Podcasts On Spotify - This Is Getting Interesting - The Podcast Report Episode #23

Podcasts on Spotify. Okay, this is getting interesting. It's the podcast report, episode 23@thepodcastreport.com 23 show hotline is 503-897-1290. It's the podcast Report with Paul Colligan. And here's Paul. Alright, the big idea is simple. Your content everywhere will always be better this than your podcast everywhere. Your content everywhere will always be better than your podcast everywhere, including Spotify. Before we get to the content, a couple of words. My name is Paul Culligan. I'm the six time bestselling author of the business podcasting bible, the number one top selling podcast strategies, et cetera, et cetera. I've been part of podcasting since the beginning. I love this industry. I love podcasts, I love podcasters. I've been having a blast in this space and I hope to share some of that with you two audiences for this show. Audience number one is the podcaster. Those who are trying to make sense of what's going on, what's changing, that kind of thing. Then those who are thinking about getting into podcasting. It's a better game, it's a bigger game than some are positioning it as. Now, this is not a massive play, this is not an NPR deal to take over the entire world, but this is a deep one. I love this industry and I will fight for it. And that's why this show. So why this topic? Spotify podcast? What's going on? Well, first of all, a little backstory. Dan Benjamin from the 5x5 network. I'm a huge fan of Dan. Everything he's done with 5x5 TV is amazing. I appreciate all the shows he's involved with. I'm a big fan of Back to Work with Merlin Mann. I've never missed an episode of that one. But I've been tracking more and more what Dan's been doing. It's a very, very interesting model for those who are doing podcasting. On the sponsorship level. He's taken it to a level of professionalism that I just haven't seen others do. I'm so impressed with the guy, in awe of what he's done. Really. If you look at his numbers, they're amazing. If you look at the shows he's produced, they're amazing. But even more importantly, if you look at his professionalism and you look at what he's done, it's a good guy to model. Now, his monetization model is only one, and I want to encourage everybody that it can be bigger than that. But man, what he does, he does really, really well. He's worth modeling. He's worth looking at. Now, I don't know how I missed this, but recently Dan tweeted out an article from TechCrunch that somebody found inside of the code for Spotify podcast stuff. That is. They're going to be testing. They're going to be playing with podcasting inside of Spotify. This is huge. So I want to comment on this. It's a really big topic. I want to give a shout out to Dan if none of you have listened to him before. I've got some links here in the show notes and it's big stuff. So let's look at a bit of a history here. Podcasts are expanding all the time. We're starting to consume podcasts on more and more platforms. In episode 20, just a couple of episodes, we chatted about Stitcher and what that meant and how the acquisition of Stitcher by basically the Spotify of Europe, how that is going to get our shows out to more people in episode 14 of this show. And both of these you can get to thepodcastreport.com 20 or thepodcastreport.com 14. We looked at iOS, we looked at what Apple was doing and how the podcast app was going to be independent. And we're seeing more and more now. This hasn't worked for everybody. Some have embraced podcasting supposedly and have completely and totally fizzled out. You look at what Microsoft tried to do. I'll tell you, one day I will write the book on Zune and what happened there. And just the failed attempt at so much that that one represented. And BlackBerry has tried podcasting and some other people have tried podcasting. And so everybody who's embraced it has not necessarily worked out well, but that's really more about the platform that embraced it as opposed to how they embraced it or what it was that they actually embraced. But anyway, TechCrunch found that inside of Spotify's code. Now, this isn't anything that's public. This isn't anything beta. This isn't anything that is accessible to the world other than the code, some podcasting terms and some icons, which really means nothing other than Spotify is considering putting podcasting into their mix. Now, what do we make of this? Well, first thing you got to make of this is your potential audience is continuing to expand, regardless of if you saw it coming or not. I honestly never saw Spotify as a podcast distribution platform, now that I think about it, now that I chat about it on this it makes a heck of a lot of sense. But your potential audience continues to expand regardless of whether or not you've seen that. And you got to get ready for that. One day, somebody is going to come to you, is going to email you, is going to reach out to you on social media and say, I heard your show, I consumed your content. And you're not even going to know that that was an opportunity. You're not even going to know that that was necessarily a thing, which is good. The Internet is getting your show, your content out to people that you didn't even know that the Internet was getting your show and content out to. I mean, the implications of this are absolutely staggering. Now, some freak out by this, some go, well, they're going to put an ad on it. We chat about this a little bit in the previous episode about Stitcher, but really, honestly, if they wrap your show in something that you don't like, you need to learn how to like it. Anyway, I chatted about this last week when we chatted about the things that podcasters do. You know, how they might criticize a certain platform or they might discourage people who are using or consuming their content the way they want to. They might discourage them from doing that. Basically, long and short of it is more and more often, if you're really particular about this stuff, somebody's going to wrap your content in a way that you don't like. And if you can't get over it, you're going to minimize your impact, you're going to minimize your reach. So we got to get over it. We got to exhale, exhale. So everybody exhale. It's a good place to be. Now with that, realize that podcasting might be coming, other places that we didn't see coming, if we didn't see these coming. Couple things to think about. Number one, don't just think about audio. Think about video podcasts as well. If you haven't put together a video plan for your podcast, and I'll tell you this, we're certainly thinking, thinking about video versions of this show won't be too much more than the talking head and the sharing of the mind map and maybe some audience interaction. But don't just think audio, think video. Because, boy, if there's a lot of places to distribute your audio show, there are going to be a lot of places to distribute your video show as well. Again, the more people you reach with your message, the better off you're going to be. So don't just think audio, think video, and then also just what Other channels could deliver your content. You want to think through that. You want to really examine what the opportunities are. We're going to go back into this in a second. Another thing you want to look at, and this is a bit heady, but you guys have got it. Will traditional ad certs ever actually end up doing you damage? What, Paul, how could that be possible? A traditional ad cert? Somebody pays me money to put their ad in my show. How could that do me damage? Well, I'll tell you this right now. There will be some platforms that will not wrap your content because there is a commercial message around it. Now, obviously two options for that go, well, I don't care because if they're wrapping my content and I don't make any money, it doesn't really matter. Tree fall in the forest kind of thing. But others will go, are there ways to gather a list and do marketing external to the traditional ad insert? Now I know some of you are going, okay, Paul, way too high in the sky. No, look at Leo Laporte. Look at the Twit network. Look at this week in tech. Now, to be honest, I haven't listened in quite some time. But the fact of the matter is he at one point, and it wasn't that long ago, and I'm pretty sure he's still doing it, he had to make really clear breaks for when his ads were because when his show was on aol, they had to cut out those ads. So it was a very clear beginning of the ads, a very clear ending to the ads. I don't know if anybody else does that, but I know Leo spoke to it and it's something you want to consider every episode. We're what, on episode 23 of this? Yes, I'm sending everybody the show hotline at 503-897-1290. If you text ep. 23250-389-71290 I will get you the transcripts from this episode and you will be on the list. And there will certainly be marketing opportunities. Of course you can at any time leave these marketing opportunities. Not going to be a traditional ad insert. Nobody's going to have a problem wrapping their show around that. Just something to think about. But it goes back to the idea, back to the big idea that I had at the beginning of this. Your content everywhere will always be better than your podcast everywhere. If your content shows up on something that's not a podcast traditional platform, that is Spotify. Boy, everybody talks about, how are we going to reach the kids? Well, if we're on Spotify. We're going to start reaching the kids, which is pretty cool. So your content, everywhere, always better than your podcast everywhere. And here's another thing. Podcasters, I'm sorry, Spotify users who don't know what podcasts are or don't care what podcasts are might still be thrilled with your content on Spotify or Platform X here. So, yeah, you everywhere. Better than your podcast everywhere, every single time. Don't discount people. So I'm sitting here on my desk. I've got my Sonos player, which, by the way, is a beautiful platform, really great company, really great tool. A band that I've known for a long time just released an album. They haven't released one in about 12 years. Steve Taylor and the perfect foil. I've been listening to this thing really loudly all day long. It's a great album, having a blast with it. And the fact of the matter is, the Sonos app includes Tunein, one of the little lesser podcast platforms. I did something. I searched my name in the Sonos app today, and lo and behold, my podcast showed up. Why? Because I took the time to put them on Tunein. Now, I've spoke to Tunein as a viable player in the past because they really seem to be the easiest way to get podcasts on the Microsoft phone, too. But I'll tell you, I've seen executives in publicly traded companies pooh, pooh Microsoft phones and that type of thing. Therefore, a Tunein strategy, therefore a Sonos strategy. Therefore somebody who might be consuming your content, don't do discount anyone. If your content can be wrapped up in such a way that your audience can consume it, be thrilled and happy with that. Be it Spotify, be it Sonus, be it a Microsoft phone, be it whatever. Okay, enough about that. So what am I doing? A couple of things I'm doing and I want to share with you. Full disclosure. I like the spirit of all the podcasters who are doing that. A couple things. I'm reexamining the title of this show. I am reexamining the positioning of the show for a number of reasons. We'll probably hit that on a future episode. There'll be some news coming soon if we change anything. And part of it is this show is called the Podcast Report. Yes, the audience is podcasters, so I don't want to deny that. But looking at that topic, examining that, and it's never a bad idea to examine the name of your show and the keywords for your show and the marketing for your show. One thing I'm doing, I'm getting a Spotify account. In the past, I have pooh poohed Spotify. I've preferred Pandora or Google Music or even itunes radio. But I'm going to get Spotify. I'm going to get ready to know them. I've got Tunein on my device and I've got Stitcher on my device. I might as well get tunein on there and Spotify and these guys as well. I've also got an Android phone that I've been playing with. I'm learning how podcasts are being consumed there. I'm going to play with podcast consumption, podcast consumption on platforms that I don't traditionally associate with podcast consumption. Probably go for a walk in the park listening to a podcast on my Android demo phone or maybe, you know, pick a certain podcast I'm only going to listen to on Sonos. What I want to do is I want to expand my consumption experience so that I can realize what it might be like for people who don't traditionally take a podcast and, you know, listen to it accordingly. I know a past episode I talked about does a podcast need a website? Well, I still don't believe a podcast needs a website. Website, however, a media entity, which is what this is becoming bigger and bigger. It might. So I'm reexamining some of my website as home theories. Follow me along. Make sure you subscribe to the show and we will make that happen. Let's speak to that. Why subscribe if you are an active podcaster? You know one of the strengths of podcasting is subscription and every time a new episode's released, you get updated automatically. Subscribe to the show. If you've gotten this far, you are interested in the topic, definitely subscribe to the show. So let's hit where we can interact with each other. Number one, I'm on Twitter. This show's Twitter feed is podcastrpt Podcast rpt, as in Podcast Report. Go ahead and follow that. We're also at facebook@facebook.com thepodcastreport the blog is up. Feel free to comment away. This is the podcastreport23 I mentioned earlier on the show. If you text ep23 as an episode 23 to 503-897-1290. I will text you the transcripts and show notes. Notes from this episode should be fun there. You can also, if you'd like to call that number to leave a voicemail message. Like interacting. If there's anything in this episode that intrigued you would love to do that. If you'd like to, I got some links for you at the website at the PodcastReport 23 I've got a link to the TechCrunch article that Dan's tweet led me to. I've also got a link to Dan's tweet specifically, so you can either favorite that or comment. Definitely follow Dan. He's a guy to follow. I've also got a link to episode 20. Not that complicated to give you the podcastreport.com 20 but that is there. If you would like to listen to further episodes of the podcast report. I honestly don't know where you're listening to it. I would love to know if you want to reach out There we are at the usual suspects thepodcastreport.com iTunes Stitcher, Pocketcast, TuneIn, Spreaker Overcast not on SoundCloud yet. Getting closer and closer to the implementation of my SoundCloud strategy. But we will go there next episode. It should be fun. I'm not going to spoil this one. If you would like to review us at itunes. Would love a review. Podcastreport.com iTunes Stitcher takes reviews as well. I guess Spreaker does. I guess Tunein does. I guess all of them do. But of course the big granddaddy, at least right now in this game, is itunes. If you'd like to email me the podcastreportoutlook.com comment on this one, I would love to get a comment from you. I think it's an important topic. I'd love to hear what you think. If you'd like to do an ID for the show, that little NPR kind of jazz radio thing you heard at the beginning of this. If you listen to past episodes, I have had podcasters who have introduced themselves and then introduced the show. I'd love to do that. You can go ahead and email that to the podcast report@outlook.com that is it. I gave you way too many links, but now you got what you need to interact. Please subscribe. See you next week. Bye.