Does SoundCloud.com And/Or Podcasts.com Affect My Hosting Strategies? - The Podcast Report Episode #44

Does soundcloud.com or podcast.com affect my hosting strategies? Show notes, links, conversation and more@thepodcastreport.com 44 it's the podcast Report with Paul Colligan and here's Paul the big idea is simple. All podcast hosts are no more the same than are all cars. The options for podcast hosts keep getting bigger and bigger. The debate continues to go on and on, and the only thing that it seems to successfully do is keep us from creating content. Hey everybody, my name is Paul. Paul Colligan, podcaster, author. My current book, how to podcast 2015 is doing pretty well. Got my first video review at Amazon today and I'm thrilled with it. I've been part of podcasting since the beginning of the I love this industry. I've loved this industry since day one. The avatar for the show, the person who watches this show. Podcasters looking to make their podcast a real business or do real business because of their podcast. This has never been a massive play, but it's a deep one. You'll never see me on any top 10 list. The greatest podcast of all time. For those of you who listen are the best audience I could possibly have. Thank you for your kind words. Let's get to work. Why? Why this topic? If you've been listening to the podcast report at all, you know that my joke has been pretty repeatedly that I wouldn't be episode about you know, the microphone shootout or the podcast hosting shootout or you know, comparing one company to another company or that type of thing. And this is not that episode. That's what you're looking for. There are other places to go to it. But what has happened is SoundCloud has made a very big announcement. It's gotten a lot of press, got a lot of attention. Podcasts.com Honestly I don't know when this popped up but it's been getting a lot of attention recently and they are two sides of the same coin in the form of interesting wrappers around podcast hosting and I want to talk about that. The funny thing is is really in the end I could have recorded this episode four or five years ago with insert company A versus company B. But the fact of the matter is tail is old as time. Let's. Let's chat. So soundcloud.com has been an interesting audio play for quite some time. They essentially if you look at them they're trying to be the YouTube of audio. My 15 year old daughter watch, you know, watches, monitors, covers, whatever, a couple of bands. They're all on soundcloud she, she loves them, she uses that. And it's, it's a great little interface. Their, their players, great. The ability to make comments are great. They're getting some attention. They've got a lot of VC money and there have been some podcasters who have been putting their content at SoundCloud. And so if you listen to the show at all, I've always been speaking to how I'm about to crack the SoundCloud nut because a lot of podcasters are doing that. So Podcast recently announced, hey everybody, we have a PODC solution for you. I'm sorry, SoundCloud announced we have a podcasting solution for you. And it's gotten some people's attention and people are going, oh, should I move over there? Should I should, should I go over there? I have a link in the show notes if you go to the podcastreport.com forward/44 the episode or the link to the TechCrunch article that kind of brought all this about. You know what's funny is, is I'm still amazed with the industry and how badly and how poorly they track podcasting. They're speaking, speaking to Libsyn hosting company inside the article them Liz Bin, which I thought was funny. And if you look in the comments, there's a comment as well. Somebody complaining that there's no video at SoundCloud. That's about equal to complain that there's no audio at YouTube. It was an interesting article. It created some attraction. I asked others to respond and I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Thepodcastreport.com 44 I've got a link to the article and I've got a link to a little thread I started out in the podcast community over at Google. I wanted specifically Libsyn and Blueberry to respond and I've got part of their comments here, but definitely go out and read the whole thing. So SoundCloud, a flashy, fancy, attractive looking platform for audio distribution on the Internet, you know, now has a podcasting plan and if you're looking for price and that kind of stuff, that's, that's not what I'm covering here. At the same time podcasts.compast popped up again. It's funny, I at one point had a opportunity to acquire that domain name with a group I was working with and we decided not to and looks like it's been passed around a couple of times or maybe the same person's trying a bunch of different things, I don't know. But podcasts.com is essentially, you know, they've got a quote unquote free hosting platform. And let's face it, if you're going to have a podcast, it's kind of cool sounding to have yourself hosted@podcasts.com, but it's the same issue as the SoundCloud issue. It's the same issue as all of the other weird podcasting platforms that have popped up. Again, it's it's tail oldest time. So let's chat about what matters in new podcast platforms and we'll specifically speak to soundcloud and podcast.com, but let's go on a higher level, what really matters with your hosting, and then we'll speak to what doesn't matter. And I'm sure I might say a controversial thing or two there. But first of all, let's speak to what matters. Two questions, really. One massive question that kind of has some sub questions to it. You know, who owns your feed, who owns your show? Who owns your domain name? Who owns your show and what happens if you want to change it? You know, if you want to change your show, you should be able to change your show because it's your show. If you want to move the hosting location of your show, you should be able to change the hosting location because it's your show. If you want to change the RSS feed, source, etc. You know, it's yours. Most of you listening to this show, knowing by my demographics, you remember back in the days when, you know, the cell phone company owned your mobile number and you know, if you had started with AT&T, you had to stay with AT&T. And as a result, AT&T treated you like crap because you were, you know, trapped by AT&T. And then when number portability came in, all of a sudden, all the cell phone companies had to get better and they had to kick up the game. Now, AT&T still hasn't. That's another story. But, but all the other players have. It's been really, really interesting and the consumer did well. And the same thing is true in podcasting. If you are with somebody who owns your feed and prevents you from changing, they got you trapped. They can charge whatever they want, whenever they want, however they want. If somebody owns your hosting, same thing. What happens if you change it? That's the first thing that matters. The second thing that matters is you have to look at the financial viability of a hosting model. You got to look at the financial viability of an RSS direction model. You got to look at the financial viability of anybody that you're working with, with, you know, this idea that somebody is going to give you something for free, they're not quite sure how they're going to make money with it. Well, that, you know, shame on you for embracing that model because they haven't figured out what they're doing and they're going to take you along for this ride. So one of the comments inside of the idea about this article was that SoundCloud's an acquisition play, that SoundClouds looking to be purchased by somebody. I don't know whether or not that's true. Certainly makes sense. Don't know why they wouldn't be looking for that. You know, they certainly don't have a model that's profitable otherwise. Well, you know, acquisition plays are huge. I mean, if company A says they're going to treat you this way and then they sell to company B, are they interested in you or are they interested in the ticket price acquisition play? You got to deal with that. Then the other thing you have to deal with is just simply what happens if they go down? What happens if they don't get acquired before the money runs out? This isn't even only an acquisition issue. And what happens if they can't figure out how to make money? What if their model isn't there? So you got to figure out the financial viability of the hosting model. And this is the one reason why I do like those, or at least I do understand those who control their feed with WordPress. You know, it's a lot of extra work, but you know, when it's WordPress on your host and your domain and your website, you got full control of it. So question one, who owns your feed? Question number two, financial viability of your service providers. The next thing that matters is the whole concept of source versus destination. You know, we are in a situation now where there are a ton of people who are aggregating podcast consumers. You know, there's spreaker.com, there's iheartradio.com, there is soundcloud.com these are our destinations where people are going. A couple of my clients have been helping them work to a transitioning it over to SoundCloud and we're getting some decent numbers over at SoundCloud. So SoundCloud isn't somebody that you toss away, but you do want to a ask if they are a source or a destination. The second thing you want to ask is, are there better destinations? You know, Here we have SoundCloud getting all this attention. But I'll tell you every podcast that I've put without promotion over at Spreaker vs Soundcloud actually Spreaker is doing better right now. Something to think about. Source versus destination. What is your source? If you are hosting your source at a destination, that's just a bad strategy. You know, if they're where you end up, they're not ending up at your site or your location. So walk through that. Got a couple of quotes from Todd over Blueberry Rob Libson. These are straight out of their comments in the Google community. These two guys have been going at a little bit on some other issues. So I picked who and first solely from alphabetical order of the company. So so Blueberry comes first. Todd says I have no idea how many millions they're burning a month. Their last VC round which I think was a D round with some time ago. They've had major issues getting deals with copyright holders to date to share rev. Their end game is to be acquired if they do our podcasters safe. If they don't. Podcasters should have a backup plan is with any hosting service their media and control their feeds. Fun times in the podcasting space. Our concern remains with podcasters longevity and providing great tools which we continue to need the community support. We're here for the long haul. So Todd makes some good points. I mean what happens in game and the thing is this is a question you should ask for everybody. This is a question you should ask for SoundCloud. This is a question you should ask for Blueberry. This is a question you should ask for Libsyn. This is a question you should ask for everybody. And I'll tell you, I've gone on record the unlimited hosting model. That's a creepy one because Blubrry pays for hosting and Libsyn pays for hosting. Now both of these guys have worked in some interesting alternative models. But yeah, what is the financial model? You gotta look at that. So thank you, Todd. Rob said as per what people should do, it all depends if they care about building their brand. I've said it before and I'll say it again. SoundCloud gives you good tools to help you promote the SoundCloud brand. Libsyn gives you great tools to help you promote your brand. Everything SoundCloud does about driving your audience back to their ecosystem, that is their core model. You as a podcaster need to decide if that matches up with your goals. And Rob is dead on. This is one of the things about, you know, YouTube versus video podcasting. Think of the same thing about SoundCloud. I mean, their goal is to get people to the SoundCloud destination. And in some cases, that might be good. Guilt by association. In some cases that might be bad. You got to decide what you want to do. But here's the thing, and this is the most powerful element of podcasters, is that you can be on SoundCloud as well as your own podcast right now, as a matter of fact, if anybody's listening to me on SoundCloud, go ahead and head over to thepodcastreport.com got a whole website dedicated to this show. See what I did here. I can use the destination of SoundCloud as a marketing format for me, but I can still bring them back to my own location, which is really, really, really what I recommend you do for yourself. So what doesn't matter. What mattered was who owns your feed, who owns your hosting? Financial viability, the hosting models. Are you hosting at a source or a destination? And then the stuff that Todd and Rob brought up. Now here's what doesn't matter, number one, the price. What, Paul? How could the price not matter? Podcast hosting is affordable. It's just ridiculously affordable. And there are models that work. And if you can't spend the price of a pizza a month on professional hosting, don't get upset that you don't have professional hosting. It doesn't matter. The price. There it is. I'm sure I'll get complaints, send them to the podcast RPT over at Twitter. What really doesn't matter is the owner. What matters, of course, what the owner does with the content. What matters, of course, is what the owner lets you do or doesn't let you do, or what the owner provides for or doesn't provide for, what the owner's financial stability is, or that kind of thing. But you know, the owner of your stuff doesn't matter. Put it at the place that makes sense for you. And what you're doing, your host, it doesn't matter because it should be about your show. You don't know where I'm hosting. Not going to tell you some of you know because you heard me speak about it before, but it doesn't matter. What matters is this is the podcast report. The podcast report. I own the content, not the host. What doesn't matter, really, is who produces your feed. I don't care if you're using the WordPress plugin, great. If you're using a third party tool, great. If you're using Libsyn, great. Don't care if you're coding it by hand. Personally, I pity the fact that you feel like you need to do something like that to yourself, but in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter. What does matter, of course, is that you control your feed and that you can do portability for your feed if you need to. Those types of things. Now this last one, the final thing that doesn't matter, and I know I'm going to get some arguments here, is audio resolution. One of the people were saying, well, SoundCloud only has a certain audio resolution. Don't care. Spoken to this in the past. If people want to consume your content on a platform that changes resolution, doesn't matter, let them. Eventually all this stuff's going to change. Remember, television of old used to not be as good as high definition. We're going to get better. The thing that's important now for a podcaster is not what resolution your podcast is at, is that you've got an audience member who has gone to a certain location and has asked to consume your content and you are able to deliver it to them. Not putting yourself on a platform because they change the resolution is just absolutely ridiculous. The fact that the other guys changed the resolution as well shows some short sightedness. Yes, but in the grand scheme of things, audience trumps resolution every single time. So what do you do about this? You know, do you move over to podcast.com it's free. When it's free, you're the commodity. When you, when it's free, you are what is bought and sold. You know, it's a place to play. But man, if it's free, don't think you're going to get ownership. You know, soundcloud.com competitively priced, but boy, the specifics aren't clear yet. And you know, if you don't own it, it's not really, really cool. So what do you do? Number one, own your show. Own every single process of your show. Own the name, own the media, own the hosting, own the feed. You know, well, Paul, I can't be a hosting company. You can own the relationship. You know, if you can pick up and leave from one person to another, you're, you're absolutely fine. Number one, own your show. Number two, read the terms of service, you know, find out what they're allowed to do, what they aren't allowed to do. Are they allowed to add ads, Are they allowed to steal your feed? Are they out to redirect people? You, you need to be in a situation where you own the process. And then what you do is if somebody's someplace else, like I did earlier with SoundCloud, you know, bring them back to your show. If you're listening to this any place other than on the podcast, go ahead and head out to the podcast report. The next thing you need to do is you need to understand where your host makes their money. Podcast.com is not giving you free hosting out of the goodness of your heart. They're doing it because they think they can make more money someplace else. And personally, I think that's a really bad strategy. But regardless, you just gotta understand where your host makes money. And if there's no model for your host to make money, you gotta ask yourself how long they're gonna be around. And with that, the last thing you wanna do is you wanna have yourself an escape plan. What happens if your host goes south? What happens if your media server goes south? What happens if your model for feed production goes south? Figure these things out. And then finally, the last thing I recommend just simply is work with a proven entity. Guys, we've been podcasting for a decade now. There are people who have proven themselves and there are people who are trying to pop up. I mean, if somebody pops up out of the blue that lets you own everything and makes it easy to be portable and lets you do all that stuff, that's fine and dandy. I don't think they're going to, because the existing guys right now have made it painfully easy, painfully inexpensive. And stop looking around. Go back to creating content. Thank you so much. This is Paul Colligan. This is the podcast report@the podcastreport.com this is episode 44. You can find the show notes and everything@the podcastreport.com 44. Three links to today's notes, the book how to Podcast 2015, the thread over at Google that I read some of the comments from, and the TechCrunch article regarding SoundCloud, which still has them referencing it as Lisbon and not Libsyn. You can listen to the show@the podcastreport.com iTunes or the podcastreport.com Stitcher or the podcastreport.com PocketCast or TuneIn or Spreaker or iHeartRadio or Overcast, but either way it starts with the podcastreport.com because I own my media. I own the feed. Not at SoundCloud yet. Yeah, should crack that nut at some point, but I'm not too worried about it. If you want to follow me on social, I'd love it. Go to the podcastreport.com Twitter or thepodcastreport.com Facebook if you want to do that email thing, it goes to the podcastreportoutlook.com yes Siri, it does. Do subscribe. If you just listen to this audio. You know this episode 44, there's 43 before. Wouldn't it be great if you got those in perpetuity? And I'll tell you this, there are a lot more episodes of the podcast report coming. If you subscribe to any of these platforms, every time a new episode comes out, you will be updated and you'll be able to consume and you'll be able to be part of this very cool family. Speaking of family, thanks for being part of the show. Thanks for listening to the end. Got a new episode coming out week. It should be fun. Talk to you then. Bye.