Shownotes
In this one:
- What HLS video actually is — and why it isn’t the old MP4-in-the-RSS-enclosure trick that nobody could see
- What the listener experience really looks like (spoiler: “clean” is a Michelin star in podcast infrastructure)
- The hosting catch — it lives or dies on who you host with
- Three workflow changes nobody warns you about, including the upload time and editing for two audiences at once
- What two weeks of data actually showed — told straight, no fake growth-hack victory lap
- The honest verdict: who should switch it on now, and who should wait
LINKS
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- Everything else:podmastery.co
Transcripts
Around two months ago, I made the argument both for and against Apple Podcasts HLS
Speaker:video, which meant that, of course, I then had to go and actually enable it
Speaker:to test it because there's a version of podcasting about podcasting that stays
Speaker:permanently theoretical, and I find that version slightly embarrassing.
Speaker:I mean, some of my peers have no problem with spouting so-called
Speaker:expertise around stuff that they've never actually tried or achieved, but I
Speaker:hold myself to a much better standard.
Speaker:So I did it.
Speaker:My other podcast, B2B Podcasting Insights, I enabled video in Captivate,
Speaker:and this is a real commercial show.
Speaker:I mean, I make that show as a lead generation tool
Speaker:And I wanted some actual results to present.
Speaker:So this is my report, and hopefully, my podcasting
Speaker:Padawan, you will benefit from it
Speaker:Welcome to Podmastery Podcasting Insights.
Speaker:It's the podcast for indie creators who want more from their shows.
Speaker:I'm Neal Veglio, the podmaster, and each episode, I'm doing my level
Speaker:best to help you make progress on your journey towards podmastery.
Speaker:Now, if you've been following the last few episodes, you know that I've been
Speaker:working through the case for and against this, not just for you, but also my own
Speaker:head, to figure out whether or not I want Podnos, my podcasting agency, to start
Speaker:leveraging this on behalf of clients.
Speaker:I need the theory of it, what it is, what it isn't.
Speaker:Well, this episode is gonna be different from the usual ones because
Speaker:this is an actual field report.
Speaker:I've done it.
Speaker:I've enabled video in Apple Podcasts for my show, B2B Podcasting Insights, and that
Speaker:show's a little bit like this one, but it's specifically targeting people wanting
Speaker:to get the most out of their B2B podcasts, their branded podcasts, a show they're
Speaker:doing for the benefit of their business.
Speaker:And that kind of podcast is in a crowded market.
Speaker:At last count, I noted around 50 shows that I could class as
Speaker:a direct competitor to my own.
Speaker:And I'd heard that shows with HLS video enabled were getting prioritized
Speaker:in the feeds within Apple Podcasts.
Speaker:More on that in a second.
Speaker:But the point is, the show is now a video podcast on Apple Podcasts
Speaker:via Captivate, and I've now got two weeks of data and an honest verdict
Speaker:on the whole thing to share with you.
Speaker:So let's start with the basics
Speaker:Let's talk about what HLS video actually is.
Speaker:HLS stands for HTTP Live Streaming.
Speaker:Three letters that sound less like a streaming protocol and more like
Speaker:something you might see mentioned in a scary letter from HMRC.
Speaker:Also, it isn't, despite what your inbox's AI summary might suggest, as a high-level
Speaker:strategy document that someone needs back by Friday, complete with your comments.
Speaker:It's actually an Apple-developed streaming standard.
Speaker:What makes it different from previous attempts at video in podcasting,
Speaker:and believe me, there have been lots of attempts over the years, as
Speaker:far back as the mid-2000s when the video-enabled iPod Nano was released.
Speaker:Anyway, what makes this tech different from the MP4 pass-through standard that
Speaker:Libsyn have bragged on providing for years is that this tech streams in chunks.
Speaker:Your video gets broken into small segments and delivered at whatever
Speaker:quality the listener's connection can handle right at that moment.
Speaker:So instead of a long delay while the podcast apps download enough of
Speaker:that MP4 file to begin playing it to you, this protocol means it can
Speaker:start playing almost immediately.
Speaker:And with a strong signal, you get high quality.
Speaker:If you hit patchy 4G through a motorway tunnel, the quality adjusts automatically
Speaker:with no buffering, no spinning wheel of screw you while you scream about
Speaker:your phone, your service provider, and the life choices that all led you
Speaker:to this exact tunnel just as John on your favorite podcast was starting
Speaker:to explain email open rate success.
Speaker:The previous method that I just alluded to, as in attaching a
Speaker:video file directly to an RSS enclosure, was technically possible.
Speaker:Some hosts offered it Like I say, Libsyn bragged about it.
Speaker:In fact, when I told Libsyn that I was leaving them to move to Captivate
Speaker:a few years ago, that was one of the things that they mentioned.
Speaker:"Oh, you won't be able to publish video anymore." Almost nobody was publishing
Speaker:video via Libsyn anyway because most podcast apps just stripped the video and
Speaker:played the audio version anyway, which is kind of like the digital equivalent
Speaker:of ordering a steak and being handed just the peppercorn sauce and an IU- and an
Speaker:IOU note where the steak should have been.
Speaker:HLS works because Apple Podcasts is genuinely built for it.
Speaker:In fact, they invented it.
Speaker:It's not a workaround that a bunch of Silicon Valley nerds came up with just
Speaker:so they could enjoy watching production companies nagging Amy Poehler into
Speaker:applying some makeup for recordings.
Speaker:And it's a clean experience.
Speaker:I know, that's not a word that gets pulses racing.
Speaker:Nobody is subscribing to a magazine called The Clean Podcast
Speaker:User Experience Quarterly.
Speaker:Three issues a year, free tote bag if you renew before March.
Speaker:But for anything in podcasting infrastructure, clean is pretty much
Speaker:the equivalent of a Michelin star.
Speaker:Someone follows B2B Podcasting Insights on Apple Podcast.
Speaker:The new episode lands.
Speaker:Wanna watch?
Speaker:There's a button.
Speaker:Tap it.
Speaker:Watch it.
Speaker:Driving?
Speaker:Just tap the button again.
Speaker:Listen to it from exactly the same place it was.
Speaker:Clean.
Speaker:There's no, "Head over to our YouTube channel for the full experience."
Speaker:There's no, "This episode contains visuals best appreciated on our website.
Speaker:Go to www.blah." No QR code that you're scanning one-handed
Speaker:while doing 60 on the A40.
Speaker:There's none of that.
Speaker:The video just sits there.
Speaker:Offline downloads work too, the video version specifically, and I'm mentioning
Speaker:that because things in podcasting that are supposed to work and usually
Speaker:don't has become kind of a meme in the podcasting industry, certainly over
Speaker:the last six or seven years whenever Apple Podcasts tends to update something
Speaker:Now, before you make any plans at all, your podcast host needs to support this.
Speaker:If they don't, there's no clever workaround, there's no plugin,
Speaker:there's no bloke on Fiverr who can sort it all out for you for $15.
Speaker:The encoding and delivery isn't happening at creator level,
Speaker:it's at host level, full stop.
Speaker:Now, Captivate supports it, and that's what I use for B2B Podcasting Insights.
Speaker:So do Transistor, Acast, Art19, Omni, Libsyn, and Buzzsprout.
Speaker:I think I've got most of them there, if not all of them.
Speaker:Oh, rss.com, I think they now do it as well.
Speaker:A few of the others appear to be treating it less as a technical roadmap
Speaker:item and more for a long-running philosophical debate about the
Speaker:nature of video itself in podcasting.
Speaker:Now, look, I get it.
Speaker:It can be a bit annoying when new stuff happens in podcasting that gives
Speaker:us all an excuse to go, "I've been around in podcasting since before
Speaker:it was called podcasting, and if it doesn't have an RSS feed, it's not a
Speaker:podcast, and that includes video." But look, it does have an RSS feed now.
Speaker:So I look forward to hearing their conclusions on why they're still
Speaker:not doing it, possibly in time for the next Gen Alpha deciding
Speaker:to reinvent what podcasting is.
Speaker:Maybe they'll invent astral projection podcasting.
Speaker:Who knows?
Speaker:Anyway, the day Apple properly announced this, the usual fleet of podcasting
Speaker:commentators on LinkedIn had already formed their strong opinions and
Speaker:published thoughtful 10-page carousels, everyone with a different font, in
Speaker:roughly the time it took the rest of us to finish reading Apple's press release.
Speaker:And a fair number of those carousels didn't even seem to
Speaker:realize that the feature was dependent on who you host with.
Speaker:So we've learned to take these people's opinions with a massive pinch of salt,
Speaker:and that's why I'm bringing you here some real insight from a real podcast
Speaker:person, me, who's in the trenches doing it
Speaker:So let's talk about the workflow.
Speaker:Yes, it's changed.
Speaker:Not massively.
Speaker:Don't buy into the drama of, oh, it's gonna take 10 times longer than
Speaker:it used to to make podcasts now.
Speaker:Not massive changes like that, but it has changed, and how much that matters to you
Speaker:depends entirely on what your show is.
Speaker:Now look, B2B Podcasting Insights, my show that I have now enabled
Speaker:video for in Captivate, it's a monologue narrative show.
Speaker:I record it in BoomCastr.
Speaker:The link to grab that, by the way, if you want to, I highly recommend
Speaker:the tool, is podmastery.co/boomcastr.
Speaker:And if you click that, you'll get a free trial and 50% off your first three months.
Speaker:Yes, it's an affiliate link, and yes, I do get a very tiny
Speaker:benefit if you sign up through it.
Speaker:I'm telling you that now upfront, past- partly because that's the right thing
Speaker:to do and partly because I've spent many years mocking people who bury that
Speaker:kind of detail in paragraph four of a blog post that nobody was ever reading.
Speaker:Glass houses, you see?
Speaker:I'm fully aware.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:The actual workflow change then.
Speaker:Uploading the video file to Captivate instead of just the audio, which does
Speaker:Right, the actual workflow change then.
Speaker:Uploading the video file to Captivate instead of just the audio does add
Speaker:way more time to the upload procedure.
Speaker:I used to see that little bar whiz by in less than two minutes
Speaker:when I was just doing audio.
Speaker:Now the upload is closer to 20.
Speaker:In fact, I've had to completely rethink how I publish my episodes on that show.
Speaker:You need to make allowances for that time, especially if you
Speaker:tend to upload the content on the same day that you publish it.
Speaker:You're gonna need to factor that in.
Speaker:Now, three things become real considerations with this workflow.
Speaker:One, you need to care even slightly how the video looks.
Speaker:And I wanna be precise here because there's a version of this advice that
Speaker:ends up with you whacking 400 quid on a camera, buying a ring light, a
Speaker:backdrop, and bringing so much main character energy that you didn't
Speaker:have before and don't strictly need now, you've forgotten your own name.
Speaker:What I actually mean is camera at eye level, light in front of you
Speaker:rather than behind you so you're not pr- presenting the 10 o'clock
Speaker:news from inside a wardrobe.
Speaker:If you've done a webinar in the past four years, you're basically there already.
Speaker:You just might need some tweaks.
Speaker:Two, the edit has to work for two audiences at once.
Speaker:So a guest points at something on screen and says, "Like this one
Speaker:right here." That's great in video, but it's absolutely cack in audio.
Speaker:You don't wanna be responsible for someone doing 70 miles an hour driving past
Speaker:Birmingham swearing at you through their car speaker because you just told them
Speaker:to look at something that they cannot see, and then realizing they missed
Speaker:their turn because they were so incensed.
Speaker:You either catch it in the edit or you train yourself during the chat
Speaker:to describe things out loud even when you've got a visual right there.
Speaker:That's a radio instinct that us lot in broadcasting got trained for in the early
Speaker:days of studio webcams and internet radio simulcasts with FM and things like that.
Speaker:And so it's become automatic.
Speaker:But for you, it might require a bit of conscious thought.
Speaker:Either way, it's not optional if you wanna keep both audiences.
Speaker:There's a trust factor there.
Speaker:Three, file sizes.
Speaker:Like I say, video is enormous next to audio, so
Speaker:That's pretty obvious until the moment that you're watching a
Speaker:two-and-a-half gigabyte file inch across a progress bar on a connection
Speaker:that your provider calls super fast.
Speaker:But even more than that, you might be quickly kissing goodbye to storage
Speaker:space on your hard drive if you commit to doing this regularly and
Speaker:you haven't mastered folder control
Speaker:It might well be worth you starting to spark up a relationship with your
Speaker:favorite AI tool to start looking at how to manage your folders with you.
Speaker:Okay, so here's the bit that we're all wanting to know, right?
Speaker:What the metrics have actually showed, the impact on show growth.
Speaker:Let me manage your expectations here.
Speaker:My downloads did not spike, with caveats.
Speaker:Now go on, sit with that one for a moment because I had to No, the downloads did
Speaker:not spike, and I'm telling you that straight rather than avoiding the topic
Speaker:entirely because podcasting already has more than enough people who've changed
Speaker:one setting, watched a number wobble slightly, and announced they've cracked
Speaker:some growth code with the confidence of a man who's just invented fire.
Speaker:I'm not gonna do that to you.
Speaker:There's no course I'm selling, none of that stuff.
Speaker:But here's the bit that actually matters though.
Speaker:My downloads shouldn't have spiked, and there's a good reason for that.
Speaker:First off, HLS video isn't a discovery feature.
Speaker:It doesn't introduce B2B Podcasting Insights to a single human
Speaker:being who wasn't already looking for it or already aware of it.
Speaker:The video capability is not its own algorithm.
Speaker:There's no specific recommended for you just for people who have
Speaker:enabled it in Apple Podcasts.
Speaker:It's also worth me noting that Apple Podcasts isn't even the platform
Speaker:that most listeners to that show have been listening to it in, and that was
Speaker:something I was actually curious about.
Speaker:Would adding a feature that Apple Podcasts really wants to push lead
Speaker:to any meaningful push towards new listeners that might enjoy the show?
Speaker:And here's the answer.
Speaker:Perhaps.
Speaker:I mean, the most recent two episodes which do feature video versions, and
Speaker:indeed one of which talks about adding video to podcasts those did indeed see
Speaker:Apple Podcasts overtake Player FM as the most popular app for listening in.
Speaker:Now, for full transparency, the popularity of the show in Player FM was helped by
Speaker:some paid targeting within that app a few months ago, and the conversion of that
Speaker:campaign was high, so we've kept around 45% of that audience that we paid for.
Speaker:But Apple Podcasts has now beaten that as the number one listening platform
Speaker:recently, as in coincidentally with this change across all the episodes,
Speaker:not just the ones with video enabled.
Speaker:And that suggests some compound growth occurred across my back catalog thanks
Speaker:to some kind of strange algorithmic surfacing that's going on somewhere.
Speaker:The show's definitely not being promoted in any obvious way within
Speaker:the app, but I can't ignore this growth has come from somewhere.
Speaker:This is something I need to keep an eye on and revisit once I have more data.
Speaker:My suspicion is that when people are listening to podcasts about
Speaker:podcasting that have a video track enabled within them via HLS, maybe
Speaker:my show is being recommended as you might also like kind of content.
Speaker:Possibly.
Speaker:Again, I need more data.
Speaker:But beyond all this, what enabling video does do, in fact, the entire job that it
Speaker:does, is make the experience better for people who already showed up to your feed.
Speaker:So if you're enabling this expecting your numbers to do something
Speaker:dramatic, they may well not, but you may see some slight lift.
Speaker:I'd rather tell you that now in a slightly disappointing tone of voice than have
Speaker:you find out in three months and write an angry post about how HLS just doesn't
Speaker:work, when really it works exactly as advertised, and the advertising was
Speaker:just more subtle than you'd hoped after seeing 20 LinkedIn posts from so-called
Speaker:podcasting experts selling it on the growth opportunities, mostly because
Speaker:they don't have the first idea about anything in podcasting, and therefore
Speaker:they do what any clueless idiot does, they monetize it with an expertise-based course
Speaker:with no expertise in it, and a made-up algorithm and formula, the magic pill.
Speaker:But of course, what do we always say about numbers?
Speaker:Well, download numbers are only ever a part of the story.
Speaker:It's all about the plays, really.
Speaker:And in Apple Podcasts Connect, the analytics are unclear despite promises
Speaker:to the contrary that were included in the whole marketing bumpf that
Speaker:Apple threw out there at us when they tried to get us excited about this.
Speaker:They told us we'd be able to see exactly where people were listening and watching.
Speaker:No, we can't.
Speaker:I can see the episodes have been engaged with, but I can't see
Speaker:anything that tells me those plays were in video or audio only.
Speaker:That might just be my Apple Podcasts Connect dashboard.
Speaker:That could be a glitch.
Speaker:Maybe others are seeing something different.
Speaker:I don't know.
Speaker:But I can tell you this, I did not see that data.
Speaker:So if you are seeing that data in your own Apple Podcasts Connect, please do
Speaker:reach out to me, podmastery.co/getintouch, and I'll be grateful to hear from you
Speaker:That's podmastery.co/get-in-touch
Speaker:In terms of the average consumption… In terms of the average
Speaker:consumption, yeah, that held steady.
Speaker:It may be nudged up slightly.
Speaker:I mean, I'm not building a TED Talk out of two weeks of data, but nothing got worse.
Speaker:So again, this is something that we'll need to revisit, and this is
Speaker:probably worth saying, not a single complaint from the audio-only audience
Speaker:moaning about the video being added.
Speaker:And to be fair, the video is mostly AI-generated because nobody wants to look
Speaker:at me yapping my gams for 20 minutes.
Speaker:But I had heard other podcasters, a shout-out to Danny Brown, who does
Speaker:the, uh, what's the name of the show?
Speaker:But shout out to Danny Brown who does The Artifacts Show and did enable
Speaker:video on that show until he got some criticism from people saying, "Ugh,
Speaker:AI slop." That has been a bit of a running theme with some podcasters,
Speaker:listeners complaining about now having the video making it a bit jarring.
Speaker:But then maybe these people have more than the 300 or so regular
Speaker:Apple Podcast listeners that I have.
Speaker:I certainly didn't experience that.
Speaker:Maybe it's early days
Speaker:So should you do it?
Speaker:Here's an honest verdict.
Speaker:If your show is audio only, if it's a hobby or something you make
Speaker:no money from, if it's a scripted monologue with no guests and nothing
Speaker:particularly visually striking happening in the recordings themselves, wait.
Speaker:Genuinely, the overhead's not enormous, but it's not zero,
Speaker:and there's no real listener benefit for your format right now.
Speaker:You'd be doing more production and admin for the sake of production and
Speaker:admin, and nobody needs more production and admin in their life, do we?
Speaker:If you're already recording video of your conversations, and that's
Speaker:currently all going on YouTube and nowhere else, when you finish
Speaker:listening, go look at this properly.
Speaker:The video already exists.
Speaker:You're still-- You're actually making the effort into it.
Speaker:It's sitting on a hard drive somewhere, so uploading it to your host instead
Speaker:of just the audio is a small extra step for maybe an improvement, maybe a
Speaker:growth opportunity, if indeed there is some organic growth available for you.
Speaker:If you're running a focused B2B show and your audience genuinely lives in
Speaker:Apple Podcasts, which for a lot of probably niche professional shows, it
Speaker:does, then this might be worth doing.
Speaker:Also, by the way, go follow B2B Podcasting Insights because that show's
Speaker:even more for you than this one is.
Speaker:But anyway, the bottom line is you're not trying to find
Speaker:these people with the video.
Speaker:You already found them.
Speaker:This is not about making them work harder than they need to
Speaker:But the bottom line is you're not trying to find these people with
Speaker:the video, you already found them.
Speaker:This is more about what you're offering them in terms of
Speaker:their consumer experience.
Speaker:I'm Neal Veglio.
Speaker:If you wanna talk through your video strategy or genuinely anything else
Speaker:about your show that's generally keeping you awake at half past 11 at night,
Speaker:go to podmastery.co/get-in-touch,
Speaker:and let's actually sort out your problems rather than just theorizing about them.
Speaker:Until next time, good luck with your continuing journey
Speaker:towards attaining pod mastery
Speaker:I'm Neal Veglio, the podmaster.
Speaker:If you wanna talk through anything to do with your show that's generally bothering
Speaker:you at nighttime, go to podmastery.co and then click the link for Need Help
Speaker:There you can book yourself on a 60-minute coaching call with me,
Speaker:yours truly, and we'll help you get over any slopes that you need to.
Speaker:Until next time, good luck with your continuing journey
Speaker:towards attaining podmastery
