Navigating the Future of Podcasting Apps on Android

Enjoy this unedited transcript created by Castmagic.

Dave Jackson [00:00:00]:

The future of podcasting on Android. This is the future of podcasting where we ponder what awaits the podcasters of today. From the school of podcasting, here's Dave Jackson. And from the Audacity to podcast, here's Daniel j Lewis. Daniel, future of podcasting episode 31. We're talking podcasts On the Android platform and the big thing I I thought of is and and why we're talking about this is Google Podcast is It's going bye bye sometime in 2024, we're not really sure when, and we've heard that YouTube it's gonna be moving to YouTube Music And that they're eventually, maybe, kinda, sorta, we're not really sure, ingesting RSS feeds, which I think is happening somewhere in the right now, I think they're beta testing that somewhere, and I thought about that and I was like, wait a minute. Think about this. If you're On Google Podcasts and 5% of your audience is on, you know, getting that from Google Podcasts and, you know, they shut that down, They move you over to YouTube Music.

Dave Jackson [00:01:10]:

You know, if you're not getting any stats because, you know, it's not on your lips and captivate blueberry Buzzsprout anymore. It's coming from YouTube or Google or whatever we're gonna call it. That means 5% of your downloads are not gonna show anymore in your dashboard. And as a support person, I'm gonna be like, oh, great.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:01:27]:

And you're talking merely the stats. That's assuming 100% Of that 5% moves over to YouTube Music, how many of them are just gonna decide, no. I don't I don't wanna move over, and then they, like, drop your podcast either Intentionally or unintentionally, whatever for whatever reason, but they just don't move their through following. That's just where we'll merge it all together in 1 now because everything is subscribed on YouTube still even though it's follow almost everywhere else. And now Even on Twitch, it's been follow for a long time, and subscribe was the paid thing. But that aside, even if All of your audience moved over. It's just a stats issue. Yes.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:02:12]:

But you're going to lose some of your audience Because some of them are not going to want to move over to YouTube Music and in the process of moving to whatever other app they might choose, They're probably not going to transfer all their podcasts either.

Dave Jackson [00:02:30]:

Yeah. Depending on I don't know if Google we're assuming That they're gonna make it easy, but they're gonna make it easy to go to YouTube Music. I don't know because some apps have the ability to export An OPML file, which is cool because then you go into another app and go import an OPML file and presto, you're back in business and you don't lose anything, but if it's not, Then you have to, you know, go into Google Podcasts, like, okay. Where's the Audacity to pod okay. That's the one I listen to. Now I gotta go into, And that's kind of one of our questions is, okay, if we don't point people at YouTube Music, who's who's the next person on, You know, the Android hill, I know there's Pocket Cast, there's, Podcast Addict, of course there's Spotify, but I've never really the only time I'm in Spotify looking for a podcast is when I'm doing troubleshooting. But I I as a Listing platform. I love it for their music, but as a podcast platform, I kinda go, this doesn't have what I'm looking for.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:03:31]:

It's interesting that whole combining podcasts with music. Now that's the way it originally was when iTunes 4.9 launched In 2005, and they introduced podcasts into iTunes. Here was Itunes with podcasts And then also TV shows eventually, and everything was in iTunes to the point that iTunes got bloated and then they split it out. Well, these other players combining podcasts and music into a single audio entertainment app, we could call it, That has benefits and that has disadvantages. I think this move with Google I mean, you look at what is Google's history here? We were talking about this recently. What are all of the apps they've made that could consume podcasts?

Dave Jackson [00:04:21]:

Alright. So I think the first one, it's it's it's a tie between Google Listen and Google Reader because they were both there. Then you had Google Play Music and then Google Podcasts, which is going away. And so this is really depending on how you wanna look at it, either they're 3rd or 4th because because Google Reader wasn't really a podcast, Like, app, but you could use it to listen to

Daniel J. Lewis [00:04:45]:

podcast apps. Subscribed to an RSS feed that had the enclosures in it, which is what makes an RSS feed a podcast feed, It would give an audio player inside of Google Reader, but it wouldn't auto download anything, and I'm not sure if it would even track your Progress inside an episode. So if you left the app and

Dave Jackson [00:05:04]:

came back to it through the website or through the mobile app,

Daniel J. Lewis [00:05:07]:

I don't think you'd be able to pick up where you left off within the episode, but it would keep track of what items from the RSS feed you'd already, quote, read, unquote.

Dave Jackson [00:05:17]:

I loved Google Reader because it was a great way, because back then, a lot of times you're getting your information from blogs, and I had it all set up and I could go in there and Instantly see, you know, now a lot of that information I get in newsletters, but it was a great way to do that. When they shut that down I was like, because a lot of people used to Google Reader, they're like, yeah. We know you're all upset. We don't care.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:05:38]:

But you know what? An interesting thing with that, and this comes back to even, like, the whole shutting down of Google Podcasts, is that when Google Reader shut down yes. There were some competitors, like Feedly was a competitor and it would synchronize through Google Reader. There were a couple others. But when Google Reader shut down, suddenly, the market for those competitors improved and the products drastically improved. Feedly has gotten so much better since Google Reader shut down because they're no longer competing. I mean, trying to convince people why to pay for something they could otherwise get for free. Now all the good weed readers do cost. So now instead of just trying to convince someone, like, yes.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:06:22]:

Our service is worth paying money for. Now it's more about, Of all of the services you might be willing to pay for, why is this one better? And then trying to actually innovate because they're no longer tied to What Google Reader could do. So, like, I use Ino Reader.

Dave Jackson [00:06:38]:

Me too.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:06:39]:

And, I know I used Feedly for a while too, but Switched over to ino reader a couple of years ago, and I really love it. And there are other great ones that just didn't exist back then. I think we have The death of Google Reader to think for the innovation.

Dave Jackson [00:06:54]:

Because it instantly let us know that we didn't see it before. Like, hey, that was really valuable. I'm kinda bummed that it's gone, and so when somebody said, well, we have something similar. In fact, it might actually be better, but you gotta pay us for it. People, like, Okay. Yeah. Anything. As long as you does that mean you're not gonna close in 3 years? Yes.

Dave Jackson [00:07:12]:

Here, take my money. When Google Podcasts was doing that, It was like, we're gonna put podcasts on the front page. We're gonna we have a team of people and just we're all like, this is great. Here we go. We've been waiting for Google to jump in, And they're jumping in with both feet and they're, you know, they're gonna lead the charge, and and really they made a nice dent for the 1st couple months, And then they didn't, and then there was like, wait. Who's the guy at Google? Wait. Oh, he's not there anymore? Oh, wait. There's okay.

Dave Jackson [00:07:41]:

The team, you know, and then there were 2, and then there was 1, And then there was none. And so this announcement doesn't really catch me by surprise. It does it does bum me out because, again, I I was so, what's the word? Just enthusiastic. I was hopeful that, like, wow, Google finally got in the game. If we could just get Microsoft in the game And Amazon's jumped in. That's great. It was like, this is gonna be another way to, you know, the old rise all boats together. Here we go.

Dave Jackson [00:08:11]:

And now they're like, oh, we're we're going back. We're gonna mix it in. Like you said, they're mixing in with a music app, and we're kinda like, Yeah. That's been done. It it didn't seem to work well. Maybe you have a better way of doing it, but there is a thing now where I'm like, alright. Where am I gonna tell those Android people where to go? And that's kind of what I wanted to to talk about, and and so, you know, there are there are apps coming online. You know, there's, if we go to podcastapps.com, Do we know how many over there are are Android apps? I know there's a bunch of web based ones.

Dave Jackson [00:08:42]:

Pod Fans, obviously, is is a a web based one that'll work on anything.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:08:47]:

Yeah. And, Podverse and Fountain are both on Android as well. And I know the developers there, Many of them want to be on both platforms. It's just a matter of making that possible.

Dave Jackson [00:09:01]:

Yeah. And that's the difficulty on an Android phone where on an iOS phone, most people are on the latest Version of Ios or at least maybe, you know, a version behind where from what I understand on the Android side, it's a mess. And so it's harder to develop for that because you have people on really old phones that had that haven't upgraded where When my phone I have a iPad behind me that's, I think, the 2nd version of an iPad, and so half the time I go to load anything on that, it's like, yeah, this is We can't upgrade the Ios anymore, and you can't run any new apps, so it's time for me to go to the the Apple Store and either replace it or something. But It'll be interesting to see on the Android side. It's like you said, this would be great with with, there may have been people that weren't gonna develop an app Because they were going up against Google Podcasts, maybe now they'd be like, oh, there's we know and we have a big window To come up with something so when that thing goes away and they're telling everybody to go to YouTube Music, they can go, or you can come over here.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:10:07]:

Now to clear up a couple of misconceptions that might be out there that I've kind of seen here and there, when they make this move, they have said to people using Google Podcasts that they will it sounds like they will naturally, seamlessly migrate all of the subscriptions over to YouTube Music. So as long as that process is as seamless as they're saying it will be, which they probably can make it that way since they control both aspects, then It will mean that all of those people who were following your podcast on Google Podcasts will then become followers on YouTube Music. So you won't have to lose audience there in the technical process of it because that should not be a barrier, But it is that decision factor. The 2nd misconception here is this idea of a built in app. Now YouTube is Pretty much a factory installed app on all Android devices. In fact, I think that Google has a requirement that if you're going to license Android for well, it's Kind of open source, but if you're using Android on a mobile device and you want Google's blessing on that mobile device, it has to have certain Stock apps, and YouTube is one of those, I believe, for almost all the phones out there. Maybe YouTube Music is also. I've I apologize that I'm not on the Android side, So I don't know.

Dave Jackson [00:11:31]:

Hey. This is future Dave. And from an article by Adam Bowie, when phone manufacturers install Android and want to use Google services, they have to agree to take the Google Mobile Services suite of apps. YouTube Music is amongst the list of apps They're included in that suite and are therefore preinstalled. Now back to Daniel.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:11:53]:

But the thing about Google Podcasts, I mean, YouTube Music versus Google Podcasts here, YouTube Music is potentially a native app, probably Far more native than Google Podcasts ever was, but there was always this weird thing with Google Podcasts that It actually was native on Android. The functionality was there. If you ever looked at when you went to install Google Podcasts on an Android device, the size was tiny, Like, so small that, basically, that's just the icon because the functionality was built into Android already. So it was a native podcast app that just Google didn't highlight that here's this built in feature In your phone, already there. And the only way you could get to it was either to install the icon Or to search for podcasts inside the Google Search app, and then it would also expose the Google Podcasts interface like that. That's that's unfortunate. Yeah. I wonder even like that Google Podcasts interface that was inside of the Google search app On the phone, I wonder if that podcast interface is going away as well.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:13:11]:

So this whole thing, it it kind of Makes me wonder. This could either be the worst thing Google will do for podcasts on Android or will be the best thing that Google can do.

Dave Jackson [00:13:24]:

Yeah. That would be awesome if when you went to, I'm assuming a podcast tab, it had all sorts of functionality and Playlist, I'm a playlist guy. I've I've also come to that conclusion. There is there are podcasts app, they usually have 1 queue, And when you fire up your phone in the morning, here's your list of new episodes, and you say yes, add it to the queue or not, that is not my favorite thing. I'm always afraid I'm gonna miss something. Where I like, you know, Overcast or Cast O Matic on both those are Ios, and I love the fact that I can make Playlist and say anytime a new episode comes down from this podcast, automatically add it to this playlist. And that's my favorite thing, and and I'm starting to think I'm in the minority of that because every time I look at an app, when I was looking at Pod Fans, there's a playlist and you add episodes to it, and I was like, Yeah. But isn't it's for me, look, I'm not a developer, but I'm like, that's an if this happens, then do this, and I'm like, that's Kind of programming 101 in some ways.

Dave Jackson [00:14:24]:

I'm like, can't you just say when an episode comes down from this podcast, put it over there? And it just seems like most of the apps are Queue based, and I know some people love that because it really comes down to think about that. If most of the apps are built that way, you really need Good episode titles because if it's just episode 16, James, because you ran out of room, that's not gonna work. Well, are you a are you a queue person or a playlist person?

Daniel J. Lewis [00:14:53]:

A playlist person. I was using playlist back on Apple Podcasts until, the whole bug A few years ago, it kind of forced me to leave Apple Podcasts, and now I use Overcast still. And, yeah, I I have my playlist for podcasts about podcasting, for Business related podcasts for Christian related podcasts, for personal stuff, for comedy or entertainment. Yeah. So I I frequently use those playlists, especially, like, for me, I try to segment my listening to help with Help kind of point my brain in different directions. So I'll listen to podcasts about podcasting during the workday When I'm wanting to get in that mindset of thinking about podcasting and helping podcasters and getting inspired and just being aware of the industry that I'm working within, But then after business hours, before I go to bed, I transfer to either listening to personal Podcasts like church sermons or something or something entertaining, comedy, audio drama, something like that, that takes my mind away from business And still engages my mind, but then doesn't rev me up with more ideas because that's the worst thing. It's to listen to something really great And then go to bed more bedtime. And think, I don't wanna go to bed right now.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:16:10]:

I want to implement this thing that's gonna take me, quote, 5 minutes Oh, yeah. Unquote. Hey. Just one more thing. The stereotypical thing That husbands say about their wives is 5 minutes never means 5 minutes. Well, you know what? For us geeks, men or women, for us geeks, Doing something quickly for 5 minutes, that's our thing. It's never going to be only 5 minutes. It's hours.

Dave Jackson [00:16:36]:

Yeah. I I, I got Meny in eye roll when I'd be like, I'm just gonna go check my email for 5 minutes, and she'd be like, I'll see you in a half hour. Alright. Good. Well, that brings us to maybe a slightly dusty feature that the folks at Blueberry made a while ago because here we are, 2 guys that are somewhat Much more familiar with the Apple side, you know, Ios and iPhones than, an Android phone. I have an Android tablet around here somewhere. It's it it is very dusty. I can guarantee that.

Dave Jackson [00:17:06]:

And so the the feature from Blueberry, I know it was subscribe. Was it just subscribe on Android? Yeah. And so do you remember exactly what that does besides I remember that You basically ended up with a link and or I think you put your RSS feed into a tool. It gave you a link, And then it showed a bunch because right now we're, like, I don't know what's on Android. We know there's, you know, Podcast Attic and Pocket Cast and a couple others, but this This had many of the most popular Android apps, and that might be coming back in style because, again, nothing against Google. I may not Feel confident pointing them at a 5th app attempt at at podcasting.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:17:53]:

Certainly, there are plenty of reasons other than just it's their 4th or 5th attempt. There could be plenty of reasons like, what is the experience like, and what kind of stats or monetization options are you going to get, And what's is your audience going to be forced to see ads kind of like on YouTube, that kind of thing? So besides that kind of thing, Yes. Subscribe on android.com is what Blueberry made, and they made this free. You don't have to sign up for anything. You don't have to Submit your podcast. You simply give it your RSS feed, and then it gives you a link back that you can then use. Like, I made a pretty link on my site. So it's the audacity to podcast.com/android, and it takes you to my subscribe on Android page, And it currently lists 18 apps.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:18:40]:

Now that includes Google Podcasts, which so that's going to be dropped, and it will be 17. But the beauty of this is we've had these simple tap options on Ios for a little while, but they're very app specific. So you give someone an Apple Podcast link, and the default behavior on an iOS or Apple device is that opens up an Apple Podcasts. Now some apps can actually interpret an Apple Podcast link and open it in them. Like, I think Pocket Cast And Beyond Pod can do that, but that's not the default behavior on Ios. And you can't really change what is that default, But you can do certain things there with those links, or you could make app specific links. Like, you can make an overcast link That opens your podcast in the Overcast app directory. But on the Android side, we've got subscribe on Android, Which it's 1 link that then presents all of these options.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:19:42]:

And the way that they've worked with these developers and Leverage certain tools that are built into Android is so that this one link does allow the Android device to remember The preference because it's triggering, like, basically, how should Android handle RSS feeds? Should it, by default, open in this app or that app? So it triggers a prompt for Android users where they can set their default if they want to. So then I believe then every time after that, if they click on a subscribe on android.com link, It would open then in the app that previously selected. But regardless of that, even if they don't have an app installed or they haven't set a default, It opens to this page where it lists these, you know, more than a dozen podcast apps. Some of them paid, most of them free. So it gives them all of these options that they can install. They can tap one of these to install right from there, or if they already have it, They tap on the button that they recognize, and it opens to their podcast in the app. So this is it's not a one tap solution, and, really, Nothing is a one tap solution anymore. Everything takes at least 2 taps or maybe more like 3 or 4.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:21:00]:

But it's That's why I call it a simple tap solution. It's people don't have to copy and paste RSS feeds. They don't even have to Go to their podcast app to search for your podcast because this contains the most popular podcast apps on Android Other than Spotify, it's got Podcast Addict, Podcast Republic. That's another popular one. It's got Pocket Casts On their Player FM, antennapod, Podcast Guru, Castbox, and several others. So you're covering a lot of bases with 1 link, and I'd love to see podcasters use this. And and don't worry. This is not a Blueberry customer's only kind of product.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:21:46]:

Lipson People, you can use this too, and you should use this too. It's just Blueberry has pushed it heavily Because they really want to see people supporting Android more, but it it's for everyone.

Dave Jackson [00:21:58]:

Todd has always seen the Android side of the world is a huge opportunity for growth because they didn't have a default app, and he was like, well, let's make it easy for people on that. And, yeah, even if it's, you know, like you said, 17 apps, instead of putting 17 links in on your show, you can put 1, And then that way, we're putting the choice back in the hand of the the audience. Let them pick, and they're like, oh, that's that icon looks like just like the one I listen to podcast And they can click that and they're they're back in their comfort zone again, and so that should make things easy. So, yeah, I am gonna start using that because I just I don't know, you know, and god bless Google, they're doing so good communicating what's happening in the future and how we should prepare. So, he said sarcastically, so I'm gonna start putting this link on, on my website and let the audience choose.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:22:49]:

I've had it on my site for a while, And I I've toyed with well, should it be more prominent or less prominent compared to Google Podcasts or to Any of the other options on my site, and I've tracked the stats for this too. And this is through my own WordPress plug in. And I'm I'm quite surprised. So if we look at the last approximately year of data from this, This is from the audacity to podcast.com. So keep in mind, the people who visit my site are generally like you. They are other podcasters, so a bit geekier. But this is quite interesting. The number 1, by far, most clicked icon.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:23:30]:

So I've been tracking the stats of Apple Podcasts, Facebook, Spotify, YouTube. That's for my actual video on YouTube, fake video. The podcast only RSS feed, the site wide RSS feed, which includes blog posts, subscribe on Android, Google Podcasts, And my Twitter account. So those are the links that I've been tracking. Dave, can you guess which one By far was clicked the most of all of those. So it's the typical stuff plus a couple social things.

Dave Jackson [00:24:02]:

Well, I would think Apple Podcasts.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:24:04]:

You'd think.

Dave Jackson [00:24:05]:

You would think

Daniel J. Lewis [00:24:06]:

The RSS.

Dave Jackson [00:24:07]:

I'm Oh, of course. So pew

Daniel J. Lewis [00:24:09]:

The site wide RSS, specifically. So I've got 2 RSS links there. 1 is an RSS icon with headphones around it. That's the podcast only RSS feed. Then there's the normal RSS icon, which is my site wide RSS feed, which would work in a podcast app, but it also includes the blog posts with it. And that was More than double the runner-up, which is the podcast feed, which is then almost double The number 3 position, which is Apple Podcasts, and then number 4, Google Podcasts, and number 5 would actually be YouTube. I'm kind of not surprised there. And then number 6 would be subscribe on Android followed by, closely, by Spotify, And then I have my social links after that.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:25:03]:

So the RSS clearly is the king here because that's 2 feeds Representing the number 1 and number 2 spot. So if I had only 1 RSS link, I'm guessing it would be nearly the perfect combination of these 2. But, because I doubt that people who visit the site are selecting both RSS feeds, they're probably picking 1 or the other. So that really shows that, at least for a geekier audience, you want the RSS. I

Dave Jackson [00:25:31]:

was gonna say.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:25:33]:

So keep that in mind. My audience is Geeky like you are, you listener, wonderful listener. But when I look at it even more closely, like comparing just Apple Podcasts to Google Podcasts to subscribe on Android, My Apple Podcast link during the same period was clicked, let's see, about well, we'll say In this period of a year, 39 100 times, Google Podcast was clicked 29 100 times, and subscribe on Android was clicked about 2,000 times. So Google Podcasts was 50% more popular than subscribe on Android on my site. But with Google Podcasts removed, how would this change? And that's that's part of why I wanted to this data for so long through my own site.

Dave Jackson [00:26:29]:

Interesting.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:26:30]:

And some other stats as long as we're talking stats and numbers and people's eyes are glazing over. Anyway, Here's some

Dave Jackson [00:26:36]:

But who doesn't love stats? Come on.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:26:38]:

Here's some other fun stats. If you go to buzzsprout.com/stats, they put out monthly Their platform stats. So this is of all the podcasts that they host. I'm guessing this also includes those Trial accounts for people who sign up for Buzzsprout on a free trial or just use it for a little bit and then their account eventually expires. I think That's also included, and free trial isn't the right word. They offer a fleet free plan, but it's limited, and it does expire if you don't use it. So stuff does disappear. I think that's the right approach to take with free plans, where if you don't use it, you lose it.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:27:17]:

But what Buzzsprout reports is that Google Podcasts was 3.5% of all of the downloads of podcasts hosted by Buzzsprout. That's at the number 4 position underneath in this order, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and web browser. And just below that is Castbox, iTunes, Apple Music, Buzzsprout Embedded Player, Overcast, Pocket Cast, Podcast Addict, and on and down. Transistor also does something similar. If you go to transistor.fm/globaldashstats, we'll have these links in the notes for this episode. Their number 1 is, of course, Apple Podcasts. Number 2, Spotify. They have Transistor Mobile and desktop players.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:27:58]:

Their Google Podcast then is of podcast apps. Theirs is listed then also as number 3 at 2.14%, Then Overcast, Castbox, podcast PocketCasts, and Podcast Addict, and that's as far down as they go on their list. And Podcast Addict then being 0.8% on, transistor stats and 0.6% according to Buzzsprout stats. So You have to kind of wonder whenever a hosting platform puts out stats like this, keep in mind, this is of The people who use only that hosting platform and certain platforms tend to attract certain kinds of podcasters. Like, I would say Lipson has a lot of traditional podcasters who are, I would guess, more committed than many of these other platforms. Whereas Buzzsprout, Although Buzzsprout is a very good platform, they do offer a free plan. So they I would say they have a lot more people who kick the tires, But Buzzsprout also expires accounts if they're unused. So some of those tire kickers then Get kicked out, essentially, or just deactivated.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:29:14]:

That's the better way to put it. Whereas on Anchor and SoundCloud, you put up A one second audio of you burping, and it will stay up there for all eternity, but they don't put out their platform stats either. So These kinds of things, you can't really use 1 to say this is reflective of the entire industry Unless you're just primarily looking at the order of these things. And if you look at the order, you can see that Google Podcasts Seems to be the number 3 podcast app.

Dave Jackson [00:29:52]:

Yeah. I'm I'm at podcastaddict.com, And according to Podcast Attic, they're number 1. Now they may have gone to the same school of marketing as Iheartradio because, you know, they're number 1 in podcasting. All the stats we just read prove that. Right? It is one I hear a lot when, like, when you're reading those stats. It's like, Okay. There's Podcast Attic again and Pocket Cast. Those seem to be the 2 that aren't Spotify that show up a lot.

Dave Jackson [00:30:18]:

So It'll be interesting to see how this shakes out in 2024. Now I realize that sounds like so far away, it's like two and a half months, You know, depending on when they do this, you know, it's October, so we got November December and whatever's left of October as we record this. And then 2024 is, you know, knocking at the door. Congratulations. We're all gonna drop 40 pounds and start a podcast because that's what happens in January. So for me, last year, I looked and I had 6,000 downloads for The School of Podcasting that weren't from Apple and Spotify, And so that'd be my other thing to just throw in here as a tangent that if you're not in all the apps, be in all the apps because It only you only have to do that once, and, you know, if you get 10 downloads from Boom Play, which is in Africa. That's in people you didn't have before. So

Daniel J. Lewis [00:31:12]:

Yeah. And even if you think about something like, well, I don't like the experience for my listeners on such and such app, And that that's a very good thought to have because it says that you're thinking about your listeners more than yourself. But keep this in mind. People who listen on a particular platform, even if the experience isn't all that great, they are probably there by choice. And even if they don't mind whatever crippling effect that that particular platform has, If they can't get your podcast in that app, whether it's the only app they have, the only app they know, the or the only app they want, If your podcast isn't there, you're not gonna get them as a follower at all if you're not in their app. So, Yeah. Be everywhere with your podcast even if you don't like the listener experience. Now I know some of these apps or Forms might have certain terms and conditions that you don't want to agree to or can't, and some of them might have certain things that might be potentially detrimental to your business just to get any kind of following a particular place, but that's where you also kinda have to decide.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:32:24]:

Like, take the thing with YouTube Music, for example. What it we we still don't really know What is that experience going to be like? Because I want to know, for example, is YouTube going to make and generate the fake videos For audio podcasts, if they're going to start ingesting RSS feeds, will they either offer pass through, Which they will if you if a listener manually adds an RSS feed, it will be passed through, which is where everything is downloaded from the RSS feed. Or are they going to essentially rehost the files by making either fake video or reencoding the audio and hosting on their own platform or anything like that? And then that comes with certain costs to you. Like, any kind of dynamic content insertion that you use, whether that's for ads or anything else, That's going to break on the YouTube Music side if they are rehosting the media in whatever format. And you have to decide then as the podcaster, is the potential benefit of whatever increased audience you might get, Is that worth whatever cost you end up having to pay for or the advertising or whatever of whatever kind of black box YouTube music ends up being.

Dave Jackson [00:33:52]:

I get frustrated that we don't really know what's going on, or if they're talking with the the upper upper people, it's not trickling down, And, you know, we just wanna be prepared and so we can make the best choices both as podcasters and as listeners because like you said, it's like I we mentioned earlier, you know, I'm I'm not a queue kinda guy, but some people might absolutely love that so that's why they're on a app that I'm like, wait. You use that app? You know? So everybody has their own preference, but, I know I'm gonna start using subscribe on Android. It's like here, there are other apps available that I'm not familiar with, but you might be, so go and click on those. So I

Daniel J. Lewis [00:34:33]:

I do think, in a way, This could be generally good for the industry as a whole, maybe not for some of us individual podcasters. But you look at Spotify, And I know we we hate on Spotify for many good reasons, but Look at how popular Spotify is for consuming podcasts. They're the number 2 place, And they don't even have all of the podcasts in their platform. Why are they number 2? That could be for many reasons, but one of the reasons I Suspect is that they already had so many people using Spotify to consume music, and then podcasts were added to that. Maybe some recommendations and discovery and marketing here and there along with that and all of that. Okay. For whatever reason, though, Spotify was huge for that, and so now it's number 2 by a long shot above Google Podcasts as number 3. So if Google Podcasts moves everyone over to YouTube Music or maybe YouTube also, I that's the other thing I'm kind I'm kind of or confused about is how much is this going to be just like an automatic crossover? Just like we always say Amazon Music slash Audible.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:35:53]:

Are we going to have to say YouTube slash YouTube music? Is it basically the same but different player experiences, or are they Independent directories of each other. Whatever the case, though. The point is that having podcasts In a place where people are already going for mostly audio entertainment, maybe some video entertainment, Having podcasts alongside that sounds like a good thing. It certainly helped when iTunes Launched with support for podcasts, it certainly helped when Spotify included podcasts right there inside of the same Spotify app. And now that's Most of the average people I talk to out there in the world away from the podcasting bubble, when I ask them what apps they use to listen to podcasts. Most of them are saying Spotify. I I don't dig so much into why Spotify because I wanna get triggered or trigger myself. But I think then as much as there are concerns About the future of podcast on Android and what this will do to the industry and all of that, and and totally legitimate concerns, fears, worries, Some of them may be not so legitimate.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:37:10]:

As much as there might be of that out there, this could be a good thing and maybe Finally, be the right thing that Google is doing to help podcasts because you look at everything that they've done in the past. Like, the most prominent thing was Google Podcasts, a separate app whose functionality was built into Android but never really exposed, And they never gave it prominence. It was never a preinstalled icon on the apps. So podcast discovery within Android was not very organic, but it could be now with mute YouTube Music. I also kind of wonder, is this very much more of a money play for Google because you see what they do to monetize stuff on YouTube. They could be doing that now with Podcasts, audio podcasts through YouTube Music and YouTube, and maybe even Inserting ads inside of the middle of a podcast or, like, pausing the play of a podcast to then play an ad just like they do with YouTube. And I would hope that the podcaster would have some control over that. That does present some monetization opportunities for podcasters, sure, but Probably don't expect very much, but I also kind of wonder with YouTube Music as a music consumption app Where it really lists in dominance and is Google trying to make YouTube Music for music more popular by bringing everyone who listens to podcasts over to it.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:38:49]:

Like, for me, I do not have the YouTube Music app installed On my phone. The only reason I go to YouTube well, to listen to a specific song that I don't have access to from somewhere else because you can generally do that for free on YouTube. Whereas all the other platforms, you can't really jump to The full version of a song, a specific song, without being a paying member, but you can get that through YouTube because of the ads and stuff. So all of that kinda jumbled thought. I am generally hopeful, but also very tentative Because we've seen how Google has botched things in the past. But then again, FeedBurner is still around And recently updated, and we thought they would kill off FeedBurner years ago, and they updated it recently. Gave it a Huge update recently. And so I'm not gonna be one of those who says that Google hates RSS.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:39:49]:

I don't think they do. I think They are very much business minded, not so much content minded. And I think they are making a business decision with this, but I'm hopeful that we'll get content benefits.

Dave Jackson [00:40:07]:

Yeah. That's I never thought of that. This might just be The big PR play to get people to start using YouTube music, I have it because It's part of YouTube Red, and I could not take the ads on YouTube. Eventually, I was like, fine. Just take my money, but and the other day, I I did start using it, and I noticed that anything under podcast was a video because, you know, it's the whole YouTube and Google have deemed everything a podcast, so everything's Podcast. So that part was was a little weird, but I I never thought about that because I've I I have that app, but I never use it, And maybe that's what this is all about. We want people to use YouTube music because it adds value to being a YouTube Red subscriber. It's one of the bonuses that nobody's using, and maybe if we throw podcasts in there, it it it's weird.

Dave Jackson [00:40:57]:

It'll actually make YouTube Red more valuable Because that's one of the perks is YouTube Music.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:41:02]:

But is the player experience for podcast going to somehow have any benefit For RED because, like, on Spotify, I don't believe you get any benefit by subscribing to Spotify as a podcast listener.

Dave Jackson [00:41:20]:

No. You still get all the Joe Rogan ads.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:41:23]:

And maybe the same thing on YouTube music. But, Like, even that experience that you mentioned where even when you've looked for a podcast, you find a video, that's the experience right now. And I again, we don't know what the experience will actually be like when they start ingesting RSS feeds, but I really think that they're doing it like that right now Because that's what shows off something good. They don't want people at least right now, they don't really want The algorithms show it. They don't want people to have to watch fake video. So when you search for a podcast, YouTube is going to want to Show you something, especially because when they have your visual attention, that also helps with advertising because when they insert an ad, it's very visual. Yeah. And you'll be more engaged with the ad if you're looking at it instead of listening to it.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:42:17]:

But that's the experience right now because That's the kind of content that's on there, the good content. If they make YouTube music more audio friendly And even just podcasts on YouTube and YouTube Music make it audio focused, I could foresee a much better experience then For listening instead of watching real or fake video. And that's what I'd love to see is, Alright. Give us a YouTube interface that's optimized for audio, maybe even audio live streaming someday. That would be really nice to be able to do. So Imagine YouTube but without the 16 by 9 ratio large image, but instead a smaller audio only player in the apps or On the website, that might be what we'd see, and that's what I'd hope we'd see. And that could significantly change that experience that you just now described, Potentially making it much better for people, but we don't know.

Dave Jackson [00:43:18]:

Yeah. With chapters and playlists and Speed up and snooze and all of the all the other features that we see on all the other apps. So, well, In the meantime, we'll just hold our breath and cross our fingers and our toes and everything else you have to cross. So, if you are an Android person, and let us know. You can send us a boostagram and let us know what app you are using If you're on Android, and maybe there's 1 out there that we've missed that you guys you guys keep talking about Podcast Addict and podcast. You need to use, you know, blah blah blah, something that we were Unaware of, so send us a boost to Graham and let us know.

Daniel J. Lewis [00:44:00]:

We have 500,000,000 people downloaded Google Podcasts, 10,000,000 downloaded Podcast Addict. Certainly, hundreds of thousands of opportunities for another podcast app to come along and Plenty of opportunities for you to boost the podcast too. We didn't get any boostograms to read out this time, but we do appreciate the streaming stats, And we appreciate your sharing this podcast, especially that's the best thing that you can do for us. So if you're looking there at the buttons in your podcast app and you're wondering, I wanna support these guys, What should I do? Well, if you don't have the boost button and you don't wanna get a Better podcast app, then click the share button And share it in podcast communities, share it with other podcasters. That would really help us and help bring some of this information, help bring the future to podcasters.

Dave Jackson [00:44:49]:

There you go. Well, I think that's it. Episode 31 is in the can. We'll see you again real soon with another episode of The future of podcasting. Keep boosting

Daniel J. Lewis [00:44:58]:

and keep podcasting.