The Feed. Reflecting on the past year of podcasting and my gosh, do we cover it all. Plus, significant updates in the podcasting world, right? Including something I looked into, which was Google search visibility. And then we cover the YouTube podcast performance, at least according to our podcast. All kinds of Apple podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music stuff.
Shout out to the 2025 Hall of Fame inductees touching on the importance of long-form content and political discourse again with some thoughts. and big love for all things Lipson. Plus, of course, podcasting stats. Hello, I am Elsie Escobar, Director of Community and Content for Lipson, and this is episode 283.
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. I am calling you out. This is the last episode of 2024. If you happen to consume this episode sometime up to January 9th, 2025. Record your 2025 goals, what you're planning, what you wish for, what you're committing to in less than 90 seconds and send it to us.
attach it to an email and send it to the feed at Lipson.com. If you don't want to do that, but you want your voice on the show, you can always ask us a question or you can add to the conversation that you hear, especially on this episode. We cover so much. So send us your voice feedback. You can call us at 412-573-1934 or you can use SpeakPipe at speakpipe.com slash the feed. I think...
Featuring your voice at the beginning of the year would be super awesome. Send in your voice. Okay, that said, thank you so much for being part of the feeds, Lipson family. Y'all are brilliant. Have a lovely... end of 2024. And now on to our main conversation with Rob Walsh, VP of Podcaster Relations at Lipson and my co-host. Here we go. Hello, Rob. Good generic time of the day, Elsie. Oh my gosh, we made it. We made it through another year of recording the feed.
This is, yay, woohoo. 2024. 2024 is in the can. Oh, my gosh. I know. Oh, my gosh. We probably just violated some laws there. Yeah, but it was just a few seconds. Although that's not an excuse. Okay. That is not. I just want to say happy holidays to all of you all who are... with us today because this episode is going out right on a wonderful holiday week for all the holidays that everybody celebrates towards the end of the year. So whatever holiday you are celebrating with your family.
and or loved ones, big hugging. Right. Traveling with your family and you're in the car with them. Hey, kids, how you doing? Your parents are well in tune to the podcasting world by listening to this podcast. You should be proud of them. As you travel. That's right. For others that are using this podcast to get away from their family saying, I have to listen to this because I need to know more. Yes, I understand that too. Good Lord. Now, as we get ready to say goodbye to 2024.
This is kind of the last chance for you to watch a good sci-fi movie from the 1970s, mid-70s, I think it was the 1975 it came out, that takes place in 2024. And that movie is one that influenced... and inspired Mad Max, and the video game series Fallout, which then became a TV show. And it is the movie A Boy and His Dog, which I watched many, many years ago and just re-watched with...
A very young Don Johnson. Anyway, as this year comes to an end, and you might think that this year did not go so great, just be grateful it did not end up like how it was in A Boy and His Dog. Which is available on Amazon Prime, by the way. So check it out. It takes place in 2024. So you've got about a week to watch it in the year that it takes place. And just be grateful that the world isn't like it is in that movie. That's all I'm saying. All right. Well, then.
And speaking of saying goodbye to 2024 and hello to 2025, right? That's what that means. We want to say congrats to the 2025 Hall of Fame inductees that were announced last week or two weeks ago by the time you hear this. They are... Chris Christensen, the host of the Amateur Traveler podcast. Lance Anderson, creator of The Verge of the Fringe. George Harab, host of the Geologic podcast. Lou Mangiello, host of the WDW Radio, Disney podcast. Jessica Kupperman.
I think you know Jessica. Maybe, possibly. Co-founder and CEO of She Podcasts. Twala Dang, founder of Matriarch Digital Media. Dave Mansueto. co-founder of Libsyn and the Boss Jock Apps. Hey, Dave. Maria Thomas, NPR's first digital general manager. Chris Gramosos. Sorry, I am sorry, Chris, founder of PodFest Expo, where the Hall of Fame induction ceremony is going to be taking place here in January. Well, we'll be at that event.
Tom Webster, a partner at Sound's Profitable and former VP of Edison Research, and finally, but not last, Tim Street, pioneer in video podcasting and best known for his work for French-Made TV, and who I'll have the honor of introducing. at the induction ceremony. So Tim asked me to do the honor for him. So I'm very, very happy to do that. I've known Tim going on 18, 19 years, 19 years, I would say. And Tim is just the greatest guy.
a lot of these folks. So congrats to everybody. Everybody is, it's just so wonderful to see that group together and whatnot. And, uh, so I'm yay. Congratulations to everybody. And you've known Lance for a long time. I've known Lance for a long time. Lance Anderson was really one of the very first people who welcomed me into podcasting. because he was also, I guess, a founder, is that what you call it, from the LA podcasters back in the day. We used to have meetups. It was so fun to go to just...
you know, a restaurant slash bar, sit down and meet all of the LA podcasters, which is where I met Tim Street. Actually, it was in those meetups during that time. Yeah, it's just, it's so great to see these folks being, I think I've, I think I know all of them except for George Harab and Maria. Thomas. I think those are the only two that I don't know. I don't know, Maria. George Harab, I interviewed.
on Podcast 411. So you can go back and listen to that interview. You can find that one. Maybe I'll try to find the show notes for that. George is a great guy. And he was very, very active around the, I would say, the Atlanta. podcasting, the Southeast podcasting scene. So around Dragon Con and those folks and Skepticality and Merle Lafferty and in that group. Yes. So I've known George. Very cool. Yes. Very, very talented.
Love that. Yay, everybody. And that is happening, y'all. That is happening at PodFest. So if you're in Orlando and or near Orlando, Florida in January, head on over there. That's going to be such a wonderful time. So there's going to be a link in the show notes for you guys to be able to check out. I do believe that the Hall of Fame is going to also be live streamed. And of course, as soon as we have all that information, we will just add it into the show notes and all of those things.
I don't know if we're actually going to live stream at this time. We may not. Oh, really? We may not do the live stream. I think... That we've been talking about not doing it as a live stream and just making it available shortly thereafter because of all the issues that came up last year with the live stream. Yeah, yeah, I see what you're talking about. Yeah. So if you want to see it live for sure.
Be there at PodFest. That's the only way guaranteed to see it live. Cool beans. All right. So we're going to switch it like a lot. Different topic. So in looking back, because I did a lot of research into what we covered this year, just kind of like a high level overview of our show. Right. And in doing so, I came upon. a conversation that I had towards the beginning of the year where I brought up Google search and looking at podcasts about podcasting.
Instead of looking, doing that search this time, what I did is I went into incognito mode and I searched for the feed podcast just on Google. And I was so surprised by what I saw. Surprised good, surprised bad? It's good surprised, especially because... Did you see this? So I took a screenshot and I shared it with Rob.
where the results are. And one of the issues that we have with this podcast specifically is that there's a ton of other podcasts that are called The Feed. And there's one of them that is by what is... Rick Bayless. Is that his name? Yeah. Right. He's like super famous. He's a super famous, well-known chef person who is in the food and foodstuffs.
which has nothing to do with our type of podcast, right? The feed is different. So it is very hard to compete for the title of that, the feed podcast, right? But what I saw when I did this search inside of Google, I just put the feed podcast and Rob, we're number one. And you did this in incognito mode? I did it in incognito mode. In fact, when I first didn't do it in incognito mode, I was like, of course, this is what's happening because I'm not in incognito mode, right?
So I went and I did it in incognito mode and I was like, oh my God, we're number one. And the feed podcast, the other feed podcast has a sponsored post on that page. Right before us. So I was really pleasantly surprised by this. Mind you, I don't know what the difference is between because there's. Three The Feed podcasts that are all different and they all have different... Well, there's more than three, but there's three that chart up at the top, right? Yeah.
At the top part, there's more than three, but those three. But I actually don't know what that second result is, the one that just has the feed in white and podcast in red. That's actually the second one. That was the second one that launched. That was the one that launched with us. And I think that's the one that actually tried to trademark. Oh. Yeah. And they started about six months after we did on Libsyn.
And what about the feed for the food? I think the feed for the food is because there's like anyway, whatever. Here's the bottom line. We are number one. I like that. We are number one. But also. This is the part that had me really excited. On the right hand side of the results. So obviously when you're searching on Google, there is a list, right, of all the results.
Then on the right-hand side, there is a giant, it's our podcast artwork. There is two episodes that are featured there. And it says at the top, the Feed, the official Lipson podcast. beneath that, it says technology podcast. And then on the bottom there, it says the show that takes it beyond how to podcast into keeping you podcasting. It literally has our stuff, right? Basically what I...
say at the beginning of the show. And it's taking up quite a large amount of that top results section. And I thought, what, where is this coming from? And this is great. I love it. But how did this even happen here? First of all, because we're getting a lot of stuff. So I took a couple of screenshots and Rob, if you scroll down, you can see.
that there, where it says technology podcast, there's like these little dots, right? And I hovered over those three little dots and then it has a little information tab. It says share. And then it says send feedback. And so I tapped into about this result. And what it said is. This is what it said on Google about why we are featured like so prominently at the top of the page and taking up so much real estate. It says about the source. This content comes from the knowledge graph.
Google's collection of information about people, places, and things, your search, and this result. The Feed the Official Libsyn podcast, obviously a technology podcast, is related to... your search terms. And then it's got a little thing and it says these popular topics from Google's knowledge graph about the feed, the official lives podcast may be helpful for your search.
This result is in English. And then it shows you like how to search works. But on the bottom, this is the part that I was like, oh, it says this is a search result, not an ad. Only ads are paid and they'll always be labeled with sponsored or ad. So they had to call that out because it looks like it's paid for. which we are not paying for the to be promoted. No, no.
Totally not. And so that was like the biggest thing. But I think the other thing that really called my attention after right at the top of the page. Yes, we are the first, but there's they also bubble up other the feed. podcasts. I'm assuming that the longest running The Fee podcasts. at the top. And then there is a YouTube channel for the feed podcast. And this is the YouTube channel for the, I believe it's for the Rick Bayless one.
where it's got the, so you would think that obviously that one's going to come up first. He is a famous dude. He has a lot of people subscribe to his channel on YouTube. So that makes sense. It's up there. But also... Below, if you keep on scrolling down towards the bottom of the page, there's also two other results for us. And one of them is, I mean, two of them are two separate specific episodes. And I think one of them is.
One of them is the playlist for the feed on YouTube, and the other one is an episode. Sorry, I misspoke there. So I'm kind of really happy about that because... Overall, I do feel that our podcast is getting a lot of juice. And the other thing is the YouTube is working here, right? It is working in the search. function in Google proper. And I'm excited about that above and beyond, I guess, right? Being in YouTube.
But I love the fact that it is ranking in just plain old search results, Rob. Yep. Good reason to be in there. I know. All of this, folks, is to say to you, have you done this for your show? Have you gone into Google? And have you done this? We're reaching that New Year time. It's time for you during this down period, during the holidays, to do a little research on how does your podcast show up when you tell people to go search for your podcast.
Are they going to find it or are they going to find something else? Yeah. And usually I tend to say to people search for the feed Libsyn because I know that there are other the feed podcasts. But I'm now very happy that if people just understand the feed and they just go into Google and they say the feed podcast that they'll find us. Yeah, there are other the feeds in there, which is fine.
but our branding is so prominent and the fact, the differentiation of our, the feed versus the other, the feeds is very clear. And so I don't. I don't feel that if somebody's looking for us, they're going to get confused. To me, ultimate, that's a huge win. Huge win. And this is a super big surprise. I'm like, I want to make it better now. I want to take on the whole page.
But sticking with YouTube situation, I promised and I think that we needed to go again on this. So the last time that I did some YouTube stats, Rob, was in April of 2024. because April 2024 was the very first full year that we had on YouTube. Prior to that, we hadn't been there. I kind of front-loaded. a lot of our podcasts that we published in 2023. So everything that we published in 2023 was published to YouTube in April 2023. So there were...
quite a few podcasts that I put in all at once. But this year was the first year that we had a full year on there. So these are some of the YouTube stats for the feed, just us. cross-posting using the YouTube API to a playlist inside of the Libsyn YouTube channel. And overall, we had a 1.6k views. which is about the same as the prior year. Although remember that the prior year, we didn't have this playlist set up for the first quarter. Our watch time was 121.4.
Ours, it's 25% more than the year before. And then we were actually the show, not the show, the channel is now monetized on YouTube and our little playlist made $3.46. So there's that. The YouTube average duration, as in like average viewing duration here, was 4 minutes and 39 seconds, which was up by 6.7%. That's 23% more than last year. Woo-hoo for four minutes, Rob. And so, yay. But I also wanted to talk a little bit about the YouTube OS and device type.
in here, where you can see that basically over 50% of folks are consuming our podcast on a computer. 53.7%, correct. And the mobile phone is at 36.6%. Then we have TV, again, which is surprising, at... 5.5%. And the tablet is the fourth consumption there. It's at 4.2%. And in terms of the average duration per It looks to be that the winner overall at 12.14 minutes average view duration is the TV, with the second one being the tablet.
The third one, the computer. And lastly, we have the mobile phone as the one that doesn't consume as much. But it seems like the TV overall is like if somebody puts it on the TV. I think we talked about this the last time that I think people forget. Well, I'm just wondering, could you not find anything on Netflix? Did your doom scrolling go that badly? Dear now. For those 80 people, 86 views, by the way, which is at that 5.5%.
So it seems like they're getting to 12 minutes and 14 seconds, which is like long for that. Maybe they're in the bedroom and they're folding laundry and they just put it up on the TV. That could be. That could be correct. Then we have the operating systems. And we have, we are kind of very heavily skewed, I would say, to the Mac, the Apple ecosystem, right? So the Mac OS is the winner here at 28.4%.
iOS is at 25.9%. So that kind of makes up 50% of the folks that are consuming our content. Then we have Windows and Android, which come in in that last sort of third of it. really there. And then we have Roku OS, Apple TV OS, Linux, and Amazon Fire. OS, which are really the Amazon fire is like 0.6%, which is like nine views.
It was very nice to be able to see that. Now, here's the interesting part, though, Rob. Did you see the percentage all the way on the right-hand side, the average percentage viewed? Yeah. And the duration of consumption? Yeah, Apple TV OS did the best, 31.5, followed by Amazon Fire OS at 23.5, and then Linux at 18.5, and then nothing else above 8%. Yeah.
And it's like 20 minutes of consumption on Apple TV and 16 minutes of consumption on Amazon Fire OS. That's the average. That's average consumption per user. Yeah. Which is... Wowza, right? And there was something else that's not in this screenshot that I shared with you is we had somebody consume the show on, oh my God, the Nintendo Switch. I was like, what?
But I think that that was a mistake because in looking at the average duration, it was like basic. I think they tapped something and they were like, wait, what am I doing? Make it stop. But anyway, those are just giving you all stats into how folks consume the show. But I also wanted to call out some of our top episodes of the feed for last year.
And mind you, I'm just going to give you what am I going to do? I'm going to give you the top five versus all of them, and then we can discuss the titles and stuff and some thoughts that I had about it. But our top episode. last year was episode 241, which was released on 2023. And it was called Video Podcasting Workflow on Libsyn. The second one was also a 2023 episode. It was 255.
And it's should you use the YouTube RSS feed and ingestion. Episode three was the first 2024 show, which was episode 272. which is called Restarting Your Podcast, Updating Your Podcast, and YouTube Podcast Strategy. Then episode 261, again, 2024, Apple Podcast Transcripts, Updates, and Stepping Down from Podcast Leadership. And rounding out the top five is 264, optimizing your podcast discovery, uploading your transcripts, and the sure move mic. So those are our top ones there, Rob. And I saw...
based on just the entire top five, 10, even the entirety of it all. Obviously, a lot of things that are very video podcasting workflows related. And strategies and YouTube RSS feed ingestion. They perform pretty well because they're on YouTube and they're talking about YouTube. And transcripts. Transcripts showed up. Marketing showed up. Common word in there.
in those titles. Yep, absolutely. So those key words, the video podcasting topics, like you mentioned, but also optimizing about advertising, brand, marketing. Those are all words that people are looking for in there. Also, it looks like to me that the searchable, straightforward titles are really important. So they are clear, right? They keyword focused that aligns with what people tend to be searching for more specifically here. And it seems like the creative or cute titles as you have.
often called out before, are not something people are particularly searching for on YouTube, and thus they don't perform as well. Apple Podcasts. just as a key word, was also a key driver for people to look at that. Things that are like, you know, strategies around that high rankings. And anything that has an actionable tip, breaking news from major platforms, whenever we put that up there, that was another thing that was there. So to me, it just seems like the YouTube attracts.
an audience that's looking for very direct, practical solutions of information. And mind you, this is results out of YouTube. So it's going to be skewed. Yeah, out of YouTube, for sure. So this is going to be skewed a little YouTube. Yeah. And so they tend to skew based on that. It looks like they're looking for certain topics and they are obviously very video centric in it. And this is just from.
just the performance, what I'm looking at it, right? And in terms of how they found us there, I also have that down and you can see, and this is something that kind of aligns with. The search stuff that I showed at the beginning. So external traffic, which I would assume is. Basically a Google search. Google search. Yeah. And or. Links that I post directly to our shows, right? That is the number one here. The channel pages, which is just obviously the channel itself, is...
sending the next of how the traffic sources. And external was 23% of our traffic and channel pages was 18 and a half. Yeah. And then the browse features, and mind you, the browse features, this is all of the YouTube stuff. Browse features are the next highest at 16.5. And YouTube search itself is at 11.6. And then we get to the playlist. The playlist rounds out the last part, which is 7.6, which is not as...
high as I would want it to be. And I think that that's, we still need to, I just noticed, Rob, that I didn't even have a description on our playlist. When I was doing this, I'm like, oh, that's not great. So I added. the description to our show on our playlist because I completely forgot. So those are some things that you all don't do what I did, which is make sure that all of the information in your playlist is filled out.
the name of your show, the description of your show. Make sure that you optimize as much as possible so that this becomes one of the stronger features, right? Still not unhappy with what happened with the external traffic sources there. So any other overall thoughts there, Rob, about YouTube performance of the feed? I think folks should check their shows out. Do the deep dive that you did.
And see where or where traffic is and is not coming from. And see, make sure your show is optimized for YouTube. And make sure you have a channel title for your playlist. Yes. All right. So moving into some of the big stories of 2024. Let's go into Apple podcast updates, Rob. So what was like the biggest one that you thought?
around Apple Podcasts was this year. Well, it was the one that started last year, right? It was with the release of iOS 17 and it fixing the issues that were introduced with iOS 15. And that causing quite a few podcasters monthly download numbers to, for lack of a better word, tank. If you got a lot of episodes of which, you know, again, we beat.
over and over at the beginning of the year. But as the year went on, the numbers kept dropping and dropping and finally leveled out around May. So I think... The changes with Iowa 17 in September of 2023, as they related to the decline from October through May, October 23 to May of 2024, I think, was one of the biggest things that...
impacted podcasters that I had to deal with. A lot of times I was explaining, it's not you, here's what happened. I mean, I'm still... literally explaining to people now i'm still sending them links to the post that i put together where we talked and which had links to the three episodes that we really deep dived on that um and went over that but Yeah, so that to me was the biggest. iOS 18, some nice improvements, but again, nothing that impacted people like what happened with iOS 17 change.
But the big, I think, release of Apple Podcasts to me, outside of the iOS 17 behavior and all of those things, was the transcripts. The transcripts feature that was released this year for Apple Podcast was just, what an amazing execution for that. I am still the biggest fan of that functionality. I love the way it.
It works. I love the fact that now so much more is being searched and found because of that functionality. Just the way that it's being employed by a lot of people, which is very easily to capture. even like a screen recording of the words going on the screen. And it's not something that podcasters are doing. It's something that the audience is doing. So in that respect, I really love that.
In a personal level, I don't know, Rob, did you see that our show notes are no longer truncated? I cannot remember where they ended up being truncated. I don't know what the character count was. I think it was something like 3,000 characters. ended up truncating half of my show notes all the time. And it was so upsetting to me because I worked so hard on it. But the release of, I believe it's 18.2.
I don't know if... That's the one that just came out, yes. The one that just came out, yeah. And now, so, it's there. Excellent. I did not realize that they had removed it. I think it was 4,000 characters, by the way. But yeah, that's nice that they're not truncating. So I have to go. Yes, I am. So I cannot even tell you. And I saw Stephen Robles posted about this and I was like, oh, my God.
And nobody else is talking about it. And I was thrilled because it is something that used to happen only for that. And then we had some like closing downs of things. Yes. But one thing I want to just mention on the transverse. Oh, yeah. And this was something I saw on either threads or Twitter, one of the two. Someone had taken a screenshot of a transcript of a podcast and said the podcaster said this, and then the podcaster linked and said, that's not what I said.
So the transcript had gotten their wording wrong. It wasn't very wrong, but it was wrong enough that if you're going to go say this podcaster said this on a podcast, don't rely on what's in the transcript. You can do that to search and find something, but go and listen to what they actually said to just confirm that the AI converted it correctly. Because there's a big difference between the word inconsistent and incontinent.
AI sometimes messes things up. And that wasn't the case in this one. But I'm just saying, I don't remember the exact wording they got wrong. But the person then put a link to the podcast. This is what I said. And it was different. So I thought that was interesting. You know, thanks for calling that out because I do feel that that is something that... might become more problematic as we move forward. There are some folks who are relying on industry, let's say industry podcasts.
They're covering a specific industry, maybe even just a vertical. And in lieu of actually sitting down and actually consuming podcasts, they are using AI to... either export transcripts, transcribe it themselves, and then process the information and create content on their own and publish as if, right, quote, so-and-so quote, so-and-so of what podcast, and then write about that when they haven't verified the exact content and context of...
the conversation. So yes, absolutely agreed, Rob, because tone, tone and context, emotion are not quite the same. When you are transcribing things. Just something to point out on those transcripts if you're going to be quoting people. Absolutely. Do your research. Don't be like mainstream media. Actually do some research. Oh my God.
OK, but there was a lot of endings this year. I have at least for what I could quickly look at. It was Google Podcasts, Samsung Podcasts and Chartable. But I do know that there were some other. What was that? Those last closings that we. saw so we also had the closing of blog talk radio so four ones one blog talk around almost since the beginning of the space so that was a long time on samsung podcast
as we mentioned, closed in less time than it was talked about opening. Yep. Google Podcasts, again, another Google closure, and then Chartable with Spotify closing that down. Which, by the way, hopefully we'll get to it later, but it went well on our side for the removal. So a lot of podcasters didn't even realize we had removed it. That's how well it went. So I think that's a good sign. Oh, good. But yes.
But yeah, I mean, there's always going to be things closing down, just like this podcast closing down. And... It's not a bad thing when podcasts close down. I mean, obviously, if you're the listener of the podcast, you're bummed. But it's not bad on the industry, is what I mean. Just like we no longer watch new episodes of MASH, and we no longer watch new episodes of the 80s.
team, television shows run their course, and podcasts run their course. There will always be some big ones that close down during a year, but then there'll be some new ones that come along to take their place. That really actually is where the podcasting space has gotten to. The amount of podcasts that are no longer producing is pretty much in equilibrium with the number of new podcasts coming on board. And we saw that for the last six months of the year.
But the number of active podcasts is at a four-year low. And we're at about 360,000, 365,000 active podcasts with 10 or more episodes that have released something in the last 90 days. That was, to me, something in 2024 that stood out was that in the last four years, we had gotten to a low point of active podcasts. Even though there's all the hype of 2.7 million or this and that, the reality is it's...
less than 400,000. Yeah. You know what? The other one that was, it was just a sort of like a December, 2024 closing is tune in radio that it's sort of like tune in disappeared. Something's going on with it. It's no longer there. There's people like all over Reddit, all upset. It was actually the one that we were going to have the very first destination with many, many years ago.
And we had gotten it set up on our side. We got it ready to go. And the girl, the lady that was there went on pregnancy leave. And the guy that came in for her came out of the radio world and hated podcasting. Oh. And I think he single-handedly killed TuneIn. Oh, my God. Yeah. And I'm not going to name names, but he came in and he was the worst thing for TuneIn. And he's just somebody that's out of radio, has always hated podcasting, always hated podcasting.
And what he did there to tune in was a shame. And he was moved on to decimate other companies' podcasting strategies. Yes, yes. It's like a one-man wrecking crew. But then we also had obviously we had a lot of conversations around YouTube, YouTube music, right? YouTube podcasts. This was the year that YouTube really stepped up and did all the things. In fact.
We did it. I think it was one of their very first live events where we talked about the YouTube API integration that we had. We always had the destination. We always had. that connection. But now it really supported those extra features, which are the playlist features and being able to have artwork that went along with that channel playlist.
All of it done through the Libsyn side of things and being able to get data into the Libsyn platform itself to be able to measure your stuff all in one place, right? And we still recommend that you use the Libsyn integration for YouTube rather than submitting your RSS feed because it's just one of the stats and two, you're also able to get video in if you use it with us versus just...
a static image where it converts. So there's pluses, definitely more pluses than minuses to use our integration. And as you said, we've been publishing into YouTube. 10, 11, 12 years now, somewhere around there. So it's been a long time. It's just nice to get the stats back. So that was really huge. And the conversation continues to move through. Then there's Spotify of it all.
One of the biggest changes was moving from podcasts like, what is it, Spotify for podcasters to Spotify for creators. So they really shifted that whole conversation around we had. You can refer back to episode 282. We covered that.
in-depth, that whole thing, and moving into video podcasting. And they've optimized their platform for podcasts. And it's become a really strong... place for some podcasts where that's where their biggest audience is right and let's not forget spotify also unleashed caller daddy and rogan to be available out correct beyond just spotify they realized that people consume in more places than just Spotify. In some ways that was good. I don't like when content's only one place. And of course then...
Alex took her show. I know. She didn't left. But Rogan, obviously, is still by far clearly the largest out in the space, and it's not even close. Another big thing, obviously, this past year was Libsyn's 20th birthday. Woohoo! We had a birthday! All kinds of things. And it's just so we are really was now living into our 20th year right now because it was just the birthday. So we're just living into that 20th year right now. And it's exciting.
It's exciting. So, so much more to come around that. We'll be talking about Libsyn here as we move forward, as we finish sort of like the coverage of what we did in the show. And I think that one of the other things that we really. That you really brought to the table was just all of the industry data, the audience discussions about podcast behavior and the state of podcasting in 2024.
including some of those major deals that you just talked about, which was, I think, Alex Cooper and Travis Kelsey's deals. Well, yeah, I guess you could say Travis bringing the Swifties into the podcasting world. Yeah. That definitely helped. You know what's really interesting? I'm not going to talk about this at length, maybe in the coming year here, but the Latino Podcast Listener Report just came out and there was like a massive uptick on women listenership.
overall of the Latino audiences were now at 50-50 split. And it was like a, I can't remember what the point growth was. And it's really hard to discount things like this, like Alex Cooper's. Reach. And I know Taylor doesn't have a podcast. Like, I know she doesn't have a podcast, but something around the conversations with. the podcast and Travis and podcasting, like there's a triangulation there where it did usher in another demographic at a higher level, right?
I can't directly say more women started to listen to podcasts because Travis Kelsey has a podcast. I can't say that. Now that the errors tour is over and she's just chilling with Kelsey and Casey, they should do a couples cast. Oh my God. I don't even, can you imagine if she makes a, if she decides to go on a show like randomly, what would that would do? That is wackadoodle right there.
I think I have here like in personal and cultural highlights, the Hurricane Helene of it all, like taking us all out, at least here in Western North Carolina and the thoughts about tech challenges and things like that, which really came to a head. And I think another conversation that kept coming up, Rob, I don't know about you, but it's the whole evolving platforms and technologies and Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify. What are we looking at?
In the industry now, with these other platforms pulling their more... You know, again, I always come back to audio is still the one medium you can consume more in the day than any other medium. You need to still be audio first if you're a podcaster. If video works for your workflow, works how you record, then look at it, adding it. But there are a lot of people that have gone to video that got nothing.
got nothing for audience on video and spent a lot of time, money, effort, and misplaced focus on the video and got no results from it. It's not... a guarantee if you go into video that you're going to do well and you have to really up your game and you really have to be ready to spend some serious coinage if you want to compete with other video podcasts versus audio where you don't have to spend as much.
I'm curious about how Spotify can, the video Spotify part is going to affect because with the YouTube part, YouTube is really a science. Like it's not something you do haphazardly. It's not something that you do in the same way that we do a lot of this recording. We have a way of doing our thing. We put our stuff out. And yeah, there's many things I wish that I had a lot more time to do too.
promote our show, to market our show, all of those things. So there is that as it pertains to the content that we have. If you're going to compete within the YouTube ecosystem, it really is a lot of thinking. What's the title going to be? What's the thumbnail going to be? When are we going to release this versus the other? What are the first few seconds? What's the hook of this video? Because there's so much science about YouTube.
To succeed, it requires a lot. It's not just set it and forget it. So I agree with you. Overall, I agree with you. Now, the stats we shared at the beginning of the show were very passive stats. They're not big stats. I'm sharing with you cross-promotion or cross-posting to YouTube with minimal promotion.
As in like, here's our latest episode. Here's a link. Listen to wherever you listen to your podcast. Here's the links. And our podcast is not a real video podcast by any stretch of the imagination. But it does get you some pickup and we definitely think is a minimum. All podcasts should do the option where they convert your audio to video and get it up into YouTube because some of that stuff gets found. And that was one of the top ones in there was YouTube search.
And then that was a Google search, right? People finding it through Google search. Correct. It was there. It was there. You could see it. So that matters, especially if people are searching for the title of your show. And I appreciate that it said the feed, the official Libsyn podcast, and it said a technology podcast, right? So it got all of those things right. And that was contextual based on the information Google has about us. And so being on YouTube.
I believe has helped us in that respect, not necessarily building, you know, a hundred thousand views on YouTube. Anyway, but you've got here some of the election influence, right? Well, if we're going to round out 2024 and podcasting, we've got to talk about the election and the influence that podcasting had. One candidate.
openly embraced podcasting and won. And the other candidate did not and lost. And, you know, I sent you a link this morning. I don't know if you had a chance to see it, but it was a minute and a half clip of the senior advisor to... Kamala Harris talking about not going on Rogan and the cavalier attitude she had on it. And you realize, wow, this is really why they lost. They just didn't get it. And not only didn't they get it, they still don't get it.
And there's been a lot of articles written about the influence that podcasting had on this past election. Again, we said before, it's not the thing, but it's one of the things. that influenced this past election. And future elections, the candidates will definitely, especially in the primary season, are definitely going to be hitting the podcast circuit.
and doing a much better job than the Harris campaign did, because they really did about as poorly a job as you could have done this past cycle. And it was disappointing hearing the comments from the person that was their lead, I guess you call it. influencer consultant on that side of things. And she really, really did not get it. And it was really clear in that minute and a half clip. She was on Pod Save America.
But there was an article, and that clip was actually in an article, and we'll talk about it maybe in a future episode, from PR News or online, where they were saying to people, here is how you use podcasting for influence for your product. So that, to me, is that podcasting as an influence space has opened the eyes of many in the PR world now, realizing, hey...
We can use podcasting to help influence for our product or service, which is good for podcasting because we're going to get more attention. And that's, to me, the biggest takeaway of the election was that. now podcasting is going to be treated more seriously. And as the article said, Kamala Harris chose at the end to go and get on.
saturday night live with an audience of six million and stay away from rogan where she could have had an audience of 50 million i've really been thinking about all of that and from a very different perspective as well which is And really be honest with the impact that somebody that has the skill set of being able to hold people's attention in a long form content.
is a skill that is very hard to have. There's some folks who are just able to do it. And that is one thing that Trump does. Trump is an entertainer. He is... Curious about stuff. He has a certain type of personality that holds attention in long form content, especially. as it pertained to the podcasts and the kinds of conversations he was having with the types of podcasts that he went on. And it was not always about the politics of it, right? He's just curious.
Whether you like him or not, he's good at what he does in that respect. That's the role of personality, right? In media formats. I don't feel that everybody is built for that. And there are some people who are naturally skilled at long form conversations, for sure. They can maintain eye contact. They can stay engagement. They can be wacky. They can bring energy. They can bring charisma. They can focus.
for an hour long or longer on dialogues. For others, it's just not possible. And it actually requires a lot more. Now think about this, Rob. I know you're not particularly a fan of video. But imagine if we had to be doing this show on a weekly basis and we were doing video, the lift that it takes to do a long form video podcast is a lot. Yeah. And in order to train somebody to be good on camera in a long form podcast is harder, I believe, than.
doing soundbites if you're going like on CNN or something and you have two seconds or two minutes, right? It's all super fast. That has to be talked about as well. So the next presidential candidates that come out of both sides of the... aisle are going to need to be people that are good in two hour plus interviews. Yeah, I do it here and there and I'm exhausted. When people keep talking, I'm like, holy crap.
I'm done. My brain can't handle this anymore. It's time to stop. The question on the Democratic side is going to be which of their candidates. does best on that long form. I think Dean Phillips does a good job on it. I've seen him do some long form interviews that he did it well. So the question is, who else on the Democratic side? They're going to have to work on honing that skill.
That is a thing. But also, what if they're like really good on? I mean, listen, I just said that Trump was really great at what he was doing with long form like podcasts. Don't think he's great on the other stuff. No, we're just talking. Right. We're just talking about casting here. But if this becomes an important part, you know, that you have to master to move to the next level, there's going to be 15 to 20 candidates.
In three years from now, probably about two and a half years from now, right after the next midterm elections, you're going to have 15 to 20 candidates to start really shuffling around for the next nomination because it's going to be open on both sides. And on the Republican side, there's a few candidates that have done a good job on long form.
probably the best on the Republican side of the ones I've heard interviews from. Probably that Vivek Ramswami does a really good job on the long form. He can sit and he can just talk about anything for any period of time. On the Democratic side, again, I think... The ones I've seen, I think Dean Phillips has done the best I've seen. But is there others? I've not seen Gavin Newsom, for example. I've never seen him or listened to him on a long-form interview. So I think that's...
Something that the candidates, those 15 to 20 candidates are going to bubble up here. They need to start practicing now and get out there. That is true. I don't, I mean, everybody has to practice at the podcasting thing. I'm just saying that there's some people that are better than others. Oh, yeah. Well, it'll be interesting. There'll be a lot of opportunities for us to vet.
some candidates in the next couple of years. The smart candidates will get out there right away. Yeah, they'll start training. They'll put the training wheels on, having long form conversations. It is something you have to do to get better at it. Because if there's not that room of like the editing. Anyway, yeah, there's a lot. There's a lot because I've been really sitting down with this and I'm looking at all sides of so many different layers of what I feel about this. But overall, it's a.
There's some folks that are just better at it. I think that we're going to be closing out here by looking at the year and just focusing on all of the Libsyn, lovely Libsyn things that we did this year. And just to follow up on the fact that the one thing that I know for sure since I've been here is that we are just committed to supporting podcasters. committed to making sure that you keep podcasting, which is what our tagline is, keeping you podcasting through everything, right?
Something that we do really well is obviously providing you the tools and the services for podcast hosting and growing and monetizing your podcast in all of our lovely... advertising stuff, which, you know, one of the key things that happened this year is advertised cast became Libsyn ads. So we're really one Libsyn now. We're like, we are all the things. We are all a bundle. We're a bundle of...
podcast hosting and tools and podcast advertising. And we do our very best to partner with things. Remember Bunny Studio? I don't even know if you've tested all this stuff out. We have a new partnership that we mentioned earlier about. with Lipsyn and Bunny Studio, where you get six months of free access to a custom Bunny Studio package, 20% discount on audio, video, and translation services that they can do.
YouTube, obviously, with our YouTube podcast team, the API integration that we had there, where you can publish and manage your podcast directly to YouTube Music. update your playlist, automatic publishing. You can go, obviously, through YouTube Music, which is that replacement to Google Podcasts, access to YouTube stats via Libsyn's advanced stats plan that we have. and all kinds of lovely things. Right, Rob? What about you and Lips and Ads highlights? Tell us some of those things.
The auto ads is one of the bigger ones that was the highlight from Libsyn. We helped a lot of people generate revenue from shows that maybe the per-episode numbers weren't big enough. To do Host Red, because the Host Red advertisers really have pushed for shows to be in that 20K per episode range or greater. But the programmatic allowed people that were doing 2,000 downloads.
an episode or 2,000 downloads a month for all episodes combined to monetize. And by the way, if you're someone that's in that category and you want to monetize and you haven't and you want to make some money, you can make some really good money with... Really little effort. Just email me, rob.lipson.com. But, you know, one thing we added was a tier for faith-based podcasts. So these are advertisers that are faith-friendly. Got Joyce Meyer, too.
sign up for that and have it on her podcasts, edit programmatic revenue so that she can get some additional revenue for her ministry and some other big ones. So, you know, I think that was a nice addition in 2024, although my wife... Gives me grief because now she hears the ads on Joyce's podcast. But being able to help more people monetize has always been part of what we try to do at Libsyn. Growth and monetization, fame and fortune. Those are the two things that we try to help.
with Ellipson. Additionally, I think Rick taking over as executive VP of sales definitely helped the team. He really has restructured the team in a more focused way and in a more professional way. I think we have probably the best. We definitely, in my opinion, have the best ad sales team in the podcasting space and really helping folks like Roseanne Barr and others like that monetize. We worked with the Osbournes.
as in Ozzy Osbourne and Jack Osbourne for advertising, which is, you know, it's fun when you have some of your childhood heroes that you get to work with forever. You know, it's kind of, it's a name drop with my kids. Quentin Tarantino, you know, having him and Roger Avery, their podcast on board and working with them for advertising. It was really great because I'm huge.
Huge Quentin Tarantino fan. Not that I've seen every movie once. I've seen every movie more times than I can count. And I'm a bad parent because I've showed most of those movies, sans Pulp Fiction, to the kids. So, yeah. I think 2024 was a really good year. We saw the host red ad sales come back and really increase, and I think we're going to see that more in 2025. Outside of that, other things this year.
The certification of IAB, oh yes. And moving on to that, it's nice that the industry coalesced around the IAB standards and it continues to. It surprises me that there's still a few people out there hosting companies that haven't got certified. The reality is if you want to be monetizing your podcast, you have to host with someone that's certified. Not saying they're compliant, but certified.
And the IAB has worked hard to make sure as an industry that the numbers that we represent to advertisers are legitimate. Now, that's another downside to this year. If we want to talk about bad things, we've continued to see. People that are out there selling fake downloads. And we have to be diligent. And we, I'm not talking about Libsyn, I'm talking about the industry. We as an industry have to be diligent to whack-a-mole on those folks that are going to come in and sell snake oil.
There is no guaranteed audience growth. And anyone that says, oh, if you pay me $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, I guarantee you audience growth. The numbers are not real. I mean, I had one the other day. I was looking at the numbers. What are the chances that the Lincoln, Nebraska DMA is going to have 20 times more downloads than the Phoenix DMA, right? There's some red flags that come up on some of these.
scams that are out there. And then I think the biggest thing for Libsyn at the end of the year was our new CEO. So having Brendan on board is great. He is co-founder of Megaphone. He really knows the industry. And I said to him the other day, it's great to have a CEO on board that really knows the space. and understands it and gets it. And he's really pushing for us for growth, not just on ads, but on the hosting side as well. One last item I guess we overlooked, I overlooked was...
The partnership that we did with Mike Duncan, exclusive multi-year partnership. Mike is one of the podcasts that I've always been a huge fan of. And people ask me to go to podcasts. You know, I'm a big history buff. So I'm always Dan Carlin. You know, Hardcore History and Mike Duncan's Revolution in History of Rome. And, you know, it was nice to get a multi-year ed exclusive deal there with Mike. And again, with the upcoming release here of Gladiator 2.
you definitely want to go ahead and check out History of Rome. It hasn't changed since he stopped doing it, but he's cleaned up his episodes and they're there. If you need that gladiator History of Rome fix, he's got the podcast for you. Any other items that we missed there? No, I mean, we do have, you know, the other exclusive deals also with Envy Media and Humble Bragg and all of those folks for Nick Viles.
show and all of that stuff, which has been really nice to be able to see coming forth. So that's really good. But outside of that... Oh, one other thing I should mention in 2024. Matthew Passi joining the Lipson team. Oh, yeah. Yes. Okay. I'll do a shout out to Matthew who came on. Shout out. He co-hosted one of the episodes of Feed. I'm sure he'll do more than one this coming year when either Elsie or I have a conflict. Totally. Yeah. No. Very cool.
So exciting. Yay, Matthew. And now you're going to do the last bit of geographic and user agents of the year, Rob, at least not of the year, but as of. As of, right. So this is the last time we'll report in 20. We still have to do December. So we're going to start with November breakdown per downloads geographically from all sources across Libsyn. And what we saw was 62% U.S. downloads for November.
Canada was 5.7%, UK 5.4%, Australia 3.5%, Germany 3.1%, Sweden 2.5%, India 1.3%, Spain 1.2%, Japan 1%. And that was everyone above one. Rounding out the top 20 are the Netherlands, France, Mexico, Denmark, China, South Africa, Poland, Belgium, Brazil, Ireland, and New Zealand. For November, we had New Zealand back in the top 20. And between November and October, those with changes greater than 0.2% was the U.S. jumping up to 62% from 59.8%.
The UK inched up to 5.4 from 5.1. Germany inched up to 2.8 from, sorry, 3.1 from 2.8%. And of course... Check your stats to see how you measure up against these numbers for November. And now, per user agent info, for November, across all shows globally hosted on Libsyn and Libsyn Pro for IAB stats, mobile downloads were at...
87.28% of all downloads going directly to mobile devices. This is up a bit from October's 86.78%. That means computer downloads were down. They went down to 12.28%. And home... Voice attendance plus set-top boxes held in pretty close to steady. They were 0.44% in November, down just slightly from 0.45% in October. The iOS to Android ratio in November was 3.32 to 1, which was up a smidge from October's 3.27 to 1 ratio. And mobile aggregator apps not...
from Spotify, or from Apple in November were 12.3% of all downloads. And the big dog in aggregator apps is still Apple with Apple Podcast app. iTunes and the Apple ecosystem coming in at 46.9% of all downloads for November. So regardless of what the press may want to report about and ignore. and not talk about Apple Podcast. Apple Podcast is still number one, and more than double number two, and number two is Spotify at 21.48%. Number three was Overcast at 3.2%.
Pocket Cast came in at 1.9%, and iHeartRadio at 1.2%, and that was everyone above 1%. Those under 1%, but greater than 0.3, in order. Podbean, Amazon Music, Podcast Addict. CastBox, Antenapod, and Player FM. And then there's a little drop, and those are followed in order from those between 0.3% and 0.02%. And you go in order, Downcast, Evox, Pandora. Google Podcasts, still getting something. TuneIn Radio, Podcaster, Podamo, Samsung Podcast, Podcast Guru, Deezer, Fountain, Real Life app.
Android, BeyondPod, RSS Radio, Castro, Snip, AirPodCatcher, DogCatcher, Podverse, MixerBox, RealLife, App, iOS, and Axios. And then many, many more that come in at less than 0.02% and don't. weren't mentioned yet. Again, those were based on IEB numbers for November downloads across all of Libsyn, Libsyn Pro. Outside of aggregator apps, there were browsers with Firefox. And I should say this, Firefox really is Firefox and other.
And that means there's some apps that are in there. And that came in at 8.5%. And then Chrome was at 2.2%. Overall, the browsers, including the Firefox and other, were around. A little under 12% of downloads for November. There you have it. That was our last report for this year. We'll be back next month talking about how the December numbers did. Nice. Now to the where have we been. We had a few different webinars, and you...
You actually mentioned them quite a bit on the last episode, but they've happened. They've happened and now y'all can watch them. So we did it. If you are interested in the whole true crime of it all. Please go check it out. There's some astounding stats from a study that we sponsored with Sounds Profitable and Tom Webster presented that data. Mind-blowing.
We also did a live stream for Podcasting Solo, a step-by-step guide to creating and publishing your episode. And we went through the recording to... enhancing your visuals, doing show notes and titles and metadata and artwork. And then we just put it all out.
into the platform, right? Using Libsyn, but you could use anybody you want, but we showed you exactly how to do it, uploading, publishing and promoting. And we had such a wonderful time. Y'all can go check. You'll see that links in the show notes. And we also presented the Latino Podcast Listener Report, another report that we sponsored this year.
with some astounding data. I think I am going to talk a little bit about this next year, Rob, so that we can look at some of the really keystone data points that went in there. So that's really great. But where are we going? We'll be in PodFest in Orlando in January. And that'll also be where the 2025 Hall of Fame induction ceremony is. So in the end of January, Orlando PodFest. Hope to see a lot of you there.
And then in February in Dallas, we'll be at the NRB, National Religious Broadcaster Show. Podcast Movement Evolutions is in Chicago in March. NAB Las Vegas, well, obviously it's in Las Vegas in April. And then we'll have a couple folks at the podcast show in London in May. So at least one show each we'll have someone at or we'll be exhibiting at in the first five months.
Please, folks, if you are not going to any of the shows I mentioned and you host on Libsyn and want to get your cards at the show, please email me, rob at Libsyn.com. And then switching gears to where are you going? And if you go to... podcastingjobs.com you can find A single opening. Sam and our HR has been doing good filling the open positions. We're down to one. It's for a payroll specialist located in Pittsburgh, PA. Go to podcastingjobs.com to see that one and future.
opportunities that will open up. And then finally, don't forget to send in your feedback for anything we did or did not mention on this episode. Maybe you go and do some research on your show, like we talked about in Google, and you find some interesting trends or results you want to share with us. We'd love to hear that. You can record that feedback and email it to us, thefeedatlibson.com.
Or you can call us, 412-573-1934. Or finally, you can use SpeakPipe at speakpipe.com slash the feed. All right. Well... We're done. Thank you so much, Rob, for co-hosting for another year with me and getting all of this information out. And we will be chatting with you on 2025. Yay! Be safe and happy holidays to all of you. Happy holidays. And don't forget to go watch A Boy and His Dog. You'll be questioning me why I recommended it. All right. Okay. Talk with you soon. Ciao. Bye.