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What are some of the things that we wish podcast companies offered? Or not offer? You'd be surprised at the number of times offerings come out and we ask: "Do we really need that?"
A discussion about some of the services and features we think would make podcasting better, and a light critique of some of the things we’re not sure are going to positively move the needle.
Join Catherine O'Brien, Matt Cundill (Sound Off Media), David Yas (The Boston Podcast Network), Jon Gay (Jag in Detroit) and Johnny Podcasts (Straight Up Podcasts) as they sort through their wish list.
Sarah Burke (Voiceover) 0:02
Welcome to the podcast Super Friends. Five podcast producers from across North America get together to discuss podcasting.
Catherine O'Brien 0:14
Well, hello everybody and welcome to the podcast Super Friends. You are in the right place if you want to talk about podcasts, all the great things that are going on in podcasting. If you are a podcast maker or a podcast lover, we are so happy to have you. My name is Katherine O'Brien. I'm a Podcast Producer based out of Baton Rouge, Louisiana, my company is called a branch out programs. But hey, it's not just me. I've got my super friends with me. Good job with the production there, Matt. And everybody's looking so dapper today. So let's go around and introduce ourselves. Let's start with you up in Canada, Matt.
Matt Cundill 0:48
I'm Matt Cundill. According to this, I'm a podcast wizard. That might not make it through the whole show. But I am the owner of the sound off media company and we make podcasts for people.
Johnny Podcasts 1:02
I like it, Matt, you can be our podcast Gandalf. I'm Johnny podcasts. I was the first one to put podcasts in the name. And I'm based out of Fort Worth, Texas. I'm a podcast audio video producer. And I like to tweet a lot. So you can follow me on Twitter.
Jon Gay 1:19
I'm Jon Gay, also known as jag from jagged Detroit podcasts outside Detroit, Michigan. I create and produce branded podcasts for businesses nonprofits. And you if you're listening right now, potentially.
Catherine O'Brien 1:31
And just coming in right in the nick of time battling traffic battling or worse that the Northeast has to offer. DAVID Yes, please introduce yourself.
David Yas 1:41
It's raining like a bad set up in Boston. DAVID Yes, pod 617 dot com, the Boston Podcast Network late for his own funeral. Thank you for your patience, everybody.
Catherine O'Brien 1:53
I was going to do the whole thing about you know, listeners, if you're if you're listening to the podcast of this episode, at some point David might be coming in. But right on time, it's as if you have a preternatural ability to come in right in the nick of time. So very good.
Johnny Podcasts 2:08
They made a face like he knew to he came in right as Jack was finishing up as
Catherine O'Brien 2:17
well, as everybody heard, we are podcast producers. And as we've made all the podcast episodes that we've worked on, a Podcast Producer can hope and dream, can't we we start thinking about how things could be better. And so today, we are going to be doing a little wish casting, you get a little peek into the podcast producers wish lists. So we're gonna go through a couple of the pieces, the elements that help podcasts be what they are. And we're going to say from the podcast producers view, what we wish, what we would like from these different parts of podcasting, what we wish for what we think would be better. And we might even have a couple of mild constructive critiques to offer as well. I think that was a diplomatic way of saying that Jag. What do you think?
Jon Gay 3:06
Agreed? We five people and like, everybody has an opinion, just like everybody has. Nevermind. Okay, let's continue from there.
Catherine O'Brien 3:13
All right. Well, we're gonna start this off with just the sort of some of the basics. And in a moment, I will share a little bit behind the scenes of where this idea came from. But we're going to start off talking about podcast hosting. So now if you're a real newbie, you need to know that when you have a podcast, you have a host. That's where all of your files live. That's where the publishing of your episode goes out from the internet to all of our pod players out there. And so we have some wishes. What are some of the things that we wish all of our podcast hosting companies would offer us? And, Matt, why don't we start with you?
Matt Cundill 3:50
So one of the things I've noticed that gets overlooked is the podcast player itself, and it's the one that you can use to embed that goes on the website. And not a lot of time seems to get spent on it. So you know, platform like rt 19. They haven't really done much to theirs in the last six years. megaphones is pretty rudimentary. It has two colors. I think when you're looking at a podcast player, what I really want to see is I want to see versatility and branding colors, be able to go into a website, so that it it matches and fits and really makes your website look pleasing. I will say one of the things when my network left Omni we really missed was the the versatility of it. We can have any color of the writing, we can have any color of the player, the background just about everything it was it was it was pretty awesome. And just around the time I was leaving, they added captions. So if you use the transcript in Omni, and it would automatically show up in the captions. You could like captions play right out of the player. And I think that form of it did look a little messy. But I think that form of exploration, and always keeping up on the player is really important that I don't think a lot of hosting companies spend a lot of time on it, because I don't think there's much in it for them. Well, and
Catherine O'Brien 5:12
you know, you bring up a great point because I'm constantly reminded in podcasting that we're dealing with a clickability problem, like you want art that looks clickable, you want a player that looks clickable, you want people to know what to do with it, and what they're going to expect. So your grace, some great points there about the podcast player. Johnny, what about you? What do you wish from our podcast hosts? I wasn't
Johnny Podcasts 5:35
expecting us to the contrary and right out of the gate. But I, I put in the exact opposite of what Matt said. So we kind of Catherine broke this down into sort of segments. So there was hosting sites. And then the next one was podcast websites. I think that this is my personal opinion. I think that the Insight embedded players are actually overhyped and overrated and overused, I don't think that people are going to I think it's a nice to have if someone's going to go there and wants to get a taste of of what your episode sounds like. But I really think the goal should be to drive people to their preferred podcast player so that you are now going to be in their catalogue of episodes that they consume on a weekly basis, whether that's Spotify, Apple, Google podcasts, or even YouTube. I don't think that someone's going to make a habit out of going to my website for my podcast every single Tuesday, when I release an episode and listen to it in Safari on either their desktop or on their phone. I think that's a very minut percentage of people. So that's my kind of contrarian take. I'll give that as a check in a second to kind of rebuttal. Yeah, you can rebut?
Matt Cundill 6:44
Actually, you're not wrong. I mean, 4% is really what's gonna show up there. Yeah, I care about but as we talk a little bit more about websites, we talked later about how important they are, I'd like them to look nice. You
Johnny Podcasts 6:56
know, I agree from the branding side, you want it to look across the board, like when you talk to a marketing team, when you're creating all of your brand assets for marketing materials for your podcast, I agree, you want the player to look like that and not look like oh, it's the purple megaphone player. And it's completely different from my blue and yellow podcasts that I put out there. But in terms of my wish list, I think that Lipson, I'm not familiar with some of the other sites. I know I'm getting a lot more into megaphone lately. But I know Lipson has a sort of social media scheduling tool. But sort of a deeper wrinkle into that that I would like to see is the problem with the problem that we're running into right now with one of our shows is that our one of our hosts doesn't want to take the time to write out all of the social media posts and say, Hey, here's the new episode, type it all out every single morning, that the episode goes live, and then copy and paste the link from Apple, and then from Spotify. And then from YouTube, from YouTube, when you upload a video, you can get the link to it even when it's scheduled to release 10 weeks from now you can have the link for it and schedule that in a post. You can't get the apple link or the Spotify link until that episode is actually published in live. So what I would like to see, and I just feels like it would be kind of difficult is if the web's if the hosting website could allow you to schedule social media posts to a variety of different places. And then within that poll, the Apple link and the Spotify link for your episode for you as that post goes live, so I don't have to go hunt it down, drop it in there, and then send the post live because that's just it seems like extra work that we shouldn't have to do, but we're still doing.
Catherine O'Brien 8:32
What about you, David?
David Yas 8:34
We're still talking about platforms, right? Yeah, I mean, hosting. Hosting, right? Yep. Yeah. Am I too loud? By the way? Or am I okay?
Johnny Podcasts 8:43
Do you like your golden sign?
David Yas 8:44
Well, no case. I want a podcast host for Dummies, I want you to remember all the stuff I already put in for starters, some platforms, some hosting. Hosts do this some don't. If my last podcast was season three, episode four, I want it to default to season three, Episode Five. I want it to default to my podcast logo. If I didn't do a special image for that episode. Most of them do that. I think I want I know, Jay, I gotta meet to steal your thunder because I think you want to talk about dynamic ad insertion. But I think the the plot the hosts that I have used thus far, it's not that easier game to do that dynamic ad insertion because it needs to anticipate things like I used to have one mid roll ad and now I have to. So if you want to put that second one in, you want that to go into you know, future episodes, but not but there won't be a place to put it in previous episodes. So maybe it should just ask you would you rather have this as a as run at the end of the show or pre roll I've seen For example, not to pick on them because they're pretty good. But pod bean has a thing where if you, you got to create an ad campaign. But if you want to do a second mid roll ad, you have to do a completely separate campaign. Well, then I might forget about that the next time. And you end up with these situations where there's nothing more embarrassing than having your podcast out there. And like, an ad is actually running twice in a row or something which just happened to me, or an ad doesn't appear at all?
Johnny Podcasts 10:27
Well, it's similar to YouTube, but they're called episode defaults. So it's stuff that you just paste in there that are going in every single episode, I love the idea about the episode and season that that should just default to the next one. I think that's that's a no brainer. But like, if you're plugging your Twitter, or you're plugging your substack, or you're plugging your website, like those should be things that you can just set as an up, upload default, and it will always be in the description every single time. And then you can go in and add your specific time codes, your specific links to that episode specific episode description. But again, this is all stuff that seems like it could be really easy to fix, but nobody's doing it
David Yas 11:03
that I was You stole my thunder, but I'm glad you did, because I was gonna forget it. But you're talking about the show notes, right? Just in Shona. Yeah, absolutely. I haven't seen a host that that has that. Why not have that because what we all end up doing is having a keep our show description, or any contact info or social handles that we want to run in every episode show notes, we keep them in some document, and we got to cut, cut and paste it every time. So
Johnny Podcasts 11:28
absolutely. Shout out
Matt Cundill 11:29
to Buzzsprout. Who
David Yas 11:30
does that? Do Okay, for,
Matt Cundill 11:33
they'll let you put a footnote in the bottom and it will carry over to each episode.
Jon Gay 11:37
I will also say that simple cast does the simple cast does the the default episode numbers of episode four, three, there'll be a season for the three. The next one, I was just gonna say the same thing I would like but Matt said Buzzsprout does where I'd love to have a template or hey, this is going to be at the end of it every episode. To piggyback off, what would David Johnny tease for, I would see dynamic ad insertion a lot more universal. I think it's on the higher premium plans with a lot of different podcasts elsewhere, you've got to pay extra you got to up the ante if you want to add access to dynamic, dynamic audio insertion. That said, I think it's going to start coming down and being more accessible to other people, just the market is going to demand it.
Johnny Podcasts 12:21
And then can I get it? Can I get a little detail just off of what Jack said on the Dai stuff. So yes, it's great to have dai and all of there. But I think that that needs to be built out even more specifically with being able to drop it in at any point in the episode, not just the very, not just the pre roll and not just the post roll because you can have specific areas where you want to put certain calls to action, if it's your own audio that you're putting in there. And then allow for expiration, I don't want to have to remember to go back and be like, okay, for 30 days, I know that this is going to run and I need to set my calendar I want it to just automatically expire and
Jon Gay 12:56
both of those you can set a spot for a mid roll and yeah, your campaign with a start and end date. Yeah,
Johnny Podcasts 13:01
setting setting expiration dates on there. And then the final thing would be, I don't want to have to manually click every single episode. It's either I'm gonna there's an option for mass insertion for every single episode or specific episodes, and I can check the boxes in there so and, and it drops that audio into the same one. So I'm not uploading it to each individual episode, which I know megaphone. I'm pulling all this from megaphone because Matt's I'm a megaphone fanboy now because Matt got me over there. But megaphone allows for all those things. And I think that that agree Jaguars should be universal for all this.
Jon Gay 13:33
In case you have any simple cast folks listening, they call there's may there movable audio engine ma e does also does all those things you just mentioned, Johnny,
Catherine O'Brien 13:41
we just have a special our own special name says simple cast. Okay, one thing I did not hear from any of you is stats, what about our wish list for stats, that's what I thought was going to be on everybody's lips. Because I one thing I know is that of course, all of our clients want to know how many downloads they have. But they also want to know who is listening to this. And we're we're finding that sometimes getting meaningful statistics is a little bit tougher. Anybody have a comment on that? Johnny?
Johnny Podcasts 14:11
I did write down some stuff about stats I think we're all thinking of I think we all intuitively think about stats because every platform offers them when you said wish list. I think we're thinking about things that a lot of platforms don't offer. And so I think that stats falls under a must have like these are boilerplate things that shouldn't go without saying I did say meaningful that meaning meaningful? Sure, absolutely. So but in terms of stats, what these platforms need to have obviously downloads and then breaking down below that it needs to be overall per episode. And then you need to be able to check on a data range, what what month by month, week, day, year, quarter, however you want to do it downloads by distribution, meaning Apple, Spotify, etc. And then obviously YouTube when they implement their RSS feeds geographics, I think are really important consumption rate, time of day downloads and then mass You probably want to talk about this is the IAB certification, you have to have that meaning unique listeners versus overall downloads.
Matt Cundill 15:08
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think stats are really what the podcast host wants to contribute to it. So anchors free, they're not going to spend a lot on that. And the stats are terrible. You know, a company like Omni has some of the better stats, I wish that you know, with a company like rt 19, they kind of keep things to 30 days, but I can get more if I send a note to the Health Department. Same goes with megaphone and some campaigns, I would like to drill down on some specifics, we'll create a report for you, here's your report. It'd be nice to have all those in front. But, you know, I think when I think of all the stats and everything out there, I sort of look at the industry as a whole. And then in my head, I almost want to move to charts, which is a separate problem, can we all get one chart, and that will always raise some laughter.
Catherine O'Brien 15:59
Anything more on our dear hosts for our wish lists before we move on?
David Yas 16:05
Just to add on stats, Catherine sorry. I just stepped away for a minute. So I'm sorry, if someone said this, and I missed it. But just the simplicity of of running good reports. I find this catches catch can with a lot of these posts. In terms of you know, I want to just run a report on what the last give me options, what the what are my you know, my top 10 episodes or for the last year? And make them simple?
Matt Cundill 16:31
That's all? Actually I'll take it one step further. Make me an A sales report that I can sell ads. How about that. But I guess maybe that would be the podcast hosting company that would be giving you the tools to sell against them because they want to put programmatic or their own set of ads, I would just not a conspiracy theorist, but I'm just saying this may be the discussion about why these things don't happen. Well, tinfoil hats under
Johnny Podcasts 16:55
his desk,
Catherine O'Brien 16:57
which we welcome we welcome and support. Well, I think that but what you're saying no, this a sales type report is exactly the kind of information that would be more meaningful. Because as we know, the downloads, tell us what happened. We're all looking to make our shows grow. And we were looking to the future. And it's hard to get the kind of information that's going to help us do that currently, in my opinion. So that's part of my wish list. Let's talk about websites. We all want to tell you your podcast must have a website. Let's get some wishes going for our podcast websites. Johnny, where are you going to spend your wishes for the podcast website,
Johnny Podcasts 17:36
I think I have the best wish. And I would love to see this across every single podcasting website. It's an I forget what show it was, but it's a little microphone in the corner. Or maybe it's bigger, but you click on it and allows you as the listener to send an audio message to the host, or there's a text option. If you want to type out a question. It offers more interaction between the listeners and the hosts, you can do q&a segments. And here's the catch. If you want to submit it, you got to give me your email.
David Yas 18:07
I've seen that I think pod page has that. But memo to pod page, label it better. It's a little it's a little microphone, it's a little microphone icon in the bottom right hand corner of the web page, completely unlabeled. Which which kind of defeats the purpose because then on the podcast, you gotta say, go to the little microphone icon and you'll see it in the lower right hand corner. It's like come on, just label the thing. That's what it looks like a chat box. Yeah, right. Exactly. Right. You think it's a chat robot? Yeah.
Matt Cundill 18:37
I mean, there is some, there's some apps out there you can add to your website, like speak pipe, that will do it. But does anybody actually use them? Like do listeners go to the website and then say I want to contribute and click on it. And I
Johnny Podcasts 18:54
think we'd have to call it out. You'd have to make that ask in the episode be like, Hey, we do q&a. The best way to do it is to go to our website, click the microphone in the corner. But you're right. If someone's just looking at the website, they're probably not going to do
Jon Gay 19:09
radio stations are having trouble calling this out getting listeners to contribute to the show. So see idea. Yeah. So give me
Catherine O'Brien 19:15
a phrase that pays so that's
David Yas 19:19
that I can give an example of one used successfully, at least in my world. I do a music podcast. We were doing our 50th episode. You do? Yeah. Did you know it's called? That's tense. Go to Time Machine. pod.com. Johnny, you should check it out. You enjoy it. We're recording our 150th episode. Tonight. That's right. Anyway, when we did our 50th Episode retrospective or whatever, we just we we kind of gamed the system. We we emailed a couple dozen listeners and we said it would be cool if you gave us a congratulatory audio message told told them to click on that microphone. And it was a very easy way to compile A bunch of messages. And you could do that any Podcasts can do that, you know, I recommend it for if you're doing, you know, listener mail or whatever, it's a good way to engage with listeners.
Catherine O'Brien 20:11
Jack, do you have any podcast website wishes?
Jon Gay 20:14
I'd like the players for these specific podcast apps to be more obvious. Apple and Spotify, as we all know, are dominating. And YouTube is in the mix now as well. I would like on the podcast website, big giant Apple badge, big giant Spotify badge, big giant YouTube badge. So if somebody is not super tech savvy, or a very experienced podcasts listener, they go to the website. Oh, yeah, I like listening to podcasts on Apple or Spotify. I'll just click this button, it'll open my app, and I'm right there. I think sometimes the podcast apps get a little too fancy, where they're putting the links for various things. Just give me the links to listen where I want to listen, this listener.
Catherine O'Brien 20:55
Interesting, Matt. Catherine,
Matt Cundill 20:57
I want to just go back to what Johnny said about the microphone. Now, this is not necessarily about a website, but Spotify does offer this. And so can you see my screen? Yes. Oh, look at that send a voice message. So this isn't Spotify for podcasters. Watching. So you can send a voice message, there's a link to it. And this podcast has put it inside all of their show notes.
Johnny Podcasts 21:25
Is that is that just something you have to toggle on? It
Matt Cundill 21:29
would be one of those things that you would add in at the bottom of your show notes. There's a link. Okay. And so if you were on Buzzsprout, you put it in the footnote? Right?
Jon Gay 21:38
No. Background,
Catherine O'Brien 21:41
callback and comedy? Yes.
Matt Cundill 21:45
But I know, Catherine, you're asking me about what I wanted. I have a podcast website. And I think I want podcasters to understand that. You know, the website is one of your top investments. I don't think it's a should you have it, or should you not have it? It's up there. It's you need one. And I see there's a lot of bargaining going on. So you know, I'll just use the one that I get from from the host. And that thing is not optimized at all for SEO. And as well update your website is really, really key
Jon Gay 22:17
that can I push back on that for a second? Yeah, go ahead. Where you're going to a lot of our listeners are going to come from Apple and Spotify. Why not just send them to Apple and Spotify and take them from there. What Why devil's advocate Why do you need the website in addition to that,
Matt Cundill 22:31
I think what happens when I think for the first reason why you want a website is you want to be able to collect the data about who's visiting your show, all we've done is whine about stats so far. And your best place to get stats is Google Analytics from the people who come to your website. That's the best stuff you're ever gonna get. You're gonna get demographics, you'll see where they came from, you'll see what socials they came from. But by promoting and sending people to Apple, Spotify, Google and Amazon that only helps Apple, Spotify, Google and Amazon. And once you get into their ecosystem, it's like a cat video, you went to Facebook, I didn't come to Facebook, I wanted to do something here. Now I'm watching cat videos all day, you can really get caught up inside inside all that stuff. And I guess it's to support what Matt's saying too.
Johnny Podcasts 23:14
It's a nice to have sort of one place to send your audience. Because, you know, it's a it's a whole lot to be like, hey, follow us on Apple, Spotify YouTube, like giving them so many different options where you just say, hey, visit this podcast superfriends.com
Matt Cundill 23:28
I would like to give a little shout out there to pod dot link. A lot of people will go there to share stuff. And yeah, pod links. Great. Yeah. And, you know, if you don't have a website, I think that's a good place to go. And it speaks to exactly what you're saying jag which is people can then choose where they, where they go to, you're just not gonna be able to collect that information. And I, you know, I was sort of reluctant to suggest that but you know, area on this, and Blatt suggested it. So
Catherine O'Brien 23:52
now you're oh, now I'm now in hybrid brought it up, then it was like, Okay, I see what's happening here. And the thing I like about public and we'll get to this in a minute is it looks great on social media. That's one thing I can't get over it. Sometimes these links look terrible from any of the websites I want, if somebody is going to see it on social media, which, by the way, I don't know how useful that is anyway to even to begin with, but I want it to look good. And the pod link looks good. It looks really good. And you can listen right away. That's really the number one thing,
Matt Cundill 24:26
and you can promote the episode and that artwork will appear.
Catherine O'Brien 24:30
I also I just saw, I want to hammer on what you were just saying a minute ago, Matt, is that the real? The real goal of having people go to your website for your podcast is that you're collecting Google analytics information. That's really what you're the point is there. So that comes back to just you know, knowing more about who your listeners are thing and having that information on hand, presumably to be able to get them to get more people like them.
Johnny Podcasts 24:56
Can I add something else on the websites? Yes or Another great reason to have a website that's
Catherine O'Brien 25:01
just just off, just go.
Johnny Podcasts 25:03
It's so sponsorship page. So as your podcast grows, and you potentially want to have sponsors, say that you're a company put yourself in the mind of the company that is looking at podcast to sponsor if they just visit your podcast, the only thing that they can get from it is oh, this is the, this is the content, I can listen to an episode and that's about it. If you're really serious about monetizing your podcast, you need to have a dedicated sponsorship page says it right up at the top it says sponsorships, you click on that. And it breaks down a list of and this is more work that you're gonna have to do this, the work that you have to put in to monetize your podcast is more than just creating the episodes every single week, you need to figure out who your audience is whether that's running audience surveys using the Google Analytics to find out who the demographics of your show are. And putting that into really easy to consume data of 40% of our audience has a master's degrees 60% of our audience is male, there are between the ages of 23 and 45. And they're living in the metropolitan cities of the United States, mostly on the west coast and the East Coast, not so much in the Midwest, if I'm a sponsor, if I'm a company looking between two podcasts that I may want to sponsor, I'm going to pick the one where I can actually see oh, they hit our target demographic, and I didn't have to set up a meeting, I didn't have to find out how to reach them by sending them a voice message on the microphone icon in the background, hey, we maybe want to sponsor your podcast, we're making it so much easier for the potential sponsor to reach you. Yes, you're probably going to have to do some cold calls to initially get the ball rolling. But you're including, hey, here's our previous sponsors, these companies align with our values. Here's a breakdown of our audience demographics. And here's a link to get in touch with us. If you're in search interested in sponsoring the podcast. I think if you're actually serious about monetizing the show, that's something that you have to really consider.
Catherine O'Brien 26:50
That's a great tip, Johnny, that's really good. That's great.
Sarah Burke (Voiceover) 26:59
The podcast Superfriends support podcasting. 2.0. So feel free to send us a boost. If you're listening on a newer podcast app, find the full list at new podcast apps.com.
Catherine O'Brien 27:10
We're gonna pivot now, because I want to just sort of reveal here. The the kernel of the idea for this episode. And this conversation is the is the idea that some of these hosts that we all are familiar with, are starting to add lots and lots of bells and whistles. I've noticed it with our online recording platforms. I've noticed it with our legacy hosting companies there. They're all they all seem to be angling to be a one stop source for podcasting. And it's just been sort of interesting to watch. I'm trying to weigh like, Okay, well, why? Why wouldn't I go and try, you know, let's say just Lipson to do the not only the recording, but also the editing and the hosting and the publishing. Zen caster is also telling me I can they we can do everything for you. And I but I just have the sense that. First of all, I've been doing this for a long time. And as we like to say I'm a little set in my ways I have you know, I use different things for different services. But also I'm wondering, some of these, some of these services seem pretty specific, like I don't know, do they transfer across? You know, is my recorder my the same quality as my host? Is my host providing recording services? Is that going to be give me the consistent product that I need? So my question to you all is, have you been noticing this? What are your thoughts? Have you have you tried any of these Jag?
Jon Gay 28:36
Yes, I've noticed, but in particular, Riverside is now offering transcription as the Riverside, the recording platform, I feel like all of these various services are trying to be all things to all people. It's almost like human nature and business greed, where they see the podcast space expanding so quickly. They're trying to be all things to all people, kind of like one of our clients would hire any of the five of us to just take care of stuff take, I'm hiring you so you can take care of everything. For me, all these platforms are trying to do that. When I think really we're at a point now where each of the platforms has its own specific use, you have your host, you have your audio editing platform, you have your recording platform, they're all good at those specific things. And I worry that as they branch out and try to do everything that they're no longer gonna be good at that one specific thing they're good at.
Catherine O'Brien 29:22
Exactly. That's what that's my concern as well. Anybody you on this
David Yas 29:28
just on online recording platforms, Catherine?
Catherine O'Brien 29:32
No, just the everybody trying to do their every centralization
Johnny Podcasts 29:35
of the One Stop Shop podcast.
Catherine O'Brien 29:39
And I'll say this too, just to fill the space here. One of my thoughts is one of my one of my dead horses that I love to beat here is there's a lot that is to attract the new podcaster and that's, that's great. We want people to come into the podcasting space. We want people to be launching shows. We're all for that. It does seem like some of these services are all geared to people who don't have their routines who don't have their, the way that they've been doing things. And of course, I don't want to be stuck in like, Oh, this is how I've always done it. But I do have the concern that that jag is talking about with the CD seems like specialized services, and I want I want everybody be doing their thing. Well,
Jon Gay 30:24
this is more than they just they moved our cheese. Right, exactly.
Matt Cundill 30:27
But I think it does cause a little bit of confusion. I can't, I can't blame the companies for wanting to do it, because it's easy for them to get involved with it. People are already there. They're recording their show. I'll use Zen caster, for example, Oh, you're here, why don't you host your podcast, and then one of my clients said, I'm gonna need the redirect. Because I'm Zen caster wants to me to move I go, you're not going anywhere. You know, and it's, that's not the only one that's, you know, happening. substack does the same thing. You know, you write a blog, or you do a podcast to well put your podcast here. And it's convenient, because it's there, like a lot of they're kind of taking advantage of people who haven't researched. And what what happens inevitably to people as they get involved with it. And they want to the next toy and podcasts and they want better stats, they want to be able to put in a redirect via one which I don't think substack offers, they want to be able to do that. And by the way, this also happens with some of the with websites as well. Kajabi started to host podcasts, and they just actually put in a redirect 301. So you could move your podcast somewhere else as
Jon Gay 31:36
the online teaching platform, I think
Matt Cundill 31:38
Yes, correct. Yeah. So it's, um, I think it causes confusion for our clients. So I think that's probably where a lot of our irritation comes from. You're taking advantage, I guess, of people who are there? And hey, yeah, you can get started. And yes, you can start a podcast. But yeah, I'm not really, I'm not really. It certainly doesn't do me any favors, when, you know, extra toys get set up. And I do get worried for, you know, the ease of use for for platforms. So, you know, give an example like squad cast, which I think for the better part have really stayed in their lane. They haven't done the streaming thing they haven't, you know, but they have added video, they are not getting into hosting, but they do export stuff to descript. So there's a little bit of that going on. But you know, as they begin to add more and more things that really they do focus in on the sound, one of my wishlist for them. And I did send them a note today's like, what does this mean? And sometimes, you know, they're all tech people. And they get together. So when the little note on the screen says, app is not focused. I don't know what that means. I
Jon Gay 32:51
can tell you what that means. I know you can because
Matt Cundill 32:53
I asked them. But what is it?
Jon Gay 32:57
No, is if you have two different tabs open or different apps open, then you click something else to be the active one as opposed to the squad cast window or the squad cast tab. It will say hey, you know that and occasionally on a mobile app that can actually cause issues with the recordings as well or on the mobile device. But that's, that's what it is. That was that focus, like up you caught me because I clicked over to my notes when I was recording the show.
Matt Cundill 33:17
I'm in the middle of a show and it shows up and I'm like, well tell the app to get it together.
Jon Gay 33:22
I just found that it just found out that I was scrolling Facebook feed when I was listening to a client record their podcasts. My
Matt Cundill 33:29
suggestion, by the way was to say browser is not focused. Yeah.
Johnny Podcasts 33:33
My fear is exactly what Jack said is that as more people start podcasts that say, say, say this platform came out, we'll call it like the Alpha platform. It does. It does what Zen caster and Riverside does, it offers Lipson hosting. And then it offers your website as well. And it's just kind of keeping everything self contained, they're not going to add editing to was was the other big thing we talked about, it's not going to be able to do any one of those things great as well as say premiere, or audition or Logic Pro X or audacity, or Riverside, or Lipson or megaphone. And my fear is that we will get a lot of really subpar podcasts because the goal is for you to just get on our platform, we make it super easy. And we don't put a lot of emphasis on. Hey, here's actually all of the amazing things that you can do in one of these separate platforms. And we're just going to get saturated again, like we did in 2020 with a lot of just kind of just crap podcasts. That's right.
Jon Gay 34:35
I'll dovetail off of that. I think it's human nature that we all want the quick fix. We all want the easy one click solution. And I think that's the same thing is we can talk about AI later or if we want but it's the same thing of all these AI tools. Hey, we'll write your show notes for you. We'll do your transcription for you. We'll fix your audio for you. Sure and amateur podcasters gonna love to just click a couple buttons and have it done. But the result is not going to be good. It's The technology is not where it needs to be yet. And if you take these shortcuts your listeners will know.
Catherine O'Brien 35:07
Let's keep going with this and go back into the some of the online recording platforms and our wish list for them. I'll just I'll start and say I wish that they would make it very simple and record because now some of the recording I've done online you I have no option but to have it transcribed and do all these different things when I want something very specific. And I don't need all the extra bells and whistles but those bells and whistles I must take so what are some other your your other wishes for the online recording platforms?
Matt Cundill 35:40
Well, I got right now by the way, I'll cut David off and start right now. Shut up, David. Stream yard doesn't split files. Oh, yeah, I don't think stream yard splits files.
Johnny Podcasts 35:54
single track?
Jon Gay 35:55
We are Wow, that's bad.
Johnny Podcasts 35:58
That's not good. Because I've been farting this whole episode and it's gonna be
Matt Cundill 36:03
sorry, David, go ahead.
David Yas 36:04
Well, that's okay. I'll good. A couple of things that come as no mystery you guys. You've heard me say this before. But the reason I use Zoom, or at least I used to they're pissed me off now. But it's just the integration to Calendly is so easy. One of the hardest things to do in podcasting is to book guests, you can book a guest and have it make it seamless. They click on your calendar, they pick a time when they want to record and now instantly, they get a zoom link, you get a zoom link, you're all going to the same online place. So if squad cast or stream yard or any of these could could do that. I'm sure there's probably some deal they've worked out with Calendly. Who knows. But that will make it a lot easier. Also, this is nitpicky, but I'm in front of a green screen now. So thank you stream yard for allowing green screen. It sounds like a vanity thing. But yeah, a lot of podcasters are podcasting in their closet, like I happen to be right now. And it's a professional thing. You know, if you're a lawyer doing a podcast and you want to do it from home, you get a green screen, you can look like you're in your your office, a lot of online recording platforms don't
Jon Gay 37:09
don't do that. As opposed to all your Boston jerseys hanging behind you
David Yas 37:12
right there, you just can't see him. I have, I have three, they're quick, I
Johnny Podcasts 37:21
won't I won't go into long rant again. So one thing that I would like to see is I know so Riverside is the one that I'm most familiar with. And I know they offer the echo removable one. So for just those of you that aren't familiar, if you're not recording with headphones, the echo removal cuts out the sound coming out the sound of other people talking coming out of your speakers being picked up on your microphone. Again, that's super distracting when you're the one talking and you can hear yourself coming from the other people coming from their windows that's super distracting. So I think that was a great tool, I think that they can improve upon that by adding in a noise reduction plugin. So if I have a loud fan in the background, it's really just isolating the noise that's coming directly into the microphone, dogs barking in the background sirens, anything like that. Because that's stuff that we would have to do on the back end as producers anyways, the second thing would be a built in noise gate. So as I'm speaking and no one else is talking, what the noise gate would do is it cuts off all the audio below a certain level. So if again, if there's a fan going on in the background, and unfortunately stream yards got all this going on to one track, a fan in the background of Jags audio is going to be picked up while I'm talking a noise gate negates all of that. And then the third thing would be pop up notifications. So if someone on the call has a slow internet connection, and notification pops up and says hey, we noticed your internet's running a little bit slow, we'd recommend moving closer to your Wi Fi or your router or any number of options that you can do, hey, you have too many tabs open this is going to hinder your quality of your recording, or three, we've noticed that you've turned on and this is something we spoke about privately guys was sometimes the audio doesn't record if people are using their work computers because they have a VPN setup or they have ad blockers on or they have some kind of firewall setup with their company computer that can sometimes cause your audio or video to not record simply because of the security measures that are put in if though, if some kind of notification could pop up in that aspect. And let people know, I think it would avoid a lot of headaches. After the fact,
Jon Gay 39:16
squad cast has some of that actually, squad cast has started to have some real time notifications. Like that was saying URL. The app is not focused or spotty internet connection, things like that. So I'll dovetail off of that. And that's the one thing I'd like is have real time in real time feedback. Let all your hosts be able to see all the guests input and output devices because I think as we set up podcasts for our clients, one of the big pain points is do we have the right microphone checked? Is it is it is it picking up computer your microphone here, rub the top of your microphone top the top of it or tap the top of it so that you know you know that that's the one you're recording on. And all those things would be a lot easier if you could see what somebody has selected.
Catherine O'Brien 39:56
And if you can do anything about it, I mean some of these platforms don't offer either Even if what you can see there's nothing you can do about it, it's you can help squad
Jon Gay 40:04
cast claims to let you change it as the host change your guests input and output. But anytime I've tried to do it, it hasn't worked.
Johnny Podcasts 40:10
Riverside allows you to see as we have to be in producer mode that allows you to see what other people are using. But it would be so much easier for me jumping on as the producer just say, hey, look, I know you just bought this microphone, let me just change the input for you.
Catherine O'Brien 40:23
That's right. Yeah, well, and also, Riverside on their very helpful videos was like producer will not be recorded. We can't stress this to you national will not be recorded as the producer, if you're not part of the show, producer, like any other wishes that we want to use for our online recording platforms,
Matt Cundill 40:41
is it too much to ask for a speed test? Before we start? Great suggestion,
Catherine O'Brien 40:45
that would be nice.
Johnny Podcasts 40:48
And for those of you that don't know what that is, and haven't used it before, you can just go open google and type in internet Internet Speed Test, and it will it's free, you just click a button, and it shows you how faster and and other third
Jon Gay 40:58
party companies do that too. Like Ookla has that speed test.net. That's if any of these services are listening partner with them. I have a friend that works there.
Matt Cundill 41:07
I think the next step is like what happens if you'd find that somebody's a little bit slow. Well, tell your kids to stop gaming, maybe go shut off a few of the devices.
Catherine O'Brien 41:17
Do you have suggestions? Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Matt Cundill 41:21
I restart this computer every time before we get on here. Which is why that we're, I'm always late to get you guys have the link, and all the other stuff.
Catherine O'Brien 41:32
I will and the stunning revelation of this episode is that David is upset with Zoom I just that is the real bombshell experience here today. My goodness,
Jon Gay 41:42
I will share this in our private meeting last week I'll share with our audience now we all kind of dump on Zoom because the audio quality isn't as good. There is a place for zoom where I had a client recently who the guest had a firewall in their office and they could not get on squad cast, they could not get Riverside those that those websites would not access their camera, their microphone. So as a backup, we use Zoom. If you use Zoom, you want to make sure you've got the setting sets the record separate tracks, and original sound for musicians is on set you have the most high possible fidelity audio.
Catherine O'Brien 42:15
And I have to say I'm in defense of David as I always like to say the advanced settings do help a lot they do they do they do they do.
David Yas 42:23
My recent my recent problems with Zoom have been I don't know if a connection or if, if you ever select record on this device, but then you decide to download it later. Sometimes when you go back and download it later. Oh, guess what? It's not there. And now. Good luck. Good luck trying to get in touch with someone or
Jon Gay 42:41
is it in a folder in yours user slash XYZ slash ABC folder downloads?
David Yas 42:48
Right? If it is there, it's almost impossible to find so
Johnny Podcasts 42:51
sorry. Just record it for an hour and a half it's gone by
Catherine O'Brien 42:55
and you know, there is nothing we can or will do for you. All right, well, social media social media, it should. It seems like they should be best friends with podcasting. But I am not sure always that social media is doing what it can to help us podcasters out. What is our wishes that could How could social media just really work beautifully with podcasting? Jack, you haven't kicked us off yet? Tell us what, how can social media become BFFs with podcasting,
Jon Gay 43:28
one of the things that's really important to underscore here, Katherine, and this is something that we heard a lot about at the Podcast Movement convention in in Dallas last year, is you think about when you're posting on social media, it's really good for awareness. It's good for branding for your podcast, you know, hey, here's a quick, quick real or YouTube short of something, we talked about a really compelling moment of the podcast. And that's great. But you have to think about the hook that you're asking your listeners to jump through to close out of YouTube or Instagram or Tiktok and then reopen Apple or Spotify or wherever they're listening. So I would like to see more of the ability to go seamlessly from social media to podcasts app one great hack for this. For our listeners who aren't familiar with it is you can share in episode from Spotify directly to an Instagram story. So if somebody's watching it on your Instagram story, they can click right onto the podcast on Spotify. Like to see more integration. So you're not asking listeners to close out of something and open something else because 99 times out of 100 they won't do it.
Catherine O'Brien 44:29
Absolutely. David, what about you?
David Yas 44:34
I just spaced out for a sec. We're talking about spell social media. Right. Okay, so this is something that drives me crazy. I wish that I don't know if this is on Facebook or on Apple podcast. But how hard would it be for Apple podcasts for Facebook to figure out that when you post a link to a particular episode that it pulls the episode part um because it also makes it fit like an adult. Again, I don't know if this sometimes you don't know which end it's on here. But if you post a link to a particular episode that you never know what shape it's going to come in. And sometimes that makes it difficult to decide what the episode art is going to be. So it'd be cool if the social platforms had an automated way of picking that up. Johnny,
Johnny Podcasts 45:27
I for once don't have anything
Catherine O'Brien 45:29
what? Well, I think I think that Jack's point is really encompassing, because the whole point is, we're trying to move the needle, we're trying to get new listeners, we're trying to get people to engage with the content that we're producing for either for ourselves or for our clients. And if social media is giving people a taste, it would be nice for them to be able to take the whole byte and listen to the episode right away. That's why pod link is a great solution. But it Spotify links look good. And for the most part it getting to that point where you can actually start listening, or hook that make that conversion to turn somebody who sees it into a listener is sort of a big ask, what about you, Matt? Do you have any comments on social media,
Matt Cundill 46:18
directly to the social media companies, I wish they would stop treating podcasting so poorly. Facebook showed up, we're gonna be doing podcasts, and then they decided we're not going to be doing them. And then Google's kind of, you know, been in and out over the years, we're going to do Google Play. And now we're going to do the Google app. And they never really updated the Google app. But here comes YouTube. But we're not going to be accepting your RSS feed. But we want you to make a play, like we're going through an awful lot of hoops for these companies to get involved with podcasting, but they don't really get involved with podcasting. Right at all. So I think they do realize that there that they do suit a need for for podcasters. By, you know, to David's point, you know, to promote the show, you know, what is the picture in the art does it does it carry over the artwork, I think a lot of that has to do with with websites. But Twitter made a change and really started to mess up the card. And they've also played around with their API as well. So they make it hard whether you're trying to market your show, and whether or not you want to be involved with podcasting at all. I mean, clubhouse starts up and then Twitter spaces, and then we're going to do some podcasting with Twitter spaces. No, we're not that was. We're kidding. We're not going to be doing that. We're actually everybody is pivoting to video now.
Catherine O'Brien 47:38
Do you think, Matt, do you think that sometimes the company these big companies don't know what podcasting actually is like they they want us to be something that we're not. They know exactly
Matt Cundill 47:51
what it is. And they can't control any of it. And it bothers them. They don't like the RSS feed. That says,
Jon Gay 48:01
I feel like that should drop that microphone right now.
Matt Cundill 48:06
We're done tonight, everybody.
Jon Gay 48:08
Thanks for joining us this month, everybody.
Catherine O'Brien 48:11
Oh, good. Okay, so I, I think that we have some good leads there for what we can do with social media. And I want to close out on a very positive note, and that is for the beloved podcast listener. We love our listeners we love we the podcast wouldn't be anything without the podcast listener. What are some wishes that we have for our dear sweet podcast listeners.
Johnny Podcasts 48:35
I'll start since I didn't have anything on the last one. Share the show with somebody that's really the best thing that you can do that whether it's for this podcast, or your favorite podcast, if you find an episode that you really love, I guarantee you there's somebody that you know, or you are happy to share the episode with them, just send it to one person. That's all that's that's really the best thing that you can do.
David Yas 48:55
That, yeah, that I'll piggyback on that. Because that's pretty much what I was gonna say. But, but for those that, that don't know, despite as far as podcasting has come the way for podcasters to build their audience. The best way is that call it word of mouth or whatever you like, but it's brick by brick. It's this president telling this person posting this person sharing on Facebook or whatever it may be. And, you know, think about if you love podcasts, if you're listening to this pod, you probably you probably do. If you like go if you're listening to this. Well, that's true. So you know, I don't know, we don't know what time you're back at the institution. Now Sorry, bad joke. I take it back. Anyway. But the you're sort of contributing to the podcast goodwill, if you think about how you learned about your five or six favorite podcasts, probably because somebody told you about it. Right? So spread the love, spread love and tell somebody else about a podcast that you enjoy. Matt.
Matt Cundill 49:51
So I go back to Valerie Geller, who is a talent coach. quite famous radio has now moved on to podcast and a Are mediums most of her work is fairly agnostic. If you ever get a chance, find a podcast with Valerie Geller in it and just listen to it. And one of the things that she said whenever we came up with any idea, and it doesn't even for your podcast, what's in it for the listener? And I think that's the question you're asking here, Catherine is, what's our wish list for the for listeners? And what's in it for the width for the listener? And I think it's better sound, I think we should be delivering better sound to the listener. Overall, I think that's something that podcasters should be doing. At the same time, I think, from the listener side now, what's our wishlist for them? Feedback? Yeah, you know, what feedback, I mean, we were talking earlier about, you know, accessing the microphone. And, you know, in something like SpeakPipe, or on pod page at the bottom, to offer feedback. I think it's more than just reviews, although a lot of people like to leave reviews. Once again, though, not every podcast app has a review page. But and then, you know, just being able to go in and to access that dialogue to connect with the podcast host. And reach out to them. Nice to get some feedback.
Jon Gay 51:07
Absolutely. Jag I got to just piggyback on what Dave said, which is, podcasts are discovered by what I call old school, word of mouth, a new school, word of mouth, new school, word of mouth of social media, old school, word of mouth is a friend or family member, or a colleague of some kind telling you about it. Yes, Google and YouTube are also up there in terms of discoverability when people are finding stuff by searching the internet for various topics. But I really want to underscore David said, Because yet word of mouth is still such a huge thing for podcasting. If we're asking our listeners, for one thing, it's to phone a friend, tell somebody about a show you like and get them to listen to one episode. And if they like it, though, to true friends, and they told you friends, and they don't so and so forth.
Catherine O'Brien 51:49
Absolutely, yeah, that's always stunning, because that is the takeaway from so many of our the big wigs that we know and trust for who are able to tell us about podcast industry behind the scenes is that word of mouth still is the number one way that people learn about podcasts. So to really just encourage our listeners to go ahead and do that word of mouth, whether it be sharing the episodes on social media that they like, or specifically shouting them out to a friend and making sure that they tell them how to listen them direct them to that pod, that pod cast website that we set up earlier in our in our discussion here, so that they're able to listen. Well, I will add this to is that an I again, privately with our within the podcast Superfriends they already know this, but one of my clients received a I'm not gonna call it a hate letter, but they definitely received a constructive criticism letter that our first our very first construct
Jon Gay 52:43
a sternly worded letter,
Catherine O'Brien 52:45
or an early worded email. And, you know, on on one hand, there was part of me that that okay, well, that isn't, that is a form of engagement. So yay for that. But I thought about all the times that we have heard positive things from our listeners, it might feel a little bit awkward or a little bit, you know, a little bit out of people's comfort zone to reach out and let a podcast know that you that you liked their work, or that something really impacted you or you loved a particular episode. But I say go for it having been on the other side of some of those emails, they mean a tremendous amount, especially with the if you're if your podcast is a labor of love. And you hear from somebody that you really there the your work meant something to somebody else that is golden, and I can speak on behalf I I authorized myself to speak on behalf of podcast hosts everywhere and say they want to hear they want to hear the good stuff. They are open to the consumer constructive stuff too, for the most part, but they love hearing the good stuff. So don't be shy about sharing the good stuff. They will welcome it like you wouldn't believe so if you have a podcast that you love, and you feel there's something that you want to bring it to their attention. I say go for it. Because you really will make that podcast say How does that sound?
David Yas 54:06
So true? Yeah. And yeah, the applause button. We got it done. It is it sounds cliched, but a podcaster will say that makes it worth doing because most most podcasters are not doing it for money. They might be doing it for another reason, but they're probably doing it because they enjoy doing it. And they want to brighten someone's day a little bit inform someone a little bit more than they ever would have been done. If if you get told Thanks. That's it's huge. You'll be surprised that the love you get back probably. Yeah,
Catherine O'Brien 54:35
that's absolutely true. Well, that was I think that was a whirlwind that I think there's a lot of gems. We could we should be on a consulting basis for some of these podcasts companies. What do you guys think?
Jon Gay 54:46
Partners in a consultancy, all five of us
Matt Cundill 54:49
should get a podcast?
Catherine O'Brien 54:52
Well, that's great. Well, okay, I think those were some great wishes plus some we offered our own constructive critiques in there. I think that was really be valuable to and I know that we all I think this was a good exercise because it kind of honed us in on what are the most important thing. So I hope that came through to everybody who is here listening to the podcast superfans. Any thoughts before we close it out here.
Matt Cundill 55:13
I have one more idea.
Catherine O'Brien 55:14
Give it to us, Matt Cundill
Matt Cundill 55:16
we should have a turn in program for the Blue Yeti.
Catherine O'Brien 55:19
Oh yeah. Lost that sponsorship. Bad news never build an
Johnny Podcasts 55:25
effigy.
Matt Cundill 55:26
You take your blue Yeti to your local police station and they will give you your choice of an ATR 2100 A Samsung cue to you. Or if you bring two blue yetis you can have assure MV seven nice
David Yas 55:42
you'll you'll be saving a life and the life that you save is Jags here because he's going to have a heart attack next time. This podcast just uses a yeti
Catherine O'Brien 55:53
be Yeah. Everybody knows how we feel our thoughts and feelings and prayers go to the Blue Yeti. Let's close it out. That is a that is the ultimate wish list right there. If we could save the world from the Blue Yeti, okay, well, let's close it out. And Matt wants to go ahead and we'll close it out our normal way.
Matt Cundill 56:14
I'm Matt Cundill. From the sound off media company in Winnipeg, Canada.
Johnny Podcasts 56:18
I'm Johnny podcasts. Follow me on Twitter at Johnny podcasts.
Jon Gay 56:22
I'm John Gage Ag in Detroit podcasts jag in detroit.com.
David Yas 56:28
David yas Boston Podcast Network, pod 617 dot com.
Catherine O'Brien 56:33
Wouldn't it be great if if David just like rushed out as soon as you know the same way he rushed in right?
David Yas 56:38
When Excuse me?
Catherine O'Brien 56:41
Done and I'm out of here. Thank you for being here. My name is Catherine O'Brien. It's been my pleasure. Leading off the wish list here. You can follow me on Twitter. Hello, Catherine. Oh, and of course, I'm podcasting in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Thanks so much for being here with the Superfriends. Today everybody and we look forward to seeing you next time, fix it and post.
Sarah Burke (Voiceover) 57:04
Thanks for listening to the podcast super friends for a transcript of the show, or to connect with the Superfriends go to the show notes of this episode. Or go to soundoff dot Network.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
