Podcast Pontifications

Guest host: Bryan Barletta of the adtech newsletter, Sounds Profitable.

It may sound odd to hear Bryan saying this, but he has a message for those of you stressing out about the adtech solutions you’re thinking of using for your not-yet-launched podcast: 

You don’t need one.

No, you really don’t need to plan out your adtech solution before you start your launch your show. In fact, you might not even need to worry about it for a year. Or more. 

Not that he’s suggesting you avoid monetizing your show with ads. If you manage to land a sponsor for your podcast from the get-go or early into your first year, then you should absolutely bake those ads right into your podcast’s episodes. 

What he’s suggesting is that, at least early in your podcast’s life, you probably don’t have the data necessary to make an informed decision on such a weighty topic as adtech.

Should you use analytics services like Chartable or Podtrac? Sure, that’s fine. Should you immediately start working with platforms that offer new podcasts some ad revenue right out the gate? If you want to, OK.

Bryan’s not sweating your decision because he knows how easy it is to switch from whatever you start with to other services in the future when you need them. His advice: Keep your focus from the start on what’s familiar to you rather than paying for an adtech platform that may not pay off for you for a while. The technology and offerings within podcast adtech are changing constantly, so there’s really no rush.

Of course, not designing an ad strategy from the start means that yes, you’ll likely have to go back through your previously published episodes and insert dynamic ad calls. But that’s a necessary pain, as without analytics, you’re really just guessing where you should put ads. A much better play is to let the data guide you, which takes time to gather.

Here’s the reality: Post-roll ads are bullshit. Pre-rolls can scare your audience away. And midrolls are so fluid that they can go anywhere within the body of the content. Eventually, your show will find its flow and analytics will help you figure out where best to put each ad placement. 

Ads are great. They’re literally why Bryan has a career. But they’re not for every podcast, so don’t try and fit a square peg in a round hole.

If you enjoyed Bryan’s pontificating, I highly encourage you to check out his Sounds Profitable newsletter (of which I am an editor). Super smart stuff if you care about the advertising side of podcasting.

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Share with a friend: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/8aef7e40-902b-4d89-af8e-0764daf7d06e

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

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.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra and will return to its normal four times a week schedule in January of 2021, with loads of special content before that!

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.

Guest host: Mark Steadman of the podcast hosting, distribution, and analytics company Podiant.

The pandemic is once again top of mind for Mark Steadman, as at the time of this recording, his home country was about to go on lockdown—for the second time. That’s given him lots of time to think about… well, time. Specifically, the way we podcasters think about and use time differently now in the pandemic than we did before.

Perhaps you were like Mark, staying well ahead so you didn’t find yourself scrambling for content each time you went to publish. But then came the pandemic, and the only thing you could think about was the pandemic, and you found your bank of episodes dwindle to nothing. 

Or maybe you found yourself questioning why a guest would even bother to come on our show and talk about not-all-that-important of things, so you decide to launch a brand new show that felt more right.

Perhaps you found that the quest for cash—donations, merchandise, or advertising—felt weird. Or maybe wrong. Did you change any of those aspects?

Moving forward in time, what’s your outlook for the next 18 months or so? How will you incorporate the realities of living in and perhaps (if we’re lucky) transitioning out of the pandemic into your podcasting? Will we start to see familiar patterns emerge in a year or so?

And what will all of this we’ve been through and will soon go through mean to us and our podcasting over the next 5-10 years? Will what we think of as “podcasting” change drastically? And how much of that change can be attributed to the pandemic? Will we change how we book or work with guests remotely, or will we hunger for in-person connections, so that remote interviews are the exception rather than the rule?

And then way out in the future, like 10-20 years from now, how will the podcasts and episodes we made be a reflection on past times? Will it be a record of what we went through, or an escape from it? Will we have created a piece of pandemic-time art that carries relevance to that time period? Or will we have made something that continues to live in its own right, separate from, and barely acknowledging the pandemic?

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Share with a friend: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/a344a779-6734-4858-bfe3-7763290580b0

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

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.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra and will return to its normal four times a week schedule in January of 2021, with loads of special content before that!

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.

Guest host: Kevin Patton of the podcasts The A&P Professor and The Academic Podcaster.

We all do that, right? We podcasters often listen to podcasts with an overly critical ear. That's natural. Everybody does that. Carpenters naturally check out the quality of construction when they visit your newly built home. Engineers sometimes can't help but analyze the arches and beams and cables as they go over a bridge when they take a road trip.

But I think that sometimes all of us—podcasters, engineers, all of us—develop a habit of going right to those things that we don't like. Right to those mistakes or to those things that could be much better. That is, being critical only in the negative sense. And possibly never really getting around to what's working well.

I recently listened to a podcaster talking about having those critical, negative, responses when listening to other podcasts and pretty much giving up on trying to listen to them. And a thought occurred to me. A thought that brought me back to my youth as an apprentice wild animal trainer.

My mentor made sure that I saw as many wild animal acts as possible. We were working in animal shows at a major zoo at the time. But we'd watch circus acts as they came through town, or the next town, or the town just past that one.

After each of these animal performances, we'd talk about it. He'd always ask me—in his best Socratic style—“Kevin, what was the best trick in that act?” And I’d have to think hard about that, because I knew that he’d be questioning any answer I gave. And I knew he'd not reveal his pick until the very end of the conversation.

And as I answered him, he’d ask why I picked that trick and not this other one, which was a pretty good one, after all. Not that ranking the best of what I saw was all that important itself. What was important was analyzing each one deeply enough that I could rank them. That is, getting past my first impressions and casual judgments and have really analyzed each trick I saw performed.

And you know what? It worked. I learned to look at performing animal acts and how trainers presented themselves and interacted with their animals much more deeply.

My immediate goal back then was to better form an idea of what I wanted to do when I got to be a grown-up lion tamer and developed my own show. And I also learned that the first step in enjoying a wild animal act is to look for the best things about it—not the worst things about it. Even if it was a pretty lousy act, there was always something done well. Or kinda well. Even if it was a very simple trick for a person to teach an animal, but it was executed perfectly, which is probably more about the animal than the trainer, I had learned to notice that and appreciate that.

What happened was that I began to enjoy animal acts way more than I ever had. Even the lousy ones. Reflecting back on that, I realize that the big lesson I learned is appreciation.

I was an assistant sea lion trainer back then, later moving on to become an apprentice lion tamer. After a while, I switched to a slightly different species to train and became a college professor. Now past the middle of my career, I mentor other professors in how to teach well. In a graduate degree program that trains teaching professors, it's my job to critique the teaching skills of my learners. And you know what? Looking first and foremost for their “best trick” serves me really well. Looking for a student's "best trick" is a form of criticism, too—just not the negative part of criticism.

That “best trick” technique has worked very well for me on several levels. Not just for providing useful feedback in college teaching. But on another level, I find that by starting off with acknowledging a student's best trick, it softens that “here’s a suggestion” advice for those weak spots that I've also found in their work.

Besides that, I've found that as I become better at using the best-trick approach, I've often squarely hit those specific things that a student worked particularly hard at…and is most proud of. What a great thing to validate those aspects of their work that THEY value most.

I'm thinking that, well, one could say that the best-trick technique has become one of my best tricks!

So bringing this story back to being a podcaster listening to other podcasts, I've found that I naturally look first for a podcast's “best trick.” And also try to find some other really good tricks—just in case I hear that mentor in my memory asking me if that’s really my final answer.

And I enjoy these podcasts more than I otherwise would. And I think that I learn much more from them than I otherwise would.

So I ask you, what do YOU do when you listen to other podcasts? Maybe you've given up listening to new podcasts because they so often just grate on your finely tuned expert's sensitivity. Maybe you listen, but just can't get past that bad mic technique or disorganized conversation… or that missing call-to-action… or whatever pet peeve pops out at you.

Or…maybe you do try to find what's done well, but more as a secondary thing, perhaps even as an afterthought. I wonder if trying to start out with the goal of first and foremost trying to find the "best trick" might help you enjoy other podcasts more. Maybe preparing yourself for questions like, "why is that the best trick and not this other trick?" will make that work even better for you.

I hope my little story has got you thinking a bit about your thinking, what we educators call meta-cognition. Thinking about your thinking.

I have a podcast called The A&P Professor for anatomy & physiology faculty, but don’t listen to it. It's not for you. But I've recently been collecting a ragtag group of folks who want help in launching or growing their own academic podcast. It's a free online community at AcademicPodcasting.org.

Right now, we're developing a new podcast as a learning activity. It's called The Academic Podcaster and it's for, by, and about academic podcasters. If you are an academic podcaster, or know one, or just want to hang out with us, once again, we're at AcademicPodcasting.org. 

Evo will be back in 2021 with yet another Podcast Pontifications. Cheers!

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/b8ba0840-3dca-4b99-b63d-f41e9bef1ca3

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

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.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

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.

Guest host: Steph Fuccio from The Geopats Podcasts.

News flash: Your podcast is on the internet. That means it’s available to anyone anywhere in the world. So yes, even if you’re doing a local podcast about New York City, Kansas City, or Bangkok, you probably have a wider global reach than you think.

I’ve spent the majority of the past 16 years living abroad. During that time I've been active in podcasting groups and listening groups filled with local people wherever I happen to live. And just about everyone in those groups, at one time or another, has been slightly frustrated by the inaccessibility of the podcasts they choose to listen to that are not local to them. 

Yes, we’re talking local accessibility today on the show. Here are three very quick things you can do on your podcast that would help invite more global listeners to your podcast.

1. Be A Good Tour Guide For Your Out Of Town Listeners

Those obvious things to you and the others who live in your town, state, or country are probably not that obvious to a global audience. Think about that when you’re recording, and make a conscious effort to clarify for the listeners who might be anywhere in the world things that you think are obvious.

You can also do this in post-production, hopping in with a clarifying statement and then getting back to the interview or monologue. It’s not disruptive at all. Not even to your local listeners.

2. Spread The Link Love For More Context

Add links - lots of links! - inside of your episode details. They’re a handy guide right at the fingertips for your not-local listeners. With a quick click, they’re digging into the extra info you’ve linked to while they’re listening to your words. That’s helpful!

3. Eschew US-based Time Zones

Sure, you and I can convert Eastern Time to Pacific Time in our heads. But there rest of the world? Not so much. Switching to just providing all times in GMT probably won’t be good for your US-based listeners. So here’s a clever way to do a better job when mentioning a times:

Use the “World Clock” feature on your mobile phone and lock-in three or four cities around the world. Maybe New York, London, and Sydney, for example. When you’re mentioning a time on your show (or on your social channels for your show), give the times with those cities named. Even if your global listeners aren’t in those cities, they probably know roughly how far off they are from one of those, so they can get at least a close approximation in their head.

Sure, these three things take a little more work. But they really will make the global listeners that are already listening to your podcast fell a lot more invited. 

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Share with a friend: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/c0cbe142-e00d-438f-bffa-7d3be3574b1c

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

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.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra and will return to its normal four times a week schedule in January of 2021, with loads of special content before that!

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.

Guest host: Patrick Oliver Jones from Why I’ll Never Make It.

When producing a daily podcast or a monthly podcast, it all comes down generating ideas ideas. Follows is the “Three I’s” that Patrick has learned in his three years of podcasting that keep him from getting stuck, or at least not stuck for long.

1. Input - If you’re the proud single parent of your precious baby podcast, it feels often like everything is on your shoulders. The recording, the interviewing, the editing, the writing, the marketing... and, oh yeah, coming up with the ideas for episodes as well. That’s a lot!

Reality check: It’s really hard to reach new levels of experience or success from a solitary effort. You need input from others in the form of feedback and critique and perspective else risk burn out. Or maybe just some pretty bad ideas. 

2. Inspiration - Much more passive than actively asking for input, inspiration is passive. And often not planned. Something that we read in a book or hear in another podcast or see on a TV show can spark an idea or topic to explore. And it’s important that those sources come from a multitude of genres. Inspiration comes from learning about subjects outside of my own expertise and experience. 

In addition to changing up the media you consume, inspiration can also come from changing up your surroundings and your routines. This pandemic has kept many of us inside and isolated more than usual. Just taking a walk, reaching out to someone you haven’t spoken to in a while, or even starting a new workout routine can be helpful.

3. Inward - As we continue to search ourselves and uncover our own strengths and weaknesses, our passions as well as apathies, we will start to discover what’s important to us. And it is this awareness that will ultimately lead to ideas and content that we can put into our podcasts.

The content you create comes from you, from your life, your interests, and that unique way you see the world. That’s also what is going to also interest your listeners. When you go inward and wade through any successes or failures you’ve experienced, others will find those same situations similar or perhaps fully in common to others. 

So focus on the “Three I’s” all over again where you are now giving input and inspiration to others. And isn’t that the whole reason we podcast in the first place?

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://player.captivate.fm/episode/8a584d50-5baa-4ce5-95c2-a1c403dd1ffe

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

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.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra and will return to its normal four times a week schedule in January of 2021, with loads of special content before that! 

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 is very much a two-way street between podcasters and listeners. It’s just that the bidirectional flow of give-and-take isn’t communication-based. 

The give I offer you on Podcast Pontifications consists of future-positive, forward-thinking episodes/articles focused on philosophical questions about podcasting and ways we podcasters can work together to make podcasting better.

You take that information, consider it, and sometimes put that insight into action on your show to make your podcast better, thereby increasing the overall “betterness” for all of podcasting.

But you also give me your attention, your time, your comments, and more.

I take all of that from you and add it to my Reasons To Keep Doing This pile. And that’s a very important take.

But it’s also important for me to take a break.

Going on break for the next couple of months is good for my mental health. That means it's going to be good for you when I come back in January 2021. And yes, I’m coming back in January. 

There isn’t a direct correlation between me publishing an episode and me receiving tangible, direct monetary compensation for my efforts. 

You may not be in that situation. If podcasting is your lifeblood and you can directly correlate consistent, regular episode publishing to life-changing or life-enabling income, you may not get to make such an easy choice. 

To many podcasting pundits, taking a break from producing episodes is anathema to show success and will result in a loss of listeners. I don’t buy most of their arguments because I know my core listeners will stay. And just as soon as I resume producing regular content, downloads and reach will start climbing back to the levels they were before. 

Even though I’m taking a break from the daily production of Podcast Pontifications, you’ll still see plenty of content from me. I have some bonus content ideas that will only be shared with those who’ve signed up for a membership at BuyMeACoffee.com/EvoTerra. If you feel that promise is worth $5, sign up.

You'll still get plenty of tweets from me that are relevant to the future of podcasting or when cool new news breaks about podcasting. I’m @EvoTerra on Twitter. 

And you’ll still here pontifications on the future of podcasting right here in the feed. They’ll just be voiced by other working podcasters.

Finally, because I don’t say it enough: Thank you for listening to Podcast Pontifications. More episodes and articles from me will resume in January 2021. Here’s to your own mental health as we all try to put 2020 in our review, yeah? Yeah.

Enjoy the fresh voices in the podcast, check out all the alternate places I’ll be sharing content listed above, and I’ll back in 2021 with yet another Podcast Pontifications. 

Cheers!

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/podcasting-at-its-best-is-give-take

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

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.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra and will return to its four times a week publishing schedule in January of 2021.

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.

This US election cycle has been a giant shitshow, but it has caused two terms - RINO and DINO - to become a part of our cultural lexicon. Both are pejorative terms that are summed up nicely (?) by their actual meanings: Republican In Name Only and Democrat In Name Only.

Podcasting has this problem as well, where “elites” or “OG” podcasters look at the flood of new apps that make podcasting more accessible than ever before and, instead of being excited by the flood of new interested people, turn up our noses or insist these noobs aren’t doing podcasting “The Right Way”.

Choosing the PINO path is not a negative thing. Letting someone else (or something else) worry about the technical underpinnings of podcasting is, for my clients, super smart! Let me make a really bold statement that will upset “full-stack” podcasters but come as welcome news for those who’ve taken the PINO path: 

In the next five years, podcasting will see more advancements than seen in the previous 16 years since podcasting began. And almost all of those amazing technological advancements will benefit PINOS, not full-stack podcasters.

Rather than disparaging these podcasters in name only, we should be learning from them to make the podcasts we create much, much better.

1. Better Storytelling - While full-stack podcasters go into tactical mode contemplating the right DAW, hosting platform, release schedules, feed management and more, the PINOs are focused on telling a great story. They aren’t thinking about waveforms and noise profiles. They’re thinking about the words they’ll use to tell their story over a series of episodes, and how sections of words can be re-arranged to tell that story better.

2. Better Soundscaping/Scoring - Different skills are required to effectively use a DAW - digital audio workstation - to build an immersive aural experience than to edit out filler words from an interview. Yes, the tool is the same, but it’s wielded in vastly different ways. “I know what sounds good” is a perfectly acceptable perspective, if you can pull it off. And they’re pulling it off without being able to teach a Master’s class in audio engineering. 

3. Better Resilience - Many PINOs are used to services closing, getting acquired and shut down, or pivoting with little warning. It’s us full-stack podcasters with all of our acquired knowledge and rigid processes that are thrown into a tailspin when we upgrade our OS only to discover that our plugins don’t work.

4. Better Creativity - Unburdened with the linear thinking that plagues those with near-encyclopedic knowledge, the brains of PINOs are free to think creatively. They don’t have an immediate answer at the ready, which frees them on a creative path as they explore various ways to make amazing content. They experiment or try weird things that many of us would never consider. And sometimes, they strike gold.

Once we can go back to seeing new people in real life, I’m going to start befriending DINOs and actively trying to learn from them. When the PHX Podcast Club meets again, I’ll no longer try to convince members - mostly hobbyists - to join the full-stack podcasting way. Instead, I’ll fliip the tables on them and will eagerly listen as they school me on how they make their podcasts. 

Because I think that these podcasters in name only are a lot closer to the future than I am. You too, perhaps.

Only one more article tomorrow from me, then I go on Evo’s Long Winter’s Nap until early January 2021. If you’re subscribed to the podcast, you’ll still get content: just not from me. A few working podcasters who listen to this show or read these articles have agreed to do their own pontificating while I’m away. If you’d like to do that as well, get in touch with me: [email protected]. 

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/why-pinos-podcasters-in-name-only-own-the-future

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

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.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

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.

Some Podcasters Finish Thousands Of Episodes

I have a few friends who have been podcasting since the beginning, and they’re rapidly approaching the 2,000 episode mark. Some might have passed that right on by counting bonus content. Chances are, you’ll probably produce hundreds of episodes of the show you’re doing right now.

Some Podcasters Will Finish A Dozen Or More Podcasts

A great many of us podcasters build and dismantle several podcasts before deciding on the formula we’re using now. Making the decision to end a podcast isn’t always our decision. But with the exception of tragic circumstances, nothing is stopping us from creating another podcast. Even if we no longer do the show we’ve been doing for years, we can start a brand new podcast anytime we like. 

Every Podcaster Will (Eventually) Finish Podcasting All Together

During your tenure as a podcaster, you’ll probably finish producing hundreds of episodes. It won’t be uncommon if you finish your involvement with a dozen or more shows.

But you only get one shot at being a podcaster.

At some point, all of us might like to retire from podcasting. We might look back at the body of work we’ve created over the last 16 years and find it a fine time to make a graceful exit. 

Or will we? Considering how podcasting technology is progressing, maybe the ability to create great sounding podcasts will grow so simple that the robots can just take the words we speak aloud and make them into a perfectly sounding podcast episode. 

Remember: there's always the chance of something better than podcasting coming along. Better for you, that is. If a better way for you to express your creativity, thoughts, and ideas comes along, you’d be doing a disservice to yourself if you didn’t explore it. Yes, even if that means leaving podcasting behind for good.

Your work as a podcaster is really never done... until you're done being a podcaster. One way or another.

Now, as I mentioned, Evo’s Long Winters Nap starts next week! That means you will not hear my voice on Podcast Pontifications until January of 2021. However, that doesn’t mean you won’t hear new episodes of Podcast Pontifications. Several working podcasters have committed to producing episodes during my absence, sharing their ideas on the future of podcasting and how we make podcasting better with all of you. If you want in on that, just send me an email [email protected] and we’ll talk.

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/a-podcasters-work-is-never-done-until-theyre-done

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

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.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

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.

Gamers are largely responsible for the crisp, deep, and rich visual experiences we have come to expect when watching any sort of video on the myriad devices we own.

So it stands to reason that perhaps podcasters can lead the charge in making devices capable of high-quality audio reproduction in or on our ears every bit as common.

Here are three trends I’m seeing that could indicate a coming shift in how all of us experience sound in our everyday lives. Not just podcasting!

The Rise Of The Smart Listening Device

I don't only mean smart speakers. Today’s headphones are getting smarter. Apple’s AirPods Pro, for example, have chipsets installed in each earbud dedicated to processing audio. Imagine how much more room Apple’s engineers have to work with on their new over-the-ear-model rumored to come out in a few weeks. Once earbuds and headphones with APUs become commonplace, you can bet savvy content creators and developers will find ways to make content that shows off the upper limits of that tech. 

Superior Streaming Audio

Big streaming audio platforms - Amazon, Spotify, Pandora, Apple, & others - are busy developing new compression algorithms that can work in conjunction with the chipsets in smart listening devices to push out higher quality files without impacting bandwidth. I haven’t done a full audio test of this, but I feel like the audio quality of some songs played on Spotify’s new “shows with music” actually sounded better than the track from the album also streamed on Spotify. (Or I’m just projecting what I want to be true.)

Binaural and Spatial Audio

Many wireless earbuds are already giving listeners a chance to hear what innovative creators are creating. And shows presented in binaural or spatial audio tend to be backward compatible. So even if a listener still uses the wired earbuds their phone came with back in 2007, they can still hear the content, just not in its full glory. But they can hear it!

As these trends increase, listeners will demand more and better sound. Content creators will create content that meets that demand, which in turn will spur engineers and developers to come up with new ways to not only capture better sound, but to better reproduce it for the listeners. 

And not just extreme audiophiles. Like anything, the tech will come down in price to the point where it’s almost harder to exclude a chipset than include it, making smart listening devices that can make amazing streaming audio - and podcast - listening experiences a commodity.

There are three things you can do (or start doing) right now to ensure that when this hi-fi world comes to pass in podcasting your content is a near-perfect fit:

If you have the uncompressed audio files saved in your DAWs structure, it’s a low-effort job to re-export all of your previous episodes’ .mp3 files in a higher quality format. No, it won’t be fun, but it will be rather straightforward to ensure your show provides a sound-rich environment. Yes, even if it’s just your voice. 

If you know your sound quality could be better, fix it. Bouncing down to .mp3 hides a lot of sins, but those sins come raging back when you start upping the quality. If you’re using cheap equipment because you can only afford cheap equipment, I understand. You’re just going to have to spend more time doing more work to make it not sound like it was recorded with cheap equipment. 

Mono files aren’t any smaller than stereo files unless you start cutting bit rate, and cutting bit rate is the opposite direction you want to go if you want your show to sound good in the future. If spatial sound is best, with binaural second, then stereo is third. Mono is an incredibly distant fourth place, and you should not accept fourth place as good enough for your podcasts’ sound.

Hi-fi is coming to podcasting, but I doubt we’ll call it hi-fi. We’ll probably just call it “audio that sounds great everywhere people listen”. Or something catchier. 

Next week, as of this writing, the calendar turns to November. November marks the beginning of Evo’s Long Winters Nap, where I take a break from producing new episodes of Podcast Pontifications until the new year. If you're a working podcaster and you would like to do your own pontificating for an episode of this show while I’m on break, get in touch with me: [email protected].

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/podcasting-in-hi-fi-3-trends-to-watch

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

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.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

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.

I think we can all agree that the podcast listening experience on smart speakers is pretty terrible. And by “we” I mean podcasters. We know the best podcast experience is listening via our earbuds with our preferred listening app in our hands. We have the habit of listening via that experience, and it’s lightyears better than the voice-only, limited-choice, and rather unintelligent podcast discovery and listening experience provided by smart speakers today.

And we must not be alone in that assessment, as every data point I’ve seen shows that less than 1% of people listen to podcasts with their smart speaker. So we’re vindicated

But Amazon/Apple/Google have each bet heavily on voice assistants to fill a variety of their customers’ needs for information, entertainment, and more. Sure sounds like a perfect fit for podcasting. 

Which is why it’ll get better. Imagine how much better of an assistant your smart speaker would be if it could parse something like “play the podcast called confetti” request with other things it already knows about you 

I know you don’t want anyone looking at your browser history or search history, but Google is the entity that keeps that data! It could also check through your YouTube videos, your physical location history, or your inbox in an effort to find just the right result for you. Again, this is data that this tech giant already keeps about you.

Imagine how much better your Amazon-powered smart speaker would be at returning relevant podcast results if it looked at your purchase history to see what types of books you order. And which books you abandon mid-read

Imagine if your Apple-powered smart speaker could cross-reference podcasts you currently listen to and other device-level data from your iPhone.

Using this data - data the device is already connected to - you 3 possible results instead of 36. Much more manageable.

But we can go beyond that, giving us relevant context about the shows rather than the context-poor show titles only. 

And imagine a future where these helpful devices become even more helpful, helping you decide which season to listen to, or which episode you might find most useful.

Amazon/Apple/Google could do all of this and more tomorrow, fundamentally changing the experience of podcast listening on smart speakers. It’s not a question of if, but when

Is your show ready? Start by cleaning up your show-level data, like title and host(s) name. Make sure your subtitle and show description are well-written, actually descriptive of your show, and are clearly and uniquely yours and yours alone. 

Then begin the clean-up process of your episode-level data. Make sure you’re using episode numbers properly and consistently. Categorize each of your episodes so the assistants can see how your episodes are connected. Correct your hastily-entered “show notes” to transform them into useful episode details the assistants can use. 

The way you and your podcast win in the future where smart speakers are made much smarter is by being the better-described show.

We’re now a week out from Evo's Long Winter's Nap. If you have an idea you'd like to share as a podcast Pontifications episode while I’m on break, get in touch with me as soon as possible: [email protected]. 

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/podcasting-on-smart-speakers-isnt-dumb-its-the-future

Follow Evo on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

Buy him a virtual coffee to show your support.

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.

Podcast Pontifications is published by Evo Terra four times a week and is designed to make podcasting better, not just easier.

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.