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- [00:00]
Kevin
Do you guys want to hear about my Uber ride this morning? Got in the car, very nice gentleman driving me home from the auto repair shop. He was listening to what sounded like talk radio, but I noticed it was coming through Apple CarPlay. So I, of course, asked, what are you listening to? And it was a sports program that I'd never heard of before. And I said, oh, is that a podcast? And he said, no, I don't know anything about podcasts. And I said, oh, well, what are you listening on? And he said, TikTok live.
- [00:27]
Jordan
What?
- [00:28]
Kevin
TikTok live every morning. And I said, oh, is this like a regular show that you listen to on TikTok Live? Yeah. And he said, yep. Every morning, these guys come on and they do their show live on TikTok. So I just go on TikTok, I follow them. It pops up, and I just listen to it as I drive around. And so we talked a little bit about what podcasts are and that he doesn't have to tune in at the same time every day. He could listen whenever he wants. And again, I can't remember the name of the show, but I asked him if these guys had a podcast. So we. We loaded up Apple podcasts on his phone, we searched for them, we found their show, and so now he can listen any time of the day, and he was very thankful.
- [01:03]
Jordan
Wow.
- [01:04]
Kevin
So I was thinking, like, maybe a lot of people are listening to things on YouTube and TikTok and stuff, but podcasts might be a better solution for them. That's. That's what it got me thinking, at least for this gentleman. He seemed appreciative. He might have just been being polite, but he was like, no, this is great. So, like, now if I'm, you know, driving in the afternoons and my morning show's not on, I can still listen to the morning show. I was like, yeah, that's exactly. It's, like, on demand. He's like, this is great.
- [01:29]
Jordan
This is exactly what a podcast is.
- [01:31]
Kevin
I changed a life for the better today with podcasting.
- [01:33]
Jordan
Wow, that's great.
- [01:34]
Alvin
Kevin Finn, podcast evangelist.
- [01:36]
Kevin
Yeah.
- [01:37]
Jordan
You know, that reminds me of that story that I saw. I think it was a couple weeks ago, maybe last week, and it was those tween boys that have that podcast that they're basically streaming on, like, TikTok and YouTube, and it's, like, a bunch of, like, food reviewers, but they have no experience in, like, tasting foods. And so they talk about, like, school lunches and stuff. Right. And I was really surprised to see that they didn't have Their show on podcast apps, it's. It's literally just like YouTube and, and Twitter. And so I wonder if there's just some weird sub genre of people who are podcasting by streaming on these platforms, but I didn't realize that they could do that on TikTok.
- [02:13]
Kevin
Yeah, I didn't know that either. What also was interesting is the conversation took a weird twist when I said, do they have any ads? Do they do any ads in their show? And he said, no, they just get paid by TikTok. And so I was like, well, why would TikTok pay them? Yeah. And he's like, cuz TikTok has a lot of money. So they just. No. Somewhere TikTok has to be making money.
- [02:35]
Alvin
A lot of the live streams I remember for a while were making money because people would like, donate to the live stream.
- [02:41]
Kevin
He did say that. He said, there is a way that you can just give them money. He said, like you can give them coins or hats. I was like, hats? What do you mean you give them a hat? He's like, I don't know. There's a little hat button. I can click it and then they. The hat goes on their head if you're watching it. But it costs you money to put a hat on their head. And he's like, I think they get the money if I put a hat on.
- [02:59]
Alvin
This whole time podcasting, we've been trying to figure out monetization and the whole thing was hats, right?
- [03:04]
Jordan
Yeah, we just needed.
- [03:05]
Alvin
We need a video podcast so we get the hat button and then that solved it. All the value for value stuff. No, it wasn't that. It wasn't Patreon. It wasn't exclusive content. It was hat button.
- [03:15]
Kevin
And I feel like we were close a couple months ago when I switched my profile image to the cowboy hat image. Yeah, like we were just teetering around the idea. We just missed it. But like, how, as a listener to this show, how much would you pay to be able to put hats on us?
- [03:29]
Alvin
Well, I can tell you someone very famous, Kevin, a podcaster who always wears a hat is Tim Pool.
- [03:36]
Kevin
That's right.
- [03:36]
Jordan
What a segue.
- [03:38]
Kevin
I saw the news article, I saw the headline that a buzzsprout podcaster has made it into the White House. Press pool.
- [03:43]
Jordan
Oh boy.
- [03:44]
Alvin
A former Buzzsprout podcast.
- [03:46]
Kevin
Former Buzzsprout, right.
- [03:47]
Alvin
Yeah. So that's the second former Buzzsprout podcaster who has been in the White House. The first being former president Joe Biden and now frequent hat wearer Tim Pool.
- [03:58]
Kevin
Is A beanie? A hat. Yeah, I guess it is a hat. It's a genre of hat, but nobody calls it a hat.
- [04:02]
Jordan
Is it. Is it a hat or a sock? Which is it?
- [04:06]
Alvin
Head sock.
- [04:07]
Kevin
Yeah.
- [04:08]
Alvin
Well, we're still waiting for our press Pool briefing badge. Yeah.
- [04:12]
Kevin
So we talked about that on this show that the White House opened up a new media seat and one of the types of people that they were looking for were podcasters. They brought in a podcaster last week. It was Tim Pool, who is a controversial figure in the new media space. We're not saying anything good or bad. We're just saying he is a podcaster. And we can also say that he started, I think he launched his first podcast on Buzzsprout, since moved to, I don't know, a different.
- [04:42]
Alvin
He moved to Megaphone shortly after for
- [04:44]
Kevin
ad deals and stuff like that.
- [04:45]
Jordan
Yeah.
- [04:46]
Kevin
So no longer a buzz sprouter, but got to ask Caroline Levitt a question. I think it was not a question that has anything to do with podcasting, so we won't cover it, but he got in there.
- [04:59]
Alvin
I just want to know what's the best way to start a podcast after that follow up? What's the best way to keep podcasting? I've got to know. They're like, oh, what a great question. You just got to go to buzzsprout.com right here.
- [05:17]
Jordan
Welcome back to Buzzcast Podcast about all things podcasting from the people at buzzsprout. So we're going to start off with an attention grabbing headline. Bartlett turned down massive 100 million podcast deal. And that Stephen Bartlett from Diary of CEO. And he recently disclosed that he had turned down two pretty big podcasting deals, one worth about a hundred million dollars and the other, I'm not entirely sure, but I'm guessing it's a lot. Did you guys get a chance to read this article?
- [05:46]
Alvin
Yeah, I did. It's interesting to see his rationale for turning down a hundred million dollars. First off, that's just so much money. And even when it's totally against your principles, it's really impressive to see people turn it down. I mean, that's not life changing money. That's like forever, never work again. And also your kids and their grandchildren never work again money if you want it to be. But very cool to see him kind of make this decision and talk about it publicly. Do we know where those deals came from, by the way?
- [06:17]
Jordan
He did not disclose that. I'm assuming one of them was probably Spotify because there was a little bit of a mention about you know how this was during the time when there were these big acquisitions. And he did mention that one of the reasons why he turned down this huge deal was because they were wanting him to be platform exclusive. And I believe that Spotify was one of the only platforms that was doing the platform exclusive deals.
- [06:43]
Alvin
Yeah. I actually just heard there was a little clip from the Netflix where Netflix was doing their earnings call and they asked about podcasting and their CEO had a response about video. Podcasts are starting to get more and more similar to talk shows.
- [06:59]
Jordan
Yeah.
- [07:00]
Alvin
And so you could see us bringing those kind of talk shows onto our platform. And so it made me wonder if maybe the more recent of the deals might come from Netflix, because his diary of CEO is available everywhere on podcast listening apps, but it's predominantly on YouTube. And so I wondered if maybe they were trying to pull him on there.
- [07:21]
Jordan
Another reason why he turned down this deal was because he said that it would be a 300% increase in ad sales on his episodes, which is ridiculous. So he would have to go platform exclusive and then have three times the amount of ads on his podcast than he wants. He wouldn't have creative control over the podcast. Looking at it, it's like, yeah, that's, that's a life changing amount of money. And then you look at it and it's like that could also tank your podcast and he would be beholden to the platform that he's on.
- [07:54]
Alvin
So there was this other little bit that he mentioned and it's funny, like we're trying to pull apart multiple deals that we haven't been able to see. But $100 million is like, you know, your eyes pop. And then it's multi year payout tied to performance targets.
- [08:09]
Jordan
Yeah.
- [08:10]
Alvin
And then you're like, ooh. And then it's three times the adverts. Ooh. And less creative control. And then you realize that he's already making a massive amount of money with the podcast. Now if you have to hit these performance targets over a five year period, then it's really looking like 20 million a year for five years. If you continue to grow and you pump massive amounts of ads into your show.
- [08:38]
Kevin
You know, it reminds me of, and I don't want to take anything away from the fact that he turned down like generational wealth amount of money. As Alvin said earlier, I'm not saying that's easy, but I am reminded of there's a tech person who I follow and they are hundred millionaires. They have made it way beyond big. And he talked one time about the different stages of wealth that he's been able to go through in his life. And he was like the, There's a really big jump that kind of happens for, for him anyway. His experience between going from like being pretty wealthy at like making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to being a multimillionaire, he was like, that was pretty life changing. Like, I used to live in a nice house and drive a nice car, but now I could like take multiple vacations a year, I could have multiple cars, I could have a bigger house or multiple houses. And that happened between, you know, a couple hundred thousand dollars a year and a couple million dollars a year. And he said that was the biggest life change from there forward to like accumulating fifty million dollars and a hundred million dollars. He's like, you know, yeah, I can do all these things. I could have a private jet, I could have a helicopter, I could probably buy an island or stuff. But those weren't things that were really desirable for him. And he was like, it just kind of felt, I don't know, gluttonous, like too much or whatever. I don't know that you'd have that perspective before you got there. I certainly don't have that perspective now. Like, it would be hard to turn down $100 million, but at least for somebody who'd been through it, it was interesting to hear them talk about it from that perspective. Anyway. It makes me think like Stephen Bartlett, the Diary of a CEO. It sounds like he's already made the huge life changing thing where he has more money than he will ever possibly need. And anything that he wants to do or anything that you can get with money, he can probably already get the next level jump. Maybe he had enough foresight to see that what he'd be giving up in the quality of life and the joy and the creative expression and the control of a show. Like, that's not worth it just to be able to, I don't know, have a private jet that you can call on.
- [10:31]
Alvin
It is important to remember, you know, you can turn things into money sometimes, but is that what you want to do? Do you want to spend day in, day out working for whatever company he'd be working for and doing shows that they want to do and pumping ads in and like not being able to control it when maybe you do get four or five times as much money as you would have otherwise? But the lifestyle may not change drastically in a positive way. And if you can see your work life actually getting a bit more annoying now you're in Meetings about whether or not you're allowed to interview somebody you want to interview or. Okay, people are mad that there's all these weird ads in my show now and I can't make the decision, you know, that could be much more of a cost than the additional money might have been worth.
- [11:16]
Jordan
His vision for his podcast was really to diversify what, where his income streams are coming from. And he saw way more value in that than just getting this huge brand deal. It seems like it's upfront, but it's not upfront. So he talked about equity deals where he would get like shares in a company in exchange for doing like, ads or like being sponsored by them. He talked about these like, long term partnerships where you actually like integrate the brand into the podcast. And so it seems a little bit more like natural and fluid and, and your, your audience can get familiar with that brand and there's just all these different things with like merch or listener subscriptions. So there's all these different ways you can make money. And he chose to just bet on that as opposed to getting this like upfront cash and then like, maybe it'll work out.
- [12:04]
Kevin
Right. You talked on equity deals, and I think that Tim Ferriss made a lot of his worth out of doing equity deals and just being able to create relationships. So he was an author and a podcaster for many years and through the relationships on his podcasts, he got opportunities to invest in companies at some very early stages. I think he also was introduced to some new products and companies and would, you know, like them himself and said, listen, I want to be like an ambassador for this product, so don't pay me to do the ad. I'm going to talk about it. When it feels natural, I'm going to help build it. But in exchange for whatever, a small percent of equity in the company, 2% or 5% or something like that, and that has worked out for him really well. Like he's crushing the wealth side of life anyway.
- [12:49]
Jordan
Yeah. And I think that's something that seeing these huge, massive deals and thinking like podcasters can really take away from this, how important it is to be loyal to your listeners and be intentional with your podcast. And long term that will build up the success of your podcast way more than selling out for these like, programmatic ads that are just gonna alienate listeners, it's gonna annoy them, they might drop off. And so I think it's really important to keep that in mind, that no matter how big your podcast is, it's just important to be thinking about Your listeners, first and foremost.
- [13:22]
Alvin
The thing I took away from it was, you need to remember and keep in mind, am I doing the thing that I want to do? Even if there's a big bunch of money coming with the thing you don't want to do, then pay attention. Like, well, if it's not the thing I want to be spending the next five years of my life. Who knows where Steven will be in five years? And if it's not what he wants to do, then awesome, great decision. Yeah, I don't want to do it. And the other piece was, man, this deal sounds insane when it's 100 million. But then you're like, oh, it's over five years. There's earn outs, there's actually a bunch of ads, there's platform exclusivity. And then you add all that up and you're like, okay. It starts feeling like the present day value of this deal is way, way smaller. And the lost revenue from the show being exclusive and him not getting all the ads anymore, probably it wasn't as big of a turndown, I guess, as we imagine.
- [14:15]
Jordan
Yeah, I think that's so true, because it is. It's just this headline where it's like, turn down $100 million. And you're like, well, what? That's crazy. And then you look at it, you're like, actually, yeah, that was the right choice.
- [14:27]
Kevin
So the takeaway here would be when those $100 million offers start flowing in for your podcast show, which it will. Don't sign too fast. Think it through, read all the details, and maybe there's a lesson that Stephen Bartlett has to share with you.
- [14:44]
Jordan
All right, so I know that a couple episodes ago, we promised, we swore that we would not rant about video podcasting again, but I found a loophole.
- [14:55]
Alvin
Great. What's our loophole, Jordan?
- [14:59]
Jordan
Our loophole is our wonderful listeners who sent us clips of celebrity podcasts talking about video podcasting and also some friends in the industry talking about it too. So we're going to discuss that. And it's. It's not us, it's them. All right, I'm gonna play a couple clips here. So the first was sent to us from David John Clark of Late Bloomer Actor. So there's an episode of Smart List from the month of April, and they had Maria Shriver on the Maria Shriver. The beautiful Maria Shriver.
- [15:35]
Alvin
We can talk to you about anything, though, is what I love about you. You can tackle any issue. That's why I can't wait to talk
- [15:42]
Kevin
about 10,000 but you said to me.
- [15:43]
Alvin
I said, what I'm so excited about is the only show I've ever gone on where I haven't prepared at all because you told me not to prepare at all. So I didn't rush my hair. I had no makeup. Yeah, because we're not doing anything right.
- [15:54]
Jordan
Nothing.
- [15:55]
Alvin
We're not filming this.
- [15:55]
Kevin
It's just audio. It's a podcast, you know.
- [15:57]
Alvin
Yeah, but just. But I didn't prepare.
- [15:59]
Kevin
Please, please don't explain to her what a podcast is. This is. Thank you. Well, than.
- [16:04]
Alvin
I mean, my bridge too far. Yeah.
- [16:06]
Kevin
Really.
- [16:07]
Jordan
Oh, my God. I could listen to Will Arnett talk all day. I love his voice.
- [16:13]
Kevin
Batman. Yeah, I love it. Hey, I will play the part of Maria Shriver today. This is exactly why I love audio podcasting. I don't have to prepare. I don't have to do my hair, which is like an impossible task for me. I don't have to. It doesn't matter what I'm wearing. I don't even have to read the outline.
- [16:29]
Jordan
You don't.
- [16:30]
Kevin
I just show up and chime in with stupidity aplenty. And that's a podcast.
- [16:36]
Jordan
All right. And so this next clip that we have is from. Remy Roy, host of the Driven Introvert, let us know that the office ladies also had a rant about video podcasting when a listener asked them to make a video version of the show.
- [16:50]
Josh
We have discussed many times the idea of adding a video element of the podcast, and it boils down to this. I don't want to.
- [17:00]
Lee
Yeah, I mean, it's a podcast. Aren't podcasts just by definition something you listen to? Why do we have to watch everything? Why does everything have a video? Like, I like the idea of something that I just listened to. And I think once a camera's there, it changes how you share. It's not as intimate. I feel like I would be aware of the camera in some way. The camera would be, like this extra person in the room that I would clock in to the camera. I just like that there's not this third thing in the room. It's just me and you having a conversation.
- [17:40]
Josh
Well, listen, we tried it very early on back in the Earwolf Studios. Josh and Lee came in with two cameras, and they set up lights for us.
- [17:49]
Jordan
And.
- [17:50]
Josh
And we tried to record the podcast while we were being videotaped, and it was horrible. We didn't even put that podcast out. We stopped in the middle and we were like, shut off the cameras. I was so self conscious. I was so, like, I Don't know. I didn't like it. Also, sometimes I don't want to brush my hair before we record, and I want to wear my sweatpants, and I want to be in my cozies, and I just don't want to feel like I'm on display.
- [18:19]
Lee
Oh, I know.
- [18:22]
Kevin
It's another good clip.
- [18:23]
Jordan
Okay, so this is two actresses who have built a career on being in front of a camera, and they're saying, no, absolutely not. Turn it off. We're not doing this.
- [18:34]
Kevin
Yeah, and I'm picking up on a theme here.
- [18:36]
Jordan
Yeah, Women don't like to get ready.
- [18:38]
Kevin
Hair and podcasting do not mix. I feel like maybe this is why so many video podcasters are bald men. Do we think
- [18:52]
Alvin
Stephen Bartlett from Diary of a CEO, does he have hair?
- [18:55]
Kevin
What's the hair situation we were talking about?
- [18:57]
Jordan
Tim Pool. He wears that beanie all the time.
- [19:00]
Alvin
That's the video podcasting hack is the perpetual beanie.
- [19:04]
Jordan
Yeah.
- [19:05]
Alvin
All right. Stephen Bartlett does have hair, but it is pretty closely cropped, so maybe he doesn't have to do too much work.
- [19:12]
Kevin
Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry. You're making a really good point about these being professional actresses who are, like, assumingly very comfortable on camera, and yet they still did not like the camera for their podcast.
- [19:23]
Alvin
Yeah, I feel that too. I mean, how many times have you been somewhere and you're just having friends, you're hanging out with friends, you're having a good time, you're at a wedding and people are dancing, and then you realize somebody's pulled their phone out and you're like, oh, everything changed. As soon as there's video and it's being recorded, then you're kind of. You're watching yourself and you're going, okay, is this cool? What am I doing? Is it, like, fun? Is. Are people gonna like it when they watch it back? And that running in your head changes all of the feel, all the feelings that you have about whatever you're doing, you know? And I feel that with podcasting, for some reason with audio, I don't feel as much of that self conscious kind of checking, oh, what, what are we saying? How are we performing? How do we show up? Instead, you're just a little bit more authentic. And maybe that's to our detriment sometimes, but I think often you just end up being a little bit more casual. It's another reason why I like podcasts more than live audio, because you can say something and go, oh, that was kind of dumb. Or I didn't. I don't really agree with that. I don't know why I said it that way. Let me cut it. And it kind of takes two of the inhibitors of being authentic and sharing off the cuff. I'm not being recorded video. And I had the chance to go back and re. Say something if I get it wrong. It makes this so you can be much more real.
- [20:43]
Jordan
Yeah. You know, I actually cut that clip a little bit short because it was a longer clip. But they went on to talk about how they also don't like how judgy people are when they do video. They get so sick of people making comments like, when did her chin start looking like that? Or, you know, getting distracted instead of, like, reviews. But I mean, you know how people on the Internet are. They get, like, snarky, and they have comments about everything. They have to, like, judge how someone looks or how someone has aged. And what that reminded me of so much was that blog that you actually shared with us, Kevin, the Compassion of Audio from Hindenburg.
- [21:21]
Kevin
Yes.
- [21:21]
Jordan
And in that, Nick actually mentioned that. That's kind of the beautiful thing about audio is we turn off our judgment for a hot second. You know what I mean? There's just something built into us that when we see someone on video, we're judging. And that could be a good judgment or a bad judgment, but it just. It sort of like having those visual cues of what someone's wearing, how someone looks kind of takes us out of it for a second. We get distracted by the way that someone, like, blinks or the way that someone is dressing or fidgeting with something while they're speaking. And in audio, you don't have that.
- [21:56]
Kevin
Yeah, that's profound. I don't know that I've spent a lot of time thinking about that until you just raised it. But for sure, I would agree with. If I'm watching someone, I can see what they look like. I don't think it's conscious, but I think subconsciously I'm probably making assessments of whether they are like me or not, based on how they look, based on how they dress, based on cues I pick up on just by their appearance. And then I probably value or devalue some of the things that they're saying based on how similar I perceive them to be to me. And with audio, you don't have that as much. You might have a little bit of the. Oh, by the voice. I'm sort of envisioning what this person might look like, but it's definitely, like, not right in your face. And so I do find myself oftentimes listening to audio. And I hope, I feel like this is true. Being more open minded to ideas that I might not have myself, or being in a position where I could be convinced that you're right, even though initially I didn't love the idea of this, that you're, you're expressing this viewpoint and I'm like, oh, I'm really against that. I see that a different way. But then after listening to them for 20 or 30 minutes, I might come around to, at least to their perspective. Like, I still might not agree with it, but at least I, I understand where you're coming from now because I'm really engaging in the idea more than I am the person, somebody who I've perceived to come from a totally different walk of life. So we're never going to see eye to eye. Immediately it's like, I don't know what walk of life you come from. I don't know your story. So I'm just hearing your perspective. I'm just kind of judging you based on the argument you're presenting and trying to qualify the idea and the thinking without all this other noise and distraction around it and noise and distraction in this scenario, just being video, like just being what somebody looks like, which is, which is terrible. Like, we don't, we don't, don't want to do that, like I said, and ideally you wouldn't, but I think it does happen subconsciously.
- [23:42]
Alvin
Yeah. I was pretty surprised once when I saw a video of Nina Totenberg. She's like the Supreme Court correspondence for npr and she's been covering the Supreme Court for years. And so I think if you'd asked me, how old is she? I would have probably said she's gotta be at least in her 60s. But I really had not ever thought of her age. And then I saw a video and she's in her 80s.
- [24:02]
Jordan
Oh, wow.
- [24:02]
Alvin
But that had never clicked for me because all I'd ever listened to was she has a great voice and she knows a ton about the Supreme Court. And that was like my only experience. And I did wonder if I'd seen video from the beginning of having listened to her for years and kind of put her in a box of, oh, she's like my grandmother's age almost, and she's similar to my grandmother, then would I have, like, approached the ideas differently? And I think it's an uncomfortable question because when I'm surprised that people look different than I imagined, that they, this is, I guess, rude to podcasters, but people are always more attractive in my mind.
- [24:41]
Jordan
I was thinking the same thing, and I think this.
- [24:44]
Alvin
It's because when people are on tv, we select pretty heavily for beautiful people. Like, even normal roles in tv, you think, like, they're the normal person in the TV show, and yet, if you knew them in real life, like, they're pretty attractive. That's just, like, the way TV works. It's even the way, like, YouTube works. And I think there's a pretty heavy bias towards people who are attractive, you think are smarter. And I think that podcasting, I noticed that must be true for me, because it happens the opposite way. That I hear people and I go, wow, they sound smart. They must be beautiful. They. And then you see them and you're like, whoa, this guy is wearing, like, some wild outfit. I can't deal with watching this video. But I'm like, oh, but I'm going back to the podcast, and it's great.
- [25:33]
Jordan
Yeah, I was. It's so funny you brought that up, because, I don't know, like, sometimes podcasters sound very, like, hot with their voices. Like, they just have hot voices. You know what I mean? And I'm like, they're probably, like, super cute. And then I see them, and I'm always surprised if the voice matches the face, because usually it does not. But now, the reason why we don't do video podcasting.
- [25:54]
Alvin
Kevin, are there any podcasters you listen to? Do you think are hot?
- [25:58]
Kevin
I don't think I process it in the same way, but it might be a good explanation of why we don't do live events. Like, we don't want to disappoint our fans.
- [26:06]
Jordan
That's true.
- [26:07]
Kevin
The few that we have, we had
- [26:10]
Alvin
somebody once come to the booth, and they met us in person. They're like, all right, so who's Kevin? Who's Albin? It was like, that's very surprising to me that it wasn't obvious off the bat. But why would it be obvious, right?
- [26:22]
Kevin
But then as a joke, you said something kind of grumpy. You're like, well, let me just tell you, I don't really like anything about, you know, videos. And then she was like, oh, you're Kevin. You totally fooled her.
- [26:39]
Jordan
Okay, let's get into our Sound off segment. So, first off, we have a fan mail message from Wits and Weights. Hey, guys. Longtime listener and host of Wits and Weights on Buzzsprout, of course, love the effort behind the no Sugar Challenge. That said, I tend to cringe a little when restrictive dieting is promoted, especially when it dismisses tools like artificial sweeteners. Which can actually help people manage calorie intake. On our show, we focus on flexible dieting and sustainable habits that don't villainize any specific foods, including sugar. Well, my initial thought when reading this is that I don't think we were promoting it at all because clearly I couldn't stick to any sort of no sugar diet.
- [27:19]
Kevin
So defensive. Jordan, you were clearly promoting this.
- [27:21]
Jordan
I don't think I was. I think I was saying it was impossible.
- [27:25]
Alvin
It's funny because to me, every diet has been so much more effective if it's completely restrictive. I really have some like legalistic streak in me that when I'm like, absolutely no chips, then the chip cravings go away. But as soon as I'm like, I don't vilify any food, I have a little bit, I go off the rails. Or at least it's just, it's much easier when I'm like, I don't drink. It's so much easier.
- [27:49]
Jordan
It's like when you did that thing where it was just like, no drinking. Like you're doing whatever diet and then you're exercising twice a day, One of them must be outside and then you have to read a non fiction book every night. I'm just like, wow, so much easier
- [28:03]
Alvin
than if you were like, eat 40% less chips. I'd be like, oh, that's going to be a lot harder. But I know I may not be typical because my wife is much more similar to what Wits and Weights is talking about, where she can do anything in moderation. And as soon as there's like a rule in place, she's like, oh, now I want to break the rule.
- [28:25]
Kevin
I agree. I don't like restrictive dieting. And I'm in the camp of it. It's never worked well for me either. I will say this though. My daughter has this trick that she's been doing that I really find fun. And that is anytime somebody asks her if she wants something, she says, no thanks, I'm full. Like regardless of if she's full or not, she says that first to like take their offering her or pushing something. And so she's like, I'm gonna eat when I'm hungry or if I want something, I'm gonna evaluate that. But if I'm not even thinking about food and then someone's like, oh, I'm going to get a bag of chips, do you want some? No thanks, I'm full. Like, default response comes out immediately and she's like, I'm gonna make my food choices. I'm not gonna have other people put food choices on me. And I'm like, that was pretty clever. I don't know where she got it from, but she was just home for the weekend, for Easter weekend. And anytime somebody said something like, oh, do you want dessert? Or do you want. I'm grabbing this. Do you want something? No, thanks. Humble. She's like, I wasn't thinking about food, so I don't need you to push food on me.
- [29:18]
Jordan
I love it.
- [29:19]
Alvin
We got another message from Andrew. The Family Histories podcast. I was air punching during Alvin's video podcast monologue rant. Loved it.
- [29:27]
Kevin
Nice.
- [29:27]
Alvin
I gotta say, some of these are my favorite messages. I don't know why the people getting excited if I rant. Yeah, now I'm going to be more prone to ranting in the future.
- [29:37]
Kevin
I like the air punching I used. You know, I'm a little old school. I would call that. Who is it? Was it Arsenio Hall? He used to do the dog pound. The woo woo woo woo.
- [29:46]
Alvin
Remember that?
- [29:47]
Jordan
I was picturing the Breakfast Club, like, end scene. You know, the guy in the football field.
- [29:54]
Kevin
The beauty of podcasting. We all can create our own visuals. Dave Jackson from School of Podcasting wrote in and said, I added the funding info, but I don't see it in Pocket Casts. I refreshed. Is this a feature that is here or a feature that that is coming? Okay, Dave, I had this problem too. It is a feature that is here. I looked for it in podcast. I couldn't find it. So then I went, like, to the app Store, like, trying to force an update, and I noticed an update was available. So then I hit the update whatever button. And then I went back into Pocketcast, and I still wasn't seeing it. So then of course, I go to my podcasting expert, Jordan, and I said, jordan, I can't find this thing. Do you. Have you seen it? And she sent me a screenshot. So I knew it was there something I was doing wrong. So what I had to do was force quit the app on my phone. And then I relaunched it and then I saw it. So if you haven't, like, quit that app in a while, it might not pop in until you do that well.
- [30:42]
Jordan
And they have that, like, lovely minimalist interface going on. So you have to, like, actually click the title of the podcast and then the options will show up, Which I didn't know because I'm not familiar with Pocket Cast. It's not my daily driver. You guys probably already knew that.
- [30:56]
Kevin
Yeah, it's not as front and center as I would like it to be, but I'm not going to criticize anybody who's making any, like, positive moves, so great job, PocketCast. If you want to make it more apparent in the future, I would love that as well. But no criticism. All love. Thank you for putting it in there.
- [31:11]
Jordan
Our last question for Sound off was, what feature would you like to have in your podcast listening app? First up, we had someone from MetaCast reach out and said you want bookmarking of transcripts and podcast apps. We've got it in MetaCast app. You just swipe the segment and it saves the bookmark. Check it out. Very cool.
- [31:31]
Alvin
So did all three of us download metacast or just Kevin and I?
- [31:34]
Kevin
Yeah, I have it.
- [31:34]
Jordan
I got it.
- [31:35]
Alvin
I was able to bookmark stuff. It was good. I listened to some podcasts and was able to do it, but unfortunately, Only the first 5 minutes of the transcript were available. So that's the. The Paywall or Medicast app is if you want to be able to see the full transcript, that you have to upgrade. So it's good. But you would need to pay for the full transcript thing.
- [31:59]
Kevin
Yeah. And let me. Let me just say I. I checked out a couple different podcasts. One that I know does not have transcripts provided by the podcaster. So the app is creating the transcript on the fly, which I like that. If the podcaster's not doing, I love that the app is doing it. And to put those behind a paywall, no problem with that. I get that. I don't like the fact that, like, for when we looked up buzzcast on there, we provide full transcripts through our RSS feeds, and Only the first 5 minutes are available in the app, and you still have to pay for the upgrade to see the full transcript. I don't love that.
- [32:35]
Jordan
Yeah.
- [32:35]
Kevin
I mean, I feel like us, as the creators are creating a transcript. We're editing it, we're making sure the names are correct. Like, you know, most automated transcriptions get Alvin's name wrong. They call them Alvin and stuff like that. So we make those adjustments. We publish it. I would like the MetaCast app to just display what we're publishing. We're putting it out for free. I don't like that you're taking our stuff and putting it behind your paywall, but that's just my opinion. The rest of the functionality, I really love, and I think that there's probably some other great opportunities to paywall some of that functionality that's not paywalling the content from the creators, specifically.
- [33:09]
Jordan
Yeah.
- [33:09]
Kevin
So not to be super critical. Thanks for listening to the show. Thanks for writing in, but I would like to see that change.
- [33:15]
Alvin
Chris from Pod Tastic Audio reached out with a app request. He said, I don't know if many apps have this feature, but could we create an about section of the show with photos and bios, look more like a website than just some text. There's been some work in this space. I know that some of the podcasting 2.0 stuff has talked about having photos of the hosts, but after our talk about the compassion of audio and apparently like extreme attractiveness bias that we all seem to have, I'm of the opinion maybe we need to keep this section out. I don't really know if I want people to go and see all these photos of Kevin and I. Yeah.
- [33:54]
Kevin
But I do like the idea of being able to bring more of the podcast website into the apps. There's a lot of stuff like on the websites that we provide for all of Buzzsprout customers, there's a lot of things you can do in there, from contributions to if they provide subscription content to a little bit more about the show. Other like we have this tag that we call the pod roll tag. So you could bring in other shows that this podcast recommends. So there's a lot more content that could be brought into podcasting apps. It might be nice if the apps just did something as simple as there is a link to a podcast website in every RSS feed. If you could just tap that and make sure that it had a nice mobile browsing experience within the app, that could be a simple way to execute on it. But I do like the idea. I think there's some good stuff there.
- [34:39]
Jordan
Yeah, I was going to say we have the person tag that's usually associated with the host photo and you can have a bio and all that stuff. So it's really just a matter of the podcast apps adopting that and implementing it. Apple Podcasts has something very similar. When you go to a podcast, you can scroll down and they do have the photos of the host there. And if you click the photo, it'll actually show the podcast episodes that they are on, guests are on, things like that. So that's nice. But yeah, it would be nice if it was a little bit more widely adopted.
- [35:11]
Kevin
Yeah. All right. Damien, the DM wrote in and said, I use Podcast Addict and one thing I'd love to see is a native way to take a podcast clip a section and generate an MP3 that I can send to people, share on social media or use for Creating audiograms. I love this. And there are a couple podcasting apps that I'm aware of that do this really well. One, but if you're on Podcast Addict, I'm assuming you're Android user. I don't know any offhand. Oh, Pocket Cast is available on Android and Pocket Cast has a great clip sharing feature. And the other one I was going to mention is Overcast, who sort of kind of pioneered this in the podcast app space. But they're iOS only, so you might want to check out Pocket Cast.
- [35:51]
Alvin
I really enjoy those because you can create a little clip and it's a video clip, just shows like the progress going across, but it's got the artwork, it's got the episode title, all that information. So when you send it to somebody, they can listen to it anywhere, but then they can also see all this other information about the podcast in case they want to go listen to the whole thing.
- [36:09]
Kevin
Yeah, a little nuance. It's not. These apps don't generate MP3s, so maybe not super easy to use as an audiogram, but they are movie files, like Alvin said.
- [36:18]
Jordan
Yeah. What I've been doing lately, whenever I want to share a clip is I don't know if Android has this. They probably do, but iOS they just have a built in screen recording tool.
- [36:28]
Kevin
Yes. That's on Android.
- [36:29]
Jordan
I'll line it up and I'll do the screen recording and then I have to go into my photos and like crop it so you don't see how low my battery is. Because it's really embarrassing how low it is all the time. So I'm in the camp of that would be cool to have a native way to have like a little screen grab.
- [36:44]
Kevin
Isn't that funny? Why is, why is low battery an embarrassing thing?
- [36:47]
Jordan
Because people call it I don't know,
- [36:48]
Alvin
but also cracked screen.
- [36:50]
Kevin
Oh, yeah.
- [36:51]
Alvin
If someone's got like, it's not like a big crack, it's mostly like, oh, I'm going to wait to upgrade it. But it's like the small cracks, I'm like, what's going on? You're dropping this phone a lot, but you don't get a case. What's going on here?
- [37:02]
Kevin
Yeah, I get all the little chips around the edges. I feel like it's just like a metaphor for. For your life. Like everything's just kind of chipped and rolling around.
- [37:10]
Jordan
And I once accidentally dropped my iPhone off of a patio and it fell on the concrete and of course the screen shattered, but was still functional because iPhones are amazing and I Took packing tape and put it over the top. And I kept that phone for like another nine months or something like that. And my boss at the time, he finally bought me a new phone because I was embarrassing him at work meetings. Like, I just looked insane with this, like, cracked screen with tape on it.
- [37:41]
Alvin
I did have a friend once who broke her phone and then was like, I'm gonna show you, and then said, I'm gonna take a screenshot to show you how it broke. Like, that's not gonna work. It's on a photo of the screen.
- [37:56]
Jordan
All right, so Steph geopat's podcast. I want to be able to order my downloaded episodes. Can't do that in Podcast Addict. Do any apps do this? Uh, yeah. Apple Podcast does this. They have a queue. Uh, Spotify also has a queue where you can, like rearrange the episodes that you want to play next. Do you guys know of any other ones that you can do this?
- [38:17]
Kevin
Yeah, Pocket Cast has a. I think they call it now, like Up Next, I think is what they call it. And you can drag anything up and down and around in there.
- [38:25]
Alvin
Yeah, it's pretty much just setting up the queue so that your episodes you want to listen to next are up there and then when that finishes, it goes into the next one. D Sparkling life coach reached out, said, I'm with Jordan and Albin. I'd love to see an option for social, like commenting and liking and bookmarking episodes similar to what YouTube and GoodPods have. My favorite app is Apple Podcasts, but I've been listening more on GoodPods for that option. Yeah, I mean, D, I agree with you agreeing with us. It would be nice to have one place, you know, where you could just drop comments and chat with people kind of asynchronously about an episode. That is one of the things that I really love about YouTube is, you know, you can go onto a video that's five years old and it's got all of the, you know, these interesting comments and people sharing things and so you can learn more about whatever the topic is about.
- [39:13]
Jordan
You know, I actually saw. I actually heard from Megan who does our buzzsprout weekly podcast, and she does the buzzsprout newsletter. She had pulled a story that Deezer has implemented an algorithm where listeners can either like or downvote podcast episodes. And it's sort of like a Reddit style recommendation algorithm that they have, but it's personal to that podcast listener. And I really like that. I would love that so much more than having, like, rating and Reviewing systems. Like, if we could have that in more podcast apps, where I could just say, like, yeah, I like this, or no, I didn't really enjoy this. And they go, great, we'll quit serving up more of this stuff to you in the app.
- [39:57]
Kevin
As far as what they're recommending. Yeah, yeah, I do like that. That's reminiscent of early Netflix work.
- [40:06]
Jordan
Yes.
- [40:06]
Kevin
Do you remember when you used to have to log into Netflix? You'd watch something and they'd ask you to give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Then they moved to, like, a star rating. But it was all for the benefit of them trying to get an understanding of the type of movies and TV shows you like. So they could suggest other things that you might also like.
- [40:22]
Jordan
And then you start figuring out, like, the weird niches that you're into. Like, cerebral, like, clown stuff.
- [40:28]
Kevin
I don't know.
- [40:29]
Jordan
Like, it was always. They always have really weird categories.
- [40:33]
Alvin
Cerebral crocs. I don't know.
- [40:36]
Kevin
I'm imagining they got sophisticated enough where they're like, we don't have to ask them anymore. We can just tell by how much of the stuff that they're watching that we can figure out what you like and don't like. They probably still trying to figure me out since I watch all my movies at 2x. I can't figure out.
- [40:49]
Alvin
No, you don't.
- [40:50]
Jordan
Yes, he does.
- [40:51]
Alvin
Please don't.
- [40:51]
Jordan
Yes, he does.
- [40:53]
Kevin
Yeah, but that's good. And, and. But what's more exciting to me about that is, is Deezer is alive. That's fantastic.
- [40:59]
Alvin
I thought Deezer got shut down at one point.
- [41:01]
Kevin
I hadn't heard anything about them in a long time. All right, well, good for them. Deezer should also check out the, you know, the pod roll tag that you can find out if I'm listening to a show that podcaster may be recommending other shows that might have some influence on your algorithm as well.
- [41:15]
Jordan
Yeah.
- [41:15]
Alvin
So for Sound off next week, I was in the Buzzsprout Reddit group where now we're up to, I think, 900 people in the group. So we'd love for people to come and join us. But I was in there and chatting with somebody and they're talking about all these growth tips that they'd done. They're like, oh, we've tried everything that's, like, off the wall. And they named all these kind of random ideas, but one of them was they made any music that they made for the episode. They put on, like, SoundCloud and then link back to the podcast and then they made Pinterest posts about the podcast, and they were sharing all these kind of, like, off the wall ideas. And they said, and now we can see a third of our new listeners come from all these weird backlinks that we created over the years.
- [42:01]
Jordan
Oh, interesting.
- [42:03]
Alvin
And so my question for you is, like, what's the strangest podcast growth tip that you've tried that's worked? I'd love to hear. You know, we came up with unique podcast growth tips a few months ago for people, but I'd like to hear from our listeners. Are there any that you've tried that are unique that we maybe haven't heard of?
- [42:22]
Jordan
Yeah, let's get in the weird stuff, man. Let's go.
- [42:26]
Alvin
I think weird as in, like, very few people are trying this, and if it's working, then we want to, you know, get it out there so everybody knows. Oh, yeah. I wouldn't have thought you would get any listeners by taking the music you made for your show and putting it on SoundCloud, but apparently somebody did make that work.
- [42:42]
Jordan
All right, so to have your response featured on our next episode, go ahead and tap the text the show link in our show notes. That is the easiest way for me to grab all those. So when you send us Messages via email, DMs, Twitter, it's a little bit harder for me to remember and I might miss them on the next episode. So be sure to tap that text to the show link. Thank you all for listening and keep podcasting.
- [43:10]
Kevin
Did you guys notice a new feature in buzzsprout?
- [43:13]
Alvin
No, I did not. What did we launch?
- [43:17]
Kevin
There is a hidden. It's pretty hidden.
- [43:21]
Jordan
Okay.
- [43:22]
Kevin
But Buzzsprout has been a longtime supporter of transcripts. You both know that we've been doing a lot of work to be able to generate high quality transcripts ourselves without using a third party.
- [43:33]
Jordan
Mm.
- [43:34]
Kevin
The bar is pretty high for us because we've been using some really great third party tools. So it's not like we can just roll out kind of average transcripts. We need to roll out good transcripts if we're gonna replace any offerings that we have currently. And that work has now been published. And the really nice thing about it is that since we're. It's brand new and we're testing it out right now. Any podcast episode that's uploaded to buzzsprout, you can create a transcript for free.
- [44:00]
Jordan
Whoa.
- [44:01]
Kevin
Using the new buzzsprout transcripts tool.
- [44:03]
Alvin
Okay, how does this work?
- [44:04]
Kevin
Okay, so any episode you upload, if you don't have, if you have co host turned on, you automatically get a transcript for free. That already happens. You can edit it, all the things you'd expect. If you don't have co host, then you can click into your episode and on the right hand side there's a little section that says do you know, do you have a transcript for this episode or do you want to create one? Add a transcript here, you tap into that and then you're brought to a page which gives you different options. One like you already have a written transcript, you want to upload that or paste that in. You can just do that if you don't have a transcript. There's some options below that to create a transcript and now there's a new option there and it's basically let buzzsprout create a transcript for you for free for a limited time. And we're just calling it buzzsprout Transcripts. It's in beta, but it is open and available to anybody who's on any paid plan within buzzsprout.
- [44:53]
Alvin
Very cool.
- [44:54]
Kevin
So I think we're probably gonna let em roll for free for you know, four to six weeks roughly. Like that's a work plate and like how we run things. We're going to let it roll for a little while while people give us some feedback on the quality of the transcripts that are getting and the editing experience. After that we'll probably roll it into like an add on package like we do with Magic Mastering and co Host and everything else. These transcripts are not free for us to create, so there's some cost involved. So we need to make sure we're covering our bases there. But I'm really excited because we do it. We did it for a couple of reasons. One, we believe in the power of transcripts for helping all the accessibility benefits that come along with that. Opening the podcast listening experience to more and more people, regardless of whatever conditions they may have that may limit their ability to hear clearly. So you can always read along. It also helps with some discoverability. So more and more podcast apps are pulling in transcripts and then you could search through episodes like we just talked about in our Soundoff segment today. More apps are doing great things like MetaCast being able to like swipe and create notes from transcripts. More apps are just supporting transcripts in general like we talked about. This year Apple Podcast Apps has a really great transcript integration feature. Pocketcast is adding it. We'll probably see more and more of that coming to more and more podcast apps. So I just feel like 2025 and beyond is just going to be like, transcripts are just going to become table stakes for podcasting. If you publish a podcast, it's going to sort of be expected that there's a transcript available with it. And so we decided to make the big investment to make sure that everybody who hosts on Buzzsprout has a really easy way to get high quality transcripts.
- [46:29]
Alvin
I really love it because, you know, I mostly am not reading podcasts, though sometimes I'll listen to a podcast and later on go back and read and kind of pull notes. But lately I found myself much more often pulling up old Buzzcast episodes. And I'm like, I think we talked about this. I want to remember what we covered and what we didn't. And you could just go back and search. It's so nice to be able to search old episodes. Kevin sent an article, I don't know, maybe a week ago, and you're like, oh, this is interesting. I was like, yeah, I think we talked about it on Buzzcast. And I went back and I was like, oh, we kind of talked about it, but it was a little bit different than I'd remembered. But I wasn't going to go through the process of listening to hours of content trying to find that bit again. But it was super easy when there's a couple keywords and you just start searching and you. Okay, yeah, it's not there.
- [47:17]
Kevin
Yeah, yeah, there's. There's some really fun things you can do when the majority or all of your podcast episodes have transcripts associated with them. With AI tools that are available today, you can train your AI. So, for example, I've got a ChatGPT subscription and I. And it's now it has memory, so you can teach it things. And so you can say, this is my podcast. Here is the RSS feed and you can see at line whatever 73, there is a link to a transcript file. There is a pattern there. Can you see the pattern between this episode and all the other episodes? Yes. So now you know how to pull down transcripts. Can you please pull down the transcripts from my last 10 episodes and tell me, like, give me ideas for what a good next episode would be and like, you can start interacting with AI agents in this way.
- [48:02]
Alvin
Did that work?
- [48:02]
Kevin
It does work, yeah. I've been doing a lot of experimenting with that, but I think they're going to get better at being able to discover transcripts on their own. But right now you have to teach it the pattern of how to find your transcript. Then once it finds that pattern, then it can follow that pattern and it can pull in transcripts automatically. It can read them, parse them, get that knowledge, and then you can ask it questions about your stuff.
- [48:22]
Jordan
That would've been so nice to have when we had our hundredth episode.
- [48:28]
Kevin
Oh, yeah.
- [48:28]
Jordan
And I pulled those clips that were like, the best of moments of Buzzcast in the past a hundred episodes that took so much time for me to go through, find it, figure out what timestamp it was on, and then, like, go and listen through all these things and be like, oh, yeah, that was a good moment. Or this was really compelling or funny. And I. That would have saved me hours, probably.
- [48:49]
Kevin
Yeah. Do you guys remember a couple weeks ago when I was in the company chat, I was saying, you know, like, I'm teaching ChatGPT how to do things? And I said, I taught it how to find the transcript for a Buzzcast episode. And I said, I was wondering if it knew, since I taught it from basically my instance of chatgpt, if. If your instance would then figure it out.
- [49:08]
Alvin
I remember you asking about this. Yes.
- [49:10]
Kevin
Yeah. And so I think, like, one of our programmers chimed in and said, I asked ChatGPT to find a Buzzsprout transcript, and it could not find it. So my experiment was failing. It wasn't going outside of my box. But I can still go into my chat GPT and say, hey, can you find the latest transcript for the latest Buzzcast episode? And then I can ask it questions about that and it can do that. I don't have to retrain it every time.
- [49:28]
Alvin
That's pretty impressive.
- [49:29]
Kevin
Yeah. So, anyway, enough with the AI stuff. But, yeah, if you don't do transcripts, please hop in there. We. We would love as many people as possible to try out the new Buzzsprout transcripts feature and edit your transcript. Once you. Once it's processed and you have one, jump into the editor, see what you think about that. You can assign speakers, you can correct any typos. You don't have to do extensive, like get every single word perfect, but just polish up the glaring errors and then publish it. They appear on your Buzzsprout website and as I mentioned before, are appearing in more and more podcast apps, so it's a good thing. We're excited to bring it to you, but it's still early days, so we need. We need testers and feedback and all that stuff.