← School of Podcasting: Expert Tips for Launching and Growing Your Podcast
School of Podcasting: Expert Tips for Launching and Growing Your Podcast
Apple Video: Smart Move or Time Sink?
00:47:46
Loading summary
Transcript72 lines
- [00:00]
Dave Jackson
Just when podcasters thought they only had to worry about audio, Apple showed up with video. And last week I talked about how your show should be an experiment. So today we're stress testing the idea of do I dare say it? A dialogue with Justin Jackson. Remember dialogues with Justin Jackson from Transistor and Albin Brooke from buzzsprout in a conversation about Apple's HLS move. Whether it's a big deal, a small deal, or just the start of another podcasting identity crisis. Oh, yeah, and we might not be getting the full story from Spotify. Shocking. Hit it, ladies.
- [00:41]
Show Announcer
The school of podcasting with Dave Jackson.
- [00:47]
Dave Jackson
Podcasting since 2005. I am your award winning hall of fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson. Thanking you so much for tuning in. If you're new to the show, this is where I help you plan. And today we're kind of talking planning because you might be going, do I need to do this Apple thing? Well, we're gonna talk about that. We also help you launch, we help you grow, we help you monetize. It's all there. Schoolofpodcasting.com and if you're new to the show, I have a history of inviting people on the show that I don't always. It's not that I don't agree with them. It's often that I don't understand where they're coming from. And one person was Justin Jackson, and he seemed just giddy, giddy. I tell you about this new HLS video, and this is a new way of bringing video into Apple. So I had a conversation with Justin, but I also got an email from my buddy Alvin Brook over at buzzsprout. Oh, first of all, Justin Jackson, founder of Transistor, a great media host. And then I got an email from my buddy Albin over at buzzsprout who said, hey, we're flipping the switch on this thing too. Pretty much all the hosts are doing this, and we'll talk about some caveats along the way, but I wanted to get Albin's view on because I am of the. The ilk. Is that the right word? I don't know that I don't get it. I mean, I get it that it's, you know, it's another way of growing your audience, but I just didn't get the whole, like, oh, yeah, yeah. I was kind of like, I was very meh. So the one thing that I've discovered is I am no longer married. I do not have children. I do not have a cat or a dog.
- [02:41]
Show Announcer
And.
- [02:41]
Dave Jackson
And so that is My perspective doesn't mean my perspective is wrong. When I talk to Steve Goldstein about this whole YouTube is a podcast thing, Steve is surrounded by 20 year old people at NYU. And when I talked to Justin, he brought this point up.
- [02:58]
Justin Jackson
A lot of this comes from me watching my kids and, you know, they're 16 to 23 and they are what, watching a lot of content that feels like a podcast in this kind of fluid mode, which is I hear people all the time go, who's watching these podcasts?
- [03:17]
Dave Jackson
And in this case, that would be me. That doesn't make any sense to watch a podcast on YouTube.
- [03:23]
Justin Jackson
Well, it's more fluid than you might expect. And, you know, sometimes they have it on the background while they're doing homework, sometimes they have it open on their phone while they're cooking eggs. But it's fluid in the sense that they'll happily put it in their pocket and just listen to the audio version. So they're moving in and out of audio and video modes. And if that's the next generation, Gen Z is the next generation. Eventually us old folks, we will move up the, you know, the period, the great ladder and into the sky. And who's going to replace us? Well, it's the next generations, right? That's going to be, you know, millennials came along and we saw this big surge in terms of Spotify usage. Well, now we've got Gen Z coming and they are much more video oriented. They grew up with TikTok and Instagram Reels, et cetera. So I'm excited that Apple has an option for modern video, modern streaming video. And I'm really excited about what this is going to do for the open podcast ecosystem. But I think this is going to have tremendous benefits for RSS based podcasting apps, RSS based podcasting hosts, and for creators that still want all the advantages that this open ecosystem gives us. I think that this move by Apple is actually going to benefit that whole ecosystem.
- [04:50]
Dave Jackson
So I asked Albin from buzzsprout, I said, I know all the different media hosts. They all set up kind of like a waiting list. And like, was anybody really interested in this?
- [05:02]
Albin Brooke
The sign up sheet? It's funny, originally it was for us to collect a few beta testers and then I went, well, I'm going to start sharing this on social whenever people ask about it. And so we didn't put it out for everybody, but we still got a few hundred people who are interested. And most of those people are not. People were doing audio podcasts, it was people who were doing Video podcasts already, but they were just manually uploading to YouTube or Spotify. And then they saw, oh, Apple podcast is really making a big push into video. And so they wanted to get access to it. And the response has been really positive. It's been really nice to see everybody get their videos live. I think we've got, I don't know, 165 podcasts with episodes in there. Most of them have two or more videos live in Apple Podcasts and it's been a ton of fun.
- [05:54]
Dave Jackson
And so, yeah, there are definitely people that are interested in this. When I asked the same question to Justin, here's what he said.
- [06:02]
Justin Jackson
Oh, people are chomping at the bed. I think our wait list is hundreds and hundreds of people now.
- [06:07]
Dave Jackson
Well, does this mean that audio is dead? JUSTIN JACKSON Audio podcasting is dead.
- [06:13]
Justin Jackson
No, it's grown 10, 15% a year for the last decade. Every year, 10, 15% more people consuming audio only content. That's a nice dependable growth curve.
- [06:26]
Albin Brooke
It's great.
- [06:27]
Dave Jackson
And both guys had the same take. Apple Podcasts is different than YouTube. Yes, they're both video, but they were excited about the experience on Apple.
- [06:40]
Albin Brooke
Albin BROKE I mean, this has actually been the critique of Apple music for years. People will say, yeah, but I love my Spotify playlists. I love how YouTube music is always recommending new music. Apple, all they're doing is they're giving me the music that I told them I liked. That actually is a positive in one world that I don't always want to find new music. Every time I go into my music app, I don't always want to find new podcasts. I just want to go in there and listen to the things that I found that I enjoy. Both are good.
- [07:14]
Justin Jackson
Justin Jackson what I'm hoping is that people will realize there's, there's quite a difference to coming into Apple podcasts than to coming in on YouTube. Everybody is addicted to their phones and almost everybody is addicted to short form media. So Apple could position itself as the calm, mindful alternative. This is the place where we, we don't, we're not advertising to you. I mean, there's an advertising component of the podcast, but their business model's not like Google or YouTube. They're not like trying to addict you so they can serve you more ads. That's not the point. And so they could say, hey, young person or hey, boomer, because they need to get more of them too. This is a mindful place for you to consume media. Audio, audio and video. Video however you want to consume it. If you want to go for a walk and just have a beautiful audio only experience. Apple podcasts, if you also want to watch your favorite video show. Apple Podcasts. So they could engender a consumer preference. Right, like let's try to get consumers to come to our app. What's going to draw them away from YouTube because it's. YouTube has a lot of momentum right now in the culture. Well, maybe this mindful angle is one possible place, but ultimately the consumer will decide.
- [08:36]
Dave Jackson
And so the podcaster is going to have to understand the strengths of YouTube and the strengths of Apple and use them accordingly. Here's Albin and we got years of
- [08:49]
Albin Brooke
going to every podcast conference and hearing, oh, you've got to do video because video is good for discovery. And I don't think that's exactly right. I think what's right is YouTube is very good for discovery because YouTube is algorithmically based. But what we all love about podcasting is that we listen to the same podcast that we grew up with. You know, some of them you've probably got shows that are 10 plus years you've been listening to and you've liked the whole time and you build a more familiarity and more of a connection. Well, Apple podcast is now becoming this one platform where you're getting that long term connection. But if you want to flip between audio, you want to flip over to text and read the transcript, where you want to flip over to video, you've got all that one experience.
- [09:39]
Dave Jackson
And so for the person who wants to do video, this is an opportunity not so much to grow your audio podcast, but to grow your, your reach.
- [09:50]
Albin Brooke
There are people like you and I who love creating audio content and listening to audio content and it fits specific moments in our lives. But there is a massive audience that loves watching video content. And instead of them watching a bunch of Tiktoks and Instagram reels, they could now be watching your podcast on Apple Podcasts. So I'm excited that we're going to reach new people, new audiences for podcasting because there's tons of good content out there and I'm always excited to get more of it in front of new audiences.
- [10:23]
Dave Jackson
So one of the exciting things in Apple is the fact that you can switch between the audio and the video in Apple. And Justin was talking about we're going to get kind of nerdy here. There's a thing called an alternate enclosure and it's nothing you have to worry about. It's in the back end. It should be in your media host if they decide to use this feature, and then it should be in apps like Pocket Cast that would make that whole switchability thing available to everyone everywhere.
- [10:56]
Justin Jackson
Now there's going to be all this new HLS video, which we are going to put into the alternate enclosure in the RSS feed, making it available for the first time to Pocket Casts and Fountain and true fans and podcast guru and anyone else that wants to support HLS streaming in the app. So if creators wanted more options, like, maybe they're tired of YouTube too, well, now you've got more options. You can distribute it to YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and the open RSS ecosystem.
- [11:32]
Dave Jackson
And this is where I got a little confused. And we're going to get some of our nerd on here, because I heard Open ecosystem and OpenRSS, I thought all the information was in your feed. And an API is a way for your media host to talk directly to Apple. And even though some of this information might be in your feed, and if you're new to some of this nerd talk, think of it like a radio, where you have a Signal, you know, 97.5, and you tune that into a radio and stuff comes out. Well, with podcasting, you. You have your feed, and when you put that feed into Apple or Spotify or whatever, when people tune into your channel, stuff comes out. And I thought this information about the HLS video would be in the feed. Hence, and this is the true power of RSS feeds, you can't be canceled. As long as your audience can get access to your RSS feed, you're good to go, it doesn't matter. And that means if you get kicked out of Spotify, you got all these other places to go. And what has me ever so slightly worried is now with Spotify and Apple, this gives them another way to kind of shut off your content to your audience. Even if they have your feed, if they revoke your API access, no soup for you. So that makes me worried that some of the biggest companies are putting in things to shut off your content. Now I understand why. I've heard that in a way, we're going back to the old days when you submitted a show to Apple Podcast. It might take a couple weeks. Used to tell people, give it a month, and now I've heard reports of it can take up to two weeks. I've heard a lot of people say it's like a day, if that, maybe two, but plan on two weeks to be approved. And that's because they're taking more time to make sure. I think that A, it's not a bunch of AI slop. B, that it's not a bunch of, shall we say, adult content. And so it's taking a little longer. So when you're like, hey, I'm going to upload a file and be an Apple today, that's not the way that's going to work. Now, when it comes to what do you have to do, I'm going to go ahead and just play this clip from Albin, and when he says Buzzsprout, you just say transistor. If you're a person that's using transistor, because I've heard Captivate's version, it's all the same thing. And that is you go to your media host.
- [14:08]
Justin Jackson
Okay?
- [14:09]
Albin Brooke
So when you have video content, you upload it to buzzsprout or whoever you're using. And then we are going to create the HLS video. We'll do it in three different formats. We'll get that over to Apple Podcasts, and then we'll use that same track. We'll take the audio, and we'll make sure that that still goes out to all of your audio destinations, which is everywhere else. We want it to be a seamless, you know, one upload and get it out to everybody so that you're not kind of fumbling through this on your own. And then over on the stats side, we're unifying the stats as well. We still are IAB certified because we can now see, you know, a actual minute of this was streamed to Apple Podcasts. And then when we see video bites being requested, we actually see that somebody is watching the video. Then we can make that a video stat. So now we have another page in Buzzsprout where you can drill down and see a bit more about what's happening on video. You know, how much of this is of my engagement is audio? How much is video? Which episodes are people wanting to watch?
- [15:18]
Dave Jackson
And so you will hear that same process, whether it's Captiv, Transistor, eventually Libsyn, it will be. You log in, you upload the video, we slice and dice it into bits. You take your API key from Apple and then we tie it to that, and somehow it's going to take the audio from your video and put that out. So keep that in mind. We're going to talk about that in a bit with Justin, because if you haven't, I do this on Saturday morning. I do ask the podcast coach. It's a live stream that goes to YouTube and then I edit it and it's Pretty different because it's a live show, which means there's a lot of ums. There are times when technology decides, I don't know, not to work. And I'll leave that in the YouTube video because you kind of can't swap out files on YouTube where you lose all your stats. And so the stats are going to now in these media host, you'll have audio stats and video stats and you'll be able to see on an episode how much was audio and how much was video. And so then the question becomes, well, what about pricing? Here's Justin from Transistor.
- [16:30]
Justin Jackson
Our pricing has always been 19, 49, 99, and then it goes up from there for like enterprise customers. And right now we're looking at having this basically at no extra charge for folks on the $49 plan and 99, etc. So anybody on our not on the starter plan will get this just as a part of their regular subscription. And for folks on the starter plan that have been wanting to do upload once, distribute video everywhere, they'll be able to upgrade and get this as a part of that. So we're looking at not raising prices and just including it in our mid tier and up.
- [17:10]
Dave Jackson
Albin Brook from buzzsprout.
- [17:12]
Albin Brooke
Well, with Buzzsprout, we've never really focused too much on megabytes and gigabytes. It's how much content you upload. And almost everybody is on what is a $15 a month plan for video. That's going to be 25 when we bill you for the full year. And I think that's going to be really competitive. Video is much more expensive for us from processing and hosting and delivery. But we want people to have kind of that full experience when you're creating video content. So $25. And I think we're going to be pretty competitive there.
- [17:48]
Dave Jackson
And so because he's James Gridland from Pod News, he assembled a list of different companies and their pricing. So Potigi, which is a company out of Germany, they are not doing the alternative enclosure, but they currently offer Apple Spotify and YouTube and hold off on that Spotify thing, we'll talk about that. But they're doing four videos, 30 minutes per month and a yearly price, notice this, of $18. You can also do three podcasts with unlimited audio, 12 episodes, 180 minutes a month for $36 a month. If you look at Buzzsprout right now, they just have Apple 72 hours a year for $25 a month. Now the yearly price again, if you're like trying to do the math in the car and your brain hurts. That's $300 a year at $25 a month. Captivate has. And right now Buzzsprout does not support YouTube, Spotify or the alternative enclosure. It's just an Apple thing because we're all Russian, because, you know, it's Apple Captivate. Has the Apple thing rolled out. No Spotify, no YouTube, no alternate closure. Unlimited podcasts, up to 30,000 downloads a month. And then for the video, unlimited video episodes up to a thousand a month. And then there are additional bandwidth costs. Now, if that's a thousand views on Apple only right now the yearly price is $29 US. And if you go out to James's site, he has the pound thing, but you know me America, right? So the flight cast, currently they do Spotify, YouTube and the alternate enclosure, but they don't support Apple yet. That is $32 a month. Libsyn is working on Apple, but they just do Spotify and YouTube again. We'll talk about Spotify here in a second. They're looking again a yearly price of $25 a month. It's one podcast, up to 10 hours of audio a month or a hundred gigabytes a month of video uploads. And so I'll put a link to that in the show notes. So I'm sure James will be updating that as it goes along. And I said this when this first was announced. I go video is not cheap. That's why YouTube takes 45% if you earn any money on on YouTube. So that's where you're looking at. And I don't know if there's any right or wrong. If you're doing Captivate, I mention them. It's an extra in the same way that buzzsprout added a little bit to their audio plan. It's captivate is 29amonth plus $12 a month if you're doing videos. So there's all. That's it. Go over and look at it. But just realize this is going to cost you more. Be an experiment. And when I was talking to Justin, he talked about this, that, you know, all these companies are putting things in place and they're spending money on developers and things like that. And we still have to keep in
- [21:00]
Justin Jackson
mind there's also still a chance this doesn't work out, especially for Apple in particular, YouTube Music has already chosen this switching paradigm. So they've been using it since the introduction of podcasts on YouTube Music Spotify also chose this switching Paradigm, you can switch between audio and video mode. When we were doing a lot of work with the Podcast Standards project about including HLS in the alternate enclosure, this was also the paradigm, the ui, the user interface paradigm we used. And it might turn out that in the evolution of the medium, that's actually not what consumers want. Maybe they want something that looks a bit different. I think the reason that that particular choice was made is if you are watching on your iPhone and then, you know, you click the power button and it has to background it, it's essentially doing the same thing. You're just switching to audio mode now, right? The video has been backgrounded. The HLS stream is now just pulling the audio instead of the video and wasting all of that data. You're just getting the audio feed when you background it. And I think it'll be interesting to see how people use it.
- [22:18]
Dave Jackson
And what's interesting is we've kind of said it's the younger generations that are doing this, oh, I'll go to something to watch and stick it in my pocket. And maybe that's not what older people will be doing. But there is an advantage to Apple Podcast because the people that use Apple Podcasts are people that have been using it since back in the day, and they might be a little older. And there is a characteristic about people that are kind of older versus someone who's say, you know, 19.
- [22:50]
Justin Jackson
What Apple does have is the most. They have the oldest and most lucrative audience. So the audience that all these advertisers want are on Apple Podcasts. So they've got the right kind of attention on Apple, I think, and they're putting quite a bit of effort behind this. I think we're gonna see especially shows that make the take the plunge and try it out. They're gonna get some of the advantages because Apple's promoting them. You know, Stephen Roblez was telling me that they had massive increase in audience, but also in terms of premium subscribers just from being promoted on their video being promoted on Apple podcasts.
- [23:34]
Dave Jackson
And James Crinlund pointed out that that did not take away his audience from YouTube. But I also want to point out I was introduced to Stephen Robles as the Apple shortcut guy, which of course they're then going to promote that guy because he's showing you how to use their products. Just something to keep in mind. Another thing is there is something to be said for First Mover advantage on the marketing side.
- [24:01]
Albin Brooke
If you are creating video content, I would a hundred percent say go and sign up and do this right now we in our beta, I want to say half of the people who are in our beta at one point got featured by Apple podcasts and that's just a nice bump that you get exposure to a lot of new people. These are people who've never watched your video before who might now be interested. In addition to that, you're going to be able to tell people, you know, we were featured on Apple podcasts. And for years people have used that as a really nice proof point that this is a high quality show. Well, this is an opportunity to go get your show in. It's relatively, there's not a lot of competition right now. So if you have video content, you're putting it up on YouTube, you're putting it up on Spotify. Let's get it into Apple Podcast now and get you featured.
- [24:56]
Dave Jackson
So yeah, we might have some YouTubers jumping into Apple.
- [25:01]
Justin Jackson
We're going to have some more friends at the party. They're, you know, joining the public radio crowd and you know, all the folks that really love audio. We're going to have some video people, some people that grew up consuming and creating video and that's going to change the culture a little bit. You know, we're going to that the tent is going to get bigger.
- [25:20]
Dave Jackson
And speaking of people that grew up on radio and grew up on TV, wait till you hear what a guy in his 70s did on YouTube. Are you dreaming of starting your own podcast but not sure where to begin? Podcasting in six weeks gives you a clear step by step path to go from idea to launch with confidence. This this practical course is designed to help you create, record, edit, publish and promote your podcast in just six weeks. Now, whether you're starting from scratch or feeling overwhelmed by the technical side, you'll get the guidance, structure and tools you need to launch a podcast that sounds professional and reaches the right audience. When you're ready to stop overthinking. When you're ready to start podcasting, join podcasting in six weeks today and turn your voice, your ideas and expertise into a show people want to hear. The best part is it's only a dollar. Check it out. Classes start June 3rd. Go to schoolofpodcasting.com six weeks. If you host a podcast, your website should work as hard as you on your episodes. At PodPage, we automatically create a beautiful professional site for your show, complete with episode pages, transcripts, audio players, SEO optimization, and building tools to grow your audience. No design work, no plugins, no ongoing maintenance. In less than a minute, you can see exactly what your Podcast would look like on PodPage. Go to podpage.com preview and generate your free preview site right now. See your show the way it should look@podpage.com preview.
- [27:21]
Show Announcer
The School of podcasting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [27:25]
Dave Jackson
So you notice that Justin said video creators should jump into Apple and so did Albin. It's like if you're making video, you, yeah, you should put it into that. But we're also worried about the person who's an audio only person. And then this happens.
- [27:43]
Albin Brooke
I've seen so many creators get into podcasting and say, you know, I love that John Lee Dumas does a daily show. I'm gonna do a daily show. And they burn out after one week of a daily show because it's too much. They have a full time job. They have so much going on. What I don't want us to do is create a bunch of anxiety around video and burn people out. Instead, I want to say, if you love video, this is a wonderful place to be. If you only love audio, you don't have to feel like you're going to be left behind. You're just doing a something that's a little bit different. And they're both really good mediums in the same way that writing is a third option for you if you just want to have a blog.
- [28:23]
Dave Jackson
And so I was talking with Justin about video and he brought up, because Justin's from Canada, this older gentleman who used to be on TV and moved to YouTube and well, check out this story.
- [28:38]
Justin Jackson
So, like there's a show in Canada by a former news anchor here. The show is called the Bridge by Peter Mansbridge. And I can't believe, I mean, he has some name recognition, but he's not, it's not like he's a super celebrity or something. He was a news anchor, he retired. A lot of people don't know who he is, but he's just put together. And here's the other funny thing. His audio quality, not amazing. His video quality, not amazing. It's just three squares for each guest. No special editing, no special lighting. But what he's nailed is incredible content that's engaging, that pulls you in and a repeatable format. He has a theme for every day of the week and I will often listen to the audio version on Pocket Casts. But then I'll get home and there's 30 minutes left and I want to see them engaging on screen. So I'll find it on YouTube. Fast forward and now I'm watching the rest of the show. He has incredible numbers on YouTube for you know, I think he's in his 70s now, you know, 100,000 views an episode for a Canadian politics podcast. Pretty incredible. And he's also in the top 25 in the Apple podcast rating. So he's. I think he's a good example of how podcasters can win in this ecosystem. And if I'm already listening on PocketCasts, it would just be so much nicer for me to be able to just go, okay, I'm home now. I'm gonna switch to video mode. Airplay this onto my TV and watch the rest there. Why do I have to switch platforms? Why do I have to give YouTube any of my attention? I would much prefer to keep it with Pocket casts and, you know, just do it that way. So, yeah, why not give people the choice to have more fluid modes of consumption?
- [30:39]
Dave Jackson
And when I heard that, I was like, well, I'm sure this guy has, I don't know, his grandson making thumbnails for him, right?
- [30:46]
Justin Jackson
These thumbnails are nothing special. And if you look at the views he's getting, four days ago, 102,000 views. Seven days ago, 39,000 views. 11 days ago, 84,000 views. Now, certainly he's stacking a bunch of advantages he has. He has some name recognition, et cetera. He has some relationships with reporters and other things that he's pulling in here. But I think this is a good example of the kind of approach that
- [31:18]
Dave Jackson
can work, and you only know if it works if you try. And as I was talking with Justin, both buzzsprout Captivate Transistor, they're great for entrepreneurs because you can insert your own ads. And between me and you, I think that's the way to go. And if you have a product or service, and if you don't have a product or service, you can use those ad spots that you make to ask people to then give you money to support the show. And I know people are like, oh, that feels all salesy, and I can't believe I have to beg for money. And I go, you mean like, I don't know, PBS has been doing for decades, if you like this James Taylor concert, please buy the James Taylor hanky. We've all seen that on, you know, different PBS shows. It's nothing new. It's. We like to call it value for value. And so keep that in mind that it doesn't always have to be these programmatic ads that pay you next to nothing. And so he was telling me about the show acquired, and I was familiar with them when I worked at libsyn they, they were using our somewhat Patreon kind of tool called glow, which for the record was a piece of crap. But anyway, and he was telling me what they're up to now because they're not doing the premium kind of podcasting thing anymore. Here's what they're up to.
- [32:50]
Justin Jackson
They have basically the most valuable audience in the world. Right. By the way, as a context, the season for them used to be six episodes, then they dropped it to five episodes, then four episodes. So I'm going to give you the public price. This is on their website, for what a four episode season costs you. So to be the presenting sponsor, it sold out until 2029. 5.6 million for four episodes. What, what, what? For the mid roll, it's 4.1 million. This customer is doing what I think more podcasters should be thinking about, which is thinking about the audience first. So yes, if you are serving, you know, an audience that really, you can only sell them mattresses, then there's a lot of shows like that and you're going to need, you know, a massive audience, massive scale. You're going to be competing against all the celebrity podcasts, etc. But if you're a business podcast that has as its listeners CEOs, executives, VPs, etc. And that's a very difficult demographic to reach via advertising because they've all got YouTube Premium and everything else you're willing to spend. I mean, they're sold out. They've been sold out. They sold out 2026, 2027, and they have already sold out 2028. You can still get in on the mid roll for 2028 though, if you want 2.9 million, Dave, it's a bargain. And then what? Here's this. What else they do that's very smart is once your four episode season is done, you've paid 5.6 million for it, they remove your ads and then all those episodes go into the back catalog, which you can then sponsor for six months at $900,000.
- [34:33]
Dave Jackson
Well, that's ridiculous. They must have a team of 18 or, you know, their parents are rich, something, you know, show.
- [34:40]
Justin Jackson
But this is two guys who started a podcast, they went out for coffee, they're like, we should start a podcast. We love the history of great companies. And they started talking about it. It's two guys and an editor, that's the whole company. And they did this show for 10 years without making a lot of money. And then all of a sudden they accrued this audience and now they get to benefit from it.
- [35:02]
Dave Jackson
That's amazing. And so as I was looking into this, like I said, I didn't see a lot of people, as in creators, that were excited about this. I didn't see a lot of media hosts that were excited about it. I didn't hear a lot of audience members that were like, boy, I wish I could get more ads in my stuff. But there are people that are excited about this. And it's called advertisers because it's another stage to get your message out there. And for years the advertising space was trying to hit 2 billion. They eventually did, but for years they would go, yeah, we're shooting for 2 billion. They would come in just under. And so it's another way to say, look, we've grown the advertising space because, you know, the podcasting space is now worth whatever, 2.9 billion. Except there's one problem. We can't define what a podcast is anymore. So when your shoe makes a dollar, you're like, hey, look, podcasting is up by a dollar. But it is something that advertisers are definitely interested in.
- [36:10]
Justin Jackson
Like you could be 20,000 hertz with like just a nice, like, you know, swaying trees in the background. And it's psychedelic. But in the bottom, there's a tasteful logo for a company. You don't even mention them audibly. It's just there. Well, it's giving you one more tasteful place to have an advertiser or a sponsor, which you can now, now you can sell that option and your podcast
- [36:37]
Dave Jackson
can look like a NASCAR with just stickers all over the whole thing. And those guys are crying all the way to the bank. And earlier we heard Albin explain how don't burn yourself out by adding too much to your plate, meaning video. But he also said, if you're already making video, this is a no brainer. And here's some advice from Justin.
- [37:02]
Justin Jackson
Listen, folks, don't overcome to color with three colors first, right? Like, just simplify it. Oh, I'm gonna get all the cameras and everything. Okay, hold on, hold on, hold on. Learn to be engaging audio first. If you can do that, then add a little something, upgrade to a little camera, get a little overhead light, just maybe upgrade your microphone, do a few things. But the, but the funny thing is, in some ways, nothing's changed. What is your goal? If your goal is to build an audience, then you've got to be engaging. You've got to learn how to be entertaining on the microphone. And it is a lot harder when you're thinking about the Visual stuff and the audio stuff. The great thing about being an audio first creator to start with is you just get in the booth or your closet or wherever you're recording and you have nothing else to worry about. You don't have to worry about hair or makeup or clothes or anything. You just headphones, microphone, a way of recording your audio. It really does simplify things for creators. It'll be like more colors to color with. But I do see it as like, you know, you can start with audio, you can start simple and then move up from there.
- [38:20]
Dave Jackson
That's it. Thanks again to both Justin Jackson from Transistor FM, Albin Brook from Buzzsprout.com and these guys make great content. I love this. We're going to bring on a clip here from Kevin Finn. Albin is part of Buzzcast, which is Buzzsprout's podcast. And Kevin was talking about how the experience on YouTube is a lot like the experience in theaters. And if you haven't been to a theater in a while, it's not a great experience.
- [38:54]
Kevin Finn
So over the past couple years, I've kind of done a lot to avoid YouTube as much as possible. Over the years, it just got to the point where, like, I never left a YouTube session feeling better. Like, it just became like, ah, that was a waste of time. Like, it was just, I got sucked into video after video and none of them made my life any better. And it just felt like a time dump, a time suck.
- [39:14]
Justin Jackson
Yeah.
- [39:15]
Kevin Finn
And so I've pretty much gotten to this place where I'd avoided it and that probably colored my taste around video podcasts in general. Now over the past couple months, I've been reengaging with video content through the Apple Podcast app, and I found it's a very different experience. I talked about this a little bit last week in the quickcast that, like, the, you know, moment of clarity I had when I got to the end of my podcast and it just stopped and like, it waited on me to choose what I wanted to hear next instead of just putting something in front of me. So the analogy that I want to try out on you guys, it's kind of like similar in my mind to like the movie theater experience to me, at some point in my life, I just sort of like going to a movie theater just wasn't as magical as it had been. Maybe when I was a little bit younger or something. It was fun, it was sort of social. You'd go with your friends, you'd see a great movie. But, like, as I just got a little Bit older, matured a little bit. Like it's expensive. I don't know. It was just like you walk in and your feet like are always sticking to the floor. Everything feels dirty. I don't know.
- [40:08]
Albin Brooke
You're like that before.
- [40:11]
Kevin Finn
If it's a popular movie, you're like always going to be sitting next to somebody who you don't may or may not want to sit next to the assigned seat thing. Buying tickets in advance, paying the 2:50 surcharge to pick your seat. Like, I was just like done with movie theaters.
- [40:24]
Dave Jackson
And so I totally get that perspective because A, I don't go to the movie theaters anymore because a, the experience was horrible. It was nothing but ads for a half hour before the movie started. And maybe that's, you know, YouTube just feed you with a fire hose about, look at this next. And you're like, look, I'm trying to watch somebody that I said I wanted to watch. Please quit distracting me. And so maybe this apple thing has legs. That's from Buzzcast. I'll have links to that. Then you got Justin. Well, you can find Justin again over at Transistor fm. Check out his show the panel as well as podcast Marketing Trends Explained with Jeremy. And hey, this is future Dave. I forgot to mention, he just launched a new show on YouTube, creatively called Video Podcast Show. All the links will be in the show notes@schoolofpodcasting.com 10:35. Justin and Albin, thanks for coming on the show.
- [41:20]
Justin Jackson
Yeah, thanks so much, Dave. This is great.
- [41:22]
Albin Brooke
Dave, thank you so much. And thank you for being a fan of Buzzcast. We appreciate it.
- [41:26]
Show Announcer
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [41:29]
Albin Brooke
Ooh, now that's a good question.
- [41:32]
Dave Jackson
Most of us use some sort of remote recording for interviews, et cetera, et cetera. And most of us have gone through more than one. So think of a new podcaster. They say, I want to record remotely. Who do you recommend and why? And then let us know any horror stories from previous ones you've used. I need your answer by May 22, 2026. And don't forget to say a little bit about your podcast and your website. Just go to schoolofpodcasting.com? by May 22 or click the link in the show notes. Ah, where am I gonna be August 21st through the 23rd? Charlotte, North Carolina. Empowered podcasting three. I went last year and the minute it was over, over, I'm like, I'm going back to this one. You gotta check out this one. Especially designed for independent podcasters with a maximum capacity of 250 people. I love that because I get to meet everyone. Check it out. Empowered podcasting.com
- [42:49]
Show Announcer
the School of podcasting. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [42:53]
Dave Jackson
Hey, things are a little blurry. Shocking when it comes to Spotify and video. I'll put a link to this, but in POD News there's an article that says beware of Spotify's video locking, where James says that if you are submitting video to Spotify through your podcast hosting company that you will be forever locked in your current podcast hosting company according to warnings. And this was in not from Spotify, but it was on Potig's kind of website when you implement it. And it said things like this cannot be undone. And another one said this permanently replaces your RSS feed with API based distribution. Now there's an update to this story is he's saying that again this was based on screenshots of Pottages implementation. And he says we're happy to point out that this did not come directly from Spotify. But still less clear is the extent of this lock in. So I would wait a bit if you're thinking of doing Spotify on video. Spotify denies that creators are permanently locked into using a Spotify API feed if they opt for video distribution through their podcast host. Though the company has confirmed that changing your feedback to rss. So if you're like, wait, wait, wait, wait, I don't want this API thing, I want an RSS feed, meaning I want control of my show. That it takes manual work from both the podcast hosting company and from Spotify itself. And it says from others. We are hearing that this revision process removes comments, reviews and video files from your podcast. And POD News also understands that the following that their story about you know you were permanently locked into Spotify and that Spotify has contacted all their partners to require different messaging about the RSS reversion. Now, of course none of the hosts are talking about this because apparently the whole Spotify API is under a non disclosed agreement. So what I'm saying right now is this is blurry and it's not 100% transparent. Shocking that Spotify the walled garden wouldn't quite be as clear as they should. But if you're thinking of putting video on Spotify from your media host, there's a better way. And if you got decent upload speed, it'll only take a little bit. Just upload it directly to Spotify and market as video. Now I realize, I realize that means people can't switch from video to audio, to which I go, yeah, you can just put it in your pocket. So just, I'm just letting you know that's a little weird right now. And thanks to James over at POD News for raising the red flag here. That, that might be something. We want to make sure we know what we're getting into. Because when you're looking for transparency from Spotify, that is not their strong suit.
- [46:14]
Show Announcer
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [46:16]
Dave Jackson
On the 26th of May, at the School of Podcasting, Max codes from Flightcast. That is the media hosting company that was started by Stephen Bartlett and rocks. And he's going to be giving a demo and then answering questions. Now, you don't have to pay to see this, but you have to be a member of the School of Podcasting. So when you go to Join the School of Podcasting, if you're looking for the free version, just click the little change option because it's going to be set for you to order a quarterly membership, which is a value. But if you're just looking for free, you can click that to change Join the free and then you'll be able to come to that. I'm really looking forward to that discussion. It's all there. @schoolofpodcasting.com I'm Dave Jackson. I help podcasters. It's what I do. Been doing it for 21 plus years, and I can't wait to see what we do together. Until next week. Take care. God bless. Class is dismissed. Share it with a friend. If you like the show, pretty, pretty please share it with a friend right now. And my stupid Alexa is going crazy behind the scenes here. I'm, I'm sitting. I saw it ahead of time at 4:58 and I hit mute and I'm like, alexa, do not disturb. She completely ignored me.
- [47:44]
Show Announcer
Yeah,