Hello. This is Kyle Bondo, and this is Timothy Kim O'Brien. And you're listening to Pod Rec, the podcast that helps you navigate the podcasting industry. And today, we're gonna talk about the most crowded categories and why you should care about how you categorize your podcast. Welcome to Pod rat. And in this episode here today, we're gonna discuss the most crowded categories in Apple Podcasts, and we're gonna show you how you can utilize strategies to make it a lot better for yourself,
to help you be that big fish in a small pond if that's what you really need or If you're comfortable being a small fish in a big pond, you can go ahead and do that too. But our article here today we do wanna give credit where credit is due. It's from Dan Meisner, and he's over at Pacific content. And just recently well, recently as of October of last year, he did this wonderful article really detailing all these podcasts that we're looking at here. And he's looking at the categories.
Now, Kyle, for podwrecht, I I gotta say you set this up here for us what category are we in in Apple podcasts? Oh, that's a that's a tough 1. It's it's weird. We're in technology. I know of all places you think about where we would be at. Technology doesn't really sound like, but there is a category, a subcategory, technology for podcasting. So if you think about the technology around the medium in which we exist in, we are a technology
thing. But it's like if you're gonna, like, I'm gonna start a podcast. I'm gonna be a podcaster. Where would you look? Well, I mean, it kinda makes sense. But Some of this is art. Some of this is is, I guess, you could say, is kind of like business in a sense. Right? You gotta do some business skills. I'm actually you gotta do some research. Maybe there's some writing. But yeah. Technology.
We Well, that makes that makes sense to you and I, you know, when we're starting this up. But When we're looking at this article here by Dan Meisner, let's go ahead and take a look into we'll open this bad boy up and see what we got. Now he's talking about 500000 shows in Apple Podcasts. We know that number's a lot bigger. We're sitting here at about 650, almost 700000 shows. And he analyzed just under 790000 approximately.
I'm trying to be very exact here because We all know that Tim likes to be exact. He likes to have good numbers in front of them. Technically correct. The best kind of correct That's kinda correct is that. It's not ubiquitous. I'd like to be very correct according to my uncle Bob. But anyhow, he's got some wonderful charts here for us. And there was some surprises when we were talking about this in pre show. Right, Kyle? Oh, I think the the biggest surprise is is,
you know, what would Jesus do? And what Jesus would do is he'd start a podcast because Christianity, boom, Bob's your uncle, number 1 category, you know, buy a buy a nose. Maybe night night, Bob, maybe like a whole length because that category is exploding. And we we and we kinda know I mean, the dirty little secret is is Tim and I do a a ton of research behind the scenes. We kinda know why Christianity is exploding. When we're talking about the category of religion and spirituality.
Colon, Christianity, This is a category that churches. And in particular, American churches have realized that, hey, It's hard to get butts and seats. It's hard to get people in church. But people love their phones. If we create a podcast of our sermons, Maybe they'll listen there too. It's a way to spread the word, spread their message, and the category is definitely showing that they have really embraced the whole podcasting, the medium.
Now, Kyle, we are not such justing that people should listen to indirect while in church. We're not justing that at all. We're not. But we're we're not. But what we are telling you people is this. Think about it. Now I used to live in Abilene, Texas when I was back in my Air Force days and then had 1 of the highest per capita churches in in town of about a hundred thousand people. There was a church on every street corner. I am not kidding you. There's a lot of churches there.
And on Sunday, it was just a nightmare for all the traffic and all that good stuff. So in some areas, some places, it just makes sense. Like like you said, it's hard to get butts and seats, you know, as Sunday morning. You're watching your football games. You're, you know, recapping from the hockey the night before, the NBA, all that good stuff. And it just makes sense. You know, hit them where they live. It's an e you know, podcasting is an easy technology.
Now that's what that mean what does that mean to us, Kyle? That means that there's a lot of podcast out there, they're about Christianity. The the number 1 category is Christianity. So you're gonna be in a big pool. And when you're starting off, you're tiny tiny tiny tiny little fish unless you're a pastor or reverend or whatnot that has
a captive audience right there and says, hey, listen. By the way, if you like today, Sermon, or if you fell asleep through today, Sermon, you can listen to it all week long. Well, right before you can go to work or, you know, in your commute time. Now myself, I don't go to church. But if I was to go ahead and do something like that, That would be perfect for me because then I could listen to it in my commute time and I can leave my Sundays to be with my family.
I think you spot on with that. And and and top of that, I think that the Christianity category plays well to localized podcasting. If people say, well, localized podcasting doesn't work, I defy you to look at the Christianity Podcast and tell me that the people listening are you have some connection to the church of that podcast is is is coming out of that. The the connection to the podcast that's coming out of that church. I'll bet you
that there is a connection that people are away. Like you said, they don't wanna watch the football game. They're doing something else they got. I mean, in the in the 20 19 era of technology in people's lives. Sometimes the show up on Sunday thing isn't doesn't work out. We're this mobile community now. We're moving around. We're going places. We're traveling. Now, I can listen to us. If I go if I wanna go and hear my sermon, I can't because I'm, you know, I'm in L, Atlanta or something.
I can go and listen to the podcast. It's almost like be in there. So I don't miss anything. So the FOMO of, oh, you do you hear the sermon the other day? Oh, man. You missed it. Should have been in church, like, you know what? Not only I hear that, I've heard the last 400 of them. So I'm more involved in you because you only come to the church for 6 months. I mean, you can really it can really get really interesting of the dynamics out there.
But the locality thing only works so far because if you look at the you take the chart and you flip it upside down, who do you see at the really very, very bottom, Tim? Well, see, there's so far down there. I'm gonna tell you my eyesight is bad, and the chart that I have is not very good. So what is down at the bottom there. Kyle, is it the government category? Bingo. It is. Is the government organizations colon regional? Now, this is your homeowner's association podcast.
And of course, it's hey, this is this is Bob. And Bob and Tom, and we're gonna talk about the pool rules today. So so Tom tell us in this meeting to order. Alright? Alright? Who's here? Nobody. It's just Bob and Tom in the meeting room with 40 chairs. No 1 showed up. So the HOA is gonna have a new pool policy. Tom, what will that be?
Kyle, how do you know that my HOA meets like that? Oh my god. You've got it perfect. You know, we actually or my HOA meets in the firehouse down the road because they figure they have better coffee, better food, better chili. But you're right on you're right on the spot there, Kyle. You know, it's just the the locality
is really dependent on what people can get fired up on. People can get fired up on religion all the time. Politics well, local politics is very difficult for people to get fired up unless you're talking like school board or property taxes. Apart from that, who cares? 1 thing that I thought was really interesting is the number 2 is music. And I have a theory behind that. So this is gonna be Tim's theory on why music is number 2 in the podcast charts. And my theory is it's due to SoundCloud.
With some the the explosion that SunCloud happened for musicians. People were using that as their podcast. So every time Dick and Harry that can get some some DJ equipment or anything like that and make some music, and that's also a very cheap way to become a DJ has their own podcast. And you were even talking about DJ Tietso
have been his podcast out there, you know, playing new music all the time and playing the latest hits and the club hits, that kinda makes sense to me. And I think that's what's driving that number. Is I mean, I know a lot of the other shows talk about, oh, SoundCloud's going down, going down. They're losing money, but there's so many people already in it locked in. And the big name stars
are, you know, are keeping that thing afloat with their monthly dues and all that kind of jazz. That makes sense that music is number 2, and I think that's why it is. And I I think you're absolutely right. In fact, you even said DJT is still very almost like you you put the Ooma Lyle there was perfect. He'll he'll appreciate that. D j at TS too? A hundred bucks. A hundred bucks, buddy.
But you're right because here's something that that the music category does. Not only is this I I would even call this you could even call this category, the SoundCloud category. I really think so. I really do think that that there is a big there's a lot of evidence that says that SoundCloud is really powerful in that category of what they're pushing out.
The other thing, however, is that if you're a little network or you're a little label and you wanna get the your music out there and you a lot of little bands that no one's ever heard of. Hey,
how about have a podcast that features all your new artists that you can then share all sorts of people. That's that's really kind of a cool strategy number 1. Number 2, if you take the DJTS dose thing, he goes and he creates a whole bunch of his songs, and then he goes and pulls songs out that you haven't heard in 20 years. And he goes, hey, here's something from the vault.
Paul Oakenfield does this too. And they pull songs that you haven't even heard out before where they're going, hey, hit me up on Twitter and tell me a song that you love. That you haven't heard in a while, and I'll put it on a podcast. And now you're getting fresh music with the old music, so you're you're going back almost the way a podcaster does than doing the best of in the music category. And they're putting out hour long, 2 hour long podcast of this music
that you can listen to in the gym, you can listen to in the car, you can listen to I I I use this stuff, you know, personally, to go to sleep, this stuff. It's just it's melodic. Tempo based. It just puts me right to the only, like, hey, other words, or to write. I love listening to some of this stuff when I'm writing
because I don't have to worry about you know, the commercials are tiny. If there's commercials at all, usually, it's it's just kind of like a sound bite that says, hey, who owns this music? Like, you know, you know, you're listening to ADHD. You know? And so you're doing you're doing that kind of thing. Club life, I think, is his podcast. So let me make sure to get that right. But you're you're you're in control
of your own tiny radio station in a sense. With your own music being played, where people are definitely going after your sound. And now you have a captive audience that's really doing it for you. I think that is a huge I mean, if you're a music person, Number 2 category. It's a huge category. A lot of people are in there. And I I have a feeling that if you to niche down in that category, you're gonna get really specific about your label. You know, you don't wanna just have everybody on your label. You're very specific, but why don't you tell us, Tim, since you're an improv guy
and you're into, you know, Comedy is kind of your thing. I would say, the first thing I knew about you was you talking about Chicago and the improv troop you were with, Tell me why comedy versus society and culture of TV and film, news and politics. Why is comedy number 3? Well, comedy
covers a lot of different things there, Kyle. I mean, you can have comedy TV shows, comedy culture, You're talking about, you know, your SNLs, you're talking about your stand up comics, you're talking about your money pythons right there. Everybody likes a good joke. I mean, think about it. You're standing by the water cooler and, you know, this happened really in the seventies and eighties. Everyone was talking about the Saturday night like, Saturday night live jokes.
Now even in our little podunk town of Fredericksburg, we have a comedy club here that, you know, meets up Friday and Saturday nights. I don't know. I'm a parent of small children. I don't go out to comedy that much. But as soon as I say, second city, everybody knows who I'm talking about. Everybody knows you know, what a good show is. I say SNL. I say second city. I say SCTV out of Canada. And and there you go. You've got Adam Sandler out there. You've got just a a ton of people
that are doing it and think of it this way. When you're doing a comedy club show, you're you have to compete with the other comedians right there in the show. For yourself. If you're doing stand up comedy, you compete with the other comedians there. When you're doing a podcast, it's all you
it is, you know, it is a half hour of of just your your stuff. It's 10 minutes. Whatever you want it to be. It could be nice and polished and good to go. Now what you may be missing if you're not doing a live show. And we talked about live shows in in our previous episodes here.
If you're not doing a live show, then it's kinda hard for the audience to know when to when to laugh and when not to. And you may bom out. But if you're doing a live show, if you're being kinda brave like that, Why? It's just the the sky's the lemon. Everybody loves a good comedy show. Everyone wants to be uplifted and have a good laugh. What do you think about that guy? I mean, you're you're kind of a funny guy too, really.
Only thing. You make me laugh every day. You know, when we do the pre show, you're always making me laugh. Well, I think you're I think I think there is a correlation between the the kind of thing I talked about the music and comedy is if you're a comedy artist, if you're a comedian, the captive audience element is essential. Because if you look at, like, the Chris Hardwicks and
yeah. That's all I can remember at the top of my head right now that you know, the Lewis CKs, the, you know, even George Carlin, you remember back in the day when George Carlin used to release, he'd have his comedy specials.
That you had to go to live. And then he released the big vinyl record. You could listen to him. I mean, I'm date myself here. Right? But my my mom love George Carlin. And so we had the big final record, and then we had a cassette tapes. We play the cassette tapes all the time. And, never once, did we see a live show? The only George Carlin I ever saw was seeing him on the Johnny Carson show, and then on the Jayleno show, where he do a comedy bit here special, he'd be on was it, like, Africa live or the the AIDS live shows, or he was with Robbie Williams? And a couple other, you know, those comedian shows where they all get together, or you see him as
1 of the sitcoms like that, and then he'd have a live show you never get to go to. And then he releases the album that you hear more and more and more than you would ever hear him live. Well, I think this is just the evolution of that same concept. Is a comedian has to be he has to be everywhere? He has to be on TV. He has to be on tour, and he has to be accessible through some kind of of medium and podcasting. Lends it so easily.
To, hey, just close to my pocket. You think I'm funny? They show up to the ChuckLE Hut, and they go, who the heck are you? And I go, oh, I'm Kyle Bondo. I'm a comedian. They're like, are you? And they're like, Have you heard my podcast? And they're like, oh, hold on a second here. Listen a couple jokes. Yeah. I guess, you're pretty funny. Alright. We got set in 10 minutes. Are you ready? Like, hello, Kyle's headlining at the chuckle hat now. Chuckle hat. Hundred bucks buddy.
And I'm sure that's a place here in Fredericks. I'm sure that's a place. Right? I think I remember hearing that somewhere. That's the same concept is is you're you're everywhere and comedians can control the message then. Because rather than being in a lineup of other comedians like a showcase.
You can be your own guy where p u can build a fan base to when you show up to the town that you wanna go do your your show at, it's not just 10 people to go, oh, Chris Hardwreker. Doesn't need that guy who was on that show, on MTV, or someone learned comedy central, or something. Yo. Now it's like, oh, I've heard his podcast.
I listen to it every single time it comes out. And now he's gonna be in my hometown. I already bought tickets, early bird here I come. Right? It's like that. You're building a fan base from the ground up. And this comedy category being so full as it is, is every other comedian has realized that that is a path to becoming a star. And there is there is no limit to what what feels in that category. This is because it's cheap, I can do jokes
You can either like him or don't. I get instant feedback from my audience. It's perfect. That explains this category perfectly. Now, Kyle, we're gonna go ahead and do a ubiquitous pivot here. That's to us. And we're gonna talk about total number of episodes. And again, it's the same top 3, Christianity Music. Look at comedy. Oh, but there's such What's the catch? There is a catch on that. Christianity
has 3 times the number of episodes as music or common. Okay. Now this time, you get to explain to me why is that? Why is Christianity blowing these guys out of the water? What's going on there? Well, Kyle, we always talk about having evergreen content. Right? So with Christianity, let's think about it here now. Back in my day when I used to go to church, there's 66 books to the bible. Right?
So, boom, you have 66 books that you can focus on. If you just wanna talk the the text of the bible right there. You've got thousands of years of history with Christianity. You know, whether it's starting with Christ 2000, whatever odd years ago, you've got a lot of history you can focus in on different sex of Christianity, sex s
e c t s, not s e x. Thanks for clarifying that. Yes. You just need to make sure. You can even talk about sex in Christianity. I just heard that Well, that's right. I just heard our listener spit his coffee out. So Yeah. How do we clear that up? But, I mean, you can talk about, you know, sex in in religion. You you have a a ton of content. You can talk about Christianity and government. You can talk about social issues. You don't You're not limited to the text.
Christianity, because you have so many different, you have got your Baptist, you got your Methodist, you got your Lutheran, you got your Catholic, you've got all these different denominations. That's probably a better word, denominations versus sex. And, you know, my my Midwest accent is killing it. But you have all these different denominations that you can focus on and then you have, you know, the the fourth
methodist Church of Cincinnati and the third methodist Church of Cincinnati. You have different churches within that denomination in the same city that can have their own podcast out. And that's I'm just talking about the pastors, you know, having their own podcast. If there's any pastors listening to us, we'd be happy to help you start your own podcast. But that's not why we're here today. We're here to, you know, say, hey, listen, this is a super saturated
category. There's a ton of episodes out there. There could be a ton more. Because people really are are fired up. Again, it's being fired up fired up about your subject. You know, this goes all the way back to episode 1. We're gonna have special music for this 1 of these days, Kyle. We are. We need special music. Why are you doing this podcast? Oh, go ahead and do the music. Thank you, Kyle. There'll be party on party on Tim.
But, I mean, this is something that, you know, why are you doing the podcast? If you're doing the podcast, if you feel in your heart that you're gonna go out and save the world and all that good stuff, then you're gonna do this podcast, and you're gonna try to get reach as many people as you can. And if that's why you're doing it fantastic. Have had it. Knock yourself out, but realize that you're going to be matching widths with other people that have the same devotion, the same
fervr. That's a good word here for this for this. The same fervor for your subject. I think you hit on something very particular there that maybe I don't know if you intended to or not. You use the word evergreen. And you talked about the thousands years of history and the different lessons can be taught and I'm like, I think that is a key right there because
if you got a con if you got content that you can go back to over and over again, especially if you're into, you think about the Evergreen. I think Evergreen works in both the Christianity subject, the music subject and the comedy subject. Is it's evergreen in all 3. I can listen the same music over and again. I can listen to comedy multiple times. I can listen to a sermon multiple times. I have that evergreen element exists there. Plus,
here's 1 for you. Ever met a pastor who didn't like the talk. These guys like the talk. You ever get caught in the hallway at church? You ever had that experience? And the passenger comes up and says, hey, what's going on? Man, that guy can talk your ear off. Right? Because that's what you so he's not limited to Sunday. Sunday is the only time he used to talk to Kyle and Tim. No. Now with podcasting.
Now he can talk to you every other day of the week too, maybe twice on Thursdays. Right? Second Tuesdays, you know, double Wednesdays, he can just pump out content like crazy. And I think when you talk about every church getting on the bandwagon, because there's a lot of buzz in in the church world of, hey,
Sunday is not the only day anymore. If you get pot you get new in podcasting, I can record your sermon, record the video of your sermon, and port a podcast, your sermon, you can then record stuff when people aren't in the church. You can really pump a message out there that you wanna do. And these people have hook, line, and sinker, dug their teeth into podcasting. It's really strange to think about 3 times more episodes than comedy and music.
It's just it makes perfect sense that these people are if you again, Podrect is about helping use the podcaster. How what can you learn from this? Well, lesson number 1 right here. Christianity, why is it so big? Why is this so popular? These people are pumping out content. They are pumping out content hard.
That's a lesson to be learned. Maybe once a week isn't working for you and you wanna build an audience, maybe you need to do it twice a week or maybe you need to do it every day or, you know, twice a day. I mean, you can get crazy with this. But the people that are producing content are definitely living in these categories. And they seem to have a calling for it too. I mean, you know, we we market and, you know, Kyle and I will go and we'll talk to people. We, you know, we go to conferences.
We shake hands, we kiss babies, but these people are the type of people that'll come and knock on a stranger's door and say, hey, Have you heard about this? That the other thing and now they're knocking on your podcast door essentially is what they're doing? And I think it's a great thing for them. It's a great the lesson that we can take from it is alright. So maybe I'm not knocking on I'm not walking through my neighborhood and going, hey, have you heard my podcast? Maybe I'm not doing that.
But maybe in my day to day conversations with people, people I run into at the grocery store, at the DMV, you know, the driver's place. Why not strike up that conversation and go, hey, by the way, you know what? I have a tech podcast about podcasting here at Pod Rec. And have you ever heard about podcasting? And and we we can take their fervor and apply it to our own topic. Because Again, I I love going back to episode number 1. Why are you doing a podcast?
You know, if you're not, you know, marketing it, if you're not putting it up in front of anybody, it's gonna be difficult to find your podcast. You're the 1 that has to put it out there and talk about it and get on other podcasts and do other strategies. So get out there and, you know, take take take a page right out of the of the Mormons or the 7 day avenue.
They come around my house every once in a while. And fantastic. They wanna talk to their stuff rock and roll have added. I've got my tattoos. Cal is taking a picture of my t shirt that I'm wearing on right now probably be in the show notes with the skulls and everything. Definitely be on Instagram. But
you know, I think we can take a page right out of them and and, you know, we may not agree with their religion. I'm not even talking about that. Yeah. I'm talking about their marketing Right? I think your thought you're hitting on evangelism is is evangelism isn't limited to just Christianity or to religious podcasts. Evangelist style of marketing is something that works. Think about you don't hit subscribe on accident. Right? Mhmm. Well, if you can pre select people to listen to your show,
then that's an audience. You can help build and you're talking about, you know, the basically, the door to door version of that is is showing people in, like, in Apple iTunes or in 1 of the players that, hey, here's a podcast, you know, some show art catchy title? Maybe you're like, oh, may I've never heard of this church before. Click. Now, you're a member of a church. They that's 2000 miles away.
Or maybe even better. Maybe you're living in a country where, you know, if you have a bible, not only you go to jail and other bad things that happen to you, now you can get your podcast and you can listen to a podcast of the religion that you're interested in, you know, in your, you know, in your basement. Now you can be a rebel. I mean, there's a I mean, the evangelism
type thing. Think about the democratization of not only just religion now of society and culture of news and politics, of arts, of education, of science, podcasting is starting to permenate. It's becoming, here we go, word of the day, ubiquitous. And if you have to look that 1 up, don't worry about it. I'll help you out, ubiquitous. It's everywhere.
It's so everywhere that it's just expected as normal. It's like Google. You don't tell somebody to go search for something anymore. You tell someone to go Google it. Podcasting the same deal. And this this data backs that argument up hard to very, very, very hard. This is definitely if if you need ammo to say that evergreen content and and putting out content.
That's lesson 2, evergreen content and putting out con and just putting out the content and the number of content you put and the amount of content you put out. These numbers tell you There's there's the masters right there. The masters are Christianity, music, comedy, and maybe even there's a couple other ones. There's TV and film and news and politics. Right? Mhmm. Science, social, culture, that kind of thing. They're the masters. Why? They're putting out daily shows.
They're hitting you all over the place. And that is the the key there. So of the number of episodes put out, Tim, what kind of surprises did you see in this data? Did something did things jump out of the queue? Is there something you looked at? It's, like, you know, like, oh, yeah. Tole expected that? Or did you look at this and go, That's weird. What'd what'd you cut take away from that? Well, Kyle, I'm glad you brought that up because you knew I was gonna jump on this next So
it's almost like I set it up for you. Yeah. I think, you know, it's like a pigeon shooting here. It's like ducks shooting. Place, clay, clay, marble. So what we have here, Kyle, is you know, episodes per podcast kind of a thing we got going on here in Buddhism. Has more episodes per podcast.
Now, actually, Buddhism is not huge here in the good old United States But if you have, like, 2 2 Buddhist podcasts that are cranking out a thousand episodes each Well, their average episode count is a thousand. And that's gonna, you know, wipe the floor with anybody, you know, over anybody else. Versus you have, you know, the Christianity Podcasts, which you got a million and a half of those. And they put out 2 or 3
episodes each. Well, okay. So you got a million of them. I I'm doing some rough beer math here. Not on a Sunday talking about religion. Well, maybe there are podcasts out there for Christianity. They're only putting it out every Sunday. Maybe they're not doing the content thing I'm talking about. I know there are some that are. But if you look at you're talking about Buddhism? I mean, they're neck and neck. Christianity Buddhism, neck and neck in the podcast per episodes per show.
They're up there and they're blowing everybody out. It's almost like it's it's crazy how much those guys are up there. And then just below that spirituality. So it seems like in the podcasting world, that, man, we need religion because we because we got a lot of it. So there must be a demand for it. I I I I'm curious. This would be something that I would love to see someone like Pacific content too. And and if Dan Meissner, if you're listening,
I would love you for you to crunch the dead on this. Yeah. There's a lot episodes. Yeah. There's a lot of podcasts. Is anyone listening to them? I would love to know the listener data on this if whether or not these if they got, like, the Buddhist podcast with 5 people listening. And maybe in religion, maybe you only need 5 people. Right? You're just you're reaching the people that need to hear the message. Right? That's kind of the the the religion to tagline. Right?
But if you look at What's number 4? Islam. Mhmm. So you have Christianity Buddhism spirituality in Islam as the top of the top ones. What's the 1 just below that, Tim? That's the 1. That's what's the religion just below that at number 5? You got sports. And recreation and professional. Yep. So a sports recreation professional. So that means your football your your NHL, your NFL, Thank you. Hundred bucks for both of those. Your MLB, your MLS.
Or like we'd like to say around the ranch, That's called the Church of Sport Center. Oh, absolutely. You know, you got your ESPN 1, 2, 3, and 4. And then what's number 6? So we got the other church in there too. What's the other church being represented here? So the other the last 1 there is a business investing, if I'm seeing that correctly. Money money money. So you have the 4 you have the 3 big religions
out there. I think the only thing we're missing is is Judaism, which I think it's like it's like maybe number 10. And so it's up there as well. You're looking at Buddhism Christianity and Islam. Right? Mhmm. And then you have spirituality, which is kind of a, you know, it's a it's the it's religion light. Right? It's it's Well, that's your unitarians. That's your people that don't go to an organized religion.
They read books, they do crystals, they do Terra -- Yeah. -- oh, wait. Yeah. That's me. Never mind. Sorry. Half the guilt, all the love. Right? That's crazy right now. We I used to refer affectionately refer to that as the bird and bunny nut society as my mom was a big member of those guys. No offense to bird and bunny nuts, but We love you guys. Right? Huggatory. Anyway, the sports is is the next 1 and investing is the next 1. I think it's it's telling of
where people's interests are because it says, you wouldn't be putting out episodes if you didn't have listeners. Would you? See if you can wrap my head around tell me wrap up my head around that, Tim. If you have no listeners, but you're pumping out content like crazy, you know, is Do you hear the tree falling in the woods? I mean, what's there's a there's like a strange
correlation here that I don't see the data on is that these guys are putting out content like crazy. And there's a lot of shows. And I've been thinking that there wouldn't be shows if there wasn't an audience. But in this particular these particular categories at the top, do they care if they have an audience? And that goes back to the evangelistic nature of it, especially on the religion side of the house. You know, they think it's their moral duty
to go ahead and do that. Now, you know, a couple of things that you're not allowed to talk about at work or you shouldn't talk about at work. Religion and politics. That's right. So if you in polite society, if you don't talk about that at work, then why not, you know, you can be at work and have your headphones on and listen to it or, you know, throw it on your
on your laptop there. Although your IT people are gonna say, no, no, that's using up too much bandwidth. Use your, you know, data plan for your cell phone. And and don't screw with the, you know, the the bandwidth for our our systems here. And, of course, I'm horrible at that. You know, I have my IT guy come by and he's seen YouTube up, he's seen Apple Podcasts up and all that kind of jazz. I'm using up the bandwidth. But
you can't you you you really can't talk about that stuff at work. So you might as well listen to it in the privacy of your own head. Well, I mean, that goes back to to another key point right there. So we're getting on you you're hitting on all cylinders right now, is you really need to understand this data as a podcaster.
This stuff needs to be important to you. And there's a very particular reason why. Because if your podcast is not sitting in the correct category, 1, people have a hard time finding you. Maybe. The discovery, you know, debate to have there. Sure. 2, you want to be found in the place where maybe your competitors live so that you can stand out from your competitors, and people can see that you're better than everybody else. That there is a quality the the issue there.
Categorization matters with the third point then is, do you wanna jump into a category? Or do you wanna categorize your podcast in a category that has this much stuff in it? And we know if you listen to the the the show, PodRact is about shows how to survive the shipwrecks of the podcast industry. And what are shipwrecks? These are shows that still exists because either their RSS feed is free or they're still paying the money for it. That have died years ago, 2009, 2006, heck, even 2018.
Right? They're all over the place. And you starting as a brand new podcaster category with, say, 200 podcasts or 500 podcasts or 2000 podcasts, but 90 percent of those shows don't have either don't have more episodes than 4 or still like we did in the 1 podcast. We're talking about 4 was the most they ever had. Or they haven't had a new episode since 20 15. How do you navigate yourself through that? Catarization
becomes your next tool. This is the next tool in your toolbox. So, Tim, when you're talking about category that you're categorizing yourself, what's kind of the the strategy you should be thinking about to really hone in on do I go into a crowded field or does it matter to me? Well, when you're going into credit field, you wanna bring an audience that you already have developed, you've already marketed,
and then it doesn't it it won't matter if the category is crowded. If you're already bringing that audience in such as you have a big church. Let's say you have a church of 500 people. Oh, hey, by the way, we're gonna do a podcast. Boom. On that 500, I can guarantee you. And especially if you do it on a Sunday and, you know, show them how to download it on Apple Podcasts or pocket cast, a hundred bucks to pocket cast. You can have that probably not all 500. Let's say roughly 3 50 to 400.
Wow. That's pretty good. And then they're gonna say and they're gonna tell their friends and their family, oh, hey, by the way, I you know, I I don't need to go to church on Sunday anymore. I've got the podcast right here. Oh, you're looking for a church home. You're a brand new person. Hey. Try out this podcast there. So out of that 350, out of your 500 people church, 3 50 go and they each tell a friend, boom, 700
right there. That's that's simple bare math. That's more people than you have in your church that are listening to your podcast. I think that would that I think that would work. So you're talking about going to a crowded crowded category
with an audience already kind of pre built, like a like a church would have. How about if you're you know, you're doing your podcast on drones or you're doing a podcast on the next Nintendo video game or you're doing a podcast on the the life and times of Pablo Picasso, I mean, what's the kind of your you don't have an audience. You get 0 audience.
Well, you can go into 1 of the lesser categories. And, you know, we'll have the the links to the to these charts and into this article in the show notes. But you can definitely go into that. Now, Again, this is the third time I've said it this podcast. You're going back to episode number 1, why are you doing the podcast? Are you doing it? To get on to the charts and to develop or to use it as a marketing tool for yourself and go, hey, listen in Apple Podcasts, in business aviation.
I'm number 3. The thing of it is is that nobody asks 3 out of how many. That's a Well, I'm 3 out of it. Very good point there. If you're 3 out of 5, you're barely half, you know, you're you're at 50 percent here, you know. And if the other 2 are, I have pod fated and pod wrecked, then you're really I think that's 3 out of 3. I think that's okay. If you are 3 out of 5 and there's only 5 good shows in that category, I mean, if that I mean, because some categories are not big,
niching down matters. You get in a category that has only 5 people in it, you're number 3. That might be like, you know, 30 percent of the people who actually listen to that category in the entire world. That could be considered almost cornering the market. Sure. And I used to see this all the time in racing. You get people who do race race resumes all the time that says, oh, I was I was second nationals. You're like, okay, how many people race in your category? To
So second in nationals means you came in dead last. What's the difference between you and the first place person? 15 minutes. Maybe you should not be going to the world championships like but the thing like that. But that's that's 1 of those kind of things where does it really matter? I'm going to the world championships. You know? I scored second. I don't doesn't matter. People didn't show up. Guess what? I did. And showing up kinda matters. And I think in these categories
where you're the only podcast there, guess what? When someone's looking for that content from that category and you're the only podcast there, Guess who gets listened to. You do. That's the key. That's the key showing up. And in these categories, that are that are all rex all kind of stuff, you'll eventually rise as these shows die off. And I Okay.
Prediction time, Tim. Oh, here's prediction. We have prediction music. We need prediction music too. As the show grows, we're gonna have to, like, up all sorts of, like, little little tricks. But Give me some prediction music. What do you think? Karl's prediction. No. I love it. Okay. Here we go. Here we go. Okay. All the the pomp and circumstance. I predict that and I think it's gonna happen this year.
And I, you know, I should probably say next year and couch my bets because we know how Apple works. They they work at the speed of, you know, of when they get around to it. Right? I predict this year that Apple Podcasts will start devoting podcast that do not have new episodes. I predict that those podcasts will start to fall away. And as you have new content and your your continuity and the amount of content you put out, your frequency of content will cause you to cause their algorithm
that they're going to change to make you pop up I think that's going to happen. I think Apple, although we realized that Spotify, you know, although it's tucking a little bite, is still kind of a small fish. Right? Apple's still the big fish in the in the small pond. Right? But I think Apple's gonna really start going, you know what? Let's let's kind of clear the chaff. You know, you need to have regular episodes
and subscribers. It's gonna be like a combination too. You need to have an audience and you need to have new content. It can't just be can't just be subscribers. It's gonna have to be add new content. I think they're gonna cause that. That's my prediction. What do you think, Tim? I have a slight problem with that guy. Oh, I have a slight problem with that. So just recently in the podcast world, and if you are listening to the show, you are
If not a podcaster, you're thinking about being a podcaster, and you may have heard about this already. So Apple was going to well, I had talked over a year ago about, you know, don't put episode numbers in your show titles. And people kept on putting episode numbers in the show titles. And a year later, they finally said, no. Not not kidding. We're going to you know, because we have this new thing coming down the pike. We're going to, you
know, kick you out, you know, stop your show, and all that kind of jazz. And a lot of people made a big ruckus about it and what did the Apple do? They adjusted, they backed down, and they racked it up now. When it show pod recs or pod fades, it just goes, you know, you're like, okay. Well, the person doesn't care about it. They're just they get a free RSS feed or they're it's coming out of an account that it's so minuscule of an amount. They don't even pay attention to it.
So they wouldn't know, they wouldn't care if their show got kicked out. But you've got some people that are going to be very argumentative on what constitutes a a regular schedule for a podcast? What constitutes having an audience following? Okay. Now an audience following is 1 person downloading that podcast from Apple Podcasts. I I think that I think that would get your point there. I see where you're going with that. I think what my prediction is,
let me tweak it now. Let me little little fine adjustment here, is that if you haven't released a new episode in 6 months, you're dropping. You're going by by. You're going to the bottom. Davey Jones Locker for your podcast. And any episode any show that's had an episode over the past 6 months gets a bump. I think that's what I think's gonna happen. I think you're gonna see the chart shift where people that are actually producing
regardless of their audience size, we'll start rising the top, which may produce some podcast to go and produce the, like, the 5 minute or the 2 minute or whatever, just to throw something out there to stay alive. That might happen. There might be a, you know, the growing period of they figure out this algorithm. But I think there's without looking at stats or anything, simply just have you produced a podcast episode in the past 6 months. You should get plus 1 if you have.
Mhmm. And I think this will get rid of a lot of shows that people have not cared about forever. We found out at Pod Fest in Orlando just a couple weeks ago that Anchor had a ton of shows that had produced what? 1 to 4 episodes ever, tons and he had 0 listens. So people produce use the anchor app. Produce the podcast. Hey. Blah blah blah. Podcast. Right? Put it out there and no 1 downloaded it. Not just 1 person downloaded, nobody downloaded.
So now this this there's a there's a suspicion out there that Anchor created all these podcasts where people podcasts supposedly. And now there's all these, you know, all these podcasts out there of episodes that were never listened to. Well, okay. If anchored at that, What is the same true for SoundCloud? Is the same true for people on Lipson, on Blueberry, it's breaker, on Pop Beam, Are there episodes and and out that there have never been downloaded?
And if so, maybe that's the criteria. Maybe Apple but I believe the algorithm will change. Mhmm. How about I just say that? I believe the algorithm will change to benefit those who produce content. There we go. I like that. Wiggle out of that 1 anyway. Right? You wiggle out of that 1 superbly. This is we're gonna have a new section in the show called Kyle wiggling out of his predictions. I mean, guitar and the wheels.
We'll we'll develop some wiggling music for this, and earlier we will. We will. So But now now with that point, Kyle, and I'm I'm I'm I'm digging on you a little bit with this. Okay? I like the idea of adjusting their algorithm for that. I don't like the idea of them willy nilly saying, okay, you gotta have this many episodes produced in this amount of time and have this size of an audience in order to be on here because
podcasting to me, I know I'm not I I don't make any money off of this. Although I'm gonna be sending out a lot of bills to people because I mentioned them on this show. And the first 1 that pays me the that bill, that invoice, is the 1 that's gonna be the official sponsor of this show. That's right. That's how you do that. We will be loyal. We promise. But, you know, for me, it's the I I like the Wild West frontier of it. I I like having nobody
telling me too much what to do. Now realizing that, you know, we all gotta play Apple's game. We all gotta, you know you know, go to their their requirements for, you know, you gotta have your your your show art to be a certain thing. You gotta put if it's explicit or not. There's certain things that, you know, you have to do. But those are relatively the technology is so easy for that to happen now.
You have such a low bar to entry there. That's fine. But when you start saying, hey, you gotta have 10 shows in 2 years. What did the podcast What if you said that? How how drastically do you think these numbers would change? I think they had changed dramatically, but then then you'd have some shows that slow roll their episodes because they're taking a lot of time. They're doing very investigative journalism.
And maybe they can only put out 10 up it's every 2 years because they have to get so much information. Well, now it becomes a different I mean, you think about it as Apple released all those new tags, Maybe there's a a place for shows like that. Maybe there's a specialized tagging like I believe there is a tag in there where you can say Is this a season? If you're a seasonal show, maybe you don't get get nerfed by Apple that way. Maybe there's a way to to to circumnavigate
the periodic shows. The shows that come out, you know, epic they're not episodic. They're sterilized. Right? Mhmm. But I just think that there that's we we all know. I mean, we look around on the categories we sit in. We're like, why is that show at number 4 or number 6 or number number 10? You haven't had a new episode in 5 years. What gives
There's a lot of people out there. Well, it's still popular. People still listen to it. Right? Well, we thought that was the case. Then it turns out, not so much. So looking at these numbers and seeing just how much people are producing in these categories and how fat these categories are, you the evergreen content then becomes the
the the king. Right? If you're if you're producing, then you shouldn't really have any kind of penalty. But if you're not producing, maybe you get maybe you get the side eye or, like, what's going on over there with your podcast? I I think something has to happen. At some point, they're gonna reach a saturation point where it's like, you know, look, we you know, there is just too many podcasts out there that don't have there's nothing behind them. Mhmm. So and I'm kinda wondering why Apple would
Now I'm gonna jump on your side because I'm I'm gonna jump the fence a little bit. I love it. We're all wiggling and wiggling wiggling wiggling wiggling wiggling. Okay. Go ahead. So I'm wondering why Apple would keep that content that nobody's listening to up on their directory you know, is it just so that way they have content? Is it like with the Christianity and comedy and music podcast where there are so many podcasts and there are so many episodes for that.
Hey, you know, we we have the most content. We have the most podcast in our directory. So we're the big bad boys that everyone has to follow soon after. Mhmm. Okay. Are they keeping does it benefit Apple maybe this is another episode that we pontificate on, but does it benefit Apple to have shows on there? That don't produce content or produce very minuscule amounts of content. They that's that's those are excellent points. I really I think
I think there is a reckoning coming at some point. And I think at 1 point of time Apple thought that was the way to go. Just just hearing what I hear, you know, in the industry, especially from people like Rob Wals from Lipson talking about, you know, Apple still the 500 pound gorilla. I mean, people talking about they don't. Spotify is, you know, eating their lunch. No. Spotify is not eating their lunch, not even close. So the the content there that they have kinda establishes them.
But they also say that 64 percent of downloads per month are still coming from from Apple podcast. So they're still getting the audience. People are still downloading from there. They're still using the app. They're still getting their content from there. I think what happens is is in I think Apple's releasing of their statistics earlier in 20 18 is a prelude opening salvo, I mean, whatever, you know, kind of catchphrase I can think of, that they're starting to tip their their hat.
They're showing their hand. How many more can come up with it? Right? They're they're telegraphing their move. That I think there is a cleansing. What we call it? I got it. A ubiquitous cleansing. Ubiquitous purge. I believe the Apple Podcast purge is about to happen. There's gonna be a siren. Apple Podcast is gonna close. And 12 hours later, there's only gonna be 300000 podcasts on there. And it's like, what happened?
Well, there was a purge. Right? You know, the the wholesale slaughter of podcasts was allowed for 12 hours of Apple Podcasts. And now their database is much happier and your show is dead, I think that's a that's a very real possibility. Is it gonna happen in 20 19? I don't I If I was a betting man, I'd say, no. Is it gonna happen in 20 20? I believe without a shadow of doubt, that is a very good possibility.
All excellent ideas, Gal, that is very, very insightful there. Thank you so much for the for the prediction there, that I feel more now that you've explained it a little bit in more detail, I feel a lot better with it. So, Kyle -- Okay. -- we gotta bring this back to our audience. We gotta bring this back to our folks that are listening to us here. We want you to be successful in your podcast. Definitely, we want you to reach out to us here at pod wrecht at g mail dot com.
We're gonna cut that out here for a second here. No. But we got in. Okay. That's gold. But yeah. Yeah. Which which podcast am I on out of the 300000 So give me so give me give me a final thought here on categories. So you're still thinking about about so I'm a podcaster. I just heard where the podcast categories are at. I heard that, hey, my HOA, probably not getting a huge audience.
But I'm looking at all this data and and Tell me as a podcaster why picking my specific category not my subcategories. The primary category is an essential decision. Almost, I would say, as essential as getting your name right. Why do you think that's a true thing? Well, you the thing of it is that you definitely wanna get the name right. You wanna be scriptive in your name. You want people to know what that podcast is about. You want them to be able to find the podcast.
And depending on if you're if you're going for profit or if you're as a hobbyist, that can be a marketing strategy for you. Right now, my other podcast, in Great Britain, irate 88 out of the out of the performing arts podcasts. 88 out of how much? I don't know. But now if you slip it over into the United States and just regular arts, I'm 1 85. 1 85 out of I don't know how many,
but I can take that and go, hey, you know what? I'm in the top 200 and that's a marketing strategy that is going to win because People don't know, out of how many, and they don't ask that they go, oh, wow. You know, top 200. That's pretty good. There must be 8 ton of podcasts out there when they hear the number 650000 podcasts. Very true. To think, oh, you you're you're top 200 out of 1250000. You must be pretty darn good.
So it's a great marketing strategy for yourself. It's a great way to help your audience find you, you know, when they're looking through the different podcatchers, podcast directories, when they're looking through Apple Podcasts, and they're, hey, I wanna podcast on technology. Boom. You're gonna find pod rack. Hopefully, at the number 1 slot, that's our goal. But If you don't find it at the number 1 spot, that's okay.
You're going to find it because you're gonna know where to look for it because it makes sets. It's just you're helping your audience find you and then you're gonna grow that audience and you're not gonna progress.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Pod Direct. I hope you've got a lot out of this because I think categories is probably the 1 thing that people really mess up, so you kinda have to get into the numbers to understand how this goes. Now if you really enjoyed this episode, we got a whole lot of episodes that you could listen to. Just find us over at podrecht
dot com. Or if you wanna hear an episode, maybe there's something burning question that you want Tim and I to kind of like tear apart because we love the ballpark category especially in podcasting. Hit us up at pod rack at gmail dot com. That is definitely the best ways to get a hold of us.
Also, you can find us anywhere podcasts are. We are everywhere. We are ubiquitous. That's right. That's today's word. So make sure you use that in a sentence when you get to work tomorrow. And thank you again for listening. We really appreciate your your help and support. And if you do wanna be a Patreon member, we have a link I at pod rack dot com, where you can donate to the show to help Tim and I kinda do this because this is our side hustle. And you know how much the side hustle makes? That's right. Not a whole lot. So if you wanna be a contributor show, we have thought up bonus content, especially if you have burning questions about podcasting. I mean, Tim and I teach people had a podcast. We know all the ins and outs of everything. So if you have a burning question, you wanna know something about podcasting?
Go to either gagalpot dot com and see some other stuff there. Because they're our big sponsor, you know, like, they're us too. But pond rack dot com, go to Patreon, and if you become a subscriber, we will produce you give us a question and we'll produce content just for you. You can't beat that kind of price. I mean, for 5 bucks a month and get any question you want to answer about podcasting, that's the way to go. Again, thank you for listening. We'd love to hear from you, and we hope you listen to Pod Rec next time where we navigate through the ebb and flow of the podcast industry.
Take care. Yeah. What are we talking about? Good question. What are we talking about? I don't know. Are you talking about No. You know? Or maybe we're doing -- No. -- how about a little No. We did that last. Oh, but there is. No. That leaves us only with this. Let's do it. And Tim Show, Kyle, and Tim Show, Kyle, and Tim Show. Kyle, and Tim Show. This podcast is part of the Gagapod network. Find more podcasts like this at gagapod dot com.