Podcast Pontifications

Remember the flood of new ideas and innovation that came just after the 2008 recession? Well, podcasters; get ready for 2021. I fully expect a massive influx of podcast innovation to hit in a few months. In fact, the first waves are already with us. 

With zero intention of trying to turn you into a change-hungry weirdo like me, might I offer a straightforward, three-step process of reacting to change when you encounter something brand new in podcasting? Especially something brand new that might fundamentally change how podcasting itself works or at least how you navigate your day-to-day life as a working podcaster.

Step One: Assume The Best Intentions - When you see something new, recognize it as such and stop your brain from immediately looking for (or examining obvious) flaws in the idea. 

Instead, assume the new thing will be a good thing. You may not have much info to go off of to make a call either way, but make your default approach to be one of acceptance. With very few exceptions, everybody envisioning something new for podcasting does so because they think their idea is going to make podcasting - or at least an aspect of podcasting - better. 

Step Two: Be Pragmatic - The acceptance in Step One only orients yourself to be receptive to change. That doesn’t mean you should shut off your critical thinking skills. 

Closely examine the premises or core concepts behind the new offering and apply it to your world as a working podcaster. If the instigators of the idea are making bold claims to “fix” problem areas in podcasting, do you agree that what they’ve called out as a  “problem area” actually exists and is, in fact, a problem for you? And if it’s not a problem for you, does it seem plausible that other working podcasters are experiencing the problem and are in need of a solution? 

Go ahead and get personal in this critical-thinking stage. Do you buy into their philosophy? Do their ideas ring true for you? What do your fellow working podcasters think about the idea? Is this a model you see them and others embracing fully? Be pragmatic. Don't get fooled by the glitz and glamour of cool-looking things that turn out to just be flim-flam.

Step Three: Let Them Try Again - Remember that whatever these new startups are offering right now might - and probably will - fail miserably. But they might try again, taking what they learned and coming back to the market with another offering. 

Your job is to not pre-judge the new idea through the lens of the prior failure. Almost by definition, everybody's first offer is not fully baked by experience. A failed project doesn’t make the architects losers. It makes them learners. 

Be willing to let them bring a new idea to your life again, but start your evaluation of their next new thing from Step One. 

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/coping-strategies-for-podcasters-who-dont-like-change

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.

Hello and welcome to a bonus episode of Podcast Pontifications with me, Evo Terra. “Uh oh. A bonus episode means bad news, right?” Well… yes. But only temporary bad news. And here it is:

I'm taking a temporary medical leave from Podcast Pontifications. At least through the end of this week, but hopefully not much longer than that.  

Relax, there’s nothing life-threatening wrong with me. Now, the issue I’m dealing with is definitely quality of life-endangering, if only from the nausea-inducing pain and the nausea-inducing opioids the doctor has me on to try and control said pain until he can make a permanent fix to my issue. I see him tomorrow for a consult, and I’m confident we’ll be able to quickly schedule a minor outpatient procedure to take care of the not-so-little nine-millimeter stone that’s taken up residence in my left kidney. Since last Thursday, I’ve only been able to sit up for maybe 15-20 minutes at a time, then it’s back to the prone position as I try to live through its wrath. 

And with all the other work I have to get done to keep my podcast consultancy going through this, something has to give. That and I really want to make sure I deliver to you a good, quality show every day. But the way my head is swimming right now because of the opioids and residual pain they can’t control, I don’t think I can reliably do that.

So until the good doctor can go in there and pound them into sand, blast them into oblivion, or whatever they might do while I’m knocked out, I’m taking a medical leave from this podcast. Sitting up for the 3.5 hours per day necessary to properly make and distribute the show doesn’t sound like something I want to do while fighting through the pain.  

While I don’t anticipate financial ruin when I get the bill for this soon-to-be-scheduled procedure, I still invite you to go to BuyMeACoffee.com/EvoTerra and toss a few coins in the bucket, if only because you are very happy that I'm taking care of myself.

If you’re new, don’t worry. I’ve something like 360 episodes you can churn through while I’m away. They’re all on PodcastPontifications.com.

And if you need to know how I’m feeling, I’ll probably overshare on my Twitter account, as I am wont to do. Twitter.com/evoterra is me.

Once we get this little brick out of my system, I’ll be back with you. I’ve a full book of topics to cover with you, once I have the fortitude back.

And then, I'll be back for yet another Podcast Pontifications. 

Cheers!

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.

It's not great to constantly obsess about your podcast. Nor is it great to have it completely out of your mind until the very last second. Those who occupy the middle of the spectrum probably have a more healthy relationship with their own podcast.

As you read this, a thousand articles are being published by gurus, spiritual leaders, and self-actualization experts that all extol the virtues of meditating to fix all of your problems. 

That’s not what I’m advocating for. I promise you won’t come out of this with beads woven into a lock of your hair, or suggest you ingest mind-altering substances. 

But I do mean meditation. Not getting into the zone and planning out your next episode. The meditation angle I want you to explore when you find your quiet space and carve out a half an hour - or five minutes - of reflection is this: What’s the relationship between you and your podcast, now and in the future.

Thinking about where you and your show might be in five years is a fine thing to think about while meditating. However, using the time to plan out a week-by-week action plan to get you there isn’t. 

You may also think about large groups of people who don’t yet know about your show who you might try to reach. Stop yourself if you start plotting growth hacking techniques or marketing plans to reach them, however. 

By all means, let your mind unpack your current processes, or the overall sound of your show. But if you start making a list of equipment to buy, you’re slipping back into tactics. Examining problems in depth from lots of angles will often lead you to novel solutions. Don’t force it. 

If you find your brain offering up potential guests (if your show has guests), think through their decision process. Will they listen to an episode? Will they visit your website? Your social profiles? And if they do, do those properties and experiences make it easy for the guest to say “yes”? 

For me, the best part of meditating this way is the unexpected connections that spontaneously happen when I don’t try to force it. Stay strategic, and see where your mind takes you.

Classic meditation never really worked for me. Neither did guided meditation. Heck, I find it hard to stay in a yoga pose for more than 10 seconds. 

I meditate from the prone position, either on the couch or in bed, as I’m pretending to take a nap or because my brain wakes me between 4:00 or 4:30 in the morning every day. I find both of these scenarios perfect for contemplating big picture thoughts where podcasting is often a part.

Again, this is what works for me. It very well may not work for you. But it’s probably worth a shot, right?

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/the-case-for-non-hippie-meditating-over-your-podcast

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.

Yes, both content and context are important aspects of your podcast. But it’s the tone of your show that acts as the delivery-device that translates the sounds (and sights) to thoughts, ideas, and feelings inside your listeners’ brains.

It’s arguable that the theme music you’ve chosen for your show has the biggest role in setting the overall tone. Hard-hitting, over-driven guitars wheedling away in the background at the start of the episode sets a particular tone. A mellow piano sets the opposite tone. And a quirky, plucky ukulele means something else entirely. The same goes for transition music used inside your episodes. That little bit of music, even if it only plays for a couple of seconds, is part of the tone of your show. Does it fit? 

The words used in the “canned” bits of your episodes impact the tone. As does the length of those bits. How those words are voiced is huge. The cadence of the words spoken also sets the tone in a similar way. A pro-announcer will lend a certain amount of… well, professionalism to your show. But only if that’s what you’re going for. Each choice you make impacts the tone of your show.

Savvy podcasters will spend a significant amount of time adjusting EQ settings of all the voices and elements that go into a show. It’s a fair amount of work, but it has huge implications on the overall tone of an episode.

There's more to a podcast than the sounds the listeners hear. All of the not-audio parts of your show also set the overall tone of your show. 

Yes, I mean the show-level artwork and the episode-level artwork, title, and summary. But I also mean the artwork for your website, newsletter, or social shares. 

Discordance isn’t always a bad thing, though it usually is. Think about an orchestra or even a three-piece band playing with one player out of tune. The notes played might be technically correct, but it’s going to sound unpleasant. And you’re going to stop listening. 

Your listeners might have that same disconnect when your punchy theme music plays under a soft-spoken episode intro. Or they’ll see the garish colors of your attention-grabbing audiogram and then be taken aback when they a heartfelt testimonial of a survivor of abuse. That’s bad too.

My fear is that you might read this and assume I want everything in your podcast to be clean, pristine, and polished. I assure you I do not. Some shows are purposely designed to be almost toneless. Others are intentionally crafted with changing tones from episode to episode. And if that's the intention you put into your podcast, fine. Lean into that. 

It's all about intent and intentionality. Maybe you don't need a tune-up of your show. Maybe it just needs a tone-up?

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/does-your-podcast-need-a-tune-up-or-a-tone-up

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.

All podcasters get stuck. If you've not experienced being stuck; You must be new. Because on a long enough timescale, all podcasters get stuck.

Creatives from many disciplines have learned that sometimes the trick to getting unstuck is by doing the opposite. 

When I say “the opposite”, I don’t mean different. The advice of “try something different” leaves you with too many choices. “Try doing the opposite” is almost singular. Identify where you are stuck, and then the exact opposite (or as close as you can get to the opposite) of what you’d normally do. Or what you were doing when you got stuck.

Here are some common situations many podcasters face where this opposite trick can be deployed. 

Play The Opposite Role - If you’re the person who normally engineers the show but leaves the setup and planning to someone else, take on their role and give them yours for an episode. I guarantee you that the process of teaching someone how to do your job will teach you about your job. And crack open your own creativity. 

Reverse Your Process - If you are the kind of podcaster who plans out their episode on paper first, then records and produces the audio of the episode, and then writes the article at the end; try mixing that up by writing the article first and producing the audio last. If that’s too big, just mix up the planning part by writing out some detailed notes without a specific angle or title for the episode in mind. (I did that for this episode!)

Un-automate Your Podcast Marketing - Podcasters rely on the automated social posting service provided by our media hosting company or social management tools like Buffer to schedule an entire week’s worth of promotional posts about our latest episode. So do the opposite and handle all of your social posts manually for the week and see if that doesn’t reinvigorate your brain.

Ditch The DAW - I've talked previously about no-waveform audio editing tools that are quite the opposite of editing within a true DAW. The entire paradigm is foreign! Carving out some time to experiment and try it for a segment of your show. Just like teaching a new concept, learning a brand new way of doing things is often enough to unlock your trapped creativity.

Take A Joke, Leave A Joke - If your podcast is a comedy podcast, the funny doesn’t have to come from you, does it? Are there other ways the funny can be delivered that don’t require you to bring it? Or if your show is super-serious find ways to use humor without being flippant. It can be done.

Tight Show, Loose Segment - If your audience expects tight, detailed editing, it would be foolish of you to do the opposite and free-form an episode. However, you could drop in a looser segment (either at the end or as a bonus) that features more casual conversations with some of the normal imperfections left in intentionally. That might help you get unstuck.

The idea is simply to get you unstuck so that you can get to the next step. Though if you take a shine to your own experimentation with the opposite, be open to the idea of replacing your routine with a new one. Maybe your routine was the source of the trouble with all along.

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/your-podcast-doesnt-suck-it-just-needs-un-stuck

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.

Fast-food giant Wendy's has a podcast, and it’s not particularly good. At least not as we’ve defined what companies are supposed to do with podcasting. But what if that’s on purpose?

Wendy’s isn’t trying to make a branded podcast. Nor are they trying to make a yet another interview podcast. They aren’t trying to amass a million listeners to they can generate ad revenue additional revenue stream. And the only “merch” they want to sell is burgers and fries at their restaurants.

Instead, I think Wendy’s is setting a flagpole with this podcast. This tactic was employed by (and is still employed by) many brands and businesses entering a new digital space. Consider single-page websites (I’m a fan) or when businesses grab their Twitter handle but rarely - if ever -  publish new content. 

This podcast also lets Wendy’s lean into a popular meme thrust upon them and define the brand’s own “official” take. No, the podcast isn’t as funny as the meme and will likely never unseat the meme. But I don’t think that’s the point. 

Remember, the content you hear today on the show is not the end goal. This is just what the brand is doing right now because the climate -  for them - is right for it. 

Today, it’s hard to find a brand that doesn’t have a presence on social media. Is it really a stretch to think of a tomorrow where it’s hard to find a brand that doesn’t have a podcast? Maybe not what we think of today as a branded podcast. Maybe one that doesn’t feature interviews. Maybe those podcasts will look something like what Wendy’s is doing today. 

People like me who make podcasts on behalf of companies should love this show if only for obvious reasons: it’s one more example of a brand investing in the podcasting space. But I think all working podcasters should dig what Wendy’s is doing. Not because it’s amazing, compelling content (it’s not). But because it’s an exploration of what else can be done in podcasting.

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/sir-this-is-not-a-wendys-podcast-and-thats-ok

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.

According to conventional wisdom, 5,000 downloads the minimum threshold that ad rep firms want to see before they’ll consider adding a podcast. I tested that theory and found it to be true. But even so, it still may not be worth it. Here’s what happened:

Over the last few months, an ad rep form has been trying to book ads on one of my client’s podcast. The firm has sent me around 35 offers. I have to vet each one, ensuring it’s a good fit for my client and the advertiser.

One of those potential advertisers converted into a real offer. One. If one-in-thirty odds sounds bad to you, welcome to advertising. I’ve been in this world for the better part of two decades, so I’m not surprised at all.

With an actual offer, I contacted my client to work out the plan for getting the product shipped, giving them enough time to try out the product, and target a publishing date for when the ad would run. 

Yes, THE episode. It’s not uncommon for advertisers to run a single ad on a single episode as a test.

I take all of that back to the ad rep firm who then generated an insertion order, a document that spells out the particulars of the deal, like length of the ad read, must-have elements to be included in the ad, in which position the ad would run, and, the money offered in exchange for the ad.

Once I sign off, they advertiser shipped the product, my client gave it a test run, and dropped the ad the proscribed episode. 

It didn’t go well. Twice. So the ad ran three times before it was finally accepted. Details, yo. Now I’m waiting on payment which I should get in the next 30 days. 

Does that sound like a lot of time? It was. I’m estimating around 12 hours of my time and about four hours of my client’s time. Much of that was fixing the screwups. But even without those unfortunate mishaps, it stil would have taken each of us about half that time. 

So what did we get for those collective 16 hours of work? $250. Some quick math done at the initial offer stage showed the advertiser was offering a $35 CPM on the ~7,000 downloads projected for this single ad placement, which is quite good! 

Only, we didn’t even get the full $250. That was the “gross” offer that we accepted, before the ad rep firm takes their 30%. They’re keeping $75 and sending me $175. And then I’m keeping 20% of that, so I’ll send the client $140 and line my pockets with $35.

Of course, we do this in the hopes that the advertiser likes the performance on their end and sticks around for a while, running ads with us for months at a time that require very little additional work. This is where scale comes into play, though it takes time to work through the rough parts before the benefits of scale start showing up.

I’ll leave it to you to decide what your time is worth. 

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/do-you-have-the-time-to-monetize-your-podcast

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.

Reading a Wikipedia entry is oftentimes incredibly boring. And that’s by design. As a repository of knowledge, it’s important to Wikipedia that they maintain a neutral point of view. But few people read Wikipedia for entertainment purposes. 

Humanity has a huge impact on the podcast listening experience. Though it’s a bit of an oversimplification, shows that convey their humanity to their audience tend to be better. The converse is also true: remove the humanity from a show, and the listener experience is worsened.

Yes, even short-form, fact-based news programs need humanity. Podnews is an excellent illustration. Somehow, James finds a way to inject his own humanity in the narration, rather than just regurgitating headlines. It sounds human, just not long-winded.

Thankfully, we don’t hear as many reporters talking about themselves in the 3rd person any longer (“This reporter was on the scene to…” 🤮). Journalists who podcast find their podcast listeners want to hear how the reporter was affected by covering the story they’re conveying on their podcast. 

Narrative-driven stories are better when they show the humanity of the person/people behind them. Evidence of an architect should be subtle, yet obvious. Yeah, that’s a bit of an oxymoron.

We're already seeing new apps and services that encroach on our podcasting territory, finding ways to use the technical architecture of podcasting - audio files delivered to a player - with very little human interaction. And tons of scale.

If these apps can make a podcast episode with a more than passible human voice out of any text found on the web, is there a need to wait for a human to do the same thing, albeit slower and with a smaller consideration set?

As a podcaster, do you need to actually narrate your scripted show? Or should you leave that to software so you can get back to digging up new content for your audience and scale, scale, scale?

As a human who often doomscrolls through social feeds, will you instead “doom listen” while doing the dishes if the option is available?

This new “aural web” (which cannot be what we call it, please?) where the information we want is comfortably consumed via audio is going to see loads of innovation and disruption in the coming months. And it’s going to make things very difficult for podcasters who have sucked all the humanity out of their shows.

I’m bullish on tech’s ability to make a passable human voice, making it quite nice to listen to just about anything. But I’m bearish on that tech’s ability to out-humanize human creativity, passion, and sincerity. 

Human podcasters should embrace their humanity. Yes, even the messy parts. We need not be afraid of being vulnerable on our shows. We need to be willing to express our opinion. And we need to be willing to see our opinion proven wrong.

Your audience wants you to be human. Your audience listens to your show because of you. Get in there and put more “you” in your podcast. Because in the battle of which side can convey more neutral point of view facts, humanity will lose every time. And that’s a good thing.

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/re-humanize-your-podcast-before-its-too-late

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 really hate the catchphrase, “I have a face for radio!” I'm clearly a fan of self-deprecation, but there’s so much assumption wrapped up in that statement that it really irritates me.  

Think about the last movie or TV episode you watched. The vast majority of actors you see on the screen have non-standard appearances. Contrary to popular belief, movies and television shows are not the exclusive domain of beautiful people. In fact, beautiful people are the exception rather than the rule. 

Steve Buscemi is one of my favorite actors. He has a non-standard appearance and gets leading roles, not bit parts. The same goes for Bill Murray, John C. Riley, and almost every other actor. Would the shows they appear in be better if they instead had classic good looks? No, not at all.

These professional working actors all share one thing in common, and it has nothing to do with their faces. It’s that they are professionals who have worked very hard to get very good at what they do.

It’s the same for us, podcasters. We should each work hard at making our voice is as good as it can be. Not “as pleasant” or as “approachable”. As good as it can be. And you get to decide what “good” means. 

But don’t work at changing your voice. Your voice is your voice. You can’t “change” your voice any more than Bill Murray can “change” his face. With actors, it’s about learning how to use their faces. And for podcasters like us, it’s about learning how to use our voices effectively. 

The most important thing about a podcaster is not the tone or timbre of their voice: It’s the way they deliver words to the audience.

My friend and fellow podcaster George Hrab has a song that, I feel, perfectly captures this reality. It’s called Blue Genes and is worth a listen. Yes, right now.

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/podcasting-with-a-voice-that-could-peel-paint

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.

One of the things I lament most about podcasting is our lack of a common language around stats and performance. 

For the better part of 15 years now, Apple Podcasts (was: iTunes) has been the biggest app used to download podcast episodes across the board. In aggregate, they remain the leader. Thanks to aggressive moves by other big-money and big-user-base apps, the gap between Apple and it’s rivals is shrinking. But they still lead.

That’s true for my show too. Since the start of Season Three, I’ve seen 33.3% of all downloads to my episodes attributed to Apple Podcasts. That’s a little small compared to the “average” podcast, but my show over-indexes with podcast power users who are less likely to use consumer-grade listening apps. (Though Apple Podcasts remains my personal listening app of choice.) 

Examining the same time-frame, I see that 21% of downloads were attributed to Overcast, an iOS-only app that is held up as the gold standard for power listeners of podcasts. Again, because the nature of my content and the target audience, I’m not at all surprised that I have 3x the percentage of Overcast users than an “average” podcast.

At 10.3%, downloads attributed to Spotify are - pardon the pun - spot-on with the aggregate marketshare usually attributed to Spotify. The remaining 35% of downloads reflect the intentionally-diverse distribution methodology I’ve established, covering smaller podcast listening apps and browser-based requests. All normal stuff.

But things get weird when I start looking at individual episode downloads. Not just random weird either. Consistently weird in the same way. 

Started with yesterday’s episode and ignoring any downloads to other episodes than that one, I was surprised to Apple at only 23%. Overcast accounted for almost double the downloads of that episode at nearly 40%.

The weirdness didn’t stop there.The prior day’s episode also had Overcast on top and Apple trailing. The day before that also showed Overcast in the lead, again followed by Apple, albeit with a slightly narrowing gap between them. And the day before that. And the day before that. 

Rinse and repeat, and it was the same story with each episode. I had to go back a full 10 episodes - nearly three weeks - before Apple Podcasts finally pulled alongside Overcast for downloads of a single episode. 

What about Spotify, who was at 10.3% of all downloads? I don’t see see any appreciable Spotify download activity on the 10 most recent episodes of my show. 

Weird, right?

I worry the inherent behavior of apps is so vastly different that it’s impossible to evaluate them on an even playing field. I worry the IAB 2.0 guidelines that were supposed to eliminate confusions leave too much room for interpretation and fail at being a true “standard”.

My friend and fellow working podcaster JD Sutter thinks it’s more to do with Apple Podcast users grabbing several episodes at a time. And he may be right. I know I’ve seen spikes of downloads where one or two “people” using Apple Podcasts will download all 300 episodes in my show’s RSS feed. Is that enough to throw off my aggregate stats? Maybe. Or maybe it’s just weird.

To me, it’s more evidence that the things we think of as universal truths are anything but. It shows the weakness of making blanket assumptions about overall behavior and assuming those same behaviors take place on a very small scale. 

Stats are weird, right?

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Read the full article and share with a friend: https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/a-little-thinking-on-big-podcast-stats

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.