Google Has Entered The Podcasting Game - The Podcast Report With Paul Colligan Episode #88

Google is now playing the podcast game, and it is a different game than the other guys. It's the podcast report, episode 88, the podcastreport.com 88 for show notes, links, conversation, and more. I typically don't do the breaking news kind of thing here at the Podcast Report, but this one's interesting, this one's fascinating. I've chatted to this in the past. The implications of this will be understood in the future. But there is a moment in time here that a major player, Google, is now playing in the podcast game. We'll chat what to do about it right now. For those of you listening to this in sort of a, you know, my weekly followers, the Tuesday morning. Oh, good. Paul's got another episode. But we'll also talk about what to do in the future. And I'll give you a format to keep in the know about Google and podcasting for the months and years to come. My name is Paul Culligan. This is the podcast Report. I'm a podcast consultant, podcast author, obviously a podcaster, but that's not what this is about. This is the podcast report. This is where I share with you the podcast, the things you need to know to do more business with your podcast. Now is more business with your podcast, getting more money from GoDaddy per thousand downloads. No, it's the bigger story. It's the bigger scale. It's how all of this stuff fits together. That's what the podcast report is about. And that's why this Google announcement is really important. So just yesterday, most podcasters got an email from Google saying, hey, we're ready. And then they gave you sort of a cryptic response to how this whole thing works, and they set you out on your own. Us podcasters like myself, I clicked over on the link on my iPhone and I got an error and I even tried a couple other things and then it opened up Google Play, which didn't make sense and it didn't work and it didn't have my podcast. So let me chat about how it is right now and we'll chat about how it's going. But what I want to do is I want to keep this thread open without doing a bunch of episodes about this thread. So if you head out to the podcastreport.com 88, that's thepodcastreport.com 88, I will give you the chance to just click on the big button there. And then we'll have the Google Podcast update list. Basically, as Google updates, things will update that to that email list so that I Don't have to do episode after episode after episode about this and I really don't want to now. Grand scheme, big picture. Back last year I predicted that the Google impact on the podcasting space is going to be very, very small. I still believe it's going to be that way. Actually, what I predicted was that the Google impact on your listener is going to be very, very small. Some listeners might over to Google. I think Google will be at least an interesting of a player, as is Stitcher and Tunein, possibly bigger. So let's put all of this into perspective here. So number one, if you haven't submitted your podcast yet to Google, do it. I've got a link to the podcast portal, the podcastreport.com 88 I've got a link to that for you. Make sure you've submitted. One of the things, one trend that I've seen that's really interesting is that Lipsync has made the ability with their sort of destinations paradigm to do a different feed for the different platforms which will allow you to get different stats and then allow you to do different things to different shows. I think that's really interesting. If you are hosting on Libsyn, definitely take a look at the independent Google feed. That's gonna be really important. One of the things we're seeing already is that Google is definitely doing this different. And so as Google changes, if you can change your feed inside of Libsyn, that will be helpful. If you're the type of podcaster who's running all the feeds yourself, the first I would ask you is why? But if you are one of those, do think about producing a different feed for Google and what that would mean. So I'm up at Google. If you want to see what it looks like, take a look@the podcastreport.com Google now this is one of the tricks I always recommend everybody do. If you want to see me at itunes, go to the podcastreport.com iTunes if you want to see me at Stitcher, go to the podcastreport.com stitcher and of course, if you want to see it, Google, go to the podcastreport.com Google at the time of recording. If you go on a desktop type browser that will take you to the Google page, that will take you whether you can play and subscribe and do all these things through the browser. If you go at the time of recording on a phone device, what that will do is that will attempt to open up the app. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing. Google deserves an app Just like itunes does. And the fact of the matter is, the Google app might be better than the itunes podcast app when all said and done. But unfortunately, right now, at the time of this recording and the time the release, the apps weren't updated yet, at least on the iOS side. So that's why I got that click, that link that resulted in an error. Once all this stuff syncs up, it should be as seamless and as smooth and as clean as it is over at the Apple process. So if you want to see what it looks like right now, today, you know, we're in the next couple of days, go ahead and do this on the desktop. You might be able to, you know, be able to see in the browsers later the podcast portal where you submit. I will do a link to that@the podcastreport.com 88 and we'll go from there. Another thing will do inside of the podcastreport.com 88 is there is a bit of a link. I will put up a link. There's a bit of a thread in the podcaster community over at Google. Yes, I get the humor behind that. And what we'll do is we will certainly. Continue this conversation and we will go from there. I'm a Chromebook house. My family is Chromebook users, everybody but me. And they like it because they're simple and they're easy. Now, I don't have game players and I know all the arguments about that. But as my family goes to Chromebooks, a player inside of Chrome that's optimized for Google, that works with things like Chromecasts, this is interesting. And where Google goes with this could be done now. Google will integrate this Inside of the iOS Google Play app. For a long time I was running the Google Music service. I've switched over to the Apple service recently, largely because of the family plan, which of course then Google announced the family plan. And, you know, if I had known that was going to come, I probably wouldn't have switched. But so we're there. So your podcast on Google will be able to see on browsers on a Mac iOS desktop type of situation. They'll also be on the Chrome world, the Google world. They'll also be on the Windows world. So don't think about this as only a Android user kind of thing. It's kind of like Stitcher available everywhere. It's kind of like Tunein available everywhere. It's not like Apple iOS podcast, iTunes only available on that device. Think about that, the different streams again, I spoke to that earlier. That is going to be interesting because and this is key and this is the thing that made me want to do the episode about this. When I logged into the portal, I saw a message from Google. I've got it right up here on the desktop. I want to get sure I get this right. And you know, at the time of this recording, reports for podcasters will be available on or before April 25, 2016. What does this mean? This means that Google is going to give the podcaster reports on what's happening inside of Google podcasting. This is huge. We don't get reports from itunes right now. Now maybe, you know, we've seen the move. I chatted about this a little bit earlier. You know, the whole podcast connect certainly be a means and a way where by which they could deliver us reports and maybe we'll get some reporting. But this Google reporting, it's going to be really, really interesting. One of the things I think is going to be really interesting about the Google reporting is the ability to compare the Google reporting to your existing reporting. If you are using a media host that, you know, it's going to be interesting to see how these numbers go. But to get an understanding of what's happening on the place is definitely there. Google is giving out right now ridiculously long URLs for your show. I mean they are just painfully, ridiculously long. Definitely use a short URL. I don't recommend that you use something like bitly. I recommend that you use your own domain when you do the short URL. And again, like I kind of tried to demonstrate here earlier, the podcastreport.com88 for this episode or the podcastreport.com Google to see this over at Google do that kind of thing. Ridiculously long URL. So again, the apps are up, they're running on Android, they look good. They're not there on iOS yet. I expect the next couple of days will get the update. Obviously Apple is not going to be in any great hurry to update that app so that it can compete with their podcast app, but they'll do it. We'll be at a pretty good place. One of the things I want you to think about is Google in the car isn't really doing that well and isn't really that big of a deal. But Chromecast, Chromecast at the home is well, well, I mean, let's put things into perspective. I paid $150 for my latest Apple TV and I'm happy with it and we've chatted about that in past episodes. But The Chromecast is $35. I've seen the Chromecast go cheaper on deals. I've seen it five bucks off with three months of Google Play, that type of thing. Audio all over the house, which is becoming very popular. Sonos seems to have lost a little bit of favor, but the new Apple, I'm sorry, the new Amazon Alexa platform is getting really, really exciting. Boy, when you look around and you see audio in the home with different devices, Chromecast, Alexa, Apple tv, Sonos use, the podcaster should be ecstatic. Realize that Chromecast is going to be one of the easiest ways and one of the cheapest ways to do that. So you want to think about that as well. Okay, so what do we do with this? Google is live. The drip is a bit slow. I don't know if I would have released everything had I not had the apps out yet and been able to just kind of beta test that in the main world. But it's there, the website is there, they're promising them stats by the end of the month. Giving them a separate feed is a strategic move that I would certainly recommend that you make. I don't think it's going to have a major impact on new listeners for you. However, the implication of maybe some people switching it over because they like this infrastructure is certainly there now. The one thing that could happen, it still could happen. And I was involved under NDA with a project back at Google way back in the day and my NDA has actually passed for this when there was examination of looking at at podcasting, you know, by Google on, on the same level of strategy, if you will, that they took on Google Video, which of course became the acquisition of YouTube. I mean here's the thought for you, here's a brainiacal thing for you. And of course if this happens, we'll definitely hit another episode of the podcast report about this. But what if Google takes their audio to text translator that they use inside of Google Voice, which is not that good right now. But of course tech only gets what if they took our shows, what if they transcribed them and made that part of Google search And then just like you see YouTube results inside of Google, what if you were to see podcast results inside of Google? This could get really, really, really interesting. So this is a space to watch. Yes, it's a bit breaking news, but if you're listening to this past that event, everything I said is still true. And most importantly, if you head out to the podcastreport.com 88 and sign up for the update thing, I'll do about Google there, then we could all stay in the and we won't make it a podcast report about, you know, what's happening over at Google or what's happening anywhere else. And as other people make advances, maybe I'll have a sign up there and we can all focus together on the big picture at hand. I'm not surprised by anything app Google did, except that stats that's really, really interesting. The integration has yet to be totally seen yet because not all the elements of it are released yet. But that's very, very interesting. You as the podcaster defin, think about looking at a different feed for Google. They're already asking for different information. I believe that's going to change the stats that are going to give us. We're going to want to do this right. Go strategically. If you're inside of Libsyn, you got it, it's done. If you're inside of one of the other systems, I don't know if this is necessarily the reason why you jump over to Libsyn, but as this becomes more and more important, you want to have tracking and you want to have the destinations paradigm, at least inside of what you're doing versus what everybody else is doing. So there we go. Google podcasting. Welcome. Go we thank you. We'd like it to get a little bit better and of course, if you integrate it inside of search, that would be absolutely fantastic. But there it is. Make sure you subscribe to the show thepodcastreport.com iTunes, Stitcher, TuneIn, and of course finally now Google, so that as the week progress, we'll get you more news about podcasting. And podcasting is definitely a much, much bigger thing than just the world of oh look, Google's doing it too. Follow us on social thepodcastreport.com Twitter let's have the conversation. Thepodcastreport.com have the conversation. And of course, if you want to head out to the podcast report.com forward/88 Sign up for the Google Update list. That would be fabulous. And of course, comments there at the blog are taken as well. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast report. We'll chat with a new topic next week by.