Spotify Launches Open Access Monetization + Dynamic Content 2.0

In this episode, we discuss several new features that just rolled out in Buzzsprout, how to make the most of Podcast Movement 2021, and Jason from Supercast joins the show to dive into Spotify's new Open Access monetization feature.

Watch the video of this episode on our new Buzzcast YouTube channel!

Links from this episode:

• Expanded Canva Integration
• Dynamic Content Library and Stats
• Podcast Movement 2021
• Spotify's new Open Access Feature
• Supercast

Alban's PM 2021 Guide:

Tuesday

• 12:00pm - New Podcast Primer 

Wednesday

• 9:00am - Edison Research with Tom Webster
• 1:30pm - Alban Podcast Artwork talk
• 1:30pm - Using Microphones to Shatter the Bamboo Ceiling
• 5:00pm - She Podcasts networking event
• 6-8pm - Buzzsprout Happy hour

Thursday

• 10:30am - Podcast Taxonomy: Podcasting's Push to Standardize Credits
• 2:45pm -  Podcast editing made simple
• 4:00pm - Creating a Killer brand for your podcast

Friday

• 2:45pm -  How podcast stats can help you improve

Review Buzzcast in Podchaser or Apple Podcasts to let us know what you think of the show.

Contact Buzzcast

• Send us Fan Mail
• Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods

Thanks for listening and Keep Podcasting!

Transcript

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Alban: 0:00

Mark Cuban is speaking and you're like whoa okay

Travis: 0:03

Is he talking about fireside is that we're gonna be talking about

Alban: 0:05

I pretty sure he's gonna be talking about his podcasting app that he launched called fireside so there's a another podcast host it does the same thing as Buzzsprout called fireside FM Yeah, it's kind of a bummer. Don't Don't steal someone's name do a little market research here.

Travis: 0:19

Hey, at least he didn't call it Buzzsprout. Today on Buzzcast, we're talking about Spotify his answer to Apple podcast subscriptions. We have Jason the CEO of supercast. On to talk about that, and some really cool features that we just rolled out into Buzzsprout. But Alvin, let's go ahead and start with the features. I think, I think people are gonna be pretty psyched about these.

Alban: 0:44

Yeah, I mean, we got a ton of them. Which one do you want to start with?

Travis: 0:47

Let's start with dynamic content. No, no, no. Let's start with expanded Canva integration.

Alban: 0:54

You can tell the Travis has been living in YouTube land for the last few years when he's like, later in the video, we're going to have an interview. And then we're going to tell you some really cool features. I'm gonna save the best feature for last, like there's a total YouTube gimmick.

Travis: 1:09

Not a gimmick, it's a reason to listen or watch the whole episode.

Alban: 1:14

Yeah, slash gimmick.

Travis: 1:16

Very, very strategic, very strategic gimmick, and also done on the fly.

Alban: 1:22

So expanded Canva integration. We'll talk about that first. Yeah, let's do that. First. One of the ways we develop software is that we always try to take things in steps. Sometimes you can think you know, what everyone's gonna love and what's useful and how it's gonna work. And you can spend years building it, and then all of a sudden, you roll it out, and people are like, Okay, cool. Thanks. For something else, you'll roll out pretty easily. And they'll be like, Oh, my gosh, that was incredible. And you often are not, it's hard to judge sometimes which things are going to be really useful and which aren't. And so we are always trying to take small steps. And the things that resonate in are helpful, we'll let's expand those, and ones that don't get as much traction. Or at least they're not providing as much value, we've don't go into those more. So the Canva integration we rolled out a few months ago, actually got a ton of really positive feedback. And that was the ability to instead of uploading artwork, he didn't have any, you could just click a button, create some canned artwork inside of Buzzsprout. And then that was added right back in to your account. So you could create good artwork for your podcast. The new version is two new places inside of Buzzsprout that you need artwork. And we could do the same feature. So one is episode artwork, which is just if you want to have unique episode artwork for each episode that is available. And that shows up in apps like overcast or podcasts, a lot of podcast apps do it. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't support much in the way of episode artwork. I don't know, maybe someday they will. But for most other apps, they do support it. So it's a cool way for you to click this button, make that change. And then all of a sudden, now it's showing up in a lot of different podcast apps. But the other place that's much more valuable, and much more exciting, I guess I should say, is inside of the sound bites. So the sound bites are those little audio grams, you can share on social media to get more people into your podcast episodes and have a little trailer for your episodes. Now you can upload you can create custom artwork with Canva. And then that artwork is there. And then he can pick what orientation you want it to be in, you can pick if you want to have a little waveform going over it. And we generate that video for you. And boom, you've got a really beautiful audio Graham visual soundbite to share on social media,

Travis: 3:55

the biggest benefit for people that are just like Okay, why would I care about customized episode artwork? How are soundbites going to help me, you know that you can't just make a podcast and just expect people to find it. Like you have to put in the work to promote it to tell people tell people about it and give them reasons to listen. And so if you have guests coming on to your podcast, and you're like, Hey, why don't you share this with the people that know about you, and then you can tell them about this awesome show you were on. You can now use this Canva integration to create episode artwork, like with their picture on it. So that'd be like, yeah, I want to share a really cool graphic with my face on it talking about how awesome I am. And so you can create that inside of that integration. And then say, hey, like, why don't you just share a quick, juicy, spicy clip from this podcast interview with all your fans. Here's a short video file of an animated waveform doing just that, that all now gets that you can do that very easily inside of Buzzsprout. So we're just trying to streamline the process of giving you the tools that you need in order to effectively effectively promote your show. So you can get more listeners. Which, you know, if you're doing any kind of marketing promotion tactics, that's the strategy.

Alban: 5:05

Thinking back to a interview I did a little while ago with Kate Casey, she talked a lot about how she actually gets people to share those clips. And it was really interesting to me. One, she asks people, can you send me your favorite image of yourself? Because every one of us has these images of us that were old profile photos at some point that now kind of circulate on the web. And you get kind of tired of them. And maybe you don't want to share that video, that image anymore. Well, what happens is somebody then uses that as the image. And then like, if people don't love that picture of themselves, they're not going to share it. So I thought that was really, you know, insightful for her to say, you know, Hey, can you give me your favorite image of yourself? And then you're more likely to get people to share it. And then you need to drive home how valuable the interview actually was. Because I see this myself, I record a podcast, three weeks, a month later, they reach out and they say, Hey, your episodes live. And I don't really remember what I said, I don't know if I love the interview, if I didn't, and I needed to either listen to it to make sure how much do I want to share this. But if they send a little clip, and it's actually a pretty good point, and you're kind of like, Oh, that was a good point. Nice. And then the other host is kind of talking you up? Well, now you now you're excited to share it. And so I've just noticed, that's when people have at least kind of convinced me to share something and get me the most excited to share it promote it, is when they're putting that clip together, they're affirming, like it was really good interview, and they appreciate it, they thought this clip stood out, and he listened to it, you like it, it's really likely people will share it. And then if people don't share it, then start tagging them and you sharing it. Because maybe you aren't going to get them to go and jump into their social media app and, you know, send it themselves. But the opportunity just to retweet or to share or a comment, that's super easy for people to do. And then you can start to actually get some engagement. So those are some things to think about when you're creating visual sound bites. And luckily, we've actually got a new blog post up on it that went up a few days ago. So we can link that in the show notes.

Travis: 7:32

Yeah, we'll definitely link that in the show notes. And the key to any of these strategies, right. So unique episode, artwork, sound bites, is just getting into a good rhythm with it, committed to it for longer than one or two episodes, see if it'll work. And then just try to streamline it as much as possible. So that's what we tried to do, make it as easy as possible for you to create these assets to promote your show, and to promote your episodes. So give it a shot, try it for a couple of months, see if you can notice a difference in the number of people downloading your show and then go from there. But the second feature we want to talk about is the new dynamic content library, which much like the expanded Canva integration is, you know, the next step, the next evolution of dynamic content, which we rolled out earlier this year. So why don't you just kind of give us the roadmap of how we got to where we are now. And what's new,

Alban: 8:23

you know, for a long time, we experienced this ourselves. And this is one of the reasons why it's important when you're developing software to actually be using the software that you develop. So for this show, if we wanted to add an announcement, it was really easy to just add it into the episode. The downside was, well, we only got that in the most recent episode. So for example, we're going to podcast movement in a few days after we record this week from now will be a podcast movement. And we put a piece of dynamic content in the front of all of our episodes, will talk about it in this particular episode. But if someone listens to an episode, that's maybe an interview, or is from a month ago, they wouldn't get that timely update. And if you're doing ads, often you want to sell the ads so that if you're selling by CPM, by actually I mean people listen, you really want to be able to fill that order quickly. What you don't want to do is say hey, here, I'll you know, 200 bucks, and you'll be in this episode. And then all of a sudden, that episode blows up, but the ad is baked in to the audio file and all of a sudden, you can't get any more money for that episode doing really well. So that's where dynamic content came in. Now you can add pre roll post roll audio files to every one of your episodes. So I think we have something like 60 I think we have 69 episodes, and I was able to just apply the dynamic content you were able to traverse Actually, I use the audio files, you applied it back to all of our episodes all at once. And it's super easy. It updates pretty quickly. next iteration on that was dynamic descriptions. Well, if you tell everybody Hey, we're going to podcast movement, hey, we just launched a new feature, hey, I launched a course, check out me undies and use this promo code. Any of those, you want to be able to give people a link to click on it to go actually check out the thing you're talking about? Well, if you add it to 69 episodes, well now what do you do you have to go to every one of your descriptions and add that link. Will dynamic descriptions allowed you to say, every time you have this audio, start the episode or end the episode, drop this promo code this little sentence into my description so that people can listen to it. Alright, so that was the that was step two. That is part two, part two of a journey. Yeah, we'll see how long this journey continues. And step three, I think this one probably, you know, we've been hearing this and in thinking about it, but one person who really drove home, the need for this was karianne, Reed Brown, one of our friends and Buzzsprout creators, she was like, Oh, I love the dynamic content feature, what I do is I go check all of my episodes, I check the stats for everyone, then I upload the content. And then I go back if three days later, and I see where they're all at. And so then I figure out how many times that piece of content had played. And she was tracking to send like a spreadsheet, that is a ton of work. And if you're trying to make sure you Only you know, episodes, a ad reads in there for 5000 plays or something, you know, you're checking back every few days so that you can take it out at the right time to put in the next one. So we knew we needed a way to track how many times that episode been played. And then the other pieces, if you're swapping things in and out the way we'd done in the past, you kind of had to upload every time you upload the new audio file the or stitching to the front or the end. So now, every audio file you ever use as some little snippet of dynamic content, we will save it, it's gonna stay in your Buzzsprout account. And we will just keep a running tally of how many times that's been played. So we actually did this a few days ago, we dropped this two pieces of content in the podcast movement 2021 promo and talking about this dynamic content library. What are we up to Travis? How many plays

Travis: 12:42

413 plays in like 25 hours or so

Alban: 12:47

nice. That's pretty good. I feel great about that. Yeah. feel good about that. To me. It's not like a new episode dropped during that time either.

Travis: 12:55

No, no, this is just our existing back catalogue. So we applied it to 66 of the episodes. So not including like the trailers and that kind of stuff. And so right now we have a one minute 22nd audio file, telling people about podcast movement coming up next week, week after next one, and then yeah, yeah. And then a post roll talking about the dynamic content library, what we're looking at right now. And so here, under your episodes, you just go to dynamic content in your tab, you scroll down, and you can still add and remove episodes that you want dynamic content applied to, that's still the same. And now you have your whole library. So you, we can upload as many audio files as we want. You can apply them to your episodes, take them off your episodes as you want to. And then it will track how many times that particular piece of content has been played. So let's say that we wanted to take these down and swap positions and put dynamic content library as the pre roll and choose something else to talk about in the post roll, then this Pm 2021 would stop at 413 dynamic content library would keep going. And then whenever the new post roll is that we put in, we start getting downloads. And so you can very easily see that all right here in your dynamic content area. To prevent those crazy Excel spreadsheets and manual processes.

Alban: 14:22

Just to be precise, I want to jump in. It's not how many times these have been played. It's how many times have been downloaded because people can download your file people often download your files and may not actually listen to the whole thing. So these have been downloaded 413 times hopefully have gotten that many plays. But that's data that you'd really be much better getting from a Spotify or Apple podcasts directly, rather than from Buzzsprout since we are able to actually see once the audit files on the phone, we lose all visibility and that's what it should be. We shouldn't all be tracking each other non stop. across the world,

Travis: 15:01

well, if you track your Spotify stats, we're gonna make you sound, make you feel really, really great about yourself, because the numbers that they give you are based on like, their own internal streaming stats. And so they're, they're typically much larger than what you see in Buzzsprout. As far as like, audio files downloaded.

Alban: 15:19

Yeah, everybody has slightly different ways of determining a play. So I know play inside of Spotify is different than a stream and a star. And so they've got their own nomenclature, Apple has theirs. And the real one that you want to track is, you know, how are my downloads doing? Are they going up? Are they going down by episode? Now, inside of Apple podcasts, one that I think is probably one of the best stats is listeners, and engaged listeners, how many individual people actually listened to this episode plays is you know how many times they actually hit the play button. So you get two plays from the same person. But that listener number is really valuable. It's only a small sub segment of your podcast place, since you probably are getting a lot of plays outside of apple. But that one, your overall download numbers, those are ones that you should see trending up. And that's really what you want to see over time is those trending up. And hopefully, your numbers continue to grow as you become a better podcaster. We have one other small, it's not small, it was a big project, but it is small, and you know how long it takes to describe it. So Google has, really, I think it was May started making site speed, and core web vitals really, really important for ranking pages, at least quite a bit more. And when we started doing a lot of, you know, research just on the SEO side of things, and it started looking more and more, more more surprised, like Google was really, really wanting, especially on mobile sites to load ultra fast. And, you know, on a scale of zero to 100, that you rank sites, I mean, you could go to something like a cnn.com, which has tons of ads and trackers, a lot of stuff going on. And they're getting like a four out of 100. So, look, I mean, they are stripped. And as they shifted, that we saw more and more Buzzsprout pages, you know, falling out of like the A plus category and starting to get like C's, you know, are down in the 60s. And so we did a big project, where we said, okay, we want to be in have the very best web pages on the internet. And so one guy from the team really took this whole project on himself for quite a few weeks, Brian, and did an incredible job. I think that a lot of people don't realize how much he did. But now, all pages on desktop are like 99%, or nine getting 99. on mobile, they're regular, they're always up to this 90. So like 92, which is exceptionally exceptionally high. When you look at how, you know, all these other pages are performing. So all that being said, there's nothing to change on your side, there's nothing that you probably will see that changed. Except if anyone's on a phone, and they pull up your Buzzsprout site, man, should it be a lot faster. And if they're on some 3g network, or they have internet that's really flaky, they should still get a great experience so that they can listen to your podcast. We don't want people to have to wait, you know, 30 seconds while cnn.com loads and hope that they still want to read this exciting article. With a podcast, we just want to make sure that you know half a second that page is up is looking great and they can listen to your podcast.

Travis: 19:08

So two new features, we hope you get to take advantage of being able to use Canva. Everywhere you create artwork inside of Buzzsprout, essentially, and then the new dynamic content library and stats tracking, we'd love to hear how you plan on using these features. To help your show you can leave a comment underneath the YouTube video or just hop over to our Facebook group and chat with us there. We'd love it either way. So when we were showing you our dynamic content library for Buzzcast. And if you listened to the first part of this episode, anytime close to when it came out, you probably heard Alvin talking about podcast movement, which is coming up in the beginning of August in Nashville, Tennessee, and Buzzsprout will be there. So Albin walk us through podcast movement, what we're going to be doing and you know if someone is showing up as a boss Route podcaster, some extra stuff that we're doing that they could take advantage of as well. I mean, podcasting

Alban: 20:05

can feel a little lonely, sometimes you're, you know, can be a little one sided, you feel like you're talking into a mic, and you're really hoping people are listening, and you may not connect. And even if you're connected with your audience, your audience often don't know what you're going through. And I think that that situation of like, maybe not knowing a lot of other podcasters and being doing a lot of this work on your own, it can feel pretty isolating. And it kind of lends itself to this feeling of imposter syndrome, you're not doing enough. And it can, you know, sometimes it's not the most fun. That's why I love these podcasts conferences. Because, you know, it's, I could tell my wife what it's like when I mount a podcast, but, and she can sympathize with, you know, some of the struggles, but some of it is like, how much do the weeds do we want to get about my editing, software breaking? And she's like, Okay, I got it, something very frustrating happened with your audience, your editing software. It when you get some of these conferences, it's so nice just to connect with other podcasters. And you're constantly just saying, like, Oh, yeah, me too. Oh, you're really, you're doing really well, your podcast. And you also don't love the sound of your voice sometimes. That's really affirming to hear, oh, you have the same mic, and you realize there's a lot of plosives Oh, that's how you fixed it. Awesome. I love hearing that. And you're just building community. With a lot of conferences, I always love going because conferences are bringing a lot of like minded people together, who are all dealing with similar issues, then you're getting a lot of excellent talks where people are really going deep into the content that he really enjoy. And or, you know, learning about. And then you get to go to a bunch of parties, and you get to go see the exhibitor Hall and check out new mics and new software and kind of meet people behind the products you use. It's incredible. And podcast movement is the was the first podcasting conference. It's still the largest in the world. They do an incredible job. And I've gone every year since 2015. So I love it. And I'm really excited to go this year. Do we have some time, Travis that give you some of the talks that I'm going to?

Travis: 22:30

Yes, for sure. Because I know, especially when you go to a conference, the scale of podcast movement, you just look at the schedule, and you're like, Okay, there's like 50 million things I could do. But what should I do? Like what's the most beneficial thing for me to do? So beyond just the ones that immediately jump out of people? What are the topics that you're really interested in, that you're either going to or actually contributing to because you're doing several sessions during podcast movement?

Alban: 22:57

Yeah, I mean, everybody knows the headliners. Like you scroll through and you see Charlemagne the God from The Breakfast Club is speaking you see Mark Cuban is speaking and you're like whoa, okay, those are talking about fireside is that what he's gonna be talking about? I pretty sure he's gonna be talking about his podcasting app that he launched called fireside. It helps if if you're already exceptionally famous that you launch a new podcasting endeavor. And then every then the largest conference in the world is gonna say, hey, do you do you want to come and speak and tell everyone about it? And you're like, Oh, sweet is the marketing that I was hoping would happen?

Travis: 23:37

Well, we're also laughing because there was already a company in the podcasting space called fireside. Yes. So when that came out, that was like a whole that was a whole thing.

Alban: 23:48

Yeah. I mean, so there is a another podcast hosted as the same thing as Buzzsprout. Dan Benjamin started at called fireside.fm. And now Mark Cuban is launching a podcast app kind of like, from what I can tell it looks like a clubhouse that also creates an audio file, that's called fireside. And that's more of like, this fireside chat is kind of I think what they're going for. We'll see. It'll be interesting to learn more about what you know, they're building but yeah, it's kind of a bummer. Don't Don't steal someone's name. Do a little market research here. Hey, listen to the name of Buzzsprout you know, that I appreciate.

Travis: 24:29

So, yeah, other than the headliners, what are the talks that you're paying attention to?

Alban: 24:32

Okay, so on Tuesday, before it officially starts. I am leading along with Jordan Blair, Carey and Reed brown and crystal prophet. The four of us are leading a two hour session from noon to two on Tuesday called the new podcast primer. And the whole idea is, you show up to this conference early, you may not know anything about podcasting, you may feel totally intimidated. There's all this jargon and stuff. We are literally taking you through the entire process from, here's why podcasts are, like different and good. All the way to now we've launched your show, and here's your marketing tips like everything in between editing and recording and equipment. And you're picking the name of your podcast. All that's included. So that's a two hour session on Tuesday, Wednesday. 9am, I'm probably going to sneak out of the exhibitor Hall and go see Tom Webster speak, Edison research that does all the polling exit polling data for US presidential elections. I mean, they do real polling. They also do really interesting industry, data around audio, and podcasting, and radio. And Tom always has these like, really interesting insights. So last time I heard him speak, he was talking about how so many people are now listening to podcasts on YouTube. And it was just incredible to see how many, how much of this, you know, the The world is actually using YouTube to consume podcast content. So I'll definitely be doing that at 130 to 215. On Wednesday, I'm giving a talk on podcast artwork, and just going through tons of examples. How do you decide what's in your artwork? What colors do you pick? What fonts, pair well with each other, all the things you should be considering why you should use Comic Sans together. I might, I might. might recommend you not use it. But I also was able to speak with some of the team at Apple about what they look for when they're featuring podcasts in new and noteworthy. And so I'm really excited to share all of that. So that people when they thinking about podcast artwork, they're also thinking about the promotion aspect as well, because it's not just a little artistic piece on the side. This is a critical part of your podcast branding. This was not intentional. Sara Lee Kane, who everybody probably knows from our YouTube channel, she is doing a really cool talk about it's called using microphones to shatter the bamboo ceiling, how hearing Asian voices can flip the narrative around being Asian. And it's a lot about stereotypes, especially for Asian women. And so it's a small panel, Sarah and two other women I believe are speaking about their experiences as Asian women in podcasting and kind of the stereotypes they're facing. I really wish I could go to this, it's a bummer that they're going to be opposite each other 5pm there's that day, there's a sheep podcast networking event at six to eight, there's Buzzsprout happy hour. So anybody who's on Buzzsprout We would love to meet you come by, we'll have beer and wine and you can have a couple drinks before you go to dinner. It would just be a great time to meet Thursday 1030 in the morning, the podcast taxonomy project. So in podcasting, there's a lot of people just kind of coming up with their own titles. They're like, I'm the founder of this podcast. I'm the host, I'm the audio editor. I'm the producer on the show runner. And there's all these names. And I know they get a little bit confusing for people because what one person considers the showrunner position is different than somebody else might call that the producer. The Apple, the podcast taxonomy project is trying to standardize all those credits. So that things like pod chaser can actually make it clear like what work people were doing on each show. So a lot of our friends on gogo, who's on the Buzzsprout team, is she's going to be on that panel. Ariel Nissen block one of our friends at squad cast, she will be there. Cole from pod chaser will be on that panel. So lots of people we know 245 that day podcasting editing Made Simple, Carrie and Reed brown will be leading that I love Carrie and she's just really, really good at editing and she also uses audacity primarily. And I love that she's going to be showing how a pro level editor can use a basic free tool like audacity to get a really great podcast four to 445 on Thursday, creating a killer brand for your podcast. So if you're a brand, you're making a branded show for like a business. Fatimah Zaidi is going to show you how to make a branded podcast like Buzzcast is for Buzzsprout. If you've got a brand, go to that talk. She's probably one of the premier experts on this in podcasting. And I think there's going to be a lot of really good information and then wrap up the conference the next day on Friday. One that stands out To me, because he's my boss, to 45 to 330. Tom Rossi co founder Buzzsprout is talking about how podcast stats can help you improve your show. So Tom does a really good job of taking an honest assessment of podcast stats. He's not overhyping, and he's going okay. Here's the trends we're seeing. If you're seeing this in your podcast, when do you know you're succeeding? When do you know that maybe it's time to shut down the podcast? Where do you want to invest your marketing resources? How do you know if your podcast is something worth continuing to invest in? So he does a lot of really good, you know, exercises to help you really consider what are what is success to you and your podcast, and how you can see that from the numbers. So I've heard Tom, Tom has given this talk locally in Jacksonville before. So I will excited to hear him give it at podcast movement. So all those I think are going to be ones that I'm going to try to go to. And I'd love to see a lot of you there.

Travis: 31:14

Yeah. And we'll leave all those all that information that Alban just went through in the show notes. So if you want to reference it, screenshot it, whatever, for when you shop at podcast movement, that'll be there. Now. The to it between the two of us, we've gone to many, many conferences, and there are certainly some best practices for how to take advantage of them and really get the most out of them. Are there any tips that you have that you can think through? That would really be helpful, especially if someone is brand new to podcast conferences? And maybe this is their very first one?

Alban: 31:45

Yeah, I mean, conferences in general are, you know, a combination of a few things. It's one, you're going to hear talks to learn. But you're also going to connect with other industry professionals, you're also going to make friends who share something in common with you. And then you're also just going to try to have a little bit of fun, a lot of people, you know, between work and family, and endless pandemics, like you can just, it could be tough to go and just have some time to yourself just to like, relax and have fun with people. So conferences do allow you to do that, because you're probably traveling to Nashville. And you know, you're going to be able to spend some, like uninterrupted time just enjoying yourself. You want to just kind of go back and forth with some advice, Travis?

Travis: 32:37

Sure. Yeah. So I can I can kick things off. I think the first thing that I would think about is, if you talk about anything related to podcasting, on your podcast, I plan on bringing some recording gear with you. So you can do like some on the ground boots on the ground kind of episodes, because you're gonna have so many people there that love talking about podcasting, and also love talking into a microphone. That's why they're in a podcast conference. Yeah. And so definitely go prepared, go prepared to potentially find people that you can include in your podcast, maybe not making a plan to say like, I will record five episodes where I have failed, like, don't go into it with that mindset, but just kind of show up with what you would need to create an episode or to record something or an interview. If the situation presents itself.

Alban: 33:23

I think the other one for me is being able to connect with people who you probably know, but you know, have or maybe you follow each other on the internet. But there's something different about meeting people in person. So every podcast movement I've gone to, I have made a friend that I have liked now still keep in contact with. And they're almost always people who have been in the podcasting industry. first podcast movement I ever went to, I met my friend, Reggie and like, I feel like now we are like, long, like friends that we just keep in touch all the time. But like literally every single conference I've gone to, I've thought about it, there's at least one person who stands out that, you know, we still keep in contact with. And so you know, someone we've had opportunities to work with. And it's often just like, I'm at the conference, and I look up and I go, I think that's Evo Tara walking by and I'm like, Hey, are you you do your Evo Terry, you do podcast pontifications. And then we chat for a while. And then we get to work with each other in future. I met Carrie in at a conference. And now we've done tons of different Buzzsprout content together. We're doing a talk together this time. It's just a blast. So definitely try to go and network. I'll jump into another one. Travis. Also don't feel like you have to go to all these events, these conferences. I mean, sorry, all these talks. Like I just gave you a whole list of talks. Don't feel like you need to spend all your time in a talk. If you walk out of a talk and you're like wow, that was really good stuff. And you're kind of breaking it down with someone who you said Next to and you're kind of connecting with them, don't feel the need to be like I gotta run. There's another talk coming up. You know, there's, there's tons of good stuff on YouTube and blogs, and also at conferences, the thing that those YouTubes and blogs don't have are people, real life, people who want to talk to you about podcasting. So if you are connected with someone feel the freedom to say, Hey, I actually want to continue this conversation. I don't need to feel guilty that I didn't go to every single talk.

Travis: 35:32

Yeah, I think that's great. podcast movement really is a phenomenal podcasting conference, if you're gonna be there, make sure you stop by the booth, make sure you say hi, a bunch of the Buzzsprout team will be there. And we would love to see you there as well. So this week, Spotify made some big waves in the podcasting industry by opening up their new open access feature, which allows other publishers and third party apps to integrate premium private content into Spotify. And so places like super cast, if you use platforms like that, to allow your listeners to support you financially, and then either give them behind the scenes content, or add free content and exchange, now, they can actually get access to that within Spotify. So to break all this down what it means and how you can utilize it. To help your show, we actually invited Jason, who is the CEO of supercast, to come on and join us here for Buzzcast. So Jason, thank you so much for taking the time to join us today. Pleasure to be here, Travis, thanks for inviting me on. So for anyone who's listening that isn't familiar with super cast, how would you describe super cast what you do and how you partner with creators?

Jason: 36:43

Sure, so super cast is a membership platform that has been built primarily for podcasters. So what we do is we make it really easy for creators podcasters to come and set up a paid monthly membership for your listeners to subscribe to. And so you know, it's an end to end platform that we provide from setting up your landing page that you know, when listener listening to your podcast clicks the link in the show notes, you know comes comes through to through to you know being out to set up your your plans, what you offer in your monthly membership, how much you want to price it for, you know, typically we see five to $15 per month through to obviously, helping you take payment via Apple Pay Google pay or credit card through to then the unique private feeds that are paying subscriber can add to their podcast player of choice with just a couple of tips. So ultimately, what we do is we've set up you know, all of the technology that's required just to make it as seamless as possible for your listeners to transition as easily as possible from being a free podcast listener to being a paid monthly supporter. And in return, they get, you know, a series of benefits for exclusive content on a unique private feed.

Travis: 38:11

Right. And that's that's the rub. That's always been the friction point for listener supported podcast, because it's a model that's been around since National Public Radio really pioneered decades ago. Right that you have people that listen to your podcast, they want to hear more of it. And so if they're super fans, they want to help you pay for it to keep it going. Right. And but the friction point has always been well, how do you actually manage that relationship, that financial relationship so that they get what they need out of it to make it feel like it's worth it to them. And then for you, you're not having to like manually code together like payment forms and payment processors and schedulers and private feed creation and all that kind of stuff. And, and I know a big pain point, has typically been figuring out how do we actually deliver these private podcast feeds to people. So for you, when you started working with Spotify, getting into this open access feature, because you were one of the first companies to really jump on it and say, This is really going to help our creators and it's going to help their listeners. What was really exciting about it to you like why did you feel like this is a really good next step for helping creators be financially supported for the art that they're creating?

Jason: 39:24

Yeah, so for us, you know, our whole philosophy is very much, you know, doing the right thing by creators and, you know, really being creative centric about, you know, the solution that we offer. And in turn, often what that means is really starting with the listener because ultimately what serves the listeners the best is you know, what creators want and is the fuel that really allows them to build you know, really strong relationships and financial relationships, as well as content relationships with the premium version of their audience. From a philosophical point of view, you know, like the the approach that we've always taken with supercast is to allow creators to really go to where the listeners already are. And so what that means is that, you know, if they've discovered your free podcast on Apple podcasts, we want to make it as easy as possible for them to add the premium version of that podcast back into Apple podcasts, you know, so it's like, you know, your browser, you've already made your choice, you know, as to what browser you use to browse the web. Same thing with podcast, listening, and audio listening, in general, you know, we don't want to have to force users to download a special app or change podcast player, to be able to listen to the premium version of your of your audio, that's just, you know, friction, unnecessary friction, that, you know, kind of ultimately means that people don't have an enjoyable experience. So, so broadly, you know, like, that's the way we've approached things right from the beginning, is to really embrace the open ecosystem. And, you know, build on top of that technology that there already allows people to pick and choose, you know, the tool and the listening player that, you know, they, you know, that they prefer to use. The exception to that has been Spotify up until now, the exception to that has been Spotify. And that, yes, you know, you can absolutely listen to music and podcasts now on Spotify. But from a private podcast point of view, they've been a closed ecosystem, in that you, you cannot add a show by URL in the same way that you can, with Apple podcasts, or overcast or pocket casts, or Castro, or any other, you know, kind of open ecosystem player, you haven't been able to kind of add your own show by URL, which, you know, is a departure from the way everyone, every other player supports private podcasting. And means that if you use you, as a creator, if you offer a premium podcast to your paying subscribers, they unfortunately, can't add it to Spotify. And so that's been, you know, quite frankly, you know, disappointing to Spotify listeners today. But as a result of, you know, the recent announcement and Spotify opening up, you know, their their open access platform, it now means that we can add in Spotify as a choice, which we're extremely excited about, you know, one because, you know, we're kind of like, working with them to test out this new technology, they're doing it in a slightly different way from RSS, using a technology called OAuth, where you basically have to log in with your Spotify account to add the premium show into your your Spotify app. But what it means is that now all of those Spotify listeners that previously would have to change podcast play, can now of course, add that show into into Spotify, and get, you know, the same seamless experience as everybody else.

Travis: 42:57

So that's great. Spotify is now opening it up, starting to play nice in the sandbox with everyone else that's creating software and tools for podcasters. Right? So in your, from your perspective, what's in it for Spotify? Like, why would Spotify now decide, you know, what, we really should start utilizing these other tools, these other innovations that people are working on, to make the podcast listening experience better, and to potentially get people to like us more than they have in the past?

Jason: 43:26

Yeah, it's a great question. You know, if you think back to where Spotify has come from, they started out, you know, purely as a music app, you know, as a way for you to essentially, you know, have the entire of the world's music catalog, you know, in your pocket and available where, you know, you don't have to think about, you know, like, which albums don't want to buy, which tracks to want to buy, you know, like, it's literally just all there for you to stream, you know, on a on demand basis. And, of course, you know, over the past couple of years, they've had a big push into podcasting. And, you know, they've done it, you know, their way, you know, they have kind of like, come up with a way that, you know, like, fits, you know, their way of doing things as well as you know, their strategic objectives and values. But ultimately, you know, what they want to be is the platform where people listen to all kinds of audio, you know, they just want to be you know, that the first thing people think about when they think about, you know, like listening something, whether it be music or podcasts. And so, you know, from their perspective, or my read on their perspective, is that if they can do that with podcasting, but then there is this friction that they are creating for themselves when a listener wants to upgrade to a premium experience, and then has to change their podcast player to be able to listen to the premium version of podcast, you're advancing your mission on one hand, but then for the very most engaged listeners, you know, like you're breaking the experience that they're hearing all of these calls to sign up as a premium subscriber and then ultimately, you know, having to leave your platform To be able to participate in those, you know, I think they realized that, you know, that was just going to be, you know, kind of like showing listeners the door. And so this is a strategically smart move on their behalf. You know, they, essentially, by by creating this technology, they're, you know, kind of re rejoining somewhat, you know, kind of the the open approach that, you know, everybody else's taken. And, you know, I think I think it's a smart move on their behalf, just to make sure that their listeners, you know, at least have the similar experience to to everybody else.

Travis: 45:36

Yeah, I mean, there was definitely a season where everyone was trying to be the, the, the Netflix of podcasts. And that was a term that thrown around a lot like luminary, the Netflix of podcasts, and I don't even know anyone that has luminary subscription, you know, and then Spotify is like, we're gonna be the go to place for we're gonna win podcasting, or going to YouTube or podcasts. And an over time, as these these kind of new entrants into the game realized, oh, there's actually an entrenched listener behavior here that we're trying to break for our own interests, it didn't really work the way that they thought it would. And so it's nice to see Spotify kind of softening up to that initial stance of, we're just going to keep everything closed, internal. And we're just going to kind of own it front to back to now saying, you know what, maybe it's better for us to play the content game, start signing these exclusive deals, getting creators to come over, and really focusing on serving creators. So I'm super excited to hear news like this, Spotify is starting to reach out to creators. Now, I know a lot of people will see this press release to hear about it. And they'll say, huh, that's curious. Didn't Apple just talk about premium subscriptions, like a few weeks ago? And so as someone who is not on the inside at all of these conversations, how long has this interaction? Have you guys been working with Spotify? Kind of paving the way for this open access feature? Does it predate that Apple announcement? Or it was like it had been something that you've been working on for a while? Or is it relatively recent?

Jason: 47:07

It was more recent, you know, just going off what's available on the public? You know, obviously, Apple made their announcement, you know, that they were, you know, launching Apple podcast subscriptions, and then launching an air quotes. That's right. That's right. It took a while to get out there, but it's right. And then Spotify, you know, like, came came second with, you know, like, their announcement. So they had the advantage of being able to obviously, look at what Apple had done. And then, you know, like, decide to propose something slightly differently. slightly different. An attempt to, to create is ultimately, you know, like, they came out with some, you know, subscription offerings, and, you know, this, this open access platform, which is quite a different approach to, of course, what Apple is, is coming out with, I think, ultimately, we're now kind of embroiled in this, this kind of platform war where, you know, creators have the luxury of choice, but ultimately, you know, each of those platforms has their own vested interests. Apple wants you to use apple, Vargas, Spotify, once you use, you know, Spotify as podcast player. And so it's, you know, just kind of like this, this trade off of, you know, kind of like trying to out compete each other. But what I would say, you know, about, you know, both of those platforms, and their subscription offerings is that you just have to think about, you know, from, from your point of view, your own selfish point of view as a creator, you know, what are the catches, you know, when I sign up to any particular programs, and particularly subscription programs with these big platforms? Because, in most cases, and certainly, you know, what we've seen with Apple subscriptions, and Spotify subscriptions, is that it works a little bit like Apple's App Store, you know, of course, this has been all over the news recently, you know, and one, you know, it's, it's, you know, it's a pretty high fee, you know, 30% of your, you know, your revenue that you have to pay out to Apple, but then secondly, you know, you just have no control and no relationship with your audience. And that is a big, big catch that, you know, it's looking like both we know, apple, you know, certainly, you know, doesn't want to give you access to you know, who was a paying subscriber, or how to contact them. And, you know, we're pretty sure Spotify subscription program will, will probably be, you know, the same, that's a separate to the open access platform that we're talking about today. But, you know, that is the catch with, you know, some of those platform offerings as opposed to something like supercast where we're all about, you know, the creator and again, empowering the creator to be able to build a membership, how they like and to be in charge of both the billing relationship and the the ability to contact their subscribers, send them newsletters, like whatever you want, you know, if you have Ultimately, if you reach a point where you don't even want to use supercast anymore, that's totally fine. It's your stripe account. And, you know, you can export those email addresses and those relationships at any time,

Travis: 50:12

right? Well, that's an important detail, right? That if you say, Okay, I'm going to go in on Apple premium content, or the Spotify subscription content? Well, it's like, Okay, well, then only a fraction of your listeners can actually support you, within those programs, they're taking a cut out of that, you know, on the relationship with your listener. And if you use, you know, up until this point, if you wanted to use Spotify for any kind of premium content, you can only really monetize the US, right, like, a lot of the international markets were out of touch, like, they just didn't have the ability to set that kind of financials up, which is something that Apple was very, very proud of being able to say, you can collect payments from everywhere, that we have an app store supercast, you can collect payments from anywhere on the planet, even Antarctica, it wouldn't matter. Right, right.

Jason: 50:59

So that's a really, really important point, you know, like, and you think about, you know, even the biggest, you know, Apple podcasts, obviously, they have, depending on whose stats you believe, you know, like, they have 60%, you know, of most people's audience. And so if you go and launch a subscription program on Apple podcasts, and then you start, you know, kind of broadcasting that on your public feed, and saying, Hey, you know, like, we've got this premium subscriber experience, you know, it's $5 a month, click, you know, and, you know, like, sign up for it. Now, really, it's only the people that are listening to you on Apple podcasts that will see that button, you know, that have the ability to do that everybody else is going to be wondering what you're talking about. Because, you know, they're on Android, or, you know, they're using pocket casts, or, or Castro, and they just don't have that option to subscribe. And it's even worse, if you're on Android, because you don't can't even download Apple podcasts, you know, like, even if you, you know, we're prepared to go to the end of the earth, you know, to, to make this happen. And so that's, you know, of course, the advantage at Subic assets, you know, like, by building our technology on the open ecosystem, we give you the widest possible reach for to offer something to your entire subscription base, our whole philosophy is that, you know, we succeed when our creators succeed, you know, So ultimately, we earn a flat fee, 15 cents per month, you know, per paying subscriber. So, you know, as, as people pay you, you know, on a monthly basis, you know, like, that's how supercast ends as money. So our whole vested interest is to essentially build, you know, better and better tools for you to be able to offer more and more value to your Premium subscribers. So it starts with the audio feed. You know, it starts with being able to personalize that experience, and, you know, like, offer a welcome message, or, you know, even drip, you know, kind of new episodes, or special episodes Three days later, five days later, 10 days later. But then we also have features like ama's, an Ask me anything platform that just starts to turn podcasting, from being your kind of mostly one way traffic to now, you know, being a two way dialogue. And so what that looks like is, if, if you're a premium member of a podcast that offers ama and supercast, you get access to a platform where you can look over questions that have been previously asked to the show hosts, you can upvote those questions. Or you can submit your own question, you know, something that you know, like you want them to take a little time to answer. And then as a creator, once a week, once a month, however often you want to do it, you can look over the most popular questions and then record a specific ama episode that goes out to your Premium subscribers. So you might answer the five of the top questions. When you upload it to supercast you can timestamp where those answers actually appear. And then everybody that's followed or uploaded, a question automatically gets notified and can play right from from that timestamp. So it's things like that, that just, you know, add more value to your paying subscribers gives them more access, but also makes it easier for you as a content creator to create some premium content, you know, like, it's, it's not, you know, you don't have to come up with you know, like, double the number of episodes, you know, and kind of like, you know, just kind of drive the hamster wheel a little harder. We're always coming up with ideas for tools that we can create that just just make it easy for you to create that premium experience without too much additional overhead.

Travis: 54:40

So I know whenever we get into monetization strategies, people always live examples. They always have case studies. So are there any podcasters that you can talk about on butts here on Buzzcast? And, and talk about what they're doing and who they are and the kind of revenue they're able to generate from creating these premium podcast experiences?

Jason: 54:57

Yeah, sure. We were really You know, I kind of have the whole gambit when it comes to kinds of podcasters that we have on supercars ranging from big independent podcasters, like Peter, a Tia, or Rhonda Patrick, and the health and longevity space, Shane Parrish, and you know, kind of mental models, or a breaking points with crystal and saga, who just launched in June, actually, you know, a really popular three times a week political podcast through to, you know, entire networks like Canada, and, you know, they have all six shows on supercast, and are able to sell those six shows as a bundled subscription. And even, you know, bigger studios like Studio 71. And so, you know, they're offering a range of different things that are all, you know, specific to their shows. But, you know, crystal and saga, as I just mentioned, breaking points, tremendous success, you know, like they just had captured this, this lightened support that they had, from what was previously a YouTube only show, they took a YouTube only show, they went independent, created a new YouTube and podcast companion podcast called breaking points, launched it in June 7, and they got 10,000 paying members within two days, within two days paying, you know, anywhere from $10 a month to 15 $100 for a lifetime membership. But if you have, you know, even 200 members paying $5 a month, that's an additional$12,000 per year. So, it really works for podcasts of all shapes and sizes. And there's a lot of, you know, niche podcasts that can easily get 200 members, you know, support them. And again, you know, like, if you just do the math on your own downloads per episode, if you were able to get 5%, you know, like, where does that fall out in terms of being against that, that, you know, kind of like that 200 member mark, and we see, you know, meditation podcasts, podcasts about, you know, mafia, true, true stories, podcasts for electricians, you know, there's just the whole kind of mid tail and long tail of podcasting, that is able to also tap into subscription, because you know, the tighter engagement you have with the audience, the more likely it is that, you know, they'll want to establish a direct connection with you.

Travis: 57:13

Fantastic. Well, if you want to learn more about super cast, and see if it's a good fit for you, and being able to generate revenue from your show, and connect with your audience and get a super cast calm. To learn all about that, we'll leave a link in the show notes. Jason, thank you so much for your time, and for joining us for Buzzcast this week. Awesome. Great to chat. Well, we hope you enjoyed that. Sit down with Jason from Super cast that was super enlightening. And we're really excited to see how you guys use the new features inside of Buzzsprout, the dynamic content tools that we just rolled out those upgrades and the cam integrations, let us know how you plan on using that by going to the YouTube video. If you're listening to that podcast and leaving a comment or if you're here right now watching it, go ahead and leave a comment below. We would love to hear how you want to use those features. And if you have not yet make sure to subscribe to the Buzzcast YouTube channel. We would love to have you over there and connect with you and interact with you. That would be phenomenal. Well that's it for today. Thanks for listening. And as always keep podcasting