Why Our Last Episode Got 42.5% More Downloads

Episode Transcript
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Alban (00:00):
Jordan, this is unhinged.
This is, this is nuts.

Jordan (00:06):
But it's so good Well, we have some follow up
from our last episode in whichwe talked about the first
podcast ever recorded in afighter jet.

Alban (00:22):
Yeah, Dusty, who is in the Blue Angel actually reached
out and thanked us fordiscussing the Blue Angels said
he had a ton of fun producingthe episodes, and that the jet
ride was the coolest thing heever got to do in his career. So
yeah, I always love finding outpeople listen to this podcast, I
guess. The numbers just don'tfeel real. I mean, I talk about

(00:44):
this all the time. But like, youcould see the numbers get up
there. And you're like, itdoesn't feel like something
until people reach out. And now,especially when we're talking
about Dusties, podcasts leadballoon, and then all of a
sudden, he's reached out saying,Hey, thanks for discussing. And
I'm like, oh, so there's peoplelistening. And some of the
people listening are people thatwe're paying attention to and
talking about. So thanks forreaching out to us yet, we

(01:06):
appreciate it.

Jordan (01:06):
He and I exchanged a couple messages. And he let me
know that they had hard wiredinto the fighter jets onboard
intercom system, which is whythe audio is so good when
they're speaking. And he alsohad two separate recording
devices as well. And they endedup doing like I think it was
like 12 separate tracks tocomplete the episodes. So yeah,

(01:27):
it was pretty audio intensive.

Kevin (01:29):
Yeah. So I said on the last episode that I wanted to
listen to the audio versionbefore I watched the YouTube
version. And I did do that I didlisten to the audio version.
First, I have not since goneback and watched the video
version almost because I feellike I don't have to, like the
audio version was so great. Hedid a really good job describing
what he was feeling. And I didsee a little bit of the clip,
because you guys linked to thevideo. And I did click on it.

(01:51):
And I saw a little bit the videolooks amazing as well. But
hearing the audio version, howhe's describing what's going on
and what his body feels like andwhat he's seeing. And all this
stuff is amazing. Like at onepoint he was talking about, you
know, he was he was afraid hehad cameras flying around, and
they were doing zero gravity.
And then, you know, massive Gpolls and also other stuff, he
was afraid his equipment wasgoing to break the jet. And I
don't know, it just really feltlike you were gonna be there. I

(02:13):
was actually driving I was on aroad trip, I was driving down
the interstate while I waslistening to this. And I'm like,
I feel like I'm driving 150miles an hour down. It was such
a good podcast.

Alban (02:24):
It's the sign of a really good recording, when those kinds
of questions don't pop into mymind to later like how did they
actually film this, I'm nowimagining like the fear, I would
feel suction cupping like aGoPro to the fighter jet up
until like the cut top of thecockpit. And then it's like
you're doing these big spinsgoing, if this thing pops off,

(02:46):
it's gonna slam it Yeah, andnever even considered it. So
they did a great job. I mean, itmakes sense that the Air Force
has figured out how to do somenoise reduction and keep it
sound pretty good inside thecockpit. But it was really
impressive and dusty did a greatjob. And we're thrilled that he
reached out.

Kevin (03:05):
And if you haven't listened to it, I guess we'll
link to it again. But check itout. It was really great.

Jordan (03:09):
Alright, so we've been doing an experiment to try to
grow Buzzcast we're gonna betrying different things
throughout the next probably, Idon't know, year or so maybe
even longer if it keeps goingwell. So how do we want to do
this? Like this might be like asegment? Actually, now that I
think about it. We might havethis recurring segment, maybe

(03:31):
like once a month or once everycouple months, we check in and
talk about how well Buzzcast isgrowing and what we've done that
has worked for us. And you knowwhat maybe fails.

Alban (03:40):
I think it should be an experiment. We talk about things
we're trying and we could maybeeach time report on hey, here's
what last week's episode got inits first seven days. Now we
have one stat we give that wetalked about something we tried.

Jordan (03:53):
Yeah. So our last episode had a pretty big spike
in downloads. And I noticed thatand I was like, Whoa, what
happened? It was on a Tuesday,which is not the day that our
episodes drop. So I was a littleconfused until Alban, you told
me what you had done to make ourdownloads increase.

Alban (04:10):
Tuesday is the day that we send our weekly email,
there's an email that goes outto everybody on Buzzsprout
people who have ever signed upfor Buzzsprout who still want to
get the email and even though weregularly like cut the list from
anybody who doesn't, you know,regularly open it, it's still
really, really big. And so whenwe send an email, like we do
typically get a spike. And soTuesdays you do see a bit of a

(04:34):
bump each time we release anepisode, but overall the
episodes on Buzzsprout I'mlooking at like the first seven
days for a new episode. So thiswould include people who are
really subscribed to thepodcast, a and that first
Tuesday where we promote theepisode that's all this really
gonna be included. Typically weget somewhere between 1200 maybe

(04:56):
on the low end looks like someget down about 900. 900 plays is
to 1200 a good episode, we mightbe up near 1400. This week, we
had 2263 downloads. So almostdouble as much, we have over
1000 additional clicks. And youknow, a bunch of our stats start

(05:16):
kind of moving in the charts. Iknow you and Kevin both started
seeing some of those alerts. Andwhat we did is we made the whole
episode, or excuse me, the wholenewsletter about that episode, I
worked with Megan, who's on thesupport team, and is now helping
a lot with the newsletter, wespent a few hours just going
through the episode talkingabout what's really important.

(05:38):
And for somebody on Buzzsprout,who does not listen to this show
yet is probably not, you know,super deep into the podcasting
industry, they're moreinterested in just getting the
word out about their particularshow what was really valuable to
them. And so it took a while tocraft it, I think we put a few
hours into writing a fewparagraphs. But in the end,

(06:00):
we're really, really proud ofwhat we came up with and the
leads for that podcast. And itwas our biggest episode, I think
so far, it's already the biggestepisode of the year. And we get
a significant amount of playswell, after a week, so it was a
huge success. And I think it'llprobably change the way we start
promoting Buzzcast goingforward. And if you're somebody

(06:22):
who clicked on that email, andsubscribed and are listening to
this one, welcome to Buzzcast.
We appreciate you being here.

Jordan (06:27):
Yeah, it was a noticeable difference. Because
normally, what we do is we'lljust sort of reword the
description of the episode. Andyou guys took it like a step
further and put more value intoit.

Alban (06:39):
In the YouTube world, we constantly hear podcasters just
say, I put more work into thetitle and the thumbnail of the
video than the actual video. Andno matter how many times I've
heard it, I'm like, that doesn'tmake sense. That sounds crazy.
But what they're realizing is,you know, getting people to
click is super, super important.
And often what we've done is wecreate content, we say, What's

(07:02):
the best content? And then atthe end, we go, oh, yeah, we got
to get it out there. And what'sthe title for this episode, just
get it up, you know, we're notgoing to create custom show art.
So we got the title, we've got adescription, which is telling
you what it's about, but notreally telling you the why of
why you should click it. Andthen we promote it that way. And
I think this experiment showedus there's some real value to

(07:22):
sitting down and going throughthe process, taking a few hours
of saying what is compellingabout what we've created in this
episode. And then using that tosell the podcast for years
Buzzcast. We weren't trying togrow it, it wasn't one of our
key goals. But now I think themore we're talking to people

(07:42):
about growing, we need to berunning these experiments
ourselves, and then reportingback. So this one one was our
first experiment, and it washighly successful.

Kevin (07:51):
One of the things that we track with Buzzsprout, because
it is a software as a serviceproduct, so people pay monthly
for it. One of the statisticsthat's very important to our
business is churn. So how manypeople are paying you this
month? How many people arepaying you next month, and you
take out any new people whosigned up? So let's say you have
100 customers in January, don'tworry about any new customers

(08:13):
that come take them out of theequation, but in February, you
have 98? Well, in that case,your churn rate would be 2%. So
you lost 2% of your customers.
And I wonder if there's is asimilar metric that you could
track for podcasts listening, orif you can try to figure it out
just from looking at your stats.
So last week, we had maybe 1000,maybe 500, maybe 100 people who
listened to Buzzcast, for thefirst time ever. How many of

(08:35):
them are going to come back andlisten to this episode? And that
would that would give you a goodindication of the quality of
your show? Or the people thatyou're targeting with your
marketing? Are they the rightpeople? So are they listening?
Are they subscribing? Are theycoming back? I'm interested in
figuring out how we can maybeget a pulse on some of those
numbers.

Jordan (08:51):
It would be a lot easier wouldn't it, if we had the
ability to see our subscribersor followers across all the
platforms. I know that that'snot possible. But I think that
that would be a really goodmetric to to see how many
subscribers we had gotten.

Alban (09:05):
I love the idea of thinking about podcasts has with
churn like what is the amountthat you're adding? How long do
they stick around? And do youever do anything that's so far
off brand that you actually kindof alienate the people have been
listening for a long time. Andthe best way I can do this is by
looking at Apple podcastsconnect. So I just logged into
our account and under their newfollowers, which is the people

(09:29):
who are clicking that plusbutton and are following the
podcast, you can actually seeday by day, how many you gained
and how many lost. So we can seeNovember 21st to 27th. We gained
three but we lost eight

Jordan (09:43):
Ouch.

Alban (09:44):
So there was a big there was a big downer. But then when
we promoted the podcast, wegained 36 and we lost sit Whoa.
So we have a net of plus 30. SoI'm looking at this 36 gained in
that period and then going overto our Buzzsprout stats at Apple
podcast conveniently, is 36% ofour place. So assuming that the

(10:08):
apple podcast listeners are, youknow, similar to everybody else,
which they are, that means weprobably gained about 100
listeners from that email, youknow, people who actually follow
the podcast.

Kevin (10:19):
Yeah, followers, I think is what you call them maybe?

Alban (10:21):
Yeah, followers, and we lost maybe, I don't know, we
probably lost 30 across all ofthe apps. So there's a
significant amount of churn. I'ma little surprised. It'd be fun
to a track this number over timeto see what percent people stick
around and what percent ofpeople stay engaged?

Kevin (10:38):
Yeah. How often do you guys unfollow podcast?

Alban (10:40):
Oh, all the time.

Kevin (10:41):
Do you?

Jordan (10:41):
Oh, really? I almost never do. I've got podcasts
sitting in my library that, youknow, they haven't produced a
new episode in like two years.
But I don't know. I'm justsubscribed to them in case they
come back, I guess.

Alban (10:54):
So I definitely have those the like, you're kind of
holding out hope that thisdormant podcast will come back.
And you would love for them tobe there. So I have those. But I
don't like this feeling ofsubscribing to so many things,
and not listening to them. And Idon't like that feeling of like
building up all this, likeshould I should listen to all
this. And so regularly, I justlike delete everything. And then

(11:18):
I just re subscribe to the onesthat I want to listen to. So
kind of clean house.

Jordan (11:22):
Now that I think about it. There are some podcasts I do
unfollow. And they're usuallynetwork podcasts that maybe the
show is on a hiatus or it gotcancelled, because Spotify or
whatever. But they still havethat feed open. But what they're
doing is they're just constantlypromoting other shows doing feed
drops. So I get excited becauseI'm like, Oh, this podcast got a

(11:44):
new episode. And then it's justa feed drop for another show
that I'm not interested in. Andthat's all they ever post is
feed drops. So I have unfollowedshows like that.

Kevin (11:53):
I'm kind of in the middle, I probably add new shows
into my podcast listening app.
Maybe every week or two. I'lladd a new show here or there.
It's more rare that I go throughand clean out. So over the past
couple months, my new way oflistening to podcast episodes
is, Castamatic has, it's likekind of the default listing on
your episodes, where it justshows the newest episodes on
top, like doesn't matter whichpodcast it's from just newest

(12:14):
episodes on top, and it goesdown from there. And I found out
there's a way in overcast to dothat as well. And so regardless
of which app I'm in, I can useshows that way. And so now it
doesn't bother me as much tohave shows that I'm not
listening to as often as I usedto like there are some shows
that I wouldn't be sure tolisten to every week now I
don't. But I still see when theepisode comes in. And I kind of

(12:35):
you know, kind of pick andchoose as I'm going down like
what do I feel like listening totoday? So do I feel like comedy?
Do I want to hear tech news? DoI want to hear podcasts about
podcasting? Do I want to hear,you know, True Crime
storytelling stuff. And that'sbeen great. But what I find is
that I'm now following a lotmore podcasts. And I'm not
listening to every episode fromevery podcast I follow. I'm
really hopping around a lot. AndI don't know how normal that is.

(12:57):
The only thing I can compare itto was like back in the day when
I used to watch a lot oftelevision, I used to always
want to see every episode of myfavorite TV shows, I wouldn't
just like grab an episode hereand then grab an episode from
another show over there. I wouldwant to watch them all. But I
only had four or five shows thatI was really into. And it seems
like for podcasting, at leastfor me, it's changing. Now
there's so many good podcasts,very few of them are serialized.

(13:19):
And so you can just jump in andjust listen to a great episode
of whatever. They all stand ontheir own. But I think the
drawback is I feel like a littlebit less connected to certain
podcasts that I love. I feltbad. I was on Twitter the other
day and somebody one of thepodcasters was tweeting
something and somebody wroteback like, Don't you listen to
the episodes. I listen to mostof them, but not all of them.

Alban (13:41):
I remember in law school, I had a roommate who the way he
watched movies was he would justfast forward any part that was
boring. And it was likesacrilege to me. I couldn't
handle it. He just be it's notmovies that even I was
interested in. He'd be watchinglike some kung fu movie. And
he'd be like boring, boring,boring. Here we go. Here's the

(14:01):
fight scene. And I'm like, Thisis how you're watching this
movie. I'm like you've reallydidn't you can't ever watch it.
He's like, Alban, there'smillions of movies. I'm never
gonna run out. And if there'ssomething boring, I'm skipping
ahead.

Kevin (14:14):
Yeah, I totally do that.
Did you guys watch Handmaid'sTale? No, oh, I skipped it so
much of that.

Alban (14:21):
Were you skipping it because it was boring or because
it was like traumatic content.

Kevin (14:25):
Well, it's like the overall storyline is really
interesting. But there's it'sjust every episode is like you
could skip 30 minutes of it andstill be tracking along just
fine.

Alban (14:34):
I listened to a really good episode of the Decoder
today. And they were talkingabout Disney and Disney Plus and
Disney getting a new CEO ortheir old CEO back again. Yeah,
one of the things that theytalked about was a lot of
streaming services intentionallystretch out shows. And so
something that has like they'relike this is the content would

(14:54):
have been like six episodes onHBO. We're stretching it out to
12. And so we Keep people likewatching and engaged even longer
and how that's kind of a moresome that happens on streaming.
So maybe that's a maybe that's alittle bit of what you're
experiencing. Kevin, you werejust identifying like, Okay,
this could have been edited.

Kevin (15:13):
Yeah, it's kind of like a new superpower. When you used to
watch stuff on network TV allthe time, you didn't have that
superpower. I mean, I guess asDVR started to come on the
scene, you started to get it alittle bit. But TV is also more
social, there's a good chancethat when you're watching a TV
show, you're watching it withsomebody else. So you don't get
to just like give in to yourdesires. Like this is boring me,
I'm gonna go fast. Well, there'ssomebody sitting next to you,

(15:34):
and they might not be bored. Butwhen you're listening to a
podcast, or if you're justsitting on your phone, watching
a streaming show or somethinglike that, you get to do exactly
what you want. This part'sboring me. I'm going fast
through it. This part was reallycool. I'm gonna go watch it
again. So yeah, listeninghabits, and viewing habits. And
all that stuff is certainlydifferent now with the way that
we're consuming stuff.

Jordan (15:53):
Yeah, we get to be a lot more choosy about the things,
and I guess that's kind of alesson in, you know, what we
were talking about how the titleand the description are so
important now, because withthings being just kind of like
episodic, you know, people canjust like go through and be
like, Meh, boring, boring,boring. Oh, that one's
interesting. I guess I'll listento that. And so it is really

(16:13):
important to make sure that youcatch listeners attention right
away.

Kevin (16:17):
Yeah, and I think a lot of podcasters don't like the
idea of doing chapter markers.
Because of this, the idea that,hey, if I'm creating a show for
somebody, then I want them tolisten to it exactly how I
intended it. You know, start atthe beginning, listen to the
end, some podcasters don't evenlike the 1.25 or 1.5x, or they
just want you to listen at 1x.
This is my art form. You need toconsume it the way I intended it

(16:39):
to be consumed.

Alban (16:40):
Yeah, this is the criteria and collection of for
podcasts. That is a hundredpercent how I listen, by the
way, Kevin, I listened almostevery episode, 1x, straight
through. And for somebody whoworks in podcasting, I listened
to a very few number of shows.
But I think I'm much more of acompletionist than you are. I
think that's always the way Iapproach media. But then it
means you don't experiment asmuch. Or if you want to, there's

(17:04):
a pretty big investment.

Kevin (17:07):
Well, I do this in books, too. So it's not just just not
audio visual stuff. It's alsobooks.

Jordan (17:11):
Are you one of those people that like skips pages
like skips chapters?

Kevin (17:15):
100% 100%. Yeah. I'm like reading a chapter. And then I'll
like skip to the end of thechapter. I'm like, where's this
going? I figured that's whereit's going. Alright, moving on.

Jordan (17:26):
Oh, my gosh. I tried doing that with my daughter for
that time. One time, I was justtired. I didn't want to read a
book. And I did that thing whereyou just like kind of secretly
grab like three pages and turnit. She was four. And she still
was like, Oh, Mom, you miss somepages. And she goes back. Like,
oh, thank you.
Oh, good. Good job.

(17:48):
Oh, wow. Yeah, you're right. I'mso silly.
IMDB has added music videos andpodcasts to the IMDB website.
And so now they have the abilityto label people as podcasters or
musical artists. It's not justyou know, writers, movie stars,

(18:11):
things like that. Now podcasterscan have an IMDB page, which is
very cool. I mean, that was justkind of like the standard. I you
know, I knew a lot of peoplethat did commercials or TV shows
and things like that. And it wasalways like so cool when they
had their IMDB page. Now I canfinally get mine.

Alban (18:28):
No, no, in fact, my wife has an IMDB I just pulled it up
to make sure it was still there.
She was, I think an extra Oh, aproduction intern and an extra
in a 2008 film called a gothictale. I've never watched this
movie and I'm pretty sure she'sjust walking in the background.
But yeah, she has the IMDB sonow if podcasters are allowed

(18:48):
that No, I can do it as well.

Jordan (18:52):
I did look and see and for whatever reason Buzzcast
isn't on IMDb. I don't know howto add it. So I got to figure
that out.

Kevin (19:00):
I think when the process of getting your podcast listed
on IMDb came out I think acouple of us looked at it and it
was like it was reallyintensive. The forms were
ridiculous and so I just don'tthink we thought it was worth
it.

Jordan (19:11):
That's so strange because I looked in my personal
podcast is on there but I didn'tsubmit it. I actually didn't
even know it was on there.

Kevin (19:18):
Yeah, see, you a fan base that does work for you.

Jordan (19:21):
They need to add a good photo of me though. There's just
like a faceless avatar on mything. It says Star: Jordan
Blair, which is so cool, butthere's no photo. I need
somebody to go find a flatteringphoto of me on the internet and
plug it in there.

Kevin (19:36):
That's probably not something you want to ask people
to do.

Alban (19:42):
It's interesting that they just launched this after
Podchaser was acquired. I mean,Podchaser pretty much was I
don't know if they ever saidthis like publicly but they were
being the IMDB for podcasts youknow the internet podcast
database I P dB. And they weredoing a really good job of it.
And it was interesting for solong I figured like the most

(20:03):
logical company to try toacquire them would have been
Amazon and IMDb would roll podchaser in. And it was
interesting to see them end upwith a cast instead. So maybe
that's why IMDb is kind ofstarting to try to launch this.
Now they realize they missed outon pod chaser, and now they need
to kind of build up theircompeting service.

Jordan (20:23):
Yeah, actually thought of that. That was the first
thing that came to my mind wasoh, no, was this gonna mean for
pod chaser. But I do think podchaser has a lot more features
than IMDb anyway. So it's alittle bit more interactive and
community based than IMDb is, atleast I know of, I guess I don't
spend a lot of time on IMDb.

Alban (20:39):
IMDB feels very similar to another Amazon property, good
reads like there's so much goodinformation on there. But like
when Amazon acquired them, theymust have just fired all the
designers and all the UX peopleout there just like you're no
longer needed. This is a dataproduct. And like it hasn't
changed, it looks exactly thesame. And I don't understand,

(21:03):
there's got to be some goodwrite up or a deep dive into why
this products have not evolved.
But like patches, or just looksso much better is so much more
user friendly. And so it mayactually be a good thing for
them that they get to go andactually make this data usable.
Rather than just being I don'tknow something. It looks like it
came from 2008 and hasn't reallychanged since then.

Jordan (21:23):
I mean, IMDb, they've made a couple updates, just in
recent years. Actually, I thinkthis year, it looks a little bit
more updated. There's just likecleaner lines or using a bit
more of that yellow color. Idon't know, I just noticed that
they've been putting in morelike widget kind of looking
things as opposed to just likeboxes everywhere, if that makes
sense.

Alban (21:42):
Okay, cool. So maybe they did update, maybe they didn't
update for a long time. And thenI just missed out on it. I'm
pulling it up now. And you'reright, it looks better. It's not
good, but it's definitely a lotbetter. So I would like to

Jordan (21:55):
So I guess if you want to update your podcast or
Or maybe he wrote this blog postafter he'd already started
retract my.
profile, again, IMDb Proaccount, and add it yourself.
That's the only way to do it, Iguess. Don't know if you guys
remember this, but Eric Nuzumwrote this piece about "the
poorly documented history ofpodcasting". And in it, he

(22:18):
talked about what he hadgathered from other people about
how podcasting got started. Sobasically, he said that in
October 2000 Dave Winer went tomeet Adam curry in a New York
City hotel room. And before thatmeeting, Adam Curry had written
a blog post about his idea forhow podcasting should work. So

(22:39):
they're saying that, while DaveWiner didn't understand what
Adam was talking about, heactually worked on the code to
develop an RSS feed, and thefeed launched on January 20
2001. So what's interestingabout this is when Adam Curry's
blog posts just recentlyresurfaced, it turns out that
the timestamp on when this waswritten was January 9 2001, at

2 (23:03):
20am. So what's interesting about this is that it did not
take a year like we originallythought for him to write this
RSS feed code. I mean, that'slike, what, like a week, two
weeks baby for him to do that.
Do you think that's accurate?
Oh, that would make sense. Imean, it's kind of interesting

(23:26):
that Eric's Poorly DocumentedHistory of Podcasting. Is this
accurate? Because I cannotremember dates and times from 20
years ago. I don't know aboutyou guys. Like, I could not tell
working with Dave?
you what I was doing in Januaryof 2001. You know, I could not
tell you at all. So this wasfairly accurate. So maybe, yeah,
maybe Adam had written it aftermeeting with Dave Weiner in New

(23:50):
York City.

Kevin (23:50):
Yeah, that's kind of what I'm thinking. Yes. I mean, it's
amazing that they were able tofind that the Wayback Machine is
impressive. It seems like thereason that they weren't able to
find it for such a long time isbecause they were convinced it
was called The Last Mile when itwas actually called the last
yard. Obviously, if we'd knownthe right name of it, we
probably could have found itsooner. But either way
interesting that it came up andfun to go back and read it. I

(24:13):
don't remember reading it backthen. I mean, I was on the
internet and reading lots ofblogs back in 2000. But this one
never came across my newsfeedstream. I can't remember what
news reader I was probably usingat the time. What were the
different RSS readers? There wasNET News net newswire, I think
is what I was probably usingaround the Google Reader became
the big news reader for a fewyears before Google shut it

(24:35):
down.

Alban (24:35):
So for people who haven't read this, I mean, this is the
blog post that kind of kickedoff podcasting. So it's Adam
Curry, who wanted to be doingbroadcast on the Internet. He
wanted to be a broadcaster and Ithink kind of his background
with being on MTV and being a VJand doing radio. He kind of

(24:55):
figured out like you want to bedoing this yourself without all
the restrictions that you yetfrom kind of these more
corporate environments, and itseems that he identified RSS and
some of these, you know, theNapster, he's referencing
Napster in the blog post, someof these technologies is like
these could help us makecontent, put it online, and even

(25:18):
with slow bandwidth, download itto our devices, and then listen
to it on demand. I mean, thatwas one of the interesting
pieces from the blog post islike the talking about, this
doesn't have to be streamed inreal time, bandwidth isn't there
to do that. But what we can dois download and have it ready
for you and alert you when it'sready. And so I think that was

(25:39):
kind of the genius of RSS. Youknow, adapting that for audio is
a really great idea. I lovereading it because there's parts
of it that seem like it's reallyinterested in what looks like
podcasting. There's another bitthat kinda looks like is this is
also about like pirating moviesas well, like, there's a lot of

(25:59):
Napster stuff. If you told methis is a blog post about
building BitTorrent later on, orsomething else for pirating the
pirate, this is the founder ofthe Pirate Bay. And this is what
he was thinking in 2001. I kindof want to believe that as well.
So you could read it differentways. But super interesting just
to go back and read this historyof podcasting. I mean, this is

(26:20):
not very long ago, 21 years ago,there's blog posts going up
about what podcasting could be.
And 21 years later, you know,this is a legitimate type of
media that tons people aremaking their lives and their
livings and their art withpodcasting.

Kevin (26:37):
Yeah, I think it's very interesting that the aha moment,
I think, for Adam, is that thisstuff doesn't need to be
streamed live 20 years ago, 22years ago, there were bandwidth
constraints. There was somepeople had always on bandwidth
like, gosh, what the heck did weeven call them?

Alban (26:56):
T1 connections?

Kevin (26:57):
There was a name that we I don't know, what did people
just say high speed? Do you havehigh speed internet, whatever it
was, as people getting?

Alban (27:03):
Broadband? DSL?

Kevin (27:06):
Now it's just internet.
It's like, do you have internetor like, that's what it is. But
back then it was a thing, rightstarted in the 90s. And by the
2000s, most people had it. Mostpeople had broadband, right? Or
always on internet connections.
But it wasn't super fast. It waspretty reliable, but it wasn't
super fast. And so the idea ofbeing able to download
entertainment stuff movies, oraudio files or anything, he uses

(27:30):
Napster as an example, Napsterwas a big thing back then, even
just to download a song offNapster. And that wasn't even
just coming from one source. Itwas like a multi threaded
connection that was downloadingbits from all different people
could still take 1520 minutesjust to get one song. And so
that sparks his this idea in hishead of what with Napster, I'd
queue up all this stuff that Iwant to download, I can go to
bed, and the next day I wake up,and I sort through it all, I

(27:52):
figured out what was a gooddownload what was a bad download
what was you know, Metallica oranother band trying to mess
around with me and serve up abad song that was named like a
good song. For anybody who livedin the Napster days, you know,
it was part of the fun. And sohe wanted to do that with
podcasts.

Alban (28:07):
The fiun was like accidentally downloading
computer viruses. The peoplethat upload it with a song name?

Kevin (28:13):
Yeah, do you remember when bands would start to do
that to combat the pirating ofmusic is that they would
actually take their own, theywould see their own music out
there. But it would be listen to10 seconds of a song. And then
it would be like one of themusicians being like, "Stop
stealing our music!" and then itwould go back.

Jordan (28:28):
Yeah, my computer barely survived Limewire. So I
remember.

Kevin (28:35):
Anyway, why I think this is super interesting is because
not only is that a magical ideathat set up podcasting to become
what podcasting is today, butalso now we're in this time
where people are getting drawnto this light of life and video.
And it's like podcasting was thesolution to not have to do live,
you know, the arguments that hemakes are that 95% of what you

(28:58):
see on TV is pre recorded,including 80% of the live news
that you watch at six o'clock.
Like even the news, if you thinkabout that you do have an anchor
sitting at desks that is live,but they keep cutting away to
pre recorded bits. And then theyjust come back to themselves.
And they set up the next story.
And they cut away to a prerecorded bit. What podcasting
was solving that podcasting islike since most of the stuff
that we enjoy is highlyproduced. It's edited down. It's

(29:21):
concise. That's really what youwant to listen to something
good. That's all pre recordedstuff. Why do I need to do that
live? Anyway, I just think it'sinteresting now because people
are very drawn to this idea ofdoing live shows. Well, live
shows for most things don't workreally well. It's not going to
be as good. It's not gonna be asentertaining. You have to be
very good at your craft to beable to do it well. Now,

(29:43):
interestingly enough, Adam curryis doing podcasting to no show.
He does the no agenda show. Andhe does those with very little
to no editing at all. And hedoesn't live and they're great.
But he's also an amazing talent.
He is one of those rare birdsthat was born with a gift and
he's worked hard to hone it andcraft But over years and years
and years, and so he can get onand go live for three hours. And
it's an amazing entertainingshow. That's not everybody. And

(30:05):
it's certainly not where westart. So I just think that the
original nugget, the originalmagic that he captured here, in
this blog post is still veryimportant and relevant. And so
even though live is kind ofinteresting, and new and fun, I
think it's gonna be hard forpeople to, I don't know, build
an audience, if you're not aprofessional, if you're not
seasoned if you haven't, youknow, honed your craft three

(30:25):
years of doing pre productionand lots of editing. And then
you get good enough, we'refinally you can do live shows.
That's how I think the path ofprogression needs to take place.

Alban (30:34):
We saw this with Clubhouse, right, the
serendipity of clubhouse, thefun of connecting to people,
especially during the pandemic,when a lot of people were at
home, like the ability tointeract, those were so
exciting. But they wereexciting, because they were
novel. And they're exciting,because we weren't getting that
in our day to day lives. Andthen as soon as like the novelty

(30:56):
wore off, and like the scammerskind of started moving in there
a bunch of like really kind ofweird rooms, then everyone kind
of realized, like, Oh, I'mactually doing this in real
life. Again, I'm going out todinner, and I'm talking to
friends, I don't need to do it.
When people are doing live, youhave to think what is different
about live? What are theadvantages that life has, and
it's like interaction with theaudience. I'm not really sure

(31:18):
what else there is that I'mthinking, I really want to be
live so that I can have it. Youknow, I think, Kevin, I both
used to listen to ATP, whichdoes a live show. But in their
live show, they've got a chatroom going the whole time where
the chat rooms kind ofinteracting with the podcast,
and then they do edit it down toremove all like the dead air.
And you know, the parts thatweren't interesting. I like that

(31:41):
because it's including theinteractive element. But I think
a lot of times people are going,Oh, I'll do it live. And that's
my excuse for not editing, andnot really thinking through like
which of these pieces isvaluable. And which of these
parts are just me rambling withmy friends. I think it's a skill
you have to hone is a skill thatJordan has that I do not. And I

(32:02):
think is what people need to beconsidering whether we're doing
podcasts, because if you ever goto live, you need to start being
able to do that on the fly, likeyou're coming up with good
content, but you're also in theback of your brain going. Yeah,
this segments kind of dull timeto move on, I need to direct the
conversation elsewhere.

Jordan (32:21):
I think another thing that has made live audio, live
video, live performances, liveproductions, whatever, not as
successful as podcasting asbeing like a pre recorded thing
is I think it goes directlyagainst what Adam is proposing
in this thought piece. You know,he's saying like, I want the
media, but I want it on myterms, I want it when I have

(32:44):
time to consume it, if you aredoing live entertainment, but
you're not posting it later forpeople to enjoy on their own
terms, or making it easy forpeople to access on their own
terms when they're ready to,then that also can be a recipe
for disaster. And you're notgoing to have a lot of people
tuning in, you know, wheneveryou decide you're going live. At

(33:06):
the end of this piece. He saysevery business needs customers,
and you get customers by solvinga problem for them. enough
customers makes an industry andit kind of gave me goosebumps a
little bit because it was himsaying no, this is viable. This
is important. And this can be anindustry all its own, and it
totally has come to fruition.
And that was really, really coolfor me to see that.

Kevin (33:29):
Yeah, I I loved now I'm assuming maybe he was writing at
2am. I don't know if that waslike local time. But I love the
fact that this is like such ahistorical document for
podcasting. And it's chock fullof typos and spelling errors.
And it's great stuff. Because,you know, like the perfectionist

(33:49):
type one Enneagram one in me islike, it can't be like this, you
can't just spit ball off a bunchof ideas and not have somebody
edit it not have it proved andthrow it out and expect to make
any difference in the world. Andyet, here is the exact counter
example. And I love it that it'snot about perfection in like
sentence structure. It's notabout grammar. It's not about

(34:10):
spelling or typos. It's aboutthe idea. And just getting the
idea out there and getting it infront of enough people who can
see the magic behind the ideaand then do something with it.
He probably had no idea at thetime, how revolutionary what
this was going to turn into. Butjust think if he just sat around
and said, you know, like, Ican't hit publish on this yet
because I'm not sure I capturedmy thoughts perfectly or I
haven't had an editor do it.
Maybe it would have never goneout at all because maybe

(34:32):
insecurity would have stifledthe idea or I think it's cool,
but is anybody else gonna thinkit's great or whatever
innovation and genius requirescourage and Adam displayed a ton
of courage back in 2001 when hehit publish and we thank him for
it because we wouldn't have thejobs we do today or enjoy the
podcasting industry as we dothing unless he was brave enough
to put his idea out there.

Alban (34:52):
A lot of stuff going on with Samsung these last few
months. Y'all want to talk aboutthis for a second?

Jordan (35:01):
Yeah, it first came to my attention in the Facebook
community group, there was thispodcaster who posted saying,
Okay, this is not like abragging post, but my episodes
normally get like 100 to 200downloads, and I just had an
episode gets 17,000 downloads.
You know, they were saying, Idon't know what happened. I
don't know what's causing this.

(35:23):
And that's kind of what led usto go, something's off
something's not right. Asexciting as it is.

Alban (35:30):
Yeah, back in September, I was seeing these like Twitter
posts where people were like, myepisodes are blowing up on
Samsung, does anybody elseseeing this? And none of them
were on Buzzsprout. And I waslike, highly skeptical of it.
And then someone we're friendlywith one of our competitors
reached out, they're like, Iactually talked to Samsung. And
they said, all these arepodcasts that they featured. And

(35:50):
I'm like, wow, that's reallyincredible. That sounds legit.
And so we wrote and published aguide on how to submit your
podcast to Samsung podcasts. Andwe were excited that people on
Buzzsprout started seeing theseincredible download numbers. At
some point, they were soincredible, they start actually
taking the literal meaning ofthat word, they are no longer

(36:11):
credible. That's when likeJordans talking about 70,000
downloads for a podcast thatregularly got 100. When we dug
into it, it's this bug thatKevin, I'm sure you remember
this, we saw this back with likeIEA, there used to be a bug that
anytime you had a Buzzsproutembed player, ie eight really
wanted Internet Explorer eight,this is a ancient web technology

(36:34):
used to download the audio fileas soon as you got to the page.
So if you went to, you know,cnn.com, and they had a
Buzzsprout player on there,well, it would automatically
download the episode right then.
And it seems like this isexactly what Samsung was doing
through like, well, these arebeing featured. And so people
are probably going to click onthem since they're featured. So
we're just going to autodownload all of these episodes

(36:57):
to people's devices, whetherthey listen or not. And so it
will lead to these trulyastronomical download numbers,
but very low conversion rate,I'm sure to actual place.

Kevin (37:11):
Yeah, I don't know if they were downloading entire
episodes, but they weredownloading enough for it to
count as an IRB certified play.
So at least more than a minuteof the audio was being
downloaded. I don't know how tocall it a bug, ie thing was
definitely a bug. Sinceembedding has been a thing
you've been able to toggle preloading on or off. And so for
podcasting, you want pre loadingto be off so that it doesn't
register a play before the useractually clicks the play button,

(37:33):
right? That's when we want tokind of play and an eighth,
there was a bug where even ifyou had pre loading toggle off,
it was still pre loading. And sothat legit bug has since been
solved. This one might be moreof like, oh, we think this is a
good idea. And turns out, it'swhile maybe a good idea, really
messes up podcast that's soneeded to be changed. And it
sounds like Samsung has sincemade a change. I don't know if

(37:56):
they've deployed it to everyoneyet or not, not my department.
But it is something that we'vehad to handle. On the technical
side, we did have to update ourstatistics to make sure that
those plays coming from Samsungfrom this pretty generic user
agent. We're not being counted.
And the challenge with that islike how do you block since
they're not using a specificuser agent, you end up blocking

(38:16):
more traffic than you intend to.
So sometimes the cure is thebest solution. But it's it does
have side effects. So somelegitimate plays, were not being
registered by our sets,counters. Like other podcast
listening apps, like PodcastAddict was looking very similar
the way that the stats came in.
And so some Podcast Addictplays, we're not being
registered. It's just stuff youdeal with, when you're a podcast
host trying to give you give ourcustomers the most accurate

(38:38):
stats that we can get, it surewould be a lot easier if these
podcast listening apps wouldcorrectly registered their user
agents. So now the possibilityexists on both iOS and Android
to correctly identify your app.
And yet still, a lot of theseapps have not updated to do so.
And if they would, then when oneof them has a problem, we could
clearly identify that one appand deal with it with them only

(38:58):
without impacting anybody else.

Alban (39:01):
It's like, wear a nametag when you're requesting the audio
files. Let us know who you are,wear the name tag. And if you're
wearing a generic name tag, orthe name that everybody else
uses, it's much harder toidentify or if you do identify
it, and you have to make a ruleto block it or not registered
place or do something tomitigate the ill effects. You do

(39:22):
end up with, sorry, the onlysolution is all Bob's are banned
from the conference center. Solike, we're like, hey, but last
names would be good too. So wecould stop banning all the poor
extra Bobs that are not causingproblems.

Kevin (39:37):
I mean, that's the thing like Podcast Addict got caught
up in this. They didn't doanything wrong. They didn't have
any code that was pre loadinganything and yet they didn't
properly identify themselves. Soyou're the analogy is great that
they are just coming into theconference wearing a nametag
called Bob and there's one Bob,one time, did something wrong so
now all Bob's are banned inPodcast Addict. You just want to
tell us who you really werewouldn't have been caught up in

(39:59):
it.

Alban (40:00):
We're looking forward to getting this sorted. It sounds
like Samsung has solved theproblem on their end. And so
soon as we verified that whichmight even be by the time this
is released, then we'll be ableto update all the stats on the
Buzzsprout side, and everythingwill show up normally for you,
because we want to make surethat the stats that you're
getting in your Buzzsproutaccount, our job is to make sure
those are the most accuratestats on the web, we'll be

(40:21):
working with them, man witheverybody else. And all these
are agents and we'll be doingour best to figure out what's
legit. And what's a bot and makesure that we're showing you the

Jordan (40:30):
So for a lot of podcasters host-read ads are the
right stuff.
way to go if you have asponsorship. And a lot of those
involve talking about theproduct like you have used it or
like you know somebody who hasused it. And given kind of
personal experience, a lot ofsponsors ask for you to give
personal experience. And it'simportant to make sure that you

(40:52):
actually have personalexperience. And so Google and
iHeartMedia, they are being suedby the FTC for airing nearly
29,000 endorsements by radiopersonalities on iHeart
promoting their use of theGoogle Pixel for phone in 2019
and 2020. And what happened isGoogle bought these ads, these

(41:15):
endorsements from iHeart. Andthey insisted that the radio
personalities user script andgive a personal spin of their
experience. And Google said thatgiving the phones to I heart for
the radio personalities wasn'tfeasible in 2019, because the
phones weren't even out yet.
They weren't on the shelves. Sothe radio personalities couldn't

(41:35):
have the phones because they'renot out. And so I heart kind of
pushed back on this, but woundup running those ads anyway. And
then in 2020, Google came backdiehard asking for them to run
ads again. And I heart said no,we're not going to run them
unless you give us phones. Andso Google was like fine, and
then gave them five phones and Iheart wound up running the ads.

Kevin (41:59):
That script they provided them was amazing. Can you read
it to us, Kevin? Yeah, I lovetaking perfect photos. Taking
imperfect photo night is superhard, yada yada, yada. I've been
taking studio like photos withmy phone of everything like my
son's football game, a meteorshower, a rare spotted owl that
landed in my backyard.

Unknown (42:16):
I've been taking studio like photos of everything my dog
chance the Chicago skyline frommy balcony. My daughter's
checking out the full moon maybedoing some night skiing. And
look, I'm a musician. Most ofthe shows I do there at night
our new baby smiling in hersleep. Even some of that crazy
meteor shower. I mean, if youdon't have pics, did it even
really happen? My friendshanging out in a dark bar. You

Kevin (42:36):
Pics, or it didn't happen? Am I right? That was the
know, pics, or it didn't happen,right?
I think that's exactly whathappened. The FTC was listening
script they wanted these peopleto read. Think about the
crossover. If you listened tosomebody say that on one
podcast, and then you listenedand heard it on somebody else's
podcast. You're like, why arethese these rare spotted owls
are all over the place.

(42:59):
to a bunch of podcasts and like,man, so many kids are playing
football and catching these rarespotted owls. Which meteor
shower was that? Wait, therewasn't a meteor shower in the
last two months? Wait a second,we need to investigate.
Yeah, I need to Google and Ineed to write a little bit more
generic strips. They don't wantto get busted.

Alban (43:22):
It was already unethical to lie and say I have personal
experience with this product.
And I think it's great. And Ihave kids. And this photo is
amazing because it's on theGoogle Pixel four phone that was
already unethical before. Butthe penalty $9.4 million for
29,000 deceptive endorsements, agrand total of what $325 An

(43:44):
endorsement. That's not really apenalty. That's a like, Ah, you
really shouldn't have done that.
Don't do it again. And nowthey're barred from doing these
types of endorsements in thefuture? Okay.

Kevin (43:59):
It says they're, they're barred from misrepresenting
endorsers experiences weren'twasn't everyone always barred
from that anyway? Come on. Thisis This is pathetic. This is
pathetic. It's a terrible thingto do. And then the penalty was
insanely low. I mean, you'retalking about Google and iHeart
$9.4 million. Like there's noreason for them to not continue
to try to do stuff like this.
It's I don't know what's lighterthan a slap on the wrist like a

(44:22):
flick of the year like it'sactually worse. Yeah, there is
nothing Okay, so it is a slap onthe wrist. There's nothing less
painful than a slap on thewrist. That's what this is.

Alban (44:33):
There's got to be more.
Am, am I just miss reading this,Jordan? Or is it literally like
they're like, one of theirpunishments is, you definitely
can't break this rule. I mean,the guy robbed a bank. They're
like, alright, you know what,every time you robbed a bank,
you got to give us $5,000 Andyou can never rob another bank.
It's like all US proved wascrime pays baby, go for it again

(44:55):
because the punishment has to belaw. urge enough that there's
actually a deterrent. And thisdoesn't look like a deterrent at
all. This is one time that theydid it. They got busted. Who
knows how often I heart, Google,Apple and 1000s and 1000s. And
1000s of other groups aretotally misrepresenting whether

(45:15):
or not they're paid forsomething or whether or not they
actually have experience with aproduct. How often are we
getting lied to without any sortof FTC disclosure? And the one
time someone gets busted, it'sreally pretty light. I mean,
it's a slap on the wrist. LikeKevin said, Yeah,

Kevin (45:35):
I like I heart though, trying to be like, Hey, we asked
them to send us the phones. Yes,we act like we didn't do
anything wrong. But wait, theydidn't send you the phones,
right. Yeah. But we asked them,so we're in the clear, we're
totally fine. We asked them, andthen they asked us to do it
again. And we said now youreally got to send us the phones
this time. So they sent themfive for 50 radio personalities.

(45:55):
Yeah, for 50 personnel.
Unbelievable.

Jordan (45:58):
It reminds me of that guy who I don't know if you
heard about this, he got one ofthose devices in his car that
emergency vehicles used tochange all the lights to green.
And did you guys hear aboutthis? No, no. Okay. So there's
this guy, he gets one of thosehis hands on one of those
devices. And the city startednoticing that the traffic lights

(46:19):
were just all wonky for like ayear. And then they finally
tracked it down that this guywas just changing the red lights
to green and just going right onthrough and so they finally
tracked it to him. They find him$500 And he said, Well, I only
paid $500 to have green lightsfor an entire year. So yeah, I'm
probably gonna keep doing it.

Kevin (46:39):
Exactly. Did you get subscribed to a red light turned
green servers for $5 a year? Alot of people would pay for
that.

Jordan (46:45):
Oh, yeah, absolutely.

Alban (46:47):
This reminds me there is a I think this is an old
Freakonomics episode. Or maybeit's from the Freakonomics
books, there's a daycare thatrealized they had a problem with
parents showing up late to pickup their kids, as they're like,
alright, new rule, if you showup more than five minutes late,
it's a $5. Fine. And what theyrealized was the amount of

(47:07):
parents showing up late went wayup, because all of a sudden, the
parents went, Oh, I don't haveto feel guilty, because I'm
paying for this. And so theguilt has been relieved. And
yet, the $5 is really not thatbig of a deal. So now that I
have other you know, I've gotanother errand to run, I'll just
run that one first, then I'llpick up my kid better for me. If
you make these penalties so low,there's a point at which it's so

(47:32):
low that people go oh, so weactually should do that. You're
encouraging the bad behavior?
Yeah, this seems like it's veryclose. And it's probably within
the realm of, yeah, just goahead and keep doing it, guys.
You know, you get busted one outof every 50 times you do it, and
you only get charged $325 perinstance. Don't worry about it.
Just keep going.

Jordan (47:52):
Yeah, I mean, and I get that, I think for me, I was
viewing it through the lens ofan independent podcaster. Who
does run sponsorships? Who doestalk about personal experiences,
because that's what sponsors askfor a lot. And I've noticed that
in my ad copies that I'mreceiving from my sponsors,
they're including language thatis just in big bold letters,

(48:15):
like do not imply that you haveused this product, if you have
not, you know, you have to dothese mandatory disclosures, and
they're really cracking down onthat. And I know that for big
companies, you know, it's not abig deal. If you have to pay 300
and something dollars for mepersonally, if I had to pay 300
and something dollars formessing up on an ad read and

(48:37):
where I said I use something,but maybe I hadn't used it, or
you know, something like that,like that would be horrendously
bad for an independent podcasterwho doesn't have that kind of
money?

Alban (48:47):
I'd say like, the ethical reason is enough for me, so
don't do this. Anyone who'sworried about it, I would say
I'm not really too worriedyou're gonna get busted by the
FTC as an individual podcasterimplying you use something you
didn't. But it's wrong. So don'tdo it. I just think like, it's
some point, they've actuallylike removed the ethical

(49:07):
requirement. Like if you're Iheart, you already were okay
with this being shady in thisinstance, not actually the first
time we've seen it from myheart. They're okay with doing
this shady thing, not the firsttime actually from Google that
we've seen this. So I feel likeat that point, you just got to
like really bring down thehammer. And this was not the
hammer. This was a little slapon the wrist. But if you're a

(49:28):
podcaster, like, just don't lie.
These are your people. Thesethis is your audience. These are
the people who trust you. Andthey're going to buy Blue Apron,
because you said you built madeBlue Apron with your kids. And
it was a nice experience. If youdidn't just say blue apron is
and then read the ad read youare free to do that. But don't
imply you used it unless youused it, then your endorsement
will eventually mean nothing,because your word means nothing.

Jordan (49:53):
The host read ad reads the entire point of it is to
give personal experience andthey want you to edit the
scripts a little bit but I thinkthat a lot of probably newer
podcasters, maybe podcasters,that are just starting out with
sponsors are scared to ask forproduct samples. I don't know
what it is, it's almost like youfeel like they're giving you
money for an ad read, you feelso grateful for that. And you

(50:15):
feel like it's going to beoverstepping to ask for product
samples. Always, always, alwaysask for product samples if you
have not used it. And then thatway, the ad read is actually
more effective to because youare giving the personal
experience and then you're alsonot getting in trouble with the
FTC. So it's one of those thingswhere if somebody is sponsoring

(50:37):
you, even if you don't have thescript yet, ask for a product
sample before that, so that youcan try it out. There's nothing
wrong with that. And brandsreally expect to send samples to
the people that they'responsoring. Did you guys know
that the New York Times has aresearch and development
department that publishes guidesfor journalism?

Alban (50:59):
I did not know that. But I noticed the subdomain when you
link to the story.

Jordan (51:04):
Yeah, it reminds me of I had found that NPR has that
training to which I didn't knowthey have a training guide to
like audio journalism andproduction and stuff like that,
which is awesome. So it's reallycool that New York Times also
has something similar. So theyhave a research and development
team. They say they explore howemergent technologies can be

(51:25):
applied in the service ofjournalism. And they actually
published a guide recently oncreating spatial audio podcasts.
And I don't know if you guyshave ever heard of spatial audio
podcasts or are familiar withthat?

Alban (51:38):
Yes, spatial audio is when you record in a way that
when you listen back, especiallywe have to be using headphones
with stereo that it appears likesome sounds are coming not just
out of the right or left ear,but some are like way far ahead
in front of you. Some things areall around you, something moves
behind you. It actually feelslike the audio experiences that

(52:01):
you're actually there andthere's stuff around you
happening.

Jordan (52:04):
Yeah. And it's really cool. There's actually Aaron
Mehnke produced a podcast calledBridgewater. And I think it was
one of the first podcasts thathad the 360 audio, they use the
Dolby Atmos so that when youlisten to it with headphones, it
feels like things are just allaround you. It's like actual
surround sound. This study isactually like a little bit
different, because there'sdifferent ways that you can have

(52:26):
spatial audio, and you canrecord spatial audio. And what
they're experimenting with rightnow is actually like audio
moving through space. And thisis so fascinating. So I played
with it, they actually have asample from the daily, they
recommend listening to it, likewith your phone, or with certain

(52:47):
headphones that reactaccordingly to it, you can
actually move your body inspace, and it changes the audio
that you're listening to. So ifI turn my head one way, I can
hear something a little bitdifferent. Or if I go down a
little bit lower, I can be likecloser to the water that is
recorded in it.

Alban (53:04):
So I've run into this good ways and bad I've
experienced it. And this isyears ago. And first spatial
audio is just starting out, itwas like this audio recording,
there's supposed to be like, ofsomeone giving you a haircut,
and they're talking to you andthey're walking around in like
you're hearing snipping neareach year. And it was a very
cool experience. It was like thefirst time I'd ever heard

(53:24):
something like that. And it wastotally immersive. And then
Apple added it to all of the airpod pros. And my experience
mostly has been I'm listening tosomething, and I turned my head
to reach over across my desk andI'm like, Oh, my headphones
broke. Why is it sound onlycoming out of the left ear. And
it's because I turned to theright and now the right years
away from the computer. Thatdoesn't make any sense to me to

(53:49):
be honest, like if the audio isin relation to a story that's
being recorded. So QCode doesall of their shows with Dolby
Atmos, and this is how they'verecorded all the audio, I
believe. So it makes sense whenlike you're hearing all the
different sounds of the storyaround you. But for it to be in
relationship to the computerthat's in your home kind of like

(54:11):
breaks the metaphor, right?

Kevin (54:13):
I totally agree. I was listening to one of these
podcasts doing spatial audio.
And when I first started, it wasgreat. I was walking the dog and
going down the street straightand I would turn my head left
and it would sound a lotdifferent to my head, right? It
would sound look different. I'mlike, oh, it's pretty neat. We
get up to the end of the blockand we take it left. And now I'm
walking left. And I'm like nowthis sounds weird. No, like the
audio just changed because Iturned to walk a different
direction on the block. And thenlike I got like 20 steps down

(54:34):
and then it like kind ofrecenter itself. And then I'm
walking a little bit more and Iturn on the other corner of the
block and it changes again. I'mlike this is totally bizarre. It
was actually taking me out ofwhat I was listening to because
I was just thinking more abouthow it sounded than what they
were saying. And so I mean greatthat it's an r&d lab and one day
it might be really cool, but Ialso kind of put this in the
category of like funexperimentation. Not sure it's

(54:56):
ready for primetime yet theimmersive experience inside of
it, like you go into a reallyhigh end movie theater, and you
can hear like whateverwaterfalls behind you and birds
flying around and stuff likethat stuff is fantastic. But the
stuff where you're actuallymoving your head, and then it's
changing the sound, I'm stillfinding a little bit too
distracting, like, not quitenatural yet.

Jordan (55:17):
I also prefer the audio where you're staying put, but
like the audio is moving aroundyou as opposed to you moving
around the audio. When I wasmessing with this, I was walking
around my office like an OompaLoompa. Like just doing like
doot, doot, doot doot, likemessing with

Alban (55:31):
moving up and down.

Jordan (55:33):
I probably looked like a crazy person, because I was just
playing with them like this iskind of cool. And just knowing

Alban (55:39):
that it's like, what are you doing? You're like, I'm
trying to hear the Evergladesbetter.

Jordan (55:43):
Exactly what happened.
So, I don't know. It's it'sinteresting. I mean, it is
they're presenting it as anexperiment. And I kind of feel
like this might be more usefulfor VR experiences, as opposed
to like listening to podcastingor audio journalism or something
like that.

Alban (56:00):
That's exactly what I was thinking. So your head is in a
fixed position, don't reallyimagine like the head moving
changes the audio, but the audiois mixed in a way that it's
presented from all around you. Ithink that any fiction podcasts,
any audio dramas, I can see howthat makes sense for anything
highly produced, like the dailythat wants to have a little bit

(56:22):
more of an immersive experiencewith like audio beds and stuff
and sound effects, I can see alittle bit of a value there, the
like, turn your head and hearsomething different. The only
two ways I can see that beingvaluable for me, are like, this
is one of these audios that'slike hey, solve the crime or
something, solve the mystery.
And so maybe you need to listento like, different parts of
conversations to get the clue.

Jordan (56:46):
Oh, that's clever

Alban (56:48):
I was stretching.

Jordan (56:49):
No, I love it. I'm in.

Alban (56:51):
So solve the crime and VR, I think VR, it makes perfect
sense. Because if you're playinga video game, and you move to
the left to avoid something likethe Audio should change then,
and so I could see it beingvaluable there. So it's good to
see it's coming out. I don'tthink it's it like it's not 3d

(57:12):
movies level where it's like,this will never be a thing, even
though they're trying to make ita thing, I think this is
actually going to be a thing, Ijust don't think it's 100% of
thing yet, since the use casesare still a little bit off.
Because I think VR is gonna bethe really big one for a lot of
these.

Jordan (57:27):
I mean, the other part of it that is not quite as
accessible for the everydaypodcaster. I mean, they do
publish sections on how tocreate the spatial audio how to
produce it, which was actually areally fascinating read my brain
fried a little bit trying tounderstand the science of it.
But besides that these files forspatial audio are massive, and

(57:52):
pretty much any podcast hostthat you go with is not going to
support these huge files. Soit's not super accessible for
just the everyday podcaster. Atthis point, it's interesting,
but I don't think it's verypractical.

Kevin (58:06):
Yeah, the tools are gonna have to catch up, right? Because
right now you're editing audio,kind of linearly, like on a on a
timeline. And if you wantcertain background tracks to
sound differently, like you'regoing to have to visualize that
in a different way, you're gonnahave to have different controls
to be able to move that audioaround. Right now you can pan
from left to right, but it'shard to move something behind or
in front, and then figure outlike, as the person's moves,

(58:29):
their body moves their head, howdo you want the sound to change?
Those tools are they're just notconsumer ready tools to be able
to do that stuff quite yet. Andas Jordan said, the distribution
right now in podcasting to be ascompatible with as many podcasts
listening apps as possible, youneed to publish an mp3 format. I
don't know if any of that stuffworks with mp3. Maybe some of it
does, maybe some of it doesn't.
So as those files come out, andthey become standardized, then

(58:51):
podcast playing apps have toupdate to be able to play them.
So even if we get to the pointwhere having a 500 megabyte
podcast that's only 10 minuteslong is acceptable. Once we get
there, then the questionbecomes, well, how many player
apps can actually play that filetype? So it's neat that some
people are experimenting andplaying with it, but it's still
a ways off but cool stuff.

Alban (59:14):
We got our first three star review from TShane. TShane
sounds like you probably arelike oil tycoon. T Shane
Roberts, T. Boone Pickens. TShane Robert says "Quit it with
the Buzzboosts. Seriously. Letit go."

Jordan (59:32):
Wow. Here's the thing.
Those podcast reviews show up toeverybody. You could just write
a message asking us nicely.

Alban (59:42):
You could send it as a Buzzboost.

Jordan (59:44):
If you don't like a segment instead of leaving a bad
review for somebody just becauseof something small like that, I
have painstakingly and lovinglyput in chapter markers in every
single episode for people likeyou if you don't like a segment,
just click the next chapter andmove on to our post show.

Alban (01:00:04):
Well, TShane, you can go ahead and skip ahead if this
isn't your jam. I know noteverybody loves Buzzboosts. So
we have a few solutions. Oneobviously, is Jordans, that you
can skip ahead. But two, wetalked before about having an
alternative way for people toleave us comments and reach out.
Yeah, I created a Twitteraccount for Buzzcast. Like an

(01:00:27):
hour ago, really. Fortunately,the handle Buzzcast was grabbed
by someone back in like 2009.
They've never used it. So we areBuzzcast podcast, it now follows
both of you. And I waswondering, we could just post
like a tweet a single tweet perepisode. And it could be a place
that people could go, we'dalways link it in the show
notes. And they could just dropcomments. And those would be

(01:00:48):
comments that we would pull intothe kind of buzz boost follow up
sections. What do you guys thinkof that like making it a little
bit more accessible? For peoplewho maybe don't want to use one
of the value for value enabledpodcast apps,

Jordan (01:01:03):
I gotta be honest with you, I do have a little bit of
reservation, I looked intosocial media accounts for
Buzzcast. Myself, I did like aquick search. And there's
something that is a little bittroubling that I came across,
there's a company that seems tobe similar to only fans, that is
also called Buzzcast. So when Isearch Buzzcast, on the social

(01:01:27):
media, a lot of provocativethings come up for me.

Alban (01:01:33):
I actually a few months ago, had somebody reach out,
they'd started a new podcastingapp, and they wanted me to look
at it and give them some advice.
And I ended up with the sameapparently there's an adult
entertainer who whose name matchthe same as their podcast app.
And I was like, actually, yourapp is great. And it's doing a
great service. You've got tochange the name, though. You may

(01:01:55):
not be aware, but like this isgoing to be a shocking
experience for anybody who looksyou up on social. So you know,
Kevin, I think you named thepodcast? Are you aware of any of
this stuff out there when youcreated the name? Buzzcast?

Kevin (01:02:10):
No, I don't know that I created the name. Travis might
have created the name. But I'mnot aware and still have not
until Jordan just said it wasthe first I've heard of it. Oh,
by the look of album space, he'sfound some of this content.
Yeah, so album to your idea. Ithink it's worth exploring. You
know, one of the options for thesocial interact tag, which is a

(01:02:30):
new podcast namespace tag forcross app comments plays on the
same idea that you just had,which is that you can use a
Twitter thread as your home basefor all your comments. And so
you can set that up in thesocial interact tag, you can use
it, there's two ways to do it.
Twitter being one of them. Theother suggestion was using an
activity pub service, and thatis built more on like Mastodon,

(01:02:51):
so Twitter is fine. If we wantto start there and try it out.
We can try it out just bymanually creating a Twitter post
for each episode, encouragingpeople to go there to have
discussions about the episode.
And then if it takes off, we canalways figure out how to add it
to our feed later. And it's goodto experiment with it to see if
it's something that we'd want toroll out for all podcasters. So

(01:03:11):
I think it's a good idea.

Alban (01:03:12):
So there will be one in the show notes. So if you want
to leave a comment, if you wantto tell us that buzz boosts are
the worst segment of the show.
Feel free to let us know.
There's a link to a tweet, andwe'll put it out from the
Buzzcast account. Don't searchfor it apparently, or you might
dump stuff that you areinterested in. So we'll link to

(01:03:33):
it and let us know what youthink. And we'll include it in
the next episode.

Jordan (01:03:37):
On that note-- it's time for Buzzboosts. Genebean sent us
2000 SATs, the privacy invasivenature of the subscription
printers is seriously disturbingto me. And this is in response
to last episodes post show inwhich we went on a 10 minute
rant about Kevin's printersubscription. It was the longest

(01:04:01):
post show to date. By far thefunniest, I think.

Kevin (01:04:04):
Yeah, I agree Genebean.
So what he's saying is likethey're monitoring how much
you're printing, but they couldvery easily be monitoring what
you're printing as well. Andthink about if you're printing
bank statements, or I don'tknow, ransom notes. I guess I
don't print a lot of ransomnotes if anyone's listening, but
you might be and you probablydon't want people seeing those.

(01:04:26):
So yes, you're right. It is itis weird. Everything is
connected now. And so you youhave to be a lot more conscious
about life. It's all connected.
And these companies aremonitoring how much I'm printing
so they can figure out when tosend me new ink. Can they also
be monitoring what I'm printingand yeah, they probably could.
So you're right. I hadn'tthought about that. But thanks
for making me not sleep for thenext week now, Gene.

Alban (01:04:48):
I think you gotta get rid of this printer. Kevin, you're
paying a subscription to buy fora printer when you don't for it.

Kevin (01:04:54):
Now there's been more and more that now they sent me two
more print cards. This week justarrived and the one that's in
there is still totally fine.
That system is broken. It's,it's a mess.

Alban (01:05:05):
The next one was from Genebean as well. 2222 SATs.
Thanks for the tip of feltright. The panels look really
nice. These are the panels thatare the background of Kevin's
video that we can see. AndKevin's designed the whole thing
is behind his head. It looksgreat. So if you're looking for
panels to help with soundtreatment, checkout felt right.

Kevin (01:05:25):
Alright, our next boost is from Moritz from Alby sent
6000 SATs. Thank you. He says.
Yeah, I appreciate all thatyou're trying to do with
podcasting to do features withBuzzcast. Yeah, thank you. We
are having fun with it and is agreat test show for us to figure
out what works and what doesn'tand experiment as we continue to
roll more and more intoBuzzsprout. So all of our
podcasters can take advantage ofthe Podcasting 2.0 features.

Alban (01:05:47):
Yeah, and we appreciate all the work that you're doing
with Albie, to make all thisvalue for value and Podcasting
2.0 features more accessible foreveryone.

Jordan (01:05:56):
Mere Mortals Podcast sent us 1337 SATs

Alban (01:06:00):
Do you know what that's called? Jordan?

Jordan (01:06:01):
No. Oh, leet. It's a leet boost. I got it I'm
learning elite boost and theysay I actually listened to some
podcasts on YouTube they arestill image or waveform keyword
here being quote unquote listen,I assume YouTube has noticed
enough people like me who enjoythe platform for certain
benefits comments relatedcontent timeline popups even

(01:06:24):
though I put down my phone orleave it open, but don't watch
it. That's interesting.

Alban (01:06:29):
Mere Mortals Podcasts also boosted us to 1222 SATs.
Don't drop Buzzboosts. I'll payyou money. All right, we're
gonna have to get Mere Mortalspodcast and T Shane Roberts,
into a room to battle it outwhether or not we keep this
segment. So thank you for thesupport. Mere Mortals podcast.

Kevin (01:06:47):
And Sam Sethi sent 3000 SATs. Said love the suggestion
on labeling AI with the persontag. Great. I think we know some
people, we can run thatsuggestion by and see if we can
make it happen. And they'll sendus another 5000 SATs and said
what a great episode and chatabout AI and apple and podcast
production. Well, thanks, Sam. Iappreciate you listening. And
thanks for the feedback.

Jordan (01:07:06):
Thanks for the SATs and keep podcasting.

Alban (01:07:11):
Have either of you used chat GPT yet?

Jordan (01:07:14):
No. Is that like one of those bot chats where you can
just like talk to a bot for awhile? Yes,

Alban (01:07:19):
Jordan, this is not the same. It's totally different.
It's gotten to a new level.

Jordan (01:07:24):
I remember doing this when I was like 10. I remember
like sitting at the computer andchatting with a bot and it
didn't really lead anywhere. Sohopefully the technology has
gotten a little better.

Alban (01:07:36):
It's it's not to the level of like her, but quite a
bit improved. So open AI we'vetalked on before they invested
in descript. They are the oneswho open source whisper. It's
the transcription model thatthey built, just released
ChatGPT, which is a chat clienton top of GPT 3. It's a large

(01:07:58):
language model. So I've beenplaying with it. Let's let's do
one live right now. Jordan, whatdo you want to know? What do you
want to know about podcasting?

Jordan (01:08:05):
Oh, my gosh, okay, um, how? I got this, I got this,
this is really important. Howcan I become the best podcaster
in the world?

Alban (01:08:20):
To become the best podcaster in the world, there's
a few key steps you can follow.
Number one, develop a unique andcompelling concept for your
podcast. This could be aspecific topic, format or angle
that sets your podcast apartfrom others in the industry, to
invest in high quality equipmentand production. This includes
microphones, recording software,and any other tools you'd need
to create a professionalsounding podcast. How is there
good, continuously improve andevolve as the podcasting

(01:08:43):
industry evolves, it's importantto stay on top of trends and
developments and constantlystrive to improve and innovate
in order to stay ahead of thecompetition. Wow. It's shocking
how it writes stuff that you'relike, Oh, this is actually
pretty good. It's built to havea bit of like a back and forth
dialogue. So I just had to writethat. But now I could just write

(01:09:05):
add MLA sources into what youjust wrote. And then all of a
sudden their citations in there.
It's wild.

Kevin (01:09:15):
Yeah, ask it to write a Buzzcast opening theme song.

Alban (01:09:19):
Verse one to your opening theme song, Kevin. Welcome to
the show where entertainmentsthe main event from Hollywood to
the red carpet, we've got it allcovered. It's Buzzcast, the
hottest podcast around MarieMarie and Jake, they keep you in
the know about all the latestand entertainment. You'll never
be out of the loop. celebrityinterviews, gossips and news

(01:09:40):
what's trending and the juice.
It's all here for you. So sitback and enjoy.

Jordan (01:09:45):
Yeah, I think that's there is another Buzzcast
podcast.

Kevin (01:09:49):
Oh, no.

Alban (01:09:50):
Oh, is it?

Jordan (01:09:51):
Yeah, I think there's three of them.

Kevin (01:09:53):
I think I think he got the wrong podcast.

Alban (01:09:55):
All right. I said that's the wrong podcast. I want the
one from Buzzsprout I'm sorry, Imust have misunderstood your
request. The Buzzsprout podcastis a podcast about podcasting in
the art of storytelling, hostedby Buzzsprout. co founder Dave
Jackson. This weekly covers awide range of topics related to
podcast. Each episode beginswith Jackson disgusts me just

(01:10:15):
goes out about Dave Jacksonrender the show, but not hosted
by Dave Jackson is a real personand a friend of ours. Dave
works, actually, at Libsyn.
That's really funny. Dave, Ihope you're listening to you'd
get a kick out of this. Yeah. Sohere's the problem with the
chat. It does not know how tosay, I don't know, it's just
using like, what does it Think?

(01:10:37):
Think of it as like your overlyconfident brother in law? Yeah,
yes. Is no matter what, like youask a question. They don't know
anything about it. And then theyjust with 100% confidence, say,
I absolutely know who won the1986 Super Bowl. It was this.
This is how it went? And you'relike, let's look that up. That
does. Yeah, no, it was thebears. What are you? What are
you talking about? Like theJaguars didn't even exist back

(01:10:58):
then? No, no, no. 100%? I know,it's right. Like that's the way
that this works. So when youstart asking about things like
real facts, or for descriptionsof like historical events,
they're pretty good. It justrequires you to go and proof
read some of this stuff. Infact, check it because there's

(01:11:18):
just a lot of like, you know,somehow something got crossed.
And there's just a completeoverconfidence. So if you rely
on it too much, you end up withsome really wonky answers. I
actually saw an article thatGitHub actually sent any code
that was written by open AI, anythe chat GPT that it wasn't
going to accept it anymore,because so many people were
saying, hey, write code thatdoes this. And it would write

(01:11:41):
something. And then they wouldcopy and paste it into GitHub.
And GitHub was like so much thisdoesn't run. It looks like it
should. But it's got bugs, orit's got issues and it breaks
things that eventually they werelike, we're just, you know,
blocking all of it. So it'ssuper interesting. It's fun to
play with. But it's just funnyto see something so confident

(01:12:03):
and so often wrong. I'm asked towrite a poem about Buzzsprout

Jordan (01:12:08):
Aw.

Alban (01:12:11):
I won't read the whole poem. I'll read you the first
stanza. Buzzsprout, Oh, how youshine with your platform for
podcasters. You make it easy toshare our stories and connect
with our listeners. Your toolsand resources are invaluable to
us helping us grow our shows andreach new heights. Thank you

(01:12:33):
Buzzsprout for making ourpodcast dreams come true. We are
grateful for all that you do.
Buzzsprout Oh, how we love you.

Jordan (01:12:40):
I feel like we need to make this like you know how in
school you have like the schoolsong that you all sing. So we
need to have somebody on Fiverrput this to music and then it'll
be our Buzzsprout theme song

Alban (01:12:56):
So Kevin hasn't heard this song and I don't think we
share it with him.

Jordan (01:13:01):
Yes, we are definitely not sharing it with him. It's
gonna be just a surprise.

Alban (01:13:06):
It's not that Kevin will be against it. It's that Kevin's
bar for excellence is that avery mature state, very high, he
like thinks it'd be very goodand it's gonna be hard for him
to accept a Buzzsprout themesong of this caliber.

Jordan (01:13:27):
If we're not in the next episode, then Kevin has fired
us.

Singer (01:13:35):
Buzzsprout, oh, how we love thee. Our favorite
podcasting platform, you are thebest. From hosting and
publishing to stats in marketingyou do it all. We're proud to be
in the Buzzsprout family. Whereour podcasts can reach the

(01:13:59):
world. With your help ,will makeour voices heard, Buzzsprout, we
are one. Easy to use and alwaysimproving, you help us to create
and share content. With your topnotch features and support, you

(01:14:19):
make podcasting a breeze. We'reproud to be part of the
Buzzsprout family. Where ourpodcasts can reach the world.
With your help, we'll make ourvoices heard. Buzzsprout, we are
one. So here's to you,Buzzsprout for everything you

(01:14:43):
do. We're grateful and we'llkeep singing your praises long
into the future you'll be ourgo-to. Buzzsprout, WE LOVE YOU!
We're proud to be a part of theBuzzsprout family, where our
podcasts can reach the world.
With your help we'll make ourvoices heard. Buzzsprout, we are

(01:15:09):
one.

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