February 4, 2022 • 46 mins
Note: This episode was recorded on Wednesday, February 2nd so we only address the controversy around covid misinformation in the Joe Rogan Experience. Since then there have been additional controversies about racist comments resulting in many episodes of the Joe Rogan Experience being removed from Spotify.
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In this episode, the crew discusses Apple Podcasts' resurgence in Buzzsprout's Global Stats, what's going on over at Spotify, and what it takes to make podcasting a full-time job.
Upcoming Podcast Conferences:
- Podcast Movement Evolutions, March 23-26
- Blk Pod Festival, May 28-29
- Podfest Expo, May 26-29
Links from this episode:
- Buzzsprout's Global Stats for January
- Spotify Is Removing Neil Young Songs After He Complains of ‘Misinformation’ (New York Times)
- Joe Rogan, Confined to Spotify, is Losing Influence (The Verge)
- Improve Podcast's Study of Podcasters
Contact Buzzcast
- Send us a text message
- Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods
Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Alban (00:00):
One of the problems we have seen is sometimes people
(00:02):
move over from a differentpodcast host. And they're like,
Why did my numbers go down? Ifanything, it's because we are
filtering out bots that theyweren't. The hard thing about
stats is they never get higher.
Because you got more accurate.
It's always a that's actually abot and we can identify it to
bot because we see it hitting50,000 different podcasts.
Travis (00:21):
I mean, that makes sense, because I've still been
waiting for the big spike inBuzzcast downloads from
Malaysia. I paid this guy, hereached out to Facebook
Messenger. I said the money Iknow I gave I gave him 100
bucks. He said, I was gonna getlike 90,000 downloads on the dot
and they still haven't comethrough
(00:43):
so Alban, we have our newJanuary stats, because it's
February now. And some big somebig things happening at the top.
What can you tell us about Applepodcasts? Big search for
January?
Alban (00:56):
I mean, we have to actually maybe step back to make
sure people understand. At theend of January, we look at all
the stats for January. And sothe January stats are published
in February. That's correct. Itwas a little, I just want to
make sure that clarificationsare there. We're not just taking
a month to get around to puttingthis out. Yeah, I mean, we ran
(01:17):
the numbers yesterday,Buzzsprout, for the first time
ever in our history, served up100 million downloads that were
real.
Travis (01:26):
Yeah. Well,
Kevin (01:27):
we think we've only been publishing these global stats
stats since October 2020. That'spossible, we did 100 million
before that point, I
Alban (01:35):
am highly confident that's not true. Because if it
did, like our server costs wouldhave skyrocketed, and Tom would
have like, gonna happen.
Travis (01:44):
I mean, for for those of you that are way back in the de
Buzzsprout. Fans may know a showcalled men in
Kevin (01:52):
blazers. Then Blazers did a lot. Yeah, they do a lot of
demos. And that probably serverissues, probably not 100
million, but a lot
Alban (02:00):
that that would have had to been like 2014 men in Blazers
was a small podcast, andBuzzsprout got picked up by ESPN
to do the coverage for like,World Cup, the World Cup. And
all of a sudden, was we weregetting calls from the people
who managed our servers. Andthey were like, We're going
down. Apparently, it looks likeit's all you know, they weren't
Kevin (02:22):
going down. They were they were getting charged an
extraordinary amount of moneyfor the bandwidth that they were
consuming from who they werebuying it from. And they're
calling us to let us know thatthat bill is coming your way. Do
you want to do anything aboutit? And yeah, we we, what can we
do about it? We can't take thepodcast down. Keep serving.
Yeah, but that was a fun time.
CBS I think was doing the WorldCup coverage. And these
(02:45):
podcasters got segments on thecoverage. And we're encouraging
people to go listen, theirpodcast, and there's a lot of
World Cup fans all around theworld. Who knew? Yeah. And so
no, they never nobody went down.
There's no fear of going down.
Like the concern was alwaysabout how much this is going to
cost this. So we're that's amuch easier problem to sort
through and well, servers goingdown.
Alban (03:07):
I don't think we were hitting 100 million back then. I
guess maybe we should clarifythis 100 million is not very
high. Until we say 100 millionthat are real downloads. Yes.
Travis (03:19):
I'm gonna be certified downloads.
Alban (03:21):
Yeah, if if we actually just put all the bots in there,
too. It would be like everyone'sstats would be triple or four
times as high. It's a big amountKevin's shaking his head? No.
Kevin (03:34):
It wouldn't be triple. It wouldn't be triple No, no. Would
it be maybe 20 to 30%? Higher?
Really?
Travis (03:40):
What if what if we had like a legacy stats mode that
just like bumped them up alittle bit for your own?
encouragement?
Kevin (03:49):
Why don't we just have a button that just says how much?
How many downloads Do you want?
number how
Travis (03:53):
many downloads you think your show deserves?
Alban (03:55):
Right? One of the problems we have seen is
sometimes people move over froma different podcast host. And
they're like, Why did my numbersgo down? And we're like, if
anything, it's because we arefiltering out bots that they
weren't. And we're like, thehard thing about stats is they
never go, they never get higher.
Because you got more accurate.
It's always a that's actually abot and we can identify it's a
(04:17):
bot because we see it hitting50,000 different podcasts. So we
can remove it. But it may be youdon't check across all these
podcasts, you may not be theperson to actually see.
Travis (04:29):
I mean, that makes sense. Because I've still been
waiting for the big spike inBuzzcast downloads from
Malaysia. I paid this guy hereached out to Facebook
Messenger. I said the money Iknow I gave I gave him 100
bucks. He said I was gonna getlike 90,000 downloads on the dot
and they still haven't comethrough. So is that is that what
happens? Like Tom just figuredit out.
Alban (04:48):
I will tell you this that has actually happened where
someone wrote into support andthey're like, I don't see all my
downloads. I'm like, What do youmean? And they're like, Yeah, I
should have had like 90,000downloads loads, you know, I'm I
know that people are playing it.
And I was like, why is he sayinga specific number that he's
confident he's short by. And Isearched by 90,000 podcast
downloads in Google and all thisand all these sites start
(05:13):
popping up. They're like buyinggroups of 90,000. I was like,
Hey, did you buy a bunch ofdownloads? Because like, we
would absolutely filter those,and you couldn't use those
numbers to sell advertisements.
And I was
Travis (05:27):
like, oh, yeah, so 100 million problem has been
resolved real actual peopledownloading podcasts, which is
pretty cool. It's a pretty bigmilestone for sure. You go right
below that to podcast apps. AndApple podcasts has been at the
number one spot for a couplemonths now. But the amount that
it is above Spotify, that gaphas increased significantly.
(05:51):
Yeah. And Alban, I know that youtalked to Tom, who runs the
stats to kind of get some moreinformation on maybe why that
could be happening.
Alban (05:57):
Right. So well, I posted this on Twitter that these are
the top apps across for 100million downloads. And James
Cridland, who writes pod newswas like, I'd love to know why
Apple keeps continuing to grow,because they grew, I guess, like
another 3% in the last month.
three percentage points. That'sa really big jump, and Spotify
grew their overall numbers, butactually decreased because
(06:21):
Spotify or Apple has been sostrong, they lost market share
to Apple, yeah, they lost marketshare, even though the, you
know, amount of actual plays ontheir platform increase.
Kevin (06:32):
Yeah, Apple podcasts had 7 million more plays in January
than they did in December. AndSpotify had, I think, 2 million
more check. 3 million more.
Yeah, so Spotify is stillgetting more downloads than they
have previously, but they arelosing market share.
Alban (06:48):
So a few reasons why we would be saying this. I mean,
number one, Buzzsprout playswhen 15% in a single month, it's
January versus December,December is always a down month
for podcasting, because peoplehave tons of stuff that's going
on. They're opening presents,and they're spending tons of
time and family and they'rearguing about politics, and
they've got important stuff todo. And then in January,
(07:09):
everyone's like, well, now I'mgoing to make some real big
improvements in my life. And I'mgonna start listening to all
these podcasts and the personalgrowth. So we know that podcasts
do get a bump in January. Sothat's one reason why we saw the
overall jump. The apple one inparticular, it's all just legit.
One thing we thought for alittle bit was maybe Apple is
(07:29):
leaning more into, we alwayshave had these group called
Apple Core media, which are notidentifiable if they're Apple
podcasts or they're for adifferent podcasting app. And
that has stayed relatively thesame that grew by 15%. Just like
everything else did perfectly inline. The one that saw the big
jump was the actuallyidentifiable Apple podcasts
(07:53):
place. So just Apple's beendoing a much better job getting
more people into the podcastingapp. Maybe they've changed some
sort of behavior that morepeople are downloading episodes
rather than streaming them. Butyeah, it's uh, there's nothing
particularly there. I did hear apiece of are we allowed to put
on like gossip, Kevin, insiderinfo? Why not? I mean, the worst
Kevin (08:16):
gonna happen is we're gonna get a warning label.
Travis (08:20):
Want to come back and retract our previous statement,
but hey, give us the juice man.
What's going on?
Alban (08:24):
This is actually not like, there's no medical advice.
Apparently, like this thing hasalways been a problem that
people who use this certain APIfor Apple actually cannot set
and say, Hey, this the appthat's using it, and so people
like Buzzsprout podcast hostcan't identify where that play
is coming from, or thatdownloads coming from? It'd be
(08:46):
just know it's coming fromsomething on an Apple iPhone.
And the word is that that'sactually going to change?
Kevin (08:53):
Yeah, well, I think it's, I think it's a little bit more
nuanced than that. There aredifferent API's that are
available. And depending on theAPI's that you choose to use,
you may or may not be able toset your user agent easily.
Right? There's still ways aroundit. James Kurland did a great
job of kind of figuring outlike, if you use these higher
level API's, and maybe thesimpler ones, by default, just
gonna say apple core media,there are ways to actually
(09:14):
override that any way. But youhave to do a little bit more
work. It's not as simple.
Somebody like an overcast orPocket Cast, they use more
proprietary engines as playbackstuff, maybe not the higher
levels, but the deeper levels,which means you do more coding,
you've got more control over theaudio. And when you do that, it
was easy to set your user agent.
So some were setting user agent,some weren't. There was
additional work involved. Itsounds like the rim or the
(09:36):
little birdies that are, youknow, saying things in the
album's here are saying we'regonna make it easy for people to
set user agents regardless ofwhich API's you use.
Alban (09:44):
Yeah, specifically the one that is being used for
streaming that's really easy toimplement that has been spitting
out apple core media for a longtime, that is used by a ton of
podcast apps, that one shouldallow people to set user agents
so what does that mean foreveryone listening to this means
that stats. Hopefully at somepoint in the future, we'll be
getting much more accuratebecause now we'll be able to get
(10:06):
that data from the podcast appsthemselves. And they can say, we
know for sure displays code fromus,
Travis (10:12):
specifically, your downloads will not change. But
the devices and apps areattributed to, will be updated
to be more accurate
Kevin (10:19):
might change. And I'm being Alvin's attorney today
when he says much more accurate,he means that some plays that
are currently being registeredas what do we call them, other
apple devices may move more intotickets, unknown Apple apps,
unknown Apple apps might movemore into specific app names, or
they might move more into Applepodcasts. So that's something
(10:39):
that we continue to monitor. Andwe'll tweak where we where we
credit those plays, as thingsevolve and change. But the
number of downloads overall thatyou're seeing is not going to
change.
Alban (10:49):
Yeah, it wouldn't. It's not, it's only going to be where
they which buckets they fallinto. And Tom has been doing
this for a long time reachingout to app developers and
saying, Hey, I think your statsare actually being undercounted
because you're not setting auser agent. And nobody can tell
that you're the one who'sactually requesting these
downloads. And quite a fewdevelopers are like, Oh, well,
(11:11):
how do I do that doesn't looklike I can do it. I think they
would all be excited to seetheir own app doing better on
things like the Buzzsproutplatform stats, they'd rather
see that being higher and moreaccurate. But you Kevin doesn't
like this phrase more accurate?
Travis (11:28):
Well, I mean, like, for instance, so you can press Show
more to see like, a ton ofdifferent podcast apps and the
global stats. And I've got toimagine that like, good pods is
doing more downloads thanMicrosoft Xbox. Yeah, like I
just that has to be, or SpotifyLite, or iBooks, or whatever
these randoms apps are. So Ithink that'll be really helpful
(11:49):
to be able to see like,especially if you start to build
an audience on one of thesethird party apps, to be able to
attribute that to your stats,and Buzzsprout will just help
you understand how peopleactually finding my podcast
where they listening to it. Andhow can I double down in areas
where, you know, maybe I canbuild a community around my
show?
Alban (12:06):
Yeah, exactly. It makes it easier for podcast creators
to actually know like, Oh, I'vebeen telling everybody, let's go
over onto good pods. I chartedon good pods. I've done all this
work on good pods. And it's notshowing up, because it might be
lumped in with everything else.
That's a bummer. And you don'tyou're not able to differentiate
does that that marketing pushactually help? Well, when these
(12:26):
get into the right buckets, andapp developers can make that
change. Man is that can be anice little update.
Travis (12:34):
So the new year we got a new round of podcasts,
conferences, and I know that welike to travel around to
especially those here in the USwhere we're based. So I know the
I think the first one that'scoming up is either going to be
pod festival or Podcast Movementevolutions, which one is that?
Which one of the
Alban (12:51):
evolutions is in March, march 23, to 26th. And then in
May, we have black pod festivaland pod fest. Those are the
three I won't get to both, Ithink I'll probably be at Black
pod festival. Okay. And then,but some of the team will be at
pod fest, and then we will alsogo to Podcast Movement. Again, I
think the next one's gonna be inAugust. Okay, but if you're
(13:13):
going to be out in LA, march 23to 26th Make sure you stop by
the Buzzsprout. Booth. I'm suregroup of us are going Stephanie,
Megan, Tom, myself, I thinkJalon might go as well. So we'll
have five of us. And we will bebuying drinks for people and
hanging out and having fun. Socome on by.
Kevin (13:30):
Great what's the Do we know the dates for pod Fest and
black pod festival?
Travis (13:34):
I'll put links to all these in the show notes. You can
go and check them out. I knowsome of them will probably also
have virtual tickets, if youcan't be there in person. But
we're big believers in podcastconferences. Not only do you get
to meet other podcasters you getto hear from experts about
what's going on in the industry.
And it's just really great to bearound 1000s of fellow
podcasters. So Kevin, I know youwere talking to your buddy Neil
(13:57):
over the weekend.
Kevin (13:59):
It was man, Neil and I go way back. And yeah, he had
concerns about his podcast beingon I shouldn't say podcasts. on
Spotify.
Travis (14:11):
So Alban walk us through kind of a series of events of
what has unfolded over the lastcouple of weeks in regards to
Spotify in regards to Joe Rogan.
And then Neil Young and otherartists as well, and some
aspiring podcasters that werereally excited about getting
their shows off the ground. Youknow, I really wanted to hear
from Prince Harry, but stillhold out hope that podcast will
Alban (14:31):
give away the lead.
Alright, so Joe Rogan has alwaysbeen this guy who just jumps
into topics and maybe is notalways the expert on the topics
that he's talking about. Andsometimes the guests aren't the
experts either. And he's done abunch of conversations with
people about COVID. But he'sdone this in the past. Like he's
talking about everything. And itkind of hit a flashpoint this
(14:51):
week, when Neil Young said, Hey,there's some dangerous I think
his exact words are likedangerous, life threatening
COVID fault hoods. And becauseof it, he's pulling his music
from Spotify. And it started amuch larger conversation pretty
quickly about a lot ofpodcasters a lot of artists
(15:11):
saying, Hey, we don't want to beinvolved with the Joe Rogan
experience, I guess Neil Youngstarted off with an ultimatum
like, is it going to be me orJoe Rogan, but everyone knew
what Spotify is going to do.
They didn't pay 10 or $100million to have Neil Young's
content exclusive on Spotify, sothey sided with Rogan. And we've
(15:32):
just seen a bunch of peoplestart pulling podcasts out of
Spotify. So Brene Brown hassaid, I'm not going to be
creating any more content. Thescience versus which is a gimlet
show has said, the only podcastwe will actually create now are
going to be to combat the COVIDmisinformation on other
podcasts. So obviously, talkingabout Rogan again. So yeah, I
(15:53):
thought it'd be interesting tokind of have a conversation
about COVID science, because weare all about as much experts on
that as Joe Rogan. So it'sprobably not the most
illuminating conversation. Butfor us to talk about exclusive
content, the importance of likeeditorial work around this
stuff, but also like how thisaffects podcasters in the
(16:15):
industry.
Kevin (16:17):
Yeah, well, and I would also say this, since this is a
show about independentpodcasters is that it doesn't
stop there with the big nameslike the number one support
request over the weekend forBuzzsprout was how do I remove
my podcast from Spotify? Solike, in the end, what you said
Alban is that Spotify chose, youknow, if Neil put the ultimatum
(16:37):
down, that says, it's going tobe my music, or it's going to be
this podcast, they might havesided with the podcast in this
one case, but it didn't endthere. Like it's having some
effect all the way down toindependent small shows, or
wanting to, and we don't knowtheir reasons. Some, as they
wrote in, they did say, like,I've got the same concerns that
Neil Young has. And I saw thatsome people didn't give a
reason. But it's, it's tellingthat it was the number one
(16:58):
support request for Buzzsprout,which we get a lot of support
requests, usually hundreds overthe weekend. And the number one
request was to remove theirpodcasts and Spotify.
Alban (17:05):
Somebody asked me about like, is Buzzsprout going to do
anything about this? And I waslike, well, we've actually
pulled all of our podcasts fromSpotify years
Travis (17:12):
ago, talking about Buzzcast, and how to start a
podcast and Podcasting Q&A,right.
Alban (17:16):
Everybody who uses Buzzsprout has that option and
open to them to decide whereverthey want to distribute. But for
us, we've never put our where wealways, we've always pulled it
out two years ago. Ours was overa concern. The Spotify wanted to
be the YouTube, the platform ofpodcasting. And we said,
actually, the awesome thingabout podcasting is that there
(17:39):
isn't a platform, there isn'tone group that gets to decide,
what is a podcast doesn't get todecide who's allowed to put
content up, can't just kick youout on a whim at any moment. So
that's a really great thing forpodcasting. And so we said, you
know, if they're going to try tobe this one platform, we're not
going to aid that by giving ourcontent to them. Spotify
(18:03):
reaction to that was nothingbecause they have no idea.
They're not, they were notconcerned, they were much more
concerned when Neil Youngstarted saying stuff than when
we did.
Kevin (18:14):
Yeah, and my argument has always been, it's your content,
and you should be in control ofit, you should have the right to
say where your content ispublished and where it's not.
And so I don't want to get intowhether Neil I agree with Neil
Young's position or not, or andyou might not necessarily care
if you agree with Buzzsproutposition or not, that the point
is, is that we both madeindependent decisions, to remove
(18:36):
our content from Spotify. And Ithink that's a fantastic thing,
like I was I was trying to comeup with a compelling position to
have on Neil Young's decision topull his content and Joni
Mitchell and, and a bunch ofothers bunch of, you know, our
customers made that samedecision this weekend. And, and
I really couldn't, what I gotexcited about was that we have
the ability to do it. Right. AndI think that that's so much more
(18:58):
encouraging, than going downthis road of relying on
censorship or regulation tocontrol a speech that we agree
with or don't agree with, like,at the end of the day, I think
it's a healthier world, to beable to say, you know, I don't
want to align myself with someof the things that this platform
is doing. So I have the option,I have the ability to cast my
(19:19):
vote by pulling my content off.
And that's what is, is, again, Idon't want to get into whether I
agree with Neil or not. Maybe Ido, maybe I don't that's not
relevant,
Alban (19:28):
what's relevant. You keep going back to this, I don't want
to say what I
Kevin (19:32):
don't want people to hear what I'm not saying. I'm not
saying I totally agree withNeil, or I don't agree with
Neil. What I am saying is I lovethe fact that Neil has the
ability to do this, that he hasthe ability to say, I do not
want to align myself with thisplatform. And here are my
reasons and that's why I'mpulling my content off. So that
to me is encouraging. I'd loveit.
Travis (19:50):
Right. And even thinking about this in the video world.
Like imagine if Joe Rogan wasexclusive on YouTube. Mm hmm.
And the same thing was happeningand you're an independent
creator and YouTube is yourlivelihood. That's a much more
difficult decision to say, I'mgoing to stop providing for my
family financially to take amoral stance, right against this
one platform that has a monopolyon this kind of content.
Alban (20:10):
And when you have that, that is the decision, it makes
it so much more difficult tosay, I'm not actually
comfortable with what'shappening here on YouTube.
Because if you are a videocreator, you probably it's going
to destroy your business to say,I'm actually leaving YouTube for
Twitch or for Vimeo, and it'sall gonna be private, or a
Patreon, like, all of yourdiscovery disappears. And music
(20:33):
has actually not been a greatplatform, because it's really
down to like two, maybe, I mean,maybe three, but Apple Music,
Spotify, Amazon music or titleis third, I don't know, which is
third. But it's a pretty muchit's a duopoly. And so it's a
pretty big deal for any artiststo say, Pay, I'm not going to be
(20:54):
on the biggest one in the world.
And I think for podcasters, it'san easier decision for us,
because everybody knows, it'sstill out there, I can still
listen to it in any number ofapps. And if you don't want to
support something that Apple isdoing, or Spotify is doing, or
any of the other podcastdirectories, you have total
control over saying, I'm notgoing to be a party to that, you
(21:18):
know, it would be difficult if,you know, our business was like
meeting making some kind of foodor beverage. And we found out
that it was actually a big drawfor people at casinos, which I
am not a fan of casinos, and Ithink it's immoral, and to have
all of our so people were like,Oh, actually, I love these
chips. And they're all casinos,I go there all the time. And
then I start gambling be like,Oh, maybe we don't want our
(21:40):
chips to be sold at thesecasinos anymore. Yeah, we're
actually going to pull that out.
You get to make those stands,when you're not totally 100%
locked in on a specificplatform.
Travis (21:52):
Yeah. And it does raise a larger question about this
trend of larger shows, gettingexclusive deals, you know, so
Spotify basically locks it down,puts it behind Spotify, and it's
not distributed anywhere else,armchair experts another
example. Then you have Amazonmusic, which is we're gonna have
a one week window. So smartlists, and then they just
acquired my favorite murder forsomething like $100 million. And
(22:16):
so you can listen to episodes aweek early on Amazon music, and
then it's still availableeverywhere else. We're seeing
these different flavors oflarger distributors, purchasing
content, and making it exclusivein some way. That now changes
the leverage dynamic as acreator, right? Because you're
now you've you've signed thecontracts, right? You've
(22:36):
essentially said, I am now nolonger 100% making independent
decisions. There is now anotherparty that has a vested interest
in my content. And, you know,for better or worse, and, you
know, we were joking aroundbefore, like, hey, if, you know,
Amazon wants to show up with$100 million, check for Buzzcast
full, we'll cash it and we'll,we'll say whatever I want to
say, yeah. Well, we'll recordfrom the Cayman Islands and say
(22:59):
whatever they want us to say.
But that is an interesting thingto think through. Like, is that
really? Like what is thataspirational? Is that we want
for our shows.
Alban (23:08):
Yeah, I think another point is, that's not a huge
concern, because I'm notexpecting many of our listeners
or for us to be in this positiongoing do I want to go exclusive?
For $100 million? If you getthat offer?
Kevin (23:21):
I feel very comfortable saying that we would not we
would not we're not so sure.
About a hollow as a promises Ican make because it's never
gonna
Travis (23:34):
but I need even then you can take that position knowing
that me and Alban are gonna, youknow outvote you and be like,
alright, well, you know, the themajority have spoken, I guess
I'll take the check.
Kevin (23:43):
It is very different when, you know, Spotify is in a
position where the Joe Roganpodcast is not just a show that
is distributed on theirplatform. Yeah, they have signed
him as talent. And so they nowhave a higher level of
responsibility for the contentthat he puts out. And this is
what's happening is people areseeing that relationship and
saying, there is aresponsibility. Yeah, I was
(24:05):
gonna try to find another wordfor the word I just use. I can
just use the same word again,there is there's they're now
responsible for the content thathe puts out because he is for,
you know, for better or worse.
He's like their employee now,right?
Alban (24:19):
Yeah, he's the pillar content. The linchpin of this
entire business strategy thatthey have is, we're going to try
to get away from licensed music,which is really expensive is a
variable cost to fixed cost,buying content that we can get,
which is podcasts.
Travis (24:39):
And on top of that, if you want to buy ad space in
Spotify podcasts, like you wantto get on Joe Rogan, you also
have to let them distribute someof that ad spend on their other
podcasts. Yeah,
Kevin (24:52):
I have heard that that if you want to buy a spot on the
Rogen show, you also have to buythe other catalogue of shows
that are available. I don't knowif it's true or not. I've just
read it in order Awesome, great.
Alban (25:00):
So like Alpha Brain is, Alchemy is showing up on all
sorts of other podcasts. Butthis is like, the thing that is
helping is like the linchpin ofthis entire strategy. This isn't
like when Apple podcasts said,Hey, I don't know if we want you
to find the Alex Jones podcaston Apple podcasts anymore. That
was a very different decision.
Because all that was is they'relike, hey, there's a link inside
(25:23):
of our app to this content thatwe find objectionable. Spotify
is said, Oh, we love this show.
We love it so much, we willspend $100 million. We think the
people who listen to show loveit so much, that they will dump
all the apps they're on and moveto Spotify, we are actively
(25:44):
promoting it at the top of allthese charts, we are going out
of our way to say this is thecontent you should be paying
attention to. It's a verydifferent scenario, I keep
seeing people bringing up likecensorship and section 230. And
all this stuff about it's reallymuch more applicable to social
media and user generatedcontent. Joe Rogan is no longer
(26:07):
user generated content. This isyour premium piece of content on
your platform. And when that'sthe case, you absolutely owe
some editorial oversight, andsome responsibility. Now, I
haven't listened to any of thecited episodes of Joe Rogan. I
haven't listened to any of thoseepisodes since he became a
(26:28):
Spotify exclusive. So I'm notreally weighing in on whether or
not they're making the righteditorial decisions. But they
absolutely need to be the onesdeciding that now. And a Spotify
doesn't like what he's saying.
They need to be the ones havinga conversation with Joe about
that. They can't kind of washyour hands of it be like, hey,
it's a podcast guys. Like whatwhat are you talking about? This
(26:50):
is your podcast, this is yourthing?
Kevin (26:54):
Yeah. And it makes sense for Joe to be able to say that,
like, hey, it's a podcast, it'sjust me and my buddies having
interesting conversations. Butultimately, Spotify has to offer
some, they're the ones that aregoing to ultimately be
accountable for the decisionsthat they make. And the decision
is that Joe Mixon that's theirrelationship. I did think this
is this is a slightly differentpoint. But Joe's been exclusive
(27:15):
with Spotify for over a yearnow. Right. And at the beginning
of that relationship, all of hiscontent was pulled off of
YouTube. Right? So all the Jerryclips, all of his full episodes
are all removed from YouTube.
And there was some speculationthat Joe's numbers must have
taken a pretty serious hit whenhe moved exclusive to Spotify,
like we'd heard about this hasbeen this is public knowledge
for what happened with HowardStern. And we kind of assumed
(27:37):
the same thing probably happenedto Joe.
Alban (27:40):
Yeah, actually, Carmen wrote a really good article for
The Verge about this, thatpretty much detailed like if
people used to go on the JoeRogan experience, you would see
this massive jump in theirTwitter followers. And that jump
has been cut down significantly.
She looked at all thesedifferent factors and was like,
yeah, it's definitely beenpretty substantial. It was
Kevin (27:58):
circumstantial evidence that she was using to build this
case. But it was it wascompelling. It's pretty closely
correlated. Yeah. And, and morerecently, I think it's been,
again, in my brain roughly aboutsix months or so ago, all of a
sudden, Joe Rogan clips startedhearing on YouTube again. So I
guess somebody at Spotify madethe decision that we can promote
Joe's show using YouTube. Solet's open up the clips channel.
(28:20):
Again, let's start putting clipsback. So now we're getting Joe
Rogan clips. These are not fullywithin context, but they do a
pretty good job of kind ofcapturing the topic, they could
be anywhere between four minutesand 12 minutes, roughly what
I've seen, but there's a wholethere's there's a much bigger
audience, I'm assuming nowbecause he's back into YouTube,
along with the full episodethat's available on Spotify. And
(28:41):
I think there's some, there hasto be some level of exposure
that's happening. There's,they're the people who I think,
who are upset by the contentthat they're they're hearing on
the Joe Rogan show, probablyweren't listening to four hour
episodes of Joe Rogan. Becausethey don't like it. They don't
agree with it, I imagine thatyou probably don't want to
subject yourself to four hoursof it. But now that we're
putting clips of this stuff,back on YouTube, I'll sit
(29:04):
through 12 minutes of it, itwill, it will bother me, I'll
hear something that I don'tbelieve to be true, I might make
an argument for why this ismisinformation. And I think that
might be causing controversy. Itseems like Spotify is trying to
grow the audience for the JoeRogan experience, again, using
YouTube. And I think that'scausing trouble.
Alban (29:21):
So you think Neil Young was probably just coasting
through YouTube on a Saturdaylike he is apt to do and he
stumbled across something. Andhe was like, Good grief. This is
totally wrong.
Kevin (29:32):
I think so. I mean, what's the other theory that
that Neil Young was opening upSpotify and listening to four
hour episodes of Joe Rogan?
Yeah, was more unlikely.
Travis (29:39):
Or he just saw a bunch of people talking about it on
Twitter, and then said, Hey,manager, I don't like what I'm
hearing about what other peoplehave heard. So definitely, we'll
continue to keep an eye on thisas it unfolds to see, you know,
what could be potential impactseffects on the broader podcast
community, but I will say thatunless Spotify removes Joe
(30:01):
Rogan, we will keep making newpodcast
Alban (30:03):
episodes, and we will refuse to put this podcast into
Spotify
Travis (30:07):
proactively. I feel pretty confident about that.
Approve podcast.com put togethera study of over 1000 podcasters.
And what they wanted to see waswhat separated podcasters who
are making at least $50,000 Ayear from their show, versus
podcasters that aren't at thatplace yet to see, is there any
(30:30):
data that we can look at, toshow causation of if you do
these things, in this way, youhave a greater chance of
reaching a threshold wherepodcasting could be how you make
a living,
Alban (30:42):
but one piece is going to be this is correlation. This is
a correlation study. We're notsaying if you do the thing that
successful people do, you willbecome successful 100% of
billionaires all drink water andsleep, you know, like that.
That's not gonna make yousuccessful.
Travis (30:58):
I don't know about the sleep part. I don't think Elon
Musk sleeps, but he does six
Kevin (31:01):
hours I heard on the Joe Rogan podcast. It's true. I
heard that clip, he
Alban (31:07):
regret cat naps.
Travis (31:08):
So that was how the study was put together. So we'll
leave the link. If you want toread the slides. You can. If you
want to read the summary, youcan. We're just going to go
through some of these toptakeaways that they're
highlighting here. Alright,
Alban (31:20):
so tell us what's the number one insight? Can we
actually take some guesses assome of these insights?
Kevin (31:25):
No, I can't guess at this point, because I just read them
all.
Travis (31:30):
So the top actionable highlight trend statistic is
that if you basically take allthe data and lump it together,
what are the high level themes,you can determine how successful
a podcast is based on the numberof published episodes they have?
The number of months they'vebeen podcasting, and the number
of listeners they have perepisode?
Kevin (31:51):
Well, I think you have to frame that a different way.
Like, you can't say howsuccessful podcast is looking at
the number of episodes that ithas. But you can say that the
most successful podcasts tend tohave more episodes. Right. And
again, this is pretty logical,which is why I'm kind of
struggling to get through thisdata. But like point number two,
they say successful podcastersare 7.7 times more likely to
(32:11):
publish over 100 episodes,which, you know, we're just
joking around. But I was like,you could say the same thing a
different way, which issuccessful people are more
likely to continue to doingthings that made them success.
Yeah,
Alban (32:22):
like the most successful restaurants have actually been
in business for more than oneyear.
Kevin (32:27):
Right. And they have more than one restaurant. Right?
Yeah. Like,
Travis (32:30):
it doesn't explain why Buzzcast isn't successful,
because we're not at 100episodes yet.
Kevin (32:35):
But there, but there is a there is a narrative behind
that, like it does lead you tobelieve other things, which is
that you're not going to besuccessful if you only have a
few episodes. This is more of along game, right? And so at what
point did these people becomesuccessful? Did they achieve
that $50,000 a year in revenuefor their podcast? Well, it
probably wasn't before theystarted hitting, you know, hit
100 Plus episodes. And so thatcan be an encouragement. I think
(32:59):
that's a good takeaway. It's notnecessarily that doesn't come
right through when you read thesummary of data. But in the
podcasting world, you probablyshouldn't expect a whole lot of
success until you get into thehundreds of episodes, you know,
window,
Travis (33:13):
right. MKBHD, who's a massive YouTuber has famously
said he, for his first 1000videos, he had less than 1000
YouTube subscribers. Now he'sgot like 15 million. Oh, my
gosh, I didn't know that. Yeah.
And so, cons. It's a long game,especially if you're not already
a known name brands like a WillArnett or Jason Bateman or, you
know, Harry and Megan, right,who are wildly successful. I'm
(33:35):
sure it will be wildly, wildlysuccessful. Spotify
Kevin (33:42):
is a different example.
He was born into fame. Sure.
Right. But let's talk about likethe Smartlist. Guys, they
launched who is a Jason BatemanWill Arnett and someone else I'm
forgetting another actor, guys.
I'm willing grace. Funny guy.
Yeah. Yeah, so the three of themlaunch a podcast and they became
really successful reallyquickly, right. And then their
(34:03):
show got acquired by Amazonreally quickly. But they had
years and years and years oflike building their fame and
their following. And so that'ssomething that we've talked
about before as well. It may beit's not 100 episodes for those
people that achieve success. Butit has been 25 years as like
trying to build an acting careerto get to the point where now
(34:23):
they can launch a podcast andhave success in a short amount
of time. Right? So you don'tnecessarily I don't want to do
100 podcast episodes to reach alevel of success. Fine. Just go
ahead and do 25 years in the TVand film industry. Like put your
time but you have to put yourtime in somewhere. Sure. Right.
I think that's what we'resaying.
Alban (34:38):
Yeah, I remember I used to always love song exploder
Richie Sherway. His firstepisode, I think was like
breaking down a postal servicesong or something. I was like,
wow, how did he and then asyou're looking, all the names
are like bands that I knew. AndI was like, it wasn't like he
just showed up and was like meLike, I like music, I wonder if
(35:02):
I could get like all the mastersfrom all these record labels and
talk to really big artists abouttheir music. Like he was already
working in this industry, healready made all these
connections. And if you see alot of these celebrity shows
blow up, it's, they're like, Oh,they're just inviting their
friends on, because their cellphones are full of famous
people's numbers. And they willtext them back when they say,
(35:24):
Hey, I want to be on a podcast.
So you know, that is a goodlesson is building a podcast in
an area where you already havesome expertise is smart, because
you already have started puttingin the time in that industry.
And so it's gonna be a loteasier for you to get guests to,
maybe you don't have to do asmuch research because this is
stuff you already know. It'sgoing to flow much more
(35:46):
naturally than if somebody likeme who knows nothing about
really music is like, Ah, Iwonder if I started a music
podcast. And I'll just go jumpinto that. That sounds cool. So
some
Kevin (35:57):
other interesting facts that I think they that I think
were interesting anyway, is theynoted that 63% of successful
podcasters publish once perweek, so they said that seems to
be the sweet spot for thesuccessful podcasters. When it
comes to Episode length, theysaid that there's no there
seemed to be a winning formula.
However, 56% of high incomepodcasters said their best
performing episodes are landingbetween 40 and 120 minutes. And
(36:18):
high income podcasters are 1.7times more likely to have shows
that address a very specificgroup of people, so they have
niched down. Okay, this isadvice that we've given plenty
of times,
Alban (36:32):
sure. And all three of those make sense, you have said,
I'm going to make sure there's apiece of content every week, I'm
going to make sure that piece ofcontent is substantial, it's not
just a 15 minute, quick episode.
And it's can be focused tospecific audience. And all three
of those are very highlycorrelated with the shows that
perform well. And I think it'sbecause if you're going to be a
(36:53):
successful podcaster, you needto have this core group of
people who love the show, andyou've actually kind of embedded
your podcast into their lifethat they are used to, hey, I'm
gonna listen to this podcastwhen it shows up. When I go for
a run, when I go drive to work,when I go do this, or that, I'm
going to listen to this podcast.
(37:14):
And it's like, these are myfriends are the people that I
really enjoy listening to. Andso all three of those data
points really lean back into,like, if it's coming out every
Monday, and it's two hours long.
Like you've given your a bunchof people an opportunity to
create a relationship with youand for you to kind of be
important to their life. Becausethat's what people are putting a
(37:34):
few dollars towards, or they'regonna
Kevin (37:37):
listen through ads. Yeah, you've given them a reason to
build you into their routine.
Yeah, nobody's
Alban (37:41):
building something into the routine and suffering
through the ads or going insupporting you with a monthly
donation. They're not doing burn
Kevin (37:49):
through the ads. That's an interesting way to put that
I've never
Alban (37:53):
listened to an ad. And then like, Yes, this is great.
ad loads are always done basedon, hey, how many more ads can
we put in here before peoplestop listening,
Kevin (38:02):
not always in podcasting.
And maybe that's what makespodcast advertising more
tolerable, at least in my view,the podcasts that I listened to
more often than not have adsthat are more creatively done,
right. And once in a while, I'llcome across a podcast that does
throw in some sort ofprogrammatic ad, but then those
are usually pretty well, timeconstrained, it's not like I
have to tolerate in your words,or suffer through two and a half
(38:24):
or three minutes ofadvertisements. Before I get
back to the TV show that I'mwatching, which is what I'm used
to, in a podcast, I might hear a32nd ad. And I'm willing to just
listen to that 32nd ad becauseit's just easier than pulling my
phone out of the pocket andfinding the you know, skip
forward 30 seconds. So I'lllisten to it. If it was two and
a half or three minutes, I feellike I would agree with the
adjective to use their ofsuffering through. But in
(38:45):
podcast world doesn't seem likeit's hit that point. Yes,
Alban (38:48):
it has definitely not hit that point with podcasting. And
I think it's because theadvertisers haven't had enough
say yet, which is a positive.
But if you go look at almost anywebsite, the amount of ad space
ads that are on there isridiculous. If you go onto
Facebook, the amount of ads thatthey've increased over the
years, and the more ad spots isridiculous. Go listen to radio.
(39:09):
It's wild, how many how oftenthey break for advertise the
content advertising
Kevin (39:16):
ratio on the radio is unbearable. Yeah. And that's why
Alban (39:19):
podcasting is so great is because that ratio has not
really gotten worse. It's gone,like a little bit of ads. And
they're like, Hey, these aregonna be really premium ads. And
that's, I think, why podcastsaudiences feel such a high
affinity is because we're notlistening to a radio show that
breaks every eight minutes for afour minute break right there
consistently like, Hey, we'regonna keep coming back at you if
(39:42):
you know the content youactually want. So, all that to
say, people don't put up with TVshows or radio shows or
Facebook. If it's not actuallythe content that's around the
ads isn't good. Because ifyou're going to dedicate 20 30
to 40% of the time or the spaceto an advertisement, then the
(40:05):
rest of the content has to be socompelling that you're willing
to put up with it to sufferthrough it. In my words, either
that
Travis (40:13):
or it's the Superbowl, and the ads are content. The ad
themselves are actually createda sample.
Alban (40:19):
Yeah, that is
Kevin (40:21):
that that have these podcasts, there are some
podcasts that do a really goodjob of like, when they're doing
a host read, they do a reallygood job of, of trying to
understand the product or makethe advertisement funny, or they
use it as an endorsement.
Travis (40:32):
Like, like earlier in this, I don't know if he
recorded or not where you'retalking about how you're
drinking iced tea, you know,it's like that was really well
placed really, really well. Iwant it
Kevin (40:39):
brought to you by honesty. Yeah. But everyone
knows if you're a show, I alwayshave an honesty sitting in front
of me as
Alban (40:46):
Kevin is 30%. Honesty is,
Travis (40:49):
is BHT sea level is point three,
Kevin (40:53):
right. So other interesting takeaways, they
talked about marketing yourpodcast and different marketing
channels. So again, as you wouldexpect 1.7 times high income
podcasters 1.7 times more likelyto be active or very active in
promoting their shows. Thenumber of marketing channels for
high income podcasters that theyuse, on average is 3.6 marketing
channels, which is 157% morethan lower income podcasters 53%
(41:17):
of high income podcasters usemore than four marketing
channels. So again, it'ssomething that Alban talks about
all the time, is the importanceof investing in multiple
marketing channels. Maybe findthe one that's most effective
for you and invest more heavilyin that. But continually be
looking for other ways to marketyour podcasts. Because you might
be on two or three differentchannels or social media,
(41:38):
whatever and trying to marketand you might not have found the
big one for your podcast yet. Soalways be experimenting, always
be exploring more marketingchannels.
Travis (41:45):
And that would be like I'm promoting on Instagram,
Twitter, I have an emailnewsletter, and I go as a guest
on other podcasts. Like that'dbe an example of four marketing
channels all driving trafficback to your show.
Kevin (41:57):
That's right. Like I'm a big tick talker. And I am on
tick tock all the time. I'mkidding. But really, no, that's
not true. But I do pop the appopen once in a while my kids
will send me tic tock videos towatch or something like that.
And I noticed Alban is now atick tock star he's he's got a
couple videos on tick tock andhe's also on Instagram I see his
face so those apps are supersmart. They know who I am when I
(42:18):
launched them and they knowbuddies with Alban so they show
me his content and he's doingexperiments on on tick tock and
Instagram and YouTube shorts andtrying to find new marketing
channels for our podcasts andand the Buzzsprout hosting
service and everything else
Alban (42:31):
to be clear the content that you're seeing of Alban on
this is me working for you.
Kevin (42:39):
It's not like it's not Alban doing the latest
Alban (42:41):
hold doing like dancing, Kevin's like nice good for him.
It'd be like, hey, I want tostart a podcast, here's how to
do it give it's like nice, moremoney for me.
Travis (42:50):
I mean, I definitely whenever I see like the Samsung
Galaxy fold commercials, whereit's like, you could be like
this girl dancing in the parkinglot with your phone. It's like,
Yeah, I'm not the targetaudience. They're
Alban (43:00):
also the limiting factor for me being really big on Tik
Tok is not my ability to fold myphone to set up to record
myself. It's having danceabilities. Having a face that
people want to see on a video,having like skills, like all
(43:21):
those things are the things thatare actually built in. This is
the marketing for all physicalproducts. It's like Nike, just
do it and you'll be an athlete,and then you kind of like in
your brain are like, if I buythose shoes, I will be a great
athlete. Everybody knows that'snot true. But we do it over and
over. If I buy this microphone,I will be a great podcaster if I
(43:42):
buy this phone, I could become atick tock star. All of those are
so so bogus. And yet, that ishow the marketing works. When
people sell physical products,they're like, you could become
the kind of person you want tobecome with the addition of this
physical item. And it kind ofworks its way into your brain
until you challenge it. You'relike that is such that's so
(44:03):
bogus. Obviously the right wayfor me to run a marathon is to
run every day. It's not for meto buy specific shoes.
Travis (44:11):
I mean, I don't know about that. I think, Kevin,
would you say that your skillsas a podcaster increase as your
honesty consumption goes up?
Absolutely.
Kevin (44:21):
Yeah, at least my energy level does. Alright, any other
takeaways from this data?
Summarize it well enough,
Travis (44:26):
mate. So I think the big takeaway is, you know, it takes
time to build an audience,especially if you're starting
from square one. You need tocreate content that is for
someone, not just shooting thebreeze with your buddies, if you
have an intention of wanting tomonetize it in a significant
way. And that's one big piece ofhaving a podcast that could
(44:49):
become successful is promotingit, actually telling people
about it. Yeah. That there's nomagic silver bullet that's just
going to magically shoot yourpodcast into the stratosphere
unless you're putting In thework to tell people about it.
And so, in addition to havingtime set aside to produce the
podcast, also consider settingaside time to promote it. Yeah,
(45:09):
choose a marketing channelinvest in it. When it's going,
well, maybe add a second one,like those. It's not rocket
science. But it is work. And sodepending on how hard you want
to work, how quickly you wantyour show to grow, will
determine whether you reach someof these metrics that improve
podcasts has put together as faras $50,000 per year from your
show.
Alban (45:28):
Well, that is the lesson I would love for everybody to
hear is that if you do notpromote things, they don't grow.
And every time a podcast grows,every time a business grows,
every time anything becomessuccessful is because there was
actual effort put behind it. Andnot just effort in making
something great. But making thatthing get in front of people.
(45:52):
And like you can build the bestbusiness. But if no one knows
about it, it's not going to makeany difference. You make the
best podcast, but no one knowsabout it, no one's going to
listen to it. And whenever wesee shows become successful
quickly. It's often because theyalready did the work on the
marketing side, well in advance.
And then the content came in andit looks like an overnight
(46:13):
success. It rarely is. And so ifyou're not someone who spent 20
years building a career, or asocial media account, or
something else that will get inpeople's face and present
something you will have to putthat work in on the front end.
And on
Travis (46:29):
that bombshell discovery. We'll wrap up another
episode of Buzzcast Thanks fortuning in. And we'll catch in
the next one. Keep podcasting.
Alban (46:43):
Everybody, thanks for sticking around to the end of
the episode. This is Alban heredropping in some dynamic content
to tell you about some updatesto our dynamic content features.
We're continuing to move forwardwith all the tools allowing you
to trop ads and announcementsinto all of your episodes, so
(47:03):
that you can record somethingonce and automatically have it
added to the beginning or end ofall of your episodes, the new
updates that we've made todynamic content. Number one, if
you have an announcement that'smaybe only applicable for a
short period, and you replace itwith something else will now
that announcement stays insomething we're calling our
dynamic content library. Thelibrary is a list of all of the
(47:27):
different announcements oradvertisements, or just little
pieces that you've dropped intoyour episodes over time so that
you can reapply them wheneveryou would like. The second piece
is that now those are trackedfor how many times they've been
played. So if you have an adread, and you want to report
back to your sponsor, and tellthem how many times it's been
downloaded. Well now you know,because that content may be
(47:51):
spread across 30 differentpodcast episodes. You want to be
able to count the stats for allof those for the entire time
that it was out in the world.
Reach out to us on Twitter, letus know how you were using
dynamic content and the newdynamic content library. We'll
see you in a couple weeks. Bye
One of the problems we have seen is sometimes people
(00:02):
move over from a differentpodcast host. And they're like,
Why did my numbers go down? Ifanything, it's because we are
filtering out bots that theyweren't. The hard thing about
stats is they never get higher.
Because you got more accurate.
It's always a that's actually abot and we can identify it to
bot because we see it hitting50,000 different podcasts.
Travis (00:21):
I mean, that makes sense, because I've still been
waiting for the big spike inBuzzcast downloads from
Malaysia. I paid this guy, hereached out to Facebook
Messenger. I said the money Iknow I gave I gave him 100
bucks. He said, I was gonna getlike 90,000 downloads on the dot
and they still haven't comethrough
(00:43):
so Alban, we have our newJanuary stats, because it's
February now. And some big somebig things happening at the top.
What can you tell us about Applepodcasts? Big search for
January?
Alban (00:56):
I mean, we have to actually maybe step back to make
sure people understand. At theend of January, we look at all
the stats for January. And sothe January stats are published
in February. That's correct. Itwas a little, I just want to
make sure that clarificationsare there. We're not just taking
a month to get around to puttingthis out. Yeah, I mean, we ran
(01:17):
the numbers yesterday,Buzzsprout, for the first time
ever in our history, served up100 million downloads that were
real.
Travis (01:26):
Yeah. Well,
Kevin (01:27):
we think we've only been publishing these global stats
stats since October 2020. That'spossible, we did 100 million
before that point, I
Alban (01:35):
am highly confident that's not true. Because if it
did, like our server costs wouldhave skyrocketed, and Tom would
have like, gonna happen.
Travis (01:44):
I mean, for for those of you that are way back in the de
Buzzsprout. Fans may know a showcalled men in
Kevin (01:52):
blazers. Then Blazers did a lot. Yeah, they do a lot of
demos. And that probably serverissues, probably not 100
million, but a lot
Alban (02:00):
that that would have had to been like 2014 men in Blazers
was a small podcast, andBuzzsprout got picked up by ESPN
to do the coverage for like,World Cup, the World Cup. And
all of a sudden, was we weregetting calls from the people
who managed our servers. Andthey were like, We're going
down. Apparently, it looks likeit's all you know, they weren't
Kevin (02:22):
going down. They were they were getting charged an
extraordinary amount of moneyfor the bandwidth that they were
consuming from who they werebuying it from. And they're
calling us to let us know thatthat bill is coming your way. Do
you want to do anything aboutit? And yeah, we we, what can we
do about it? We can't take thepodcast down. Keep serving.
Yeah, but that was a fun time.
CBS I think was doing the WorldCup coverage. And these
(02:45):
podcasters got segments on thecoverage. And we're encouraging
people to go listen, theirpodcast, and there's a lot of
World Cup fans all around theworld. Who knew? Yeah. And so
no, they never nobody went down.
There's no fear of going down.
Like the concern was alwaysabout how much this is going to
cost this. So we're that's amuch easier problem to sort
through and well, servers goingdown.
Alban (03:07):
I don't think we were hitting 100 million back then. I
guess maybe we should clarifythis 100 million is not very
high. Until we say 100 millionthat are real downloads. Yes.
Travis (03:19):
I'm gonna be certified downloads.
Alban (03:21):
Yeah, if if we actually just put all the bots in there,
too. It would be like everyone'sstats would be triple or four
times as high. It's a big amountKevin's shaking his head? No.
Kevin (03:34):
It wouldn't be triple. It wouldn't be triple No, no. Would
it be maybe 20 to 30%? Higher?
Really?
Travis (03:40):
What if what if we had like a legacy stats mode that
just like bumped them up alittle bit for your own?
encouragement?
Kevin (03:49):
Why don't we just have a button that just says how much?
How many downloads Do you want?
number how
Travis (03:53):
many downloads you think your show deserves?
Alban (03:55):
Right? One of the problems we have seen is
sometimes people move over froma different podcast host. And
they're like, Why did my numbersgo down? And we're like, if
anything, it's because we arefiltering out bots that they
weren't. And we're like, thehard thing about stats is they
never go, they never get higher.
Because you got more accurate.
It's always a that's actually abot and we can identify it's a
(04:17):
bot because we see it hitting50,000 different podcasts. So we
can remove it. But it may be youdon't check across all these
podcasts, you may not be theperson to actually see.
Travis (04:29):
I mean, that makes sense. Because I've still been
waiting for the big spike inBuzzcast downloads from
Malaysia. I paid this guy hereached out to Facebook
Messenger. I said the money Iknow I gave I gave him 100
bucks. He said I was gonna getlike 90,000 downloads on the dot
and they still haven't comethrough. So is that is that what
happens? Like Tom just figuredit out.
Alban (04:48):
I will tell you this that has actually happened where
someone wrote into support andthey're like, I don't see all my
downloads. I'm like, What do youmean? And they're like, Yeah, I
should have had like 90,000downloads loads, you know, I'm I
know that people are playing it.
And I was like, why is he sayinga specific number that he's
confident he's short by. And Isearched by 90,000 podcast
downloads in Google and all thisand all these sites start
(05:13):
popping up. They're like buyinggroups of 90,000. I was like,
Hey, did you buy a bunch ofdownloads? Because like, we
would absolutely filter those,and you couldn't use those
numbers to sell advertisements.
And I was
Travis (05:27):
like, oh, yeah, so 100 million problem has been
resolved real actual peopledownloading podcasts, which is
pretty cool. It's a pretty bigmilestone for sure. You go right
below that to podcast apps. AndApple podcasts has been at the
number one spot for a couplemonths now. But the amount that
it is above Spotify, that gaphas increased significantly.
(05:51):
Yeah. And Alban, I know that youtalked to Tom, who runs the
stats to kind of get some moreinformation on maybe why that
could be happening.
Alban (05:57):
Right. So well, I posted this on Twitter that these are
the top apps across for 100million downloads. And James
Cridland, who writes pod newswas like, I'd love to know why
Apple keeps continuing to grow,because they grew, I guess, like
another 3% in the last month.
three percentage points. That'sa really big jump, and Spotify
grew their overall numbers, butactually decreased because
(06:21):
Spotify or Apple has been sostrong, they lost market share
to Apple, yeah, they lost marketshare, even though the, you
know, amount of actual plays ontheir platform increase.
Kevin (06:32):
Yeah, Apple podcasts had 7 million more plays in January
than they did in December. AndSpotify had, I think, 2 million
more check. 3 million more.
Yeah, so Spotify is stillgetting more downloads than they
have previously, but they arelosing market share.
Alban (06:48):
So a few reasons why we would be saying this. I mean,
number one, Buzzsprout playswhen 15% in a single month, it's
January versus December,December is always a down month
for podcasting, because peoplehave tons of stuff that's going
on. They're opening presents,and they're spending tons of
time and family and they'rearguing about politics, and
they've got important stuff todo. And then in January,
(07:09):
everyone's like, well, now I'mgoing to make some real big
improvements in my life. And I'mgonna start listening to all
these podcasts and the personalgrowth. So we know that podcasts
do get a bump in January. Sothat's one reason why we saw the
overall jump. The apple one inparticular, it's all just legit.
One thing we thought for alittle bit was maybe Apple is
(07:29):
leaning more into, we alwayshave had these group called
Apple Core media, which are notidentifiable if they're Apple
podcasts or they're for adifferent podcasting app. And
that has stayed relatively thesame that grew by 15%. Just like
everything else did perfectly inline. The one that saw the big
jump was the actuallyidentifiable Apple podcasts
(07:53):
place. So just Apple's beendoing a much better job getting
more people into the podcastingapp. Maybe they've changed some
sort of behavior that morepeople are downloading episodes
rather than streaming them. Butyeah, it's uh, there's nothing
particularly there. I did hear apiece of are we allowed to put
on like gossip, Kevin, insiderinfo? Why not? I mean, the worst
Kevin (08:16):
gonna happen is we're gonna get a warning label.
Travis (08:20):
Want to come back and retract our previous statement,
but hey, give us the juice man.
What's going on?
Alban (08:24):
This is actually not like, there's no medical advice.
Apparently, like this thing hasalways been a problem that
people who use this certain APIfor Apple actually cannot set
and say, Hey, this the appthat's using it, and so people
like Buzzsprout podcast hostcan't identify where that play
is coming from, or thatdownloads coming from? It'd be
(08:46):
just know it's coming fromsomething on an Apple iPhone.
And the word is that that'sactually going to change?
Kevin (08:53):
Yeah, well, I think it's, I think it's a little bit more
nuanced than that. There aredifferent API's that are
available. And depending on theAPI's that you choose to use,
you may or may not be able toset your user agent easily.
Right? There's still ways aroundit. James Kurland did a great
job of kind of figuring outlike, if you use these higher
level API's, and maybe thesimpler ones, by default, just
gonna say apple core media,there are ways to actually
(09:14):
override that any way. But youhave to do a little bit more
work. It's not as simple.
Somebody like an overcast orPocket Cast, they use more
proprietary engines as playbackstuff, maybe not the higher
levels, but the deeper levels,which means you do more coding,
you've got more control over theaudio. And when you do that, it
was easy to set your user agent.
So some were setting user agent,some weren't. There was
additional work involved. Itsounds like the rim or the
(09:36):
little birdies that are, youknow, saying things in the
album's here are saying we'regonna make it easy for people to
set user agents regardless ofwhich API's you use.
Alban (09:44):
Yeah, specifically the one that is being used for
streaming that's really easy toimplement that has been spitting
out apple core media for a longtime, that is used by a ton of
podcast apps, that one shouldallow people to set user agents
so what does that mean foreveryone listening to this means
that stats. Hopefully at somepoint in the future, we'll be
getting much more accuratebecause now we'll be able to get
(10:06):
that data from the podcast appsthemselves. And they can say, we
know for sure displays code fromus,
Travis (10:12):
specifically, your downloads will not change. But
the devices and apps areattributed to, will be updated
to be more accurate
Kevin (10:19):
might change. And I'm being Alvin's attorney today
when he says much more accurate,he means that some plays that
are currently being registeredas what do we call them, other
apple devices may move more intotickets, unknown Apple apps,
unknown Apple apps might movemore into specific app names, or
they might move more into Applepodcasts. So that's something
(10:39):
that we continue to monitor. Andwe'll tweak where we where we
credit those plays, as thingsevolve and change. But the
number of downloads overall thatyou're seeing is not going to
change.
Alban (10:49):
Yeah, it wouldn't. It's not, it's only going to be where
they which buckets they fallinto. And Tom has been doing
this for a long time reachingout to app developers and
saying, Hey, I think your statsare actually being undercounted
because you're not setting auser agent. And nobody can tell
that you're the one who'sactually requesting these
downloads. And quite a fewdevelopers are like, Oh, well,
(11:11):
how do I do that doesn't looklike I can do it. I think they
would all be excited to seetheir own app doing better on
things like the Buzzsproutplatform stats, they'd rather
see that being higher and moreaccurate. But you Kevin doesn't
like this phrase more accurate?
Travis (11:28):
Well, I mean, like, for instance, so you can press Show
more to see like, a ton ofdifferent podcast apps and the
global stats. And I've got toimagine that like, good pods is
doing more downloads thanMicrosoft Xbox. Yeah, like I
just that has to be, or SpotifyLite, or iBooks, or whatever
these randoms apps are. So Ithink that'll be really helpful
(11:49):
to be able to see like,especially if you start to build
an audience on one of thesethird party apps, to be able to
attribute that to your stats,and Buzzsprout will just help
you understand how peopleactually finding my podcast
where they listening to it. Andhow can I double down in areas
where, you know, maybe I canbuild a community around my
show?
Alban (12:06):
Yeah, exactly. It makes it easier for podcast creators
to actually know like, Oh, I'vebeen telling everybody, let's go
over onto good pods. I chartedon good pods. I've done all this
work on good pods. And it's notshowing up, because it might be
lumped in with everything else.
That's a bummer. And you don'tyou're not able to differentiate
does that that marketing pushactually help? Well, when these
(12:26):
get into the right buckets, andapp developers can make that
change. Man is that can be anice little update.
Travis (12:34):
So the new year we got a new round of podcasts,
conferences, and I know that welike to travel around to
especially those here in the USwhere we're based. So I know the
I think the first one that'scoming up is either going to be
pod festival or Podcast Movementevolutions, which one is that?
Which one of the
Alban (12:51):
evolutions is in March, march 23, to 26th. And then in
May, we have black pod festivaland pod fest. Those are the
three I won't get to both, Ithink I'll probably be at Black
pod festival. Okay. And then,but some of the team will be at
pod fest, and then we will alsogo to Podcast Movement. Again, I
think the next one's gonna be inAugust. Okay, but if you're
(13:13):
going to be out in LA, march 23to 26th Make sure you stop by
the Buzzsprout. Booth. I'm suregroup of us are going Stephanie,
Megan, Tom, myself, I thinkJalon might go as well. So we'll
have five of us. And we will bebuying drinks for people and
hanging out and having fun. Socome on by.
Kevin (13:30):
Great what's the Do we know the dates for pod Fest and
black pod festival?
Travis (13:34):
I'll put links to all these in the show notes. You can
go and check them out. I knowsome of them will probably also
have virtual tickets, if youcan't be there in person. But
we're big believers in podcastconferences. Not only do you get
to meet other podcasters you getto hear from experts about
what's going on in the industry.
And it's just really great to bearound 1000s of fellow
podcasters. So Kevin, I know youwere talking to your buddy Neil
(13:57):
over the weekend.
Kevin (13:59):
It was man, Neil and I go way back. And yeah, he had
concerns about his podcast beingon I shouldn't say podcasts. on
Spotify.
Travis (14:11):
So Alban walk us through kind of a series of events of
what has unfolded over the lastcouple of weeks in regards to
Spotify in regards to Joe Rogan.
And then Neil Young and otherartists as well, and some
aspiring podcasters that werereally excited about getting
their shows off the ground. Youknow, I really wanted to hear
from Prince Harry, but stillhold out hope that podcast will
Alban (14:31):
give away the lead.
Alright, so Joe Rogan has alwaysbeen this guy who just jumps
into topics and maybe is notalways the expert on the topics
that he's talking about. Andsometimes the guests aren't the
experts either. And he's done abunch of conversations with
people about COVID. But he'sdone this in the past. Like he's
talking about everything. And itkind of hit a flashpoint this
(14:51):
week, when Neil Young said, Hey,there's some dangerous I think
his exact words are likedangerous, life threatening
COVID fault hoods. And becauseof it, he's pulling his music
from Spotify. And it started amuch larger conversation pretty
quickly about a lot ofpodcasters a lot of artists
(15:11):
saying, Hey, we don't want to beinvolved with the Joe Rogan
experience, I guess Neil Youngstarted off with an ultimatum
like, is it going to be me orJoe Rogan, but everyone knew
what Spotify is going to do.
They didn't pay 10 or $100million to have Neil Young's
content exclusive on Spotify, sothey sided with Rogan. And we've
(15:32):
just seen a bunch of peoplestart pulling podcasts out of
Spotify. So Brene Brown hassaid, I'm not going to be
creating any more content. Thescience versus which is a gimlet
show has said, the only podcastwe will actually create now are
going to be to combat the COVIDmisinformation on other
podcasts. So obviously, talkingabout Rogan again. So yeah, I
(15:53):
thought it'd be interesting tokind of have a conversation
about COVID science, because weare all about as much experts on
that as Joe Rogan. So it'sprobably not the most
illuminating conversation. Butfor us to talk about exclusive
content, the importance of likeeditorial work around this
stuff, but also like how thisaffects podcasters in the
(16:15):
industry.
Kevin (16:17):
Yeah, well, and I would also say this, since this is a
show about independentpodcasters is that it doesn't
stop there with the big nameslike the number one support
request over the weekend forBuzzsprout was how do I remove
my podcast from Spotify? Solike, in the end, what you said
Alban is that Spotify chose, youknow, if Neil put the ultimatum
(16:37):
down, that says, it's going tobe my music, or it's going to be
this podcast, they might havesided with the podcast in this
one case, but it didn't endthere. Like it's having some
effect all the way down toindependent small shows, or
wanting to, and we don't knowtheir reasons. Some, as they
wrote in, they did say, like,I've got the same concerns that
Neil Young has. And I saw thatsome people didn't give a
reason. But it's, it's tellingthat it was the number one
(16:58):
support request for Buzzsprout,which we get a lot of support
requests, usually hundreds overthe weekend. And the number one
request was to remove theirpodcasts and Spotify.
Alban (17:05):
Somebody asked me about like, is Buzzsprout going to do
anything about this? And I waslike, well, we've actually
pulled all of our podcasts fromSpotify years
Travis (17:12):
ago, talking about Buzzcast, and how to start a
podcast and Podcasting Q&A,right.
Alban (17:16):
Everybody who uses Buzzsprout has that option and
open to them to decide whereverthey want to distribute. But for
us, we've never put our where wealways, we've always pulled it
out two years ago. Ours was overa concern. The Spotify wanted to
be the YouTube, the platform ofpodcasting. And we said,
actually, the awesome thingabout podcasting is that there
(17:39):
isn't a platform, there isn'tone group that gets to decide,
what is a podcast doesn't get todecide who's allowed to put
content up, can't just kick youout on a whim at any moment. So
that's a really great thing forpodcasting. And so we said, you
know, if they're going to try tobe this one platform, we're not
going to aid that by giving ourcontent to them. Spotify
(18:03):
reaction to that was nothingbecause they have no idea.
They're not, they were notconcerned, they were much more
concerned when Neil Youngstarted saying stuff than when
we did.
Kevin (18:14):
Yeah, and my argument has always been, it's your content,
and you should be in control ofit, you should have the right to
say where your content ispublished and where it's not.
And so I don't want to get intowhether Neil I agree with Neil
Young's position or not, or andyou might not necessarily care
if you agree with Buzzsproutposition or not, that the point
is, is that we both madeindependent decisions, to remove
(18:36):
our content from Spotify. And Ithink that's a fantastic thing,
like I was I was trying to comeup with a compelling position to
have on Neil Young's decision topull his content and Joni
Mitchell and, and a bunch ofothers bunch of, you know, our
customers made that samedecision this weekend. And, and
I really couldn't, what I gotexcited about was that we have
the ability to do it. Right. AndI think that that's so much more
(18:58):
encouraging, than going downthis road of relying on
censorship or regulation tocontrol a speech that we agree
with or don't agree with, like,at the end of the day, I think
it's a healthier world, to beable to say, you know, I don't
want to align myself with someof the things that this platform
is doing. So I have the option,I have the ability to cast my
(19:19):
vote by pulling my content off.
And that's what is, is, again, Idon't want to get into whether I
agree with Neil or not. Maybe Ido, maybe I don't that's not
relevant,
Alban (19:28):
what's relevant. You keep going back to this, I don't want
to say what I
Kevin (19:32):
don't want people to hear what I'm not saying. I'm not
saying I totally agree withNeil, or I don't agree with
Neil. What I am saying is I lovethe fact that Neil has the
ability to do this, that he hasthe ability to say, I do not
want to align myself with thisplatform. And here are my
reasons and that's why I'mpulling my content off. So that
to me is encouraging. I'd loveit.
Travis (19:50):
Right. And even thinking about this in the video world.
Like imagine if Joe Rogan wasexclusive on YouTube. Mm hmm.
And the same thing was happeningand you're an independent
creator and YouTube is yourlivelihood. That's a much more
difficult decision to say, I'mgoing to stop providing for my
family financially to take amoral stance, right against this
one platform that has a monopolyon this kind of content.
Alban (20:10):
And when you have that, that is the decision, it makes
it so much more difficult tosay, I'm not actually
comfortable with what'shappening here on YouTube.
Because if you are a videocreator, you probably it's going
to destroy your business to say,I'm actually leaving YouTube for
Twitch or for Vimeo, and it'sall gonna be private, or a
Patreon, like, all of yourdiscovery disappears. And music
(20:33):
has actually not been a greatplatform, because it's really
down to like two, maybe, I mean,maybe three, but Apple Music,
Spotify, Amazon music or titleis third, I don't know, which is
third. But it's a pretty muchit's a duopoly. And so it's a
pretty big deal for any artiststo say, Pay, I'm not going to be
(20:54):
on the biggest one in the world.
And I think for podcasters, it'san easier decision for us,
because everybody knows, it'sstill out there, I can still
listen to it in any number ofapps. And if you don't want to
support something that Apple isdoing, or Spotify is doing, or
any of the other podcastdirectories, you have total
control over saying, I'm notgoing to be a party to that, you
(21:18):
know, it would be difficult if,you know, our business was like
meeting making some kind of foodor beverage. And we found out
that it was actually a big drawfor people at casinos, which I
am not a fan of casinos, and Ithink it's immoral, and to have
all of our so people were like,Oh, actually, I love these
chips. And they're all casinos,I go there all the time. And
then I start gambling be like,Oh, maybe we don't want our
(21:40):
chips to be sold at thesecasinos anymore. Yeah, we're
actually going to pull that out.
You get to make those stands,when you're not totally 100%
locked in on a specificplatform.
Travis (21:52):
Yeah. And it does raise a larger question about this
trend of larger shows, gettingexclusive deals, you know, so
Spotify basically locks it down,puts it behind Spotify, and it's
not distributed anywhere else,armchair experts another
example. Then you have Amazonmusic, which is we're gonna have
a one week window. So smartlists, and then they just
acquired my favorite murder forsomething like $100 million. And
(22:16):
so you can listen to episodes aweek early on Amazon music, and
then it's still availableeverywhere else. We're seeing
these different flavors oflarger distributors, purchasing
content, and making it exclusivein some way. That now changes
the leverage dynamic as acreator, right? Because you're
now you've you've signed thecontracts, right? You've
(22:36):
essentially said, I am now nolonger 100% making independent
decisions. There is now anotherparty that has a vested interest
in my content. And, you know,for better or worse, and, you
know, we were joking aroundbefore, like, hey, if, you know,
Amazon wants to show up with$100 million, check for Buzzcast
full, we'll cash it and we'll,we'll say whatever I want to
say, yeah. Well, we'll recordfrom the Cayman Islands and say
(22:59):
whatever they want us to say.
But that is an interesting thingto think through. Like, is that
really? Like what is thataspirational? Is that we want
for our shows.
Alban (23:08):
Yeah, I think another point is, that's not a huge
concern, because I'm notexpecting many of our listeners
or for us to be in this positiongoing do I want to go exclusive?
For $100 million? If you getthat offer?
Kevin (23:21):
I feel very comfortable saying that we would not we
would not we're not so sure.
About a hollow as a promises Ican make because it's never
gonna
Travis (23:34):
but I need even then you can take that position knowing
that me and Alban are gonna, youknow outvote you and be like,
alright, well, you know, the themajority have spoken, I guess
I'll take the check.
Kevin (23:43):
It is very different when, you know, Spotify is in a
position where the Joe Roganpodcast is not just a show that
is distributed on theirplatform. Yeah, they have signed
him as talent. And so they nowhave a higher level of
responsibility for the contentthat he puts out. And this is
what's happening is people areseeing that relationship and
saying, there is aresponsibility. Yeah, I was
(24:05):
gonna try to find another wordfor the word I just use. I can
just use the same word again,there is there's they're now
responsible for the content thathe puts out because he is for,
you know, for better or worse.
He's like their employee now,right?
Alban (24:19):
Yeah, he's the pillar content. The linchpin of this
entire business strategy thatthey have is, we're going to try
to get away from licensed music,which is really expensive is a
variable cost to fixed cost,buying content that we can get,
which is podcasts.
Travis (24:39):
And on top of that, if you want to buy ad space in
Spotify podcasts, like you wantto get on Joe Rogan, you also
have to let them distribute someof that ad spend on their other
podcasts. Yeah,
Kevin (24:52):
I have heard that that if you want to buy a spot on the
Rogen show, you also have to buythe other catalogue of shows
that are available. I don't knowif it's true or not. I've just
read it in order Awesome, great.
Alban (25:00):
So like Alpha Brain is, Alchemy is showing up on all
sorts of other podcasts. Butthis is like, the thing that is
helping is like the linchpin ofthis entire strategy. This isn't
like when Apple podcasts said,Hey, I don't know if we want you
to find the Alex Jones podcaston Apple podcasts anymore. That
was a very different decision.
Because all that was is they'relike, hey, there's a link inside
(25:23):
of our app to this content thatwe find objectionable. Spotify
is said, Oh, we love this show.
We love it so much, we willspend $100 million. We think the
people who listen to show loveit so much, that they will dump
all the apps they're on and moveto Spotify, we are actively
(25:44):
promoting it at the top of allthese charts, we are going out
of our way to say this is thecontent you should be paying
attention to. It's a verydifferent scenario, I keep
seeing people bringing up likecensorship and section 230. And
all this stuff about it's reallymuch more applicable to social
media and user generatedcontent. Joe Rogan is no longer
(26:07):
user generated content. This isyour premium piece of content on
your platform. And when that'sthe case, you absolutely owe
some editorial oversight, andsome responsibility. Now, I
haven't listened to any of thecited episodes of Joe Rogan. I
haven't listened to any of thoseepisodes since he became a
(26:28):
Spotify exclusive. So I'm notreally weighing in on whether or
not they're making the righteditorial decisions. But they
absolutely need to be the onesdeciding that now. And a Spotify
doesn't like what he's saying.
They need to be the ones havinga conversation with Joe about
that. They can't kind of washyour hands of it be like, hey,
it's a podcast guys. Like whatwhat are you talking about? This
(26:50):
is your podcast, this is yourthing?
Kevin (26:54):
Yeah. And it makes sense for Joe to be able to say that,
like, hey, it's a podcast, it'sjust me and my buddies having
interesting conversations. Butultimately, Spotify has to offer
some, they're the ones that aregoing to ultimately be
accountable for the decisionsthat they make. And the decision
is that Joe Mixon that's theirrelationship. I did think this
is this is a slightly differentpoint. But Joe's been exclusive
(27:15):
with Spotify for over a yearnow. Right. And at the beginning
of that relationship, all of hiscontent was pulled off of
YouTube. Right? So all the Jerryclips, all of his full episodes
are all removed from YouTube.
And there was some speculationthat Joe's numbers must have
taken a pretty serious hit whenhe moved exclusive to Spotify,
like we'd heard about this hasbeen this is public knowledge
for what happened with HowardStern. And we kind of assumed
(27:37):
the same thing probably happenedto Joe.
Alban (27:40):
Yeah, actually, Carmen wrote a really good article for
The Verge about this, thatpretty much detailed like if
people used to go on the JoeRogan experience, you would see
this massive jump in theirTwitter followers. And that jump
has been cut down significantly.
She looked at all thesedifferent factors and was like,
yeah, it's definitely beenpretty substantial. It was
Kevin (27:58):
circumstantial evidence that she was using to build this
case. But it was it wascompelling. It's pretty closely
correlated. Yeah. And, and morerecently, I think it's been,
again, in my brain roughly aboutsix months or so ago, all of a
sudden, Joe Rogan clips startedhearing on YouTube again. So I
guess somebody at Spotify madethe decision that we can promote
Joe's show using YouTube. Solet's open up the clips channel.
(28:20):
Again, let's start putting clipsback. So now we're getting Joe
Rogan clips. These are not fullywithin context, but they do a
pretty good job of kind ofcapturing the topic, they could
be anywhere between four minutesand 12 minutes, roughly what
I've seen, but there's a wholethere's there's a much bigger
audience, I'm assuming nowbecause he's back into YouTube,
along with the full episodethat's available on Spotify. And
(28:41):
I think there's some, there hasto be some level of exposure
that's happening. There's,they're the people who I think,
who are upset by the contentthat they're they're hearing on
the Joe Rogan show, probablyweren't listening to four hour
episodes of Joe Rogan. Becausethey don't like it. They don't
agree with it, I imagine thatyou probably don't want to
subject yourself to four hoursof it. But now that we're
putting clips of this stuff,back on YouTube, I'll sit
(29:04):
through 12 minutes of it, itwill, it will bother me, I'll
hear something that I don'tbelieve to be true, I might make
an argument for why this ismisinformation. And I think that
might be causing controversy. Itseems like Spotify is trying to
grow the audience for the JoeRogan experience, again, using
YouTube. And I think that'scausing trouble.
Alban (29:21):
So you think Neil Young was probably just coasting
through YouTube on a Saturdaylike he is apt to do and he
stumbled across something. Andhe was like, Good grief. This is
totally wrong.
Kevin (29:32):
I think so. I mean, what's the other theory that
that Neil Young was opening upSpotify and listening to four
hour episodes of Joe Rogan?
Yeah, was more unlikely.
Travis (29:39):
Or he just saw a bunch of people talking about it on
Twitter, and then said, Hey,manager, I don't like what I'm
hearing about what other peoplehave heard. So definitely, we'll
continue to keep an eye on thisas it unfolds to see, you know,
what could be potential impactseffects on the broader podcast
community, but I will say thatunless Spotify removes Joe
(30:01):
Rogan, we will keep making newpodcast
Alban (30:03):
episodes, and we will refuse to put this podcast into
Spotify
Travis (30:07):
proactively. I feel pretty confident about that.
Approve podcast.com put togethera study of over 1000 podcasters.
And what they wanted to see waswhat separated podcasters who
are making at least $50,000 Ayear from their show, versus
podcasters that aren't at thatplace yet to see, is there any
(30:30):
data that we can look at, toshow causation of if you do
these things, in this way, youhave a greater chance of
reaching a threshold wherepodcasting could be how you make
a living,
Alban (30:42):
but one piece is going to be this is correlation. This is
a correlation study. We're notsaying if you do the thing that
successful people do, you willbecome successful 100% of
billionaires all drink water andsleep, you know, like that.
That's not gonna make yousuccessful.
Travis (30:58):
I don't know about the sleep part. I don't think Elon
Musk sleeps, but he does six
Kevin (31:01):
hours I heard on the Joe Rogan podcast. It's true. I
heard that clip, he
Alban (31:07):
regret cat naps.
Travis (31:08):
So that was how the study was put together. So we'll
leave the link. If you want toread the slides. You can. If you
want to read the summary, youcan. We're just going to go
through some of these toptakeaways that they're
highlighting here. Alright,
Alban (31:20):
so tell us what's the number one insight? Can we
actually take some guesses assome of these insights?
Kevin (31:25):
No, I can't guess at this point, because I just read them
all.
Travis (31:30):
So the top actionable highlight trend statistic is
that if you basically take allthe data and lump it together,
what are the high level themes,you can determine how successful
a podcast is based on the numberof published episodes they have?
The number of months they'vebeen podcasting, and the number
of listeners they have perepisode?
Kevin (31:51):
Well, I think you have to frame that a different way.
Like, you can't say howsuccessful podcast is looking at
the number of episodes that ithas. But you can say that the
most successful podcasts tend tohave more episodes. Right. And
again, this is pretty logical,which is why I'm kind of
struggling to get through thisdata. But like point number two,
they say successful podcastersare 7.7 times more likely to
(32:11):
publish over 100 episodes,which, you know, we're just
joking around. But I was like,you could say the same thing a
different way, which issuccessful people are more
likely to continue to doingthings that made them success.
Yeah,
Alban (32:22):
like the most successful restaurants have actually been
in business for more than oneyear.
Kevin (32:27):
Right. And they have more than one restaurant. Right?
Yeah. Like,
Travis (32:30):
it doesn't explain why Buzzcast isn't successful,
because we're not at 100episodes yet.
Kevin (32:35):
But there, but there is a there is a narrative behind
that, like it does lead you tobelieve other things, which is
that you're not going to besuccessful if you only have a
few episodes. This is more of along game, right? And so at what
point did these people becomesuccessful? Did they achieve
that $50,000 a year in revenuefor their podcast? Well, it
probably wasn't before theystarted hitting, you know, hit
100 Plus episodes. And so thatcan be an encouragement. I think
(32:59):
that's a good takeaway. It's notnecessarily that doesn't come
right through when you read thesummary of data. But in the
podcasting world, you probablyshouldn't expect a whole lot of
success until you get into thehundreds of episodes, you know,
window,
Travis (33:13):
right. MKBHD, who's a massive YouTuber has famously
said he, for his first 1000videos, he had less than 1000
YouTube subscribers. Now he'sgot like 15 million. Oh, my
gosh, I didn't know that. Yeah.
And so, cons. It's a long game,especially if you're not already
a known name brands like a WillArnett or Jason Bateman or, you
know, Harry and Megan, right,who are wildly successful. I'm
(33:35):
sure it will be wildly, wildlysuccessful. Spotify
Kevin (33:42):
is a different example.
He was born into fame. Sure.
Right. But let's talk about likethe Smartlist. Guys, they
launched who is a Jason BatemanWill Arnett and someone else I'm
forgetting another actor, guys.
I'm willing grace. Funny guy.
Yeah. Yeah, so the three of themlaunch a podcast and they became
really successful reallyquickly, right. And then their
(34:03):
show got acquired by Amazonreally quickly. But they had
years and years and years oflike building their fame and
their following. And so that'ssomething that we've talked
about before as well. It may beit's not 100 episodes for those
people that achieve success. Butit has been 25 years as like
trying to build an acting careerto get to the point where now
(34:23):
they can launch a podcast andhave success in a short amount
of time. Right? So you don'tnecessarily I don't want to do
100 podcast episodes to reach alevel of success. Fine. Just go
ahead and do 25 years in the TVand film industry. Like put your
time but you have to put yourtime in somewhere. Sure. Right.
I think that's what we'resaying.
Alban (34:38):
Yeah, I remember I used to always love song exploder
Richie Sherway. His firstepisode, I think was like
breaking down a postal servicesong or something. I was like,
wow, how did he and then asyou're looking, all the names
are like bands that I knew. AndI was like, it wasn't like he
just showed up and was like meLike, I like music, I wonder if
(35:02):
I could get like all the mastersfrom all these record labels and
talk to really big artists abouttheir music. Like he was already
working in this industry, healready made all these
connections. And if you see alot of these celebrity shows
blow up, it's, they're like, Oh,they're just inviting their
friends on, because their cellphones are full of famous
people's numbers. And they willtext them back when they say,
(35:24):
Hey, I want to be on a podcast.
So you know, that is a goodlesson is building a podcast in
an area where you already havesome expertise is smart, because
you already have started puttingin the time in that industry.
And so it's gonna be a loteasier for you to get guests to,
maybe you don't have to do asmuch research because this is
stuff you already know. It'sgoing to flow much more
(35:46):
naturally than if somebody likeme who knows nothing about
really music is like, Ah, Iwonder if I started a music
podcast. And I'll just go jumpinto that. That sounds cool. So
some
Kevin (35:57):
other interesting facts that I think they that I think
were interesting anyway, is theynoted that 63% of successful
podcasters publish once perweek, so they said that seems to
be the sweet spot for thesuccessful podcasters. When it
comes to Episode length, theysaid that there's no there
seemed to be a winning formula.
However, 56% of high incomepodcasters said their best
performing episodes are landingbetween 40 and 120 minutes. And
(36:18):
high income podcasters are 1.7times more likely to have shows
that address a very specificgroup of people, so they have
niched down. Okay, this isadvice that we've given plenty
of times,
Alban (36:32):
sure. And all three of those make sense, you have said,
I'm going to make sure there's apiece of content every week, I'm
going to make sure that piece ofcontent is substantial, it's not
just a 15 minute, quick episode.
And it's can be focused tospecific audience. And all three
of those are very highlycorrelated with the shows that
perform well. And I think it'sbecause if you're going to be a
(36:53):
successful podcaster, you needto have this core group of
people who love the show, andyou've actually kind of embedded
your podcast into their lifethat they are used to, hey, I'm
gonna listen to this podcastwhen it shows up. When I go for
a run, when I go drive to work,when I go do this, or that, I'm
going to listen to this podcast.
(37:14):
And it's like, these are myfriends are the people that I
really enjoy listening to. Andso all three of those data
points really lean back into,like, if it's coming out every
Monday, and it's two hours long.
Like you've given your a bunchof people an opportunity to
create a relationship with youand for you to kind of be
important to their life. Becausethat's what people are putting a
(37:34):
few dollars towards, or they'regonna
Kevin (37:37):
listen through ads. Yeah, you've given them a reason to
build you into their routine.
Yeah, nobody's
Alban (37:41):
building something into the routine and suffering
through the ads or going insupporting you with a monthly
donation. They're not doing burn
Kevin (37:49):
through the ads. That's an interesting way to put that
I've never
Alban (37:53):
listened to an ad. And then like, Yes, this is great.
ad loads are always done basedon, hey, how many more ads can
we put in here before peoplestop listening,
Kevin (38:02):
not always in podcasting.
And maybe that's what makespodcast advertising more
tolerable, at least in my view,the podcasts that I listened to
more often than not have adsthat are more creatively done,
right. And once in a while, I'llcome across a podcast that does
throw in some sort ofprogrammatic ad, but then those
are usually pretty well, timeconstrained, it's not like I
have to tolerate in your words,or suffer through two and a half
(38:24):
or three minutes ofadvertisements. Before I get
back to the TV show that I'mwatching, which is what I'm used
to, in a podcast, I might hear a32nd ad. And I'm willing to just
listen to that 32nd ad becauseit's just easier than pulling my
phone out of the pocket andfinding the you know, skip
forward 30 seconds. So I'lllisten to it. If it was two and
a half or three minutes, I feellike I would agree with the
adjective to use their ofsuffering through. But in
(38:45):
podcast world doesn't seem likeit's hit that point. Yes,
Alban (38:48):
it has definitely not hit that point with podcasting. And
I think it's because theadvertisers haven't had enough
say yet, which is a positive.
But if you go look at almost anywebsite, the amount of ad space
ads that are on there isridiculous. If you go onto
Facebook, the amount of ads thatthey've increased over the
years, and the more ad spots isridiculous. Go listen to radio.
(39:09):
It's wild, how many how oftenthey break for advertise the
content advertising
Kevin (39:16):
ratio on the radio is unbearable. Yeah. And that's why
Alban (39:19):
podcasting is so great is because that ratio has not
really gotten worse. It's gone,like a little bit of ads. And
they're like, Hey, these aregonna be really premium ads. And
that's, I think, why podcastsaudiences feel such a high
affinity is because we're notlistening to a radio show that
breaks every eight minutes for afour minute break right there
consistently like, Hey, we'regonna keep coming back at you if
(39:42):
you know the content youactually want. So, all that to
say, people don't put up with TVshows or radio shows or
Facebook. If it's not actuallythe content that's around the
ads isn't good. Because ifyou're going to dedicate 20 30
to 40% of the time or the spaceto an advertisement, then the
(40:05):
rest of the content has to be socompelling that you're willing
to put up with it to sufferthrough it. In my words, either
that
Travis (40:13):
or it's the Superbowl, and the ads are content. The ad
themselves are actually createda sample.
Alban (40:19):
Yeah, that is
Kevin (40:21):
that that have these podcasts, there are some
podcasts that do a really goodjob of like, when they're doing
a host read, they do a reallygood job of, of trying to
understand the product or makethe advertisement funny, or they
use it as an endorsement.
Travis (40:32):
Like, like earlier in this, I don't know if he
recorded or not where you'retalking about how you're
drinking iced tea, you know,it's like that was really well
placed really, really well. Iwant it
Kevin (40:39):
brought to you by honesty. Yeah. But everyone
knows if you're a show, I alwayshave an honesty sitting in front
of me as
Alban (40:46):
Kevin is 30%. Honesty is,
Travis (40:49):
is BHT sea level is point three,
Kevin (40:53):
right. So other interesting takeaways, they
talked about marketing yourpodcast and different marketing
channels. So again, as you wouldexpect 1.7 times high income
podcasters 1.7 times more likelyto be active or very active in
promoting their shows. Thenumber of marketing channels for
high income podcasters that theyuse, on average is 3.6 marketing
channels, which is 157% morethan lower income podcasters 53%
(41:17):
of high income podcasters usemore than four marketing
channels. So again, it'ssomething that Alban talks about
all the time, is the importanceof investing in multiple
marketing channels. Maybe findthe one that's most effective
for you and invest more heavilyin that. But continually be
looking for other ways to marketyour podcasts. Because you might
be on two or three differentchannels or social media,
(41:38):
whatever and trying to marketand you might not have found the
big one for your podcast yet. Soalways be experimenting, always
be exploring more marketingchannels.
Travis (41:45):
And that would be like I'm promoting on Instagram,
Twitter, I have an emailnewsletter, and I go as a guest
on other podcasts. Like that'dbe an example of four marketing
channels all driving trafficback to your show.
Kevin (41:57):
That's right. Like I'm a big tick talker. And I am on
tick tock all the time. I'mkidding. But really, no, that's
not true. But I do pop the appopen once in a while my kids
will send me tic tock videos towatch or something like that.
And I noticed Alban is now atick tock star he's he's got a
couple videos on tick tock andhe's also on Instagram I see his
face so those apps are supersmart. They know who I am when I
(42:18):
launched them and they knowbuddies with Alban so they show
me his content and he's doingexperiments on on tick tock and
Instagram and YouTube shorts andtrying to find new marketing
channels for our podcasts andand the Buzzsprout hosting
service and everything else
Alban (42:31):
to be clear the content that you're seeing of Alban on
this is me working for you.
Kevin (42:39):
It's not like it's not Alban doing the latest
Alban (42:41):
hold doing like dancing, Kevin's like nice good for him.
It'd be like, hey, I want tostart a podcast, here's how to
do it give it's like nice, moremoney for me.
Travis (42:50):
I mean, I definitely whenever I see like the Samsung
Galaxy fold commercials, whereit's like, you could be like
this girl dancing in the parkinglot with your phone. It's like,
Yeah, I'm not the targetaudience. They're
Alban (43:00):
also the limiting factor for me being really big on Tik
Tok is not my ability to fold myphone to set up to record
myself. It's having danceabilities. Having a face that
people want to see on a video,having like skills, like all
(43:21):
those things are the things thatare actually built in. This is
the marketing for all physicalproducts. It's like Nike, just
do it and you'll be an athlete,and then you kind of like in
your brain are like, if I buythose shoes, I will be a great
athlete. Everybody knows that'snot true. But we do it over and
over. If I buy this microphone,I will be a great podcaster if I
(43:42):
buy this phone, I could become atick tock star. All of those are
so so bogus. And yet, that ishow the marketing works. When
people sell physical products,they're like, you could become
the kind of person you want tobecome with the addition of this
physical item. And it kind ofworks its way into your brain
until you challenge it. You'relike that is such that's so
(44:03):
bogus. Obviously the right wayfor me to run a marathon is to
run every day. It's not for meto buy specific shoes.
Travis (44:11):
I mean, I don't know about that. I think, Kevin,
would you say that your skillsas a podcaster increase as your
honesty consumption goes up?
Absolutely.
Kevin (44:21):
Yeah, at least my energy level does. Alright, any other
takeaways from this data?
Summarize it well enough,
Travis (44:26):
mate. So I think the big takeaway is, you know, it takes
time to build an audience,especially if you're starting
from square one. You need tocreate content that is for
someone, not just shooting thebreeze with your buddies, if you
have an intention of wanting tomonetize it in a significant
way. And that's one big piece ofhaving a podcast that could
(44:49):
become successful is promotingit, actually telling people
about it. Yeah. That there's nomagic silver bullet that's just
going to magically shoot yourpodcast into the stratosphere
unless you're putting In thework to tell people about it.
And so, in addition to havingtime set aside to produce the
podcast, also consider settingaside time to promote it. Yeah,
(45:09):
choose a marketing channelinvest in it. When it's going,
well, maybe add a second one,like those. It's not rocket
science. But it is work. And sodepending on how hard you want
to work, how quickly you wantyour show to grow, will
determine whether you reach someof these metrics that improve
podcasts has put together as faras $50,000 per year from your
show.
Alban (45:28):
Well, that is the lesson I would love for everybody to
hear is that if you do notpromote things, they don't grow.
And every time a podcast grows,every time a business grows,
every time anything becomessuccessful is because there was
actual effort put behind it. Andnot just effort in making
something great. But making thatthing get in front of people.
(45:52):
And like you can build the bestbusiness. But if no one knows
about it, it's not going to makeany difference. You make the
best podcast, but no one knowsabout it, no one's going to
listen to it. And whenever wesee shows become successful
quickly. It's often because theyalready did the work on the
marketing side, well in advance.
And then the content came in andit looks like an overnight
(46:13):
success. It rarely is. And so ifyou're not someone who spent 20
years building a career, or asocial media account, or
something else that will get inpeople's face and present
something you will have to putthat work in on the front end.
And on
Travis (46:29):
that bombshell discovery. We'll wrap up another
episode of Buzzcast Thanks fortuning in. And we'll catch in
the next one. Keep podcasting.
Alban (46:43):
Everybody, thanks for sticking around to the end of
the episode. This is Alban heredropping in some dynamic content
to tell you about some updatesto our dynamic content features.
We're continuing to move forwardwith all the tools allowing you
to trop ads and announcementsinto all of your episodes, so
(47:03):
that you can record somethingonce and automatically have it
added to the beginning or end ofall of your episodes, the new
updates that we've made todynamic content. Number one, if
you have an announcement that'smaybe only applicable for a
short period, and you replace itwith something else will now
that announcement stays insomething we're calling our
dynamic content library. Thelibrary is a list of all of the
(47:27):
different announcements oradvertisements, or just little
pieces that you've dropped intoyour episodes over time so that
you can reapply them wheneveryou would like. The second piece
is that now those are trackedfor how many times they've been
played. So if you have an adread, and you want to report
back to your sponsor, and tellthem how many times it's been
downloaded. Well now you know,because that content may be
(47:51):
spread across 30 differentpodcast episodes. You want to be
able to count the stats for allof those for the entire time
that it was out in the world.
Reach out to us on Twitter, letus know how you were using
dynamic content and the newdynamic content library. We'll
see you in a couple weeks. Bye
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