Get Millions of Downloads by Gaming the System

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Kevin (00:00):
Wait, do you pay them?

(00:00):
You pay 'em?

Tom (00:02):
For music. I listen to Spotify for music

Kevin (00:04):
Oh my Gosh Alright, let's get Alban back. No, Alban pays
them, too.

Tom (00:10):
Alban pays them too!

Kevin (00:11):
We need, we need somebody else.

Jordan (00:13):
I also pay

Kevin (00:14):
No way!

Jordan (00:15):
Yeah.

Kevin (00:15):
Am I the only one on Buzzcast that doesn't give
Spotify money?

Jordan (00:25):
Joining us on this episode of Buzzcast today we
have Tom Rossi standing in forAlban. Tom, welcome back on the
show.

Tom (00:33):
Thanks for having me.

Kevin (00:34):
What happened to Alban?.
Where's he?

Jordan (00:36):
Well, Alban was supposed to be going to Atlanta. But
because of the hurricane, histrip got canceled. So he said he
was available for this episode.
But I was like, no, we got Tom.

Tom (00:49):
That's right. That's right.

Kevin (00:51):
Once your replacement has been scheduled, you're out.

Tom (00:54):
You're out. No take backs.
As a matter of fact, I don'tknow. Maybe Maybe I'll just stay
in.

Kevin (00:58):
That's true. Until you take a trip on recording day,
then Alban can get back. Yeah,exactly.

Jordan (01:04):
I really, really, really wasn't sure if this episode is
gonna happen at all?

Kevin (01:08):
Well, once you live in Florida long enough, it's
probably a really bad thing.
This is why people lose a lot.
And a lot of people get hurtlose their lives. Because, you
know, like, every year, we haveone or two of these, and most of
the time, they don't turn out tobe that big of a deal. Now when
they are a big deal, they're areally big deal. super
dangerous. And so you have to bedisciplined to take the
necessary precautions everytime. But then like after you do

(01:30):
that two or three or four yearsin a row, you fall into a I
don't know, just laziness, orwhatever. But like,

Jordan (01:36):
a false sense of security.

Tom (01:38):
I mean, my kids are so excited, because we just haven't
had one in a while. And theirmemories are just like, it's
kind of fun. It's like camping,like maybe you're gonna lose
power, but not for very long.
Jacksonville does pretty wellwith hurricanes.

Kevin (01:51):
Yeah, kids get excited about it. It's kind of like a
snow day up north, I wouldimagine. Yeah, schools close,
you might lose power. You got tostock up on some, you know,
whatever the grocery stores haveleft when you get there. So it
can be fun. But yeah, but not totake away from the danger side.
And also that is very real, andoften have a lot of trees come
down, which is, which is a pain.

Tom (02:11):
Which is why Kevin and I avoid having trees, right? No
trees on our property. That'sthe rule. If you look at our
properties,

Jordan (02:18):
I've got trees like taller than my house. Like
somebody planted them five feetfrom my house and it drives me
absolutely bonkers because wehave to trim them but the tree
is like 50 feet tall. Take itout. I want to go. Joshua, let
me I know we're gonna get a bigwindstorm one of these days.
It's just gonna go right she'sgonna slice our house in half.

Tom (02:40):
We used to call Kevin the Once-ler, you know from the
Lorax he would just take downtrees.

Kevin (02:45):
I replaced them with smaller trees that are metallic.
Now my backyard is artificialturf grass, so I kind of am the
Once-ler.

Jordan (02:59):
When this episode airs, it will be International Podcast
Day. Does International PodcastDay usually mean anything to you
guys? Do you guys celebrate it?
Like have barbecue?

Tom (03:08):
Oh, it's huge. It's huge in our house. We wear costumes.
Like we go around theneighborhood we talk to people

Kevin (03:14):
do you have like a podcast tree and you put gifts
under it? Everyone comes in,unwraps podcast gifts.

Tom (03:22):
Podcast tree. My kids would kill me. Like they don't even
like listening to podcasts whenwe get a car on like our Hey,
what podcasts are we going tolisten to? And then like, no,
please. Wait until I tell themit's, Podcast Day, all podcasts
all day long.

Jordan (03:35):
It's one of those things that's more so on social media.
Like I'll see the post likeHappy International podcast day.
And I kind of went like, what ispodcast day? Like what is the
purpose of podcast daypodcasters don't get a lot of
cool things. And we have our ownday, and I don't really know how
to celebrate it. So I went tothe website,
internationalpodcastday.com. Andthey have a list of ways that

(03:59):
you can celebrate includingusing the hashtag, hashtag
international podcast day toengage with others, supporting
other podcasts. So going andleaving like a good rating and
review on another podcast,sharing a podcast that you
really enjoy. So things likethat, I think are maybe a really
good way to celebrate it insteadof putting up a podcast tree and

(04:20):
hoping that your spouse orparent gives you another
microphone.

Tom (04:26):
A reminder to be intentional about supporting the
podcasting community, especiallyfor podcast listeners. You know,
we get so much value out of thepodcasts that we listen to. And
so maybe it's a good reminder tojust spread the love, help
podcasting grow, help yourpodcast or by telling somebody
about them.

Kevin (04:40):
I'm reading the about podcast a page on the
internationalpodcastday.comwebsite and it's kind of
interesting. Steve Lee is theperson who started this I guess,
but I want to hear more aboutthe history of this. Like how do
you get is it you just put up awebsite and set and choose a
day? Do you have to register? Isthere a board have international

(05:00):
days that you have to registerwith.

Tom (05:02):
I think it was one of the founding fathers does this
happen?

Kevin (05:05):
Is it like the star registry? I think somebody
bought a star for me one timefor a birthday present or
something. That's right. Is thisthe same way?

Tom (05:12):
Have you guys ever heard of Sweetest day? I was shocked that
in the Midwest, they have an aholiday that I've never heard of
before called Sweetest day. Andit's it's just Valentine's Day.
It's another day during the yearwhere you're supposed to buy
something for your boyfriend orgirlfriend. I had no idea. I had
a girlfriend when I lived up inOhio, and did not know there was
such thing as Sweetest day. AndI remember the shame that I felt

(05:35):
associated with this totallyfake holiday.

Kevin (05:38):
Oh, it's coming up. It's October 15.

Jordan (05:40):
It's like spooky Valentine's Day.

Tom (05:42):
Yeah, there are, there are days I don't know who registered
it. I don't know where that isofficially recognized. But if
you move to the Midwest, youshould know right away.

Kevin (05:51):
Right. According to Wikipedia, Sweetest Day is a
holiday that celebrated in theMidwestern United States, parts
of the northeastern UnitedStates and in Florida. It's on
the third Saturday in October.
So you can't just blame this onthe Midwest. Tom, this is a
Florida thing, too.

Tom (06:09):
I stand corrected. I mean, they have you go into a Hallmark
store. And it's like filled withSweetest day stuff. Like just
like Valentine's Day, I thoughtI was in the twilight zone I
seriously.

Kevin (06:20):
Podcast Day, Sweetest Day, it's the holiday season!

Jordan (06:27):
We have some changes to the directories pages. I know
some Buzzsprout users havenoticed, some may have not
noticed, what do we have that'snew, Kev?

Kevin (06:36):
What's new is the link to Goodpods. So, Goodpods is a
podcast listening app, iOS andAndroid primarily, they just
launched a web version. So youcan go to goodpods.com and log
into your account. And I thinkdo most everything that you can
do on the mobile app, you cannow do through the website,
which is good, because a lot ofwhat they're trying to do is
like it, I don't know if it'sratings and reviews. It's more

(06:57):
like kind of comments andcommentary around a social
graph. You and your friends whatyou're listening to what you
liked what you didn't like,maybe good reviews, but those
reviews being more intendedinstead of for just the general
world to stumble upon more likewhoever you're following in good
pods. So that's cool. We'veliked them for a long time good
pods came out maybe three yearsago, I don't know I'm not good

(07:18):
with time. So maybe seven years,maybe one I don't know. But
they've been they're relativelynew is how I think about them
still. And it's a great app anda great idea. And so they now
have a link on your Buzzsproutwebsite that you get with your
podcast. So when somebody clicksListen, now, it's now shows up
as a listening destination. Sohopefully that gets more and

(07:39):
more traction, good pods reallyworks best more people that use
it. And so check it out. Ifyou'd like it as a listening
app, then maybe you want tostart talking about it and
recommend your audience golisten there. It's a good way to
build community around yourpodcast because it is based
around these discussion threadsand these social circles. Tom
uses it a lot, right?

Jordan (07:56):
Tom actually shared the Buzzcast one with me the other
day, and I went and looked at iton Goodpods. And there's a lot
of comments on every Buzzcastepisode they had not seen
before. Have you seen those Kev?

Kevin (08:09):
I've seen some of them.
But yeah, it's not like my dailypodcast driver. But I do really
like it. Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Tom (08:14):
I gotta give it another shot. I love the idea. But like
Kevin said, it comes down to ifyour friends are on it. If
there's people that you canfollow, it's really cool to see
oh, this is what Jordan listenedto. And then, you know, read her
comments on a particular pod. Imean, I just posted over the
weekend, I said, Hey, can yourecommend a comedy podcast?
Whereas you can go into Goodpodsand you could see what are your
friends listening to? What arethe podcasts that they like? And

(08:37):
then you know, you can kind ofdo that. I'm a big fan of good
reads too, which is, you know,similar model for books.

Jordan (08:42):
Yeah, I actually steered clear of Goodpods for a long
time because I listen to veryinappropriate podcasts a lot of
times, I didn't want, you know,I didn't want people to see what
I was listening to. And I thinklike now I'm kind of gotten into
a point in my life, maybe it'sjust the 30s, you know, the

(09:03):
onset of the 30s, just notcaring what people think. And
then also, I think that peopleare more open about like the
trash that they listen to. Andso I might have to give it
another try because maybe Idon't care if people know they
listen to a raunchy comedy ormurder podcasts.

Tom (09:20):
I cannot wait to follow you on Goodpods. Let the judgment
ensue.

Jordan (09:29):
Hopefully I don't lose my job. You guys are like,
"she's way too dark".

Tom (09:34):
She went somewhere I did not expect to go. So the way
that the Goodpods integrationworks is any Buzzsprout
podcaster who is alreadyconnected with Apple has already
been connected with good pods.
So whenever you get yourdirectory set up with Apple, we
will automatically add severaldifferent directories that are
listed down at the bottom thatare all what we call Apple
derived directories and so goodpods is one of those now, and so

(09:57):
you don't have to do anythingyou already there, the link is
already on your site. It'salready in your share and your
player so that way people cansee it.

Kevin (10:05):
We have temporarily hopefully temporarily removed
the directory listings forStitcher and Pandora, this is a
result of them changing thesubmission process. So what
happened is, I think the largercompany is XM, Sirius, XM,
Sirius bought Simplecast, boughtPandora and bought Stitcher. So

(10:26):
own all three now and in anattempt to consolidate some of
these properties, I again, I'mgiving them the benefit of the
doubt here. In what seems to bean attempt to consolidate these
properties, they've now put downon the directory submission for
Stitcher and Pandora arehappening through simple cast.
Well, simple cast is also apodcast hosting service. And

(10:49):
what they're making you do iscreate a simple cast account, a
free simple cast account to beable to submit. Okay, so in and
of itself, that's, that seemstotally fine. But we were having
a lot of Buzzsprout customerswriting in and saying that, they
now have a simple cast account.
They don't necessarily know why,but it imported all of their
episodes, and they're afraidthat their podcast is now going
to get messed up. It's not goingto get messed up. But it is a

(11:12):
very confusing process. AndSimplecast, during this process
is trying to get them to buy ahosting account. And so I
reached out to him a couple ofweeks ago, we've been going back
and forth. And they're sayingno, no, no, that's not our
intention at all. We're nottrying to steal hosting
customers, we're just trying toconsolidate these properties
together and bring them allunder one brand. Okay, that's
totally fine. So why is thisconfusion happening? So they

(11:33):
sent me screenshots and showedme how the flow is supposed to
work. And it does not look tooconfusing. So I don't understand
what's happening. So I decidedto walk through it myself. And I
think I found the point ofconfusion. And that is when you
create a simple cast account,they require email verification,
standard practice, not a bigdeal. So I get the email. And
then I click the link to confirmmy account. And I am brought

(11:54):
into from that link down broughtstraight into a simple CAS
hosting account. So I'm now outof like the Submission Portal
side, and I'm in the hostingside. And then they give you two
options. And the two options areimportant existing show or start
from scratch, either one ofthose options that you choose,
you're choosing to set up ahosting account. So if you

(12:15):
import an existing show, andthen you search for your show,
it's going to import it fromBuzzsprout. If you start from
scratch, it's you're setting upa brand new podcast and some
podcast. Neither one of thoseare what you want. And neither
that whole page is not the pagethat this confirmation link
should be going to it should beconfirming your email address
and then dropping you into likethe what is it site creators
that simplecast.com or somethinglike that, I think is the link.

(12:37):
That's where it supposed to begoing. So anyway, the result of
this is that they have a linkjust going to the wrong place.
So I've notified them of that.
They said, Okay, thank you forthe report, we're going to look
into it, I've let them know thatwe've had to pull the
directories until they get itfixed. And now we're just
waiting for them to fix it. Oncethey say it's fixed. I'll just
confirm that it's fixed. Andthen we can add those
directories back. But that's whyit's out.

Tom (12:58):
And just just to be clear, we've only removed it for adding
new links. If they've if they'vealready gotten their links
established, then they're stillthere. Right. So this is just
for new podcasts that haven'tpreviously. Yeah, we're not
pushing people into thatsubmission process. Because it's
broken. It's not it's going tobe confusing. And it's going to
result in support for bothBuzzsprout and for them.

Kevin (13:18):
So once they get it fixed, and then you do submit
it. So I did walk through theprocess, then it seems like
they've got some issues on theanalytic side. So Buzzcast, for
example, has been listed inStitcher and Pandora for a long
time. Like, it took us a longtime to get into Pandora. But I
think we've been in there forwell over a year now. And so I
clicked into the analyticssection. And I would assume that

(13:40):
there's lots of data becausewe've been listing these
directories for a long time. Butthere's, there's like no data,
there's no data, I think it'sshowing over whatever the time
period is since 2017 until 2022,it shows that we had like nine
Pandora streams. Well, we knowthat's not true, because
Buzzsprout is accounting forhundreds of podcast streams
during that time. So the wholesystem seems a little bit broken

(14:00):
now. So if you're new toBuzzsprout and you're you're
wondering how do I get thePandora? How do I get into the
Stitcher, hopefully, we're gonnaget this worked out, we're gonna
get it put back in. But at thesame time, it's not even none of
it seems to be working greatright now, as they're trying to
consolidate and bring all thisstuff together. I think they've
got some issues to work through.
So just be patient. You can gofumble through it yourself if
you want. We're not linking toit right now. But you can find

(14:22):
it through Google and do it ifyou want. But again, I think it
might the best solution mightjust be to wait it out until
they get the stuff squared away.

Jordan (14:29):
I mean, really like it could be squared away before
they even be accepted by Pandoraanyway, because they take so
long. That's true. Yeah. I knowwhen I submitted my show, I
think it took about seven monthsfor my podcast to be accepted by
Pandora.

Kevin (14:44):
Yeah, it seemed like they were very slow in adding
podcasts like when they got intoit. They didn't want to just
open up the floodgates and letanybody with a podcast in
sounded like it was more like anapple system where it was going
to have some sort of humanreview, but they didn't have as
many humans are doing Have asystem or they were looking for
a certain level of quality,maybe trying to figure out what
the guidelines were around thatquality guidelines couldn't have

(15:06):
been too big because Buzzcastgot in.

Jordan (15:08):
All right, this is a really fascinating story that
just dropped today, AshleyCarmen at Bloomberg, who has
been really pumping out somegreat articles. She wrote an
article called podcasters arebuying millions of listeners
through mobile game ads. So,some podcasters and networks,

(15:31):
they have found a way to gainmillions of new listeners
through mobile gaming ads. Andthe way that this works, is in
these mobile gaming ads when aplayer wants to have like, a
special like loot crate or getmore coins or something like
that, you know how these appswill say we'll play an ad and
then you can get this item. Andso the user will play the ad,

(15:56):
and then it actually will load apodcast player. And then a
podcast will load it up andstart playing. So it's
downloading a podcast every timesomeone wants to get one of
those loot crates, which isreally sketchy.

Tom (16:12):
Okay, here's the thing. I thought there was a tone to this
article that as a person wholikes to play video games, I
felt like a little bit calledout there was this one quote,
it's like the practice allowsnetwork to amass downloads
quickly by tapping into awellspring of hyperactive video
game users. When did I becomehyperactive, and now I'm just

(16:34):
like, spazzing out, justclicking on listening to
podcasts, because the ads areshowing up. If anything, we know
masterfully, how to not click onthe ads so that we can just get
back into our game. I thoughtit's a great creative idea for
being able to get your podcastout for people to be able to
hear it, especially if there'ssome type of, you know,
targeting or some type ofrelationship between the games

(16:56):
that they're putting them in nottargeting in terms of nefarious
sketchy things, but more like,Hey,

Kevin (17:02):
I'm sure there is target.
I'm sure there is.

Tom (17:05):
But but you know, more matching up category type
things, where I've got a podcastthat talks about this. And so
I'm going to put it I'm going toadvertise for it in games like
this. So if I've got a Dungeonsand Dragons podcast, and I want
to insert that ad, in a roleplaying game on an iPhone, that
seems like a really great fitbetween two different products.

Jordan (17:23):
One of the games that they listed having these podcast
ads is Subway Surfers, which Iguess has gotten like something
crazy, like 3 billion gamedownloads since it started in
like 2012. But yeah, so I mean,that's probably mostly kids, I
would think like, kids andteens.

Kevin (17:42):
I have a 12 year old and he's on Subway Surfer a lot. I
have a nine year old. Yep. Andas far as I can tell, he's never
come to me and tell me about thenew podcasts that he found after
playing.

Tom (17:51):
So there was another quote from the article, I just, it's
just weird tone. To date, thepodcast industry has said next
to nothing about its embrace ofthis video game strategy. Kevin
just did as a member of thepodcast industry,

Kevin (18:06):
on behalf of the industry, it doesn't work.

Tom (18:08):
my 12 year old plays Subway Surfer and has never come to you
with a podcast recommendation.

Jordan (18:14):
Yeah, I think there was an independent podcast are
listed in this article that hehad tried this. But basically
after a while, he realized thathaving organic listeners is
worth way more than having justthese downloading your podcast
onto people's mobile devices. Inthe long term, it works so much
better just to have people whoare actually like meaningfully

(18:35):
connected to your podcast. Itwas interesting, because deep
sea, which is a fraudulent adcompany, they they look for
these kinds of things. Theyactually published a paper and
they found that the New YorkPost and I heart were among the
networks that were found to berunning these ads. And a
spokesperson said that I heardhas paid $10 million to gain 6

(18:57):
million unique listeners permonth through the ads.

Kevin (19:02):
I mean, this whole thing seems ridiculous. Like, okay, so
let's let's just take thearticle at face value and say
this is exactly what ishappening. So my understanding
from reading the article is thatwhen you click to hear an ad, it
is then linking to an audio filethat is being hosted from a
podcast hosting company,somebody like I heart is
affiliated with, and it's juststarting to play a podcast. So

(19:24):
we know IAB says after 60seconds of listening, or 60
seconds has been downloaded tothe user's device that can count
as a play. Well, that happensvery quickly. So even if you
only listen to 10 seconds or soof it, you've probably
downloaded a minutes worth. Soit's counting as a download. But
these are in order for this towork and register as a download
for the podcast. It has toactually be playing the podcast

(19:45):
audio file, not a promo but anepisode, unless they're like
playing the trailer or somethingor some audio file that they
just threw into the feed to beused as a promo. But it sounds
like it's just playing anepisode. So you're playing a
video game and then in order toget 1000 Free tokens are
something you click on an ad.
Yeah. And it starts playing apodcast. And if it's an I Heart
podcast, we all know the firstfour minutes of I Heart podcasts

(20:07):
are just ads anyway. And so nowyou're listening to an ad. That
is a podcast that's giving youads for other products. The
whole thing is sounds insane tome. And it sounds like it is
exactly what the article issaying, which is just a scam to
drive up numbers, which if Iheard just wants to drive up
numbers, aren't they the onesreally measuring their podcasts
anyway. I mean, you basicallyjust lie about your numbers, or

(20:28):
go on Fiverr and pay somebody todownload your podcast 10 million
times, like, that'd be cheaper.
It seems like it might just be ajustification or something,
because they're saying they arelegitimate downloads. And I
guess technically they kind ofare, but they're useless, unless
you're just trying to get yournumbers up so that you can sell

Tom (20:44):
That's like the inception model for having a look at an ad

Kevin (20:44):
Which is the point that actually makes in the article
more ads.
I click on it. And so now I'mhearing more ads and ads within
the ads.
that they're paying roughly, Ithink she said around $27 per
1000. For these ads, that's theCPM to run these ads. And then
the downloads that they'regenerating, presumably, they can

(21:04):
make more than $20 CPM on theads, probably by running
multiple ads in a podcast, andmaybe doing host read, so maybe
they're getting higher than $20or $27. CPM. Maybe they're just
getting a $25 CPM, but they'rerunning, you know, eight ads in
a podcast episode. So it's kindof like a money machine, I
guess, you just drive as manydownloads as you want. But
again, I come back to this ideaof like, you're measuring your

(21:25):
own podcast, so just just lieabout your numbers. Good.

Tom (21:30):
I mean, we've had a lot of these conversations now that
we've launched Buzzsprout ads,but there is some value to it,
there is some value to it nowattributing that value is very
difficult, and trying to applythe same formula to an ad that's
being put in front of nine yearolds that are playing Subway
Surfer versus inside of apodcast, it's in the same
category. You know, I just thinkthat it just highlights that

(21:50):
there can be value. And likeJordan, what you were saying,
it's tremendously more valuableto have some type of organic
connection. But that doesn'tmean that there isn't value in
doing this as an and not an orso that you're still doing
something like this. But it'swhen you try to attribute value
that it gets really difficult at$27. CPM, it just seems like
that's going to be hard to getthat kind of value out of an ad

(22:11):
like this.

Kevin (22:12):
I don't know, I push back on it a little bit. Because I
think if you were trying toreally extract value from this
ad, then you'd be running apromo, like a piece of audio
that is produced to enticesomebody to actually listen to a
podcast or subscribe to it. Thatdoesn't seem to be what they're
doing. It just sounds likethey're playing a podcast
episode. Right? They're juststarting from the beginning,
Dan, anything. Welcome to mypodcast. Yeah, that's not a good
sale.

Tom (22:31):
I would much rather have a promo, but even a promo at $27.
CPM, I think would be difficult,just because I mean, it depends
on the game, I guess. And theaudience for the game?

Kevin (22:41):
It would be it begs the question like, are they really
trying to attract new listenersfor their podcasts? Are they
just trying to get thosedownload numbers up?

Tom (22:48):
There's also a Bloomberg article written about it, right?
So that alone is valuable tothem. So the fact that they did
something different in the waythat they approach their
advertising strategy gets thempositive press, which for a lot
of these companies, thattranslates into value, you know,
we were talking about some ofthe moves that Spotify made,
where they'll do something inFacebook, for example, will
they'll do something and thenthey abandon it, they start

(23:09):
doing something and then theyabandon it, but they still got
the value out of it, becausethey got all this positive press
about, ooh, Facebook is gettinginto podcasting. No, actually
not. But they got all thepositive press and that was all
that was valuable to them. Andso maybe there's some bit of
that here, too, of, oh, look atus, we're trying this new
strategy, which is creative toyou know, do advertising within
games.

Jordan (23:29):
I mean, if I was one of those companies, I would also be
trying to spin it but you know,they're actually not I heart and
the New York Post are both notwilling to comment on it. And I
don't think that this articlereally says like, Hey, this is a
good strategy. I think it's morejust revealing like how scummy
it is that I Heart Radio, youknow, they're taking up space in

(23:51):
like half of the top charts, butthey're also essentially farming
downloads, and they're able toget around the IRB stuff because
it's legitimate downloads eventhough it's done in kind of a
kind of gross way. It's it's alittle icky.

Tom (24:06):
Kids are gonna be like I had to listen to 60 seconds of a
podcast. Why? Because of IAB. Iwas playing a video game I had
to listen to 60 seconds.
Otherwise, a download didn'tcount.

Jordan (24:17):
Thanks, IAB.

Tom (24:21):
so Okay, wait back to the quote though. So to date the
podcast industry you saidnothing about its embrace of
this video game strategy. Sowe're saying we're not big fans
of the strategy or at least theway that it's being used to
essentially farm downloadsversus promote your podcast to
you know, possibly findconnections with people that
might be a good fit for youryour podcast.

Kevin (24:39):
Go write it down. Dash Tom Rossi. On the record.

Jordan (24:43):
XOXO, Tom Rossi.
I saw on pod news that therewere only 155,000 regularly
updated podcasts and I thoughtthat was kind of a low number. I
thought it seemed kind of odd.
Though I linked to the articlehere from amplify media, I think
it's more 155,000 prolificpodcast, right, Tom.

Tom (25:08):
That's my takeaway. But we're still out on whether it's
10 days or seven days, the quotefrom the article, roughly
155,000 podcasts with over 10episodes have been updated over
the last 10 days. So that soundslike their definition of maybe a
prolific podcast would be, theyhave over 10 episodes, and

(25:29):
they've updated it in over thelast 10 days.

Jordan (25:31):
So daily podcast,

Kevin (25:33):
no, it can be weekly, it just has to be updated once
during that time, well,

Tom (25:36):
they could have just done one per week.

Jordan (25:37):
Oh, See, I'm looking at more than 10 episodes up to last
10 days. So in my mind, I'mthinking an episode a day for 10
days.

Tom (25:47):
But then, on their chart, they say prolific podcast has 10
or more episodes in one releasedin the last week. So unless
there is a different definitionof a week, that is 10 days, I
don't know what that means. Butat the end of the day, what we
know is there's all thesedifferent ways of answering the
question of how many podcastsare there? I hear that question

(26:09):
all the time. And, Kevin, whatdo you say, when somebody asks
you, how many podcasts arethere?

Kevin (26:15):
Yeah, well, it's hard to know, there's a bunch of
numbers. So we know There's wellover 4 million podcasts total
that exist in the world, but thevast majority of those are not
really, you know, there's notmuch to them, like, how many
books are there in the world?
Well, I have, you know,personally, I write books every
day, but then, you know, Icrumpled them up and throw them
on my desk somewhere, you know,is that really a book? That's

(26:36):
what a lot of these podcasts arelike.

Tom (26:39):
I intended it to be a book, right?

Kevin (26:40):
It could have been could have been mean, if somebody
finds it and listens to it, butnobody will. And it's terrible
quality anyway. Well, that is alot of what we find in certain
directories like no disrespectto anchor as an app, but it is
designed for people to test thewaters of podcasting. So a lot
of people have tested the watersof podcasting, they've launched
the anchor app, they've beenlike, Hey, this is Kevin, it's

(27:01):
my first podcast ever. Hey, Mom,isn't this cool? I'm live on
radio, save, publish, somehow itmakes it into some directories,
it's counted. That's not reallya podcast, I'm never gonna do it
again, decided podcasting wasn'tfor me. So we get the 4 million
something number, that'sprobably not a great number to
use. There have been otherpeople who've gone out in the
world. And they've said, Well,let me put some more parameters

(27:22):
around what we will consider apodcast and what we won't. Those
people have landed somewherebetween 400,000 600,000. And
they use like definitions like,well, they have to publish more
than three episodes, and thenhave to have made an update
within the last 90 days. Okay,well, that seems reasonable. Now
we get between 400,000 600,000.
But then you have you know, youhave to think about like, what
about the cereals of the worldcereal, like they publish a

(27:43):
season and then they don'tupdate, they don't publish
something else for more than 90days sometimes. So with by that
definition, you're not countingcereal, that's one of the most
popular podcasts that hasexisted ever, and it's left out
of that count. So no count isperfect. I think it's fine to
throw out numbers like this tosay that there's 155,000 active
podcasts as long as you defineit right afterwards. The problem

(28:04):
with this article, of course, istheir definition goes back and
forth, depending on whichsection of the article you're
reading. One section says sevendays, one section says 10 days,
like if you're going to define anumber, you should be consistent
about how you define it, andthen talk about it in that way.

Tom (28:18):
Why do so many people ask that question? And why don't we
have that question for forexample, YouTube? Right? Nobody
ever talks about? Yeah, I know.
There's there's whatever, 52million channels, but of those
channels, how many are activechannels are prolific channels?
Like why do we always have thisconversation around podcasting,
but not in other areas?

Jordan (28:38):
I think it's because podcasting had such intense
growth, that it becameoverwhelming for people and they
went like, Whoa, this is crazy,like this just like boomed. And
so it's more intimidating forpeople to enter. I don't know
why. Because there's way moreYouTube channels, and there are
podcasts. And yet, people arestill trying to get onto

(29:00):
YouTube.

Tom (29:01):
Yeah, exactly that what what I wonder is is kind of a
you know, Alvin brings up thisprinciple of how we, you know,
we're looking for reasons to notdo the thing that we know is
going to be hard. And it'salmost like people use this as
an excuse not to start thatpodcast, because all there's 4
million podcasts already outthere. You know, it seems like
when the question is asked, Iwonder if that's what they're

(29:21):
thinking is, well, you know,well, how many podcasts are
there? As if to say, surelywe've gone too far? Surely it's
oversaturated? There's, there'sjust too many out there. But
there's just no evidence tosupport oversaturation. Right.
Like, there's 52 millionchannels on YouTube, you know,
like we're saying, and sothere's plenty of opportunity
for more content and even morecreative content, like break

(29:43):
some of the molds that are thathave already been done, you
know?

Kevin (29:46):
Well, I think there's another thing that leads to this
and that is, you know,podcasting is open and
distributed. And so there's noone source you can go to to find
out how many podcasts there arein the world, you have to go to
lots of different sources. Nowthere are some some organization
Seems like the podcasts index isa really good one that tries to
gather data from all the varioussources and bring them together
to give us one number, but it'sstill distributed. And there's

(30:08):
no, everyone delivers dataslightly differently. So there's
still some kind of finaglingthat has to go along with those
numbers. When you want to knowhow many active YouTube channels
in the world exist, there is oneplace you can go to, to get that
answer definitively. That isYouTube, they can tell you, they
know exactly how many channelsthey have, they can measure them
however they want. They candefine what is a play by however

(30:30):
they want, since you have tolisten to it in their player,
whether it be on their mobileapp, or through their website,
they can tell you a lot of dataabout like what that viewer
experience was like, if it's a10 minute video, they can go to
probably to the millisecond,like how much this individual
person watched. They can alsosee what else they watched how
they got from one video toanother video, what website they

(30:52):
were on before they came toYouTube, an incredible amount of
data exists when you own theentire ecosystem. Spotify is not
naive to this. And it seems tobe what is very interesting to
them. If we can have thedirectory and the publishing,
and the playback and all thedata that goes along with it,
look at how valuable that'sbecoming the video space. And it

(31:13):
could also be very valuable inthe audio space. And so I think
that's why it's so interestingto them. But it's also why we
all have to agree on adefinition, when somebody owns a
space themselves. There's noagreeing, it's just whatever
they say,

Jordan (31:25):
you know, another factor that's kind of difficult and
skews those numbers a bit that Ithink people need to remember is
that a lot of those podcaststhat are regularly updated,
they're not actually podcasts.
Um, a few months ago, JonathanSwanson and I talked about how
Spotify there were all thosepodcasts that were actually just
like phone line directoriesbeing spoken through. And then
recently, since anchor addedvideo, there have actually been

(31:50):
a lot of people that are takingtheir pirated videos, like
films, movies, things like that.
They're uploading it to anchorand then those movies are being
distributed on Spotify. Thosearen't podcasts. So there's a
lot of different factors thatneed to be considered too is
that even in these numbers,where things are being, you

(32:13):
know, updated regularly, itstill might not be an actual
podcast that somebody willlisten to.

Tom (32:18):
Yeah, it just highlights how difficult it is to answer
the question of how manypodcasts are there.

Kevin (32:25):
But it makes me think, though, the number of podcasters
that seem to be drawn to videocontent. And I don't know, if
it's just the lure of producinga video seems fun. Maybe after
you've just done audio only fora while. Or if it's the draw of
I think if I can get on one ofthese video platforms, then I
have a better chance of gettingdiscovered. I don't think either

(32:46):
one of those are really goodreasons to get into video. But
like the video, we talked aboutthis before, so I won't be long
about it. But video productionis a whole nother beast like in
terms of equipment and prep,editing, lighting, like there's
a whole lot more that goes intoit. Probably just like mental
stress in terms of now you'renot just thinking about what I
have to say and how I sound butalso how I look, and how the

(33:06):
room looks and everything else.
So you're definitely upping thecomplexity. And when complexity
increases, the chances of youcontinuing on in that venture go
down significantly. And so Ithink it's something that should
be highly considered before youjump into video, my perception
is that the majority of peopleare making this extra effort not
just because they think it'sgonna be fun, because if it's
just gonna be fun, just go onYouTube and publish a video. But

(33:27):
I think what they're thinkingis, it's going to help my show
grow, it's gonna help withdiscoverability. And that might
be true, because there arealgorithms that Drive content on
those platforms, but you're alsoplaying in a much larger arena,
because you're talking about nowcompeting in a world where
there's at least 55 or 52million channels active on
YouTube. So while there is analgorithm behind it, that is

(33:48):
looking for specific contentthat it might want to promote
the choices that it has areoverwhelming compared to what
you're competing against in thepodcast world, whether we go
with the 4 million number, the500,000 number, or the 155,000
number doesn't matter which oneof those, it's like an order of
magnitude smaller in terms ofthe number of pieces of content
that are competing for attentionin that space. And so your

(34:09):
chances of succeeding andpodcasting, although it might
not seem as though they'regreater, because there there is
not an algorithm that can helpyou push your stuff. If you do a
good job of marketing yourstuff. You're marketing against
a much smaller amount ofcompetitive content, the amount
of content that's competing forpeople's attention in the
podcasting space is just muchsmaller. Now, there might also
be fewer people looking for thatcontent. And that's probably

(34:32):
true as well. But those peopleare of higher value. Because
when you're on YouTube andyou're looking for content,
you're usually looking forsomething short something and
I'm kind of at the mercy ofwhatever the algorithm kind of
throws into my feed. Or if I goto a trending page, whatever the
algorithm throws there. There'snot a lot of people who are like
marketing, you know, find me onYouTube, it happens a little bit
but mostly people are trying toplay the algorithm game. I'm

(34:52):
going to create content thatplays into the hands of
algorithm hoping that thealgorithm then promotes me, but
in the podcasting world, we haveto mark get our stuff. And you
can do a good job of marketingyour stuff, and you can find an
audience. And once you hit acertain scale, then flywheel
starts to work. And peoplestart, if it's good content and
they like it, then they startrecommending it. And as soon as
they start recommending it, thenyou start to gain a little bit
of speed, even without thismassive amount of marketing

(35:14):
effort behind it. So it's just adifferent world. And I get
encouraged, like, the moreparameters we put around this,
and we think like, how saturatedlike how many podcasts exists?
And can my podcast really, youknow, make a name for itself?
Can it really stand out in thespace? I think? Absolutely. If
you have any hope or belief thatyou can do it on YouTube against
55 million other contentcreators, then why in the world,

(35:34):
could you not do it in thepodcast space, when we're
talking about hundreds of 1000s?

Jordan (35:40):
Exactly. And if you produce something that is
intentional, and you have goodclean audio, you're already
leaps and bounds ahead ofprobably like 70% of the
podcasts out there.

Tom (35:53):
So we're also in the early stages still of figuring out the
type of content that peopleconsume. So one of the things
that was that was in thearticle, they introduced this
concept, I thought wasinteresting, called Content
flanking, where creating contentthat maybe is different than
what everybody else is doing, totry and gain an audience. And
they use an example I thoughtwas, was really good, which was

(36:14):
Yellowstone, and how Yellowstonewas his TV show that just nobody
had produced a Western in yoursor anything close to it. And yet
Yellowstone had all this, youknow, critical success or big
following. And I thinkpodcasters could think that way,
right? Of well don't do whateverybody else is doing, just do
something that's true to youthat you want. But that is you

(36:35):
know, your unique content.
There's so much opportunity outthere to be able to get out
there and do something. And Ithink that that's a message that
needs to be heard a lot in thiscommunity because it is, you
know, so daunting to get intoit.

Kevin (36:51):
Serial is back.

Jordan (36:53):
Serial is back, baby! For a lot of people, this was
the podcast that started all asthe podcast that got them into
podcasting has recently had abit of a resurgence because the
story that started all aboutAdnan Syed. He was released
after his conviction wasvacated, which is big news,

(37:14):
because that was the wholepurpose of serial was saying was
he wrongfully convicted, and hespent what was it like 23 years
in prison?

Kevin (37:23):
I mean, is that really what they were doing on cereal?
I didn't make it through thewhole thing. So give me the
30-second version of Serial.
They're asking the question thewhole time?

Tom (37:30):
It was a roller coaster.
What what she did so well wasyou'd listen to an episode,
you're like, oh, yeah, hedefinitely did not do it. And
then at the last minute, shedropped in something that you're
like, oh, wait a minute. I thinkhe did do it. And you'd have to
listen to the next episode. AndI just felt like it was a roller
coaster. That's why I can't evenremember where I landed at the
end of it, hopefully, hopefully,that he was not guilty. Because

(37:51):
that's what the court decided.

Jordan (37:55):
And that's the thing is like, it was not an open and
closed case. There was notstrong evidence against this
kid. And there was likereasonable doubt. So um, after
he was released Serial droppedanother episode. I have not yet
listened to it. I'm interestedto hear about it, though.

Tom (38:14):
Would you agree with this statement that in the timeline
of the history of podcasting,Serial is on that, right?
Whenever we talk about thehistory of podcasting, the
release of Serial, I feel likebelongs in that conversation.
Because that's when it felt likeeverybody was talking about it.
Remember, Saturday Night Live isdoing skits about it. And just
podcasting went from beingsomething that only, you know,

(38:36):
techies or you know, a verysmall population of people, like
everybody was talking aboutafter Serial.

Kevin (38:42):
Yeah, somehow they think this would be an interesting
thing to do, like a little casestudy on is like, how did Serial
become as popular as it became?
I don't remember ever playing avideo game on my phone, and then
clicking to get more tokens andhearing an episode of Serial.
Like, I don't think that was thestrategy. But it must have been
something right. They had somesort of marketing strategy, and

(39:02):
they got in front of enoughpeople. And then those people
started telling people, andmaybe there was also like
podcasting was new at the time.
So maybe it was the rightquality content at the right
time. And they got in front ofenough early adopters. And then
those early adopters lovetelling people about new things.
Oh, you don't even know what apodcast is? Oh, this is super

(39:24):
exciting for me to tell youabout it now, because I can show
you how you can load a podcastapp on your phone. I think that
was about the same time likedidn't Apple make it a native
app. And it was probably heavilypromoted. When you launch the
podcast app. It was probablythere. And so all those things
came together and made Serial.

Tom (39:39):
What's this new app? And then they see Oh, in the in the
first podcast that they seeSerial, they click on it, they
download it and they're like, Ididn't even know what a podcast
was. But this is amazing. Maybeit's the intersection of, you
know, the podcast app beingbuilt into the iOS and cereal,
you know, being released. Yeah,

Kevin (39:55):
it's pretty rare that you get that early adopter warm
feeling inside now when you tellsomebody about a podcast They're
like, Yeah, I know about him.
Like, either I like him. And Iwant to know what show you on
tell me about or I know abouthim, and I'm not into him. But
nobody's been like podcast,what's a podcast? Oh, cool. I
get to tell you about this newthing. That doesn't happen.

Jordan (40:13):
I actually, I did go to lunch with a family friend this
weekend. And he asked me, Sowhat do you do now? And I'm
like, Oh, I'm a podcaster. LikeI podcast professionally. I talk
for a living. And he was like, Idon't know what that means. And
he walked away.

Kevin (40:29):
Like, he just didn't know what it meant. And he decided to
have enough because yeah, he waslike,

Jordan (40:35):
I am not interested in whatever you're trying to tell
me.
Couple of months ago, we talkedabout that movie, Vengeance,
that was coming out in theaters,and it's about a podcaster going
to solve a murder. And I didn'tgo see it in theaters. Did you

(40:57):
go see it?

Kevin (40:58):
I did not go see it in theaters. But I did notice that
it is now streaming on Peacock.
So I might need to download it.
Because there's a good chanceI'm not gonna power this
weekend. So maybe I'll cue it upon my phone so that I can watch
it if we lose power.

Tom (41:11):
Yeah. If anybody could share their Peacock username and
password on the comments onBuzzcast?

Kevin (41:17):
Sure, you can use it.
Yeah, I'll put it in the shownotes.

Jordan (41:22):
And podcasts lately have been adapted into TV shows,
movies, things like that, right?
There's two new shows thattenderfoot TV is taking from TV
to podcasts. So they're beingadapted the opposite direction.
They have a short film calledthe Unexpected. And it's a true
crime project that dives intohuman trafficking. And then the
other podcast that they'recreating based on this is called

(41:45):
B1 Butcher. And it's a scriptedfictional podcast based on true
life events. And I think it'sthe same vein of the true crime
like human trafficking,harvesting organs kind of thing.
So we're talking like very darkcontent here.

Tom (42:01):
Do either of you guys listened to like fiction
podcasts? I do. What are some ofthe podcasts you listen to that
are like,

Jordan (42:07):
um, like graphic fiction? none?

Tom (42:10):
That you can share...I'm gonna have to check Goodpods.

Jordan (42:13):
There's one that I really, really love. And they're
actually coming out with a thirdseason, I think this week. It's
called The Tower. It's thisreally beautiful audio fiction
podcast about a woman thatdecides that she's going to
climb this tower is basicallylike a magical realism podcast.
So it's based in our world. Butin this version of our world,

(42:34):
there was a tower that was builtby like a mad king, and it goes
clear up into the clouds. And soshe's seeing how high she can
climb this tower. And it'sreally mysterious and very
pretty. And I also listened toBridgewater, which is the one
that Aaron Mehnke did. And itwas kind of like a
groundbreaking podcast becauseit was done with the Dolby
Atmos, like the 360soundscaping. So if you listen

(42:58):
to it with your headphones on,or certain kinds of headphones,
it's almost like threedimensional immersion through
the sound. So that was really,really cool.

Tom (43:08):
Yeah, I think there's definitely an opportunity out
there for audio fiction tocontinue to grow. There's a big
following. There's a realopportunity there for
storytelling in a podcasting,environmental.

Jordan (43:17):
Absolutely. You do that?
Yeah, absolutely. And there'sjust, there's so many different
things that podcasters can dothat people this, I mean, this
is another differentiationbetween video and audio is that,
you know, if you're doing, let'ssay, a fiction podcast, and it's
a science fiction story, well,if you're gonna do it in a video
format, you have to have theset, you have to have the

(43:38):
costumes, you have to have allthis stuff. But if you're doing
it in audio format, you justhave to have the sound of the
audio of like, maybe the beepsand bloops of the spaceship or
things like that, or the soundof like the rocket launching,
you don't have to have aninvestment and all this other
stuff, it's just sound is all soyou get a little bit more

(44:01):
freedom and the ability to buildworlds within audio that you
can't necessarily do on a budgetotherwise. So the thing about
this I'm really excited about isthat they're taking a television
series and making a podcast outof it. Whereas in the past,
really, the only thing thatwe've seen is people taking
television series movies, anddoing commentary podcasts on

(44:25):
that. So this is the first timethat I've seen them actually
tried to adapt it into adifferent medium. Yeah.

Tom (44:34):
And telling stories, the way that you described it, I
think is really good as is youcan tell stories in a different
way in an audio form. And so Iwas thinking about the new Game
of Thrones, and how it's thesame kind of thing where they
have an audio commentary andthey tell you, you know, go
listen to this podcast. But thepodcast is just a commentary
about the show that you just sawversus, you know, for another

(44:54):
story or to expand on it. Youknow, there's a real opportunity
there to tell more stories inthe universe that they're
creating visually, and now theycould do it, you know, with
audio. That'd be pretty cool.

Jordan (45:04):
That's, that's actually a really good point. I mean, you
think about it, like with StarWars, you know, they have like
those books, and then they havemovies, and then they have like
TV shows. Yes. And it would bereally cool if they also had a
podcast.

Tom (45:17):
Yes. Well, if we're gonna throw Star Wars out, then. I
mean, there's a whole bookseries, it's out right now
called the High Republic. Andit's this all these stories
about this one time in the StarWars universe. But there's no
audio, there's no drama, there'sno TV shows. And everybody's
clamoring for a movie orsomething or video game to be
made in that time period. Butman, what an opportunity for

(45:37):
Disney to be able to release anaudio show based in the, you
know, this rich universe thatthey've created.

Jordan (45:43):
Yes. So maybe we'll see more of that, maybe this is just
the beginning. Maybe this couldbe a trending thing, where they
go, oh, people aren't reallylike engaging with the audio
commentary podcast as much. Andmaybe we need to start shifting
into adapting these stories, thelittle like sub stories, things
like that into a podcast formatfor the super fans that want to

(46:07):
consume more of that. And itwould be cheaper production than
doing a TV series, a video game,anything like that.

Tom (46:15):
Yeah, think about how much an episode of you know Star

Wars (46:17):
Andor costs or Game of Thrones, I think goes back to
what we talked about earlierwith content flanking. Right,
nobody else is doing that rightnow. I think it was HBO. That
was the first one that that didthat where they would release a
podcast commentary associatedwith a show at the same time.
And they kind of fed each other.
And so you'd listen to both. Butthere's an opportunity here to
flank it and do somethingdifferent, instead of creating

(46:39):
commentary, do somethingdifferent with it.

Kevin (46:43):
Yeah, so I'm being a little quiet here. This is not
my genre, but I'm enjoying theideas that are coming out of it.
And I think it has applicationfor even for people who do
podcasts that are notnecessarily audio fiction, like
there's times in our podcast,whether you're interviewing
somebody, or you do a solo show,when you go into storytelling
mode. And obviously, thesimplest thing is just stick

(47:03):
with your format and tell yourstory. But there is also an
opportunity that once you gointo a story, whether it be a
small part of your episode, orthe entire episode, to use it as
an opportunity to do creativeexperimentation. And it's it
reminds me of what we did forthe Buzzcast episode, the day
the podcast stopped, when wewere talking about the hack,

(47:24):
what was the DDoS attack onBuzzsprout. And so we decided to
do a storytelling episode tolike, tell what it was like kind
of behind the scenes of what wewere dealing with that over a
couple day period. And do it asa storytelling podcast. So there
was, you know, there'sbackground music, there's
multiple voices and interviewsand then weaving that together
into like a story to kind ofbuild interest and build drama,

(47:45):
and get people interested in thestory that they might not
normally be interested in. So ifyou're listening this podcast,
you might be interested inpodcasting, but not necessarily
all the technical background ofwhat goes into running a podcast
hosting company. And so how dowe tell the story of what it's
like to live the life of apodcast hosting company when
they're being attacked bysomebody? Well, I think Travis
did a really good job whenediting and putting that
together. It also reminds me ofMalcolm Gladwell, his book

(48:08):
talking to strangers. I don'tknow if any of you listened to
the audiobook of that. But it'slike any other audio book. He's
the narrator. He's reading youthe book. But there are a lot of
stories throughout the book. Andwhen he goes into telling a
story, then he puts in not onlybackground music, but background
sounds. So he's telling you knowabout whatever they were on

(48:28):
campus at this university, andyou start hearing people kind of
sounds like people are walkingaround him as he's telling the
story. And he's setting thescene and you hear people like
stepping on leaves as he'stalking about how they left
campus and went into the woodedarea. And it just makes the
story so much more powerful andinteresting. Like when you're
doing a podcast week to week,you're not necessarily thinking
about, Oh, could I try somestorytelling techniques? Could I

(48:49):
incorporate techniques that Ihear in other podcasts into
mine, I think there areopportunities. So I mean, again,
audio fiction stuff that youguys are talking about? Those
aren't necessarily podcasts thatI like to listen to, but they
sounds like they have somereally great techniques involved
in them that create anexperience more than just
listening to something and wecould as podcasters we could
take those experiences andfigure out is there an
opportunity to work them intowhat I'm doing, even though it's

(49:12):
in a different genre?

Tom (49:13):
Yeah, that's a really good point, especially when you're
talking about things likesaturation. Like there's no way
we're saturated, because we'rerattling off different ideas,
different ways of doingpodcasting. So there's yeah,
there's just so much opportunityout there to do something
different.

Jordan (49:26):
That's exactly it. It's just not saturated, because
there's still things that havenot been done yet. And we're
coming up with these things justriffing right now. So if you
actually like apply yourself andreally think about it, and think
about, okay, what talents do Ihave that I could bring to the
space that don't already exist?
Or, you know, who can I bringinto my team, that we could do
something groundbreaking, youknow, maybe more interactive

(49:49):
podcasts, you know, just allthese different things that have
not been done or haven't beendone as much. It's super easy to
get into that kind of stuff. Butyeah, it's like You said you
know, there's there's a littlebit of like a cross genre thing
that can happen and we canlearn, you know, fiction
podcasters can learn fromjournalists and journalistic
podcasters can learn fromfiction podcasters about like

(50:12):
building the audio world andcreating a more immersive story.
Denver students had started apodcast on racial justice in
2020, called Know Justice, Knowpeace. And that's "Know" as in
like, knowledge. And thestudents did such a great job

(50:33):
with their podcast that theywere named to like an advisory
board to create a new curriculumon Black History called Black
History 365. They raised $14,000to purchase books for this
curriculum. They put in all thiswork, to this podcast, to their
message and all this stuff. AndI think they were like high

(50:56):
school students at this point.
So they put all this work intothis podcast for like two years.
And then last month, the DenverPublic School System submitted
state and federal applicationsto trademark the Know Justice,
Know Peace in their trademarkapplication, it says, "for
providing a podcast seriesoffering information about
inequities in the educationalsystem and providing solutions."

(51:16):
And then the school districtalso took over all the social
media accounts for the podcastand locked the kids out who had
initially started the podcast.
So these kids are now suing thepublic school system over their
podcast. This is just not agreat story at all.

Kevin (51:36):
Yeah, I mean, it's a tough one. I have some questions
about it. The last line in thein the notes, you said something
about the district is sayingthat the students were paid for
their work on it. And I thinkthat does make a difference. If
they if there was somecompensation. I think it's
weird, like, since when did aschool ever pay students to do
work or work on a club or aproject? So I mean, if that's
true, there's definitely adifferent spin. But if it's not

(51:58):
true, if they weren't paid,which I wouldn't think they
were, then it does seem a littleweird and unfortunate. The
analogy I bring up is like if Iwas a high school student, and
I'm doing a science fairproject, and I develop whatever
it's like, oh, my gosh, thefirst perpetual motion machine
ever in existence I did as myscience fair project. Well, the
school district can't like takemy science fair project, can

(52:18):
they then be like, we're gonnapower the world now. Thanks to
Kevin science fair project?

Tom (52:22):
That's a good question. I wonder if any kid has ever done
anything is a science fairproject that went on to do
something? Yeah, because it'svery similar.

Jordan (52:29):
You know what this reminds me of, I actually just
finished rewatching, because Ilove it so much, I rewatched
Silicon Valley on HBO. Andthere's a premise in the first
season where this guy has thisnew algorithm that is just
taking off. And the company thathe used to work for is trying to

(52:50):
claim intellectual property overit. They kind of get like down
into the weeds with how this allworks. And the part that kind of
reminded me of this TV show isthat the kids were using the
school district's equipment,they were using the space
provided by the school districtto record the podcast. And it's

(53:11):
one of those things where Ithink that the school district
actually legally can claimintellectual property on this
podcast, because they were usingthe equipment to create it
because they were using theschool district's space.

Kevin (53:24):
Yeah, well, I would imagine there's a solid argument
to say they certainly probablyown the recordings. I don't know
if they own the IP. So KnowJustice, Know Peace, like the
concept of that that being ableto trademark that that is
probably very questionable. Now,the recordings for the podcasts
that came out of it that weredone on their property and using
their equipment, maybe on schooltime, stuff like that, like that

(53:45):
seems sure I mean, this happensall the time. Like in in the
music world, record labels ownthe recordings, because they
paid for the studio time theypaid for the musicians that were
playing as you know, backup forthe singer and all that kind of
stuff. They pay for the recordto be produced that they own
that, but the songwriters stillown the song, they can go
rerecord themselves what TaylorSwift just did with all of her
Taylor's version albums, right?
Like they don't own her songs,but they own the recordings of

(54:08):
those songs that have made themillions of dollars. So it'd be
interesting to see how thisplays out. But I am actually
weirdly enough as in thepodcasting as I am, I'm actually
more interested to figure out ifanybody has done anything in the
science experiment in thescience fair, that has like
changed the world in a big way.
But they didn't benefit from itbecause it was the result of a

(54:28):
science fair project. Sosomebody else got it.

Tom (54:30):
Couldn't they just release a new podcast? We'll give them a
free account on Buzzsprout ifthey're listening, they can
reach out to us we give them anew podcast called No justice,
no peace. And

Kevin (54:40):
oh, yeah,

Tom (54:42):
maybe totally different.
There's this K-now K-now K-nowor

Kevin (54:46):
They could just do you know, Know Justice, Know Peace
(Student Version). So Taylor'sversion students.

Tom (54:53):
Here's the thing. They created this content. They
created this podcast thatgarnered an audience you know
that for summer Isn't the schooldistrict wants to own it,
whatever. But you're never goingto own those kids, they can go
start another podcast and do theexact same thing. They are the
personality, they are thevaluable thing, the podcasting
equipment that they use torecord it, the studio that they
recorded in like those thingsaren't as important as the

(55:15):
content that was created. And soI would think that those kids
have some amazing skills.
However, they accomplished whatthey did to be able to do that
again.

Kevin (55:23):
I like it. So reach out to us support@buzzsprout.com and
get your free Know Justice, KnowPeace: Student Edition on
Buzzsprout. And we will claim noownership of your content ever.
You own all your stuff hosted onBuzzsprout.

Jordan (55:39):
You know what time it is. It's time for Buzzboosts. We
have quite a few buzzboosts forthis episode. First off, we have
900 from Genebean, who sayspodcast search sounds like
something that would fit beingon or connected to the podcast
index. Podcast index does have asearch engine on their site?

Kevin (56:02):
You're absolutely right.
Genebean and Jordan. Yes, theydo have a search API. And so
podcast apps can tap into thatand use it. And I think they
offer their own spin onprioritizing the results based
on what you search for. Andwe'll get into it in a second.
Dave Jones continues to talkabout that in an upcoming
comment. So you're right Jeanbeing podcast index is a good
fit for that.

Tom (56:23):
All right. 4500, from at technical issues. I'm curious
what your take on op three dotDev is and if it can be used by
a podcast on Buzzsprout? Yes,absolutely. As a matter of fact,
this podcast on Buzzsprout isusing OP3.dev. So OP3.dev, if
you haven't heard about it is anopen source project for

(56:44):
capturing statistics throughredirects. And so you can put a
prefix on your episodes. Andit'll capture statistics in a
way that's totally transparent,open source, the code is open
source. So that means anybodycan go look at it and see how
it's working. And it's got anAPI, so you can actually go and
pull those stats down. So yes,you can absolutely do this. If
you ever want to experiment withit, you can reach out to our

(57:04):
support team and just let themknow that you want to have the
prefix included for OP3.dev.

Kevin (57:09):
Yep, just remember that when you do that your numbers
become public. So we chose forBuzzcast It's totally fine. If
anybody wants to download ourstats and see how many plays we
get per episode. We're totallyfine with that. But if that's
like proprietary information foryou, you don't want that shared
with the world, then you willnot want to turn this on for
your podcast.

Tom (57:26):
Correct. And really on prefixes in general, just it's
not something that we offerdirectly in the interface. It's
something that we asked you togo through support, not to slow
people down. But just because wewant to make sure that there's
legitimate prefixes that arebeing used. And we want to make
sure that we don't cause anyproblems. There's a real
opportunity to break in yourpodcast, and we don't ever want
to have that happen. So

Jordan (57:46):
All right, next up, we have 4000 Sats from
@meremortalspodcast. They saysome of the apps like
Curiocaster will also let youmodify your streaming amount per
podcast. Oh, so if you have somefavorite shows you want to give
more to it's possible tocustomize the amount you
support. Curiocaster. I've notheard of that one. So that's
good to know.

Kevin (58:06):
Yeah, I do that in the app that I use. Cast thematic,
lets you do something similar.
So some shows I give more setsto and some shows I give less.
And that is private. Which onesI support. Just for fun. I
listened to some shows and I Idon't know like hate listen, you
ever hate listen to podcastslike this podcast? Crazy, but I

(58:26):
listen to it. I streaming likeone set of minute. I'll still
boost them. No, they get mereally mad. Because it's fun.
It's entertaining. They'reearning my Listen, so they
deserve something 10,900 SATsfrom Dave Jones, he talks about
Google's secret sauce for searchhas always been linkbacks, which
is a great quality signal whenthe content is rich, but

(58:47):
replicating that from textderived from transcripts is
difficult. And I think he'stalking about last week we're
talking about search andpodcasting and how we can have
high quality search results forpodcasts, and that we don't
necessarily have all he's sayingwe don't necessarily have all
the same tools that Google hasavailable to him. You're
absolutely right. It's hard. Youknow, Google right now can
easily see how many sites arelinking to a particular site.

(59:08):
And if a lot of sites arelinking to one site, then it
must be a pretty good site. Sothey prioritize that's hard to
figure out how many podcasts areout there talking about one
particular podcast and thengiving that priority in search
results. Probably doable, butyou're right it's it's much more
technically challenging, butglad you're thinking about this
stuff. Dave. That's why you'rerunning the index man. Thanks
for the hard work you do.

Tom (59:31):
All right, we got another 4500 from at technical issues.
So if you're keeping track thatmeans he is now up to 9000 SATs
for this episode. And he said asa follow up it seems transistors
implemented op three already.
Transistor I haven't heard ofthem before. transistors, our
friends at transistor, it's acompetitive service to

(59:52):
Buzzsprout well, who we love welove these guys and yes, they
have already launched theirintegration with OP3.dev prefix.

Kevin (01:00:01):
All right. 1800 SATs from Nathang

Jordan (01:00:04):
I it's Nathan G.

Tom (01:00:06):
Let him say it Jordan. He thinks it's Nathang.

Jordan (01:00:08):
I think it's Nathan Gathright.

Tom (01:00:10):
Naythang! Nathang, that's him not Nathan
G.

Kevin (01:00:17):
1800 SATs from Nathan G or Nathang. In 2016. The show
hello internet with YouTubers,CGP. Grey and Brady Haran. I
don't listen to the show. Butthey released an episode
exclusively on vinyl. And it wasa massive success. And in a
regular episode, they discussedall the challenges with pressing
vinyl. So it didn't seem likesomething that service like

(01:00:37):
Teespring could spin up easily.
That's good input, but my wishlives on. I still wish there's a
service that I could just uploadan audio file and get it pressed
on vinyl.

Tom (01:00:45):
That's pretty cool.

Jordan (01:00:46):
So it can be done that can be done. I'll have to find
that video and then link to itin the show notes because that
sounds really interesting to seehow they were able to press
their own vinyl.

Kevin (01:00:56):
Alright, take us out Jordan,

Jordan (01:00:58):
thanks for listening and keep podcasting.

Kevin (01:01:05):
I got an Apple Watch. If any of you use an Apple Watch

Jordan (01:01:08):
recently, No, I've never owned one. Not recently.

Kevin (01:01:12):
So this is only the second Apple Watch I've owned.
And the first one was likeseries one, the first one that
ever came out. And I did not usethat for very long. So it was it
was a good product. But it was avery early product that was very
slow, didn't have a bunch ofapps for it. And so I probably
used it for like a year. Andit's been sitting in my drawer
ever since. Well, finally, whatare we on now series eight or

(01:01:34):
something like that? I don'tknow, whatever. The one is, they
announced a couple of weeks ago,they just got him in the store.
So I'm like I'm gonna go backI'm gonna try an Apple Watch
again, because I've into like,you know, fitness tracking,
sleep tracking all this kind ofstuff. So I'm like, maybe an
Apple Watch is going to be theone thing that can live on my
wrist that can do everything Ineeded

Jordan (01:01:50):
to do. So did you get like the rugged Super Ultra,

Kevin (01:01:54):
I got the one the aspirational one, right.
Climbing mountains diving to thedepths of the ocean, I bought
the whole package. I'm doing allof these things. It's amazing.
So far, my deepest dive has beeneight feet, just to the bottom
of my pool. That's how deep itis. But it's great. I survived
the dive. The watch did, but itwas supposed to tell me how deep

(01:02:15):
it was and the temperature. Buthere's the thing. So I'm going
running. And I'm like this is awhile I listen to podcasts when
I run, I don't want to have tosync them to my watch. So like
the watch should just downloadthem and play them. Well. It
just doesn't work that well inall the third party apps that I
use to listen to podcasts. Socast thematic has a watch app

(01:02:37):
didn't work. And overcast has awatch app didn't work. And when
I say didn't work like it loadedup. It showed me my episodes, it
took forever to do like the syncthing. And then I click on
episode and it's just sittingthere spinning and spinning and
spinning. It would never loadthe episode never play it, I
finally got home. And when I gotback on Wi Fi, then I got it to
play. But then it was likeplaying out of my phone wasn't

(01:02:59):
playing through my headphones.
It was really clunky. And it wasfeeling like these app
developers have really kind ofpushed out. I don't know if
there's just a bunch of bugswith it, or if it's hard to
develop for on it, or if it'sjust an afterthought. But the
watch experience was not goodfor these third party apps. So I
was about to give up on thestream of listening to podcast
while I run. Like the wholereason I bought the watch is I
don't want to run carrying aphone. And then I realized,

(01:03:21):
Wait, there's an app forlistening to podcasts made by
Apple. Maybe that one wouldwork. So I loaded up Apple
podcasts on the watch. And it isawesome. Yeah, it is awesome.
And I have like waited for thisday because I'm a fan of Apple
like Apple products. And so itkind of hurts me a little bit
every time. I'm like, I don'treally like the Apple podcast
app, because I love podcasts. Ilove apple. But that's just not

(01:03:41):
listening out for me. It is onmy watch on my watch. It works
beautifully. Like the UI isFanta it's exactly what you want
to be it's nothing fancy it justyou know shows you a list of
podcasts.

Tom (01:03:55):
Do you have to pick which episodes to put on your watch?
No. How does it How does itknow? Well,

Kevin (01:03:59):
because it's a this watch has the cellular in it. So
that's why I wanted a watch. SoI didn't have to have my phone
with me. So as soon as I get farenough away from my house, it
switches over to cellular. Andif there's a new episode that
drops in the middle of my run, Ican just tap on it and start
listening. And it's it's prettyfast. It streams nicely. I can
adjust the speed because I liketo listen to him a little bit
fast. It's fantastic. There's noshownotes so know this if you're

(01:04:23):
targeting your podcast to AppleWatch listeners. They're not
reading any of your show notes.
There's no following links oranything. But I wanted to report
because like I said I loveapple. But I just you know their
app isn't the app for me when itcomes to listening to podcasts.
But now they've I can absolutelysay I listen to I use Apple
podcasts to listen to somepodcasts the ones that play
through my watch. It's awesome.

Jordan (01:04:45):
Did they finally implement your big red I'm Done
button. No,

Kevin (01:04:49):
there's no I'm Done button.

Jordan (01:04:51):
Missed opportunity.

Kevin (01:04:53):
Yeah. Especially because I'm not the world's fastest
runner. So I definitely finishedpodcasts in the middle of my
run. Two or three Yeah, and Ican't stream sets through, I
can't boost anybody. So there'sopportunity for improvement. But
they got the main thing done,which is I can tap on an episode
and it plays it seems like Ican't get that to work and

(01:05:16):
overcast or cast thematic evenPocket Casts, I tried Pocket
Casts, I was like, I'm gonna goover back to Pocket Casts
because that showed up on mywatch, too. And I opened it up
and it was like, Please connectyour phone to see your list of
podcasts. If I had to have myphone then what's what's the
whole point of this?

Tom (01:05:30):
Man? I feel bad for him.
That's got to be so hard. Imean, we we've done it right. We
built a watch app, and it's awhole nother app to maintain.
It's a whole nother set ofsource code. That's gotta be so
difficult. But

Kevin (01:05:41):
if you're an Apple Watch user, and if you decide to jump
back in Apple podcasts, at leastfor me, that's been the way to
go.

Jordan (01:05:47):
Maybe I'll actually get one. I've thought about it but I
don't dive or climb mountains soI don't

Kevin (01:05:54):
but you will if you get the watch. comes with it for
free as part of the package getthe AppleCare in case you get
hurt on the helicopter

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