D (1:57)

This is our announcement. This is our announcement podcast. And Kevin's already lowered. Just to let you know, we're not going to be diving into this very often.

C (2:05)

Yeah, I mean, I know. I love it for. There's so many podcasters out there who love to do video and have got it worked out as part of their normal workflow. And it's fun for them and it's part of what they love about podcasting. And I'm very excited that we're going to be able to support them in their endeavors to do that, but I don't put myself in that group. I don't think either One of you do as well. And I think that that's part of buzzsprout's message, right, Is that we've always said the most important thing is that you have fun doing this and that it gives you life and it gives you joy. And if video is a part of that, fantastic. Because now buzzsprout can be a part of the solution that helps bring your video podcasting to life. And if you want to do audio, then buzzsprout's the same as it's always been and continuing to get better with every release that we do. So wherever you land on the spectrum now, and so we just happen. This show happens to land on the. Hey, we're. We love audio and we do an audio show, and that's fantastic. And I love supporting audio creators. But buzzsprout and Apple Podcasts and more platforms are embracing video and want to be able to be a home for your show and the distribution platform for your show if you do video as well. And so we're gonna support all of it.

A (3:09)

Yeah, I really. I. So I did an interview with Matthew over at the podcast host. He does a show called podcraft, and we were talking about HLS video through Apple Podcasts, and it was fun to kind of share with him why this is exciting. I even told him when they first announced it, I was like, yeah, that's cool. You probably can actually go back and hear that episode where I'm like, this is cool. But I wasn't the most enthusiastic in the world. And then the more I thought about it, I kept realizing everybody who does video is. All the platforms that do video online are very much this algorithmically driven content. And now Apple is providing a look. We're not really getting in the middle of this. All we're doing is we're connecting some hosting provider you have to your audience, so you get to go directly to them, and everything you send it will show up on their phone and. And then they can listen to it or now read it through the transcripts or even watch it in the video.

C (4:16)

Right.

A (4:16)

And it's really cool that this is available to anybody who wants to put a video podcast out there. You can always put the content also on YouTube, also on Spotify, maybe even put it on your own website as well. But Apple is providing a pretty unique experience as far as being able to get video content into people's hands.

C (4:38)

The point that you're making there, Alvin, is worth saying a couple different ways, so I'm gonna take a stab at saying the same thing. A different way, but for years. Like, we run a pretty popular YouTube channel that helps podcasters learn the ins and outs of podcasting, whether it be equipment, stuff or features in Buzzsprout that you can use to promote your show or grow your show or just new things like making your podcast more accessible with transcripts. Albin just recently posted some video content. There's. And that channel has well over a hundred thousand subscribers. I don't know exactly how many. Where are we at right now, Alvin?

A (5:12)

Somewhere like 121, 30. 130,000 somewhere. I mean, it's big.

B (5:17)

Yeah.

A (5:17)

And yet I was excited today to see that a video that I'd put up that I was proud of hit a thousand views. Right.

C (5:25)

And that's, that's the point of these algorithm hard word to say driven platforms is that you can have a hundred plus thousand followers, you could have 10,000 followers, you could have a million followers that has like no indication of how far your next episode is going to go. Like Alvin said, a hundred thousand plus followers. We put a great video out and it does a thousand views, maybe 2,000 views. A really good video would do 4 or 5,000 views on that channel. But a hundred thousand people have said they're interested in the content. And podcasting works so differently. Podcasting is totally opt in. So in Apple Podcasts, when you follow a show and they release a new episode, it's going to show up in your what's new for you. They're not going to algorithmically decide whether that's the best content to keep you in the app and keep you listening or not. All they're going to do is obey your commands. And your commands are, I want to follow this show, so when they release a new episode, please show it to me. And they do. And so like, I'm not saying that it's going to change the world of video. What I'm saying is that this is an opportunity for people who've created video content in the past and have kind of had to play the Games of the YouTube platforms of the world to try to get as much engagement as they can for every video they launched, regardless of how big their following is, that you don't have to play those games in this world. In this world, in the video side, if somebody says, I'm going to follow this show, that show, that new episode will show up in their feed. Now, they still might not choose to engage with it, and that's completely up to them. They might not choose to watch it, but they'll go they're going to see it. They're going to see that you launch something. And we don't have to do all this, you know, whatever. Subscribe, follow, hit the bell, turn on notifications, do all this stuff. Do hit all the triggers. Please tell YouTube in many different ways as you can, that you want to see my content. All you have to do is hit follow.

A (7:12)

Yeah, Netflix found this years ago. They said that people would often say, I want to watch Citizen Kane, but they would get Citizen Kane. They'd get some great piece of, like, cinema or something that's known as, like, a great movie. And they'd also get like, the, you know, first season of American Idol, and they'd return this first season of American Idol and Request season two immediately, because they were cruising through the like, just, I want to sit back and relax, watch this junk tv. And then they were, like, holding on to the other one because they were aspirational. They'd watch Citizen K, but they never would. And so when Netflix moved to everything is streaming, they took away ratings because they were like, we know you will never rate your favorite shows five stars because you think five stars is relate is reserved for Schindler's List and great cinema. But we know based on your habits,

D (8:06)

when we put it all in front

A (8:08)

of you, you just want to watch, like, reality TV most of the time.

B (8:12)

Yeah.

A (8:12)

And props to Netflix and YouTube and everybody else in the world who's willing to give you exactly what you want in the moment. But I think it's really important for there to be somebody who says, hey, you want to be your best self. You say, this is the content I want to engage with week in, week out. Here's the stuff that's important to me. We're not going to tempt you away from that, and we're going to just keep showing you what you say you want until you make the decision to change. And Apple Podcast is going to provide that. And I really think everybody else is leaning so far on the we're going to tell you what you're going to like side that we really need that counterbalance. Now, the benefit of YouTube is I just watched a video today. It had 60,000 views. It was a review of some video game, and the channel has no subscribers. Because when YouTube went, hey, you're talking about a popular game, and it's really engaging. When people start watching, they watch most of it. Then they said, we know that not many people have opted into your content because you haven't grown an audience, but we are going to Keep serving it up because people are watching it. The upside is massive growth. The downside is if he doesn't put out another video just like that for round two, it doesn't matter that he got all that growth, because it all disappears. And I think it's good that we have multiple types of content, and if anything is lacking, it's on the delivery side. It's on the here's what I want to watch. And apps that are willing to respect that. We just don't have many in that category.

D (9:55)

Did you see this?

B (9:56)

What is happening?

D (9:57)

This is the kind of. This is what happens on video. I hit the thing on my standing desk as I'm going on my rant, and then it dropped my. It moved the whole thing down.

C (10:08)

Looked like you were getting taller.

B (10:10)

Yeah. For those who are listening to it and not watching the video version of this on Apple Podcasts, Albin was giving his spiel, and then it looked like he was on an elevator going away.

D (10:22)

Oh, man.

A (10:23)

Well, it's what has gotten me more excited. The longer we're building it, the more that I've had time to kind of sit with this idea, the more I do think. I've always gravitated towards platforms that allow me to tell say, this is what I want. I really liked Twitter when it was just, it's the people you follow. And as it became more of like a feed that was just anything and everything, it stopped being as exciting.

C (10:51)

Yeah. You used to be able to get to the end of your feed. There's no end anymore. Yeah.

A (10:54)

Instagram too. Facebook too. Every one of them. I enjoyed the most when it was just, I'm picking stuff to be excited about, and they keep showing it to me. And now that world is like email newsletters and podcasts. Well, Apple Podcast has one of the very few places that says, we will give you video content in this format of you opt in. Here it is.

C (11:17)

I'll tell you, I had this. This moment of clarity just a few days ago when I was listening to some podcasts. I've transitioned. I don't know if it'll be permanent. I think it might be, because it really is a beautiful, wonderful listening experience. But I've been listening to podcasts a lot and Apple podcasts for the past five weeks or so as we've been building out the video capabilities. So I'm using that app and I'm listening to my regular shows and toggling back and forth between some of the video shows that we're listening to and some of just the Regular shows that I subscribe to. And I had this moment where I finished an episode and I'm, you know, walking the dog. And what happened when the episode was over? It was just silent. Like, nothing happened. My queue was empty. Everything that I had queued up, I'm now done with. And it, like, didn't randomly pick something else for me to listen to. It didn't. It didn't, like, say, no, don't close the app. You have to keep listening. Like, I was just, like, met with silence, and I was like, oh, my gosh. Like, what is this?

B (12:20)

It's like when you finish a good book and you just close it and you go. That was nice.

C (12:24)

Yeah, yeah, it was fantastic. And I had the. Just the clarity in that moment because I'd been going back and forth between video and stuff and audio that, like, that's. That felt weird that I was in a video experience, listening and watching and walking the dog and half paying attention. And then the episode was over and nothing else popped up. Oh, you don't. No one was pointing to the corners of the screen saying, click here and do this. And YouTube wasn't, like, 80% of you aren't subscribed.

A (12:51)

Make sure you subscribe.

C (12:52)

Yeah.

B (12:54)

All right, so for anyone who is currently making video for their podcast and they want to get it on Apple Podcasts, how do they do that? Through buzzsprout.

A (13:02)

All right, so you go. And we have new video plans. So you'll go to your plan page in buzzsprout and upgrade to any of those plans, and then you'll go over to directories. And under Apple Podcasts, we have a. There's a bit of a workflow to get into Apple Podcasts, and now there's a little bit extra to get video in. You have to go into Apple Podcast Connect. You get a file, you give it to us, we get you into Apple. It takes a couple days. Just like submitting your show took a couple days. Only thing that changes is instead of uploading audio to us, upload video, and we'll take that audio and we'll send audio out to everybody who's supposed to get audio everywhere around the world. And video, we will send in the correct formats to Apple Podcasts. And it's really nice because you're really not going to be doing any more work. Once you hand us the file, all that will be in the background.

B (13:57)

So I'm. I'm curious because I haven't done this just yet, but are the stats going to be a little bit different between the video content and the audio only content. How are we doing that?

C (14:06)

Yeah, we have a whole stats package for video now. Like a download is a download as far as we're concerned. And every download starts as a audio first download. And we have to meet the IAB like standards to be able to consider it an audio download. But then during that time, we will also watch for any video bytes to be delivered. And if video bytes are delivered at the same time or like after it becomes a true IAB download, if any video bytes happen after that point. So like somebody could start listening on audio and then toggle on video, I don't know, halfway through or something like that, and then they could toggle it off later. But if any video bites get delivered during that session, we go ahead and count that as a video play. So you can see the difference between your audio engagement and your video engagement. Yeah, and it's really nice. It's seamless. It all kind of fits in. If you have, if you're on a video plan, you'll have another tab in your stat section that shows just your stats for your video stuff. And if you don't, it's not there, it's just out of the way. And so it's, it's. I think, I don't know for sure because I not a an ACAST customer or an Art 19 customer, but I think Buzzsprout is today the only way for like indie podcasters to seamlessly be able to deliver video reliably and like, efficiently to Apple Podcasts. I know that there's a lot of partners that have said that they're going to do this and are bringing it on board, but as far as I know, none of them are ready to go. So if you're listening to the show and you're ready to go and you want to do it, you're not hosting on buzzsprout. Go ahead and jump on a, a video plan. Give it a try. If you like it, it's super easy to migrate your whole podcast over.

A (15:35)

All right. If you convince somebody. Kevin, how much does video cost? Do we have that finalized? Is that out?

C (15:41)

Yeah, all the, all the plan pricing is set. It's. It's $10 more per month if you pay annually, and if you're paying monthly, it's $12 more per month than a regular audio plan. So it's not bad at all considering, like, how big video files are compared to audio files. We've been as aggressive as possible with our pricing. We want to bring this to as many people as possible. And so I think it's very reasonable. Our audio plans, again, annualized pricing, paid monthly, works out to about $15 a month for an audio plan for six hours of content. And that same six hours with a video podcast is 25.

A (16:16)

We've actually, as part of doing the pricing for the video plans, went back and went, you know, I think we can bring down the audio plans a bit too. So all the prices got a little bit cheaper and we've offered a stronger discount for everybody who ends up on an annual plan. I know that at some point I just start, you know, you usually for a few months. I know I like it. And then I want to go to annual. Cause I don't want that charge every month. I'd rather get the better price. Actually just did this with car insurance where you know you're going to be there. So you go, okay, like, let's just. I'll lock this in and move on. So we've offered a stronger incentive for those annual plans. And I think these are going to be really competitive as far as being able to help people get video out to the world. And one of my hopes is that we don't just have podcasters on Buzzsprout who start using video. My hope is that we also will provide an Avenue for YouTubers who want to get their video into Apple podcasts. Maybe they would have done Spotify, but they weren't doing it yet. And we start helping people who create video content that is a podcast able to help it get out to the world in a bit of a different format than what they were doing on YouTube. So rather than chasing the algorithm 100% of the time, they're building up a little bit of a base of their viewership and their audience that would prefer to get their content delivered a hundred percent of the time.

C (17:46)

Yeah, I love that idea. YouTube being a great place to be able to grow your reach, find new people, and then as they become fans of yours and just want to be able to consistently and reliably see everything that you put out there, there's a place that you can point them to now to be able to do that. And that's the Apple podcast app. And it's great. And. And we're gonna wait and see. We're doing an integration with Spotify as well. And so we're gonna be able to see and we'll report back on how that platform is working, but it might work much in the same way. So I just love there's healthy competition going on in the video space. Everyone's not trying to compete directly with YouTube at their own game. They've kind of said, okay, YouTube's really good at this, but how can we compliment that? How can we offer something slightly different?

B (18:27)

Well, it's exciting.

A (18:28)

One comment I got on one of the YouTube videos that I love to kind of share here is somebody said, we're trying to grow our YouTube channel. So I'm telling everybody who's listens to our podcast to go watch us on YouTube. And that is the opposite, I think, of what you want to do. You want to leverage social media and YouTube and algorithmically driven platforms. They should be where people find you for the first time and where they end up connecting with you long term is hopefully somewhere like your website or a course or email or podcast and now video on Apple podcasts. Somewhere where the relationship is not intermediated by somebody else. And so what I would be doing is I'd put it up on YouTube and say, YouTube, you serve it up to everybody. And if anything, we're directing from YouTube over to Apple, not the other way around.

B (19:24)

I mean, yeah, YouTube's so volatile sometimes, like, people just get deplatformed for whatever reason. Like their. Their account gets flagged and it's gone. And that's one of the things that we love so much about podcasting, is it's decentralized and so people can continue to find you. I do have a question. Are the videos going to be displayed on the Buzzsprout websites as well?

C (19:45)

Not today. They are not today. We've made an intentional decision and it's kind of complicated. It'd probably be interesting to go into more depth attempt at some point in the future. But as you guys know, and anybody who probably listens to the show is aware that bot traffic and inflated stats and stuff is something that has long plagued the podcast hosting industry. And we're constantly fighting against traffic that's not human because we don't want stats that we're presenting to people to be artificially inflated. If it shows that you got 10 people who download an episode, we do our best to make sure that those are actually like real people who downloaded your show with the intent to listen to it. And so we're being careful as we step into this video space to are there steps that we can put in place that would prevent us from having to fight these same battles that we fight in audio in the video world as we move in? So there is some. There are some great tags that the podcast namespace has developed and the Podcast standards project has embraced and we love them. They're called alternate enclosure, and it's a way for you to have an audio file and a video file all on your RSS feed. But we're, we're just holding off for now, where our full intent is to be able to support that fully, but we want to do it as responsibly as possible. So we've been pushing quickly to be able to support this latest and greatest tech that Apple Podcast has rolled out, and we're doing that today. And our next item on the agenda is to figure out how to responsibly distribute video through open rss.

A (21:08)

I mean, at this point, Buzz Pro has, has something like 17 years of figuring out, okay, ie 8 when somebody loads it, for some reason, they're always going to download the audio file. So we need to make sure we account for that. And we've solved hundreds of these over the years. And with video, the stakes are much, much higher because these are really big files. And if we're going to be able to keep the cost down and offer it, I think makes sense for podcasters that we need to make sure that bot traffic isn't a problem. It messes up stats 1, but it also just inflate the costs that we would pay, so we'd have to raise the prices significantly. So it's just the risk is very high. We're also living in a world where bot traffic isn't just weird bots like it was for a long time. It's now a bunch of AI stuff, which it's not a big problem for the AI companies because they're just grabbing all sorts of stuff. But it could be a big problem for podcasters who go, oh my gosh, I just saw a thousand extra downloads. Well, that could end up being a problem. It's messing up their stats because we can see doesn't look legit. So right now it's not going to be out there, but I think we will be able to find a good solution for this so that your podcast website eventually will be the very best place to send people to consume your podcast.

C (22:34)

Right. And, and in the meantime, we are going to quickly, we're. We're supporting Spotify distribution, we're supporting YouTube distribution. So if you want to have one place where you can upload your file and then we can push it to platforms beyond Apple like Spotify and YouTube again, you would then log into YouTube, distribute on your own, but we could save you the extra upload. So if you do that, then we can connect to YouTube and then you could grab a YouTube embed player and display that on your website. So that's the direction that we're moving. Initially, it seems to make a lot of sense. Again, platforms that have the algorithms behind them, you want to get as much engagement, engagement with, you know, send as many signals as you can to their platforms in the first place so that they continue to see how popular your content is and then serve it up to as many new people as possible. And so I think that that's going to be the preferred route. Even if we do get to the point where we can safely deploy a video player on your public facing website, you still might want to opt to use the YouTube player or the Spotify player.

A (23:29)

Yeah, YouTube's had more experience than anybody in the world at dealing with bots and figuring out when something looks suspicious.

C (23:36)

And then it's a little easier when you just have a completely locked down walled garden. Like they don't let third party players play their stuff and they don't expose their URLs. Now they are constantly shutting down these weird third party sites that pop up that says, you know, download YouTube videos and stuff. They're fighting those things all the time, but just the nature of how they built their business. They don't have as much rogue just bought traffic hitting their stuff.

B (23:59)

All right, well, I'm really excited about this update.

C (24:02)

Hang on, I'll drop one quick note.

B (24:03)

I was just going to wrap her up.

C (24:05)

Sorry. We only have, you know, a handful of podcasters that have been in our beta program helping us test things out. And I've been surprised that Apple has noticed their content and has loved it enough to feature some of it. So like the time is now. If you're, if you're creating video content and this is something that you want to do and you want to jump into Apple Podcasts, I would say the sooner the better because Apple is looking for compelling video content and they're featuring it and they're putting it on the new and video screen and they're highlighting on their homepage and it's leading to some decent exposure and growth for some podcasters. And I know we just talked a lot about that. Apple Podcast is not the solution to podcast growth. That probably YouTube is still a better platform for that today. But at least right now, like early on and probably for the next few months, as you know, there's not a ton of video content being pushed into these platforms. Another one of the reasons Buzzsprout wanted to be first. So that we could give our customers the opportunity to be featured and highlighted. That is happening. And so, yeah, don't delay if you're interested in this at all, because there's probably a small window where smaller podcasts have an opportunity to be highlighted and featured and that probably won't be along around for very long.

B (25:13)

This might be one of the easiest ways to get featured in Apple Podcasts.

C (25:17)

No guarantees that it's going to happen, but I've just said, like, out of the handful of customers who we've had beta testing, a good chunk of them, like close to half of them have already been featured.

A (25:25)

So that's just a nice proof point that you say, oh, we are featured by Apple podcasts because we were one of the first to do video on Apple Podcasts this way. So really exciting. And again, I would be remiss if we didn't shout out the team again. I mean, everybody's been working harder than I've seen everybody working a long time. Everyone's in the office, lots of in person meetings. It felt like, you know, 2018 again or something. It was really good to see everybody just pull together and do the very best to get this out to the world as soon as possible. So shout out to everybody who did that. Yeah.

B (26:00)

All right, so if you try out video podcasts on buzzsprout, send us a fan mail and let us know what you think. And until next time, thanks for listening and keep podcast.