Podcast Pontifications

The impetus for yesterday's episode, as it turns out, was inaccurate. I’m leaving the content up, but I will be posting clarifications/corrections for the part that turned out to be nothing more than a bug in a beta release. Because that’s the trustworthy thing to do.

Podcasting has grown too big for any one person or company to have all figured out, no matter what they tell you. That means we podcasters have to trust others along the way. Like:

• Pundits like me: Do they know that of which they speak?
• Podcast media hosting companies: Are they forward-thinking?
• Podcast apps and directories: Do they care about data integrity and how your content displays?
• Your podcasting team: Do you trust them or micromanage them?
• Your friends and peers in podcasting: Do they challenge you to be better?
• Podcasting associations & groups: Are their goals in line with yours?
• You and your trust in your own abilities as a podcaster.

Tomorrow, the Podcast Pontifications Experience returns to Clubhouse, where I’m sure the topic of trust will take center stage. Ostensibly, we’re there to discuss Apple’s big changes to podcasting. I’d love to hear your opinion and voice when we meet tomorrow, Friday, March 12, 2021, at 10:00 AM Los Angeles time / 1:00 PM New York City / 6:00 PM London. 

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A written-to-be-read article and a full transcript of the audio of this episode can be found at https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/how-much-trust-can-you-have-in-podcasting

Follow @EvoTerra on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support at BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Evo Terra produces Podcast Pontifications four times a week to provide ideas and ask questions every working podcaster should be thinking about.

Nick Fewings on Unsplash

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

If the beta version of Apple Podcasts in iOS 14.5 is to be believed...

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UPDATE AND CORRECTION: No, the beta version is not to be believed, we now know. It’s reported as a bug in the beta version and Apple claims the default “always download” functionality of Apple Podcasts will not change when the release is made public later this month. However, the implications and speculations on this action are still interesting, so I’m leaving them for you to read — Evo

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... Apple Podcasts soon will no longer auto-download podcast episodes, causing a podcast measurement shake-out of a similar magnitude to the IAB-driven reporting drop over the summer of 2018.

Briefly: When you subscribe to follow Podcast Pontifications on Apple Podcasts, Apple Podcasts automatically downloads the audio file of the most recent episode. It’ll keep doing that, even if you don’t listen, eventually stopping the auto-downloads after five unlistened files were downloaded, but resuming that behavior after you listen to an episode. 

Spotify works differently. When you follow Podcast Pontifications using Spotify, no download or stream happens without your express action. 

That’s why you keep hearing how Spotify is growing bigger than Apple Podcasts, but your download report paints a very different picture. And that picture is about to get reset when Apple follows suit and switches away from auto-downloading later this month.

If you’re selling advertising on your show, that means your available inventory will look smaller starting next month. I genuinely feel bad for the rough weeks ahead facing those who earn a living from ad revenue generated by their podcast. It’s going to be very difficult for publishers and ad rep firms to convince advertisers to part with the same amount of money while receiving less. And though they really aren’t getting less, they're perceiving the drop in downloads as less. 

There’s a group of service providers who could soften the blow: podcast hosting companies. Specifically, podcast media hosting companies need to step up and give podcasters better data about the true size of their audience. They have all the info they need to give us this information right now. By smartly looking at the user-agent, IP address, and referring URL of all file requests, they could answer the questions every podcaster—and, arguably, every advertiser—wants to know: what’s the size of my audience, and is my audience growing? 

Time to step up, podcast hosting companies.

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A written-to-be-read article and a full transcript of the audio of this episode can be found at https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/apple-podcasts-switch-to-streaming-will-decimate-downloads

Follow @EvoTerra on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support at BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Evo Terra produces Podcast Pontifications four times a week to provide ideas and ask questions every working podcaster should be thinking about.

Miguel A. Amutio on Unsplash

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

James Cridland of Podnews broke the news that Apple Podcasts will soon the word “subscribe” and present the option to “follow” a show. 

Tom Webster from Edison Research has plenty of survey data that show almost half of non-podcast listeners say they don’t listen because podcasts cost money. For the better part of 17 years, we’ve been asking people to subscribe. Yet most people still don’t have the podcast listening habit. Will it be more inviting—and will see a spike in new listeners—if we ask people to follow our podcasts instead?

But there’s another problem I think Apple is trying to do something about it: Getting someone to just listen to your podcast is a big ask. If they weren’t likely to hit subscribe before listening, I’m skeptical the word follow will fare any better. So is Apple, apparently, as the new big-button action will be focused on listening. Nothing else. And if they like what they heard, they’ll (hopefully) hit the “+” button at the top to follow the show.

But back to the “follow’ change. Does this mean Apple is about to to add social networking components to podcasting, with publicly displaying follower counts, hearts, and even comments? Well... maybe. But let’s reign in that wild speculation with four healthy doses of reality.

• Bolt-on social media doesn’t work. The last time a behemoth hardware, OS, and app store vendor with zero experience building social networks made their big push into social, we got Google+. Yeah.
• Podcast listening is anti-social. With one notable exception, creators cannot post directly to a podcast listening app; and listeners cannot post anything directly to a podcast listening app. That notable exception: Anchor. Yeah.
• Who owns the podcast account? Were social components added will they be tied to the hosting company, forcing you to social engage not with the app itself, but within your podcast hosting company?
• Podcast listening is commoditized. Today’s podcast listening apps are more like web browsers. None of us want to maintain accounts on two dozen or more podcast listening apps in the off chance someone leaves us a comment… somewhere.

Questions aside, one thing I am certain of; you need to watch your language and get rid of subscribe in favor of follow on your web pages, in your in-app episode details, and in your recording scripts. Stop telling people to subscribe. Might as well get ahead of it.

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A written-to-be-read article and a full transcript of the audio of this episode can be found at https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/follow-this-apple-podcasts-is-killing-the-subscribe-button

Follow @EvoTerra on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support at BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Evo Terra produces Podcast Pontifications four times a week to provide ideas and ask questions every working podcaster should be thinking about.

Photo by Alexander Maasch on Unsplash

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

In celebration of International Women's Day, this cis-gendered white Gen Xer dude has selected a few women in podcasting who you need to know more about.

Mur Lafferty was one of the first people I collaborated with in podcasting. She is the editor of Escape Pod, the long-running science fiction podcast magazine, and the also long-running podcast, I Should Be Writing. 

Susan Schwartz was the first client my frim took on whom I didn’t personally know. She is the host of the drinks-industry podcast, Lush Life, which my firm helps produce.  

Allie Press makes sure things run smoothly at Simpler Media and Podcast Pontifications. She’s an actor on screen and stage, and you should buy her a coffee today instead of me because she’s amazing and a big reason why this podcast exists.  

Sam Walker is—and I’m not exaggerating in the slightest—evolving Simpler Media into a world-class production company. She produces a slate of award-winning podcasts, including her own Desert Diaries.

Steph Colbourn and I mentor each other for an hour every other week. She’s doing some truly inspiring work and providing loads of opportunities to the queer women and non-binary people at Edit Audio, a global, full-service podcast production company.

Mai Ling Chan and I are looking forward to re-starting the PHX Podcast Club, currently on a quasi-hiatus because COVID. She’s a Speech-Language Pathologist and the host of the podcast, Xceptional Leaders.

Leslie D Joyce is passionate about the fiction podcast space, with some great ideas I really want to see come to fruition. She’s publishing Fiction Podcast Share, a weekly newsletter currently comprised of a list of share-worthy fiction podcasts and audio dramas, and is the brains behind FictionCasters, an in-progress effort to make listening to fiction podcasts better.

Finally, thanks to  Suzy Buttress and Betty Dannewitz, regular watchers of the live taping of Podcast Pontifications on LinkedIn Live. Suzy hosts The Casual Birder, and Betty hosts If You Ask Betty, covering development topics aimed at learning professionals. 

And that’s just scratching the surface. There are many, many more amazing women in podcasting I’m truly grateful to have met over the years. Thank you all for your friendship, here’s to the next chapter in podcasting, and happy International Women’s Day!

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A written-to-be-read article and a full transcript of the audio of this episode can be found at https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/thanking-a-few-of-the-women-who-make-podcasting-better

Follow @EvoTerra on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support at BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Evo Terra produces Podcast Pontifications four times a week to provide ideas and ask questions every working podcaster should be thinking about.

Photo by Brooke Cagle on Unsplash

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

NFTs or non-fungible tokens have come to podcasting. Like most things cryptocurrency, I’ve but a tenuous grasp. So I’ll leave it to others to give you a primer and simply say it’s a new way for creators to get paid. Including creators or digital content. 

Brian McCullough, host of Techmeme Ride Home has made an NFT out of his episode, which doesn’t surprise me in the least.

But monetization in podcasting is not—and never has been—a one-size-fits-all prospect. Here are some of the ways podcasters, even podcasters with modest audiences, make money with their podcast:

• Advertising - You won’t make a lot of money selling ads unless you have tens or hundreds of thousands of listeners. But that doesn’t mean you can’t sell ads on your podcast and make some money
• Listener-support services like Patreon and Buy Me A Coffee  are used by plenty of shows with small audiences 
• Premium podcast feed providers like Glow, Supercast, and others make it dead-simple to create and sell access to ad-free or extended content. 
• Substack is a great newsletter service that can also allow for paid memberships.
• You can sell ads or sponsorships on your existing, for-free newsletter or mailing list you’ve probably been neglecting. 
• Affiliate marketing has been a part of podcasting since the beginning. 
• Conference organizers will be on the hunt for speakers and presenters. And some of them pay good money to get an expert like you on their stage.
• Your podcast might show what a valuable consultant you may be.
• You’d be surprised at the number of podcasters who will happily pay you to take pesky tasks off their plate so they can stay focused on the parts of podcasting they love.
• And then there’s merchandising! 

So yes, there are ways to make (at least some) real money in podcasting without selling your soul, even if you don’t have hundreds of thousands of listeners. (Though that last part makes it much, much easier.) It just means you have to be creative in your approach.

And you can call me crazy, but I think creativity is perhaps our most valuable skill as podcasters.

Let’s keep the conversation going. Tomorrow, February 5th at 10:00a Los Angeles / 1:00p New York City / 6:00p London, I’m hosting a voice-only conversation about ways real podcasters make real money, and I’d love for you to be part. 

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A written-to-be-read article and a full transcript of the audio of this episode can be found at https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/ways-to-make-real-money-in-podcasting-without-selling-your-soul

Follow @EvoTerra on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support at BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Evo Terra produces Podcast Pontifications four times a week to provide ideas and ask questions every working podcaster should be thinking about.

Photo by Micheile Henderson on Unsplash

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

Podcasting tasks—the things you and I do to ply our craft—fall into one of two categories:

• Intrinsic tasks are things that you’ve internalized. They either come with proof or they are a part of Your Way of podcasting. 
• 
  
• Instructions-required tasks are everything else. Things you were taught about podcasting but still aren’t quite sure of. Assumptions you've made from watching other podcasters. Checklist or guides you acquired in a class or online course.

Got it? Now, once you’ve identified all or some of the instructions-required tasks you follow, I want you to abandon them.

OK, maybe don’t abandon everything all at once. You still have a podcast episode to produce, after all! But yeah, abandon at least some of the recipes you’re following. Especially the ones you aren’t sure about.

Not every recipe is great. Take a critical look at the podcasting recipes you’re following and choose at least one to abandon. Focus on the outcome that recipe was supposed to achieve. Chances are, you might have a better—or at least more creative—way to get to that goal, creating your own recipe in the process. 

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A written-to-be-read article and a full transcript of the audio of this episode can be found at https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/the-case-for-upgrading-your-podcasting-recipes

Follow @EvoTerra on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support at BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Evo Terra produces Podcast Pontifications four times a week to provide ideas and ask questions every working podcaster should be thinking about.

Photo by Edgar Castrejon on Unsplash

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

Is it weird for me to hope that podcasting conferences never go back to normal? 

I could do without barely-competent but terribly-enthusiastic presenters doling out bad advice from the stage. But Zoom, Clubhouse, and other virtual events have taught us the value of The Law of Two Feet.

I don’t relish enduring finicky house sound systems that make it hard to hear or be sure I am heard, something I rarely worry about when I’m on my own mic or listening on my earbuds.

And I never have to suffer through a presenter reading their slides to me, it’ll be too soon.

Many of us spent 2020 lamenting what a poor simulacrum virtual events were. But now it’s 2021. We’ve adapted. We’re not living in the new normal. We’re living in the new different. And many of us don’t want to go back.

But don’t get me wrong. I miss the physicality of in-person events. I miss the hallway conversations. I miss holding court at a booth in the back of the hotel bar. I miss so much about the in-person experience.

But I can’t help but wonder how our lived experiences of the last year or so will change our expectations of future in-person experiences. Will they be the same? No, of course they won’t.

Maybe there’s a way to get live feeds running for each and every session that both look and sound great! 

Maybe that leads to fewer concurrent sessions, where in-person, on-stage, in-real-time talks are done in one or two rooms, with “breakout” sessions occurring (and recorded) only in virtual spaces.

Maybe the “drop-in” paradigm is fully embraced, with an entire track determined on-the-fly, with a nod back to the “unconference” format that was the darling of the aughts, modernized to meet current expectations. 

Maybe there’s a way of enabling public live chats for every session.

These are the kinds of questions I hope every podcast conference organizer is thinking about. Because it’s not just a brave new world waiting for us out there. It’s a brave new different world, and I do not think we’re going to accept the way things were when we meet up again at a podcast conference.

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A written-to-be-read article and a full transcript of the audio of this episode can be found at https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/the-future-of-podcasting-conferences-post-pandemic

Follow @EvoTerra on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support at BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Evo Terra produces Podcast Pontifications four times a week to provide ideas and ask questions every working podcaster should be thinking about.

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

Good news! US-based podcast listeners are much more diverse than the overall population. Here are the highlights presented by Nielsen In their Podcasting Today report:

• Non-white adult podcast listeners: 41%. 
• Non-white adult overall population: 36%
• In 2010, there were 6.8 million US-based Hispanic podcast listeners. That’s up 6x from 1.1 million in 2010
• The growth rate for Asian, Black, and other “not white” listeners grew 5x over that same time frame.
• White audiences grew only by 4x

So what does that mean for podcast producers? This study demonstrates millions of racially and ethnically diverse listeners are already tuning in. It doesn’t take much of a leap to assume some of them would seek out more tailored and niche content.

It also means we’re likely going to be exposed to more diverse content, as we encounter podcasts and episodes tailored for niches other than our own. Exposure to content other niches find compelling can only help us in our own creations, if only we’ll let us be influenced outside our bubbles.

But let me be clear: this report focused on the podcast listener, not the podcast creator. And we know that podcasting is still really, really white. This sort of survey shows a need for that to change. I’m optimistic that it will change. Eventually. But only if we all do our part.

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A written-to-be-read article and a full transcript of the audio of this episode can be found at https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/podcasting-listens-a-lot-less-white-than-it-looks

Follow @EvoTerra on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support at BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Evo Terra produces Podcast Pontifications four times a week to provide ideas and ask questions every working podcaster should be thinking about. 

Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash.

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

In 2020, one million podcasts powered by Anchor launched, effectively doubling the size of podcasting. Concerns podcasters and listeners raised about “control” and “quality” didn’t matter. New creators with something to say flocked to Anchor.

Clubhouse, the audio-only, drop-in social platform is currently tracking 10 million active weekly users. That pace of growth doesn’t seem to be slowing. So Imagine a world where Clubhouse enables distribution, turning every “club” into its own podcast, and then distributing that podcast to every single podcast directory automatically.

One million brand new Clubhouse-created podcasts by the end of 2021 seems quite possible.

So what’s a podcaster like you to do?

You should explore Clubhouse, but not abandon podcasting. Those million shows will be raw, rambling gabfests. Do you want to try to compete in that? Or stick to what you’re best at?

Speaking of Clubhouse, I’ll be hosting a room and joined by others to discuss podcasting’s accessibility problem tomorrow, February 26th at 10:00a Los Angeles / 1:00p New York City, and I’d love for you to join me.  That was the topic of yesterday's episode and it seems to have struck a chord. So we'll collectively pick up the conversation and let anyone interested (and on Clubhouse) chime in. And yes, I get the irony of using a less-than-fully-accessible platform to talk about podcasting’s accessibility problems. If you want to be added to the guest list, just shoot me a note at [email protected] and I shall do so. 

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A written-to-be-read article and a full transcript of the audio of this episode can be found at https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/the-next-one-million-podcasts-will-come-from-clubhouse-not-podcasters

Follow @EvoTerra on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support at BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Evo Terra produces Podcast Pontifications four times a week to provide ideas and ask questions every working podcaster should be thinking about. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.

Perhaps I've been too subtle, so let me speak clearly and louder for those in the back: Accessibility matters. 

Many podcasters are operating under the impression that accessibility is optional. It's not. 

Many podcasters operate under the misconception that people who are deaf cannot listen to podcasts, and people who are blind cannot watch videos. Those podcasters are wrong. Very wrong. If that’s you, you don’t have to understand how that’s possible; you just have to accept that it is. And it is.

People with vision loss and hearing loss have access to all sorts of tools and services to allow them to enjoy the same content that fully-sighted and full-hearing people enjoy. But only if you, the podcaster, do your part to include them in the party.

Here’s how you can start plugging many accessibility holes right now.

• Make transcriptions available starting with your next episode. Fully corrected and readable.
• Upload subtitles with every video you post. (Hint: the same transcript will help you that too)
• Use a website accessibility service to scan your existing web pages for glaring accessibility issues and fix them. 
• Use alt-tags when you post images on your social media properties. It’s a handful of extra characters that will soon become second nature.
• If you run or work for a service—either a hosting company or a website-from-RSS company—you need to ensure the pages you generate are accessible.
• If you run a podcast production house, change your services—and yes, pricing and service-delivery timing—so that accessibility is baked-in to your offerings, not sold as an add-on.

Why? Because it’s the right thing to do.

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A written-to-be-read article and a full transcript of the audio of this episode can be found at https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/stop-ignoring-your-podcasts-accessibility-issues

Follow @EvoTerra on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support at BuyMeACoffee.com/evoterra

And if you need a professional in your podcasting corner, please visit Simpler.Media to see how Simpler Media Productions can help you reach your business objectives with podcasting.

Evo Terra produces Podcast Pontifications four times a week to provide ideas and ask questions every working podcaster should be thinking about. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Support For Abortion Rights

While Americans overwhelmingly support the right of an individual to make their own decisions about abortion, unfortunately, that right is no longer protected everywhere in the U.S. The Supreme Court overturned Roe v Wade on June 24th.