All right , Kevin .
Hey ,
hey , we're back for another quick cast , this time Alban's out . You were out last time , I think .
Y eah , it's like spring and late summer seem to be all the time when different Buzzsprout employees are in and out of the office . Lots of vacation time around those two times of the year .
Hey was seeing a lot of out banners across profile images in our company chat so I was like , wow , I don't know if anyone's in the office today .
Are your kids out of school this week ?
Yeah , they're out of school this week .
Are you guys doing anything ?
We have done a few things , but today is actually my daughter's 13th birthday . Oh fun , oh my . Yeah , so I'm officially a parent of a teenager and yeah , so it's been a busy week because it's spring break and also my daughter's like big birthday , and so what about you ? Have you had anything going on for your spring break ?
I did . Last week was my kid's spring break and luckily they all had the same spring break , which hasn't happened since my daughter went to college . So we took advantage of it and we headed out West and did a little skiing , which was a lot of fun . Weather was great . A lot of fun . You went to Montana right , I did , and I can't believe .
It's the first trip I've taken in since , like the pandemic hit where all of our flights were on time . Oh really , yeah . No delays , no like maintenance issues . No crew didn't show up . All the stuff that's been going wrong on every single flight I've taken For some reason . I think they're finally getting the kinks worked out .
Maybe , hopefully it's been at the same time we're seeing like planes flipping over on runways and I was going to say catching fire and all that , so a different set of problems , but luckily I was never affected by any of that stuff .
Yeah , I was going to say , of all the years for you to finally not have something go wrong , I'm surprised it was this one .
Right . So spring break is a lot of travel happens . It's a great time to listen to podcasts , and I saw on the outline that you want to talk about podcast apps .
Yeah , so this quick cast was really inspired by listener feedback that we've gotten . Got a couple of family messages about podcast listening , so I thought you know what ? We'll take our 10 minutes , We'll hop into this and give some feedback and ideas on how to fix issues that some people are experiencing .
Okay , I think the first one that I actually want to get into Peter McCauley from British Columbia . He wrote in a couple episodes ago and we addressed this on SoundOff , but I don't know if he stuck around for SoundOff . So he wrote in again and said I appreciate subject matter , but there are no chapter markers nor a transcript in this podcast over an hour .
And , yeah , the podcast is long , which is why we use chapter markers and transcripts . So I'm thinking Peter must be using a podcast listening app or web player that does not have chapter markers or transcripts on it .
Yeah , that sounds right . The most common one you know for Buzzcast listeners is the Apple podcast app , which does show chapter markers . It's a little bit funky how you get to them . It's not a real obvious thing that you could tap on and I don't even use Apple podcasts enough to tell you offhand how to get to it , do you ?
Um , yeah , so when you have the episode playing and you're on like the now playing screen screen , there's a little menu on the bottom right hand corner of your listening app . You can click on that and then it'll show the chapter markers . And then there's also a little on the left hand side of the bottom menu bar .
There's like a little quotations thing and you can see the transcript that Apple generates , because they don't take our transcript that we edit . So if you're on Apple , you can do that . However , it's a little bit tricky because if you use the Apple web player , they don't have chapter markers or transcripts .
Yeah , well , here's the thing that really confused me about the message that Peter sent in , and it's that he's aware of chapter markers and aware of transcripts .
Oh yeah .
Which makes me think that other podcasts you listen to you are seeing them .
I didn't even think about that .
I really want to hear back from Peter , Like what app are you using to listen to Buzzcast ?
Yeah .
And why are we not seeing chapter markers and transcripts ? Because , again , presumably you're seeing them with other podcasts . So in Apple Podcasts we see them In Pocket Casts , we see them In Overcast , we see them Spotify we're .
This show is not actually on Spotify , but we do have lots of shows that are hosted on Buzzsprout that use chapter markers and we see them on Spotify . So , almost all the apps . Of course , we fully test and everything . So , yeah , I'm curious what app are you using and why are you not seeing them ?
This actually reminds me . Pocket Cast also released a new web player . They announced it , I think , a few weeks ago or something like that , and I was really excited because I was like , oh good , so Apple has a web player , pocket Cast has a web player , and it's another podcasting 2.0 supporting application that is going to be open to a lot more people .
However , when I went to their web player , they also don't have chapter markers or transcripts , and so I'm not sure what's going on with these web players that they're not supporting that . I don't know if it's that much extra effort or I don't know .
Yeah , I mean , everything's some level of effort . The transcripts , like getting it to follow along with the audio I could see how that could be a pretty big hurdle . That along with the audio I could see how that could be a pretty big hurdle .
And taking that on in your native app first and then bringing it to your web player later , that could make a lot of sense . For a lot of teams the chapter marker stuff seems simple enough , but again , these companies all work different ways and so they have to prioritize stuff .
I imagine chapter markers for sure would be coming to both web players at some point for Apple and Pocket Cast . But the transcripts in Pocket Cast , the app , don't even follow along with the audio right now . Now Apple Podcast does , and it's a really beautiful experience .
I could see them saying we really want to get this right before we bring it to market and so it's going to take us a little bit longer . But Pocket Cast , it should have been a pretty quick thing .
But maybe Pocket Cast is just like let's put out a web player , let's see what sort of traction it gets , how many people are using it , and then we'll take the next step of investment if we see it's a popular thing .
Yeah , All right . So the other family message that I want to talk about is from Alan from California , who said how come your player stops when I navigate away and does not let me resume . It starts from the beginning and I have to find where I left off .
That one is a puzzler Again . Unless he's using , he's going straight to the Buzzcast website .
That's what I'm inferring .
Yeah , that's what you're thinking .
I'm thinking so .
And so if you have that player open in a tab and you click play and then you open up another tab and continue to browse the web , it should continue to play just fine , unless another tab starts taking over the audio .
So if you went to YouTube or something , that might take over the audio and pause it , and then you could flip back to the tab and hit play again , in which the Buzzcast episode would take back over . If you close that tab , though , and then you open that another tab later and come back , it's not going to remember where you were .
There probably are some ways that we could accomplish that technically , but , as far as I know , no web players do it Like it would involve us , you know , dropping cookies on your screen or on your computer and then trying to resume from that location , and it would be technically challenging . And , again , it's not a big thing that web players do .
This is a great area , for if you want that type of experience . This is where native apps really start to shine . They're just set up . The technology is a little easier to implement stuff like that , and which brings me to this other thing , which is like native apps in general . Do you remember like okay , iphone comes out around 2007 or so .
App stores launched roughly two years later 2009 , ish . And everybody wants native apps for everything . So all the software that they use , they're like where's the native app for my phone ? I don't want to use the web view . I don't want to use the mobile website , I want to use a web app .
It's a better experience and I'm feeling like things are starting to shift now .
They don't want the app , so you don't want another app on their phone .
People don't want to install another app on their phone . They have so many apps on their phone already .
That's how I feel .
I just want to use the mobile web . I just thought that was so interesting and so unfortunately , like these companies , apple and Google with their Android platform have invested so much in making the native app experience is so great that it's hard to mimic a lot of that same exact functionality through a web app .
But we are starting to see I think the companies are starting to see that people more and more want a really great mobile like web experience just as , and they want that to mimic the functionality you get from a native app without having to install an app .
And so they are starting to give us more tools that we can use to make those experiences better , but they're not all here yet , so I think that this is why Apple started doing like the stacking of the apps , and now you can have like folders , and so instead of having like a million apps on your screen , you can now have them all individually organized and
stuff . But yeah , it's , it is starting to shift to where you have to have an app to order , like McDonald's , and they push it . Every single time I go through the drive-thru , or like every when I travel , I have an entire folder full of travel apps that I have to have just to get through a freaking airport .
It's so funny because it is getting to the point where , like , I'm resisting using apps . I mean , even if I watched YouTube , I will go to Safari and type in youtubecom to use that experience instead of the app which is installed on my iPhone . I just I don't know , there's something about it . I just don't want to get on the app . Yeah .
Well being in the podcast business . I do have a folder dedicated to podcast apps and I've got 30 podcast apps in there , but I do take the one which currently for me right now is Pocket Cast . That's my daily driver podcast app and I do break that out of that podcast folder and it sits on my home screen and so I get that .
People don't necessarily always wanna install another app you already have . If you're on Apple , anyway , you already have the Apple Podcast app . That's loaded on the phone by default . I think you can hide it . I don't even know if you can fully delete it , but you can hide it if you don't want it . On Android , I don't think there is a native one anymore .
They got rid of Google Podcasts so now it's like YouTube Music , I think is kind of their default podcast app .
Yeah , I think that's the one that's going to be stock on , like Google Pixel and stuff like that .
Yeah , so if anybody's listening and wants a recommendation for good podcast apps , the Apple Podcast app is great , so I really like Pocket . Cast I also like Cast-O-Matic is a great one . It's a very small , not very popular podcast app , but I like it a lot . Yeah , overcast is a popular one that a lot of people like .
It wasn't a good fit for me , but I know a lot of people like it .
Yeah .
True Fans is a web app that you can install , and so it kind of functions like a native app after you install it , and I think Sam has been talking a lot about actually making a native version of it . Oh , really so that might be native soon . Those are the top of mind ones that come to me . Yeah , do you have any that you like .
Much to Kevin's dismay . I love using Spotify for podcasts . I really enjoy it . I also love using Apple Podcasts . True fans was top of my list , especially as a web player , if anyone is wanting to listen on your web browser .
And then the other one that I really highly recommend , especially if you have an Amazon prime account , is Amazon music , and this is specifically because they have a deal with networks like Wondery .
They have a deal with networks like Wondery where , if you have an Amazon Prime account , you can get the bonus , premium content and ad-free listening in the Amazon Music app , which a lot of people don't know , but it's kind of a cool tip .
Yeah , that's a good bonus feature . I'm surprised that the Amazon Podcast app is still not a very popular app . Yeah , but you would think there's so many people who have Prime . Almost everybody has Prime or uses somebody's Prime account . Oh yeah , you would think that it would be more popular .
Yeah , my husband . He's recently been on a huge smart list kick and he told me he's like I binged through all their stuff . So I think I'm going to have to go and subscribe and I'll get all the bonus ones . And so I think I'm going to have to , you know , go and subscribe and I'll get all the bonus ones . And I'm like , no , no , no , we pay for .
Amazon Prime , get on Amazon Music and , sure enough , we have all the bonus episodes , so it's pretty cool .
Okay , so you mentioned Spotify , and I think you're right . Spotify is doing a really good job of making a better podcast listening experience within the Spotify app . I don't look at it all that often , honestly , but here's what you should know about Spotify is not every show is listed on Spotify .
Not every show is listed on Apple , and , of course , there'll be exclusions , but specifically this show that you're listening to right now is not on Spotify , no . So if you want Spotify to be your daily driver , you're still going to need something else , because , of course , you don't want to give up Buzzcast .
But no , absolutely not Like Spotify Buzzcast . It's easy , easy choice .
All right . So there's our our quick cast roundup on podcast apps . Hopefully y'all find that helpful and if you have any more questions about podcast apps , shoot them over and we will talk about them in the next episode .
Sounds good . Also , we're seeing some more messages roll in for our last sound off question , where we asked you to tell us something about yourself that stats will not tell us , and we're really enjoying seeing those . But we want to get some more , so be sure to get those in over this weekend and we'll talk about it on the next episode .
So until next time , keep podcasting .