The feed. The closing of Samsung podcasts and Chartable. We cover all the things, including Chartable chart and ranking replacements. Getting access to Apple Podcasts Connect and Spotify Podcasts without creating duplicate podcasts? And how do you do it? We cover all of that as well. Our take on Spotify for creators and Daniel X Vision for the platform moving forward. What happens if you have an audio RSS feed in Spotify and you upload a video version of an episode? Hmm.
We gotcha. Spotify wrapped, overcasts, new updates, new podcast apps to check out, and stats. Mean and median download numbers. Hello, I'm Elsie Escobar, Director of Community and Content for Libsyn, and this is Episode 282 of The Feed, the official Libsyn podcast, the podcast that takes it beyond. How to podcast into keeping you podcasting with podcasting tips and information for the everyday podcaster and taking you inside Libsyn.
Now calling all you that are planning on podcasting in 2025. Send me your audio promo, your audio trailer, your audio commercial. so that we can start next year by getting the word out about your show. How do you do it? You attach it to an email and you send it to the feed. at Lipson.com. Have it be 30 to 60-ish seconds. If you don't have a promo, but you want your voice on the show, you can always send us a question or...
Add a little bit of commentary to a conversation that you hear on an episode and just send us the voice feedback. You can also call us very easily at 412-573-1934. or use SpeakPipe at speakpipe.com slash the feed. I cannot wait to hear from you, and I will be keeping an eye out on... my email, and get you in the queue. Everything is first come, first serve. And now on to our main conversation with Rob Walsh.
VP of Podcaster Relations at Lipson and my co-host right now. Hello, Rob. Good generic time of the day, Elsie. How are you doing? Oh, Peachy, don't you love starting to record and starting to record 20 minutes after you're supposed to because you're troubleshooting? Oh, the life of a podcaster.
It's not so bad when the other person is a podcaster and understands. It gets frustrating when you go to do an interview with someone who's not a podcaster and you have tech issues because they expect everything to go just peachy smooth keen. Right. Breathe deep. Breathe deep. Every time. Oh my gosh. Okay, so we're starting off with some sad news from Samsung, huh? Yeah, I'll read this.
This is a sad one. But dear publishers, thank you for using Samsung Podcast CMS. We would like to inform you that as of December 1st, 2024, Samsung Podcast will be terminated. One function suspension. After the termination date, users will no longer have access to Samsung Podcasts and the Samsung Podcasts CMS site will be deactivated. So we're recording this on December 5th. So sorry, folks, this has already passed.
2. Personal data deletion. In order to protect your personal information when the service is terminated, such information collected for the purpose of providing the service will be destroyed without delay. However, information we are obligated to retain in accordance with the provisions of the relevant laws and regulations will be destroyed immediately after being retained for the period set by the relevant laws.
For more information on the destruction of personal information and legal retention period, please refer to the privacy policy published on the website below. I'll have a link for that. Three, podcast data deletion. Upon termination of the Samsung podcast, your podcast contents will also be promptly deleted. Your podcast download.
downloaded onto individual devices of Samsung podcast listeners will also be instantly removed. So yes, that means your podcast that had been downloaded on someone's Samsung device in the Samsung podcast app is gone. Four, continued provision of Samsung News and Samsung Free, the Samsung Free News app in the U.S. and Canada, and the Samsung Free app in Germany, U.K., France, Italy, Spain, Switzerland, and Austria.
Other than podcasts, we'll continue to operate. Users can still enjoy various content, including news on Samsung Free News. But let's be honest, folks. If there's no podcast in there, does it have any value? If you have any questions or concerns regarding these changes, please visit our Customer Support Center website Once again, we express our gratitude to all those who loved the Samsung podcast. Thank you, the Samsung podcast team. Wah, wah, wah.
All right. Well, that happened so fast. It was like, hello, we're shutting down. Yes. I mean, what's odd is they talked about launching this and I would... talked with them back and forth about them launching this, and we had conversations about this longer than it was live. Yeah, I remember those conversations because I remember being in those meetings and having it be like... what's the update on the Samsung podcast? What's the update? And it was basically, uh, we don't know.
Yeah, I mean, literally, it was years, years and years going back and forth with them about them launching it, about what would it be like, how would it go, and then they launched, and then... Then they had that one big issue around Thanksgiving a couple of years ago, two years ago, that caused a big spike in people's numbers. And now, right before Thanksgiving this year, they give us another surprise, which is goodbye. Bye-bye.
But they're not the only one. All right. Let us continue on then. Let us continue on about sunsets and going away. And this is an update on one we had already mentioned. a couple of times, and it's the closing of Chartable for podcasts. And as you may remember, we mentioned that Chartable would be closing down on December 12th. Well, this past Friday, as you're listening to this and tomorrow for us recording.
Friday the 6th of December, we went or will go ahead and remove the chartable prefix from all shows hosted on Libsyn using the Libsyn feed. This is for people that have added the chartable prefix in their Libsyn account. We are doing this, did this to ensure your feeds will not break. And talking with other companies in the space, they are doing likewise. The upside is you do not need to remove your chartable URL in there. We did it for you.
And that ensures your audience does not get impacted and we don't get 500 or 1,000 support emails on December 13th saying, my podcast isn't working. The downside is that most likely... This has caused or will cause an uptick in downloads for some shows that have a decent-sized audience on Spotify. See, Spotify has this little feature.
that anytime the URL in the file of the file, in the enclosure tag, changes. So anytime that URL changes, it forces a re-download on the client-side Spotify app. That's... at the user level, not in the big database, but at each user who has downloaded an episode before for your podcast. If that URL changes, it redownloads the episode.
That means for all podcasts having the chartable prefix removed, they would see some level of uptick in downloads from Spotify. And this is, as we've seen in the past, It should last about three to four days where it's a noticeable, it's overtly noticeable and have some impact still for about two weeks. And then after that, it should be, you won't really be able to notice it at all. So.
Three to four days, very noticeable, kind of noticeable out to a week, week and a half, and then at two weeks and beyond, you shouldn't see any lingering effect. Was there anything we or anyone else could have done differently? Nope. Not realistically. Sadly, the issue of the re-downloaded has been something we've seen for years, especially when shows move from one host to another host. And the decision to sunset Chartable...
in a way where it would break the RSS feed, also a Spotify decision. So in other words, we're just a messenger here. And to be very, very clear, this... Only effect shows that had a chartable prefix, or what we used to call a prepend, depending on when you added it. The Libsyn 4 UI calls it a prepend. The Libsyn 5 UI, we changed it to now what people call it.
as a prefix. If you had not added a chartable prefix to your show, then there is no impact for you. It is about 3% of our shows, roughly, that are going to be affected by this, or were affected by this. And if your show is like ours and you don't have many downloads and you did have the chartable prefix, you won't notice anything either. It'll be barely noticeable. If we had it in our show and we removed it, we wouldn't notice Elsie.
Oh, yay. Oh, yay. Having a small audience in Spotify. We have a tiny, tiny audience in Spotify. And we love you, by the way. Yeah, the few of you. Yes. And I think it is one. We're going to get a minivan. It puts you all in one minivan someday. I know, right? Yes, we could. We could have the special Spotify meetup and we would not be spending very much money. No, no, not.
Oh, man. So again, I think that if you were a little confused by what you just heard, this is what I would suggest. Pause, go back, just hit 30 seconds back or however you have it set up and re-listen. Or you can... Consume directly from Apple podcast and see the transcript and read along. That's another way for you to.
Do it so that you know exactly what Rob is saying here and you can remind yourself that for the most of you, it's not going to affect you and that there are some that did have that. for Spotify and large audiences that might see a little bit of an uptick there. And just to let you know all, you know, especially with the way that our team or most podcast hosting teams work whenever we get these news.
These types of people are going to go away or somebody's changing or this is closing down. The team pays attention and starts to work on it. Pretty early on. And there's a little bit of a plan because this is our business, right? We are with the business of of what we do as podcast hosting companies overall is to make sure that you're you're taken care of. That is what our job is. So anything that's going to break a feed, y'all, it's like top of mind for the devs. Just saying across the board.
I don't think that there's a podcast hosting out there, a company out there that's like, or doesn't even know, right? And I was on a couple of calls. They go under NDA, so I can't say who the calls were. organized by with, but a couple of calls with multiple podcast hosting companies and big players in the space. And we were all talking about this and everyone's just like, this is just, we got to just.
remove it we got to rip the band-aid we got to remove it all from everybody at once and will that cause a little uptick in numbers yes we're doing it on a friday afternoon why because that's when bandwidth goes down so That makes the most sense. Why did we wait till December 6th? Because this way people got their full stats from Chartable for all of November. So we wanted to wait until after December 1st so that people could get their full stats before we removed it.
And Friday afternoon made the most sense for us when we thought about it. That's when we did it. Thank you, podcast hosting companies, for doing the work to help all podcasters. Yay! I know some people are pulling it, pulling the Band-Aid on December 11th, but we just said, no, let's get this thing done before the weekend. All right. Well, here is an email.
Hi, Elsie and Rob. I have exciting news to share. Podcast charts and rankings from every genre in every country from Apple Podcasts and Spotify are now available in podgagement. Please see over at podgagement.com and the attached press release for more details. And this is from Daniel J. Lewis. Yeah, I would say before you read this, just give people little heads up in this. This is a nice replacement if you were using Chartable.
for the charts. So Daniel's done this, specifically added these features in and done this to address those that are missing the chart capability of Chartable. which was what some podcasters were using it for. Maybe they weren't even interested in advertising. There's part of the chartable that was more about how am I doing and where am I doing well. Right. Okay. Quote.
With hourly podcast rankings across nearly 34,000 charts for the last five years, Podcasters can now use Pod Engagement to track their podcast rankings in every genre in every country from Apple Podcasts and Spotify. Pod Engagement has every top podcast chart as well as featured areas, what's hot and new and noteworthy, enabling podcasters to monitor their podcast popularity across multiple charts, apps, and regions.
Additionally, Pod Engagement offers a real-time view of any of the nearly 34,000 charts it's tracking, allowing podcasters to watch their chart movement live and without manually refreshing. With chartable sun setting, says pod engagement creator Daniel J. Lewis, podcasters at all levels need an alternative for tracking their podcast popularity and engagement. I'm thrilled to offer this new feature to pod engagement members after collecting five years of hourly chart data.
Lewis added, quote, while chartable and similar tools were made and run mostly by data and advertising people. I made Pod Engagement as a podcaster myself and for the needs of my fellow podcasters, end quote. Pod Engagement's new charts and rankings features have been added to its other engagement boosting features and are available now at podengagement.com. Unquote. Unquote. Yes.
So there was lots of quotes and quotes, but that was all from Daniel. So thank you, Daniel, for sending that over and having that there as an option for the chart part of Chartable. For the tracking part of Chartable.
There are many other services out there from Magellan to Arts.ai to Claritas to Spotify for analytics or whatever they call that one. There's a bunch of other ones out there. But for the charts, this is... one of the options and i know there's some others as well but thank you daniel for sending that all over the other ones didn't send anything over so they don't get read
All right. So we have another email that you want to clarify some stuff around Spotify. And this seems to be now the Spotify section of the episode as it begins. So here we go. Yeah. Per this following email, I mean, in the past, we covered this for Apple, at least for Apple. But there's also info here for Spotify.
And that is new as claiming a show. And this is how you claim a show in Apple and Spotify. And the process has changed a little since last time we talked about this. So I thought it was a good idea to just... recap all this since we're talking about Spotify and Apple. So the email came in. Hey, Rob, is there a way to get access to Apple Podcast Connect and Spotify Podcast without creating duplicate podcasts? I was in Podcast Connect.
And I tried to connect SNR via the RSS feed, but it looks like it would create a duplicate show regards NR. So, quick answer. You need to request... to get the podcast added to your Apple Podcast Connect ID. Do not resubmit your feed in either platform per Apple. To do so, you need to log in at podcasts. Plural, podcastsconnect, that's one word, podcastsconnect.apple.com. You do need to have a valid Apple ID to log in there. Once you log in, go to the bottom of the page and click on
Contact Us. In that form, for the topic, under Content Management, select Show Transfer. You will then see a screen where you have to enter some info about you and your show. That includes your show's title, Apple Podcast Show ID. What you need to do in that case is go to Apple Podcasts. and copy the URL for your show. And at the end of that URL, it's going to be like podcast.apple.com slash usually it's like US slash podcast slash then your podcast title.
and then slash ID and a number. Everything after ID, that number after that. For example, that show I had created for the Harrison Trump podcast interviews was ID. 1-7-7-3-4-8-1-5-2-7. So you want to enter just the 1-7-7-3-4-8-1-5-2-7. Just the number. For your feed URL, you're going to want to put in your feed URL, so you need to have that as well. For a recipient account, that is the email address you logged.
in with at Apple Podcasts Connect, i.e. your Apple ID. For message, just say the following. Hello, I am the owner of the podcast. whatever you want for the title of podcast, whatever it is, and would like this show transferred into my Apple Podcasts Connect account. Thanks for your help. Unquote. That's it. Look at it for the message.
Apple will then follow up with you within three to five business days, typically could be shorter, with a code to add to your feed to prove you are the owner. In your Ellipson account, go to settings, then put in the code. into the copyright field and click save. Once you do that, reply back to Apple. They will then confirm the code is in there and then transfer the show over to you. Folks, let me know if you have any questions for that.
And then for Spotify, now to claim your show on Spotify, go to podcasters, also plural, podcasters.spotify.com. Sign up for an account. Then click on, quote, I already have a podcast, unquote. On the next page, put in your RSS feed. So whatever, you know, your Lipson RSS feed or whatever your feed is. You will then get a message where it says, your podcast might already be in Spotify. Hit next to check. Then click next in the lower right.
It will ask if that is your podcast. If so, click next. You will then be asked to verify that it is your podcast. Click send code. It will send an email with the code. to the email address that you have in your settings. So in settings, there's a place to have your email address. Whatever that is, that email is going to get it. You have one hour. Clock starts running. You got one hour to submit that code.
Again, repeat, one hour to answer that. So make sure you know what the email address is that you have in your RSS feed and you have access to said email now, right now, right? Because you got less than an hour to do this. Then I'll ask a few questions, fill in those and submit. And really, it's pretty easy from that point on. So again, let me know if you have any questions on that whole process. Rob at Lipson.com. I can even copy all of that verbatim.
and email it to you so you've got it written down if that's what you'd like. Or you can go in, as Elsie mentioned earlier, to Apple Podcasts and look for the transcript for that. Absolutely. You can actually... very easily search for what Rob said very quickly with a keyword. You can also, with a couple of little tap, tap, taps onto Apple Podcasts, copy and paste that transcript. FYI.
Just letting you know, because what an amazing little tool that is. Fantastic, fantastic tool. Anyway, given all of that stuff continuing here, just talking a little bit about Spotify. We actually had an email sent to us from Johnny where he mentioned, not sure if you already recorded the next episode of the feed, but we'd love to hear a take on the recent interview with Daniel Eck.
It's a shame that the transcript function is not on. Actually, I sent Johnny a link to a Chrome extension that I use. You basically put it into Chrome and then for any YouTube video, you can tap within YouTube and it transcribes the whole thing on the right hand side. Well, you know, this podcast is also an Apple podcast, so he could go to Apple podcast to get the transcript.
Yes, correct. But I'm saying for the YouTube video. Yeah, for the YouTube, right. For this one that he shared, which was actually quite long. I watched it at one and a half speed, but I did go through the whole interview. Yeah, I had it in my ears as if it was a podcast because it's also... A podcast. Right. So anyway, Rob, your thoughts? I think the biggest tell from the interview, and so they're interviewing Daniel Ek, and this was Colin and Samir, and they are video first and very...
much pro Spotify. So I just want to tell you, if you go watch this interview, it is a lot of kiss up. So once I got past the kiss up part and listen to the actual interview and what Daniel Ek was saying, and not so much what Colin and Samir were saying, sorry guys, but it really was kiss up. I think a big tell from the interview is the 84% of Spotify revenue is from premium subscriptions and just around 11% was from ads. And that's a big tell.
To me, because it tells you where Spotify really is focusing, right? Where's the most of the revenue coming from? Subscriptions. That's their mindset. Now, Daniel did say, hey, we think people should be able to monetize in multiple ways. And there was points about Spotify for podcasters being Spotify for creators change in that they're talking about what the difference between the podcasters and creators was.
Well, you might be creating a book or an e-book or have some other stuff and have multiple different forms of content you're creating. So that's kind of the reason for the change. from podcasters to creators. One interesting thing from the interview, and more importantly from the host, Colin and Samir, in their wrap-up after the interview, Apple Podcasts was never mentioned. Just YouTube, Netflix.
and Spotify were mentioned. That's what they kept talking about, right? They never once mentioned Apple podcasts. When I looked at their show on Apple podcasts, it only had around 500 reviews. Meaning they really were not engaging or promoting their audio podcast at all. I mean, these guys were really thinking video on this. That part.
When you listen, if you go and listen to this interview with anyone, you need to understand that these guys are coming at it from a video podcaster's perspective. Not so much audio, even though they mentioned this at one point. megaphone and getting some ad insertion, but it doesn't look like the audio side is their big audience. It looks like the video is their big audience. Yeah, and they disclosed some pretty huge numbers.
When they were talking about their subscription in YouTube, which they're making some bank. Yeah. And they mentioned they have one and a half million subscribers, but each episode gets 100 to 150,000 views. I don't like YouTube subscription numbers. People talk about that. Oh, no, no, not their subscription. No, no, no. Their membership inside of YouTube. So their revenue.
It's coming, it's 10%. Oh, yeah, yeah. 10% of their revenue. They had mentioned that they had made a million dollars in YouTube subscriptions. Yeah, yeah. Not from the app, but the membership. Right, yeah, yeah. Inside of YouTube. I do remember that part of the interview, correct. Yeah, and I think that there were a couple of things. I actually, let me tell you a little behind the scenes of what happened to this blog post that I just dropped on you there, Rob.
So here's what happened. I watched the video and I've been doing a lot of research, right? And I'm looking at numbers and kind of getting the vibe, getting the scenes, touching base with stuff. And during some of our calls... here for Libsyn, I kind of bring the team up to date on what's going on in this space, right? Just basically, we have a meeting and we all discuss stuff and then I just let them know.
primarily around Spotify, because it is something that we need to keep an eye out for all the time, just as both creators, but also understanding the space, right? So I gave them a little quickie. I made little bullet points and I just talked. I had the robot, you know, the robot that works for me now, transcribe what I said to the team and make it into a blog post.
So in other words, you came way, way, way more prepared for this conversation than I did. Thanks. Thanks for making me look like I am the unprepared kid walking into class without his homework. Writing the notes, filling in the answers as he's walking into class on the notepad.
All right. But I see you also mentioned here in yours, the 84 and the 11. So that jumped out at you as well. Yeah, for sure. Because it's like, that's literally what they're doing. Right. And, you know, there are a couple of things that I looked at because I was watching his language. That's what I was really paying.
attention to, how he spoke about stuff, right? So Daniel Ek was really close. He kept mentioning dependability and discoverability. Like that's a thing that they are focusing on, Spotify does. The dependability of it all is really about what the consistency of the people using Spotify is every time they open Spotify. So it doesn't matter whether they're listening, watching.
Whatever they're listening to, whatever they're reading, all of that feels reliable and familiar. And the discoverability part is that they have contextual tailored content. based on the habits and needs, right? I even just opened up, I don't use Spotify. We should say for the listeners, Daniel X term, use of the word dependability is what we have always in the space called consistency.
What he was saying, dependability is like shows that are releasing content on a regular basis. When he brought dependability to the show level, it's what we have always called consistency. Right. Take that conversion. When he said dependability, just...
We in podcast world have always used consistency, you know, consistent in your sound quality, consistent in your formatting, consistent in your release of content, right? That you want to build an audience, consistent, consistent. You have to be consistent. and time. But discoverability, I don't know if you got anything out of discoverability on it. I think that the key to that is the whole algotorial. And part of the discoverability is...
You can really see what this, the way that Spotify handles that inside of the wrapped experience. Because what they're really pushing for in both sides, not only the client side, meaning the end user side, the people who are actually consuming Spotify stuff. It gives them a list, right? These are your top whatever's your music, your top music, your top podcast, your top episodes, your top genre, all of that. And then it goes and here are some like it in one.
beautiful way, easy way for you to navigate that for you. So if you like this music, you will also like this music. And they did the same thing for us for Wrapped. where when you do have a larger, mind you, again, we've disclosed this, our audience in Spotify is not big. But if you have a larger audience, what they start to say is, in fact, we had a couple of slides for this as well. If your listeners are also listening to these podcasts, and then that is the discoverability aspect of it.
People who listen to the feed also listen to blah, blah, blah, blah. And it's spelled out for them. It's not necessarily that it's, how would I say it, that that's a new thing because Apple Podcast has done that forever. It's the way that it's delivered. It's like a little beautiful little package that everybody's sharing. So it helps overall. People discover things because it's done in a beautiful little bow. I still like how Apple has it. I'm just going to say this.
In Apple, they put it at the bottom. If you like this, you might also like that on the bottom of every podcast. And they don't have it like that for the listeners in Spotify. When you look at one podcast in Spotify... You're not exposed like Apple does to other podcasts that you might like. Then we'll go back to the Spotify revenue model. And I'm looking at it from the listener's perspective, right? From the listener's perspective.
I think Apple does a better job of exposing people to other podcasts people might like. If we go back, though, to the 84% of the revenue comes from subscribers. You have to remember that that's what they're putting forward, right? They're not there to be subtle. They're there to get subscribers. They're there to keep you on there. They're there to put.
large, sparkly things in front of your face so you could tap on it. They're there so that you make a mistake and you tap on something you didn't even know. And then all of a sudden you're listening to something you didn't even know what you tapped. And the hope is... that they know enough about you that when you listen, you go, oh, I do like that. Because Spotify really counts on the data.
of your behavior, how many times you open it, where you tap, what you're listening to, when you tend to listen to music versus when you tend to listen to podcasts versus when you tend to listen to audiobooks. it will start to learn that, but you have to use it. So that's really key in what I saw. The other thing that I found incredibly fascinating was something that he said, which was,
quote, that they want to be the R&D department for the creator entrepreneur of tomorrow. And I was like, whoa, that's like kind of big. And the reason that I bring that up is because what they want is to be able to provide data based on the behavior of people within their owned ecosystem. of the content and things that are working for creators, not just podcasters, but did they like the book? Did they move from your episode to reading your book?
Did they like the video and which video did they like the most? And what music did they go to after that so that they understand how they get as much information as possible? But they're only doing that.
so that they can also get more information for them to create more product, right? It builds on itself. And if you can get creators who are really into this, this is like... the high performing people who are doing not only courses, but they're creating audio books, they're creating podcasts, they're creating videos, they're creating all of the TikTok short form because they also have that.
that type of creator that they're courting in there, if they can get those people into Spotify and really start selling Spotify as the hub for their work and just going, hey, go listen to Spotify. They're building in this massive marketing team to get more people to sign up for Spotify. That's really it. They just want to drive audiences to sign up for Spotify. The end.
What I did like about him, though, is that Daniel did say, and whether or not this is genuine or not, he did. Here's why I was like noticing the language that he used, because. He was either coached or he had a really insightful understanding of the pain points of how you speak to creators. And he said, that he wasn't looking to monopolize people's content. He didn't want to be the only place you put stuff. He wanted you as a creator to have multi-home.
to distribute content across multiple platforms, but they wanted to be the best, right? So he had to bring it in. He had to bring it back to really bolster up Spotify. But he was trying to help podcasters feel like it's not like I'm monopolizing you. It's not behind a paywall. It's not going to stop you from doing what you want to do and build anywhere else. We just want to be.
the strongest place for you to be. I was just curious at how he positioned all of that stuff. I want to just make one clarification. Spotify does have the more like this button. So before someone says that. But the more like this button in Spotify, to me, is never really recommended things that were good. I mean, Apple, I thought, Apple's algorithm, I felt, always did a much better job. So, for example, if you look at Joe Rogan.
All right, so big podcast, a lot of data. You might also like gives you This Past Weekend with Theo Vaughn, The Sean Ryan Show, News Commentary, Two Bears, One Cave, Kill Tony. Matt and Shane's secret podcast, PBD. Those are the first ones that they give. Now let's go over to Spotify. And what does Spotify recommend under the more like this?
Effing Sober The First 90 Days, Stiff Socks Patreon, The Over 40 Alpha Podcast, The Flat Earth Files, AI Denmark, Create Your Own Light, and Kids Bedtime Stories. Oh, and the Perez Hilton podcast with Chris Booker. Maybe two of those would be legitimate for Rogan listeners. The others, I think, missed the mark. Whatever they're doing...
It's not as good as what Apple does because what Apple's doing isn't using a mixture of algorithms and that. They're just saying, if people listen to this, they also listen to that. They actually look at what people listen to Rogan. And then look at the podcast that they also listen to. It's not what you might like. It's really, if you listen to this, people also listen to that. And to me, that's a better tell than...
the way that Spotify's doing it, just in my opinion. Here's another aspect though, Rob, that I'm wondering, I don't know enough to know this though, right? Is that, what if? Again, I don't use Spotify, so I don't know. But what if they also listen to is actually curated to how you use the app? Because that's where Spotify shines, is that that, the algo editorial, algotorial, whatever, is really set up.
And based on the way you use the app, and it's very much like Netflix, which is something they mention a lot. And I thought like, oh my God, it totally is. So the Netflix queue responds. obviously, to what you're engaging with. That's how it works. And yes, there are some things that are in front of you that are being pushed, right? That's for sure. It's being pushed. But even then.
It's like if you have, let's say, I'm sure that there's going to be some things that are coming out at the end of the year that are going to be skewed towards my demographic in my Netflix versus somebody else's Netflix stuff. Right. The top 10 are probably still going to be the same. But depending upon the way I engage, my categories are different. The things that are being put in front of me are completely different.
I know when somebody uses my cue, how messed up it gets. And then I'm like, wait, why is this even here? I don't I'm not even interested in this. So I think Spotify is leaning towards that experience. And it's a much more visual experience like Netflix, because in Netflix, when I'm in there, I'm scrolling through stuff and I basically make decisions based on images.
I don't make decisions outside of that usually. And then sometimes they even change the thumbnail. They change the thumbnail all the time to get me to click through something. And I think Spotify is leaning into that. versus the layout of Apple Podcasts. Some nights I spend more time scrolling through Netflix than I do watching Netflix. Exactly! Me too!
Yeah, I mean, it doesn't always hit the mark, so I know. It doesn't. Absolutely. But you're engaged. And that's the thing. I agree, Rob. I spend time looking at all this stuff forever and I don't make a choice. And then I like close. I closed the app, but I've been in it for so long, tapping through things. Anyway, I'm curious, and I said this in my blog post, which I'll link in the show notes.
that I'm considering making Spotify my, in quote, podcast app for the first quarter of 2025. I'll take one for the team. I'm considering it. I'm not sure if I will. Not because I don't want to step into it, but also because it skews my data because I'm thinking about all of the wrapped functionality that a lot of other apps have. And because of all of my tinkering last year.
I have no home. I want to have a home where I can go like, oh, yeah. And I don't have all my data in one app. And it's making me sad. I wish that was okay. Anyway, that's the only reason. But I want to. see what happens because I don't know how to use Spotify. Like I don't use it. If you guys have thoughts, thefeedatlibsyn.com, please. Thefeedatlibsyn.com. All right, Rob, here's another email.
Hi Rob, just listening to the latest episode of The Feed, and you mentioned that users could go into Spotify Creators and upload your video to go along with your audio. I started doing this a few months ago and discovered that it would override! The RSS audio, which for me means listeners will get the audio from the video version of our show. Less edited.
It also will not carry any of the dynamic audio we carry because it will be using only the video version of our show. I have deliberately left one episode in my Spotify feed as an example. It is the episode with Steve Goldstein from February discussing the importance of video with your podcast. Just for fun, I also uploaded the video from my latest episode featuring Lisa Brandt. Spotify does say...
About video podcasts, your video will only be available on Spotify. The audio version of your episode will still be available everywhere else. Analytics from the video version of this episode will only be available in Spotify for podcasters and will not appear in your hosting platform.
They do not say that you will use your DAI for your audio. Let me know if your experience is different than mine and keep up the great work on the feed. Matt, this is for Matt. Okay, so hi, Matt. Thanks for the question. And for this, I went straight to the source and asked Spotify, and they said the following, quote, if the podcaster does not change the distribution settings on Libsyn for their RSS feed, in other words, inside Spotify,
for podcasters is a place, and you can say that this is coming from Lipson, i.e. does not turn off the distribution to Spotify. Then logging into Spotify for creators and uploading video will create a second video. only feed in addition to their audio feed. We don't replace the feed unless you ask us to, unquote. So again, the answer there was from Spotify. Please note. I have not tested this. Again, basing this on of what Spotify had told us. So I have not yet done a test on this with Ellipson.
podcast so i need to find one that has audio and i can get a video version for and put it up and see what happens but again just based on what spotify said it's not supposed to override it but Evidently, it did for Matt's and it may for some others. And again, have not verified that one way or the other. All right. And continuing on with the Spotify of it all.
Spotify Wrapped is here. And I think most folks that are listening to this understand what Spodcast Wrapped is. And if not, it's basically they. take all of your information of how you have used Spotify for the entire year, and then they give you stats beautifully put in front of you, like a beautiful little package of colorful.
insights about yourself and everybody shares it everywhere. So that's what it is. Now, there are a couple of interesting things that they're doing this year that are using AI. And this is from TechCrunch. Quote, while Spotify previously built its wrapped features in-house, the addition of Notebook LM-powered podcasts now sees Spotify working with an outside partner on a flagship wrapped feature. Using Google's Gemini AI, this year's Wrapped will allow you to explore a personalized audio.
overview of your music listening in 2024, including things like your top songs, top artists, top genres, and more. The result is meant to feel like you're listening to a podcast about you're wrapped. I'm assuming you don't use Spotify. So I have no idea. I mean, nope. This is not going to happen for me. I don't even have a wrapped, by the way. Just FYI.
You can see it for your own podcast. You can go in and see it for your podcast. And you did that. And you got some screenshots for us here. Yeah. On our wrapped. But we didn't have a podcast about our podcast stats. Yeah, so it should all be in there. And then I think that there's going to be, this is what I'm just talking about. Here's another quote that I wrote here, Rob, about this article, quote, another AI feature is aimed at premium subscribers.
who can enter prompts to generate AI playlists based on their rapt experience building on an existing AI playlist feature. launched in April. For instance, you could prompt Spotify to play more artists like your top five wrapped artists, end quote. So that... Brings me back to that whole discoverability of it all, which is not necessarily discoverability just for the podcast, but overall in the platform of Spotify and how you engage with it, one of their tenants.
is discovery. They just want to figure out new ways for people to discover new things within Spotify, however they do it. And this time they're using... AI to help. Yeah. I would just say this. The one of the things it gave us, it was like, top episode, 260, exploring podcasts. And then as you go through the rap, it's like, this had 156% greater increase than other episodes for the year. And so...
Per that episode 260, I went and I looked, and the total number of downloads for episode 260 in all of 2024 was, drumroll, 31. Woohoo! That was our best episode in 2024. And it's my favorite. I know. Listen, also, by the way, Rob. Something did go wonky with us way back because we were one of the first podcasts inside of Spotify. But when, you know, one of the first ones, we were tested.
You know, we were one of the testing things. But something happened in some transition in there where we had to like reconnect or something like it was something so bizarro that it actually took our data. out and then sort of rebooted it. I cannot recall when all of this stuff happened. And I was very disheartened. And I did see that there was a change. But I can't remember that something happened.
But I'm not excusing our sad audience on Spotify. I'm just saying that something did affect some funky stuff in the back end, back in the day. Do you know where we have a lot more listeners? Oh, Apple Podcasts. Overcast. Oh, Overcast. Yes, we do. We actually do have a lot more on Overcast. You are correct. So Overcast has a new thing. That's called a Segway.
Here is a quote from 9to5Mac. The popular podcast player Overcast has gotten a big update today with a new listening stats feature. The app can now show you which podcast you listen to most over the last... two years. Today's Overcast update also adds an incredible useful new 48-hour history and undo feature to help you recover from accidentally skipping a podcast.
The new 48-hour listening history feature builds upon the undo seek feature that Overcast introduced earlier this year. End quote. Have you checked it out, Rob, at all? I have not used that because I think, isn't that with the premium? So the new 48-hour history and listening stats feature are available today for Overcast premium users alongside the...
This update overcast premium is also getting a price increase from $9.99 per year to $14.99 per year. By the way, I am a proud supporter of this and I am pro $15 a year. Come on, you guys. 10 to 15. Give me a break. Also, I'm very thrilled with this. I have been ever since Marco updated the app last year, I've really made it my home.
And so I do have a bunch of data. I love it. It's like a mini wrapped, right? So you get your little top podcast and all that stuff. It gives you listening stats. It gives you all kinds of really fun things. And I haven't really exported it out. anymore because I kind of want to get all of my data. I'm getting that OCD about it that I'm like, wait, it's not the end of the year yet. It's not the end of the year. So I want to wait until I consume all my stuff.
And then I can have all of the stuff in there. And so I'm really, really excited by that information. And this is the reason, really the biggest reason why I don't want to do a test and go all in on Spotify for Q1. Because I want to have clean data for an entire year just using one app. But I feel like I need to do it. Like I need to go all in if I'm really going to test Spotify and how it works.
I need to use it. I need to actually use it, not do what I've been doing, which is just randomly going in there and downloading an episode here and there and futzing around with it. But I love it. And then you came across some new... podcast apps? Yeah, there are some. Stephen Robles shared on threads a couple of really interesting apps. One of them is called Q-App, as in Q-U-E-U-E, which is the hardest thing to...
spell every time I get it wrong. And there's also another app called Newcast, which is N-E-U-E cast. And another one called Sofa HQ, which isn't exclusively a podcast app. tend to curate all media, like a lot of the things that you use. And I downloaded them all. I kind of slowly just kind of looked at it. And I have to say that one of the reasons that I didn't go...
and really use them is because at the time of when I tested it, they didn't have import functionality. And that's a deal breaker for me. I'm not going to be futzing around adding things manually. Sorry, it's not going to happen. So if I could import my existing RSS feed subscriptions, yay. But outside of that, that was not available. Although I did get a response from the Sofa HQ folks.
And I do think that he is going to be adding that very soon for me to be able to import the RSS feeds in there. And so that's really good. But they're interesting apps. They're very unusual. I will download all three of these to come out, see what I think. They're in my queue to add Q to my queue. To add Q to your queue. So there was one that I was a little bit... Just stop it now. I can't remember which one it was, though.
Well, I downloaded the app and you either, I can't remember if you sign up and or you open it and it started this whole video, like a video thing that is using. podcast and then audio. And I'm like, you do not need to introduce me to your app this way. Just take me to the place. And I wanted it to go away. And it's annoying because it's the same special.
podcast that everybody is always downloading. And I was just like, these are not people I'm interested in listening to. Don't make me think that I'm going to like your app because you're featuring the same dudes. And one of my biggest pet peeves on new apps is when I go to open it to try it out and I have to go register. Yeah. It puts an impediment between you, that app, and the new listener.
That's par for the course now, though, Rob. Still don't like it. I agree. Although I understand it from the developer perspective. But I would love to hear your feedback on that at some point there. But now, though, we have our one promo of the episode. Let's hear from Video Fuzzy.
Hi, I'm Terry Jayam and host of Video Fuzzy the Soundtrack. In episode 13, Can You See Me in the Dark, I paused to celebrate two years of this production with a look at music I've added over that time, including songs by Hailstorm and I Prevail, ABC, Beyond... Also, catch me as Scrooge in a hilarious production of Dickens.
Christmas Carol, downtown Bismarck at Dakota Stage, December 5th through the 15th. For all this and more, add, follow, and subscribe to Video Fuzzy, the soundtrack, wherever you get your podcasts. Happy listening. Well, that was rather clear. All right. So let us move into some stats, mean and median numbers, Rob. All right.
The median and mean numbers are based on all episodes released on Libsyn Libsyn Pro in the month of October with downloads measured until the end of November. On average, each file is about 45 days old. This is, again, for all shows hosted on Libsyn, Libsyn Pro. The median number for October was 128, which was up a bit from the 125 in September and right in line with where we were in August.
The adjusted mean average where I throw out the top half percent and any files with three or less downloads, the adjusted mean for October was 1132, which is the same as it was in September. There were 5.7% of all downloads for episodes released in October were at the 5k or greater range. Also, it was the same as September. And then here are some numbers to measure against.
And to put things into perspective, if your episodes are getting over 128 downloads after 30 days, you are better than half the shows. If you're getting 500... or more downloads, you're better than 71.6% of shows are putting you in the top 28.4%. If you are getting more than a thousand downloads, you're better than 80% of shows.
More than 2,700, you're better than 90%. More than 5,700, better than 95% of shows. More than 15,000, you're better than 98% of shows. And more than 27,000, and you are better than 99% of shows, putting you in the top 1%. October's numbers were either up a little or the same compared to September's. So there is a quick...
review and overview of stats. The next episode, we'll have a lot of stats information because we moved a bunch over to the next episode, but also have the user agent information and geographic information. So we'll have that in the next episode too. end out the year plus we didn't talk at all yet about Apple's top podcasts and charts and that so we'll have to get that into the next episode as well so some end of the year
stuff and Apple's podcast of the year and all these other good end of the year stuff. We'll wrap it all up for the end of the year episode. So it's going to be a more statstacular type episode. Yeah, it's a statstacular. That's right. I'm trying to right now, Rob, in my to-dos for the show, I do want to get some stats for our show.
things that we've covered, some more of like an update on the YouTube stats, because I think this is going to be our first year that we've been in YouTube the whole year. So there's stuff like that. So hopefully I'll be able to get it done. Hopefully I'll be able to get it done because that's what I have on the docket moving forward. But where are we going? Oh my gosh, we are going into tomorrow. We have a...
moms and mystery and true crime study that is going to go live. I would say if you are listening either on Tuesday, or Wednesday, just look in the show notes and there's going to be a direct link to the YouTube right there. And you can just watch. That's December 11th. December 11th. Correct. This is Tom Webster from Sounds Profitable, along with Melissa and Mandy from the popular podcast Moms and Mysteries. They're going to be presenting.
Exclusive insights from the 2024 True Crime Podcast Listener Landscape Report. And this study is the largest of its kind and it exploring the habits and preferences of more than 5,000 18 plus true crime listeners across the U.S. So Tom. We'll unpack the data and emerging trends shaping true crime listenership today. Melissa and Mandy, whose Mom and Mysteries podcast has consistently charted in the true...
crime category with more than 30 million downloads to date will share their unique perspective on their audience offering firsthand reflections on listener impact and engagement. So you guys, you need to show. up for that. Of course, it's free. So go ahead and click through and watch it. Or, you know, even if this is not your genre, data is data sometimes, and it really brings a lot of insights. One of the key things here, obviously, Tom is great.
But also having a true crime podcasters that have a pretty strong base of audience that engages with them is also another layer of great insight. On December 16th, we're doing our very last supercharged event from the Libsyn team. And we are doing a show that is called Podcasting Solo, a step-by-step. guide to creating and publishing your episode. And we are aiming to show workflow. So this is going to be workflow focused of production of an episode.
If you are essentially a solo podcaster, like you're doing all the things with minimal resources, right? You're working independently. So I will be there. Brian Coddington, who is our video producer, will be there. And Emilio Tello, who is part of the support team, we're going to show you. We're going to actually demonstrate how to easily create and publish an episode from start to finish working alone.
Brian's going to cover recording, setup techniques, and editing basics. And then I'm going to cover enhancing metadata and visuals. So that includes show notes, y'all. You'll see my show notes workflow, titles, metadata, and artwork. And then Emilio is going to do the platform side of it, the uploading, the publishing. And then a little bit of that promoting feature afterwards, we're going to take all together. And of course, it's going to center Libsyn because, duh, it's...
It's our platform. And we're also going to talk a little bit about support, right? How to get support if you need help and things like that. So you'll get hacks and workflows and options to outsource and optimize in case y'all want to move that way. All of it to improve quality and speed of production, right? So it's solo podcasting made simple for everybody at the end of the year. So please show up. We would love to have you. And then lastly.
The Latino Podcast Listener Report on December 17th. Oh my gosh, I am going to have the honor again to co-host this with the Edison Research Team. We are going to be presenting five years worth of data, folks. This is going to be it's going to give you like a such a deeper understanding of Latino listeners preferences and behaviors. And this is really the first time the report will highlight video interviews of podcast creators discussing how they've utilized the studies through the years.
And yeah, so it will be Gabe, Gabriel Soto, Senior Director of Research. And then me, I will be co-presenting. So please show up. It's one of my, I really love this report. I love what it's brought to the. industry, and I'm so proud to be working on this. So I really would love it if you all would please sign up and come watch. That would be great. Okay. Additionally, where we're going in the new year?
We're going to PodFest in Orlando in January, and that will also be when we have the 2025 Hall of Fame induction ceremony. So some great new podcasters being inducted into the ceremony. Probably be able to... announce those on the next episode. I don't think I'm allowed to release the names yet, but I just saw them come over yesterday. I wasn't sure what date. I think next week we'll be announcing who those are. So next episode will.
be able to talk about who some of those inductees are. NRB in Dallas in February. It's National Religious Broadcasters in February. Podcast Movement Evolutions in Chicago in March. NAB, Las Vegas in April. The last one we're going to have a person at, I don't think we're exhibiting now, is the podcast show in London in May. But the first four we're exhibiting, I'm not sure about the podcast show, but I know we'll have some people there.
in May at the podcast show. And that's it right now for the first half of the year. If there's any shows that you think we should be at that we're not, let us know. We always like to get that feedback from listeners. There's always some regional events.
that we were not aware of or we should be at, that we should have been aware of. So let us know. And please, folks, if you're not going to the shows I just mentioned and you host on Libsyn and you want your cards to show, please email me, rob at Libsyn.com to get those at the show.
And then finally, switching gears from where we are going to where are you going. If you're looking for a job in podcasting, make sure to go to podcastingjobs.com. As of the beginning of December, we had one. We're down to one. So Sam's been doing a good job hiring. We're down to one opening listed there. It is for a payroll specialist to be located in Pittsburgh. Again, go to podcastingjobs.com to learn about that opening and potentially others as they become available. And finally...
Don't forget to send in your feedback for anything we did or did not mention on this episode. You can record that feedback and email it to us, thefeedatlibson.com, or you can call us, 412-573-1934. Or you can use SpeakPipe at speakpipe.com slash the feed. And that wraps us up for today. And one more episode for... 2024. And that'll be out. Oh my gosh, I can't believe it. But thank you all so much. And we will, we can't wait for the end of the year episode. Ciao. Bye.