Introducing Buzzsprout for iOS!

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alban (00:01):
OK, do that.
Do that she is doing it rightnow.
I love that.
This is one of my things.
It's like we we're doing thisshow and this starts to the show
and I'm like, yeah, that's agood topic, bring that up in the
show.
This is the show.
This is the show.

Kevin (00:15):
You got headphones on.
You're sitting in front of amicrophone.
We're talking to each other.

Alban (00:19):
We don't know.
How do I know?
We don't do any other thing.

Kevin (00:22):
There's no other meeting that we have on every two week
basis.
That is anything like this.
You should never be confusedwhen you're in this environment.
You're looking at Riverside,you're looking at Jordan and I.
You have headphones on yourfront of a microphone.
That's the show, bro.

Jordan (00:41):
Welcome back to Buzzcast podcast about all things
podcasting from the people atBuzzsprout.
I'm your host, Jordan, andjoining me, as always, are my
co-hosts, Alban and Kevin.
Hey, guys.
Hey Jordan.
It's been a big week for usbecause we have just released
Buzzsprout for iOS, and this isone of those projects that is
just so fun and exciting thatyou just want to go and tell

(01:03):
everyone you know that you'reworking on something like super
awesome, and so I, for one, amreally relieved that we finally
pushed out this app and it's outin the world and it's getting
lots of downloads, and this isvery exciting.

Kevin (01:16):
Yeah, I feel the same way .
I mean, this was a project thatspanned many work cycles for us
and some people who know uswell have noticed I've heard
from, like Dave Jones hasmentioned a few times.
Like I know you're working onsomething because we haven't
seen any updates in a while,which means you're cooking
something up.
But, yeah, haven't told anybody.
We've kept it completelyprivate.

(01:37):
We did give early access to afew Buzzsprout customers who we
met in Orlando at the end ofJanuary who were at PodFest.
It weren't really beta testersbecause things were pretty
buttoned up at that point.
We'd done a lot of internaltesting and felt pretty good
about it, but we didn't haveevery feature that we wanted in
the app for launch in there yetand so we just called it early

(01:58):
access.
But outside of that group ofabout 50 or so, maybe 60 people,
no one else thought Buzzsprouttknew about it.
So I kind of feel like it'slike an Apple moment for us,
like we worked on something forsix, seven months and kept the
secret.

Jordan (02:11):
We got to get a video of your keynote speech, like in
your turtleneck and Levi's.

Alban (02:19):
It's pretty bold of Dave Jones to say I know you're
building something big becauseyou haven't released something
in a while.
Imagine how much that backfiresif we weren't building
something big Right.
It was really like no dude, wetotally broke like massive
systems.
We've just been fighting firesthis whole time.
Yeah.

Kevin (02:38):
No, he said things at Buzzsprout have been quiet,
which leads me to believe youguys are cooking something up.
And so, yeah, I confirmed wewere working on something.
I told him that at the time,but I was like nothing of super
interest to him, like it doesn'ttouch the podcasting 2.0 space
very much right now, but we'vegot some really cool ideas, yeah
.
So I mean we should get into it.

(02:59):
But that's one of the thingsthat's most exciting to us about
this is it represents a newplatform for us.
So there's a whole new set ofopportunities that are available
, and so we had a set offeatures that we really wanted
to focus on to bring this tomarket, and so we're going to
talk about those in a second.
But a big thing that shouldn'tbe overlooked is that it also
just opens up a whole new worldof possibilities to us now that

(03:19):
we have access to Buzzsprout ina very convenient way, always
with you on the go, and it's inthis little mobile computer that
has a whole bunch offunctionality that isn't as
available as convenientnecessarily on a laptop or on a
desktop computer.

Alban (03:34):
Kevin's really leaning into the turtleneck moment right
now.

Jordan (03:37):
Yes.

Kevin (03:38):
That's right.
We think you're really going tolove it.
I know I just listened to thePodn ews Weekly Review.
Albin, you did an excellent jobof representing Buzzsprout on
the Pod News Weekly Review thisweek, so if anybody is listening
to the show and doesn't listento that, please go over and
listen.
We sponsor that show and Samand James do a great job every
week.
Albin just did an interviewwith them, and why don't you

(03:59):
highlight some of that interviewhere?
Because you're talking aboutthe same stuff that we want to
talk about.

Alban (04:05):
I haven't actually listened to it yet, so glad to
hear it's out.
I'll tell you the same thing.
We haven't worked on this appfor quite a while, and
Buzzsprout is almost as old asthe App Store.

Jordan (04:16):
Whoa, isn't that wild.

Alban (04:18):
You started working on Buzzsprout a few months before
Apple launched the App Store.
So this whole time, 15 years,we've been saying we're not
really thinking an app is theright way to go.
We're not thinking the app isthe right way to go.
And eventually, in the last fewyears, we went.
You know, it'd be really niceto have an app for that, it'd be
really nice to have an app forthat.
And I thought of four reasonsand, kevin, you tell me if

(04:41):
there's more than these, butfour reasons why it really made
sense.
And at some point we hit acritical mass of reasons.
So now's the time to go aheadand invest in it.
What are phones really good at?
They're good at notifications.
We send a lot of these emailnotifications, but sometimes
those can take a little whilefor you to check your email,
find it, then go back and get toyour computer.

(05:04):
It's much nicer to getreal-time notifications on your
phone.
Whenever you're doing quickcheck-ins on your stats or you
want to celebrate the moment youcross over to a new stat
threshold, you get anachievement that's better on a
phone Quick changes to yourepisodes, fixing a typo, maybe
updating, adding a link, thateffortless management and then

(05:27):
sharing Everybody.
When we share, almost alwayswe're actually sharing from a
computer to a phone to sharethen somewhere else.
And when we have something inan app, you can take a
screenshot of your stats or youcan share your visual soundbite
or you can share a link, andit's so much easier because
that's where we're used tosharing.

(05:47):
So those are the four thatjumped out to me, as these are
the reasons why we need to havean app, and I guess we can dive
into any of those.

Kevin (05:55):
Yeah, our default answer for a long time, when people
would reach out to us and saywhere is the Buzzsprout app?
Why doesn't Buzzsprout have anapp, our default answer has been
well, what would you do?
What would you want the app todo if you had one?
And we weren't being snarkywith that response.
We were asking ourselves thesame question and we hadn't come
up with a compelling enoughreason to make the investment,

(06:18):
not just from a companyperspective, but also from, like
, a customer perspective.
Like, if you download an app,you want it to be useful, you
want it to be something thatyou're drawn to, you want to be
making up space on your phone,not just storage space, but like
screen real estate and stuffand if you go through the
trouble of installing it andkeeping it on your phone, it
should be something that you useat least once a week, hopefully
even more than that.
Right, I mean, we all have appsthat just sit on page three,

(06:42):
four, five, six, because wedon't clean them up.
But, yeah, but we don't want tobe part of the clutter on your
phone.
We want to be part of theuseful apps that sit on your
phone.
So what was?
We've been trying for years tobuild this thesis around what
would a compelling app be for apodcast hosting Service?
And so we've collected a lot ofthat feedback from people and
some people gave us really goodinformation that helped inform

(07:04):
the decision making process thatwe're going into.
And we've been, you know, justcontinuing to come back to it,
the idea, work cycle after workcycle after work cycle and, as
Alban said, we've just beenbuilding these lists and
scratching stuff off and addingstuff and finally, about seven
months ago or so, we got theteam together and we said, okay,
here's where we're at.
Do we feel like this could be acompelling enough reason for us

(07:27):
to do it now?
Like, is it time to go for, isit time to build this?
If you were a podcast customerand this was the feature set
that was available at launch forthis app, would you install it?
Would you turn notifications onit?
This was the set ofnotifications that we were
sending.
What is missing from this list?
That would make it compelling?
And we finalized that and we allfelt good about it, stacked
hands and decided to go for it,and it's been, I mean, I think,

(07:52):
after.
So I've been using it on myphone for about three months now
, from a very broken earlyversion to a really highly
polished finished version now,and I do feel like we
accomplished what we're settingout to do, which is, once you
use this for like a week or two,we want people to like be in
the position of I can't imaginerunning my podcast without this.

(08:14):
Now, you know we're not tryingto be a game changer or whatever
, but if you download it and youinstall it and then like
whenever you think of somethingthat you want to check on your
podcast or a quick change youwant to make to your podcast, or
, like Alban said, you just gotan achievement or there's a new
ad opportunity that just poppedup and you want to approve it,
being able to just quickly dothat is so convenient that for

(08:35):
me the change happened veryquickly of saying, like I can't
imagine what life was likebefore that, like I don't want
to go back to that anymore.
Of oh, something just happenedto my podcast and now I can't
take an action on it, I can'tlook at it, I can't do anything
until I have a laptop in frontof me or until I sit down at my
desk and I'm at my desktop.
No, you can do that reallyconveniently from your phone.

(08:56):
Now, all that to say, we havehad a really great mobile
experience for ages, for years,but there's something different
about being able to just load upa native app and that app
experience.
That, at least for me, it justfeels like I can take quick
action on it and I'm willing to.
As opposed to, I want to openup mobile Safari type in
Buzzsprout.
com.
Hopefully my login informationis saved in there.

(09:17):
Login.
It's a good mobile responsivesite.
It works well.
But I don't know, apps are justa little bit more fun, a little
bit more convenient, a littlebit more polished, and so that
experience just feels great tome.

Jordan (09:28):
That's one of the things that gets brought up a lot when
people use the app is just howit looks, so different from what
they're used to in our mobilesite, and also just the way that
we have set up the dashboard onthe app.
We spent so much time drillingdown into what is essential that

(09:49):
the podcasters are going toneed and also I know just from
looking at the conversationsbetween the designers and
developers and stuff like thatthere was so much thought that
was put into how somethingresponds when you tap it and
there's just like these littlethings that are just so
beautiful and delightful in thisapp, and so I don't know like

(10:10):
how long they've just spent onjust thinking about these little
things that just make the appfeel so good to use and there's
just so much thought that's putinto that.

Alban (10:20):
I think that this is a great example of you know what
Cameron's been able to bring tothe team.
Yeah, because this is the firstthing where he got to work on
it from the very beginning towhere it is now, and so he
worked with Dave, he worked withKevin, he worked with the tech
team on what should this looklike?
It's a bit more like firstprinciples thinking of what

(10:41):
needs to be on these pages,rather than inheriting all of
the design language that we hadon the website, and so it was a
nice way for us to have like afresh look at what should be on
the page.
When you open the first time,you know what should be
available.
When you first click into anepisode, what's the first thing
you'd want to be able to see?
And so I think, whenever peoplesay, wow, this looks very

(11:03):
different.
Yeah, it should look a bitdifferent because it's a
different way of thinking aboutit.
Yeah, and I also want tohighlight Kevin you used to talk
about eight months ago.
We hit like a thesis of why wewould have an app.
The other big unlock wasfinding Dylan.

Kevin (11:18):
Yeah, well, I mean that that happened shortly after, but
that was step one.
Like we did not have in-houseexpertise to build native
applications for iOS or Androidat the time, so making this
commitment as a company meantthat we had to build out our
team.

Alban (11:34):
It's one of those things that if you don't have the right
people, it's very, verydifficult to get excited about
it.
The idea of there's a lot ofthese companies that are like I
mean, I got them in my TwitterDMs all the time.
They'd be like, hey, I build aniOS app for you and you're like
, no, this is we could have anapp, but it would cause us a lot
more headaches than it wouldmake us happier.

(11:56):
So you really have to make sureyou find, like, the right
people to work on it, and it'sreally been like a pleasure
working with Dylan for the lasteight months.

Kevin (12:05):
Yeah, dylan's been a great addition to our team.
It's probably worth talkingabout a little bit Like.
This is a full commitment fromBuzzsprout to be able to support
this new platform, this newmobile platform, so native apps
on iOS and Android.
Like Alban said, there areprobably app experiences that
you had.
That service that you uselaunches an app and it does, you

(12:26):
know, a B and C day one andthen it just does A B and C day
two and three and four andforever more.
It very rarely gets updates.
It's very buggy.
That's not what we were lookingto do at all.
That's why we struggled overthis decision.
So much is because it's a.
When we go in on something, youknow we want to do it right.
We want to make a fullcommitment to it.
So that's what the version oneof our app represents.

(12:47):
It represents us coming tothese platforms trying to put
our best foot forward for aversion one, but it's also a
full commitment.
So we've already launched Idon't know what you call it like
an update.
I guess a minor bug updateyesterday pushed that to the app
store.
The team is prepping release twoor three now.
I guess we're on version three,which is going to go out later
today.
So we're all in and everythingthat you do or you can do on

(13:12):
desktop is not available in theapp today and I can't commit
that it ever will be.
But anything that we feel likewe can provide just as good of
an experience through mobilethat you can on desktop, we're
going to bring that over, andanything new that would be a
better experience on mobile,that's definitely going to come
over and it might actually starton mobile first.

(13:35):
So, like you'll see some ofthat in version one of the app
that we have today, like we havethis home screen that gives you
like, how many downloads do youhave today?
In real time, as we could getthe stats like, how many
downloads do you have today?
That's not something that weprovide on desktop, but you know
, looking at the data and howoften people log into their
Buzzsprout accounts, most peopleare not logging into their

(13:55):
Buzzsprout accounts every singleday, again, because the way
that you did it up until lastweek was you had to be in front
of a computer to do it.
So most people would check onceor twice a week, and then, of
course, they log in on the daythat they're going to publish,
and then that's a totallydifferent workflow.
They're not necessarilychecking stats or looking to
make a quick correction.
They're going to do this job ofuploading a new episode.

(14:16):
But, on the mobile appexperience, it's very reasonable
expectation that everyone fireup that app at least once a day
just to see what's going on withtheir podcast.
And so what makes it compellingto fire up your app every day?
Well, how's my podcast doingtoday?
Like, again, it's just a newmindset of real time things.
Also, like how the pagesinteract with each other, is

(14:38):
something that took a lot ofconsideration, like how do we
transition from one page to thenext?
How do you quickly, you know,do a deep jump into something,
make a quick change and then getright back to the homepage and
where you're at, and so it is anew experience.
We tried to keep it supersimple, because everything that
we do at Buzzsprout, we want itto be really easy to use, really
user friendly, and make yourlife better, not just another
tool that you know you'll like.

(14:58):
You have to learn how to use.
It shouldn't be a headache.
It should be a delightfulexperience right from the
beginning.

Jordan (15:02):
Yeah, speaking of which, one of the questions that has
come up, and I think that wehave anchored to think for this,
is does that mean I can recordinto Buzzsprout right now and
edit my podcast and publish fromthere?

Alban (15:14):
Yeah, the answer is no, and actually the answer for
anger is no as well.
Spotify for podcasters has takenout a Lot of those editing
features exactly I think it kindof goes back to what Kevin was
saying about there's things thatare done better on a computer
and there's things that are donebetter in native apps.
There's things are better doneat browsers, and Sometimes the

(15:35):
worst thing you can do is try toput an experience into a phone
or into a browser it wasn'tsupposed to be there, that the
tech isn't there yet, and youmake something really painful
for the user, because then theyfeel like, oh, I should be able
to get a great recording on myphone, but until the noise
cancellation Technology is there, until the connectivity

(15:57):
technologies there, until, like,all that's ready and Buttoned
up, perfect, it is really reallypainful, and and so, yeah, I
think that the reason that a lotof people move off of Spotify
for podcasters after a time isbecause it's not the best
experience to edit a podcast onyour phone in that way.
Kudos to them for pushing itforward and saying, hey, we're

(16:20):
gonna go as far as we can, butit's not to the level where at
least I get excited like I wouldactually want to use that
experience, you know, and muchmore.
Rather pull it over to mycomputer and use some software
that was actually made forediting a podcast.

Jordan (16:36):
Well, there are some apps that do really well at
audio editing or video editing.
You know, like Cap cut orsomething like that.
It's doable on your phone.

Kevin (16:43):
I know podcasters that do that on their phone, but like
we're not Competing with them,like that's not the business
that we're in, yeah, and ourbelief as of right now is still
that, like long-form audiocontent, it's really hard to get
a great product out of like amobile recording still.
So there are ways to do this.
For sure you can hook up likeexternal microphones, you can

(17:06):
design an interface.
That's still a little bit, youknow, more complicated than we'd
like it to be to be able toedit long-form stuff.
But that's kind of our positionon it right now.
I don't think it'll be that wayforever, like we're doing
things on our phone that wecouldn't even imagine just five
years ago, 10 years ago, 15years ago we didn't even have
these things.
So, like things are evolvingquickly, we will get to a point

(17:28):
optimistic at some point whererecording long-form audio will
be simple on your phone.
We just don't think it's thereyet.
But here's the thing is, likenow we have the platform to do
it.
When we're ready, when we feellike, oh, we've figured out a
way that this is now viable toget a good product out at the
end, a good end product that youcan deliver to your Audience,
and you can do that on yourphone, the platform is now in

(17:49):
place.
Now All we have to do is buildthat piece, and so I think
that's a really excitingposition to be in, that we can
be very responsive as newtechnologies emerge.
We know how this new platformavailable to us.
So, like Alban said, we mighthave ideas that come up in the
future that were like where'sthe best way to do that?
Well, the best way to do thatis still on desktop, but that,
as of like two weeks ago, thatwas our only option.
Now we have this option of oh,here's a really cool idea.

(18:10):
We'd love to bring this topodcasting.
What would be the best way todo that?
And Alban might say, like Iwould love to do that right on
my phone, like I would thinkthat would be the first place I
would go to try to do that wouldbe a phone.
Now we have the platform to beable to launch it there first
and launch it in a reallyexcellent way.
So let me circle back to thefirst point that you talked
about.
Alban was notifications, and Iwant to talk about this just for

(18:30):
a second, because I feel like alot of people are Like
notification overload.
When I install an app and itasked me permissions to give,
like can we, you know, will youaccept push notifications from
this app, like everyone's like,no, no, I get too many.
I don't want any notifications.

Alban (18:45):
That's definitely my experience.
Is that my default is oh heck,no, there's no.

Kevin (18:52):
Right.
I just want anybody's listeningthis to understand that we are
at the same way.
Like Alban said, oh heck, noLike.
I say no like by default.
Almost everything.
Jordan feels the same way.
Everyone on our team has thesame like kind of response when
we were talking aboutnotifications and we're building
this app, and so I wouldencourage you, I would beg of

(19:13):
you, say yes when you installthe buzz sprout app, because we
were super intentional of sayingwhat are high value
Notifications that we candeliver that would be meaningful
to our customers, and thenanything that's not high value,
anything that feels like, oh,the benefit to that notification
is for buzz sprout, it's notfor the customer We've said no
to, and so we're really onlydelivering notifications that

(19:37):
are like high value to you as apodcaster, relevant to your
podcast, and things that wethink that you would want to
know when they happen in atimely manner.
So with your episode isprocessed.
When you receive a certainachievement, if you're in the
ads program, you get a new adopportunity.
There's not many of them.
Your weekly report that you getweekly like.
You don't have to check youremail for that anymore, you can

(19:57):
see that right inside your app.
There's not many and they areDesigned with this intent of
they have to be high value tothe actual podcaster before we
said yes to them.
So if you're like me and Albinand Jordan and your default when
you install app is just no, no,no, no, I give it a try for
buzz sprout, like that's just myplea to you, say yes If after a

(20:17):
week, if you're like, ah, Kevin, he's a liar, these are
annoying, they're not high valueto me.
You can always turn them offand then hit the text number in
the show notes and tell meyou're, you're wrong, this is
not high value.
Um, we've tried as best aspossible to make them high value
, so I think you like them.

Jordan (20:31):
Yeah, if you don't like getting two notifications a week
.

Alban (20:38):
This is what happens Every time when we find these
new channels that Everybody usesand everybody enjoys.
You happen with email.
When we realized everyonechecks all their email the
marketers we're like oh what, ifwe start sending a lot of
emails, then people will readour stuff all the time.
And then people stoppedchecking email all the time.
And so now what does everywebsite do?

(21:00):
It's like get 10% off if youput in your email.
We're like I'm not gonna checkthat anyway, and it's like but
also your cell phone number,because we're gonna text you.
You're like ah great, becausenow they're flooding the texts
and notifications.
Facebook and ESPN, I feel like,are the two that were the worst
.

Kevin (21:17):
Oh yes, pn lights you up.
Anything that happens in sports, there's a notification for it
but it's worse than just Sendingyou the notification.

Alban (21:25):
They intentionally format them so that the critical
information is just off screenand you're like, oh my gosh, a
player for my favorite team wasjust had a serious injury I
think that's injury, who is it?
And you click it and thenyou're reading the article and
you're going, oh, I would neverhave clicked this if I didn't
know who it was, because that'sa notification for ESPN to trick

(21:46):
you into their app.
But that's just marketers usingthis channel because they know
right now it's unpolluted.
And then they pollute itbecause they say, oh, if we're
gonna get them into our app, andthen people end up just turning
them off.
Yeah, and this keeps happening,it over and over.
And our commitment is we willsend Notifications for you.

(22:07):
We will not send notificationsfor us.
It's not a trick to get youinto the app, it's to let you
know.
Hey, I know you were waitingfor us to process your episode.
We're done.
Hey, weekly report is done, soyou can see how your podcast
performed this week.
That's it.
All the notificationinformation is on the screen.
You can just swipe to say no,thanks, we're not gonna trick

(22:28):
you to click into it when youreally didn't need to and we're
not gonna start adding theselike I will promise.
This is a full-on promise.
We will not ever send a 50% offtoday.
We will never send the 50% offtoday if you upgrade to
Buzzsprout Pro.
We're never gonna send thatnotification.

Kevin (22:46):
You have Albin's word on that, yep, so now he's gonna
have a great idea for a 50% offpromo for Black Friday or
something he's like.
All right, one other thing Ithink we talked about a bunch of
stuff the app does and let'slet's talk.
One more thing that we won't doand we don't do right now is,
like when you turn onnotifications, you will not get
an anxiety badge on yourBuzzsprout icon, so that little

(23:08):
red circle with a number in itthat keeps going up.
You will not get that, and soif you just get notifications
and you dismiss them, you don'tclick on them or whatever,
you're not gonna go like look atyour Buzzsprout app and have a
look at red one on it, or redtwo or three or four, or like
everyone's email, it's like red999.
They're terrible, they're justanxiety badges and they don't

(23:30):
make your life any better, andwe're not gonna do that, and so,
at least for now, we have nocompelling reasons to do it.
So if we, if we find out thatoh, there is a compelling reason
, customers really want this andthis would be really beneficial
.
But I don't know that.
I have an app outside of maybethe messages app, like text
messages.

Alban (23:48):
I don't know that there's an app that I want those red
badges on that is actually theonly app that I have them for,
really, yeah, I turn them offfor everything, because all it
is is it's like oh my gosh, I'vegot to click this and you click
it, and it's like somebody Iknew in high school commented on
a photo Like I did not need toknow that right.

Kevin (24:07):
I did not need that three hours of anxiety in my life
that there's something redAlerting on my phone because
someone liked my high schoolphoto.
I mean, from our perspective, Ithink I think we've hit all the
high points.
Jordan, I saw that you postedsomething in the Facebook group
and asked anybody if they hadany questions after downloading
the app and installing it.

Jordan (24:23):
You we want to run through some of those questions
now you know, I think that weactually answered a lot of these
questions.
So Matthew Crickler said canyou have multiple podcasts from
one dashboard?
Yes, for sure.

Kevin (24:34):
So there's a little bit of Easter egg in the app.
If you're right on the homescreen of the app, you can tap
on the title of your podcast,which sits right above your show
art, and you can switchpodcasts from there.
That's the little power usertool secret.
The more common way like theway that was designed to be able
to switch is just go to themore section and you'll see the
title of your show at the verytop with a little like down

(24:54):
carrot next to it.
You tap that and you can switchpodcasts from there.
So two places to do it, one forpower users.
You know, kind of at therequest of me Power user, yeah,
power user me I really wanted tobe able to do it right from the
home screen and then also fromthe more section.

Alban (25:12):
All right, we got another question from Tom Rosie.
Why is it so awesome?
Did you cover it in awesomesauce?
Are your developers just fullof awesomeness?
Yeah, tom Rosie must be relatedto Tom Rossi, co-founder of
Buzzsprout.
I don't know man.
I think it's awesome.
They are great.

(25:33):
We love them all.

Jordan (25:35):
And we also got a question from Ann saying can you
please incorporatetranscription and AI generated
show notes and chapters to yourapp?
Would be the cherry on the top.

Kevin (25:44):
All right, oh, that's all there.

Jordan (25:46):
It is all there.

Kevin (25:47):
So I just think you just haven't found it yet.
So if you click on an episodethe episodes like tab at the
bottom, and then tap into anyone of your episodes that it's
been run through Co host, ai,you will see a section that says
co-host and we bring right tothe forefront the social tweets,
because tweets but you can usethem on threads or whatever,
because that's a great placejust to share that stuff right

(26:10):
from your phone.
But you can also tap where itsays co-host.
It has that little arrow nextto it.
So just tap on co-host and youget your full.
Everything that goes generatedfor your podcast.
So you get your social posts,you get your chapter markers,
you get your titles, yourdescription.
The blog post is there, yep,it's all there.
And the transcript, of course,is available in its own little
section that says transcriptunder your episodes.

(26:30):
So when I was listening to thepod news weekly review this
morning, sam set the asked aquestion.
Very inefficient way to ask aquestion on the show, sam is
like by leaving it in your show.
You should text us or write us.
It's very hard for me to findit when I have to listen to your
show to get your question.
But he asked why did we decideto go iOS and Android native
versus a PWA?
So, for those that don't know,a PWA stands for progressive web

(26:54):
app and it is basically awebsite that you load up in your
mobile browser and then you cantap a little button at the
bottom, you can save it to yourhome screen and then from that
point forward, it very much actsjust like any other native app
on your phone.
It has almost the same featuresand functionality available to
you as like an app developer,that a normal app does, but it's

(27:15):
web based.
It doesn't have to go throughlike the app review stuff to get
into the app store for iOS orthe Android store the Google
Play Store, I think they call it.
So why did we decide to go oneversus the other?
And to add a little bit morebackground to this information,
sam runs Truefans, an excellentpodcast listening app, and
Truefans is a PWA.
It's a really great experience.

(27:36):
So for us, the decision camedown to a couple things.
One, for all intents andpurposes, Buzzsprout has had a
PWA for years and years andyears.
Our mobile site has worked verymuch like a PWA for a very long
time.
It's a great mobile experience.
You can log in through mobileSafari.
You can add it to your homescreen.
You'll get a little app icon.

(27:57):
We've had that for a long time.
We still have that.
We're still committed tomaintaining that and bringing
more and more of thefunctionality in line with what
we're offering on mobile.
So you will have both options.
So if you're anti-app store,anti-google Play Store, we're
going to provide both solutionsfor you, maintain both, going
forward for the foreseeablefuture.
That's the plan.

(28:17):
There were some things that arespecific to what we wanted to
offer in a mobile experiencethat you can only get through
building a native app and havingsome APIs and stuff available
to you.
Things like being able toaccess the camera if you wanted
to take a picture of yourselfand then use that as your host
image on Buzzsprout.
We can only do that really wellif we're doing it through a
native app.

(28:38):
Can you do it in a PWA?
I think you can, but it'slimited by the permissions you
have set in Safari.
So you have to give Safariaccess to your camera for every
website, not just this one PWAapp, and so that doesn't feel
good to a lot of people.
So things like that.
If we ever did any type ofthing with recording or sound by
editing and stuff like that,that stuff.

(28:59):
We want to be able to haveaccess to native APIs to be able
to do that more friendly on theapp, again using web technology
.
Is it possible?
Yeah, but it's probably notgoing to give the exact
experience that we would like tobe able to provide.
And then, lastly, customers allthe time ask us one of the
first things they do aftersigning up for Buzzsprout and
getting that first episode upand going is they're like, hey,
they'll write in support,they'll find us in our Facebook

(29:20):
group.
Hey, I searched the app store,I searched Google Play Store
looking for the Buzzsprout app,and I can't find it.
And so just recognizing, as abusiness, that a lot of our
customers are looking for us inthese marketplaces and we're not
there, we're not represented,was an important thing to us as
a business.
And so a lot of people have alot of problems with the way
Apple runs their app stores,including the EU, right now.
They just got fined $2 billion,and so we understand that.

(29:43):
But just like we have personalissues with the way Spotify
approaches podcasting and wechoose not to put our app there,
but we get it available for ourcustomers because we know a lot
of our customers are there andthey get to make their own
choice about where they puttheir podcasts.
It's the same thing for us here.
So while we might not loveeverything about the way Apple
runs their app store, we mightnot love everything the way

(30:04):
Android runs their app store.
We might actually enjoy theopen web more.
The reality is, a lot of ourcustomers are looking for us in
these places and we want to bethere.
We want to be represented, wewant to give them that option
From my perspective, kevin.

Alban (30:15):
It's just the PWA world has been totally up in the air
the last few months.
You've got Apple fighting withthe EU about the app store
regulations, and then theseprogressive web apps are getting
way more love and it looks likethey're actually going to break
through.
And then Apple kind of likekneecapped them for a bit.
Now maybe they're back, butmaybe they're not, and there's

(30:37):
something like this that's up inthe air.
It's really hard to get superexcited about putting an
eight-month investment behind it.
Maybe in the future otherpodcast hosts or other companies
could just say we're going tototally avoid the app route
because we know PWAs are in agreat spot, but I don't think
they're in a great spot rightnow.
The future could look verydifferent depending on the way

(30:59):
the EU, the way the Apple, theway that you and Android decide
to take it.
So I mean we'll be watching.

Kevin (31:06):
Yeah, it was kind of an 11th hour decision by Apple to
put PWAs back into iOS 17.4.
They had them out of the betasfor a while because of some of
the pushback they were gettingfrom the EU, and so one of the
ways that they were going to tryto solve that issue was by not
allowing PWAs to be installed inthe EU.
That would not be good forBuzzsprout, that wouldn't have
been good for Truefans.
Luckily, apple changed theirposition on that and put it back

(31:28):
in in the final releasecandidate that they just
released.
But from a business perspective,everyone thought, as of two or
three months ago, pwas areperfectly safe.
Apple can't take that out fromunder you.
Well, it turns out that theycan, and so it's a tough place
to be in.
You're going to play bysomebody's rules, no matter what
, because they make the devicesthat your software runs on.
So that's kind of our positionon it.
It's how we landed there.

(31:49):
Again, we are committed tomaintaining the open web and
being accessible there to PWAs,bringing more of the
functionality that you get inthe app, in line with what you
get on the responsive site.
And again, if you choose toinstall that as a PWA, you can
still do that.

Jordan (32:02):
Well, if you want to download our iOS app, we will
leave a link to the app store inthe show notes, and if you're
an Android user, no worries, wehave an Android app on the way
and you can also join thewaiting list and I'll link to
that in the show notes as well.
So this is an interesting storythat I saw in pod news this

(32:25):
week.
Kagan Kerry, who has beenpodcasting for two years.
She has a podcast calledEvolving Prisons and it's been
up for an award.
She has all these subscribersand her download numbers have
just been growing.
So she's experiencing a lot ofsuccess with her podcast.
But she is hosted on Spotify forPodcasters and Spotify's

(32:47):
algorithm picked up that perhapsthere was some fraudulent
payment activity on her account.
They sent her an email sayinghey, we suspect this, and then
promptly shut her podcast down,like, just took it off.
Rss speed's gone, it's off ofSpotify, apple, everywhere.
And then they reviewed it aftertaking it down and said you

(33:08):
know what?
Actually, we review it.
It's totally cool, we're goingto put it back up.
Kagan told pod news I've lostevery single person that was
following my podcast.
I've lost all my paidsubscribers.
When they deleted my podcast,the system then refunded each of
my subscribers and she hadabout four months of payments in
her wallet that were also gone.

(33:28):
So that was a painful story fora podcaster.
It's really tough.

Kevin (33:34):
That is brutal.
I want to say this that whenyou're operating at this scale
of Spotify, I actually reallyfeel for them.
There We've gone through a lotof growing pains as we get
bigger and bigger, and we'reonly in terms of the podcast we
host.
We're still maybe a 10th or a15th the size of Spotify in

(33:54):
terms of number of activepodcasts that they're hosting.
Maybe active is not right, butthey have a lot of inactive
shows, but they're big and sothey have to have some systems
in place to be able to detectfraud and protect customers from
being scammed or signing up forsomething.
That's really not what it seemsto be.
My heart goes out to Spotify inthis case, because their system

(34:17):
caught something it shouldn'thave.
Somebody paid the price forthat.
It sounds like they're tryingto do everything they can to
make that right.
I think it took this podcasterreaching out to the media, which
was James Cridland, to actuallyget Spotify to pay attention to
her.
Yeah, that stinks.
That's a bummer.
That's the difference betweenworking with a smaller,
dedicated podcast host andworking with somebody like
Spotify.

(34:37):
I think, when it comes down tothe service, Not saying that
could never happen to a customeron Buzzsp rout because it was a
mistake, and mistakes canhappen in any business,
regardless of your size or scale.
But at Buzzsp rout you wouldn'thave to get the media involved
before you'd get good customerservice in return, and I think
that would be true of any of ourcompetitors as well.
That is kind of what you'repaying for.

(34:58):
Is you're paying for a partner?
When you use a small podcasthost, a paid podcast host, our
business and our customer is theperson who's paying us.
It's not us trying to figureout how to make money off of the
content that you upload to beable to stay in business, which
is what Spotify does.
So Spotify is not reallylooking at this podcaster that
lost all their stuff as theirmain customer normally and how

(35:19):
they set up their businesspractices.
But Buzzsp rout certainly isand, again, a lot of our
competitors certainly are, andso the mistake is really painful
and she should have gottengreat customer service right off
the bat.
I think that's worth.
Our plans start at $12 a monthand go up to $24 a month.
I would think somebody who wasin the position that she was in

(35:42):
with her show starting to getsome traction, starting to build
some revenue with somesubscribers and stuff.
It just makes sense Just go toa paid podcasting host.
If Buzzsp rout is not the rightone for you, there are plenty
of other good ones.
But yeah, I think it's a goodlesson for anybody who's in that
position of this.
And whether you're making moneyon it or not, if your show is
important to you as soon as itcrosses from.

(36:02):
This is something I want to tryand experiment with and see if
I like it too.
I actually do like it, and if Ilost it, that would be really
hurtful and painful to me.
I don't want to risk it anymore.
Sign up with somebody who youare their customer, who's
incented to take care of you asa customer, versus whatever you
upload them, figuring out how tomake money off of that in your
audience.

Alban (36:22):
I'd reiterate the bad guys in this story are not
Spotify.
It's the people who do allthese charge backs, that do all
these credit card scams, thatrequire all these types of
systems to even be built in thefirst place.
I mean, for how small BuzzBrout is and how little we do
with credit cards, you still seesome pretty elaborate scams and

(36:44):
it's surprising how much effortpeople will put into stealing
15 bucks and it's like if youput this much effort towards a
job you'd be doing really well.
And there's just so many ofthem out there that I know
there's just a ton of,especially around credit card
stuff.
There's charge backs andthere's scams.
There's stolen cards thatautomated systems often get

(37:07):
implemented and there's timeswhere those algorithms they flag
somebody's podcast, they flagsomething as suspicious and I
think the mistake probably isdeleting it without a person
seeing it.

Jordan (37:19):
Yes.

Alban (37:20):
But yeah, it's really sad .
I hope that she's able to getthe podcast back with all the
stats, the subscribers, the fourmonths of withdrawals that she
lost.
That's really, really painfuland it's no fun to feel like, oh
great, in this middle ofeverything, it all got ripped
out and, instead of creatinggreat content, now I'm trying to

(37:41):
rebuild the show that I've beenworking on for two years, so I
really do wish for the best.
I'm glad that Pod News ran thestory, because I'm sure that
will help get this rolling overon the Spotify side.

Kevin (37:52):
Yeah, I think it absolutely did help.
I think it was from that pointforward that Spotify really
stepped up to the plate and gaveher some great customer service
.
It was just unfortunate thatJames had to get involved before
that started to happen.

Jordan (38:02):
Well, and that's the thing is, spotify does just rip
the cord when their algorithmflags something.
I mean I've had I have a verymusic-heavy podcast, right, and
I've had episodes just takendown Spotify messages me and
it's just like, oh, this goesagainst our content and trying
to get that trying to appeal,that is such a headache that

(38:24):
I've just been fine, whatever,that episode's just not going to
be on there, even though Ilicensed the music you know what
I mean.
It's just whatever.
And it's so important to do alot of research on podcast hosts
.
When you are starting a podcastand I think a lot of people
just are like, oh, this is afree option and so I'm going to
go with this, but Spotify hasnotoriously quiet support.

(38:47):
It's just like emailing a voidand it's kind of like do you
want that?
Like you said, Kevin, there'sjust so many more options.
It's so important to really doyour research before you go to a
host.

Kevin (38:59):
Yeah, and I will say Spotify does not.
This is not a negative onSpotify, it's just how they
operate.
But they won't work with us.
So in the case that Jordan justmentioned, if you have a
licensed music thing that youhave the license for, but they
still flag as copyrighted music,you work with them.
You don't get any resolution.
You email Buzzsprout supportand when we email on your behalf
, they will not talk with us.

(39:19):
They'll say that we can onlytalk with the podcaster about
their show and their content,and so there's really very
little that you can do.
And it is frustrating, but Iget it.
It's the scale that theyoperate at.
Same thing happens on YouTubeall the time.
We are at the mercy sometimesbecause these platforms are huge
.
A lot of our listeners arethere Like.
The good thing is that there arealternatives in podcasting.

(39:40):
I love open podcasting.
There are some great thirdparty.
We call them third party but,like their first party, they're
awesome apps.
We just talked about Truefans,awesome app, overcast.
I use Cast-o-Matic and theyhave all these additional
features.
Not to take anything away fromSpotify, it's some people love
it.
It's fine, apple fine.
But for the podcaster, they arein control of what is on their

(40:01):
platform and what's not, and wehave very limited ability to
rectify that when things gowrong, and so, as much as you
can, I would encourage youraudience, let them know I am on
these other platforms and youcan talk about it too as a
podcaster.
Hey, just to let you know, onmy last episode, spotify flagged
it so it's not going to beavailable there, but if you want
to hear it I love the episode Ithink you'd really enjoy it.
There's all these other appsthat you can get it on, and so

(40:24):
use that power that you havewith your audience to expose
them to this wonderful world ofpodcasting and all the apps and
openness that we have access toIs the difference between
Spotify flagging it and YouTubeflagging it.

Alban (40:34):
If YouTube flags your video as oh, we're confused,
you've got to go back and forthwith YouTube.

Kevin (40:39):
Yeah, there's no alternatives in the video space,
really yeah.

Alban (40:42):
And YouTube.
There's so many examples ofsomebody's account gets hacked
and somebody puts a crypto scamon it, yeah, and YouTube rips
the channel because they go thisis a crypto scam, obviously.
Well, the original creator thenis stuff trying to reclaim
their account and get it all,all the flags, taken off, or
somebody claims it was copyrightinfringement and it kind of

(41:05):
looks real, so it gets ripped.
It's just so much harder whenthe only recourse you have is
going back to the one companywho controls it all.
It's so much nicer in thepodcasting space, where there's
lots of alternatives and you'reable to.
If one company doesn'tunderstand what's going on, then
you're able to go somewhereelse and work with them.

Kevin (41:27):
Yeah, this is actually a perfect segue into a clip I
wanted to play on our podcastepisode today.
So this morning I was listeningto the podcast weekly review.
Just to set the clip up alittle bit, and for those that
don't know, a clip is when Itake a portion of another
podcast that I listen to and Iplay it in our podcast, and so
I'm going to be doing that.
The Pod News Weekly Review thismorning had a great soundbite
that they took from Daniel Eckof Spotify, who was speaking

(41:50):
about a ruling that was justhanded down from the EU against
Apple, and the case is involvingApple's like monopolization of
the App Store right and the factthat they're not making it a
fair and level playing field forpeople to be able to compete in
there, and so Spotify was a bigproponent of Apple being fined
because Spotify has had a hardtime being able to compete on a

(42:13):
level playing field with AppleMusic in the App Store and the
iOS App Store, because Spotify,if they sell subscriptions to
the App Store, has to pay a 30%tax to Apple for every
subscription that they get, andtheir margins are so thin that
that's not profitable for them,and so they would lose money on
any subscription that they sold,and they can't raise their
prices, because if they raisetheir prices then they're not
competitive with Apple Music,which is like the same service,

(42:36):
and so people just wouldn't buyit.

Alban (42:39):
Yeah, Apple's winning both ways.
If you buy a Spotifysubscription for 10 bucks, Apple
gets $3.
And Spotify gets the 7 and hasto pay most of that out.
If you buy the Apple Music one,Apple gets $10 and they have to
pay out some of that.
So, man yeah.

Kevin (42:54):
Good point, and so you can see Spotify's case here.
It's a legitimate argument.
The EU has agreed with them andthey have imposed this $2
billion fine roughly on Apple.
Of course, apple's fighting it.
So I want to play a clip and itstarts off with Daniel Eck
talking about why this isimportant for the EU to be doing
and why Apple shouldn't beabusing their monopolistic power
and the control over the AppStore.

(43:15):
And then, after Daniel's donetalking, you're going to hear
James Cridland from Pod NewsWeekly Review kind of give his
take about how this might be alittle bit two-sided.

Daniel Ek (43:25):
The internet is at risk and, fundamentally and
principally, we at Spotifybelieve an open internet is a
much better internet, and sothat's why we're fighting,
because Apple has decided thatthey want to close down the
internet and make it theirs, andthey view every single person
using an iPhone to be their user, and that they should be able
to dictate what that userexperience should be, rather

(43:46):
than that the iOS platform is aplatform that accesses the
internet and that openness isgood.

James Cridland (43:54):
So this is Daniel Eck, of course, the man
who tried to take Spotify asbeing the only place where you
could get podcasts.
Openness is bad in that case.
Spotify, of course, don'tsupport any of the open
podcasting 2.0 tags.
They do their own things interms of transcripts, they do
their own things in terms ofchapters.
They do their own things interms of lots of sense.

(44:15):
But obviously, open internet isvery important.
When you're talking aboutSpotify versus Apple, I think
it's a little bit dubious, to behonest.

Jordan (44:23):
James.

Alban (44:25):
Great points from both of them.
I love Daniel's point the openinternet is at risk and we
should support it.
And I love James's point iswell taken and Spotify has not
followed through on thoseprinciples over in the
podcasting space, or at leastthey for a long time they did,
and the open podcasting isdifferent than the open internet
, according to Daniel.

(44:46):
I think actually Spotify iscoming around a little bit.
I think open podcasting isstarting to get a little bit
more of a foothold over on theSpotify side.

Kevin (44:56):
I mean maybe Just because they've taken exclusive shows
now and have made them availableon other platforms.
I don't know that that is afundamental core change in their
values.
As much as it is, the businessmodel wasn't working.

Alban (45:09):
Yeah, 100%.
But it's much easier to havestrong principles when they also
align with your financialinterest, and I'm very thankful
that their financial interestsHard to call it a principle,
then that's a business model.
Oh, I think most people areclaiming these high principles
all the time when it's reallyjust their own financial
interests at work, but it's Ithink it's really good for their

(45:32):
financial interests to bealigned with what I think is the
best for the web and I think,as far as Daniel's talking about
it with app stores and the openweb, it's a good point.
I hope that that translates tomore and more openness on the
podcasting side, because thathas not been there the last few
years.

Kevin (45:49):
I agree, I agree and I really love that clip because
James said this stuff, so Idon't have to say it, so it's
great, so I don't have to be thecurmudgeon.

Jordan (45:58):
Yeah, you just get to sit back and relax and have a
soda, I'll let James be thecurmudgeon.

Kevin (46:02):
So if you want to hear more of that grumpy old guy who
hates Spotify, tune in to thepodcast weekly review proudly
hosted by Budweb.

Jordan (46:14):
So this is a unique story in that it's kind of a
follow up from something that Ihad seen back in January.
So in Paw News I saw that Jameshad linked to an Australian
story about how last year alegal dispute between Rhondilyn
Korolak and Kanna Campbell, whogoes by the name of Sugar Mama,

(46:37):
occurred because Kanna Campbellinfringed on Korolak's trademark
of her podcast name and justrecently Korolak was awarded
$114,000 to cover her legalcosts and things like that.
But it sounded so familiar tome and I was like I feel like I
saw something about this in ourBuzzsprout community group and

(47:00):
so I went back and I found thatRhondilyn had actually posted in
the Buzzsprout group about herpodcast and she had like a win
today and she was in a threeyear battle over this trademark
and she said I finally provedtrademark infringement.
I'm in the process of gettingany content still online removed

(47:23):
.
And here's what she says.
That's really cool is, whateveryou do, do not let anyone steal
your brand.
And then try to bully andintimidate you.
And then she says probably letme down because they were due by
your inaccurate representationsthat she could use my trademark
and she neglected to tell them.
Ip Australia had told her itwas the same or deceptively
similar to mine, and that is howI came to be in the Buzzsprout

(47:44):
community.
I trust Buzzsprout to upholdthe law, which I thought was
nice.

Alban (47:48):
That is super nice Because, a former lawyer on the
Buzzsprout team, I'm happy tohear that we uphold the law.
I would say sometimes thisstuff gets so confusing when so
it sounds like it's twoAustralian podcasters.
I don't know what the laws arein Australia Podbean, like
Buzzsprout, is based in the US.
I think they're at leastincorporated in New York, so

(48:10):
it's.
It can be tough when people aresending you stuff from a
totally different jurisdictionsaying like here's the law.
Yeah, it's easy to get some ofthat confused.
I would say one of the thingsthat just stuck out to me is
like the both of these podcastsare called financial foreplay.
That's obviously infringing onthe trademark.
I think the element ofinfringement that's useful for

(48:34):
everyone to be cognizant of it'snot registering it as much as
not the ownership or the use.
Like the most common thing whereall this stuff focuses on is
likelihood of confusion.
So just ask yourself is itlikely for somebody to be
confused because they heardthese two names?
Would they think they're thesame?

(48:55):
I think one of the biggestcases on point here is like
Apple computers and Applerecords, and one point Apple
records was like hey, you'reconfusing people with the same
name and now you're doing somestuff with music.
I think they sued them likethree or four times over the
years, and so it's a debateabout are people going to be
confused?
I can tell you this if Ilistened to a podcast called

(49:16):
financial foreplay fromAustralia and then I heard of
somebody saying, oh, I'mlistening to a podcast called
financial foreplay with sugarmama, yeah, and it's also from
Australia yeah, that's the samepodcast in my mind, 100%.
There's no way in my mind.
I'm thinking those aredifferent and I think that's
just a very easy human leveltest.

(49:36):
You don't have to use all thelegal argument Just like ask
yourself is it likely someone toget confused?
And if the answer is yes, it'snot a good brand for you anyway.
So just move on and go and justcreate a new name.
You don't have to get superlegal about it.
100 and something, thousandAustralian dollars, 114,000
Australian dollars I mean,that's like 20,000 American

(49:58):
dollars or something.
I don't know the conversionrate, but that's pretty it.

Kevin (50:03):
You don't know it, you shouldn't say it.
It's about 75,000.

Alban (50:06):
Yeah, I'm just teasing the Australians.
I always find these funny.
You notice, the $114,000 is thelegal fees, because the real
winners here are the lawyers.
If you're getting sued fortrademark infringement, unless
there's a real reason why youshould be keeping it, you can
just change the name and nowdrastically reduce your exposure

(50:29):
.
The problem was that they keptfighting it.

Kevin (50:32):
Yeah, so looking on the offender side, obviously not the
person that started with thatbrand in the first place.

Alban (50:38):
Yeah, Of course, the person who has the brand and
knows I'm going to win this caseand get my fees paid for, keep
going for it.
But if you made a mistake, whyis the whole world just like
double and triple, downing tothe tune of over $100,000?
Yeah, just move on.
Yeah.

Kevin (50:59):
I think that the takeaway here and kind of the feel good
part of the story is that oftentimes in our Facebook community
we see people who say I'mthinking of starting a podcast,
but there's already anotherpodcast with this name.
What should I do?
And usually our advice, andmostly the advice of the
community, is the same in thatlike, if it's already out there,
just don't do it, just don't doit.
I know that you come up withthis name and you wake up in the

(51:22):
middle of the night and youhave this name and you're super
in love with it and you're like,ah, it's the perfect name for
my podcast.
And then you go and search andthere's other podcasts with the
same name.
Just don't do it, just let itgo.
So you just go and search forthe same name until you've done
the research and you find outthat nothing else exists and
it's like ongoing.
Now, like with Buzzcast, forexample, there's another podcast
called Buzzcast.
When we came up with, hey, wewant to do a show, we want to

(51:44):
call it Buzzcast, we looked outthere and there was another one
called Buzzcast but it was likea dead show, like it would still
exist on a few directories butthey hadn't published episodes
in years and years and years.
I don't even there might havebeen like one episode in the
feed or two, so they weren'tactive anymore.
So we didn't feel like it waswe were going to infringe on
anybody.
Because then another like thereare other Buzzcasts now that
are popped up.
We've noticed them.

(52:05):
You know we haven't taken anylegal action because we don't
feel like it's like hurting ourbrand and we don't think, like
Albin said, like is there a highprobability of confusion?
But what I like about this isthis is the feel good.
Part of it is that you can feelgood as an independent
podcaster that if you doestablish a brand and you put a
lot of work and energy andeffort behind it, and then

(52:26):
somebody comes in and tries toleverage that for their own gain
this is a story of somebody whowas in that position, and she
was able to use the legal systemto help her fight that battle
and get them to stop doing it,and so congratulations to her.
It's not easy Like she musthave gone through I mean, she
went through $75,000 US dollarsanyway of legal fees to do it,

(52:46):
not to mention how much time,effort and energy and lost sleep
went into this battle for her,but in the end she prevailed.
So congratulations, good workon you for protecting the brand
that you worked so hard to build.
I know that's an importantthing to you, and so I'm really
happy that you're able toprotect it.

Jordan (52:59):
Yeah, and getting trademarked is not an easy thing
to do.
So I mean, if you do have likea podcast name or a brand name
that you want to trademark,there's a lot of things to like
consider with it.
You know what countries do youtrademark it?
Honestly, with podcasting,probably the US is ideal just
because there's so many podcastshere.
I know that when I trademarkedmy podcast I was quoted $12,000

(53:25):
to trademark my podcast.
It's a lot of money, right.

Alban (53:29):
It's a lot.

Jordan (53:30):
Yeah, that's crazy.
Like I was just like okay, as apodcaster, I can't afford that.
Like how can anyone afford totrademark for $12,000?
What I wound up doing and youcan look into this too if you're
thinking about doing it Iactually wound up going through
the business law department of alocal university and they
actually would file thetrademark for free.

(53:53):
I just had to pay the filingfees, which was like I don't
know, $450 or $490 or somethinglike that.

Alban (53:59):
Yeah, that's a good tip.
I think when I filed thetrademark for Buzzsprout for the
brand name, I went throughLegalZoom, so I remember that
being like a relatively easyprocess.
I knew that it had been a longtime since I'd done anything
with trademarks and never was anexpert at any point.
So LegalZoom was really nice,did the hand-hold thing, and I

(54:19):
don't remember that being veryexpensive either.

Jordan (54:24):
All right, it's time for Sound Off, the segment where
you send in your responses toour podcasting questions.
First off, we have a tweet fromtruemediasolutionsca.
Loved your discussion aroundpracticing safe socks and
13-hour movie marathons, Alban.
I think that's a direct lead,yeah.

Alban (54:45):
Well, the Merino wool baby is going to make sure your
feet don't blister and your runsare going to be a lot better,
so I'm glad you enjoyed that.

Kevin (54:53):
You know I have a follow-up question about the
socks, Alban, I think somehowthe algorithms have now aligned
me as a potential sock purchaser.
There we go, and so I guess themicrophones are listening to me
.
And so we were talking aboutsocks last week.
So now I'm on social media alllast week and I'm looking at
sock ads.

(55:14):
Eh like I'm used to themicrophones listening.
This isn't super shocking inand of itself.
What is shocking is the numberof companies now that are
pushing alpaca socks so socksmade from alpaca, like whatever
wool or something and they'resaying it's superior.
The marketing says it'ssuperior, yeah, yeah.
So I want to know, like, howcome, in all the research that

(55:35):
you went through last week forhours on end, did you not talk
at all about alpaca?

Alban (55:40):
I have no idea why alpaca never made it in.
I have to go deeper into this,our recurring sock segment.
We'll have to come back nextweek.

Kevin (55:49):
From what I know, alpaca wool is superior to merino wool
From you seeing the ads onFacebook.

Alban (55:55):
Yes, yes.

Jordan (55:57):
Actually we have a follow up to the sock thing from
4894.
You guys forgot to mention akey feature of darn tough socks
they will replace any damagedsock for life.
No questions asked.
Oh what.

Kevin (56:08):
Yeah, how did you not mention that, Albin?
Oh?

Alban (56:11):
are you kidding, all right?
Well, they claimed that and I'msure if you wear through a sock
and it has a hole and you goand you carry this sock up to
like USPS and you put it in athing and you ship it to them,
then they will send you a newpair of socks.
There's no way you're actuallygoing to do this, like one
person's going to do this.

(56:32):
The people who are like this isjust a point of pride that
they're like I got the socksback, but that's not how.
What happens to socks?
They rarely wear through.
Mostly what happens to socks isthey disappear.
They go away somehow, they'rein the dryer and then, all of a
sudden, you have one sock andyou used to have two socks, but
you don't know where the othersock went.

Kevin (56:52):
Can you ship them one sock and say the other one went
missing, and they'll ship youtwo socks.

Alban (56:57):
I seriously doubt you could send one sock in and say
the other sock disappeared.

Kevin (57:01):
Oh well, here's the hack you cut your one sock in half
and then mail it back two piecesof sock and say I need two
fully functional socks back.

Alban (57:10):
So you cut enough holes out of like a bunch of socks
that you stitch all the otherones together, you just have a
Frankensock.
We become the exact people whoare in a Frankensock.
We're becoming the same peoplethat are causing Spotify all
these issues by doingchargebacks and credit card
scams.
Because it's a $20 sock.

(57:30):
It's an expensive pair of socks.
Wait, one pair is $20?
Yeah, maybe it's like 17.
They're not cheap.
They're so expensive.
I also don't ever think I'mreturning them.
My experience is anytime peoplegive you a guarantee, that's a
nice marketing message there'sno way it's ever going to get
used.
They're like five years fromnow, if this leaf blower breaks,

(57:51):
we'll take care of you.
It's like no, I'm never goingto remember that.
That's why I bought the leafblower.
I never kept the documentationfor the leaf blower.
I didn't sort it in my like oh,when did all of my warranties
expire?
None of that stuff happens.
What happens is you buy it andyou justify to yourself this
will last me forever, and thenyou forget about it and then you

(58:15):
probably lose the socks anyway.

Kevin (58:16):
I don't think you're in touch with the American people.
Alban, I'm sorry, but when wasthe last time you went to
Walmart and stood in the returnline?
Because there are people therewith things that are six, seven
years old, that are nowdefective, and they are
demanding their refund.

Alban (58:30):
That is true.
I've not gone back to theWalmart return line in a long
time.
I return a lot of things, butthose things I return are like
tags still on return.
This thing broke in the first30 days thing.
I wore through a pair of socksfrom two years ago.
I just don't see that clickingin my brain like got to go back
and find those invoices andpackage this all up.

(58:51):
Yeah.

Kevin (58:52):
But this is.
I mean you're coming from avery sock privilege position.
I mean, it's not everybody.
You can afford $17 pairs ofsocks, so you need to check your
sock privilege.
Check your sock privilege atthe door man.
This is not the world we livein for everybody 100% privilege
checked.

Alban (59:11):
I mean, I do agree.
If you're buying $17 pairs ofsocks, yeah, it's a different
world you're in.
But I just don't ever seemyself returning these.

Jordan (59:20):
All right, we're going to move on from socks.
We have a response to Albin'squestion a couple of episodes
ago about your podcasting keysto success.
David from no Stroke Podcast,if we could get one hospital
stroke support group to use ourdigital content to educate
survivors and caregivers thathave been impacted by stroke,

(59:40):
then 2024 would have been deemeda success for us and PS.
Icing on the cake, sprinkling afew dozen new show supporters
using the sweet new supportfeature on Buzzsprout will make
our podcast year a bit happiertoo.

Kevin (59:53):
Yes, that would be huge.

Jordan (59:54):
Absolutely.

Kevin (59:56):
That is exactly like.
Those are the stories we love.
I want to hear more of that.
That was fantastic.
Somebody who's podcasting andthey're legitimately looking for
, like one person, to beimpacted by the stuff that they
do Like that should be all ofour goals.

Jordan (01:00:06):
Yeah, right.

Kevin (01:00:07):
It's so great they let go of all of the bailouts and the
jail where it created the dogsin Hadid in the speeches.
For that reason, I see theirthoughts in material to be
focused on.
I know they will put somethingin the middle of all that stuff
that they didn't dono-transcript stuff.
Like you have content that youbelieve is valuable to them,
that can make their lives better, that can help them after
suffering some sort of medicalsetback or a health issue or
something like that.
Great work.
Keep it up and keep sharingyour stories, because we love it
.

Alban (01:00:23):
Ashley, host of Get Out Alive an animal attack podcast.
I would love to listen to this.
My key to success forpodcasting this year stick to
our biweekly schedule andcontinue to have insightful
guests.
Growing our Patreon would, ofcourse, be great too.
I think if you save one personfrom an animal attack, that also
would be a good key to success.

(01:00:43):
Ashley, keep up the great workand keep up the biweekly
schedule.
That's phenomenal.

Jordan (01:00:50):
I like how both of those are just like.
If we could get some listenersupport, that would be amazing.
I think that a lot ofpodcasters feel that.

Alban (01:00:58):
I think just as soon as you see somebody is so, they
enjoy your content so much thatthey're willing to put a few
dollars behind it.
This is the whole value forvalue model, Just when you know
this has really hit a new point.
Donate to your favoritepodcasts.

Jordan (01:01:11):
Yeah, all right.
My question for the lastepisode do you prefer your
podcast to be extra long orbroken up into smaller episodes?
Matthias said for me, as alistener, I prefer one long
episode, but as a podcaster it'sa different story.
One long episode is onedownload, and one long episode
chopped up equals that many moredownloads.

Kevin (01:01:32):
Yeah, yeah, a good point.
If you monetize your podcast inthat way, if that's an
important thing to you, thenyeah, you got to consider that
for sure.
Absolutely right on the onedownload versus multiple
downloads.
So good point.
You skipped over the part ofMatias's comment that said sorry
, I can only remember two out ofthe three names of the hosts,
so I mean obviously he wasprobably talking about Kevin and

(01:01:54):
Jordan.
The other host is AlbinA-L-B-A-N.
Not the most common name in theworld, but yeah, that's his
name.
So Jordan, kevin and Albin.
Thank you, kevin, I appreciatethat.

Alban (01:02:06):
You're welcome as Stu's point.
I get the split it up intomultiple so that you can get the
ad impressions.
I still feel like if I have anhour long episode, you can still
put in multiple mid-rolls intothere.
The ad load can be the samebetween four episodes or one.

(01:02:26):
You just are going to have moreads throughout the content.
So I still like keeping it asone.
But maybe the alternative, Ithink, is what you suggested
last time.
Kevin put it out as a lot ofsmall episodes to begin and then
, after that season hasconcluded, go ahead and just put
those all together and make onebig mega episode and leave that

(01:02:47):
in the back catalog.

Jordan (01:02:49):
So he actually posted this in our Facebook community
group and a lot of the responseswere actually similar to
something that I've experienced,in that they put out like a
part one and then the otherparts don't perform as well.
And I actually had the exactsame thing happen.
I did like the Wizard of Oz andit was like a three-part thing
because the book is so freakinglong and the difference, like

(01:03:11):
the discrepancy and downloadsbetween my part one and part two
is something insane like 30,000downloads different.
No one cares about part two,part three, and I've actually
was thinking about my listeninghabits and I was like, yeah, if
I see, like you know, such andsuch documentary part one, I
actually will skip it for an optfor the episodes that do not

(01:03:33):
have, like part one, part twonext to them.

Alban (01:03:36):
I think that's because as soon as you have part two, part
three of anything book series,movies, tv shows, podcasts that
the only people who will everlisten to part two are people
who already listened to part one.
And so you're segmenting theaudience and you see this, I
think book series the most likeeven very popular book series.
The first book gets the mostreads and then it decreases over

(01:04:00):
time.
So I see the point there.
It kind of segments into whatTate wrote us, Hi, Buzz cast.
If an episode is longer than anhour, I generally pass.
I prefer anything less than 45minutes.
If I leave an episode, forwhatever reason, rarely do I go
back to it.
So I love the idea for QuickCast.
I have a storytelling podcastand have stories that are
concise, less than three minuteslong.

(01:04:22):
These would be perfect forQuick Cast, which I'll randomly
do as bonus between regularepisodes.
Thanks for the inspiration.
As for the Snapcast idea, thisis the same idea, just different
branding.
I don't think I want myepisodes disappearing.
Also, if they do disappear,will the stats associated with
that particular episode vanishas well?
I love this video that Kevinsent us a while ago.

(01:04:44):
It's a guy who's dancing atlike a music festival and it's
this voiceover.
That's like the leader is thefirst person who does something
and they're inspirational, butthey're just kind of like the
nut in the beginning.
They're out there on their own,but the first follower, the
person who jumps up and startsdancing with them, that's the
person who really starts themovement and it's a really funny

(01:05:07):
video.
If you haven't seen it, weshould post it.
But it goes from one guy goofydancing by himself to hundreds
of people dancing.

Jordan (01:05:15):
I'll link to it in the show now because it's worth it.

Alban (01:05:18):
But it's all about the first follower and Tate, I think
you are the first follower ofQuick Cast slash, fast Cast
slash, snapcasts, this idea of aQuick podcast.
So if you do one, send it to us, because we want to listen to
it.
I mean, this goes out toanybody.
If you do this idea, we'd loveto see how you're using it.
You are our first followers.

Kevin (01:05:39):
Yeah, and how we're doing it right now so that your stats
don't disappear, is like we hada Snapcast before last week's
episode and I hope we have onebefore this episode.
But what we're doing is we'rejust unpublishing it, so it's
staying in our Buzzsproutaccount and all the stats are
still there.
We're just unpublishing it.
We don't delete it.
If you delete it, your statswould disappear along with the
deletion, but instead you canunpublish it if you want to.

(01:05:59):
Sounds like you don't want to,but for our third follower, if
you want to unpublish, thatwould be the way to do it.
Kyle from the Parker Parleywrote in and said I don't care
for the season of podcast.
I feel, at least for my shows,the episodes are as long as they
need to be.
I don't put a time limit on it,but I also don't ramble on and
I put something out that's tothe point-ish.
So thanks and go podcasting.

(01:06:19):
Great feedback, kyle.
Thank you, and that's the sameadvice that we give all the time
that your episodes should be aslong as they need to be and no
longer.

Jordan (01:06:28):
Alban, do you have a question for our next episode?

Alban (01:06:30):
I'm reading Tate's response.
I think I want to hear aboutyour Quickcasts or your Snapcast
or your Fastcasts.
If you record a short podcastbetween bigger episodes, tell us
how you're using it and maybeshare us a link so we can go and
check these out.
So if you have any questions,choose the text Jordan.
What's that number?

Jordan (01:06:51):
1-855-951-4230.
And, as always, thanks forlistening and keep podcasting.
What's donut throwing?

Kevin (01:07:06):
Donut throwing.
Well, it's something that'sGolly, it's a lot.

James Cridland (01:07:10):
I didn't think that this was going to be a hard
question.

Kevin (01:07:13):
This is not a hard question.
Well, I was trying to figureout.
Is it like its own event?
Is it like a flash mob thingthat happens?
What?
Yeah?
So donut throwing is there's a.
Whenever you have outdoor races, usually they run through
neighborhoods and stuff andsometimes people will come
outside of their homes gatheringgroups and they'll cheer racers

(01:07:34):
on.
Some of these fans think it'sfunny to offer the racers things
that you probably wouldn't wantin the middle of a run, like a
donut or like a big hunk ofbacon or a fireball shot or
other weird things.
That's like the last thing youwant when you're in the middle
of a run.

Alban (01:07:54):
But there are things that are really nice when you're
watching a run.
If you say they're watching arun to have a piece of bacon and
a donut is kind of nice.
If you're in the middle of arun and someone offers you like
they did to Kevin on Saturday ashot of vodka, that's not what
you want.
Oh gosh, yeah I almost took it.

Jordan (01:08:12):
You almost did, oh no.
And then?

Kevin (01:08:14):
I ran this race in Jacksonville it's like the big
Jacksonville race and so we werelike, hey, are you going to run
?
I'm going to run, yeah.
So let's run together.
So we ran together for thefirst part of it anyway, before
Alban took off he's so fast Leftme in the dust.
But in the first half of thatrace we run together and there
is what looked to be a waterstation and we were like a mile

(01:08:35):
three.
And so I'm like, oh, I can usesome water.
So I go over to take the waterand as I'm getting ready to take
the cup out of the person'shand, I hear Alban yell that's
not water.
I was like what?
And I look over at the sign andthey're like vodka shots.
I'm like oh gosh like that wouldhave taken me out completely.

Jordan (01:08:50):
Can you imagine if you just like threw it back?

Kevin (01:08:53):
I was about to.
I was very close.

Alban (01:08:56):
Kevin, I am running.
I know Kevin isn't much of adrinker as it is, and the fact
that he starts veering over thisis a nine point three mile race
and at mile three Kevin'sveering over to the vodka stand.
I'm like there's no way this isintentional.
This is a joke.
He's getting closer, that's notwater.
And he keeps going and I goback that's not water, kevin.

Kevin (01:09:19):
He's like oh, yeah, so Alban saved me from that.
But then we take a few moreturns through a few more
neighborhoods and then we see amember of the Buzzsprout team,
priscilla, is standing on thecorner and she's next to some
other people that we know andthey're all hanging out and
they're all cheering and we'relike, oh fun.
So we run over in theirdirection and they have a big

(01:09:41):
box of donut holes that they'reoffering and throwing to people
to see if they can catch them intheir mouth.
So Alban was ahead of me, whichwas the theme of the whole race
.
But Alban's ahead of me, so hegoes first.
And what happened?
Alban?

Alban (01:09:53):
Actually our mutual friend Thomas, who is our
pickleball partner on mostMondays when Kevin and I play
Thomas, was there.
He tossed a donut hole.
It hit off my face.
I did not catch it in my mouth.
Later on he was like you know,most people just try to catch it
with their hand and I was like,ah, kind of makes more sense.
But I took the challenge anddidn't make it.

Kevin (01:10:17):
So Alban runs by, I see the donut hole bounce off his
face and he keeps going.
I'm next and I run by.
I'm like, and they're holdingup donuts.
I'm like I'm not interested inthe donuts, I'm not opening my
mouth and not putting up myhands up.
I'm like no, no, no, no, no.
And I run by and I probably get10 or 15 yards down the road
and I feel a donut hole peg meright in my left butt cheek,

(01:10:39):
like a hard throw.
I'm like who is the baseballpitcher who just winged that
donut hole at me, thomas?
And after the race I get back tomy car, get my phone, turn it
on, check my messages, andPriscilla goes did you feel that
donut hole hit you?
I'm like, yeah, that certainlywasn't you.
I go that wasn't you that threwit.
And she goes yeah, I hit you inthe back.
I threw it.
And I was like, no, it didn'thit me in the back, hit me in

(01:11:02):
the butt, it was completelyinappropriate.
And it is the reason this is aHR report now, because you're a
co-operator, and it's the reasonthat Alban beat me in the race,
because I couldn't think aboutanything else for the whole rest
of the race.
Somebody peg me in the buttwith a donut hole and you're
cramping up.
I probably have a mark.

Jordan (01:11:21):
Probably.

Kevin (01:11:21):
No, but that's donut throwing, it's all in good fun.
It really is super fun andmotivational and helped keep us
going to have friends out therecheering us on as we ran on.
So thanks for being there,priscilla, and thanks for
throwing the donut.
No heart feelings.

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