Apple Video: Smart Move or Time Sink?

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. The school of podcasting

with 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 going to 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 Albin Brooke 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. And. 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. A lot of this comes from me watching my kids

and, you know, they're 16 to 23

and they are 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? And in this case, that would be me. That doesn't make

any sense to watch a podcast on YouTube. 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. 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? The signup 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. 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. Oh, people are chomping at the bit. I

think our wait list is hundreds and hundreds of people now.

Well, does this mean that audio is dead? JUSTIN

JACKSON Audio podcasting is dead. 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. It's great. 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. Albin Brook

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. 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 is 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. 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 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, 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, or you want to flip

over to video, you've got all that one experience. 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. 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

podcasts 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. 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. 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

OpenRSS ecosystem. And this is where I got a little

confused. And we're gonna 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 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 gain 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. You 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. Okay? 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 our. Of my engagement is audio?

How much is video? Which episodes are people wanting to watch? 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. 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. Albin Brook from buzzsprout. 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. 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 could

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 enclosure,

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

of 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 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 $29 a month 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 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. 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. 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 going to see especially shows that

take the plunge and try it out. They're going to 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. And James Kridland 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. If you are creating video

content, I would 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 Podcasts now and get you featured.

So yeah, we might have some YouTubers jumping into

Apple. 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. 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.

The School of podcasting. Yeah, yeah,

yeah. So you notice that Justin said video

creators should jump into Apple and

so did Albin. It's like, if you're making video, 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.

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, you know, writing is a third option for you. If you just want to

have a blog and so I was talking with Justin about video

and he brought up. Cause Justin's from Canada, this

older gentleman who used to be on TV and

moved to YouTube and. Well, check out this story.

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? 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? 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 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. So 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. 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 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

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. Well, that's ridiculous. They

must have a team of 18 or, you know, their parents are

rich, something, you know, show. 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. 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. 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 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. 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, get a 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.

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. 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. Yeah. 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 re engaging 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, it's 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. You're like, theaters were like that before. Yeah. If it's a popular

movie, 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 250 surcharge to pick your seat. Like, I was just

like done with movie theaters. 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 00:39:26

35 Justin and Albin, thanks

10 00:39:29

for coming on the show. Yeah, thanks so much Dave. This is great. Dave, thank

10 00:39:33

you so much. And thank you for being a fan of Buzzcast. We appreciate it.

10 00:39:36

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The school

10 00:39:40

of podcasting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey,

10 00:39:43

things are a little blurry. Shocking when it

10 00:39:47

comes to Spotify and video. I'll put a link to

10 00:39:51

this, but in POD News there's an article that says beware of

10 00:39:54

Spotify's video locking where

10 00:39:58

James says that if you are

10 00:40:01

submitting video to Spotify

10 00:40:05

through your podcast hosting company

10 00:40:09

that you will be forever locked in your current

10 00:40:12

podcast hosting company according to

10 00:40:16

warnings. And this was in not from Spotify,

10 00:40:20

but it was on Potig's kind of website

10 00:40:23

when you implement it and it said things like this cannot be

10 00:40:27

undone. And another one said this permanently

10 00:40:30

replaces your RSS feed with API based

10 00:40:34

distribution. Now there's an update to this story

10 00:40:39

is he's saying that again this was based on

10 00:40:42

screenshots of Pottages implementation and

10 00:40:46

he says we're happy to point out that this did not come directly

10 00:40:50

from Spotify. But it's still less clear is the extent of

10 00:40:53

this lock in. So I would wait a bit if you're thinking of

10 00:40:57

doing Spotify on video. Spotify denies

10 00:41:01

that creators are permanently locked into using a Spotify API

10 00:41:04

feed if they opt for video distribution through

10 00:41:08

their podcast host, though the company has confirmed that

10 00:41:12

changing your feedback to rss. So if you're like wait, wait wait

10 00:41:16

wait, I don't want this API thing. I want

10 00:41:19

an RSS feed meaning I want control of my show.

10 00:41:23

That it takes manual work from both the podcast hosting company

10 00:41:27

and from Spotify itself. And it says

10 00:41:31

from others we are hearing that this revision process

10 00:41:35

removes comments, reviews and video files from

10 00:41:38

your podcast. And POD News also

10 00:41:42

understands that the following that their story

10 00:41:46

about you know you were permanently locked into Spotify

10 00:41:51

and that Spotify has contacted all their partners to require

10 00:41:54

different messaging about the RSS reversion.

10 00:41:59

Now of course none of the hosts are talking about this because apparently the

10 00:42:03

whole Spotify API is under a non disclosed

10 00:42:07

agreement. So what I'm saying right now is this is

10 00:42:10

blurry and it's not 100% transparent.

10 00:42:14

Shocking that Spotify the walled garden

10 00:42:17

wouldn't quite be as clear as they should. But if you're

10 00:42:21

thinking of putting video on Spotify from your media

10 00:42:25

host, there's a better way. And if you got Decent

10 00:42:28

upload speed. It'll only take a little bit. Just upload

10 00:42:32

it directly to Spotify and market as video. Now, I

10 00:42:36

realize, I realize that means people can't switch

10 00:42:39

from video to audio, to which I go, yeah, you can just put it in

10 00:42:43

your pocket. So just. I'm just letting you know that's a

10 00:42:47

little weird right now. And thanks to James over at POD News

10 00:42:50

for raising the red flag here. That might

10 00:42:54

be something. We want to make sure we know what we're getting

10 00:42:58

into, because when you're looking for transparency from

10 00:43:01

Spotify, that is not their strong suit.

10 00:43:06

On the 26th of May,

10 00:43:10

at the School of Podcasting, Max codes from

10 00:43:13

Flightcast. That is the media hosting company that was started by

10 00:43:17

Stephen Bartlett and rocks. And he's going to be giving a

10 00:43:21

demo and then answering questions. Now, you don't have to pay to see

10 00:43:25

this, but you have to be a member of the School of Podcasting.

10 00:43:28

So when you go to Join the School of Podcasting, if you're looking for the

10 00:43:32

free version, just click the little change option because it's going to be

10 00:43:36

set for you to order a quarterly membership, which is a value.

10 00:43:40

But if you're just looking for free, you can click that to change

10 00:43:44

Join the free and then you'll be able to come to that. I'm really looking

10 00:43:48

forward to that discussion. It's all there.

10 00:43:51

@schoolofpodcasting.com I'm Dave Jackson. I help

10 00:43:55

podcasters. It's what I do. Been doing it for 21 plus years

10 00:43:58

and I can't wait to see what we do together.

10 00:44:03

Until next week. Take care. God bless. Class is

10 00:44:06

dismissed. If you like the show, please share

10 00:44:10

it with a friend. If you like the show, pretty, pretty

10 00:44:14

please share it with a friend right now.

10 00:44:18

And my stupid Alexa is going crazy behind the scenes. Here

10 00:44:23

I'm sitting, I saw it ahead of time at 4:58 and I hit mute and

10 00:44:27

I'm like, alexa, do not disturb. She completely

10 00:44:31

ignored me.

10 00:44:34

Yeah,