they saw

28:44

opportunity to expand their audience

28:47

this way . Apple did not get into podcasting

28:50

and hosting this podcast directory and

28:52

getting people interested in podcasts and helping

28:54

them find things to listen to in

28:56

order to sell apple music. Yeah

28:59

. Right. But what

29:01

Spotify is doing is they're trying to sell music.

29:03

And as part of that, the way that business model

29:05

works is that every time you play a song through Spotify,

29:08

they have to compensate the artist . Right.

29:11

And so the more music you listen to, the less money they

29:13

make. And they offset that with ads

29:15

on their free plan. And if you go premium, they have

29:17

less ads or no ads, but they pay

29:19

out what they would pay to the advertiser. They pay it to the

29:21

artists instead. So now what they can do is they can

29:23

bring in this free podcast content and

29:25

the more you listen to that, they don't have to pay

29:27

anybody. Right. They don't pay

29:30

podcast creators for that content. They can still

29:32

serve ads around it if you're on their free plan. So they

29:34

can still make that money there. And

29:36

if you go premium because

29:38

you enjoy listening to podcasts and you say, Hey, I want to listen a little

29:40

bit of music now they've just up sold you a music

29:42

subscription and anytime you're listening to a podcast

29:45

on premium, you don't have to pay the artists

29:47

. Yeah. So it's very

29:49

different than what apple did , how they entered the space.

29:51

And I think their motives for entering this space.

29:54

Yeah, you can make the argument that apple was not really

29:56

like totally just doing

29:58

it out of the goodness of their heart. They did sell iPods

30:01

initially and then i-phones but

30:04

what their goals always aligned

30:06

with podcaster's goals, the

30:08

creators and the listeners were as

30:10

Spotify, you kind of see them Oh

30:13

path where like the servant ads around

30:15

it. It's all about building Spotify

30:18

up, which could end up hurting the

30:20

creators or can be not as

30:22

good of experience, for the listeners.

30:25

Right. What's , and I think if I, if

30:27

when I spoke about podcasts

30:30

and Spotify initially, if that came off

30:32

super negative, I apologize because I don't think

30:34

that they're all bad. What

30:36

Spotify is doing by entering space. I think their motives

30:38

are different than what apples were. And

30:40

so I want to be clear about that. And I also want to be clear

30:42

that if there is anything I'm concerned about them

30:45

doing in the podcasting space, it's that they're starting

30:47

to create original content, right?

30:49

And they're calling those podcasts and

30:51

they're putting them right next to independent real

30:54

podcasts. And in my mind, a

30:56

podcast is something where it's a, it's an audio

30:58

file that you put on the Internet and then you make it freely

31:00

available to the world via an RSS feed. Okay.

31:03

And so the idea that they're creating original content

31:06

shows and calling them podcasts

31:08

and putting them right next to what I consider a real

31:10

podcast is concerning to me. I

31:12

don't feel like that's a real podcast. I

31:14

feel like your [inaudible] , they are usurping

31:17

the term podcast for their own benefit and

31:19

that is to , hey, you enjoy these

31:21

podcasts from these independent creators

31:24

that we don't compensate them for, but you get to listen to

31:26

free in our platform and you could listen to on any platform.

31:28

We also have these other highly produce shows

31:31

that are amazing, but if you want to listen to those, you have to

31:33

pay us money. But it's all podcasts and

31:35

I don't know , I don't think that's fair or right.

31:38

And I don't think that's accurate. These are shows that

31:40

are on the Internet and they are shows,

31:42

but they're not podcasts, but they're calling them podcasts.

31:44

They're putting them right next to regular podcasts

31:47

and they only play on their platform. So

31:50

is it really a podcast? And I think that's dangerous

31:53

for the community because there's

31:55

already a lot of confusion. This is a new thing,

31:57

a new space for a lot of people. More and more

31:59

people are starting to step into podcasts, and

32:02

if I, if somehow Spotify does

32:05

performs this trick of convincing

32:07

the world that you need a Spotify premium subscription

32:09

to listen to some podcasts, then

32:12

that's a bad thing

32:13

because then people might

32:15

think all podcasts are

32:18

require you pay something to listen

32:20

to and they they, is that

32:22

what you're saying?

32:23

That's part of it there.

32:26

There's other, there's , there's another company

32:28

called luminary that's doing something similar. Right.

32:31

And because this model is concerning,

32:33

some of the bigger podcasts

32:36

have said, we don't want our content to appear on

32:38

luminary. I think the New York Times has pulled

32:40

their content from luminary, Gimlet,

32:43

Joe Rogan, Mark Marin. Yeah . There's lots of

32:45

podcasts, big name podcasts that have pulled

32:47

their content off of

32:49

that. It's a listening app and

32:51

it's a original content provider.

32:54

That's what luminary is doing. And

32:57

so it's very confusing

32:59

for somebody who's new to the space, who doesn't understand

33:01

all the politics that are going on behind the scenes

33:03

because now there's more and more money involved, right?

33:05

So everything starts to get political and and

33:08

stuff. But you have a podcast player

33:10

that's now available for me to download on

33:12

my phone that I can't

33:14

find the New York Times podcast

33:17

on. Well , why not? That's

33:19

a real podcast. It's an RSS feed. Let's get gets publicly

33:21

available. I can listen to and overcast, I can listen to it too

33:24

in pocketcasts. I can listen to it in costos

33:26

. Why can't I listen it to to that

33:28

in luminary? That's

33:31

a problem that's causing like fragmentation

33:33

and confusion and it's not

33:35

good. And I think it all stems

33:37

from the idea that these companies like

33:39

luminary and Spotify are creating original

33:41

content and they're calling it by the same

33:44

name. They're calling it a podcast when it's really

33:46

not a podcast.

33:47

Well, I think ultimately the question is if

33:51

in order for it to be a podcast as it has to, does

33:53

it have to be 100% free for it to be

33:55

a podcast in every sense of the word? I

33:58

think that's, that's more the question that you're , you're

34:00

getting at, right, Kevin? Like if something, if

34:02

you have to pay to listen to something, you're

34:05

saying that that would not be a podcast in the sense

34:07

of how we've defined

34:08

it's not really pay or not. In my mind, it's

34:10

the idea that I create a webpage and I put it out

34:12

on a , on a web server somewhere,

34:15

and then it's

34:18

that webpage only works in safari.

34:21

Right? It only works in one company's browser.

34:23

Well, that's not a , that's not a good webpage. Right? Yeah

34:26

. We shouldn't be calling that a webpage. A

34:28

webpage , by definition should I should be able to choose my browser

34:30

to view your webpage. Right? Luminary

34:33

is the IE8 of podcasts

34:35

, right? So it's not really about hey or not,

34:37

and I think that's why I was a little bit confusing . Like,

34:39

it doesn't bother me that some content might be

34:42

pay and some not open.

34:44

Right? It's not based on RSS.

34:46

Yeah. Like you guys carry with you

34:48

. There are podcasts are audio

34:50

files that are put on the Internet that are tied to

34:53

and distributed through an RSS file. And

34:55

that creates this ecosystem where anybody

34:57

can create a player as long as it adheres to

34:59

those standards, that RSS

35:02

Open Spec. If you can read that file and then you can play the

35:04

audio file attached to it that it references, then

35:06

that is a podcast. Right?

35:09

But they're creating these shows that

35:11

don't have RSS feeds and

35:14

they're still calling them podcasts. And that's what

35:16

I'm saying is concerning. I think that

35:18

is not helpful for

35:20

moving the podcast industry

35:23

forward. Now it might be helpful for

35:25

moving the online audio community

35:27

forward and we might have some great content

35:29

and , and you might find a show on luminary that you love

35:31

and you don't mind paying their fee to listen to it. And I

35:33

don't have a problem with any of that. Audible has been doing this for

35:35

years. I do audio books but they're not distributed during

35:38

with RSS Feeds and they don't call them podcasts

35:40

, but they're online audio. Right?

35:44

Yeah, and I think Spotify might be going

35:47

in a similar direction like it.

35:49

To me, it's hugely concerning that they bought a hosting

35:51

platform and ingested

35:53

all the shows from that platform. Like it's

35:56

possible that Spotify

35:59

has visions of becoming the youtube

36:01

of online audio. Meaning

36:03

that if you want to create an independent show, if you have something

36:05

to say, you should log in to Spotify and upload your show

36:07

there . Much like if you do in the video world you would log

36:10

into Youtube and upload your stuff there and

36:12

once that starts to happen, then

36:14

we don't need RSS feeds anymore because

36:16

all the content is going directly to the provider

36:19

and all the viewers are going directly to that provider.

36:22

And then you have a youtube in the audio

36:24

world and that's not great because

36:26

they get to set their own rules. They get to decide,

36:28

hey, we don't want people skipping ads anymore. So they disabled

36:31

skip ad button. When an ad is playing, they

36:33

get to decide how long ads are, how short ads

36:35

are, what the cost for ads are, who

36:37

gets advertise and doesn't, or we

36:39

object to your content. So we're demonetizing you and

36:42

all the problems that come along with the youtube world

36:44

then start to fall into the podcasting world,

36:46

which we don't have right now. And

36:48

I don't think we want, it's enticing

36:51

to think as a podcaster that

36:53

boy, if there was a youtube a podcast, that

36:55

would be great. Cause I would just click a button that says monetize

36:58

my podcast and all of a sudden the cash would

37:00

start flowing in. It's not the

37:02

reality. Most of Youtube burrs are not

37:04

rich. Most of these tubers are not fulltime youtubers,

37:07

only a very few are. And the few that are really

37:09

making it big are not making it big through checks

37:11

from Google. They're making a big through brand deals

37:13

and hustle and hard work

37:16

that they're doing outside of the few dollars that

37:18

they get from Google for the dynamic

37:20

ads that get inserted before, during, and after their

37:22

shows. So I get nervous

37:24

when people start talking about

37:26

the idea of somebody going to be the youtube and podcast

37:29

and that's a good thing,

37:31

you know ? Then they also start like extracting

37:33

all the profits end up going to one spot.

37:35

It all goes to youtube or it all goes to Spotify.

37:39

A lot of the things we love about podcasting I think

37:41

kind of die off. Um, the

37:43

minute that we start turning

37:45

it does probably provide a more professional

37:48

ecosystem. More, more professionals

37:50

would come in and actually create podcast content

37:53

full time. But it does feel

37:55

like a lot of the magic. And one of the things I love

37:57

about podcasting Kinda just end

37:59

up not being as important.

38:02

Alright . Anything else you guys want to chat about before we wrap up this episode?

38:05

Is that it? That's all our topics. It's all our topics.

38:07

Yeah. We, we breeze through

38:09

them at a brisk

38:11

pace. That's it. Nice

38:14

chatting with you guys.