What To Make Of Apple's Podcast Subscriptions

All right. So today we're going to talk about Apple's new podcast subscriptions and their new Podcast Connect section, which is basically their enhanced analytics. And don't forget to hit the subscribe and bell button if you want more videos like this. All right. So we can see Apple's talking about leading the next chapter of podcasting with podcast subscriptions. And if you can see the image, you can listen to a free episode and you can try the subscription free. And it just makes a lot of sense. There's a lot of try before you buy going on here. And they have a lot of new like luminaries in here. The Athletic. They have a lot of kind of brand names, podcasting brand names, The Washington Post. And you can see here they've got new analytics, which is very similar to what I've been using with Chartable over the years. But you can see 20 days after release, is it going up or down, up or down? Here's the change. So they basically enhanced their podcast analytics, which is great. So I love using Spotify analytics. I like using Chartable right now. And then Apple's kind of stepping up their game too because they want to make sure that they don't, you know, they've been losing ground to Spotify over the years and it's good to see them kind of step things up. And beyond that, I think they even have a, you can add different channels to your podcast. So as an example, for the Marketing School Podcast, we can have different channels for SEO. We can have it for paid media, we can have it for email and we can kind of group or curate all of our episodes. So I think that's great. And You know, going back to the subscriptions, I am an advisor to a company called SuperCast and they actually launched a while back, maybe a year and a half, 2 years ago. And what I would say is, I mean, they, they were kind of the pioneers to this space, giving the ability to people to say, hey, if you want to add a subscription to your, your podcast, you can go ahead and do it and you can make a lot of money while you're doing it. There's kind of pros and cons to both sides, right? If you go with SuperCast, you're not giving up, you know, 30% of your first year's revenues like you would to Apple. And, um, the other thing I would say too is you have a lot more control over your, your audience, right? What I mean by that is if you're doing Apple Podcast subscriptions, you are not going to be able to collect email addresses. You're not going to know who your customers are. So in essence, it's kind of like selling on Amazon. You don't have a lot of that customer data. Uh, Amazon has it or Apple has it. That might be kind of a deal breaker depending on how you look at it. And then, you know, SuperCast, they take a percentage of the revenue and then they also give you a lot more control. So it just depends on what you're looking for. I think if you're looking for more distribution, it might make sense to go with Apple. But that's not saying they're mutually exclusive. You can actually go with both. If we take a look at what Apple has done, it's seamless, right? A lot of people are using— they have iPhones and they're using the podcast app. So just to be able to hit the subscribe button there, subscribe to a free trial, it's easy. It's simple to manage. And you can have a lot of free content back there, whether it's exclusive content. Because I mean, look, people are listening to you. They trust you if you have a podcast. And so It makes all the sense in the world to do this. And if you break down the numbers, it might make sense, right, to also launch a subscription on Apple while you're doing it on SuperCast. I think for the Marketing School Podcast, the way I look at it is like, even if we can get 10,000 or 15,000 subscribers or so paying us $10 a month, you know, it's $150K a month and that's $1.8 million. That's pretty good, right? So if you have volume and, you know, you know a lot of your listeners are on Apple, you You take a look at your podcast analytics. Oh, it looks like 70-80% of my audience is on Apple. Give it a shot. I mean, what do you have to lose, right? I know in the new Apple Podcast Connect ecosystem, you have to upload all the content in the backend, which is fine. And then you can also add new users as well. So you can have people from your team managing the content as well. And I'm totally down with that. Like I'm shooting this video right now. I can make new content all the time. I can do Q&A. I can do a lot of cool stuff. And make it unique to my audience. If anything, this is making podcast subscriptions a lot more popular. And I do know there are people that are making, you know, very good money. We're talking a couple hundred thousand dollars a month on top of whatever else they're doing, right? Because podcast community is just super strong. Does it make sense to sell to a— like sell your podcast like Joe Rogan to Spotify? Maybe not. I think it's to have a lot more control and to also get the support from your audience. And then once you have that money coming in, you can support your audience even more. I think that's a good deal. If you want to sign up for the subscriptions, again, I think you're gonna pay them $20 a year, 30% of revenue share for the first year, which is a lot of money. And then I believe it drops down to 15% or so. So it's trade-offs, right? I mean, the way I look at it with the Marketing School Podcast, we, we get about 1.5 million downloads a month and we've created a good community around it. We have an in-person community, we have the peer group. Adding this is just kind of icing on the cake. Makes all the sense in the world. I'm gonna try it, I believe. Question is, are you going to try it? I'm excited about it. I like that they're bringing this to the forefront. A little late in my opinion, but you know, better late than never. Don't forget to check out the next video over there. Okay, over there. And before we go, open a new tab, levelingup.com, to learn more about the book. We may or may not have other goodies tied to this book. All right, levelingup.com in a new tab. You can check out the next video first in a new tab, and we'll see you later.