296 Libsyn Multi-User, New Podcast Audience Data and LUFS!

The Feed. Multi-user has rolled out. No more sharing your password with people that help you podcast on Libsyn. And it's totally easy. to add them to your account. Insight into measuring digital audio in medium mix models. Tools to figure out luffs. If you know, you know. a workflow for getting control of channels in Apple Podcasts, discussing the Cumulus Media and Signal Hill Insights Podcast Download Spring 2025 report,

How to download all your files from an RSS feed. We got answers plus geographic and user agent download numbers. Hello, I'm Elsie Escobar, Director of Community and Content for Libsyn, and this is Episode 296 of The Feed, the official Libsyn podcast, the podcast... That takes it beyond how to podcast into keeping you podcasting with podcasting tips and information for the everyday podcaster and taking you inside Libsyn.

And if you're starting a podcast or simply looking to find a new home for your existing 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, send in your 30-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,

Ask us a question or add to the conversation that you hear on an episode. Send us 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's first come, first served, sprinkled with a little bit if we get to it, or if we forget, or if we don't have time for it.

We'll save it to next time. OK, don't be sad if we don't feature you right away. OK, you got it. And now on to our main conversation with Rob Walsh, VP of Podcaster Relations at Lipson. And my co-host, here we go. Hello, Rob. Good generic time of the day, Elsie. How are you doing? Oh, happy mid...

Oh, happy July. Yeah, when this comes out, it will be July, right? First? Yes. Is it, right? Oh, my gosh. Halfway through 2025, who knew it was going to jump so clearly so fast? Here we are. Good Lord. Well, we have a little something that we just released in Lipsyn. Yes. You want to talk about this one? Yeah, yeah. So something called multi-user has been rolled out. And I think that y'all...

I can kind of guess what this is, but I'm going to read a little something something here to let you know what that is. So we now have a multi-user access. And this feature allows you to add team members to your account. such as producers and editors, VAs, or of course, co-hosts, right? So that they can help manage the podcast and or your account. You can grant access to up to five additional users per show.

This is a really easy way to grant access without sharing your personal login, especially for those of you who are working with a team and stuff. Each team member gets their own access, meaning no more sharing usernames and passwords of your Libsyn account. And it allows you others to directly manage uploads.

the settings and more effectively letting them to do their job if that's what you've hired them to do within your show and facilitating all the workflow. So it's important to note that these additional users have some limitations. They're restricted from any billing-related features, and this restriction specifically includes changing the plan level, canceling the show, or enrolling in automatic podcast ads.

However, these users will have the ability to access features related to your stats, publishing tools, and show level settings. So it's super easy. To add a new user or edit an existing one, you go over to your settings page and you do that by clicking the little gear icon at the top of your Libsyn account. Then click manage users.

The Manage Users page is your hub for displaying who currently has access to your show. So on this page, you can also search for your users. Mind you, there's only five. So you don't have to be like... going into pages of users to add someone new you click add new and if you need to edit an existing user's profile you click edit in that row and it's easy it's so easy to add them i actually

like check that out. It was the easiest thing to be able to do that and delete them also. And next you enter their, you know, user details, our first name, last name, and a display name, which appears on the managed users page for you to know what they are. And of course their email address. Now, once you've finished entering or updating the information, then you, of course, click Save. After you click Save, the user will automatically receive an email invitation.

If the user already has a Libsyn account, they will be invited to log into your show. If the user doesn't have an Ellipson account, they will be invited to get started by setting a password. And once they have Ellipson account, they can then log into your show. So multi-user access is designed as a way to collaborate with your team.

having to share passwords or display sensitive financial information. Now, if you have any questions or you need setting any of this stuff up, you can reach out to support. You can do it by clicking the little, there's a little icon at the bottom right of the dashboard inside of the Lipsyn UI. So it's always there, by the way, y'all, for everything. Or by contacting support directly over at support. at Libsyn.com. How about that? So one of the ways I've seen or...

Uses of this, people wanting uses of this isn't for co-hosts, it's for the hosts themselves. So people like me or you or Dave Jackson or Matthew Pacey, who are actually the producers of the shows. run an account for somebody, you would have to have a login for one show, then a login for a different show that you shared. If you have multiple clients that are hosts of the shows, now you can have your one main login across the different shows.

And for each show that you're managing, you can have different people. So it's not like you as a person who has five shows can only invite five people. For each show, you can invite five people. So for show A, you can invite in. the two co-hosts or the, you know, host one and host two. And then show B, you can invite in just the host. There's only one host for that show. And then for show C that has four.

co-hosts a panel, you can invite all of them in, and then they each get access to just their show, and you still have access to all the shows that you had in Lipson. So it's not just five users across all the shows that if you manage multiple shows in Libsyn, it's five users per show. So that's one place where I talk with people a lot that do that, that manage many shows. So that's where...

that they were at least most excited about this. Yeah. And it's like one of those things where if you don't have a team of people that are doing your stuff for you. That's okay, but I think that we often think about what you were just talking about, the co-host situation as something that... we haven't really ever thought about. I think for roundtable type shows, this is something that people can really use.

in a way that makes things so much easier so that you have your own login. You're able to manage all of that stuff on your own. You're also able to disperse the work that needs to go. in your show production, because in a lot of those panel type roundtable shows, sometimes you split the work. So one person does the show notes or one person does the audio or one person does the planning and things like that, and they're able to put it up.

It's so easy to be able to disperse that and also keep your own account. So if you have your own personal show, everything's in one place and it just makes the management of all of that so much easier. The other level is when you do have a show producer or you are working with a team because, you know what, I'm not sure. We may have a blog post out by the time this show goes out. I'm not sure yet.

but it will be coming up. And we highlight a workflow from one of our existing podcast production agencies, if you will, that works with a lot of clients in Libsyn. And they essentially... have this happen, right? Where the agency is in charge of doing all of that busy work, where they come in and I say busy work because, you know, uploading the file, adding the show notes.

putting all the metadata in there, uploading all the artwork, like all of those things. Let's call it the important work. That is called. The important work. Not busy work, important work. Because you do the important work for the show. And I am so grateful I don't have to do that. And first, you do such a better job than I have ever done on any of my shows. People underestimate.

Well, we get such a dopamine hit recording, and that is the, at least for me, I don't know about you, but this is like the easiest part for me. But recording the show, I mean, putting the show notes together and all that stuff sometimes can feel a little heavy. But once we start recording, there's no way we're going to sit there and go like, hey, Rob, what do you want to talk about? My least stressful moments of... is every other week at 8 a.m. Central Time when we start recording.

Yeah, it's easy, right? Now everything's done. I had the stress from the last two days of making sure the show notes are ready for 8 a.m. I mean, I get really cranky Wednesday nights. You don't want to be around me sometimes. Yes. Except for last night where I got my show notes done early. And well, anyway, we had it. Yes. Chaos ensued in life. Yes. But normally I am like around dinnertime on Wednesday nights. My wife's like, what's wrong with you? I'm like, show notes done.

I know it's heavy, but and that's what I'm saying. And then after you're done, sometimes you just kind of want to be done and move forward. And then knowledge that you still have to deal with all of the uploading and the metadata. Yeah, it's a lot. It feels heavy. So it's very nice when somebody else does it for you. So now you get an opportunity to do that without having to give somebody else your login.

Also be able to remove access if and when you need that. And I think that that's one of those key features that I find so helpful, too. There might be a time when you need somebody's help and then you just delete them. When it's over. I like that. All right. Anyway, if you have any questions, email the feed, the feed at Libsyn.com if you want. I don't know. Or maybe you are using this feature, you guys.

If you're using this feature, you've already used it, send in audio feedback or at minimum, write us a little email. We would love, love, love, love it. We would love it. Share it on the show or... You know, it would be great. It would be fantastic, I think, all the way around. All right. So now what's going on here with the IAB guidelines? And wow, MMM. All right. So MMM.

MMM stands for Media Mixed Models. So the IAB just released a document that we've been working on for some time titled Measuring Digital Audio in Media Mixed Models, a Beginner's Guide. The ultimate goal of this document is to help to get audio advertising on the ad buys for agencies. Or for those that have already some ad buys for audio to increase.

the amount of ad buys they're doing in audio. I mean, one of the things the document really pointed out was, you know, you can't just barely test it to do a small little media buy and then expect big results. You have to really, if you want big results, you have to do big ad buy.

So I'm not going to go over the document other than to say if you are a media buyer or work with media buyers, trying to convince a media buyer to place ads on podcasts, please take a few minutes to look this document over. And please email me, rob.lipson.com, with any questions per this document or per getting involved with the IAB. Link in the show notes. Matt at IAB, thank you so much for all the work you did on this, getting this out. Matt Sappo.

A lot of people don't realize the work that the IAB is doing, and Matt especially, in really trying to help educate and incentivize media buyers to buy ads into the audio. space, especially the podcast audio space. They do a lot of work behind the scenes, creating tools and educating the media buyers. So thank you, Matt. And this one, look, please.

Look this over if you're at all involved with ad buys, trying to get them or doing them. We'd really appreciate it. Very, very cool. Love that. And again, you guys, any links that we mentioned here are things we talk about. They're all in the show notes. And you're welcome to click through and read on your own. So we have some news. I completely missed this. This is almost transition from IEB to this one because Acast has a new CEO.

Ross Adams, their previous CEO for the past 10 plus years, stepped down. And the new CEO is Greg Glenday, who is someone I've been on a bunch of IAB calls with over the last couple of years. Greg was the CBO for ACAST, which was the chief business officer. And Greg has been with ACAST since 2023.

So congrats, Greg, on the new position. I hope he'll still be, well, he probably won't be on the IAB calls anymore. He's going to be a little busy, but he'll have someone else stepping in from ACAST on those calls. But yeah, it was... Nice. You know, I know who Greg is, and I think Acast made a good hire. So congrats, Greg. Congrats, Acast, on your new CEO. Very, very nice. Congratulations.

Okay, we're going to move into an email here. Hi, Rob. We keep getting messages like this. I don't totally get it since we normalize to basically zero dB.

I know I've asked you before about it. I just don't really get what else we can do. And that message was, quote, I have been a longtime listener and wanted to let you know to tell you that I enjoy your commentary. I appreciate what you do. I did want to mention that it seems the audio level is low compared to other audio I listen to. Hello, NR. And I listened to his...

most recent episodes, and they sounded like they were at standard audio levels. And I just listened to a few other shows and all seemed to be really close to the same level as his. Apple recommends minus 14 to minus 16 luffs, and his show was coming in around minus 20 to minus 22 luffs. So a little lower than the recommendation, but not crazy low.

And you go, well, Rob, how did you check the LUFS? I found a free tool for checking levels. And it's at MAZTR.com. MAZTR.com slash audio loudness meter. We'll have a link for it in the show notes. And I sent that to him and I said, if you can increase your volume level about 4 dB, that would put it in the range of what Apple and Spotify are recommending. And Elsie, when I checked his, I also checked our show. And we were coming.

in right around minus 15 lofts, right in between that 14 to 16. Good job, John. But the intro comes in a little hot at minus nine lofts. But other than that, it was really running around minus 15. I did find another tool to check lofts, loudness.app slash en slash measurements. But interesting, that one had us at around minus 18. Yeah, the first one I mentioned, Matt, sir.

M-A-Z-T-E-R dot com. That seems to work really well. And they had a good definition of what LUFs are. Because I know we've mentioned LUFs, but I don't know. We probably went over the definition a long time ago. But even then, I don't think it was. to the detail that these guys got it. So it's, and it sounds still something I get questions about. So here is their definition of what LUFS are. And I think this was a pretty good one and it makes a lot of sense. So what are LUFS?

LUFS is an acronym that stands for Loudness Units Full Scale. Loudness units are basically the same as dB, decibels. However, they try to compensate for the way humans hear loudness based on the tonal balance of a sound. For example, if you test two files at the same DB level, but varying equalizer settings, the LUFS value may be different. Full scale refers to the highest allowable level in a fixed point digital audio.

Momentary lofts show loudness values for a specific moment in time. It's equivalent to an RMS meter, as found in audio workstations and traditional meters, but corrected for how you actually hear. Short-term LUFS shows a moving average of the last three seconds of momentary values, which means less fluctuation that evens out some peaks and troughs. And then integrated LUFS is an...

average loudness measurement for the entire track or portion of track played up to that time when using the live mode. So that's their definition. The tool from Mazda is nice in that it shows you all three, the momentary, the short-term, and the integrated on a bar chart.

And you upload your file and gives you a nice feel for how your audio levels are perceived by the listener. And it does change as the episode goes on. And here were some screenshots from our... most recent episodes when i uploaded it it said overall the integrated lofts was minus 18.4 and then as we started playing the intro you could see the minus 9.4

the feed at that point. And then everything was running around 10. But then as we were both talking, got to the point where we were talking for a few minutes, then you could see that the overall integrated. the long-term part was at minus 15. And that's where it kind of stayed out for the rest of the episode. But then there were some points where it got up and down on the momentary. And so...

I thought this was a nice tool if you want to get a feel for how your episodes are perceived. And again, LUFS is a perceived. And that can mean when you have a deep voice, like at the beginning of the feed, even though the overall... DB's loudness is that the same as the rest of the episode, the perceived of the feed, right, is louder, even though it's not technically louder. So that's where Luffs comes in.

We'll have a link to this in the show notes. It's a free online loudness meter. You upload your file, not via URL. You have to have it on your desktop and upload it. I wish it was where you just dropped the URL in there, but I didn't see that option just to choose the file. But something you should at least check. And he was happy with that tool. He used it and he's adjusting it. And I should always say this.

When you're adjusting your loudness, make sure you're not peaking. Not like peekaboo, but peaking as in clipping. So make sure you're not clipping your audio. So just keep an eye on that. If you increase your loudness, if you felt you were too low, don't clip because clipping is bad. By the way, this is going to be one of those tools that I have to bookmark.

Because this happens all the time. You know, wanting to check LUFS, then it's a weird thing. It's one of those tools that you need to have in there because when you need it, you really need it. but it's not something you're constantly doing. And this was really smart. So you guys check it out in our show notes again. And I'm just going to spell the website again, just in case you don't want to go to the show notes. It would be amazing if you did, but in case you don't want to.

It is M-A-Z-T-R dot com. Mazder, Mazder, Mastard? Oh! Master? Is it Mazder? Master? Yeah, master. Like a master track? Okay. Yeah, like a master track. Yeah, totally. So master.com slash audio loudness meter, like all together, no dashes or anything. So very cool. Thank you for that website for being so helpful.

Now, I just want to give a little shout out here to Jason Snell from Six Colors. I want to share a link again in the show notes. of a member podcast that he has, which means you do have to subscribe to his member stuff. I am not a subscriber to his member things, but I want to share with you in case any of you are interested. because I do know that there's a lot of our audience members who are fanatics for any new audio.

workflows and optimizing your gear and all kinds of stuff. So this is what it says about this members only podcast episode. Quote, this is surely one of the first podcasts recorded entirely using the local recording feature iPad OS 26. We discuss new OS stuff and design stuff. Big week! Exclamation point. And the episode is called iPad Podcasting and Glassy Design.

From what I can understand, even from that, Jason has been sent one of the iPads and or has been, obviously he's added the beta for iOS 26, iPad OS. iPadOS 26, yes. iPadOS 26. And he's using all the fancy new sound stuff and audio stuff that was released at WWDC that we talked about in the last episode. And he's doing it.

He's recording into his iPad. And I have a feeling he also, because he does a lot of editing already on his iPad. That's kind of how he does a lot of the stuff. So if you guys are interested in that. Check it out. Pay to be a premium subscriber. Jason Snell is a very, very smart man. He knows his stuff and he... puts his hands on the things and creates the stuff. So anytime you can get somebody who actually is in it doing a thing and has...

legacy understanding of not only the hardware, but the software that he's using, as well as production and content online, I'm all in. So check it out if you need it. Okay, we have another email. Hi, Rob.

We have been struggling with Apple support to get control of our channels on Apple Podcasts Connect. Basically, an email was created a long ways back, before it was part of this project, and our company has since deactivated that email. Therefore, we can't get back into our account. Our IT team has tried to work with Apple, but it has not gone well. Do you have any experience with this? Do you have any contacts at Apple we can use to rectify our situation?

Could they move it to an email we can't set up? This is a shot in the dark, I know, but we are out of moves. Let us know your thoughts, regards, and are. I replied as if does someone on your team have access to... any Apple Podcast Connect account. You know, at first I said, if so, what you want to do is log in at Podcast Connect, scroll to the bottom of the main page and look for more actions and then click on claim existing show.

And then in the pop-up box, you add the podcast URL of the show you want to claim. So, for example... The show, enter in the box, the Apple show URL, which you can get by going to Apple Podcasts, clicking on the three dots and selecting copy link. It'll look something like HTTPS, coming forward slash podcast.apple.com. usually like US slash podcast slash ID, and there'll be the title in there, stuff like that. Enter that in the box, then click next.

And then take the token you're given from Apple and you go to your Lipson account, Lipson 5 UR, and you go to settings and podcasts and you scroll down to where it says Apple ownership token and you can enter the token that Apple gave you and then click save. That is it. And unless, then one day that show should show up in your Apple Podcast Connect account. You will need to repeat that procedure for each show you want to claim and then let me know their questions.

There's something interesting on this. That's a follow up that I didn't put in the notes was they tried to do that and they could not get the show claimed. Oh, my God. Rob, that was my next question. OK, so here's what happened. the show was part of a channel and because it was part of a channel they had a channel of shows so they had a grouping of shows so not only did they lose access they tried that you can't claim a show that's in a channel already

You have to take the show out of the channel to then claim it. But if you can't get in to access the show, you can't get it out of the channel. So if you ever go to claim a show. you go to put the URL in and it won't even pop up with the box to give you the token, the answer is the shows and the channel. So if you go through that process and you do that pop-up box and you go to put the URL in and it won't let you click next,

to get the token, the show is in a channel. So that wound up being a whole other issue that we had to then fix and ultimately get Apple support, got involved and removed the shows from the channel. Once they removed the shows from channel, then they were able to go in and claim them and boom, no problem. So ultimately we got them taken care of, but it was an adventure and it was something new that we learned, which was...

If it shows in a channel, you can't claim it. Now, speaking of claiming shows and Apple, you know, one of the reasons to claim shows is sometimes you have a company and you have like five different people have submitted the podcast and they're all in different Apple Podcast Connect accounts. I've seen this too.

And the company is like, hey, we want to create a channel. Well, you can't put them in a channel until you get them all into one Apple Podcast Connect account. So in the opposite of this, where the shows aren't in a channel and you want to put them in a channel and they're in different Apple Connect accounts, that's a reason to claim shows.

To create channel, first thing you do is get all the shows into the one Apple Podcast Connect account per what we just went over. And then follow the instructions Apple has on this. And this one, I'm not going to go into it because it's like anyone driving will get in an accident. Hi, Porter. And look in the show notes as I am not going to go through all these steps now. So anyway, yeah, that was the irony as I wrote this.

about a car getting in a car crash before my son got in a car crash last night. That was our fun part. So there you go. He's fine. He's fine. He's fine. He just destroyed my car. And right as we were getting ready to... To record, I got a text from Allstate that said, your car is not going to be repairable. Please take all personal items out of it and get your title. So, yes. Oh, my God.

Yeah, you know, that's karma for me writing in there in the show notes about it. This causing an accident in this. I should have joked about that. I forgot about that. Anyway. Look in the show notes if you want to figure out how to create a channel. And then we just went over how you do that to claim all the shows to bring it in. So lots of stuff about Apple and channels in this episode.

I do want to say kudos to Apple's support on helping us get those shows out of a channel for an account that they long had lost the Apple Connect access to. Oh, my God. You never know. You know, there's some use cases that you can you can't plan for. You can only do so much. The ones that have happened in other ones is where people at companies.

Because a lot of times company email, they can't get to set up an Apple ID. And this happens all the time. Someone leaves the company. Yep. And it was a personal email. Not only did they leave the company, they were fired. Yeah, good luck getting control of that back, right? So I've had that happen multiple times where someone left a company and they no longer had access to it. So lots of...

ways that you can lose access to a show. Again, Apple does have a good way to claim it as long as it's not in a channel. If it is in a channel, you do have to get Apple support involved and you have to let them know and then they have to remove it manually from the channel for you.

Yeah, I believe, you know, it's one of those things where when we all first started podcasting, the idea of doing it In community, meaning as in like with a team with more than one person doing something wasn't something that was common at the beginning. And now it feels like it is actually part of something that you need to think about is that it isn't just access to one person. Multiple people need to have access to the thing.

everything tends to be tied towards one thing, right? Like logins and email addresses. And I don't think that any, and I'm not talking just Apple Podcasts specifically here, but that is something that happens sort of across the board. Facebook had to do with that in terms of facebook.business.com situation, access to ads and Facebook pages and insights into.

all of the different types of social media management things that at first it was just you as the person who owns the channel and or the profile. And then all of a sudden it became. Other people started to do things and they're tied to email addresses, to logins, to profiles. And especially for early adopters, usually the early adopters are the ones that pay for this. Because he'd been around for a long time. We didn't know. No one knew, right? Right. Nobody knew. How would you know? Right.

Exactly. How would you know all of this stuff was tied to all the things? OK, so this is a curious little bit of news. I added this here just for us to mention, but quote, this is from an article on Bloomberg.

Tencent Music Entertainment Group has agreed to buy Chinese podcasting startup Himalaya Inc. for $1.3 billion in cash plus an insurance stock, a deal that propels its ambition to become China's answer to Spotify. The company, a unit of WeChat operator Tencent Holdings Ltd., will issue shares to its founders and other backers to help fund the acquisition, it said in a statement.

Bloomberg News first reported on a potential deal in April valuing the transaction north of $2 billion. Whoa. Closely held, Himalaya counts Tencent, Baidu Inc. and Sony Group's Corpse Music Entertainment Unit as backers. The company filed for a Hong Kong initial public offering in 2021, but pushed back the plan. The app-based online audio platform had 303 million monthly active users as of 2023, according to a separate listing.

application it filed last year. Tencent Music is one of the biggest online music entertainment platforms in China with apps such as QQ Music, QGo, Qwo, and WeSing. According to its website, its shares jumped more than 7% in pre-market U.S. trading. End quote. So they had led the 100 million series C round of Himalaya back in 2016.

They were a long-term investor of Himalaya. Also, most of the content on Himalaya is not podcasts as we would call them podcasts. It's pay for premium content, including audiobooks. And most of the audience is in China. That said, they do have podcasts. Just if you look at the app, you'll find many are not up to date and they don't have all podcasts or even most podcasts.

They call it podcast, but it's not. And most of it is not podcast as we would call it outside of China. A lot of those podcasts in Himalaya and China are pay for content, premium content. Really closer to audiobooks or, you know, what was the Linda? Like Lydia? Was it Linda? Lydia? What it was? The service? Libby. Wait, wait, wait. What are you talking about?

There was a service that you would pay for tutorials and stuff like that. I think it was Linda. Linda, yeah. So it's similar to that in business model, a lot of what they were doing. And again, they did have podcasts. That is part of it. There were some, not a lot, not up to date. So it is limited in true podcast RSS of what's there. But in any case, this was a long-term investment that they just then actually...

did an acquisition on. Yeah. For those of you who were kind of been in the podcasting scene for a while, like right around, what was it, 2018, 2019, they were really present. In all the conferences, they had big, giant booths. They were spending a lot of money. They had some crazy parties. You can look that up. Yeah, it was big. They were sponsoring a bunch of things. They were really just paying.

All the money to all the people. But all right, we'll keep an eye out on them and see what's going on. Will they or won't they become the Spotify of China? We'll see. I always cringe when I hear someone saying they become the Netflix of this or the Spotify of that. Yes, I know. Just be yourself. Right.

There's a part of this. Did they actually say that? I mean, that could be something that they said. And unfortunately, it's the only reason people say that and or reporters report like that is because the masses. just are not creative, Rob. They understand like that one thing. It's like Netflix and they go, oh yeah, right? If you say that, they understand it.

And sometimes if you say like you want to do your own thing and you want to describe it, they're just going to people are going to be like, what? So I get it. I get it. But alas, do your own thing. And plus, China does their own thing regardless. So I think they're going to do their own thing. OK, here's a new article that I added here that is based on a study that actually came out after this article came out. And I'm just going to put a quote in here.

from this article over at SignalHillInsights.com about YouTube isn't dominating podcasting. Let's also be clear about what's being measured. These shares represent the platform consumers use most often, not exclusively. The 39% of podcast consumers using YouTube. Most are also using other podcast platforms. In fact, half of these YouTube primaries... also use Spotify occasionally or frequently, while at least a quarter use Amazon Music, iHeartRadio, or Pandora.

Most consumers don't have a single podcast platform. They use two or more, end quote. And, you know, in the article, it mentions like 39% of the, or you even read it, 39% of consumers. So what people wind up going and saying, oh, 39% of podcast listeners are on YouTube. No. For 99% of podcasters, that's nowhere close to reality. This is about a few, small group of very, very large podcasts getting most of the audience on YouTube.

the vast majority of podcasts are seeing 2% or less of their audience. on YouTube. That's the reality for 99% of the podcasters. So then you said, so you've got this other article you brought in some here. This is actually from that same study. These are the key takeaways from the study. I just wanted to give context to what you're saying because

yeah, you are pointing out to this, but actually overall, by the way, I will put a link. I'm going to do my very best to find the study so that you guys can go check it out. But this was a joint study from Signal Hill and Cumulus. And they did have some interesting takeaways about that. So you are talking about the YouTube and podcasting things, but in the study itself, although obviously they talked about it, they did not necessarily...

bolster YouTube as a thing that everybody needs to be paying attention to. And I just want to say kudos to Paul for putting this together at Signal Hill and Cumulus. He probably was working with Pierre. But anyway, go ahead. Yeah. So the key takeaways from this is the first one is once you're in, you're in. Even podcast newcomers listening one year or less.

consume nearly as many episodes a week as podcast pioneers of four plus years, which that's kind of neat. That is good. I love that. We're like potato chips. Once you stop, it doesn't matter. Gotta consume more. Podcasts are like potato chips. Yes, that is it. Okay, because of co-listening...

Downloads and listens underestimate the actual audience, a sizable minority of consumers listening to podcasts with friends or family, something not captured by download or impression numbers. And that is true. And there's literally no way. way for you to find that out. It's not a thing. Okay, number three, the three leading platforms serve different audiences, differing audiences. Spotify skews young.

Apple skews to podcast pioneers and YouTube leans male, which I cannot. If you saw our demographics for our YouTube channel, you would know. The fourth one. Podcast newcomers are more diverse and more likely to be women. Yippee! How about that? I'm all in for that. I'm good with that. Podcast advertising captures hard-to-reach ad-free video streamers.

Weekly podcast consumers are also heavy viewers of ad-free video streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, ad-free Hulu, etc. And lastly, advertising or adoption of podcast ads continues to grow at a breakneck. pace. In the advertiser perception study, advertisers say their use of podcasts has jumped from 15 to 59 percent in the past eight years. Well, that's a big jump. I have to say, I think that that top one about the podcast advertising captures hard to reach ad free video streamers.

That's going to change a little bit just because a lot of the ad free video streamers are also going to be adding ads because I think they're going to be priced out of subscribing to all the things without ad free. Have you seen how much money ad-free is for some of these services? How much it's climbed? It's wackadoodle. It's crazy. The price hikes for that. Anyway, okay, here's some recommendations from the study.

The first one is focused on attracting and engaging newcomers. They're more female and diverse, and that's where the growth is. And once they get hooked on podcasting, they're consuming nearly as many episodes as the pioneers. The second one is have a smart YouTube strategy. There's no one size fits all and there's no reason to rush into a plan. It's good to have a presence.

but do the research to find out what works for your audience, content, or brand. How about that, Rob? See, don't you say that? Don't you say things like that? Oh, yeah. Smart, smart, smart strategy. Okay, the third, keep ears on audio and audio platforms. The majority of podcast consumers are using platforms other than YouTube most often, and audio is still the primary mode of consumption.

Number four, don't discount the value of back catalog and engagement. A super majority of consumers go back to listen to older episodes when they find a new show. Women are especially likely to catch up on ones they missed. That's nice. I do that. I had no idea that it was a gender thing. All right. Number four. Five. Leverage podcast ability to out influence social media influencers.

Three times more podcast consumers say hosts are more influential than social media influencers. All right, then. The second to last reach the less reachable with podcasts. Podcasts deliver heavy viewers of ad-free. Video streaming, 88% of weekly podcast consumers say they have watched an ad-free video streaming service in the past month. And last one for Reels.

Create norms for co-listening. Current audience calculations based off downloads does not account for the percentage of podcast consumers who say they listen with others. So that's great. That was a great study. I think that they were very smart in the way that they laid out all the information. It was quite a long presentation as well.

But I will do my best. And I think in that initial article that I have here, you can click through to the study. But I have to, I got to do a little digging to see if I can find the actual. landing page for that. All right. We have a little bit of listener feedback here. And this is from Darren Marlar, host of Weird Darkness. Here we go.

Hi, Rob and Elsie. Love the show. This is Darren Marler from the Weird Darkness podcast, where I share true stories of everything strange and macabre. You were mentioning in your last program about YouTube versus... podcasting when it comes to income and what the percentage was. And I had not really looked into that. So thank you for bringing that up because I looked it up and it turns out I'm making about

3% of my income on YouTube and the rest is coming from the podcast. So yeah, I'm on YouTube as well. And it's interesting because I do spend a lot of time there. There's a lot more interaction with people as compared to the podcast. But if you're just looking at the monetary value, it's negligible.

Thanks a lot. Really appreciate you guys. And we'll see you back on the show. Do you want to find me? Just go to weird darkness.com. Thank you, Darren. And yes, you have this Lord. Yes. You sent this link. You want to give a little bit of what.

Oh, I don't even know. I think you need to take this because I don't even know how to position this whatsoever. All I saw was like, what? This is from Hollywood Reporter. We'll have a link to it. And so basically getting this right. There's a guy who goes by the name of the Liver King, whoever that is. And he was making threats at Joe Rogan and that he wanted to fight Joe and was heading to Austin. heading to Austin, and someone reported this to the police or whatever, and the police...

looked into this and then contacted Joe and said, do you know who this guy is? Basically, was this a publicity stunt you guys are doing to drive some, you know, online thing? And Joe's like... You know, he knew of him, but he didn't know. He's like, I don't know this guy. I don't know the guy. I know of the guy, right, basically. But this is not a publicity stunt. And then the police arrested the liver king.

Which really was the best thing that could have ever happened for the Liver King. Because now everybody's like watching his stuff? No, because Joe Rogan is a beast. Oh. I mean, he literally kicks harder than any professional. MMA fighter. That's not hyperbole. There is a machine that the UFC has to measure kick strength, and Rogan has the highest score on that machine. Alright, but still though, I mean, Rogan is old.

Joe's not that old. He's because he's my age and I'm not going to say that he's old. I mean, listen, Joe Rogan was Taekwondo national champion. Joe knows more about. MMA, UFC fighting. I mean, there are professional fighters that will talk about Rogan seeing things and telling him that they're doing things that they didn't even know they were doing these moves.

He is not just someone that this isn't like Howard Cosell who knew football. Right. Yeah. Or knew boxing. But you would never be afraid of Howard Cosell. No. This is. a guy that was in it. This is like when you hear Brett Saberhagen or a professional pitcher doing the color commentary. Bill Walton, when he was doing basketball commentary, he talked the talk, but he could walk the walk. Joe could walk the walk. I mean, he was Taekwondo national champion. He's not someone you mess with.

And his kick strength, these are recent. This is recently where he was doing this. It was a long time ago. It was a few years ago on the kick strength. He is literally a beast. And Liver King should thank the police from Joe sending him into hospice. Because that's where he was headed if he tried to confront him. I mean, okay, dude. I mean, I get it. I understand that. But still.

Like, is he training all the time? I'm just pushing back only because, you know, all of the retired football players, there's some of them that were in peak, you know, performance and there's. All of the, you know. He actually is in better shape. If you listen to the show, he's given up alcohol in the last couple of years because it wasn't making him feel good. He's actually in better shape than he was a few years ago. OK, but regardless of this, though, it is scary to have some dude.

Plus, the liver king guy is really scary looking on his own. His arms are huge. And by the way, there's a huge beef, I guess, between them, which is what this Hollywood Reporter article was also saying that. The beef was really, it wasn't necessarily. Joe's beef, it's the fact that this liver king guy was saying that his body was all due to this like primal living of just doing everything natural, I guess, eating lots of meat and things like that and just working out.

And Joe was like, dude, there's no way your body is going to look like that without taking steroids. And the liver king was like, are you kidding? No, no, no. And then finally, there were some like doctor leaked. in things where it showed that he was paying something like $11,000 a month on steroids. And so the liver king had to come clean. And ever since, because Joe called him out, just...

randomly on a show. It's not like he was going after him. Literally, Joe just said, like, what a dork. Obviously, he's you know, he it was just like, I think it was like an off the cuff comment. And the liver king took very like he was just he's been after him after that. Anyway, but here's the other kicker, though. The liver king dude going to go get Joe. He was putting this out on social.

Like he was recording himself going to commit the crime, essentially. I have links, by the way, we'll have links in the show notes to YouTube videos of Joe Rogan. kicking and you can see the strength and literally out kicking professional fighters there was one where he's he literally out kicked a professional kickboxer okay okay rob i'll give you that i'm just saying

He is a beast. You would not mess with Joe Rogan. Not if you're smart. Also, I'm sure Joe has no interest in this. And I think all this to say, just the police. Stop them. Joe said. To his credit, he just said, yes, this feels like it's a threat to me. Please go stop him. And the police did their job. And Joe can just live his life. He doesn't need to be proving his manliness by...

fighting other random people that just want to fight him. It's just weird. Who does that? And it's dangerous. People just doing stuff like this is stupid. Don't do that. And by the way, if you threaten violence and you're... podcaster, you will get kicked off wherever you're hosting. That's the line. Remember, folks, there's a line. Correct. And promoting and threatening violence is crossing that line. And we never, ever condone that. That is one of the reasons.

why I put this in here. Because I know we often get asked about it. I think we've been pretty straightforward about that for many, many years. We do not ever condone promotion of violence. Correct. And that's something... Again, we go back to Alex Jones, right? His offhand comments, not kicked off of Libsyn, he wasn't with us, but got kicked him off of Apple and other places. You can't promote what this guy did, obviously, if you're a podcaster and you did that.

You should expect in those scenarios to have your show removed. Yeah. And again, Liver King should be thanking his lucky stars that the police stepped in because he would have gotten destroyed. Not that Joe wants to do that. And I'm not saying. Joe, in any way, shape, or form, said he would have destroyed the guy. I am just commenting on the fact of what I know about Rogan. And evidently, the Liver King does not know how to search YouTube. And Joe Rogan could kick power. Oh, my God.

You are going to die on this hill of Joe and his big legs that fight people and hit them hard. Hey, by the way, great episode this week. Bernie Sanders was on two hours on Rogan, which doubled the amount of time he was on the last time. So if you want to check out an episode, Bernie was just on there. All right. So. What are we doing now? Oh, yes. You have a tool that you want to share. Yes. So you want to read this? It was an email. Someone asking about this. Yes. So, OK, here's the email.

Hey, Rob, is there a tool you know or a way within the Libsyn dashboard to download all the files from an RSS feed? I have a client that wants to send all their episodes off for transcription, and they have over 500 episodes. So we're looking for a painless solution to get all those episodes downloaded into a single folder. Thanks, NR.

So this is one that's come up before. It comes up all the time. It's weird. Yeah. And on the PC side, the recommendation was iTunes and using the get all feature. But that's only good on the PC side, right? Because iTunes is no longer available on the Mac. But on the Mac.

I didn't ever remember that we've ever given a good answer. And we did get a couple of people that had recommended. We haven't talked about it since the recommendations came in. Podcast Archiver. It's a paid Mac app. It's $8.99. I have a link in the show notes. From the description, it says just enter an open RSS feed URL and download all or selected episodes. So you can download all or you can download a select group of episodes. I have not personally tried it.

But again, folks did suggest that and have used it and said that it worked for them. And again, we'll have a link in the show notes for that app, which is called Podcast Archiver Two Words. And it's $8.99. finally have an answer for Mac people that want to do a bulk download. So there you go. That's very cool. Love it, love it. I just want to give a shout out here very quickly to Jeremy Enns. He just finished the Podcast Marketing Trends Report 2025. And I have not.

Reddit. I mean, I've scanned it. There's so much information on this thing that I literally got tired just scrolling down the page. So we will talk about it. in more detail next in more detail at some point soon because remember rob the thing is though for the 2024 report we had it in our show notes for like every episode and we skipped it all the time because it was so

Anyway, there's more. There's more information. And I have to sit with the data for a bit before I even I don't have a point of view right now. And I don't want to, like, start talking about it without context. But you guys can check it out. there's going to be a link in the show notes. So podcastmarketingacademy.com slash podcastmarketingtrendsreport 2025, all dashes in between the words.

But again, link in the show notes. Please go check it out. It's really good. Very well done. Very well thought out. So, yeah, check that out. Anywho. Wait, so now we got a promo from my favorite podcast, my new favorite podcast. I listen to all these episodes. I recommend this podcast all the time. So go ahead and roll that promo. Oh, wait, they didn't send it in?

Well, that could have been your podcast, for all you know. Oh, well. Rob, we, you and I, you know what we need to do? We need to create promos. We need to start to create promos for ourselves. Somehow. We're going to promote stuff. We got to start doing that. Come on, people. You got to get on it. Okay. Anywho, are you ready for your stats feature? Yes. This is geographic and user agent stats. And this first up, this is...

Country breakdown for May per download geographically from all sources. And here we go in order of top 20. USA, 61%. Canada, 5.4%. UK, 5.4%. Australia, 3.5%. Germany, 2.6%. Sweden, 2.1%. Netherlands, 1.7%. Spain, 1.2%. That's everybody over one. And then rounding out the top 20 in order. And for May, we had Norway and Switzerland move back into the top 20.

And between May and April, those with changes greater than 0.2% was the U.S. dropping from 61.3% to 61%. Netherlands jumping to 1.7% from 0.8%. Big podcasts there in the Netherlands had a big month. And Japan dropping from 1.3% to 0.9%. Of course, check your stats and see how you measure up to these numbers for May.

And now for user agent info. And this is for May across all shows, globally hosting on Libsyn, Libsyn Pro. For IAB stats, mobile downloads, we're at 86.58% of all downloads going direct to mobile devices. down a smidge from April's 86.9%, and computer downloads were up a smidge to 13.02%. Home voice attendance plus set-top boxes were at 0.4% in May.

The iOS to Android ratio in May was 3.44 to 1, which was down a smidge from the 3.49 to 1 in April. Mobile aggregator apps not from Spotify or from... Apple in May were 11.01%. And then the big dog in aggregator apps is... Apple and with the Apple podcast app, iTunes and Apple podcast ecosystem coming in at 46.05% of all downloads in May. Number two was Spotify 21%, Overcast third at 2.8%.

Fourth was Pocket Cast at 1.7%. Number five was iHeartRadio at 1.3%. And number six, Amazon Music at 1%. So Amazon, congrats breaking into that 1% or better category. And that is everyone with 1% or greater. Those under 1% but greater than 0.2% in order were Podbean, CastBox, Podcast Addict, AntennaPod, Player.fm, and Evox. And those between 0.2 and 0.02. Downcast, Pandora, TuneIn Radio, Podamo, SXM, Fountain, Deezer, Podcast Guru, BeyondPod, Castro, RSBN.

PlaydioCast, Snipped, RSS Radio, AirPodCatcher, RealLifeApp, Android, Podcaster, Axios, Podverse, DogCatcher, and MixerBox. And then many, many, many, many more that come in at under 0.02% and don't yet weren't mentioned. Again, those are all based on IEP numbers. Outside of aggregator apps, there were browsers. Firefox and Other came in at 9.8%. Other, by the way, includes Chrome for iOS, Safari for iOS, and Others. We do have that request to get that broken out. And then Chrome.

was at 2%. Overall browsers combined were around 12% of downloads in May, so above. So there is your user agent information breakdown.

Does it? So have we been anywhere? Have you been anywhere, Elsie? I have not been anywhere. As far as I know, I've been working hard, people. I've been working hard. You haven't been seeing it. But no, I just ran my mentor. Like I mentioned last time, I ran my mentorship experience and then I did a whole entire workshop and my in-laws came. So I feel like. I'm finally pausing a bit right now. This just ended, meaning all of this work. And now I'm settling down.

And we're going to be doing some fun things here for Libsyn, hopefully sooner than later. And so stay tuned for all that stuff. But I haven't been anywhere as of now. And then doing a little switching of gears here. Actually, where are we going? I haven't even talked about that. We are going to Podcast Movement in August in Dallas.

So that is coming up, folks. We look forward to seeing you. The end of August is about less than two months away. We'll be there. Hope to see some of you there. And then... Switching gears to where are you going as in the listeners. And if you're looking for a job in podcasting, make sure you go to podcastingjobs.com. As of the end of June. We had one opening listed there. That opening is for Associate Director Performance Marketing, and that is remote.

location. So Associate Director of Performance Marketing. So that is the one opening we have right now. Again, go to podcastingjobs.com to learn more about that opening and other potential openings that we may have in the near future. Yeah. And hey, listen, if that's you, it's going to be working for my team and you get to manage me. How about that? Are you up for that, people? Manage my brain, manage my ideas. Let's see, like, I am like the golden retriever.

I'm like the golden retriever with an occasional, yeah, anyway. So that's it. Okay, podcastingjobs.com. You can learn more there. If you're looking to start a podcast or switch up your podcast home, you can use the code the feed, one word, the feed, for a free month with us. And finally, don't forget to send in your feedback.

For anything we did or did not mention on this episode, you can record that feedback or promo and email it to us, thefeedatlipson.com, or you can call us, 412-573-1934. Heck, we'll take a promo from a call-in if you can do it. One take. No editing. Kudos to you. Or you can use SpeakPipe at speakpipe.com slash David. The feed at minus 9.4 luffs. Yes. Oh, my God. Good Lord.

All right. Well, guys, we will chat with you in a couple of weeks and do send in your feedback. We would love to get your voice on the show. All right. Bye-bye. Ciao.