The Feed. Updates to submitting and claiming your podcast on Apple Podcasts with Libsyn. Best practices when switching hosting platforms. Castrol updates and love for Sofa. Not all podcast apps support playing video. The challenges of creating the perfect video podcast background and why it's not as easy as it might seem. And finally, stats, geographic, and user agents. Hello, I'm Elsie Escobar, Director of Community and Content for Libsyn, and this is episode 287 of The Feed.
the official Lipsyn 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 Lipsyn. And if you're starting a podcast or simply looking to find a new home for your podcast, use the code THEFEED, all one word, to get up to two months free.
If you would like to get featured on the show, send in your 30-second promo. Now, how do you do that? You attach it to an email and you send it to the feed. at Lipson.com. If you don't have a promo, but you want your voice on the show, ask us a question or add to the conversation that you hear us talk about in an episode, send us voice feedback. You can even do it old school. You can call us. Seriously, 412-573-1934. Or you can use SpeakPipe at speakpipe.com slash the feed.
I'll be keeping an eye out on our email and in our messages. And, you know, the sooner you get it to me, the sooner I'll put it in the queue because it is always first come, first serve. And now our main conversation with Rob Walsh, VP of Podcaster Relations at Libsyn, as well as my co-host right after the first promo of the episode, the Educational Duct Tape Podcast.
Have you ever grabbed a free sample at the grocery store, taken one bite, and thought, wow, I need more of these taquitos, and I have to tell my friends about them? Well, this is your taquito moment, but for podcasts.
If you are an educator or know someone who is, you'll love the Educational Duct Tape Podcast. So I guess it's a little different from the taquitos thing because maybe if you're not an educator, you might not be super into it, but this got your attention, right? Anyhow, tell the educators in your life,
I found a podcast that teachers and ed tech enthusiasts use to stay up to date on new technologies while having some laughs along the way. And let them know that lately we've been tackling big questions like why you can't trust tools. They claim to detect AI-generated text in student work. So tell those educator friends to grab a bowl of taquitos and check out the Educational Duct Tape podcast. Hello, Rob.
Good generic time of the day, Elsie. How are you doing? My goodness. I actually was so excited that the weather was changing and then now it's freezing again. And oh, well. Oh, well. Connie Phil nailed it. He said six more weeks of winter. Six more weeks? I know. I heard. I mean, it was like minus seven in Kansas City, which is where my wife is visiting her mom. Oh, my gosh.
Whoa. Okay. Regardless, I'm happy to be indoors and cozy and talking about a new PR release from Apple. Yes. Apple Podcasts had an announcement Thursday, the 20th of February. announcing two new interactions for many podcast hosting companies for the podcasts that use said hosts.
The first item was actually something Libsyn has supported for over two years, and that is the ability to directly submit to Apple Podcasts from inside the Libsyn UI, even for those that do not have an Apple ID. Now, some other hosts will have that ability. The second item was the ability to claim a show directly from your hosting company. This part is new for Libsyn and new for Apple. This is a new option.
Let's say in the last two years, you submitted your podcast directly to Apple from the Libsyn UI because you did not have an Apple ID or just because it was easy to do. And now you do have an Apple ID and want to claim your show. and get it into your Podcast Connect account. With the new updates Apple announced, and that we support in the UI now, you can now claim your show directly from inside your Ellipson account.
For any podcasters that submitted their RSS feeds directly at podcastsconnect.apple.com, nothing to see here. Move along, move along. Again, for most established podcasters, these announcements do not mean anything. But for those that are getting ready to launch a brand new show, especially for those that do not have yet an Apple ID. It is good news. This is especially true for branded podcasts at corporations that do not have an Apple ID again yet. You know, that was where we saw a lot of.
frustration in the past before Apple allowed us to do that direct submission was from the corporate podcast we worked with. That they're like, I don't have an Apple ID. And they wind up having to use a personal Apple ID for someone in the company. And then that person would get transferred to another division. But it's still under that or they leave the company. So that was always a concern.
Now, again, in the last couple of years, they've been able to submit directly to Apple Podcasts. And then if they wanted to finally, if they got an Apple ID and they wanted to claim it, then you had to go through support at Apple. It wasn't easy to claim the podcast. Now it is. And I should point out that most podcasting companies, hosting companies, do not support these new features. Apple and their PR will be saying which ones do.
It's a select couple handfuls, maybe, of podcast hosts. And as mentioned already here in this episode, direct submission is not new for Libsyn. We've been supporting that for two plus years, along with... the full support of Apple delegated delivery. The new item for Libsyn podcasters is the ability to claim your show if you had submitted to Apple via your Libsyn UI. We will have a link to the Apple article per claiming your show.
in the show notes for this episode is, again, for Libsyn podcasters that submitted directly and have yet to claim their show, this is the important item. It's a little confusing on this because for some podcasting hosted companies, this is all brand new. For Libsyn... It's just one item that's new and the other part we've supported for a couple of years. Yeah. And just in case you don't know, we do have a lot of amazing show notes that I work very hard on, y'all.
Wherever you're listening to your podcast, wherever you're consuming your podcast, whether maybe you're even listening in YouTube. I put the majority of the links that you can get access to right within the description of the episode. So you can just tap on the screen there, look at the description and see all the links and you can read up.
On most of the things that we discuss on the show, we have the source that we are talking about. And when there is no source, it really is our opinion and our thoughts. But you can definitely check the source out right there. So the link will be there for you. And speaking of Apple, they, as in the Apple podcast team, sent out the following email this past week. Quote, dear podcast creator.
On March 1st, starting at 6 a.m. PST, Apple Podcasts Connect will be unavailable for up to eight hours. Access to Apple Podcasts Connect and Analytics will not be available during this time. Best regards, the Apple podcast team. I should also point out I got a similar message from the iTunes team for the iBooks. So this is an all-encompassing, probably...
apps as well. So this is something big going on in Apple's back end on March 1st. So they're doing some sort of upgrades. So it's not just the Apple podcast team that's going down during this period. It's the iTunes and other stuff. So there you go. So what does that mean? That means if you need to look at your stats, do it before 6 a.m. PST on March 1st. So if you're trying to look at your monthly stats on March 1st, do it on February 28th.
That's my best recommendation for you. Oh, my goodness. All right. Yeah. And it's all right. Just stay calm. Stay calm. I know for sure I'm going to get at least two or three emails. from people on March 1st going, hey, Rob, do you know what's going on with Apple Podcasts Connect? I can't get in. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. And then I'm going to send them the time code to this episode. I covered it here.
All right, so we have an email here. Hi Rob, since we are on Libsyn now and our episodes are running from there, can we now delete our old hosting platform? I see our content is still there. We're still paying the monthly subscription. It has been over a month since we moved to Lips and Thanks, NR. Hi, NR. There are two key reasons to have waited a month.
One is to make sure the redirect has taken a hold. And now subscribers are subscribed to your Libsyn feed, the new feed. Having the redirect in at the old host and turning on the iTunes new feed tag at Libsyn. helps with that. But you also want to make sure at podcasters.spotify.com that they are showing the new Lipsyn feed as your feed and not the old feed from the other host.
Again, that is the first reason, to make sure the redirect has taken hold. The second reason to wait 30 days is to look at stats from the old host. for the past month and see if you're getting any direct downloads for your media files. Sometimes people will find one or two episodes are linked to a popular blog post somewhere and get lots of traffic still.
If that is the case, then you need to track down where those files are being linked at and ask them to update to the new file URL. Remember, redirects are for the RSS feed, not for the direct media links. And waiting the month is not just about the RSS feed redirect and item one, but also the media file links and making sure. When you shut down the old host, you're not killing off any viral links directly to a media file or embed player that's linked back to your old host. And FYI...
Turns out in this case, the person did have one episode that was still getting very good traffic at the old host. And it was one file that they had linked to from a blog post on their own website that they'd gotten about. And they were able to go in and change that to the new file URL, which they wouldn't have even known to check for that until someone had reported to them that, hey, you have a broken link, maybe at some point. Good to know. Yeah. So that's again.
Two reasons to wait that month. A lot of people forget about that second reason, which is checking stats. And now moving on to talking about Castro, which has been it hasn't happened as often anymore. And truth be told, I actually was on a podcast talking about this. The fact that I, you know, Castro and I broke up. A while ago. Yeah, because I was ready to go into Grok and say, Grok, make a picture of Elsie Escobar wearing a Castro cheerleading outfit.
I know. Right. But Castro and I broke up and it was, you know, yes, I can't say that the relationship had run its course. In fact, it had not. It was rudely taken away from me. Yes. And at that time, I just had to cut ties. It's not me. It's you. That's right. It was for my own sanity, my own mental health. I had to move on. I could not because it was really heartbreaking for me, honestly. Regardless, I found a new love.
I can't believe this. I seriously did. I found a new love. And now I'm an overcast girl. Welcome to the party. I've been investing in my relationship with Overcast now for a bit. I'm happy. All is well. And Castro has continued to... to be amazing and really has a wonderful team working on it. And I all love to Castro. And all that to say, they have just released a new update.
They are now supporting the transcript tag within their UI, right? And this is what they said on their blog. Quote, today we're releasing our initial support for the podcast. Transcript tag, this is not generating transcripts, but rather displaying the ones that are already in the feed, consistent with our goal of delivering the best UX possible while staying true to creator's content.
We have full support for the four formats outlined in the podcast namespace. So the standard JSON, SRT, VTT file will just work. HTML support is a bit trickier, but we've got it worked working well, even when podcasts with somewhat non-standard timestamps, end quote.
And there's a lot of really lovely screenshots in there. Like I said, I have not been listening on using Castro, so I don't know how this actually works, but it looks very nice with the screenshots that they have on the blog post if you want to take a look at that. And again, it's actively being worked on. There has been a lot of movement and a lot of really wonderful stuff going on with Castro overall.
Still a really solid app. I still really believe in it. I'm just no longer in a relationship with Castro. Well, we'll mention them again later in the episode when we go through the quick run of the shows between 0.2% and 0.02%. Yeah, okay. Or apps, I should say, not shows. All right, all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, so now.
What is going on here, Rob? So this was from the New York City audio email list. And it just, you know, this is again about video and audio. And this is, I just thought this quote was really interesting. Quote, hello. I just had an interview with a popular podcast that could definitely use some audio polishing, editing. And the host said that since moving to include video, the audio quality has been less of a priority and that they weren't looking to improve it.
Gotta love the YouTubification of audio, regards NR. Oh, wow. Well, that's very strange to me. A lot of people that get enamored with video will forget that audio is still important. Yeah. And I've seen this. I've heard this with some podcasts that we saw this one back in the day when streaming audio became a thing. People took podcasts that were very well polished and edited and produced.
and went live and became less polished, less produced, and so less audience at the end of the day. Don't neglect your audio audience if you're going to move into video. Remember, you have listeners. And if you change... What they get audio quality wise, when you go into video, you may change the amount of audience you have and not in the positive way. Here's the kicker, Rob.
And I know that they're saying this and I understand why. I think that it's, you know, when you start to edit video, it does become. It's a harder lift if you're doing something that's a long form, like an hour video, editing an hour video versus audio. It's a little bit more. I don't understand why they were exhausted by that. But I do a lot of consumption on YouTube.
Just straight up video. I consume a lot of all kinds of content on YouTube and audio is very important for YouTubers. Right. It's not like all of a sudden people who really take YouTube seriously. 100% are conscious of their audio. 100%. Any of the bigger, you know, YouTube channels, anything that has to do with being able to grow on YouTube. 100% have amazing audio. So disregarding it is just going to hurt them regardless. It doesn't even matter if it's the audio portion of their podcast.
It's going to matter because the platform itself does that. I know the difference because I, again, when I'm. But they got the lighting right. Well. I know. But it's unfortunate because there are a lot of really wonderful creators that I follow. And mind you, again, there's... You have to also understand that in YouTube, there's all kinds of different types of content, right? It's not just...
presenting content. It's not just podcasting type things. It's all kinds of things. Sometimes it's a different type of tutorial. There's like things, how do you put things on, how to fix stuff, desk things, you know, all kinds of things like that. are happening. But whenever you have the audio be subpar, even if they have really good content, I just can't understand what they're saying, right? I can't hear it or it's very annoying.
It's hard. And I honestly feel that, and I know people are going to get mad at me over saying this possibly, but there are some wonderful video AI tools out there. That will help you very fast. And yes, a lot of them are paid. So you do have to invest in a subscription for this. But they exist and they make that production so much faster. And even if it is very quickly optimizing that audio with a click, it's better than you not doing it. Yeah. So there's that. Oh, my goodness gracious.
All right. So here's another email. Hi, Rob. NR1 is our head of production and innovation and is a video first guru, highly focused on YouTube maximization and a LinkedIn superstar. His background is podcast production, and he has learned a lot about Libsyn. He does have some questions about the platform and one specific one that is of high need is understanding how to post our video first produced episodes, which is where our network is going now for most shows.
And I replied back, hi, NR1 and NR2. you would publish a video episode the same as audio. You just upload a video file instead of an audio file. That said, most services do not support video. I would highly... I put that all in caps there highly. Recommend you stay audio first focused for podcasts, i.e. RSS feeds, and then have a second feed for video. If you go video first, it will hurt your distribution. Oh, I put will in capitals there.
For example, on Spotify, if you want video up there, you need to first publish the audio episode in the RSS feed, then go to podcasters.spotify.com and then upload the video manually to that post at that link. Reality is audio podcasts are much, much more popular than video podcast episodes on Apple Podcasts. There has not been a single video episode cracked the top Apple Podcasts top 200 list in the past seven plus years.
that I've seen. Again, most services do not support video. I send them a link. I'll put a link in the show notes of which ones do and don't. On top of that, people have much more time to consume audio in the day than they do video. My recommendation, again, is to have two feeds if you're going to do video. Have the main one be the audio and the secondary one be video. I can't say this enough. Video experts that know nothing about podcasting.
are going to ruin many a good podcast. I didn't tell them that part. That's just notes for here on the show. In our notes, I have a little screenshot of a slide that I have for a presentation. That I did. Mind you, that was last updated. My slide was last updated in August 2023. And I have not.
Continue to do the work, Rob, because you did the initial work in there and I tested some of these ones and I haven't. You have ACAST in the list, right? ACAST app isn't even live anymore, so I should probably remove that from my list.
Yeah, and mind you, these things can be updated. So there's a slide here, guys, because you can't see our notes, so you don't know what I'm talking about. So the slide says podcast apps that support video podcasts, not including Spotify, out of hundreds. And then... What I did is I started testing the ones that actually play video and meaning you put a video file on and then when you open it, you can watch the video in the podcast app, right? That's actually playing the video.
And out of the ones that we test, or at least I tested then, 14 of them do that. Meaning if you upload, you can watch the video in app. 14 of them do that. Right. And now it's 13 because Acast is no more. And in case, OK, Acast is no more. So out of those, those are the ones that play it. Then from the that plays the audio from the video, there's 20 of those.
on that side, at least the ones that I saw. I don't know. Maybe there's some of them that have gone away too, meaning that in that one, if you upload a video file. Both Overcast and Castro on that list, by the way. So let's say you're subscribed to your podcast. They release a video in there. Overcast and Castro will play. The audio of the video, you can't see it. It just will play the audio file within the video, but you can't see it. There's 20 of those there. The rest of them.
can't even, they don't even know what to do with it, I guess, or they don't support. Sometimes it doesn't show up as even. Yeah. It depends on the app. Some of it's really bad experience. Some of it, they kind of hide the post. But in any case, you can't hear it, you can't play it, you can't see it. Yeah. And there are some of the top apps, right? Apple Podcasts does play in-app video. You can see it.
Podcast Addict also does that. Pocket Casts also plays the video. The Podbean app also does that, too. Those are probably the most, in quote, well-known ones as of now. that you can actually watch the video and stuff. And again, this is not from Spotify. So I guess if you don't care, okay. But just know that it won't... even pop up in other places, right? And even though there are a few podcast apps that are used the most, right?
Some of these other apps that are out there sometimes end up becoming a discovery place like Player.fm. There, at least a while ago. You would get a lot if you were looking for things like online in like on, you know, on a browser or something. A lot of the player of FM links would pop up with.
With something like, let's say you're looking for a very specific episode on XYZ or a very specific podcast. Sometimes the player FM stuff would pop up and that was great. You could like discover things and then go subscribe to it on your podcast app of choice. So just for you to know, and again, it's, yeah, it's really weird. I was just thinking about how to position that in the way that when the video of it all is coming out, right? So it's like...
If you had like a newsletter, if you were running a newsletter and you wanted to play live video within your newsletter and you were trying to figure out. how you were going to make your video play in the email as it got to the person. That's sort of what this type of question sometimes makes me feel where. It's like, why would I want to watch a video in my newsletter or in my email client? I want to read an email in my email client.
And I'm happy to click through to watch said video if you would like me to. I'm okay watching a GIF and I'm okay with an image because it captures me and I would like to. Go to the place I watch videos in order to do that. I would not want to have videos popping up into my email client because that's not the right delivery mechanism. And I feel with this question, that's what we're seeing, where most podcast apps are audio.
And they want to optimize a specific delivery mechanism there, which is to consume audio. And that's what they're optimized for. That's it. That's my comment. That's all you want. Okay. What do we have here? Here's another email, Rob. Hi, Rob. My basic question is, I don't know how to begin. I would like basically...
a babysitter, to walk me through this process. But I'm willing to read through your website as I have been doing today. I answered these basic questions, but my one specifically to you are, how do I start this process? I have my recordings double recorded using smartphone and computer with me talking to myself and occasionally other people. Question here.
I want to integrate myself talking into other podcasts and uploading it to my own podcast. I'm not worried about infringement rights. Stop right there. And this is why I said to a person, you absolutely should be concerned about stealing other people's content because that is absolutely what you just said you were going to do. This 100%.
is a violation of our T's and C's, and you cannot use us if you plan to do this. If you get written approval from each and every one of those other podcasters, that is a different story. But you cannot just steal their content and use it however you would like. That is a major violation of IP rights and will get you in trouble. Sorry to be so forceful on this, but this is a major issue. We at Libsyn take...
all podcasters' IP rights very seriously, and we will never condone violation of those rights. Regards, Rob W. Libsyn. She then went on to say that she told a podcaster via Twitter that she was going to use some of his content. and he hearted her post, so that must mean she has approval to use it. Nope. You need, in writing, with you explaining what you are going to do...
and them saying they approve and give you permission. But hitting the heart means zip. Maybe he loves your naivety when it comes to podcasting. But... It doesn't mean he gave you or she gave you permission just because they hearted the most. Like, oh, my God. And people are pretty open to things like this, by the way. And it's very easy to reach out. Hey, I really loved what you said.
time code to or even, you know, two minutes in or maybe you can say like that section where you were talking about X, Y, Z. Is it all right if I play that on my show? I would love to comment on it. And then, of course, have a link back to your episode. Always link back to sources if you're going to take content. Be considerate. Not just illegally, it's the right thing to do, but it's the morally right thing to do.
Right. Yeah, absolutely. Just stuff like, especially if you're creating direct content from it, it's important to do that. And especially if you're going to be using some of that stuff for yourself. You know, there's other ways where you and what I've done it when I haven't used people's stuff. I mean, meaning when I haven't actually played the audio from other people's stuff. What I would do is say, like, this is where I got this idea from.
And I will still link to the people that said it because that I feel is very important. The source, especially nowadays, you guys, source material is really, really, really important. This is where the idea came from. This is where I got that. My 16-year-old working on a history project on the Northern bomb site and sourcing, sourcing, sourcing. Anytime he used anything, his teacher was like, you got to source, you got to source, you got to source.
Same thing in podcasting. You use content, you get it from someone, you got to source it. You got to put the links. You got to say where you got that source material. Give credit. Give credit, people. Give credit. Yeah, but when she said... I'm not worried about infringement rights. We should all be worried about infringement rights of people's IP. Yes.
Just because it's a podcast and the RSS feed is out there freely does not mean you have the right to use that content however you want. You've got to get it in writing. And no, a heart on Twitter and social media is not approval. Okay, moving back again to some video stuff, guys. And I am going to share again the link in the show notes for this one. It's an article that I found on lowerstreet.co.
on their blog. And it's a really good, solid article about what the best background for podcast video is, because that's something else that is important even. Even though, Rob, you were just talking about the audio of it all and the cosmetics of it all. For some people who are really going all in on audio, the video podcast backdrops is like a thing that comes up. And this is a solid article.
I did write some notes in here that I'm really not going to read through because I think that it's a great, just go read the article. It really talks about why backdrops are important, lighting your backdrops and how important that is. as well as the last element, which is making sure that you test it all, right? So all of those things are wonderful. Really solid article. Again, now.
The reason that I have this in the show notes is less about the thing and more about the fact that for most people, this is sort of like somebody saying. I actually don't have a really good metaphor about this whatsoever. It is very challenging to find an area of a home that you can... Have be your studio and have it be pretty with the background and all the stuff. I feel most of us don't have a place that we could.
make aesthetically pleasing because I believe, and this is my personal opinion, in most homes, we're using our homes to live. and have things in our background and shelving units and stuff like that, that actually serve a purpose, which is to store stuff. finding a clear, this is another thing, Rob, even in this little house that we live in, I have one wall that is like a clean wall, like that there's nothing on it.
Outside of that, there's windows. There's like a mirror stuck to the wall. There's like this like random stuff that is on walls in houses that are not just empty walls. Also, we only have two rooms in our houses, in my house. We have two in other little tiny rooms where the kids sleep and stuff. But it's a weird house. It's a weird house. But where the heck are you going to set up?
Like, I'm in my bedroom right now. I'm already taking up a third of this bedroom for just this little area where I can record my stuff. You have a room, don't you? It's not. set up well i mean so the room i have behind me is my son's gaming computer uh and and then off to the other side are some boxes that i need to get over and get through some of my star wars all my star wars stuff not all of it but
a good part of my star now. Okay. Maybe a third of my star Wars stuff, which is still a lot and star Trek, but I need to get over to storage and go through. And then like a couple of banners. So I have not set up a good. spot for video. And, you know, looking at the backdrop, you know, there was something that says here, not your messy bookshelves, which I used to do Dr. Mark Hyman's podcast, his very first one, Ultra Wellness Podcast.
If you go back, if you can find any of these on YouTube, and I think some of them are still out there, the first 10 or 15 episodes behind him, his bookshelf. Looked like it was the librarian was a squirrel with ADHD on meth, had organized it. It was bad. And they had recorded a bunch of them before they got them to me for initial editing and uploading and stuff. And I'm like.
That was the initial group. And it was just bad. And I was like, OK, you guys need to clean up his bookshelf before recording. So then it changes. There's this point where it changes and the bookshelf becomes very organized and clean. But initially. It was really, really bad. So if you can find the Ultra Wellness Podcast, find like episode one or two of it and look at the bookshelf behind Dr. Mark Hyman. When I say bad, it's really bad.
You know, I think that there's a lot of folks that don't really realize that that's a thing and or they don't really have an option. There's a lot that I feel people don't think through when you tell somebody. In order for you to optimize your podcast, you need to have this in the background. You need to have your background look like this. And if you don't have the luxury of having extra space.
To have this beautiful setup, even in a corner of your room, you still have to invest in the furniture if you want to clean it up, right? Or invest in green screens. And that means more editing, more time in the other side of it so that it looks nicer. That's the part that I think is the most challenging, especially for me, because I've wanted to do something that looks nicer in my background, but I cannot feel like I need to invest.
in buying something pretty for the background that is only going to be set design. If I'm going to buy something for my background in my home, I want it to be useful to my life. I don't want to buy random stuff to just put out there. And that takes a lot of thought to be able to design something in the background.
I don't know. I don't know if anybody, nobody ever complains about this stuff. That's why I'm complaining about it right now, because nobody talks about that. They go, oh, you could just go to the thrift store and buy XYZ or you can just. Use a light and change colors. And you can just, it's not just. It actually takes a long time to do all this stuff. And space matters.
Meaning my background would look a lot better if I could move my desk forward a foot, a foot and a half. And guess what, Rob? That means that the foot and a half, now my desk is right on top of the bed. Do I have a way to get on my bed on the side? Do I actually live in my bedroom like a normal bedroom or do I just now have my studio with a bed? I don't know. I'm annoyed.
Getting a good place is important if you're going to do video. Again, I'm not anti-video. I'm anti-video when done poorly. And you have such competition. on the video side. And it's so many things to think about to get it right. Unlike audio, which you need a quiet room. Yeah. And a decent mic. And you're golden. Video, you need great lighting.
You need a decent backdrop, not one where your meth-addicted ADHD squirrel has done the bookshelf behind you, which included like a flashlight sitting on the bookshelf. And the books are, yeah, I'm looking at, I went and pulled up some of the old videos. I'm looking at it and laughing about how bad the background looked on some of those videos. You got to get it all right. A lot of things, a lot of things to think about on video.
If you're going to go in, go in and do it right. And testing is a thing. Test, test, test, test, test. All right. And now moving forward. And here's this thing, Rob, that I found. I don't even remember how, because I put this in the show notes so long ago. This new thing called Station, station.page. If you go over to station.page. It doesn't open for me. Does it open for you?
Yeah, I opened it this morning because I wanted to look at it. I'm having issues with my internet today. Oh, no. Yeah. I went this morning. Yeah, so it does open. It basically... It's a big, giant landing page. And right at the top of the page, it says, join your podcast tribe. And then below that, it says, station is like a discord for podcasts.
A simple hub to discuss topics, attend events, find promo codes, and explore hidden content. And it's got a search bar right below that, like right at the top part. And it says search for a podcast community. And you can, I guess, search for things there. I haven't been able to figure out exactly what this is as of yet. You can enter stations, and when you enter stations, it has conversations around a topic.
Again, it's interesting. It's an interesting concept. I like that tagline about a Discord for a podcast because that makes sense to me. But I'm curious. I'm curious about it. I haven't played with it. If anybody would like to go check it out. please head over to station.page and report back. All right.
Now, this is a little bit dated in the sense that it's not a new thing. But since we keep getting a lot of questions, we still have a lot of questions about YouTube, how to get your podcast into YouTube. And when I say we, I'm not talking just about Libsyn. I'm talking about overall. I've seen this conversation so much. And we actually have a video that is so good. Brian has done a fantastic job. It's called...
Upload your podcast to YouTube automatically, start to finish, because you always have to have a title that calls people's attention. And it is really... really great because you get an opportunity to see how the UI within Libsyn, and I know it's a little bit more Libsyn centric there, but Brian really breaks down from start to finish exactly how to do all of the things that need to go. into YouTube, right? Because there are some things in the back end.
about the playlist aspect of submitting your podcast into YouTube is something that a lot of folks still don't quite understand. And it requires a few step-by-step scenarios there. And if you go check out that video, you're able to follow it right along. and do all the things that you need to do. And this is not something that Libsyn jumped on the bandwagon for those that are new. I mean, we've been supporting getting your podcast into YouTube for over 10 years.
Yeah. And then this is just it's an upgrade, not necessarily because we didn't upgrade. It's more because YouTube streamlined the process of what a podcast. was on their back end. They organized the material in their back end. And therefore, we implemented those new things, which primarily focused a lot on the playlist tab. And we are supporting it in the UI where you can do the majority of this managing within the Libsyn UI. Now, why would you want to do that? For a lot of audio podcasters.
has very limited understanding of how YouTube works. Not how to consume on YouTube, but in the back end. And then it will walk you step by step. It'll show you these are the things that you need prior to doing this for your podcast and doing it well and being able to do that all within the UI. And then that way.
You don't actually have to be going inside of YouTube too much unless you want to like optimize a title or you want to change a link or something like that because you do have to go into YouTube to do things like that. But you can see, you know, if you set it up this way within the Libsyn UI, you can also see your stats and you don't have to be going inside of YouTube to do that. You can see it all like at one place, which is really nice to be able to check it out.
So the link will be in the show notes and it would be so helpful to everybody if you want to check that out. All right. So you have this app that you love so much? Oh, my God. How can you tell, Rob? Are you going to tell the people? It's been like bold and there's lots of lots of exclamation marks, more than I can count. And then a little smiley face with hearts around it. So, yeah.
Oh, my gosh. So there's glitter on this. You would have thrown glitter on it. By the way, it. Yeah. So this is a new up to me. It has been around for a while, but I. Just started using it at the beginning of this year consistently. It is, I believe, moving forward in the future, although not quite yet released, going to support.
consuming podcasts within the app. At this point, it does not do that. But why am I talking about that? Okay, why am I talking about this app that is not a, in quote, podcast app, but it is, I really love it. It is sort of the dream app for somebody who consumes a lot of content and really likes to keep like a stock of things they want to consume and or a log. And that's the part that I love the most.
a log of what you have consumed because I'm a big law. I love to log what I do because I often forget what I do all the time. And I also use my consumption habits as a reference for my life, meaning, oh, yeah, that's when I was listening to the Game of Thrones audiobook, right? I have those things that pop up in my head or that's when I watched, I don't know, whatever movie for the very first time.
So Sofa is an app that helps you not only organize the things you want to read, watch, listen to, anything you want within it. And you can add it there into these little lists. And also you can log the stuff. There's a little log. So when you finish watching something. you can immediately put it in your logbook and it just sticks it back there and it gives you the time and the date. It already has all this metadata attached to it. So you don't have to do that yourself. It is the coolest thing.
And I've been looking for a place to have all of my podcasts because I test so many podcast apps and a lot of new podcast apps don't have. the ability to import XML. And so meaning you don't have the ability to import all your existing podcasts. And then there's times when I want to just see all the podcasts that I follow. and subscribe to in just one place outside of the podcast app. So I have a list inside of Sofa that has all of my podcasts. That way I can look at them.
and go, oh yeah, these are, especially because sometimes you can't see that in a regular podcast app. The layout is amazing. I've been logging my consumption of things that I watch, shows that I watch. documentaries, audio books that I listen to, regular books that I read. It's all in here, Rob. And the share sheet, it's supported in everything.
So you can share it as soon as you're finished from like watching something on Netflix, you can immediately send it over to Sofa and have it be in there logged. It's the coolest thing. If you love this, you have to test this, test this out to keep a tab of the things that you watch. And if there's not like, let's say maybe Rob, you want to watch like, I don't know.
sports things who me yeah you maybe there's games that you want to keep a tab on or something like that you can actually create a list inside of sofa and you can add a new category to that. So like sporting events and you can just add them when they're coming up and that way you can keep a log of the things that you're watching and the games that you're watching.
based on your stuff that you want to do in there. So I've added a thing for podcast episodes. I'm keeping a list for my favorite podcast episodes ever because there's times when I go, wow, that episode was... Amazing. So now if I feel that way about a podcast episode that really shook me in some way. I can just send it over to Sofa and keep a log of my absolute number one favorite episodes of all time. I have that now. And I can just put it there because I've been looking for that.
There's sometimes podcast episodes that have really changed my life, literally. I wish I had a reference. I could go like, oh yeah, that show, that episode was really moving or was really helpful or whatever. I have that also for my favorite pieces of media of 2025 that I'm keeping. That way I can look back and go like, oh, yeah, those shows were my favorite for that year. And anyway, so it's really great for logging.
your media consumption and almost everything else. Actually, you can create your own stuff. So I would love you guys to check out SofaHQ.com. There's a paid that I have not upgraded to, but I'm really considering on doing that because it gives you other features of being able to get data on the stuff that you've done. Like I'd be able to see.
How many hours of movies did I watch? Have I watched? How many hours of audiobooks have I listened to? You know, stuff like that. All in one. So you can log. You can see your stats across all media versus just podcasts, which Overcast helps me with that. That's it. All right, moving on to some stats follow-up. Hi, Robin Elsie. This is an email.
Thanks for answering my question. After hearing your explanation, I realized this spike coincided with me updating a big chunk of my back catalog and uploading many new MP3s. had a huge spike overall right after that, including this Windows player. What do you think? So a couple of episodes ago, we talked about the, what was it? Microsoft.
Yeah, it was a spike that they had seen in Windows Media Player. Yeah, yeah. So that's what. And it was a very like specific, like a one week window where it happened. Yeah. So good on you for doing the research. Right. And they hadn't mentioned at the time that that was when they replaced files. So let me just say, if you're hosing with Libsyn and you're going to do a replacement of a big part of your back catalog, and we have people do this all the time, they change.
branding, they change them intro, they change encoding, whatever. There's many different reasons why some people will do this. I always recommend you use FTP to upload the new versions and you make sure the new version of the file is the exact same file name, including case, as the original file. And the reason you do it with FTP, it's bulletproof. Because you just FTP it up to a folder called Dropbox in your Libsyn account.
And it instantly replaces it. You don't have to go into the episode, hit edit and publish and do anything. You just upload the new version. And if it's the exact same file name as the original, it replaces the original. if you get the file name wrong, it just sits in your FTP queue and doesn't replace anything, and then you can go and delete that and then re-upload with the right file name. That's why I recommend the FTP, because you can't mess it up.
If you do the FTP and if you keep the file name the same, you don't get this spike because these spikes happen when, especially with Spotify. When the file URL changes in any way, shape or form, if you had a lowercase e in the original file name and now you have an uppercase e somewhere in the file name, that's a different file as far as Spotify is concerned.
and will cause extra downloads. So if replacing, you can use the FTP function, which Libsyn supports. You drop it in the folder called Dropbox, not to be mistaken with Dropbox.com. We called this before there was a... Dropbox.com. So again, folder's called Dropbox. You drop it in there. If you have any questions on FTP and uploading with FTP, email me, robertlipson.com. Happy to help you. I have tutorials I can send you. But that's the best way to replace. It's bulletproof.
It's easy. You can do it in bulk. It's fast, simple, and FTP is so easy to use once you set it up. If you're on a Mac, use an app like Cyberduck. It's free. Again. Very easy. Don't be intimidated because it's three letters that you don't know what they mean, which is file transfer protocol. But it really is really simple. And it's something that Libsyn supported for many, many, many years.
All right. Before we get into this promo, it reminds me, you know, the last house I was at, we had these bar height counters. And then, you know, you now you have the lower counters. And I mentioned that because you have to have the right.
height for the stool for the counters and i was surprised when we were selling stuff because we were moving out and i was like okay we gotta get rid of these stools because they're not going to work at the place we're moving to how much interest there is for that perfect stool
in getting the right height for the counters. So with that said, why don't we go ahead and play this promo, which seems to be related. Are you ready to transform your health and realize that your gut may have something to do with it? On The Perfect Stool, Understanding and Healing the Gut Microbiome podcast, I go beyond gut health to explore how the microbiome influences everything from mental health to autoimmune disease, cardiovascular health, skin conditions, and even weight management.
I dive into the surprising connections between your gut and conditions like anxiety, depression, ADHD, and autism, as well as how the microbiome plays a role in chronic illnesses through in-depth interviews with functional and integrative medicine professionals.
researchers, and patients, I uncover the latest science and practical strategies to help you take control of your health. Whether you're looking to heal chronic health issues, optimize your well-being, or just stay informed about cutting-edge health topics, the perfect stool offers insights that go far beyond digestion.
Subscribe today on your favorite podcast platform and start your journey to better health. All right, Rob. Oh, that was different than I was expecting. God. Now we get the stats. Geographic and user agents. And first up this week is the country breakdowns for January per download geographically from all sources. And I will go through the top 20. U.S. at 60.3% of our downloads, Canada at 5.6%, U.K. at 5.2%, Australia 3.3%, Germany 2.9%, Sweden 2.1%, Spain 1.2%.
Netherlands and India, both at 1.0%, and that's everybody above 1%. Rounding out the top 20, Japan, Denmark, Mexico, France, China, Poland, Brazil, South Africa, Switzerland, New Zealand, and Norway. For January, we had Switzerland and Norway back into the top 20. And between January and December, those with changes greater than 0.2% were no one. It's kind of a boring month.
Of course, check your stats and see how you measure up to these numbers for January and now per user agent info. For January across all shows globally hosting on Libsyn, Libsyn Pro for IAB stats. Mobile downloads were 87.39% of all downloads going direct to a mobile device. This is up a smidge from December's 87.25%. Computer downloads were down a smidge to 12.16%.
Home office attendance plus set-top boxes were at 0.45% in January. The iOS to Android ratio in January was 3.56 to 1, which was up a bit from December's 3.23 to 1 ratio. Mobile aggregator apps not from Spotify or from Apple in January were 10.94% of all downloads. And the big dog in aggregator apps is still Apple with Apple Podcasts app and iTunes and the Apple ecosystem coming in at 47.9% of all downloads in January. Number two in January was Spotify 21.4.
Overcast third at 2.9%, Pocketcast at 1.9%, fourth, and iHeartRadio in fifth at 1.1%. That was everyone at 1% or greater. Those under 1% but greater than 0.3% in order.
podbean amazon music cast box podcast addict antenna pod and player fm that's your tier twos and then we go to our tier threes and um there this is everybody between 0.2 percent and point 02% in order are Downcast, Evox, Pandora, Podomo, TuneIn Radio, Fountain, Deezer, Podcast Guru, RSBN, which is new into this group, Google Podcasts. BeyondPod, Podcaster, Castro, RSS Radio, AirPodcatcher, PlaydioCast, another new one, Snipped, RealLifeApp, Android.
Dogcatcher, Podverse, and Mixerbox. And when I say new, I don't mean new apps in general, just they moved up into the above 0.02% range. And then many more. that came in at less than 0.02% and don't really warrant mentioning yet until they move up. Again, those were based on IAB numbers. Outside of aggregator apps, there were browsers. Firefox and Other, and again, we say Other because a few apps that use Firefox Player, came in at 8.1%. And Chrome was at...
2.5%. Overall, all browsers combined were around 11% of downloads in January. Alright. So that is stats. Move on to where have we been. I mentioned last time I did some recording on some episodes, but nothing that's public yet. So when those go public, I will mention them. Me too. As far as I know at the moment, at the time of this recording. Unless I missed it. I honestly have no idea. Well, if you missed it, that's on the podcaster. If you are a guest.
and you don't realize that your interview went live. That's not your fault. That is the podcaster, the host, who show you Ron's fault for not making it abundantly clear with links and notifications and emails that... The episode is live. And that's a message to all podcasters that have guests that you should.
be making it really, really, really clear to your guests that the episode is live or it's about to go live and with links and everything else so they can help promote it. It's just a good marketing strategy. So there we go. All right. Where are we going? Well, the week you hear this, I will be in Dallas at the NRV show, which is National Religious Broadcaster. I'll be doing two training sessions at NRV. One is how to create assets for a podcast.
That's all the things you need to make a podcast, you know, get a podcast launched. And then the second one is how to set up and distribute and launch said assets and podcast. So if you're at NRB, please come to those sessions. And then after that, we've got Podcast Movement Evolutions in Chicago. End of March starts. And we've got a bunch of people. You want to go through who we have speaking at that show?
Sure. So for Podcast Movement Evolutions, we have Matthew Passi. He's going to be speaking on Studio on a Budget in the Create track. Rob Walsh is going to be presenting his podcasting stats. how to check if they're valid numbers. We'll leave it at that. For, I don't even know what track you're on there, but you're in a track there. So you'll be able to see all of that stuff. It's a really great session. Everybody needs to attend that.
Anthony Civelli and Steven Pickens have two sessions, host red ads that work. Authenticity is the new ROI for the profit track. And then YouTube ads and beyond the rise of video podcast dollars. Those two things are going on. Then Brooke Collins and Karen White are going to be doing audience targeting campaigns, podcasts versus streaming industry and brand track.
Brian Coddington is going to be doing video podcasting on a budget, quality content without breaking the bank. Steven Pearlstein is going to be doing unlocking YouTube analytics for podcast success. Pod Kane is also moderating a panel titled TBD. We do not have a title for that one yet, but he will be moderating that and we'll add it here as soon as we have that.
And then coming up in April, we have NAB in Las Vegas. Yeah, I got I get home on Thursday night from podcast movement evolutions and then Saturday morning. Early, like 5.50, I fly out to NAB Las Vegas. So I'm home less than 36 hours, essentially, between the two shows. Yay, time to get my laundry done.
And then we're going to have someone attending the podcast show in London in May. And then, you know, folks, if you're not going shows mentioned, you know, email me. So you can always send your cards to me via snail mail, get them out of the show. And finally, switching gears to where are you going? Well, if you're looking for a job in podcasting, make sure you go to podcastingjobs.com.
As of the middle of February, we had three openings listed there. All remote, Director of Creator Partnerships is one. Another one is Director of Podcast Strategy and Operations. And then a newly added one, Podcast Ed Operations Coordinator. I do not know anything about what these jobs entail. So if you email me asking this, they are not anything that I can give you help on, but I can forward you on to our HR team. But best is just to go to...
podcastingjobs.com to learn more about these openings and potentially others and to submit. There's a place where you click through and you can submit. If you're looking to start a podcast or switch up your podcasting home, you can use the code THEFEED. one word, the feed, for a free month plus with us. And then 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, thefeedatlipson.com, or you can call us, 412-573-1934. Or finally, you can use SpeakPipe at speakpipe.com slash thefeed. rounds it up perfect well folks uh we will chat with you in a couple of weeks ciao bye