THE FEED can win a golden globe. Ish. What you need to know about the FTC and AI podcast ad reads covering... Spotify announcing public plays and how they encountered the rat. of podcasters, iOS 19's new accessibility features, Libsyn's downloads, per podcast category, and... Mean and Media user agent stats are back. Hello, I am Elsie Escobar, Director of Community and Content for Libsyn, and this is episode 290.
Three of the feed, the official Lipson 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 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! Now, if you would like to get featured on the show, make sure that you send in your 30 to 60-ish second promo.
How do you do it? You attach it to an email and you send it to thefeedatlipson.com. If you don't have a promo but you want your voice on the show, you have something to say. I know you have something to say. Ask us a question or add to the conversation that you hear in an episode. Please send us your voice feedback. You can call us at 412-573-1934 or you can use SpeakPipe at speakpipe.com slash the feed.
Everything is done via email. It is first come, first serve and subject to time, topic relevance. or editorial discretion. Plus, the sooner you get back to me, the sooner you'll get it in the queue. And now, on to our main conversation with Rob Walsh, VP of Podcaster Relations at Lipson, as well as my co-host, But Before We Do. We do discuss. the news of Spotify announcing public plays in obviously the main show here. But we recorded on Thursday and Spotify made an announcement on Friday.
That's stated. Quote. To help celebrate growth, plays will be presented as incremental milestones instead of precise figures beginning once an episode hits 50,000 plays. Creators will still see their precise numbers in their private dashboard. While plays are already available to all creators and publishers in Spotify for creators and megaphone, this experience continues to be a gradual rollout across the Spotify app. End quote. Alright, so they did update it.
so even what we're discussing is slightly dated although this announcement answers some parts of our discussion and our concerns. A lot of our dialogue about the feature being rolled out is still relevant for all podcasters, so I hope you still enjoy. Okay, are you ready? Let's go! Hello, Rob. Good generic time of the day, Elsie. How are you doing? I'm good, you know. I'm...
I'm in it. I love sunshine and it makes me happy whenever the sun comes out. My energy levels pop up and I am ready for new stuff. This is my season. How are the goats doing this season? The goats are good. We did have an experience of something wacky. That came around and I don't know what it is. I woke up one morning and... The trash was totally destroyed because we have trash in the back. But it was very strange. There was a trash bag that was... ripped open in the middle of our yard.
very nicely like in a clump and then there was another trash bag going deeper into the woods ripped open with just a like the trash wasn't everywhere it was just in these little piles and then I was like oh my gosh so all of that was messed up and then went over to the compost bin we have this kind of big compost bin that's really heavy, like very heavy, full of obviously compost and it's wet and heavy. It was pushed to its side.
And all of the stuff was everywhere. That sounds like a bear. That sounds like a bear, right? It sounded like a bear. And I was like, that was not a raccoon. Randy said it might have been a coyote or like something like that. And I'm like, no, those guys like a wolf, they don't have that much strength. I mean, I guess they can, but they were a little messier, I think.
Bears are strong. Yeah, raccoon couldn't push something heavy. You know, it was just ripped up stuff. That's a raccoon. Yeah. But the heavy sounds like a bear. And also the fact that it was carried. So there were little signs like that. Because we have had critters get into our trash in the past, but usually it's a big old mess by the trash. It's just everywhere.
ripped up. This seemed like a pathway. I thought, that was a bear. That was what I thought. I could just see the bear grabbing and picking up stuff. Anyway, so that happened. Well, tell the family to be careful. Yes, for sure. But that was fun. Bears in the trash. That was fun.
Lovely. Anyway, but alas, from that, let's go ahead and move into some lips and news. Yeah, this comes from Podcast News Daily, a link in the show notes for the full article. Here's a snippet for you to read from the article. Okay, so quote Lipson appointed Andy Wright. As Vice President of Technology, he will lead Libsyn's technology strategy and innovation roadmap, guiding the evolution of its integrated platform. for creators and advertisers.
And Wright will oversee the design and development of tools that enhance podcasting. hosting distribution and monetization. Quote, his appointment comes at a pivotal moment as Lipson scales its advertising capabilities, expands creator focus, offerings, and accelerates investment in future-ready technologies that simplify complexity, elevate user experience, and drive long-term value, unquote, the company said in the announcement. So Andy, woohoo, welcome. Yes, Andy, welcome to the family.
After this recording, I'll be on a call with Andy for the first time, so I got to meet Andy today. Oh, nice. Yes, in just an hour and a half or so. Very cool, very cool. Welcome, welcome, Andy. I have not had a chance to meet him and so I look forward to that. Yay. And you've got some stuff here, Rob, about some AI-generated voices and things. Yeah, you hear me grunt and groan. Ugh.
It's a little backstory on this. Recently, I've talked with a couple of different AI companies, and they talk about, oh, we can generate voices from the host to do ad reads for programmatic ads. create his voices and get these ads created in the host voice for your podcast and then I talked to another producer for a big podcast not one that hosts with us and they were telling me they were using AI to do ad reads
so they didn't have to annoy the host. And I was like, well, do you guys watermark and mention that it's not the host reading it? And there was silence. Oh. So I'm going to go over this looking at the FTC rules and statements. Here are some quick to-dos. and don'ts. So put do's and don'ts when it comes to AI generated voices.
For ad reads, do clearly disclose when an AI-generated voice is used in an ad read, especially if it resembles a real person, and definitely if it is the host's voice that you're doing. ensure the ad content complies with FTC endorsement rules, example, reflecting honest opinions and disclosing material connections, and obtain consent if using a cloned voice based on a real person's voice data.
Don't avoid using AI-generated voices to impersonate real individuals without their permission or disclosure. as this could be deemed deceptive, and do not use AI voices to mislead listeners into believing a real person is endorsing a product when they are not. Now, in podcasting, if you have a host, a view as the host, I should say, or as the producer for the host, or the company doing ad insertion for the host,
Create an AI-generated ad read for the show in the voice of the host. You must, must, must. and podcasting. State at the beginning of the ad read, the voice is AI generated. And if you are doing streaming audio, you must stay at the beginning and the end of the ad read, just in case someone comes in midstream. But for podcasting... which this show is focused on.
You must disclose at the beginning of the ad read, it is an AI-generated voice, even if the host fully is on board with the advertiser, even if it's their favorite product they've ever used, even if they're part owner, it doesn't matter. Even if they lost their voice the night before screaming at a sporting event or they got sick, you still need to disclose, say if you used a script or any other AI tool to create the voice.
for the ad read. You have to disclose that it was AI generated. It's that simple. It's that straightforward. Don't get fined. Don't get in trouble. And beyond the fines, it's also ethically the right thing to do. What you're sharing here is that these are the rules. Right? This is what you are required to do? According to everything the FTC has said, yes. These are the rules. They've made it clear there isn't to be any deception when using AI-generated voice.
and that you have to disclose when it's an AI-generated voice doing any sort of and read. Again, even if the host lost his voice and goes and does it himself, because you go into the script and, you know, we've all lost our voice, right? And you already didn't do the ad reading, you got to get that in. You still got to say, Hey, this is Naya Generated Voice.
and say, I lost my voice. Sorry. You know, whatever the reason is that you're doing the AI-generated voice in that case. But you still need to disclose that because it is considered deceptive otherwise. To me, this is more of a concern on these new services that are coming out that will be able to take the host voice and create an ad read for a local car dealership. I mean, come on. And things like that that are coming.
that just has to have that watermark. And when I've talked to these companies and I said, well, do you put a watermark at the beginning? Well, no, the host gets to approve the advertising. That's not what the FTC said. You know, I'm really curious what the workflow of all of this is going to be like because... That just makes it so much harder overall. Like if I was doing something like that, how do I make that not be one of those things where...
All of a sudden I'm putting in an ad and every time I put in the ad, this ad is a robot. Or what do you say? These are AI voices. What's the disclosure sound like? The following ad is an AI-generated voice of the host. And if it is where the host has approved the advertiser, you could say this is an AI-generated voice of the host who has fully approved this generation.
artist creation. You can put something like that. But here's where it comes in and why some bigger shows do this. Some people record episodes a month. a month and a half before. They have these interviews that are kind of evergreen or content itself, you know, true crime or whatever it is. It's evergreen content history podcast. And then the host is done with the recording. They go into the studio, they record.
and then the producer takes over from there. And then the producer's responsibility is to get the ads in there, but the ad doesn't come until a week before, two days before the episode's going to go up and the host isn't available or whatever. They don't want to inconvenience the host because they are. The talent. There's some big celebrities out there.
doing this so whatever there's multiple reasons again could be it could also just be the simplest one or you lost your voice or the person was traveling and not available to do a recording because they were out of town and out of out of pocket and the ad came in a day before. And you go, well, I'll just go into script. I've got this voice trained. I'll just... Use it and create it. Well, you still need a watermark.
And some hosts do a good job whenever they use AI. Brian Dean Wright from The Wright Report, who has done AI voice to read segments, he will say, you know, this is... AI generated Brian. And he has a little shtick that he does with it. So, you know, when a segment is in him, this is AI-generated Brian reporting it, da-da-da-da. And he did it a couple times because he had lost his voice.
However you want to do it, just make sure you disclose it up front. You can be cute with that disclosure. There's no rules about what the disclosure is or how snarky or funny you make it. It's just that you need to have it. Yeah, I'm just thinking through the content piece of it all. Because, I mean, I agree with it. So I'm not here to fight back against the disclosure aspect of it. And I understand why also. the execution of it in a way that is not, even when we ask here for folks,
to send in their promo code, you know, their promos for the show. And it needs to be around, you know, 30 to 60-ish seconds or something like that. There are some folks who have a really hard time distilling the message to that time frame. And a lot of the ads have a time frame. It's 30 seconds. And if disclosing the AI of it all becomes part of the content in a way that it gets stuck in the message, if the ad itself is 30 seconds and the disclosure is 5,
It becomes a challenge to distill it down. I think as a producer, and I understand. But I get it. I get the disclosure part, especially if you're saying disclose at the beginning and disclose at the end. That's another five to 10 seconds added to a 30-second ad of disclosures. Yeah, I mean, I wouldn't... count that as part of it, the 30 seconds. But yeah, it could be something as simple as the following message is from AI-generated Rob.
Yeah. And then at the end, thank you, AI Rob. Yeah, and you don't have to disclose at the end of podcast. Only have to disclose at the end if you're doing streaming audio. And podcasting is not streaming audio. So podcasting, you don't have to disclose at the end. You just have to disclose at the beginning. Okay. Yeah, no, no. Just the beginning for podcasting.
But if you are someone doing live streaming audio, well, if you're doing live streaming audio, you're not going to have an AI-generated voice. But if you're doing... There are streaming services that you can put your show up on. If you are going to put your show up on there and you're going to have that, then you do need to disclose that the ad read is at both the beginning and the end that it was AI generated. Again, podcasting, just worry about the beginning.
And you're okay. And, you know, it's super annoying to me the fact that nowadays a lot of the, you know, bigger names I've seen now, I think we reported on it a couple of episodes ago about... Some ads being created in other channels that are depicting their likeness. Within a context of being interviewed for a podcast. where they are endorsing a product as an ad, and it's not them. And I have, after that, seen other... In fact, Tim Ferriss is the latest one.
Who just posted something saying that there's a Tim Ferriss out there endorsing a product that is not me. Oh jeez. And it's a video podcast. So it's not the audio portion of it, but I did see that, and I think that that's such a huge problem. The other thing is, I just want to comment here of the AI of it all because I hadn't experienced it as of yet, right? I've seen a lot of people talk about or I've seen articles written about
How many podcasts are AI podcasts and all this stuff? And I'm like, what are you guys talking about? I see all of these articles, but I didn't understand it. but just the other day ironically i was doing a ton of research on certain AI products out there and I was very curious about Gemini specifically. So I was just looking for information about Gemini 2.5. and all of the different offerings from Google as it pertains to the AI.
The way that I learned is through my ears, and so I went and I looked for episodes about Gemini 2.5 specifically. I just went into Podchaser, actually. I put in... gemini 2.5 it spit out a ton of podcast episodes from podcasts i've never listened to about gemini 2.5 And I chose a bunch of them, added them all to Overcast, and started to listen through. Rob! Half of them were AI. And I thought, like, this is so ironic.
Because I learned through my ears, I do do research on like notebook LM on my own stuff, you guys, my own things. I put my own work on there and then I sometimes use. The podcast feature, the audio voices talking to each other, talking about the content that I have uploaded. So that I can understand and like get other ideas. It's just a workflow thing for me that I've done. And so I do listen to those podcasts within that context.
the AI. I'm not here to publish those anywhere. I'm there to learn and to deepen my understanding of my own work and other information that has been shared with me. That's how I use it. Great. So I know these voices that are in these podcast episodes. It's the same voices. And I'm like, oh my God, they're literally using the AI voices and just uploading them.
And I get why it's being put out because it is an easy way to discern information and distill information because that's what these were. Information about Gemini 2.5. Very specific. Most of them were five to seven minutes long. So I'm thinking a lot of these AI episodes and podcasts are short form.
The other one that I found was a teaching podcast about AI where there is a human who is introducing the podcast or the episode and saying like, hey, today we're going to talk about XYZ. We're going to go into this and this and the other. and then all of a sudden the portion of the teaching came on and it was the AI voices. He didn't disclose it. He didn't say these are AI people talking or AI voices talking. So does that also have to be disclosed or just... It's about ad.
It's about ads. You can create AI-generated content, and that's fine. That doesn't need to be flagged as that this isn't a real host. But once you get into the point of selling something, then it needs to be disclosed. And you know, we had... an AI-generated podcast. We actually had a few of them. And one way you could tell they were AI-generated before even listening was the fact that they misspelled the word wrong in the artwork for the podcast.
That was a common word that was clearly AI generated artwork. So they did AI generated artwork and AI generated content. And then they used bots to drive numbers up and that's how we busted them and we busted them because they wanted to get onto auto ads and they were bogus content well bogus downloads The fact that it was AI-generated content was okay right up until the point that they had fake downloads.
and didn't have any real audience. I mean, like, no audience. So the content's not working well for them, and that one week turned off ads for them, or actually didn't allow ads for them. And then they left us and they went to a competitor who then also didn't allow it. and then they went to a third one, and they're now at the third one. But they have no ratings or reviews at this point, and they have no audience. And the artwork's still there with the misspelled common word.
And I'm not going to get into what it is, but it's just funny to see that that content's out there. I'm more concerned in those cases about the fraudulent bot activity for driving traffic. Wow. I think of all the things for somebody to optimize and want to put into a pipeline and just spit out and automatically make money. Podcasting is not. It's so hard already for all of us humans.
The robots are not going to make it, y'all. The robots. There's other things you can optimize and add into a pipeline and have it all be AI. There's other things that will really work for you. But podcasting is not it. So just. Step back, people. Step back. Good lord!
Anyway, so moving on to the Golden Globes now has podcast Rob. I'd heard this, so you've got a few different... items here you want to get into a little bit more detail on this yeah so i'm just gonna have a little bit of quotes here because everybody's Question is like, how can I get, I can win a Golden Globe now.
But this is from the article, literally from thegoldenglobes.com, and this is what it says, quote, As the world of entertainment continues to evolve, we are excited to recognize new forms of storytelling. said Golden Globes president Helen Hone. Podcasts have emerged as a profound medium for sharing narratives and building communities across global borders and generations. By celebrating achievements in both audio and visual podcasts,
We aim to honor our heritage categories while making room for new voices and formats to be heard. The newly added podcast category marks another progressive step by the Golden Globes to adapt. to contemporary entertainment trends and audience interests. The 83rd Golden Globes will include a salute to podcasts that have made a significant impact over the past year, celebrating the creativity and influence of creators worldwide. The top 25 podcasts.
will qualify for the award with a total of six final nominations for the category comprehensive eligibility criteria and additional details about best podcast will be announced. in the coming weeks. Okay, what defines the top 25 podcasts? This is, um... part of what i wrote here where i'm like i do not know the details should become clear according to the hollywood foreign press association hfpa in case i said that and they're going to release
the formal eligibility rules. So we don't know. We literally don't know what that is going to be. And according to them, it'll be published before the nomination process begins. So if Rogan's not at the top of that list, we know the list is BS. Uh, yeah, but also, we'll figure out, like, because it depends on the measurement, correct, Rob? Because if the measurement is... something that doesn't align with whatever, then that is why. We don't know.
Now, I have a little bit of a quote here from another article from Awards Watch. By the way, you guys, all of the quotes are going to be and can be linked to and accessed via our show notes. So here's from the Awards Watch quote. Nominees for the new category will be narrowed down to six candidates from a larger pool of 25. Most popular podcast series.
Although, where the collective metrics would be coming from, we're unclear as of today. Eligibility requirements for those rankings and other details. will be announced in the coming weeks. The org also cited Luminate. data point that estimates global podcast audience to exceed 600 million within the next year, end quote. I have a feeling we're going to be talking about this again. Oh my gosh, yeah. Also, the other thing is the exact submission process. Right? That, we don't know about that.
So I kind of went into this thinking about the way that TV and film goes in there. So the way that usually things work for film on TV, it looks like it's like this. So producers or studios submit their work. There are shows and performances and the movies for consideration. So that's how it happens for the other stuff. So for podcasts. Maybe something similar kind of like that. So that would be the creators or distributors.
May have to submit their show by a certain deadline and maybe include things like release date or listener numbers and our audience numbers, download numbers. If that's part of the criteria, and since they mentioned this top 25, then that means that maybe the Hollywood Foreign Press might not open it up to every podcast out there. But alas, how are we measuring that?
And they might just pull from the top 25 most listened to podcasts. Now, where's that data coming from? Who knows? And maybe they'll just focus on that. So yeah, obviously they have to be popular in some way, and that's going to be the heavy lift right there. And then once that happens, then the Hollywood Foreign Press Association voters... who are all international entertainment journalists. We'll dive into those top in quote 25.
and choose the six nominees from there. Now, as far as how they will be evaluated once they are nominated, that is also up in the air. So we don't know if the voters will be given like a highlight reel of podcasts. right or a specific episode or if they're expected to listen to entire seasons and what if the podcast is doesn't have a season and what if it's a you know there's so many questions because Somebody like Rogan, you can't listen to an end quote season of Rogan.
Also, a daily podcast that's five minutes long versus, again, the long form types. Who knows? So who knows? Alas, we will be talking about this. Later, and if you want to read deeper, Links in the comments. Well, if Rogan and The Daily are not near the top of the list, at the top of the list, Well, I'll definitely have comments about that later. Oh my god. And Rob, as you know, how often or how much Do those top 25 podcasts change?
It would be funny to see Hawk to a girl in there. Oh, my God. Yeah, that, right. Can you? Yes, of course. That would be great content for the show. Not so good for podcasting, but, you know, good content. Maybe Spotify will sponsor it and then they can use the play data from Spotify. Oh, that's a segue. That's a segue. So Golden Globes, yes, news number one. News number two that has the people going wacky out over here in the podcasting industry world.
Spotify and Plays, Rob. Have you seen the conversation out there? Oh my gosh. It's crazy. And it's picked up by mainstream media. NBC News has something on this. I know. Newsweek, other main ones have... Oh, I'm just seeing a bunch of articles. So if Spotify said, hey, how can we stir the pot? They figured it out.
Well, I don't think that they went in there staring the pot. They literally thought they were being all smart and they were like, this is the best idea ever. This is a good, how do you say it, trial by fire where you understand that podcasters. are not your average content creator. They don't understand the long tail of podcasting, clearly. No, nor do they understand the emotion.
that podcasters have attached to their data. For the three people listening that don't know what we're talking about, we're talking about Spotify is going to make play data on an episode-level basis available. in the Spotify app for listeners to see. So not just in your stats as the podcaster, but now it'll be public. what your numbers are for plays on the Spotify ecosystem. That means the Spotify app and Spotify website.
This doesn't mean if you're hosting on creators for Spotify or whatever it is, podcasters for Spotify, Anchor, whatever it was, doesn't mean your numbers that happen in Apple Podcasts will be reported. It's just about plays that happen in the Spotify app. and website, similar to how views are shown in YouTube. So this is very much the same. as what YouTube does for showing views for each podcast or video that's on YouTube. Spotify said, hey, let's show this information for a podcast.
with no way for the podcasters to opt out of that. Correct. They didn't even think about... I mean, you know what? I would have to say that you can't opt out of the YouTube plays. I don't believe. So I understand why they didn't think through that. That was my first. thought around that because I don't know. It just is incredibly... I had put myself in the...
I'm always here to advocate for the independent podcaster. I'm here to advocate for the person who's doing this because they really love it and they have a very, very clear vision as to why they're behind the microphone. And one of the big questions that I have come up in my own head is, is transparency always good? Yes, it is. I do hear that it is important.
Because people cannot hide, especially the nefarious folks or the folks who are trying to lie about things and or position themselves as bigger than them, right? And there was definitely one person that I saw that was complaining that is known. for bogus numbers and saying, I'm going to take my show off of Spotify. So there was definitely at least one person yelling that was like, oh crap, the jig is up. Yeah. But the majority... that are complaining.
i believe have a legitimate complaint and that they're like oh well now i've People can see everybody's numbers. Why are they going to click on my show that's going to show, I think, And now, I'm 100% sure on this because they haven't rolled it out, but my understanding was they're not going to say, like, it's not going to be like YouTube where you see 46 views or 54 views. It's going to be less than 1,000, and they're going to round it at thousands or something.
So why are they going to click on my podcast that shows all my episodes are less than a thousand views when someone else on the same topic is a hundred thousand? And that's the concern, and a legitimate concern. At the end, I'll get into my big, I'll get a little soapbox for answer why I think this isn't bad. There's a bigger reason why I think this is a bad idea. You know, one of the biggest things that is... contributor to creator burnout and
Pod fading is something none of us can really help with. None of us within the podcasting industry, companies, whatever. And that is usually life, personal circumstances. Something has happened in your life that is impeding you from taking a seat behind the mic. And it doesn't necessarily need to be a negative thing. Sometimes it's positive. But another layer to add to life getting in the way there is the fact that we as podcasters are emotionally invested in what we do with it.
We invest time, resources, thought, our hearts, our souls into all of this. And when you start to define us by a number and how worthy our voices are by numbers, It is defeating at the nth degree. It hurts so deep. Because it is literally diminishing our value. and placing the value only through one lens, one data point, if you will, right? Even though we all know we don't measure value that way. But alas, what we are helping do here is to help people quit faster.
Because sometimes it's so hard. It's so hard to do it. And when we see it, we're devalued to this specific number. It becomes more challenging to get behind the mic again. Even though. That is not, I'm here to tell you all that that is not the case. Your voice absolutely matters and every time you get behind the mic you have touched at least one person who finds your work.
and has a shift, a change in their life in some way, shape, or form. That's the part that I got really angry about. Everybody else who has businesses and want to do all the stuff. Fine. But we're here trying to keep people podcasting, Rob. Yeah, and the other thing is... Depending on your show and your genre, you may not do well on Spotify and you do much better on other applications. Now people are going to look at these Spotify numbers and try to rank a whole.
genre and rank podcasts and say, oh, this podcast is really this big. I was looking at a couple different shows, and one show had 500 downloads on Spotify and one had 27. Which one was the bigger show? Was it the one with 27 or the one with 511 or 513 or something like that? It was the show at 27. Because they had... Almost no audience on Spotify. By the way, that's our show. And a lot more on Apple Podcasts and Overcast.
And the other show had almost all their downloads from Spotify and nothing pretty much anywhere else. a little bit here and there, but we, on that episode versus the other episode, had more downloads overall than the other show, but it just, if you were to look at our Spotify numbers, we looked much, much smaller than that show. So there's going to be people that are going to misrepresent that data. when it gets out there. Services that pull it and that.
And there's other issues we'll talk about here at the end. But, okay, you have other concerns here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, that is one of those. And the other one is the conversation around discovery, right? Is this... So Discovery, or just more of the same stuff. Will these play counts actually help people find new voices, or will it just surface the same top shows over and over again? Unfortunately. I mean, that's just a question.
Well, I think the answer is going to be pretty obvious. The algorithm is going to... Algorithm? Yeah. The algorithm is going to look for the play counts with the ones with the highest and try to keep people on the system the longest and it's going to use the play count number. But there'll be other services too. for discovery and go, hey, look at these top podcasts on Spotify and use the play numbers. It's just inevitable. Yeah.
And then we have, you know, platform muscle and podcast metrics who decides the standard. So they are really, I'm saying redefining, but who knows? They're just creating something, what a play looks like in a public way. So, but what does that mean when every platform has a different measurement? And so then the question about unification of standards, is it all about contextualizing per platform? Is it all about just whatever happens, happens?
Is it whatever you choose? Well, you have to look at their definition of plays, right? So here's their definition of plays. the number of times a Spotify user actively watches and listens to your content on the Spotify app. Plays are only counted once per user per session. So if you play an episode, pause, and resume playing, that counts as one play. If you close the app and go to a different app and then come back an hour later,
What does that mean? I'm assuming that means how it's a second play. But plays counts are shown alongside your episodes on Spotify and are the best way to understand how your episodes are performing. But the IAB, the definition of a download, is At least one minute of content. is consumed or delivered to the end user. We shouldn't say consumed, right? At least one minute of content is delivered to the end user, filtered on unique IP address, user-agent combo.
for a 24-hour period. Now, it can be a calendar day or a rolling 24. We were the first to do the rolling 24. Most companies have gone to the rolling 24 now. It's a more accurate method. So again, how does... their plays compare to that and and i don't know the answer to that i don't know a listener
who, on the way to work, starts listening to the episode, stops 10 minutes in. Maybe they have a 15-minute commute. It's an hour-long episode, right? They have a 15-minute commute. They listen to 15 minutes on the way in. They close out the app at lunch. They got another 20-minute break to listen. They listen to 20 minutes at lunch. They close the app, and then they listen to most of the episode on the way home. They stop, and then later at night after dinner, they listen to the remainder.
Is that four plays? Or is that one play? And I don't know. If you were IAB, that would be one download. Yeah. As a metric person, that's going to be a concern. Now, what I'll say is, Advertisers aren't going to use play data. They're not going to use that. They're going to stick with the IAB numbers because this is limited to what happens on Spotify. But it's still going to cause a lot of confusion because now we're going to have to answer questions.
Why is my play number this versus your download number that? Why are you showing I had 183 downloads for Spotify on this day and Spotify is telling me I had 293 plays? Why is it different? Something that we're going to have to in the podcast space have to answer.
going forward yeah that's the measurement part there's also you know for podcasters is it about just adapting to this you metric or do you resist it you know you put your head you open up which i didn't even know there's a changed org thing happening I was like, wow. Okay, that's how strongly we're going for this. Although it doesn't look like it's getting too much visibility in there. It was about 30.
something people had signed it yeah i did see the 30 something people for sure but it's like do you lean into that or do you resist the pressure and we go back to the way that we define our own metrics right because it just It's something that we often teach here, right? You compare yourself against yourself, if you will. That's like one of the best ways to do it. Plus,
And add to that whatever your goal is. But that said, let me just mention this too. And obviously this is not scientific at all. And I literally have had four people respond to my question here. But I did post on thread. I asked the question. You know, when you're watching a YouTube video, especially for those of you who are YouTube people, the ones that are in YouTube all the time. In fact, most of us are YouTube people. We use YouTube all the time.
Whether it's for learning stuff, you know, I'm trying to declog my tub, show me what to do, reviews on things, how to use stuff, and yes, of course, podcasts. and all of those things. When we consume the content that we're interested in, are we consuming it based on play count? I can answer this for myself, is that I don't. I consume based on the title of the podcast or the video, whatever it is in there, on the content.
And specifically the title. Because I'm looking for something very specific usually. And if I subscribe to a channel. I tend to consume what they put out. I'm not concerned whether or not these people have 10 or 20 or 100,000.
I feel fine consuming something that is helpful to me regardless of size. I just... found a video that had I would say like 10 plays or something like that that was so helpful and it was just about organization of a google sheet because I'm not a google sheets person I'm not a spreadsheet person I didn't know how to do a task This person, thankfully, showed me how to do it. It literally had 10 plays. Thank you so much person that made this video for me.
You were very helpful. It's great content. It's probably not going to get 100,000 views because it's about a spreadsheet. I will say for podcasts, when I'm searching for a podcast, I don't look at numbers. I look at how well it matched up and sadly how good they are. Yeah, the visuals are important. Yeah, I mean, so if I go and I'm searching for a podcast about, let's say, space economy. And I searched for space economy and I popped five podcasts.
I will look at the titles and artwork and make a quick decision based off of that, like which one matched my search. Now, I will say on YouTube, if I'm looking for a tutorial, about how to change out something in the dryer. Like, I had to do this, I had to fix a dryer last year, and I definitely looked, when I did a search for the Maytag dryer and it popped a few different videos, I did go to the one that had the more views.
I mean, one other thing that I did too, though, I realized this is another differentiator for me, though, is I will look at, instead of the plays, what differentiates for me is recency. So if somebody has done, in quote, a review on like a makeup. or something, I tend to stick to the people who have recently put it out versus two or three years ago. Because things have changed.
During that time, not to say and sometimes a product has been updated. Sometimes the experience has been updated. Sometimes there's there's other things around that that have changed. And usually what happens when I'm looking at the most recent content is they'll be able to go like, do you like this water bottle? This is why it's a really great water bottle. But also there's these brands.
And maybe those brands didn't exist three years ago. Now they do. And so I'm a lot more curious about the recent episode. of around a topic especially if I'm searching for it so that matters to me more than the amount of people anyway you have some thoughts here though about The new business.
I mean, first off, Spotify did say in an Instagram post they are listening and will give an update on their plans on Friday, May 16th. Now, It didn't say they were changing, they were just saying, hey, we're going to give you an update on our plan. or we're going to give you information about our plans, right? So we'll see if they change. But let me tell you the most important reason on why Spotify should not do that.
Once they add in plays, those fraudsters at game numbers will have great feedback if their method for inflating plays is working. This will make it easier for the whole ecosystem around buying Spotify podcast plays to emerge. As a matter of fact, if you want to go ahead and register buyingspotifypodcastplays.com, you should probably do so now. But you can go ahead and Google buying SoundCloud Plays, and you will see offer after offer after offer after offer.
And I've said it before, there's a whole ecosystem around gaming the numbers at SoundCloud. And that ultimately, and very, very quickly, will emerge with Spotify. It also meant what happened with SoundCloud was every advertiser in the space said, you can't use SoundCloud numbers. They're bogus. And what's going to happen if this happens in the spaces? advertisers are going to start saying, what are their Apple podcast download numbers?
throw out spotify we don't trust them and this is going to hurt spotify's reputation in my opinion in the long run because they're going to create this feedback loop that allows The spammers. to optimize and the worst part is These are pass-through. So it's going to show up in my Lipson stats. It's going to show up in your Blueberry stats. It's going to show up in your Omni stats and even your Megaphone stats. So anybody that has a podcast on Spotify...
will be able to go and buy for $50, 50,000 plays. And that's coming. So under the category of unintended consequences, we can add Getting a whole lot of people a revenue stream from those looking to boost their play count. to look better than they are, and in some cases to defraud advertisers, or just so they can keep up with the Joneses. I do not see how... Any possible good from this will ever come close to all the bad that is about to roll downhill. from this rollout and
seriously thinking, and by the way, I am long on Spotify, have a bunch of stock. I'm seriously thinking last night after going through these articles of selling all my Spotify stock. I'm that concerned on this. I'll see what they say tomorrow. But if they say they're moving forward, I'm probably going to dump my Spotify stuff. Take the win and move on. Oh, my God. Rob, you are so... No, I think this has the potential to really damage Spotify's reputation in the long term. Holy monkeys.
It's not Lipson's opinion. It's Rob's opinion. Just in my opinion. Because I saw what happened with SoundCloud. You're right. I think that, you know, folks do not know about the SoundCloud of it all. I feel the SoundCloud plays. are so in quote OG now. When did that start to happen? Do you remember when that whole thing started to go down? It was like 2011, 2012, somewhere in that time frame. Yeah, so anything...
Because of the way the podcasting industry works at the moment, anything prior to 2020 does not exist. Just as an FYI, people. Okay? But there is historical context for this. And I completely forgot about the SoundCloud plays. It was wacky. Oh my gosh. And with the whole, how many of us, and I'm sure you can raise your hand out there, folks.
How many of you have had an unsolicited outreach DM from somebody telling you that you can grow your podcast in Apple Podcasts? All the Apple Podcasts promoters are out in these parts. Getting ready. When we were talking about the AI of it all, this is the type of business you can build with AI. To poster it up. So, I forgot about SoundCloud. Holy monkeys. This could be very, very bad for Spotify's reputation. I hope they rethink this.
for the industry's sake and more so for their own sake. So we'll see what happens. It's something to happen, yeah. So if you have any feedback on either of these hot topics, the Golden Globes, Or the Spotify plays. You guys. You can have your voice on the show. Email thefeed at Lipson.com. Open up your phone, record a voice memo, and email it to thefeed at Lipson.com. All you have to do is say, like, feedback. Episode 293. Boom!
We got it. And then I tend to add it first come first serve. So please don't get all wound up if you don't hear your voice. You know, we add it as it comes. Okay. So now moving into just a little bit of news here, just because I really love this. The 9to5Mac website, not that it was just their website, many different coverage about new iOS 19 accessibility features. I want to shout this feature out.
And I just want to say hat tips to John Spurlock for originally informing me of this specific feature in the first place. And it has been a lifesaver. And if you don't know it, you need to know it. It is background sounds. And this is from the article, quote, background sounds become easier to personalize with new EQ settings, the option to stop automatically after a period of time, and new actions for automations in shortcut.
Background sounds can help minimize distractions to increase a sense of focus and relaxation, which some users find can help with symptoms of tinnitus. Alright, end quote. But here, let me tell you how I use this, especially, I tend to, sometimes I get really anxious. in weird situations sometimes traveling gets me really fired up and anxious and I get my nervous system starts to escalate Or there are times when my children are being so loud around me, there's really no way for me to focus.
And I don't want to listen to a podcast. I don't want to listen to music. I just kind of want to get myself into a tube. This little guy, you guys, it is so cool. You literally just swipe down in the top right corner of your iPhone and there's this little like... EAR! situation that's in that in the little menu there and you tap the little ear and it gives you these background sounds
That can go into the background of anything. And it calms me. Because it's just literally white noise. It could be rain. It could be just dark noise. Or white noise. Or mixed noise. Or whatever. And. If you want to have that noise behind a podcast, you actually can do that too. Which I have done in the past. Just because sometimes I just need that calm. So it's amazing. Anyway, I just thought I'd share that. Yeah, when this article started breaking, I obviously still follow Apple news.
And I saw iOS 19 features, accessibility features. I'm like, oh, people are speculating ahead of WWDC. But no, these were actually announced by Apple. So, yes. There's a lot. Yes. And this is Apple. for some reason, which is not Apple-ish, pre-released or pre-announced features that are coming in iOS 19, which they haven't even officially announced until WWDC. So a tip to Apple also for... releasing information about accessibility features early.
Yeah, and there's some good stuff. Um, unbelievably well thought out. accessibility features. I'm astounded by it. The other thing is that there's a voice feature in there, Rob, that I think is worth noting since we've been talking about AI and voices. There is a feature in there that you can start to clone your voice also. It is meant to be a feature that helps folks who are losing their ability to speak.
And it is meant, I'm assuming, for folks that have been diagnosed with ALS or those sort of terminal illnesses. And it is a way for them to be able to use their own voice. with you know having it come out of the phone and I thought what an amazing way like I all of a sudden was like this is another way that I could actually capture my parents voices before I don't even want to say it, but just to have my parents' voices remembered, you know, and having my mom say things to me. Via phone.
When she's not around, how about that? So that's how I thought about it, even though it is accessible only. Again, Apple, you know, Apple really does care about the users. I mean, that is their primary focus. and they do some really good things. Not just being an Apple defender fanboy. I really do like what they do, and they have legitimately good reasons behind it. Sure, they make a lot of money. Good for them. Create a great product, you're going to make money. Give people what they want.
Alright, so this is an article here that you have from Justin Jackson about YouTube killing podcasting. Yeah, I just want to put it in the show notes, you guys. Rob and I have it in some way, shape, or form talked about. A lot of what Justin discusses here that he so succinctly put in this article. So I'm going to put a link in the show notes. You guys can go ahead and check out this question. But one of my favorite quotes, speaking of,
listeners and the people who consume your things. This is one of my favorite quotes within that piece. He said, quote, if we want to maintain podcasting's independence from YouTube, we need to focus on what makes podcasting special for. Listeners. Which is something that we often talk about. In fact, Rob just actually said that. And that's a special part of... Listening when you are in the world, I think it's super important. And just to make some really clear.
points in this piece so please go check it out and consume it and think through it and it's just a really good it's a really good article Alas, here we go. Onward to... Now we're moving into our promo of the episode. Well, before I get to that... Oh, sorry. Yeah, yeah. On the last episode, I said I would go over the percentage of shows we host in each category and what percentage of downloads per category, how they broke out. And this is the top-level category, not looking at the subcategories.
So just top-level Apple categories. And what we saw, the biggest category that we host, again, this is Lipson, 20% of the shows are in the business category, 10.5% in education. Health and fitness was 10.3%. Society and culture, 9.6%. Religion and spirituality, 8.7%. So those are your top five there. Bottom one was true crime at 0.5%. And then the top level categories by percent of our download.
in the given month, and this is for February. Religion and Spirituality, which was number five, was actually number one. and the percent of downloads at 16.1%. Health and fitness was at second at 11.2%. Education was third at 10.8%. Business, which was number one on the number of shows, was fourth in downloads at 9.8%. Religion and spirituality podcasts do a better job of the podcasting business than the business podcasts do at the business of podcasts.
And then Society and Culture rounded out the top five for downloads at 8.5. But True Crime did over-skew where they were half a percent of the shows. They were 1.8% of downloads. So they definitely over-skewed the most when you looked at that. They were over triple their percentage on downloads than they were for a percentage of shows. Yes, because we need more true crime podcasts. Say that. You don't know how much it pains me for.
All right, that said, now let's get into our promo, and then after that, we'll get some more stats. All right, so on that note, here we go. This is Prairie Tales Podcast. Before highways and high-rises there was this and sea of grass. A place where danger rode the wind. were wilder than the West itself. Welcome to Prairie Tales. True stories of life and death, grit and glory, straight from the Kansas frontier. I'm Darren McManus, author of Murder and Mayhem in Kansas.
and your guide on this wagon train through history. Each episode, we crack open the very newspapers your great-grandparents read by Lamplight. Stories that had whole towns buzzing, murders in the night, gunfights at high noon, and heroes no one remembers until now. Wow, come on. These aren't just tall tales. They're real lives, real people, real frontier justice.
Battle up. Join us for Prairie Tales and discover the rugged heart of America. One newspaper article at a time. Prairie Tales. Real life. True stories. Every week. Only wherever you get your podcasts. I really love this. You guys. Rock Chalk Jayhawk. We leveled up the promo game here, y'all. That was so good. Anyway, shout out. Y'all tell them how nice it is and go listen to Prairie Tales podcast. Okay. Go on, Rob. It's time for stats. Alright, so some good news. The report...
That were broken for me. Previous to the last episode. Have been fixed. And I was able to pull info for stats. That we report here on the show. So they're all fixed. So we will double up and catch up and do both sets of stats today. So let's start with median and mean number to see how your show measures up or your client shows. The median and mean numbers are based on all episodes released on Libsyn and Libsyn Pro in the month of March and downloads measured until the end of April.
On average, each file was about 45 days old. This, again, is per all shows hosted on Libsyn and Libsyn Pro. The median number for March was 124. That was down a smidge from 125 in February. The adjusted mean average were throughout the top half percent and any files with three or less downloads. The adjusted mean for March was 1,111, all one. down a little from February when it was 1,120.
5.5% of all downloads for episodes released in March were in the 5k range or greater for downloads. This was the same as February's number. And then here are some numbers to measure against and to put things in perspective. If your episodes are getting over 124 downloads after 30 days, you're better than half the shows. If you're getting more than 500, you are better than 72.6% of the shows are putting you in the top 27.4%.
If you are getting more than 900, you are better than 80% of the shows. More than 2600, better than 90. More than 5500, better than 95% of the shows. More than 14,000, you're better than 98% of the shows. And more than 27,000 puts you in the top 1%. March's numbers were for the most part down a little or the same compared to February. and then moving on to geographic part of stats.
We have, for March, this is downloaded geographically from all sources. This is Libsyn.com specifically. And the U.S. was number one at 61.3%. Canada, 5.5%. UK, 5.3%. Australia, 3.3%. Germany, 2.5%. Sweden, 2.2%. Japan, 1.3%. Spain, 1.1%. That's everybody above 1%, rounding out the top 20. Under 1% in order are India, Netherlands, Brazil, Mexico, France, Denmark, Poland, Ireland, China, Philippines, New Zealand, and Colombia.
For April, we had Columbia move back into the top 20, and between March and April, those with changes greater than 0.2% were none. Pretty boring, I know. Of course, check your stats and see how you measure up against these numbers. And now on to user agent information. And for April, across all shows globally, hosting on Libsyn and Libsyn Pro for IAB stats. Mobile downloads were at 86.9% of all downloads going directly to mobile devices. This is up a smidge versus March's 86.59%.
Computer downloads were down a smidge to 12.69. And home voice attendant plus set-top boxes were at 0.43% in April. The IS to Android ratio was 3.49 to 1, which is down a smidge from March's 3.61 to 1. Mobile aggregator apps not from Spotify or from Apple in April were 10.7% of all downloads. And the big dog in aggregator apps is still Apple with Apple Podcast app and iTunes and Apple ecosystem coming in at 47.0% for all downloads. Number two was... for April was Spotify at 21.1%.
Number three, Overcast at 2.8. Pocketcast at 1.7. It was number four. Number five was iHeartRadio at 1.1%. That's everybody over 1%. Those under 1%, but greater than 0.3% in order. Podbean, Amazon Music, CastBox, Podcast Addict, Antenapod, Player FM, kind of the tier 2 group. And then in the Tier 3 group followed those between 0.2% and 0.02%. And what are R? Downcast, Evox, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, Podomo, SiriusXM for Android.
Fountain, Deezer, Podcast Guru, Axios, RSBN, BeyondPod, Castro, Newspaper, Playdeocast, Snip... RSS radio, podcaster, air podcatcher, real life app. Dog Catcher, Mixer Box, and Podverse. And then many, many more that come into Tier 4, which is below the .02%, and don't want to mention it yet. Again, those were based on IAB numbers. And then outside of aggregator apps, there were browsers. And if you're looking in your stats, you'll see Firefox. And really, it's Firefox and other.
And that came in at 9.5%. Other, by the way, also includes Chrome for iOS, Safari for iOS, and then others. on top of that. We do have a request to get those broken out in your stats and Libsyn in the future. Hopefully that will happen sooner rather than later, but if that request is in. And then Chrome came in at 1.8%. Overall, the browsers combined were about 11% of downloads in April. And that rounds out stats.
Where have we been? I haven't been anywhere other than what we talked about last episode we were in Pittsburgh. But since then, other than go pick my son up from college, yay, he finished his freshman year. Congratulations, Henry. Oh, wow. That was so fast. I know. And he kicked butt. He got 100 on his Calc 3 exam, which the average was 60, so kudos, Henry. Big brain. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Well, good. Yay! Woohoo! The good news is he gets at Purdue.
He was in first-year engineering, and then you have to get a certain grade to pick the actual engineering major you want. So aerospace and mechanical are two competitive ones. He wanted aerospace, so now it looks like he has the grades to get his first choice, which is aerospace.
So, by the way, for next summer, anybody out there in an aerospace company looking for a summer intern, please email me, rob at lipson.com. I know an aerospace engineering major at Purdue that is looking for a summer internship for 2026. Look at you getting him, like, all set up prior to all those things happening. Good dad, good dad.
I've not been anywhere other than you guys. I didn't even put this in the show notes last time, I think. But I'm having a great time in my little Instagram channel experiment that I'm having for the SSD. for the slight spiral dispatch group in there where I just get a little snarky. I know. I'm letting my snark out in there. It's a little unhinged, which is the nature of the chat.
I don't overwhelm folks. I hope not anyway. And if I do, you can always mute it. But it's really great because you can actually go inside the channel and look at everything else that I have posted as well.
and you can respond to things and very quickly read stuff. So I just, anyway, I'm having a great time in there. That's where I am. If you want to go connect with me over on Instagram, and I might make that its own thing at some point, but I just... I really like the workflow and not having to do anything other than imagine that I'm texting my friends and that feels very doable for me.
So where are we going? Oh, my. Next week, when this comes out, we'll have our team in London for the podcast show. Gentlemen, if you're listening overseas, hello. Yeah, and we have, I believe we have Stephen and Chris and Rick over in London, so... Go find our team members around. I believe there might be a panel happening, which I don't really know exactly about there, but please do find them. They're going to be there. And if you want to connect with them. feel free to do so.
And then podcast movement in Dallas, of course, in August. Correct? Correct. Podcast Movement, Dallas, they just opened up or recently opened up for speakers. That's right. So if you want to speak, go check it out. Go to Podcast Movement website, find it, the link, and apply to speak. Good luck. Sweet. And then finally, of course, Hey, if you're looking to start a podcast or switch up your podcast home,
You can use the code THEFEED, T-H-E-F-E-E-D, altogether for a free month with us. We would love to have you be part of the Libsyn team. And, of course, anytime you have any feedback, email the feed at Libsyn.com or you can call us at 412-573-1934 or use SpeakPike at SpeakPike.com. Thanks, folks. Thank you. Until next time. Ciao. Bye.