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Is Podcasting 2.0 Pointless?
Episode 2 • 26th March 2024 • In & Around Podcasting • Mark Asquith, Danny Brown & Friends
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In this episode, Mark, Danny, Joe Casabona, and Daniel J. Lewis discuss the future of Podcasting 2.0 and its impact on the podcasting industry.

They explore the challenges and benefits of implementing Podcasting 2.0 features, such as transcripts and chapter markers. The conversation also touches on the complexity of value for value in Podcasting 2.0 and the need for better app support.

Additionally, they discuss the importance of engagement and handling negative reviews in podcasting. The episode concludes with Danny's dream AI tool and a recommendation for the Knick Knack News podcast.

Takeaways

Podcasting 2.0 is an evolving movement that aims to improve the podcasting and podcast consumption experience for everyone.

Implementing Podcasting 2.0 features should be based on the goals and needs of individual podcasters and their audiences.

Reviews and ratings do not directly impact podcast rankings, but they can provide social proof and engagement opportunities.

Engaging with listeners and focusing on the positives is more important than dwelling on negative reviews.

App support for Podcasting 2.0 features is still limited, but the recent support from Apple is a positive sign for the future of the movement.

Chapters

  • 00:00 Introduction
  • 01:05 Introductions
  • 04:40 Is Podcasting 2.0 pointless?
  • 24:36 The Wave File
  • 26:04 The Wonderfully Whimsical Podcasting Wishlist: Danny's fancy AI idea
  • 28:19 The Flattering Ram: Knick Knack News from Daniel
  • 30:53 Stupid Stuff in Podcasting: Reviews = rankings, argh!
  • 38:14 Wrap up

Links to interesting things from this episode

In & Around Podcasting is a podcast industry podcast brought to you by Mark Asquith and Danny Brown.

If you're an independent creator who would like to co-host with us, please let us know via Twitter (https://twitter.com/inaroundpodcast) and we'll get you booked!

Please tell your friends that the show is available on Spotify (https://inandaroundpodcasting.com/spotify), (https://inandaroundpodcasting.com/apple) and YouTube (https://inandaroundpodcasting.com/youtube), plus wherever else they may listen to their podcasts.

The podcast is also available at https://www.inandaroundpodcasting.com.

Mentioned in this episode:

The #1 Place for Podcasting News - Podnews Newsletter

Podnews is our #1 place for podcasting news and is trusted by tens-of-thousands of indie creators, industry experts and curious creators every single day. Every week, James Cridland and Sam Sethi recap the week's podcasting news from the daily newsletter into an easily digestible weekly review. It's free and we highly recommend that you subscribe!

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This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis:

OP3 - https://op3.dev/privacy

Transcripts

Mark:

Hello there, and welcome to in and around podcasting, the inclusive

Mark:

podcast industry podcast, where we highlight a range of powerful podcasting

Mark:

perspectives. I'm Mark Asquith, co founder of Captivate, and I'm joined

Mark:

by our wonderful co host, Mr. Danny Brown. Danny, you're not wearing

Mark:

any crazy clothing today. What's going on? I'm a little bit disappointed.

Danny:

I'm not. No, the last time, I believe we got some interesting green screen

Danny:

stuff going on, so I'm not sure about that. Just like a little t shirt

Danny:

today.

Mark:

Lesson learned. I think that is what that is called. And today we're going

Mark:

to talk about podcasting 2.0. What is going on with it? Is it a fad?

Mark:

Is it the future? Or is it something in between? And we're joined by two

Mark:

amazing guest co hosts for this. First of all, we're joined by the

Mark:

man that provided the inaugural stupid stuff in podcasting on his LinkedIn

Mark:

a couple of weeks ago. It is Joe Casabana. Welcome as a guest co host,

Mark:

my friend.

Joe:

Thanks. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here just for the occasion

Joe:

because I know you all are Star wars fans, and I had my Star wars.

Mark:

Yes, we are. We are absolute r nerds there. And I appreciate the thought

Mark:

on that. I love that. And we're also joined by another guest co host,

Mark:

someone that needs no introduction, someone that I've known for a long

Mark:

time and a former advisor to captivate before we became part of global.

Mark:

It's the one, the only, Mr. Daniel J. Lewis. Welcome, my friend. How

Mark:

are you?

Daniel:

Thank you very much. I'm excited to be here and excited to talk about

Daniel:

some of this stuff.

Mark:

Good. Well, we're excited for an interesting show. We are going to

Mark:

go podcasting 2.0, but we've also got some shout outs to other podcasts.

Mark:

In our audio only wave file segment, we've got actually the first ever

Mark:

wonderfully whimsical podcasting wishlist coming up. We've got, of

Mark:

course, the flattering ram delivered by the one and only Daniel J. Lewis.

Mark:

And it would be rude not to do some stupid stuff in podcasting. But before

Mark:

we get to all of that, Joe, give us the skinny. Give us the top level.

Mark:

What is it that you do in podcasting? How do you help people? What is it

Mark:

that you enjoy doing in this industry?

Joe:

I love helping podcasters do two things, save 12 hours per week producing

Joe:

their podcast. And I like helping them do that so that they can do

Joe:

the most important thing in podcasting, which is storytelling. Those are

Joe:

kind of the two aspects that I help people with, and I love telling stories.

Joe:

I always have. And automation is kind of my jam. I was in software

Joe:

development for a long time, and I took that knowledge and moved it

Joe:

over to podcasting to help people be as efficient as possible to prevent

Joe:

the dreaded pod fade.

Daniel:

Right.

Joe:

I want to get people past seven episodes.

Mark:

And you also have possibly the best name in podcasting as well. I'm extremely

Mark:

jealous of it. I've got the most basic 80s name. I am called Mark.

Mark:

It's disappointing, but Joe Casabono, what a legend. And you can find joe@podcastworkflows.com

Mark:

and Daniel J. Lewis, you have been around a little while, my friend.

Mark:

What are you up to these days? You've got a couple of new things ongoing

Mark:

at the moment. What's on your plate right now, mate?

Daniel:

Yeah, the two biggest things I do, helping podcasters engage their audiences

Daniel:

and grow their podcasts. I host the Audacity to podcast, a podcast about

Daniel:

podcasting for podcasters. Talking about podcasting, it's very, very

Daniel:

meta. I also have podgagement, formerly known as my podcast reviews, that

Daniel:

helps provide tools for podcasters to engage their audiences and grow

Daniel:

their podcasts. And I love helping podcasters, and that's why I'm in

Daniel:

podcasting 2.0 and join podcasting, conversations and conferences and

Daniel:

everything.

Mark:

I love it. You are literally the podcast guy. If I'm the british podcast

Mark:

guy, you've got me as you are, the global version of that. And audacitytopodcast.com.

Mark:

Is that still the best place, mate? Yes, legend. All right, I love that.

Mark:

Now let's get on to podcasting 2.0, the future of podcasting, the future

Mark:

of RSS, but also something that can scare indies a little bit. We've

Mark:

seen it. We see it quite a little bit in support at Captivate, the

Mark:

idea being that we want to progress podcasting. We love the open ecosystem,

Mark:

and whilst closed ecosystems such as Spotify, YouTube and whatever

Mark:

else may exist, and we can't really do much about those, they have their

Mark:

place. We still want to protect and to move forward with the open podcasting

Mark:

ecosystem. So, Daniel, I'm going to come to you actually on this one

Mark:

because you've just released a new website to help explain this a little

Mark:

bit more yourself. And James Cridlin, if I'm an indie producer, if I'm

Mark:

an indie podcaster getting into podcasting and someone says to me, what about

Mark:

this podcasting 2.0? Have you done that? Are you quote unquote, doing

Mark:

that? How would you explain it to them. Give us the pitch.

Daniel:

Yeah. Podcasting 2.0 is a whole set of innovations that help improve

Daniel:

the podcasting and podcast consumption experience for everyone, for podcasters,

Daniel:

for audiences, for developers, even for advertisers. So everyone benefits

Daniel:

through the innovations that are being offered in podcasting 2.0 through

Daniel:

different features that we're building into RSS feeds and around the ecosystem

Daniel:

of how podcasts work and just making it better. That's why the name fits

Daniel:

so well. This is the 2.0 version of podcasts, which have been pretty

Daniel:

much the same technologically since the beginning. So podcasting 2.0

Daniel:

brings that in and revolutionises it in many exciting ways.

Mark:

I love that. And it's very much RSS centric. So RSS being the delivery

Mark:

mechanism for podcasts in general. A hosting platform like captivates

Mark:

generates an RSS feed, sends information in that box, which is the RSS feed,

Mark:

off to the apps that read it and deliver features, deliver content,

Mark:

and so on and so forth, information about that particular show and the

Mark:

episodes within. Todd Cochrane, a friend of everyone's.

Danny:

His.

Mark:

Reaction to this a while ago I thought was quite interesting, which is we

Mark:

really want to be selling benefits as opposed to technical features

Mark:

when it comes to podcasting 2.0. So Joe, you work with a lot of people

Mark:

working on the podcast workflows and so on and so forth. How do you

Mark:

see that landscape on the ground for the indie producer? What's the

Mark:

talk of the town when it comes to podcasting 2.0? Are people sort of

Mark:

afraid of it? Are people embracing it? Where do you see the indies right

Mark:

now?

Joe:

Yeah, I think it's more like people want the features, right? I'm an

Joe:

evangelist for RSS.com as well, and we do like to promote podcasting

Joe:

2.0 features, but I usually don't put it like that when I'm talking

Joe:

to folks on that end or my clients. It's almost like saying, hey, you

Joe:

want to get a black and decker hammer? And they're like, I just want to

Joe:

build a house. And so when I'm talking about the podcasting 2.0 features,

Joe:

they'll say, hey, we got transcripts, right? There's like transcript support.

Joe:

There is the ability to lock your feed. There is the ability to recommend

Joe:

other podcasts and a bunch of other kind of 2.0 features. But I usually

Joe:

won't specifically brand it that way unless I'm talking to other folks

Joe:

in the industry, other people who are part of podcast management platforms.

Joe:

When I'm talking to people who are shopping. I definitely sell the benefits

Joe:

more than the underlying tech, I guess it's also like in the WordPress

Joe:

space, the sales pages for plugins used to be like we built it with

Joe:

react and JavaScript, and I'm like, no one cares about those things.

Joe:

They want to know what the plugin does. So that's kind of how I view

Joe:

it when I'm talking to the non technical or like non deeply embedded podcast

Joe:

folks.

Mark:

I think Todd's versioning of that and the way that he articulated that

Mark:

idea know sell the features and the benefits as opposed to the tags,

Mark:

which is know we know the processes goes through GitHub, goes through

Mark:

review. There's a lot of collaborators on there, some more active than others.

Mark:

And the process is that there's a collaborative effort to sign off

Mark:

a round of tag releases, which is an RSS based tag, and they essentially

Mark:

translate into features for people. So we sign off a transcript tag,

Mark:

eventually hosting companies support it, listening apps, even Apple now

Mark:

supports it. So it's a journey. And Danny, one thing I want to talk to

Mark:

you about very quickly is it's been in the industry for a while. We've

Mark:

all spoken on different podcasts about it. We're all aware of it,

Mark:

this being an industry show about the podcasting industry, but really

Mark:

trying to help, not just give that view from the top. What's the general

Mark:

feeling in places like captivate support when it comes to things like

Mark:

podcasting 2.0, you lead up that support team, you got any insight

Mark:

on that? How are the day to day people feeling about it?

Danny:

I think it's a bit of both of what Daniel mentions and Joe, they understand

Danny:

the features when you explain it, but a lot of it is about understanding

Danny:

what benefits it actually does for them as a podcaster and their listeners.

Danny:

And I feel there's a danger of getting lost in the reads or the weeds, whatever

Danny:

country preference description you use there. But there's a danger of

Danny:

getting lost in that by spewing all the cool stuff they can do without

Danny:

actually breaking it down to really basic for the new podcaster or the

Danny:

indie podcaster that just wants to produce a podcast and doesn't know

Danny:

value for value. What's that? What's the people tag? Why do they need

Danny:

a person tag? All that stuff. So I think there's definitely excitement

Danny:

about making the show more interactive and accessible for listeners, but

Danny:

it's what that entails, what extra workflow it entails, et cetera.

Mark:

One of the interesting challenges, I think, is accessibility of podcasting.

Mark:

2.0 and Daniel, you've done some work with James Cridland on a website

Mark:

to try and mitigate some of that. And one of the biggest aspects of

Mark:

that is translating as we've just gone through this idea of, okay,

Mark:

a tag in an RSS feed is actually something that we'll deal with as

Mark:

a hosting platform that an app will then have to respect and look at

Mark:

in order to deliver the outcome of that tag. So if it's comments, we

Mark:

have to enable it, they have to enable it, and the outcome will be comments

Mark:

are available and you can do cross platform whatever transcripts, the

Mark:

lock tag, the funding tag, whatever that might be. The biggest single

Mark:

issue that I think that we face, that I'm going to come to you on

Mark:

Daniel, is that there's just very little support on the app side. And

Mark:

I think Rob Walsh articulated this really well. He just said that actually

Mark:

less than 1% of downloads across the entire industry come from apps

Mark:

that support podcasting 2.0 features in any meaningful way. Pod chat feels,

Mark:

well, there's two sides to this, actually. It's an open ended for

Mark:

you. It feels as if that's true and as if that's sort of, oh my word,

Mark:

look how problematic that is. But yet we're only, what, a year into

Mark:

podcasting? 2.02 years into it, we've barely even begun in the grand scheme

Mark:

of things. What are your views on that?

Daniel:

Well, a couple of things. I first am grateful that Rob brought up that

Daniel:

challenge. Even though it kind of stunned for the industry. I am grateful

Daniel:

for it because that is what inspired James and I to launch podcasting

Daniel:

two point org. Two, I mix up my british and English sometimes now when I

Daniel:

say that. But podcasting two is the website for podcasting 2.0. And we're

Daniel:

trying to make that a site that is both a resource for developers who

Daniel:

need to see what are all of the tags, but also especially for the people,

Daniel:

the podcasters who need to see. I've heard about this thing. What is it?

Daniel:

I have heard about value time split. What in the world is that? Well,

Daniel:

we want the website to explain that, so we're grateful that Rob brought

Daniel:

that challenge. I want to challenge Rob's data and maybe Mark, this is

Daniel:

a great opportunity for captivate to bring some of your own data. Libson

Daniel:

Rob Walsh works for Libson. Libson. Before Apple started supporting the

Daniel:

transcripts tag, Libson did not officially support any of the podcasting 2.0

Daniel:

features. Like there was no field to populate any of the features to

Daniel:

enter your transcripts yes, you could, in an old version of the Libson dashboard,

Daniel:

manually insert XML code in order to add the RSS tags for your podcasting

Daniel:

2.0. And that should sound scary to anyone. You should never have

Daniel:

to do that. So for Libson to say in their data, they see that only

Daniel:

a certain very tiny percentage of downloads come from podcasting 2.0

Daniel:

supported apps. I think that kind of makes sense because they're not

Daniel:

really pushing their own podcasters. They're not enabling their podcasters

Daniel:

to support these features, let alone encouraging them to encourage their

Daniel:

audiences to use their features. Then compare that to I know you haven't

Daniel:

released this data yet, but would be interesting to see data from captivate.

Daniel:

Captivate made the huge splash. What about a year, a year and a half ago

Daniel:

with like you just dumped a whole load of new features of podcasting

Daniel:

2.0 support on the industry. And Blueberry and Rss.com and other companies

Daniel:

are supporting these features much more heavily too. So I'd love to

Daniel:

see how the downloads skew for them. But going back to your point of,

Daniel:

even if it is a small number, yes, this is fringe, this is cutting edge.

Daniel:

But the Apple, the number one podcast app now supports one of these features.

Daniel:

That's not only going to inspire the other apps to support that one

Daniel:

feature, which is transcripts, a very good, very important feature.

Daniel:

But I think that's also going to challenge the other apps in the industry

Daniel:

as a whole to realise this is a legitimate project. This is not just someone

Daniel:

in their basement coding. This is something that now has been embraced

Daniel:

by Apple. Maybe it's time that we also look at embracing this support

Daniel:

in our apps, publishing tools, whatever it is. That's what's really exciting

Daniel:

that Apple has. I don't like to say this word legitimising it, but that's

Daniel:

the way that the industry will look at it, as if Apple's doing it now.

Daniel:

That means this is a real thing. So maybe we should too now. And that's

Daniel:

got me excited.

Mark:

Yeah, it's almost a validation, isn't it? Like you said, it was legitimate

Mark:

before because there were other players that did support it. But the validation

Mark:

that, I think the validation that this could scale has been granted

Mark:

a little bit more because Apple have supported that one tag, and it's

Mark:

a very useful tag as well. And Joe, when it comes to, I think, certain

Mark:

other features, let's get into the mindset of features versus tags.

Mark:

I think for a second, it feels, to Daniel's point about this being bleeding

Mark:

edge, this is fringe this is very early stage, very, very sort of nascent

Mark:

developmental work in RSS and podcasting. On the whole, it feels as if even

Mark:

within podcasting 2.0, there are more bleeding edge things and there

Mark:

are more, okay, safe things. So we've got things like value for value.

Mark:

Let's make money through the blockchain. And then we've got the locked tag,

Mark:

which is. Let's just make sure. Let's add one more layer to just try and

Mark:

stop people from stealing your podcast. The spectrum is huge there. So when

Mark:

you're talking through workflows and so on, have you got any sort

Mark:

of methodology around. Okay, here's, I don't want to say a partial implementation

Mark:

because I don't think there is a full one yet. But do you work with

Mark:

people insofar as. Okay, do you know what podcasting 2.0 is? This massive

Mark:

range of things. For now, let's just worry about these one or two things.

Mark:

How does that tend to sit with you and the people that you work with?

Joe:

Yeah, that's a really good question. And I think to Daniel's point, to

Joe:

the point that you guys are making here, I think it really is kind of

Joe:

up to the industry folks to. It's almost like saying, as a car maker,

Joe:

I don't want to. Oh, well, only less than 1% of people die from car crashes,

Joe:

so I'm not going to put airbags in my car. That's a crazy thing to say.

Joe:

But I think, again, from the kind of feature standpoint, as I watch

Joe:

the podcasting 2.0 space and some of the features that get implemented

Joe:

and the things that I think are going to be most helpful, that's kind of

Joe:

where I land. So, like, transcripts, I've been bullish on transcripts

Joe:

are necessary for a podcast. My current show, my flagship show, we'll say,

Joe:

launched in 2016. In 2017, it had transcripts because I think that

Joe:

it's an accessibility play, it's a search play. It's a lot of things.

Joe:

And so it's really cool to see Apple and other people kind of implement

Joe:

this and give native support to it. Things like chapter markers.

Daniel:

Right.

Joe:

I think that's technically podcasting 2.0. Maybe that's like, support it

Joe:

if you want. It's kind of hard to add. Maybe other apps do it better.

Joe:

But I think about what's going to make the biggest impact based on

Joe:

my clients or students'goals.

Mark:

Right.

Joe:

We want to grow the show. Transcripts are necessary for that chapter markers.

Joe:

If you're going to upload it to YouTube now.

Daniel:

Right.

Joe:

And there is like the medium tag now. So that's pretty cool to see.

Joe:

Maybe we do that. I guess it's all very goals based is the most succinct

Joe:

way for me to put.

Mark:

Yes. Yeah, I would agree with that one. Danny, I'm going to drop this

Mark:

one on you because we've got to touch on it because on the other far extreme

Mark:

side of this, you know what's coming. Someone has to explain value for

Mark:

value. And I'm going to speak to Sam SETI from true fans about this.

Mark:

He's a good friend of the show, he's a good friend of everyone here, and

Mark:

he's doing amazing work in that value for value space. Just give us the

Mark:

top level on this because I feel like this is probably the most complex

Mark:

feature, I want to say, of the movement. So good luck. Go for it.

Danny:

Can you just bleep this section out altogether? Yeah. I mean, from a

Danny:

personal point of view, I see the value, no pun intended, but I still

Danny:

try get my head around, and I see this with our podcasters. I see it

Danny:

online, Reddit, et cetera, where if you're given a listener a choice

Danny:

that's never heard of podcasting 2.0, but you're trying to explain

Danny:

the benefits of why you should use 2.0 apps like Fountain, et cetera.

Danny:

And true fans.

Mark:

Did Judas nearly say only fans?

Danny:

I said only fans. Sorry, Sam.

Mark:

Sound bite, Daniel. Sound bite. Joe, get this on LinkedIn.

Danny:

Yeah. So true fans. True fans. So if I'm trying to tell my listeners

Danny:

and explain to my listeners, you can support me if you love the show,

Danny:

and I'd love you to support, you can either give me $5 a month for

Danny:

a free buck, buy me a coffee, or you can give me 10,000 sats. Okay,

Danny:

what's sats? Why is it so high? Because I'm equating five versus 10,000,

Danny:

think of pounds, dollars, et cetera. And I feel it's really hard to, if

Danny:

people aren't technical, to buy into the setup that you have to do with

Danny:

a get albi or a lightning account, et cetera, and then set up all your

Danny:

details to transfer this via a lightning network or however the transfer is

Danny:

happening to get the support and the boosts, et cetera, from one person

Danny:

over to the podcaster. For me, there's a huge education gap and there's

Danny:

a huge. Just the numbers don't make sense from a simple point of view.

Danny:

510 thousand. 510 thousand. And I feel that's where a big stop gap

Danny:

is at the moment for value. For value really taking off and getting adopted.

Danny:

Yeah.

Mark:

The idea you can stream crypto via the blockchain to a podcaster in

Mark:

return for the value that they provide. And not just a podcast, but like

Mark:

a musician, we've seen experiments in that space. It's a lovely idea.

Mark:

It's a great, great idea. And if someone said, I'll do that and I'll

Mark:

send you $0.05 or $0.01 every time I listen to 30 seconds of your audio,

Mark:

and I think it's worth it, you can sort of see where people would buy

Mark:

into that because they're equating the value that they use at the shop

Mark:

and the store to the thing that they can receive from strangers who enjoy

Mark:

their show. But I just feel there's that. It's quite an enigmatic challenge

Mark:

because you've got all of these different words Satoshi via the blockchain

Mark:

that I can stream to a creator using value for value. It feels like Daniel

Mark:

does the job you're doing on podcasting two, it feels like Sammy's trying

Mark:

to do with true fans, but it feels like that's got such a long way to

Mark:

go as a concept before people start saying, okay, that's one of my main

Mark:

funding methods. It just feels tech.

Danny:

Yeah.

Daniel:

There's an aspect where I think the approach to it is going to get easier.

Daniel:

That's the nice thing, is the way it is now is not the most complicated

Daniel:

it's ever been. It has been more complicated before. It's gotten easier,

Daniel:

it will get easier to get into it. And then some of the app developers

Daniel:

are also making the understanding of it a little bit easier. Like,

Daniel:

I've been using castomatic for a while now, and it's really neat that

Daniel:

it shows me the current conversion rate. So if I'm saying I'm going

Daniel:

to send a boostogram, which is amount of satoshis with a message attached

Daniel:

to it. So if I say I'm going to send 10,000, it shows me what that's worth

Daniel:

in my currency. So that's really neat to see that easy conversion

Daniel:

there. So I can know, okay, 10,000 is a really big number, but, oh,

Daniel:

that's only about 650 right now. So that's not all that bad. But the

Daniel:

other approach is, I like the way that James Cridlin put this, is you

Daniel:

could think of the satoshis as like Internet tokens. Just like you might

Daniel:

go to a carnival or a fair and you buy a certain number of tickets and

Daniel:

then things cost a certain number of tickets to use, and you forget

Daniel:

about the value of the tickets. You start thinking, this is how many

Daniel:

tickets I have. So this is how many I can spend. And that's what it is.

Daniel:

With satoshis. You might load up a wallet, we would say with a certain

Daniel:

number, 10,000, 20,000, whatever it is. And then, you know, this is

Daniel:

how many I have to spend, and I want to send 1000 here, 1000 there. And

Daniel:

then you're spending those tokens, and it's going to become more familiar

Daniel:

to people as time goes on, and especially as bitcoin gets more adoption, that

Daniel:

people will understand this conversion better. So I'm excited about how

Daniel:

easy it will get in the future.

Mark:

I think that's the key takeaway as well from this portion of the show,

Mark:

is that podcasting 2.0 is not pointless. It's a developmental future of podcasting

Mark:

that is in such a young stage that it requires us all to give it space

Mark:

to contribute where we can and to allow people to understand exactly

Mark:

what the opportunities are when they are, without making it seem some

Mark:

big scary thing that if you don't adopt it, if you're not shouting

Mark:

from the rooftops about it because you're an indie podcaster from your

Mark:

bedroom, that's all right as well. There are layers to this and there

Mark:

are levels to this, and I think that's a big important thing, but it's a

Mark:

valuable movement, and there are people doing fantastic work in that

Mark:

space. Thank you to everyone that is pioneering that, and to people

Mark:

like Daniel and to Joe and to everyone else, and to James Quidland and to

Mark:

Adam and Dave and everyone, all the hosting platforms that are doing

Mark:

great work in that space. Now it is time to just switch gears.

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with James Criblin and Sam Sethi.

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I'm James Cridlin, the editor of Pod News, the daily podcast newsletter.

Joe:

And I'm Sam Sethi, the CEO of Podfans.

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Every week, the Pod news Weekly review is the last word in podcasting news,

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with a look back at the most important news in podcasting and interviews

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with the people that matter.

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This is Rachel King. I'm the CEO and co founder of Pod People.

Mark:

Hey, this is Mark Asgris, the co founder here at Captivate.

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Hey, James, it's Kathy Doyle.

Daniel:

Hi. This is Brendan Mulligan, founder of Podpage.

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I'm Anna Sean. I lead the marketing team that is focused on Spotify for

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podcasters. Hi, I'm Christiana Kromer descripts community manager.

Mark:

Hi, I'm Tom Rossi from Buzzsprout. Hi.

Joe:

This is Todd Cochrane, CEO and co founder of Blueberry.

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I'm Melissa Kishi and I'm a senior vice president at Edison Research.

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Hear from Sam, me and everyone else in this industry every week the Pod

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news Weekly review with Buzzsprout podcast hosting.

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Made easy from your daily newsletter the Pod news weekly review.

Mark:

Danny, you wanted this one. I'm going to let you jump in with the wonderful,

Mark:

whimsical podcasting wishlist. What have you got? What's the dream?

Danny:

This actually came up this morning after I received the Daily Pod news.

Danny:

I get James's newsletter every day and there's news in there that I'm

Danny:

not always interested in and there's maybe podcasters. I never want to

Danny:

hear the name or like any news about podcasters. And so it'd be really

Danny:

cool if I could stick in an AI browser, tool extension, whatever, that I

Danny:

can let AI know. I never want to hear this topic, this name, this

Danny:

podcaster, nothing at all. And it looks at my newsletters and looks

Danny:

at the content coming in, strips that out from the email, but leaves

Danny:

the email intact and replaces it goes searching off the web for content

Danny:

I've read before, content I've listened to, and takes the latest news from

Danny:

that piece of content and sticks it into my email or my browser, where

Danny:

I've got the email version of the web version of the newsletter open.

Danny:

I'd love a tool like that. That's where I would love AI.

Mark:

Joe thumbs up, thumbs down, or ambivalence.

Joe:

I like it. One of the reasons I'm still on the social network, formerly

Joe:

known as Twitter, is because I have spent years I've been on that platform

Joe:

since seven. I've spent years curating and blocking and muting words aggressively

Joe:

and just moving all of that technical debt to another platform seems very

Joe:

upsetting to me. So I would love an app. There was a chrome browser

Joe:

like this or a chrome extension a few years ago like this that I heavily

Joe:

utilised when the Avengers movies came out because my daughter had

Joe:

just been born and I wanted to avoid spoilers at all costs before I could

Joe:

go and see it in the theatres. And so heavy thumbs up on that. I'm all

Joe:

for not seeing things I don't want to see on the Internet.

Mark:

I relate to that. Most of my mute words are Star wars focused. We do

Mark:

not like spoilers at all. Daniel, you have brought to the table one

Mark:

of our other interesting segments today. So I'm going to throw over

Mark:

to you for the flat. This is positivity. This is where we're spreading goodness

Mark:

and highlighting people doing great work in the podcasting space. And

Mark:

we can flatter absolutely anything that we want at all. There are no

Mark:

boundaries or limits. So, Daniel, thank you for bringing this. What

Mark:

do we have?

Daniel:

I've got a podcast for you that's really fun. It's completely independent.

Daniel:

For some reason, they don't have advertisers yet, but it is knack

Daniel:

news. So that's knickknack is spelled with k's on the beginning of both

Daniel:

of those words. So Knickknacknews.com, this is a podcast from two friends

Daniel:

who talk about recent random news bits. They have dinosaur news, they

Daniel:

have hamburger news, they have space news. They talk about tardigrades,

Daniel:

they talk about science. They talk about all kinds of interesting things,

Daniel:

and they just have fun with it. And I met these two friends at a podcast

Daniel:

movement a couple of years ago. Their podcast sounded interesting. I checked

Daniel:

it out and it's really good. It's not highly produced. It doesn't have

Daniel:

all the NPR style journalistic stuff, but it's two friends who know how

Daniel:

to have an entertaining conversation, which is something that I would say

Daniel:

that a lot of comedy podcasters out there don't know how to do. That's

Daniel:

one of my pet peeves, is two comedy podcasters getting together and not

Daniel:

being funny. But Alex and Anthony in Knickknack news are great together.

Daniel:

It's great to hear one of them bring a crazy news story and the other

Daniel:

just burst out laughing at it. It's a really fun podcast that I think

Daniel:

should really get more attention because it's so good and so fun,

Daniel:

and yet it is very simple, too. And yet it's that good.

Mark:

I love that sounds fascinating. I love the irreverence of just bringing

Mark:

random use together like that. And it's one of those shows that, it

Mark:

feels like one of those shows where you're just in the car, you're not

Mark:

quite sure what you want to listen to. That just feels like it fits

Mark:

absolutely perfectly into that gap. So fascinating. We'll put a link

Mark:

to that in the show notes as well. We'll dig it out and we'll stick

Mark:

a link in there because I think that's a really good shout. Daniel, thank

Mark:

you. Pod chat. That is the flattering ram. Always interested to see what

Mark:

comes up in the flattering ram, because goodness is good to spread and we

Mark:

are going to wrap up because we've got two people that know about this.

Mark:

We've got Joe, we've got Daniel and Danny brought to us this week. I

Mark:

feel like this might become a trend, mate, actually, that you bring this

Mark:

because it feels like you are on the ball with it. Danny did bring

Mark:

this week's stupid stuff in podcasting. All right, what's grinding your gears,

Mark:

mate? Yeah.

Danny:

And this is something you see a lot. It's the good old, and I'm glad Daniel's

Danny:

on here. And obviously job, it's a good old. Get loads and loads of

Danny:

Apple reviews because that will throw you up the charts and it'll get you

Danny:

any search and it'll help you get more downloads and it's just great.

Mark:

So get these reviews.

Danny:

So, yeah, it's just. I'll leave it to the experts on this.

Mark:

Oh, yeah, it's been around for a while, hasn't it? Review swaps early

Mark:

on, on the launch to get into new and worthy and all that was part

Mark:

of the launch plan for a lot of people. Joe, is this something that you still

Mark:

see? Are people doing this when they're launching shows?

Joe:

Yeah, and interestingly, I was talking to a few people who launched podcasts

Joe:

earlier this year that said, oh, we're only launching on Apple podcasts

Joe:

because we want to get reviews there. And I'm like, that's so weird. That's

Joe:

not how it works. Reviews are great. They are social proof and they make

Joe:

you feel good most of the time. Unless somebody says that you have too many

Joe:

ads in your show, it's a real bad review I got on my show. But yeah,

Joe:

I get why people would think that, but Apple does these quarterly. What's

Joe:

new in podcasting sort of things. And everyone, they're like, we're

Joe:

not going to tell you what affects the charts, but we will tell you

Joe:

it has to do with subscribers, listener or followers, listeners consumption,

Joe:

some combination of that. And they're like, reviews don't help, but it's

Joe:

just this thing that has permeated the hive mind, I guess, of like,

Joe:

oh, reviews obviously means better ranking.

Mark:

And it came as well, like I said, part of the launch phase for a lot

Mark:

of the gurus and so on. I think the challenge was it was attributed to

Mark:

rankings, which I thought was interesting, as opposed to just, it might get

Mark:

someone to click and have a look at your podcast. So someone's written

Mark:

a review about it that's positive. Like, we get that aspect of it, but

Mark:

maybe we sat with the foremost expert on this. If only someone had a system

Mark:

that would cheque my podcast reviews. Luckily, such a thing exists. Come

Mark:

on, give us a skinny Daniel, you know all about this. What do reviews

Mark:

do?

Daniel:

Yeah, I created the service called my podcast reviews. It's now called

Daniel:

podgagement. And while I would love it if getting more ratings and reviews

Daniel:

did make your podcast rank better, because that'd certainly be better

Daniel:

for my software, that's just not the case. I have tracked this for

Daniel:

years and I can see that in the charts, especially you look at the top podcasts,

Daniel:

and if you actually click through and see the number of ratings and

Daniel:

reviews that they have, you'll see that it does not coincide with their

Daniel:

position in the chart. I've seen sometimes a podcast will shoot to

Daniel:

number one and it has a dozen ratings, and maybe one of those has a review

Daniel:

on it, and then maybe the number ten has a couple of thousand. There

Daniel:

is no correlation there. But I love what Joe said. It is really about

Daniel:

how you use your ratings and reviews. It's engagement, it's social proof.

Daniel:

It gives you opportunities to learn things about your show, learn things

Daniel:

that you can improve. It gives you special stuff that you can use in

Daniel:

your marketing material. You could use it to figure out what you need

Daniel:

to focus on with your podcast, but it's not going to help you rank better.

Daniel:

It might help someone who has already clicked into your podcast to decide,

Daniel:

oh yeah, this looks interesting enough to cheque it out. So it might help

Daniel:

someone convince, but it's not going to attract them. But it's still really

Daniel:

fun to have. And that's what I think we should focus on with reviews is

Daniel:

to engage your audience with them, not to try to rank better. That comes

Daniel:

as a reward of engaging your audience.

Mark:

Better engagement is huge, and it should be the thing that we all focus

Mark:

on. I totally agree, and I think obviously your pivot to pog engagement

Mark:

is testament to that as well. There's a huge space there that can be worked

Mark:

within to help shows grow in almost, I don't want to say an easy win,

Mark:

but what I would suggest is that probably most shows aren't really

Mark:

doing that much to engage fans, even though they think they're doing a

Mark:

lot to engage their fans. So I think this is a fascinating space to be

Mark:

in. And yeah, applaud you for pivoting that and sort of not necessarily

Mark:

pivoting, but adding to my podcast reviews and building on top of it.

Mark:

Danny, I once got a review that just said, thanks for that, mate. Why

Mark:

did you do it? No, I did. I got one. You guys who do email marketing will

Mark:

get this as well. You do the email marketing, whatever, you send an

Mark:

email out, whatever new episode. I also got on saying f off just to

Mark:

reply to that. But then the hilarity is they didn't what. All right, but

Mark:

what I'm getting at there is I do think that a lot of new podcasters,

Mark:

Joe, you probably see this a chunk, is that they can take the bad reviews

Mark:

to heart a heck of a lot, which can be quite a challenge. It can put

Mark:

people off. Especially one of your core missions is stopping people,

Mark:

podfading, helping them get past that milestone 7th episode. The last

Mark:

thing you want is a negative review within those first few episodes,

Mark:

derailing you, kicking you off the car, and you actually do podfed,

Mark:

do you ever speak to the people that you work with about this and just

Mark:

say, look, here's how we're going to handle this. Do you have anything

Mark:

in place for that?

Joe:

Yeah, I think it's mostly, I mean, like, I've been, you know, I've been

Joe:

making websites, or I had been making websites for 20 plus years. I've

Joe:

been on the Internet a long time. There are people who are just trolls.

Joe:

There's a guy who threatened me via email because I blocked him on my

Joe:

YouTube channel. And I'm like, these are just empty words. There's no

Joe:

consequence for being mean on the Internet. And this is what I try

Joe:

to tell people, right? There's like the scene from how I met your mother

Joe:

where Ted gets like dozens of glowing reviews from his students and then

Joe:

gets like one bad one and it ruins his day. And I try to tell people,

Joe:

look, you're not going to be for everybody. And there are just some

Joe:

people who are having a bad day and they're taking it out on you. Focus

Joe:

on the positives, because those are the people that you're helping, that

Joe:

you're making their day better. Forget about the myopic people who are just

Joe:

trying to be mean. You're going to get those and it's going to be fine

Joe:

if they provide real feedback, by all means. When someone was like,

Joe:

hey, you take too long to get to the actual meat of the episode, I

Joe:

started doing a cold open and telling people the top takeaways in the first

Joe:

three minutes. Right? When someone was like, you have too many ads.

Joe:

I was like, okay, I had four ads in a 40 minutes span. That feels,

Joe:

I mean, if you listen to certain podcast shows, you'll know that it's

Joe:

not a lot anymore. But it felt like a lot of the time. I'm going to dial

Joe:

back and I'm going to have a metric of one ad per 15 minutes of content.

Joe:

So real feedback definitely take to heart. But if someone's just like

Joe:

rubbish or f off or whatever, they've got hurt people hurt people, right?

Joe:

They've got something else going on and they're taking it out on you.

Mark:

I love that. Very sensible and I think very inspirational for people

Mark:

that have not quite been through that process as well. So thank you

Mark:

very much. We are going to stick a pin in it. Thank you for joining

Mark:

us on the second episode here of in and around podcasting. Mr. Daniel

Mark:

J. Lewis. Thank you for joining us, my friend.

Daniel:

You're very welcome. Thank you for having me. And I've enjoyed the conversation.

Daniel:

I enjoy listening and journeying with you around and in. Got that

Daniel:

mixed up in and around podcasting.

Joe:

I love it.

Mark:

No, we will welcome you back soon as well, sir. I'm sure we will. And

Mark:

Joe, always a pleasure and thank you once again for inspiring that

Mark:

first episode last week. It's great to have you on as the co host, and

Mark:

I'm sure we'll get you back as well.

Joe:

My pleasure. Thanks so much for having me. This is a great show and a great

Joe:

format you guys have here. I love it.

Mark:

Appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Danny. Thank you so much.

Mark:

And the stupid stuff was a good one this week, sir. I applaud thee.

Danny:

Thank you. I'm off to send an apology to Sam Seti.

Mark:

There was nothing butchered. Don't you worry. You did it justice. I

Mark:

assure you. I've been Mark askquith. Thank you so much for joining us.

Mark:

Grab us at in and aroundpodcasting.com at Inaround podcast over on the old

Mark:

X or the Twitter, whatever we're calling it these days. We'll be on

Mark:

YouTube because we're a very modern set of people. And of course you

Mark:

can get it inaroundpodcasting.com slash listen. Until the next time,

Mark:

look after yourself. We'll see you soon. You.

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