Reports Of Social And Spotify - The Podcast Report Episode #47

Reports of Social and Spotify. It's the Podcast report. Episode number 47. Links, notes and more@the podcastreport.com 47. It's the podcast Report with Paul Colligan. And here's Paul. I've said it before and I'll say it again, it's a platform, not a podcast. Hey, my name is Paul. Paul Colligan, if you will. Author of how to podcast 2015, longtime podcaster, podcast podcast consultant, and, well, host of this show, the Podcast Report. This is not going to be a normal episode of the Podcast Report. I've got two things I wouldn't traditionally do, but I think they're important. And the industry continues to change. It's kind of what I've wanted to cover here on the show. So let's hit it. Part one, a quick look at Social Media Examiners 2015 Social media marketing Industry Report. I've chatted about Social Media examiner in the past. A couple of episodes ago, we chatted about their event. They've released their report this morning. It's got some interesting stuff about podcasting, and I wanted to chat about that. After that, I've got an interview with Rob Walsh. Rob and I got on the Skype line to chat about Spotify. Spotify is not doing podcasting, and that is fascinating, the implications of that. I've chatted about that in a previous episode. What would happen if it was there? Well, it's there. It's live. Rob has some ideas about it. But then what's interesting is Libsyn is. Well, for lack of a better term, they've got a backdoor for you and they've got an ability for you to get your podcast listed on Spotify. And Rob was very kind and very generous. And we've got an option for you, and I want you to take that on. He's got an option for you. I'm just reporting it to you. So before the interview with Rob, I want to chat about Social Media Examiner's 2015 Social media marketing Industry Report. They do this every year. It's a great report. It talks about the entire industry. And it's funny because social media marketing to me is a platform. And, you know, Facebook maybe is a sub platform or Twitter is a sub platform. I mean, it's a way to promote, it's a way to talk, it's a way to interact, it's a way to gain the conversation. It's a way to do a lot of things. And podcasting to me has always been part of it should always be part of it. This year's report. There's only a couple of things about podcasting in there, but I wanted to examine them. One of the big issues is podcasting is on a growth directory. According to the report, only 10% of marketers right now are involved with podcasting, yet 26% plan on increasing their activities. 43% want to learn more. So right now, from a marketing standpoint, only 10% of all marketers are using podcasting. So if you look at the report, everybody's using Facebook, everybody's using Twitter, and that's not the exact number. Go ahead, take a look at the report. And I've got a link to the report in the show Notes. It's a free report. The podcastreport.com 47 will link you right to it. But what's interesting is here's this medium that everybody knows is powerful, everybody knows is impactful, everybody knows is very, very cool, I guess, for lack of a better term, but very strategic. And only 10% of them are doing it. And it's funny. Here's Mike, head of Social Media examiner, the guy who puts out the report. And if you look at the bio at the end, he introduces himself as Mike Stelzner, the founder of Social Media examiner, author of the books Launch and Running White Papers, and host of the Social Media Marketing podcast, a top 10 marketing podcast on itunes. This guy, a hotshot in social media, is introducing himself as a podcaster, and yet only 10% of others are doing that. So it's something I want you to think about. Only 26% of marketers plan on increasing their use of marketing. 60% have no plans to get involved in podcasting at all. So we've got this social media. It's a noisy field. There's Facebook and there's Twitter and there's vine and there's all these things. Yet podcasting, which is what this show is about, isn't getting the attention that one would think it would. And personally, I see that as an opportunity. As a podcaster, I think you need to ask yourself two questions. Number one, why isn't everybody else doing it? And B, if the answer is because maybe, you know, it's a little bit too complicated, they're a little bit scared, or maybe they don't necessarily believe in it. Does this mean you've got more opportunity to do more with podcasting? And gosh darn it, I think the answer is yes. So, links to the report@the podcastreport.com 47. Now, a quick interview with Rob. Actually, it's not a quick one, but it's a good one. Rob's a buddy, longtime friend, VP of Libsyn, chatting about Spotify and what that means, how you can get into it. But the stuff that Rob talks about, I'll put in the show notes@the podcastreport.com 47. But it's an interesting option, it's an interesting thing and I wanted to make you aware of it. So here's the recording with Rob. Hey, I'm here on the Skype line with Rob Walsh from Libsyn.com, had Rob on the show before, but Rob's always a great guy. The funny thing is we usually go about an hour before live and sometimes afterwards, because not everything's always on the record, as it sometimes shouldn't be in life. But there's some interesting stuff going on, the first of which is Spotify now has podcasts. So Rob, talk to me about that. Now that Spotify is there, am I suddenly going to be a millionaire podcaster?

Yeah, no, there is no millionaire podcasters coming up quickly for any one of these launches. But I'm glad I can finally talk about it. This has been something we've been talking to Spotify for, for quite a while and had a bite my tongue. And I tell you what, the 70 plus producers that are hosting with us that were part of this beta launch, they all did a really good job biting their tongues and not saying anything, which you're talking about. 70 something. Yeah, 70 some odd podcasters who love to talk not being able to talk about this. And it was even funnier was being at New Media Expo and people were speculating as Spotify coming into this with quite a few of those podcasters at that event, knowing they all bit their tongue. Nobody said anything. So I was very proud of everyone keeping quiet on it.

Very cool. So you guys are power. You guys are powering Spotify. What's your connection? What are you guys doing with Spotify?

Well, yeah, a lot of the Spotify arrangement I learned on Wednesday during their video because I didn't know who all their partners were and they had a screenshot that put up who their partners were. And I don't know if you got a chance to see that. Oh yeah, okay. So Libsyn, we're one of the partners. Then there's Nerdist, who hosts with us and using our tools to get in there, and there's Slate, who also hosts with us, and there's others that are in there as partners. But as near as I can tell, Libsyn is the only podcast hosting company right now that is one of the partners for the launch. Right now, just a select number of shows. We went with Spotify, worked with Spotify for that list. They had their ideas of who they wanted at launch, and they came to us with this list of shows, and we worked to get that list of shows for them. Tried to sneak some others in there as we went along as well. But now they're going to be able to open it up for some more shows as their system grows. It's not going to be a floodgate, turn a switch. Every show available on Libsyn will be, you know, have the option for it. It's going to take some time before more and more podcasters get in there, but the goal ultimately is for anyone that hosts with Libsyn to be able to get into Spotify if you accept their terms of service. And that's part of how you do it. We turn a destination on for you. There's a form to fill out, just looks like the destination form that you would see filling out for the RSS feed with a lot of itunes fields, similar fields for Spotify, but then there's a terms and condition checkbox at the bottom. You check and say you accept the terms and conditions. You click save, and then their system sees, hey, there's a new show available, and it pulls it in.

Now, let's do a couple things for people. For the two listeners who aren't familiar with Libsyn, Destinations is a thing that you guys do, and best I know, you're the only ones doing it. I mean, that's your term, right?

Yeah, we call it destinations. I don't know if anyone else is doing it, but it's something that we realized early on, give you a lot more flexibility and power on when and where you can publish your content.

Yeah. And basically what it is, you upload a file and again, audio or video and podcasting, and then you say, okay, you know, put into the feed at this time, which is pretty standard. But then you can say, well, put at the blog at this time or put it SoundCloud at this time. And most people know you have a. Have an app option. So you could put at the app at this time. And the other thing that's interesting is that you don't have to put it everywhere. You could have a app only episode, which is one of the reasons why, you know, you could charge a premium or that type of thing. Or you could say, you know, people on the app get it three days earlier or, you know, that type of thing. And you don't have to go if it's three days early. You don't have to publish the app on Monday and then log back in on Thursday to publish the public version. You can go in and say these different things at these different times.

If someone watched the Spotify video, there's a great example of how these tools work, which was when they were talking about the Nerdist and they said the Nerdist was going to be releasing episodes three hours earlier to Spotify than anywhere else.

Perfect example.

Nerdist is using our tools to do that. So they're going to schedule an episode to release to Spotify, and then three hours later it will release to the other destinations. So that's a great example. My own personal example. What I do every week when I release an episode is I usually release my episodes at 1 or 2 in the morning. And some of those destinations that we have are Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. I don't know about you, but one or two in the morning doesn't seem to be a very good time to put up a LinkedIn or Twitter post or a Facebook post. So I schedule them to go noon the next day. So now I'm done. My message, my custom message for Twitter and LinkedIn and Facebook are put in and I go to sleep and I don't have to worry about the next day when I'm working. Oh, yeah, I should tweet out. Now that the episode's live, it does it automatically. It's always fun to start seeing some tweet hits coming at noon when people restart retweeting that, or liking your Facebook message that you had scheduled the night before.

So you have this service and some people use it, some people don't. Some people are oblivious to it. I remember seeing an article by a podcaster who was all excited about figuring out a way to automatically publish to SoundCloud. And I was just laughing because, well, I've been automatically publishing to SoundCloud for a while now, and it sure didn't take a complex solution. It took picking SoundCloud as a destination. So you have this option. Before we went live, you were chatting about how some love to do some talk about publishing everywhere, and I'm certainly a publish everywhere kind of guy. But what your system allows is publishing everywhere a little bit strategically. Is it more than just timing? What else does this kind of approach offer?

You can publish certain content to just certain destinations if you want to say Tunein is another one we have. If you Want to say get featured and Tunein you. Can you reach out to Rachel at Tunein? Rachel used to be over at Stitcher and say, hey, if you guys feature me, I will do a special bonus episode or a couple bonus episodes that will go to Tunein listeners only. Or I'll release content that only goes to Spotify. I'll release content that only goes into my RSS feed or my app. You have the ability to pick and choose which content goes where, so you can make it very strategic. And, you know, again, when it goes not just where what content, but at a different day, a different time, a different minute, a different file, different episode. We're working with Consumer Reports and they're going to have some different content that goes into Spotify because they have to put a little proviso in there saying, hey, if you hear ads before or after this, it's not our ads. We don't take ads. But Consumer Reports wanted to be in Spotify enough to actually do it.

So you could actually have, hey, Spotify listeners, you know, hey, Facebook listeners, hey, so and so listeners. You could do that for your show right now. One thing that you do well, and I'll do the prefacing, and then if you want to add to that, you know, Rob's not a lawyer, and Rob doesn't play one on tv. But Rob is a connoisseur of terms and conditions. It's something I've always appreciated about you. You know, you've mentioned many times the Spotify terms and conditions. Is there anything in there that is, let's call it interesting or fascinating? Is there anything that people would want to take special note at? No.

Basically, what you're saying, you have to understand Spotify's position. They don't want content coming on board that you don't own the copyright to. What you're saying in their terms and conditions is you agree that you're only uploading content to them, that you own the rights to Gotcha. I mean, because they don't want to have a legal issue because of a podcast that's going there. You're also stating that you understand that yes, there may be ads before or after your content, but you're not going to get money for it. So this is not. I'll just, you know, I want to tell people up front, the Spotify play, you know, talk about fame and fortune. This is a fame play. This isn't a fortune play.

Right.

And we probably could have maybe worked with Spotify to try to bring some money to podcasters that did the Spotify and maybe share revenue and then they would have really restricted the number of shows that came in and the money's not going to be that great. Go and read online how much producers get paid from Spotify. Musicians get paid. And now think about this, that if a musician is getting paid a thousandth of a penny for his play of a three minute song because it was some ad near there, how much do you think you're going to get paid when your episode is an hour or two hours long? So now your content's even longer. So there's even less ads that can go. They're hosting the files, by the way, so they're delivering bandwidth. Spotify is not very good English Rob. Spotify is not making money off your podcast here. This is just an added service boost to the ecosystem. So I kind of looked at it when we were talking with them and Lipson looked at it when we were talking. We want this ultimately be available to as many podcasters as possible. And let's take the revenue part of this out. Libsyn doesn't get any money. Podcasters don't get any money. Let's just make this about opening up Spotify to more podcasters.

My 12 year old, I took her out to lunch today and we were chatting about Spotify and I said, hey, hey, you know, all the pundits say Spotify is huge with the kids, you know, you know, do you know what Spotify is? Do you like Spotify? And she goes, that's the place that Taylor Swift won't go because they don't pay her enough money. Right? And I just had to laugh. I'm like, yeah. And she goes, no, Taylor Swift, I'm not interested. So, you know, the perfect demographic. But, but yes, the streaming thing is, is interesting. Now, of course, if you've got a, you know, advertiser read ad in the middle of your show, they're not going to cut that out or anything, right? It's.

And that was, that was the. And that was the. Okay, we won't take revenue from you, but you will accept the, the fact that some of these podcasts have ads in them and not do anything about that. So, yes, so if you have an ad that you read your ad for Linda or Harry's or Casper, and it's in your show and it goes up, it will play inside Spotify.

Now you said Spotify does the hosting, so what are stats going to be like? I assume you guys got a good little system in play. How's that going to work?

Okay, so Spotify is going to report back to us the stats and we're working with them to finalize this. So again, this is part of the beta to finalize it all, but you will, as a Libsyn user, have your own statch module inside your statistics. And the Spotify stats will be separate from the Libsyn stats.

Gotcha. Okay.

And they will update about once a day. So we're only going to get daily updates. It's not like what you're normally used to with Libsyn, which is almost real time updates, but you will get Spotify stats and you will have that information. And I can't tell you everything that it's going to be because I haven't even seen the system working yet myself because it's. The devs are still working it out and finalizing all that.

Gotcha. So you've got Spotify as the destination. You've got, or at least a coming destination. You've got SoundCloud as a destination. I heard you say Tunein.

Tunein as a destination. Yes. And that one's being finalized too. Our side of it's done and Tunein's finishing on their side. And this will allow you to get your show into Tunein. So before, if you wanted to get your show submitted to Tunein, you had to send an email, you had to find the email address to send it to, then you had to send them the email with your feed and this and that. And now the way it'll work is you just let us know you want to have a tune in destination. We turn it right now, we'll turn it on for you. And once their system is done, it will skim through. We have like basically almost like an OPML file and they'll see that there's a new show available and they'll pull it into their system.

Any other platforms, Big ones, I mean, you mentioned LinkedIn, WordPress, who else?

You mentioned SoundCloud. So we can push to SoundCloud. We don't get any stats back on that. But then again, as near as I can tell, there really aren't any stats yet. I think my podcast today in iOS has been pushing over to SoundCloud and I've got a total of 15 listens since I've been doing it for a few months now.

Yeah, I'm seeing more plays from Spreaker than I'm seeing from SoundCloud.

So right now the big ones are obviously Spotify and TuneIn and SoundCloud. And then of course there's the RSS feed, which you can push out anywhere, and then your own smartphone apps, YouTube if you have video, and then Blogger and Tumblr, if you have a Blogger Tumblr page, you can publish there. And if you have a WordPress page, self hosted WordPress page, you can publish to WordPress. So there's no reason at all to ever manage your feed on WordPress. Use a solid, reliable feed that you get with Libsyn and publish to your WordPress site. Two birds killed there.

So we've been in the space for a while, you and I was cleaning my bookshelf and there's that Secrets of the Podcasting Masters with a certain senator having written the foreword. And you know, back when this started, it was like, I just need a place to put my file and I need some reliable RSS generation that isn't me, you know, and you've done that, but you've moved, you know, I mean, Libsyn is less podcast hosting and more distribution platform. Is that the right term or what.

Should I be calling this term? Yeah, I mean, our primary goal as a company is to provide podcasters with the best tools for the distribution of their show. And that's what we look at our goal is, and we ask ourselves, how do we make it such that you can distribute your content everywhere and, and reliably? And that's what we focus on. The fame part of the fame and fortune. And then the other part we work on is the fortune part with advertising and MyLibson and premium. But first and foremost, I believe the most important tools are the ones that help you grow your audience.

I agree.

Be everywhere, be everywhere, control it smartly.

Well, I'll tell you, it's funny, people. One of the things that I advise is, well, there's a podcast host at Libsyn that I do some work with called I Love Marketing. And one of their most popular episodes has been downloaded just an obscene amount of times. And it's a recording of a phone call. And not only is it recording of a phone call, but it's recording of a record. Badly, poorly recorded phone call. And you know, the funny thing is, is always you need to do on that people love content, but you just start with, hey, you know, inside of the good Mike. Hey, this is recording of a poorly recorded phone call, but the contents, good one to share it with you anyway. And what's interesting is, is man, if somebody's listening to you on Spotify and you said, welcome Spotify, you know, there'd be a connection there to be really interested you know, I'm always watching YouTube videos on my television set and somebody points down and says, leave below. I'm like, what? On the floor? Or I'm listening to a podcast that's an audio podcast of a video show, as you can see here on the screen. No, I can't. All you have to do is say it's funny because there's an amazing option to actually use that to build a list or something. Hey, if you're listening to the audio version of this, sorry about that. Obviously you can't see the screen. Visit the website, sign up to the newsletter, and we'll get you all the screenshots. You can do things like that. You just need to be strategic about it. And what you've got internally is a system for being strategic about it. That, yes, one could probably recreate with a week or two of IFTTT and zapier programming, but you got it right there. And it's included even down at the $5 a month account, right? Yeah.

I mean, all the publishing, you don't get the smartphone apps until you get to the $20 account, but you get the SoundCloud, you get to Tunein, you get to Spotify. All that is available at any level account, the RSS feed, all of that stuff. And you mentioned saying, hey, welcome Spotify listeners. My podcast today in iOS was probably the first one that was able to say that because I recorded it on Tuesday night. And then rather than release it right away, I scheduled it to release at 11:24 26am on Wednesday, right during the middle of the Spotify announcement, because I knew that I couldn't do it right at the beginning, but I knew they would get to the part where they've mentioned podcasting at least 20 minutes in. So I gave myself a little buffer and scheduled it for that. And the episode went live right during the keynote.

Very, very, very cool. So if someone wants to get on Libsyn and is not on Libsyn, you go to libsyn.com L I B S Y N. You sign up if you use coupon code Paul, and you don't have to, but if you use coupon code Paul, you get a free month out of the deal. And that's always fun. And if somebody wanted to publish, I mean, everything's open today that we discussed other than Tunein and Spotify. If somebody wanted to get on Tunein or Spotify, what do they do?

Email me robrobsonl I b s-y n.com and I will put you in the queue. For getting into Spotify. And if you're not already in Tunein, I will turn the Tunein destination on for you right now.

Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. And in terms of what's next, is there a reason, is there any place you don't publish to that's popular in the podcasting space?

Pinterest, because they haven't made it available yet. And we would love to be able to publish to Pinterest so that you could put your artwork up there as a pin. So that's one. We've got a few others that we're talking about internally, and there's a big one out there that we would love to deal with, but there's others out there and we'll work with it, and as they become available, we'll do it. I mean, our goal is to add more destinations. It's not to stop where we're at, it's to add more. And sometimes it's a matter of they don't have the ability to allow us to publish in. We would love, for example, we would love to publish to Squarespace sites to be able to publish to Squarespace. We've talked with them and they have dragged their feet on it. So if you are a Squarespace user, you want to be able to publish from Libsyn into your Squarespace blog, automatically ping their support team and tell them that you want it. Because talking with the owners and that, I don't think, you know, they just have. They dragged a feet on it. We would love to be, you know, some others, and we're talking with others, but you know that the Squarespace is the one. I'm bummed that we can't do that. I would like to. I know they have their own podcast hosting part of it, but, you know, we get a lot of people that move over from them because they want some better tools on the podcasting side. But Squarespace blogs are beautiful.

Yeah, they are. They are.

And they do a really great job on the blog side of it. The podcast side, not so much.

One of the things that I'm always fascinated with in podcasting is there are some things that people have done that they've done well and they've done successfully that people suddenly embrace as reality. You know, for example, you know, John Lee Dumas is a friend, and he's a fat. He's a fascinating guy. And, you know, I had a gal who posted on my. On my Facebook page something along the lines of, what do I do if I can't get enough people to interview on my show? And I said, you know, kind of cocky, but, you know, it's kind of the way I am sometimes. I said, well, don't do an interview show. You know, I thought it was kind of logical.

Yeah.

And. And her response was, sorry, they're hitting the cough button. Her response was, is that allowed? You know, and this particular person was so in that world and in that mindset that she thought that podcasts, by their very definition, were interviews.

Well, you know, I jokingly say John should change his name to Dolly. He's been cloned so many times.

Oh, man, I saw one today that was. I saw one podcast today where the, the, the COVID was such a rip off of John. And, and it was funny because it wasn't on fire, but it was something else. And then the description was in the spirit of John Lee Dumas or something like that. So they were even trying to get.

Oh, no, they, yeah, they game. They game that all the time. There's a lot of them. My favorite one, though, I think of all time was a podcaster complaining because he goes, when you search for Rush Limbaugh, you don't find my show in iTunes. What's wrong with your system? He was putting Rush Limbaugh in the description. I go, well, itunes doesn't search your description.

Well, put it in the title with these suppositions. So I was talking to a guy yesterday, an old timer who had been around, and we were chatting about our buddies over at Boss Jock, and he's like, I want to publish directly from Boss Jock to WordPress. You can and you can. But I asked him why.

Well, you can do it right now, here's very simple workflow. You create the MP3 file, you put the title and description in the ID3 tags, and you export to the Quick Cast folder in your Libsyn account, and then have your Libsyn account connected to WordPress and it publishes.

Well, that was the thing. He wouldn't do it without LibSync.

Yeah, well, then you can't.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And, you know, and he wanted to put it in Amazon S3, you know, and, and, and all those issues, you know, I said, well, why? He said, well, isn't that how you do it? You know, And I'm like, well, Amazon.

Doesn'T even do it that way. Amazon hosts with Libsyn.

Well, so that's true. That's true. You know, I said, I said, well, you can do it that way, but can I offer you something else? You know, and then I said, the Quick Publisher Libs and And then to go everywhere else, he's like, well, that's, you know, and he was, he was surprised because he was like, well, that's. That's easier. And like, well, yeah, you know, and you don't have to make plug ins work and you don't have to make all these other things work. And, and he's like, well, then I can spend more time with the content. And, you know, I'm like, yeah, you know, and I don't want this to be a Libsyn commercial. You know, I know you wouldn't mind if it was, but, but, but, but the approach and the process of a publishing platform, a integrated system that gets your content out everywhere strategically so that you can worry about the content is a higher calling, is a much higher calling than publishing at a website somewhere, finding a plugin that works with WordPress, creating your own RSS feed and spending half your week validating it.

You know, my belief, our belief here is that once you get the content done, that should have been the hard part. Right? That's the hard part. Right after that should be really simple. Upload, add your title description, hit publish, or if you want to make it more advanced, go down and schedule your release of your content.

So regardless of platform choice, do something that's simple and focus on your content. Because there are some nerds who do the nerd stuff considerably better. Spotify is taking podcasts, which is interesting. It's definitely a vanity play more than it is anything else. However, to say as seen at Spotify is certainly an interesting thing. And on previous episodes of the show, we've chatted about other places to say, you know, as seen at. And that. That's there and that's viable. So I want to, you know, a, thanks, you know, B, you know, the only ones left are, of course, Pandora and some sort of official Google play.

I think Google's coming right after the devil puts on his ice skates.

Okay, there we go. So Google. Not yet. And Pandora. And if you can't give us a piece of knowledge based on anything that might be happening, that's fine. But what's your take on Pandora doing this at some point?

I think they will. I don't have any inside knowledge. Yeah, I think they will.

It just makes sense.

Yeah. You know, we'll see what happens with Pandora.

Yeah, very cool, Rob. Always, as always, fun and, you know, as always, I just, just appreciate what you guys do and, and the simplicity of it and everybody. It's robson.com. i'll put everything in the show. Notes. And, you know, this, this is good stuff and this is fun and this is exciting and thank you so much, man.

Yeah. And if you want, if you are on Libsyn and you want to get your podcast up on Spotify, in the title of the email, just write Spotify, add me. And then in the body of the email, put your Libsyn show slug. And then I won't have to email you back and I'll put it right into the folder. And then when they give us the go ahead for the next group of shows, yours will be in that group.

All right. That was very cool. Thank you, Rob, for that interview. Thank you for listening this far again, a little bit longer than usual, but I think the content is good. So the links mentioned will be@thepodcastreport.com 47, if you want to grab any of those. Would love your thoughts on either of these topics. I think, you know, podcasting continues to get more and more interesting. And as we get closer and closer to show 50, I'll share with you some of the things I'm going to do to change up the show a little bit to help deal with podcasting. But would love your comments on the podcastreport.com Twitter, the podcastreport.com Facebook. If you want to email the podcast report@outlook.com that would be great. If you haven't subscribed to the podcast report, definitely do. So we're at the podcast report.com itunes or/stitcher or slash tunein or slash Spreaker or any of those places. Hopefully soon we'll be at slash Spotify, but we'll see how that goes. Thank you so much for listening. We'll have a more traditional show next week, but between now and then, keep podcasting, guys. Talk to you soon. Bye.