How To Switch Podcast Hosts After bCast: A Complete Tutorial

Want your podcast and videocast to be seen, heard, found, and rewarded in this noisy digital world, you are not alone. Join the nonprofit community at Podcasters United and podcast industry experts Tom Hazard and Tracy Hazard as they debunk all that outdated and bad advice you've been getting from the podcast gurus and find out what actually works. Today, get ready to Feed. Feed your brand with smart cut tactics proven to cast your original voice to the world.

Hey, everyone. Welcome to Feed. You'd brand. I'm Tracy Hazzard, and along with my co host, Tom Hazzard, we are going to talk about a topic today that. Well, it might be related to something that might be hitting you right now, and you're panicking about it, but also it's something that you should really be aware of long term. At some point, your host, your podcast hosting company might quit you. They might abandon you. Right now, BCast is abandoning their users. They're done. They're out of there. They're going belly up, whatever's going on with them. I don't know, Tom. Hopefully, you know, a little more detail on that, but they're done with their users and you gotta go find a new podcast host. So today, like, we're going to cover two sides of this. One is making sure that you don't make a bad choice in a panic. Don't pick the wrong host, because we've seen people who do it, they come off of some bad experience and they go into something else that's even worse. So out of the frying pan into the fire, right? Like, it can get worse. So let's think this through carefully. Make sure you're making the right choices for you and your podcast. And then how can you make sure you don't lose anything in the switching process? How. How can you painlessly switch podcast hosts? And this is something where we actually built our own way back when potatoes because it was so painful and it was so dangerous and it was so bad for the podcaster that we said, this can't keep happening to people. And that's actually how one of the reasons we got started on hosting, which wasn't something we ever wanted to do.

It's ended up being a wonderful thing, though, because we're constantly able to continue to make our platform better and something that helps podcasters achieve their goals. And you know why? Because Tracy and I are podcasters and have been for a decade. So we want to make sure it works for us. And we have the ability to put our thumb in that scale and, you know, make it what it should be.

Let's talk first about Bcast in particular here. So let's lay it out. What's happening with bcast? Tom?

Yeah, that's what I was going to get to Tracy, thank you. Is that in case you didn't know, BCast started about four years ago as we're recording this. So really during the pandemic, and that actually was a time when we as a company saw a lot of people wanting to start podcasts. Right. Because everybody was home during lockdowns, during COVID and wanted to bring their message to the world. So it doesn't surprise me that a company like this started up at that time. And what they did though, to start and I think, honestly, in my opinion, although I do not know anyone at the company and I truly don't have any inside information, but from everything I'm reading, they started out as a pay 1 fee and have hosting forever kind of a program, which was an app sumo offer. And if you've ever experienced anything like that, AppSumo is one of these platforms where there's lots of different softwares available and you can put something up there and get the attention of a lot of people tend. They tend to offer softwares that are a pay once and never have to pay again type of thing. And I see a lot of these offers and I'm always thinking, how do they do that? Is that really too good to be true? And I often think it must be. And I have to say, although four years removed from when they launched and did it, I think that may be what killed them because they actually issued a letter to all the people hosting on their platform. And I have become in possession of one of these letters because they've been posted online. I mean, it's nothing special. You can Google it and find one, right? And they basically, the letter that all of their hosting customers received on July 25, 2024.

You're watching this later.

Like, yeah, you're watching. Yeah, this is coming out as a podcast. For those of you watching as a podcast or a video after we published it, the deadline to get off of because has already passed because on July 25, they issued a letter saying they're shutting down as of August 30, 2024. So a month and a few days, not even five total weeks, they're giving their people to get off the platform. They're basically saying after four years they have not been able to get enough monthly recurring revenue from new customers hosting on their platform beyond the people that bought the app. Sumo. And then, yes, some people did sign up with monthly paid subscriptions to host their podcast. They haven't gotten enough of that to sustain their operations, to cover their costs. And so they're shutting down. We've seen this before. A couple years ago, there was another platform called Sounder that went under for different reasons. Wasn't the app Sumo thing. But still, company failed to get enough traction and I guess ran out of investment money and shut down. So this is the same type of thing. So this is what we mean when, you know, Tracy was saying, be careful who you choose. Make sure you are with a company that's been around and is going to be around for a while and that you have the belief that you're going to not be abandoned. But this is literally what BCAST is doing. They're no longer going to host anything.

If it's too good to be true, it's too good to be true.

Right?

Like, if it's too cheap. And this is what we've been saying all along, when you look at the hosting company that you're going to choose, make sure that hosting is the primary thing they plan to be doing for you, right? And if their money is being made by advertisement, I think you're at risk. I think you're at great risk if the money that they really make is in an advertising and not in the hosting subscription fee. And if they offer too good a deal in the hosting subscription, like the appsumo, where it's not enough continual revenue. I mean, look, I'm just going to be straight with you guys out there. It does not take a lot of money to run a hosting company for the actual server space. Especially when so many podcasters quit their shows too quickly. They don't use a lot of server space. Like, you don't have a lot of overhead. Like, there's not a ton of money there. So this means that they really couldn't even probably generate $50,000 a month.

And certainly there are some ongoing costs. I mean, the bandwidth and the servers, I mean, there are costs, but yeah, it is pretty inexpensive. You're right, Tracy. But the other thing I want to say, to piggyback on what you were saying is if you're on a platform where your hosting is free. Let me raise a figurative digital red flag here for you right now, because free isn't always free, okay? They're getting something out of it.

Free is never free. It's costing you somewhere, something, somewhere. When you get free stuff, what do you lose? You lose your privacy, right?

It's usually the first thing you lose, right?

You might be losing your content rights, you might be loaning them to an AI system without your permission because you signed an agreement allowing them to do what they needed to do.

When it's free and you did give permission, you may just not realize everything you gave them permission to do.

That's right.

And you know, the other thing about a free platform is they're only going to put so much effort or work into it and not really trying to make it the best it can be. Now, Anchor was a free platform. Spotify for podcasters bought it. It's probably the biggest free platform for podcasters out there, but there are some serious limitations to that platform. Yes, it's owned by Spotify, so it's probably not going away anytime soon, but it also is not serving the podcasters really well. Spotify is definitely doing it to be in the podcast business, but it's really more for their benefit than for yours. And they're making a lot of the same selfish decisions and practices that other podcast sourcing platforms do to gain advantage and traffic at your expense. And you know, we often refer to these kind of places as hosting hijackers because that's what really what we believe they are. That's a tip I talk about periodically. But, but a free platform and there are others out there just beware because they certainly don't have as much of a obligation to make your experience the best it can be. And why are they doing it, how are they doing it and are they going to be around? So I think somebody that doesn't charge is as serious and not out for your best interest.

And in that, not as serious and not out for your best interest. I also want to make you aware, if you're not paying anything for something, then usually you aren't as committed. And so that's what tends to happen. And we see that statistically across any hosting company that has a free tier and has a lot of people in that free tier, it drains their resources and causes them a lot of problems on the other side where they then can't afford to keep running because they have too many running on the free and not not enough running on the paid. Right? So that can happen. Just because they're not a hundred percent free doesn't mean that they're not still problematic because of their free tier. But also remember that when you have a free tier, you have a lot of pod faders, you have a lot of people quitting, so your statistical success rate is very, very low. And people don't remove themselves from a free platform because why would they? They're just like, leave it there, whatever. And so it bogs everything down and it bogs up the. The digital space. And so you're less likely to be seen, heard and found there too. So that's something to keep in mind. Your success rate is always going to be lower in that freemium model.

You're certainly not going to get any kind of meaningful support from a free platform. Email support, maybe get an answer in a day or two. That's about it. You're not gonna get any kind of phone number. In fact, there's no other platform other than potatoes I'm aware of that has an actual customer support phone number that's listed on every footer of every webpage on the website. And if there is a way to contact any of them, they bury it. Because guess what? They really don't want to provide that kind of support. And there's other support we provide.

Right, because they can't afford it. Right. They can't afford it because they have too much free.

Well, right, because they're free or they have. They're not charging them for their service.

Let's go back here to what's going on with bcast. And so what happens is, is when you get this letter and it's going to happen more and more. Look, it's already happened. I think there's been four companies total over the course of the last six years. I think at least four of them have gone, and then many of them got bought by somebody else and dramatically changed. So there's at least been a half a dozen of those as well. So just keep that in mind that this could happen to you. And then when they get bought, like this happened to a lot of people on anchor when, when they got bought by Spotify, they didn't like the new terms and conditions, they didn't like the new model of business, and they didn't want to stay there anymore. And now you have to figure out where to go and what to do. And this is where we want you to carefully consider. Because if you've made a mistake the first time, or if you're not feeling comfortable with the first move, where do you go next and how do you make that choice?

Correct. And that choice, I mean, it's going to be a personal one, depending on your own needs as a podcaster and what you find in the platforms you consider, what you consider to be of value, what functions you need, which ones you don't. And I'm not going to go into a lot of that detail today, but we do want to talk about how do you painlessly switch? And what I'm here to tell you is switching is going to cause you some pain. It is going to. There is always some pain.

But it. And if you do it wrong, the pain is you lose the audience you work so hard for that you don't even know their names. Right. And that's the real pain that we're talking about, is if in that process, you lose access to the members of your show, the people who subscribe to your show, and you work so hard to get them to subscribe over time, and you lose access to them. That's the biggest pain, that's the biggest harm you can do to your show because you're starting all over from scratch.

So you definitely want to make sure you know what you're getting into, when you're gonna switch. Some of you are being forced to switch, and then others may choose to switch. Now, there can be a lot of pain, mostly because usually you get surprised. You get. You don't know what you're in for when you do it. And so that's what we're going to share, is a few of the things to watch out for and be aware for so you're prepared and do it properly. And as Tracy said, if you don't do it right, you can lose your audience. I see this happen a lot. We have podcasters that actually have been on one or two other hosts in the past, usually because they had a producer that put them on a particular host and they didn't have control of their own hosting account, somebody else had control of it. It wasn't started by them. And then you end up, when you move, they don't actually do it properly. When that producer moved you from their account to your own account, and your audience doesn't go with you. So you gotta remember, you gotta realize, number one tip, you should never lose your subscribers or your listeners when you change podcast hosts. You need to have your previous RSS feed, and that's a technical term. You need to have your previous RSS feed redirected to the new one. And as long as that's done properly, you will not lose any listeners or subscribers.

Which means that at the core of everything, you need to make sure you're in control of your RSS feed of your show. So my biggest fear for some of you bcast people out there is that you worked with a producer who put you on BCAST because it was cheap for them. And they had this. They could get you in for life and they could do this. And they set you up and it's their email address that is associated with your account. And you don't even know you're about to be kicked off of bcast. You don't even know that you will not be able to redirect your own show because you don't have a relationship with that producer anymore. That's where the real struggles lie is when you're not actually in control.

Very true. And that's a whole lesson and a tip on its own is make sure as a podcast host, you are in complete control or at least have full access to your own podcast hosting account. I mean, I always am shocked when people tell me they don't have access to it and they've never seen their analytics. They don't know the numbers because they can't log in, only their producer can. That's a very bad situation. So please get out of that situation if you're there right now. But let's talk about some of the other pitfalls of switching is that you can end up with a lot of broken links if you have a episode webpage. And keep in mind, even on a free platform like, let's just say Spotify for podcasters. I'm not going to speak for bcast here because I'm not sure what they did you have a free account. There's an episode webpage that Spotify for podcasters puts into every episode. That's a unique link, but to a page on Spotify's website that shows the same information that's in the listening app for your episode. So that's a link back to them. But guess what? When you move from one platform to another and you if you are importing your RSS feed from Spotify, bcast or wherever to a new platform, whatever links the previous host put in that field for an episode webpage or web link is going to come through. And so I see people go on other platforms and their link is to a page for an episode on Spotify and they're not even on that platform anymore. So you're helping Spotify. It's part one way your traffic from your podcast can get hijacked to another platform. So be aware all those links are going to copy over and you either need to manually delete them or depending on where you're going. All I can speak for is for politize. When people import to our system, all those old links can be replaced in one step and it makes it really easy. You don't have bad links or dead links out there. Second thing is track players. If you use, if used and put any track players three episodes on your own website, those track players aren't going to work anymore when you are moved from the old host. So you've got to replace them with track players from your new host.

So that means every episode that you have a blog for every episode that you might even have just like, even if you've got just a listing on like a main webpage and you just have the track player on each with a little description or title of the show or the episode, then you have to replace every single one of those with your new host track player.

And that can be tedious depending on how many episodes you have. You know, I've had people import their shows to Poditize and they have 2,000 episodes or even more. That's a lot of track players to replace. So make sure you know what you're doing and you have a way to do that in an efficient way. And there's a lot of little steps to making sure this is done right, it's redirected right. You also want to export any analytics from your previous platform before you remove.

There's hardly any host besides us at Potatoes where you can import stats into. So you can't take stats from somewhere and import them in. But even when you leave us, you can't import them someplace else because they don't accept them anywhere. So even though we'll give you your stats, you can't do anything with them if you cannot import them into into your show settings into it. So that means that if you are trying to seek advertisers, so if you've been in bcast and you were building up your show and building up your listener base and you do go switch hosts and make sure that you don't lose your members and your subscribers and you don't lose that because you redirected it properly. Chances are you're losing your baseline stats depending on where you're going. So that means that every episode starts at zero again. That means all the show starts at zero.

Yeah, all the collective downloads of all episodes start at zero. And I know a lot of people that it's very important to them. I mean, we have a podcast who's approaching half a million total downloads and they're going to have a celebration moment on social media here coming up in early September when they cross over that half a million threshold. And how do you know? And you know well, you got to save those old numbers. But again, yeah, most platforms don't help you with that. They have no way to export those or to import those numbers to a new platform. But apologizes, we knew podcasters care about their analytics, and if you switch hosts, why should you have to start from zero? So we are able to import your downloads per episode so that they figure into your total cumulative count, and you continue building on those numbers with new downloads that occur after you've moved to potatoes. They're all combined together, but in even not only for the whole show, but each individual episode, the count for each episode is continuing to build on what it was. So. And it's true, you move hosts, I think most people just accept they're gonna have to restart from zero, but you really don't need to.

Yeah, absolutely. And so just thinking about these things is, like, really what's critically important to you. So for some of you, you could care less about your stats. That's not important to you, and that's fine. You make your choices about where you want to go and what features you want and what are going on there. Great. But if your stats are integral and important to the future of where you're taking your show, you don't want to let a mess up of this hiccup of a host quitting. You, like, derail your podcast goals, so you cannot let this happen to you and making sure that you do that. So my one piece of advice that I really want to get across to all of you is right now, there are a lot of you who bcast is going to close down from the time that we're recording this within about nine, 10 days or something like that, right?

Nine days. 10 days.

About 10 days. And in 10 days, you're going to go, my B doesn't work because you didn't open your email. You ignored the messages from your hosting company. And I know you get a lot of marketing messages and all of those things, but it takes two seconds to make sure that you're not getting an urgent, important message from your hosting companies. You really need to pay attention to them. Look, we have clients who do this all the time. Who are they? Like, I don't want to get any emails. I'm never going to read them. I don't want them. But then something happens. Something changes in the podcasting industry, and you're not aware of it, and it is on you for not reading it, for not reviewing it. Your host is not bcast is not going to go pick up the phone. They're going out of business. They're not going to go pick up the phone and call you. They're not going to go text message you, go find you wherever you are. That is not on them. It is on you. You have their service. You have to pay attention to what's happening over there. Keep that in mind that this can cause you this huge headache because you didn't look at your email.

And Tracy, I have a prediction. I think that bcast when it comes to the August 30 deadline, when they get there, they have a lot of shows that have not been redirected away. They're probably going to extend that deadline another few weeks or another month unless everybody's really moved off. I just don't see them doing that and just pulling the rug out from under every show that's still there without a little more of an effort than just a little more than 30 days to get off the platform. But we'll see. And if you're one of those people and you didn't realize this was all happening and you're listening to this episode, then check into it, see if it's still there. And then you know what, figure out where you want to go. But another thing that I want to share is while there are a lot of detailed technical things that need to be done and need to be done correctly to move your show to make sure that you don't lose listeners, you don't lose subscribers, you don't lose your analytics and you're not populating dead links and, you know, all sorts of other things. Just understand that you can get support for this. I mean, I know this is a plug, but the reality is it potatoes. We do this migration stuff for you. You don't have to do it yourself. We can do it and make sure it's done right.

Because I've seen all those links and do all that stuff all in one swoop.

Yeah, I can't tell you one of the biggest rookie errors in podcasting. And I even see people that have been podcasting for years make this mistake when they change hosts. They think, oh, I've got to put it on Apple again. I've got to put it on Spotify again. I've got to put it on all these apps again. Most of the apps will let you do that, especially Apple, who's like the major one. And that is a mistake. Unless you absolutely have to and have no other choice. You should never have to re register your show on an app. You've already been on it all is done through the redirect. So make sure you're doing the redirect properly or get some support to do it. And like I said, Popties will do it for you.

Because when you re syndicate yourself, you're actually starting all over. So you have no subscribers.

You are. And you're not bringing along your people who have listened to you, your subscribers for years that have listened to you. You're not bringing them along for your new content. You post new episodes. They're not going to get it. And I see this happen all the time.

Well, and also when people search in the app, they see two shows for a period of time, right? And they see two shows for a period of time and they see this one that looks like it stopped and this one that's continuing, so they don't know which one, but the one that stopped outranks the new one. So the one that you're currently publishing in is being outranked by something that has more history.

Right.

And so it's hard to tell which one. And they get confused and then they just go, oh, a confused mind doesn't buy, like our friend John Livesey always says, right. A confused mind walks away. So they won't hit subscribe on either one.

That's very true. And here's the other tragic part, particularly with Apple, because it's one of the only platforms that has ratings and reviews that people have made on your show, that's some equity and importance that has been built in your show listing. And when you re syndicate your show, when you put it on Apple again, guess what? Those rating and reviews are with the old one, not with the new one you're starting. And it looks like you're a brand new show and you may have 50 episodes, 100 episodes or more published, and you have no ratings and reviews that can make people go, hmm, I wonder why. Maybe the show's not that good. Because they don't see anyone if they looked on the old listing that doesn't have the new episodes publishing. There's where the ratings are reviewed. Our reviews are. So one of the things we end up doing in politize is really podcast listing triage a lot of the time.

Triage is a great word for it, Tom.

I love that, really, because we get people coming to us who. And look, they're very good people and they're telling wonderful stories and bringing their important message to the world. That's great. But they're not technical people and they really relied on others to go after their best interests and didn't realize those others they trusted maybe didn't know all the details themselves or didn't care to be careful about these things. It's either lack of knowledge or maybe indifference or whatever. There's a lot of potential reasons why it happens, but you may have been poorly served by someone you trusted to just take care of it because you didn't know more than they did and you thought, well, you know better than me, go ahead and do it.

Yeah. And one thing that I want to say here is, look, you may be having a gut reaction, a very rash gut reaction to being dumped or being frustrated with your podcast host, whatever it might be, or feel the pressure of my renewal if you're paying for it. My renewal is in two days. And you make a rash decision. This is not something you should make a rash decision about. You should carefully pick your next host, make the decision for the right reason, and if it means paying one more month to your existing host to make it happen and make sure that it's done correctly, your valuable subscribers and your statistics are worth that time and consideration. Keep that in mind. Just really make sure that you're not going to lose all the good work you did because you got a little hot headed and upset about things. Right? So you want to make sure that you're making this choice. Now, BCAST is putting pressure on you in this particular case, right. So you need to make a quick choice. But if you do not get that redirect in before they shut down, your show is gone. So this is where you have to be careful.

And this is part of why I think also BCAST is probably going to extend their deadline a little bit. And the other thing they're going to need to do and should do, and I can't imagine they're not going to. Maybe I'm giving them more credit than they deserve.

Well, but let's not make anyone promises. If it were us, we would have extended. But it's not us.

Well, no, but not even that, Tracy. When you create a redirect, you need to leave it in place for a period of time. So somebody who redirects their show on Aug. 30, the last day that B.C. says they're going to be in operations.

That redirect has to remain on their server somewhere, ideally for a long period of time. I mean, you want it to be a permanent redirect. Now, maybe there's truly in the world of the Internet, no such thing as a permanent redirect, but that's what they call it. But you'd want to at least leave it up for a few weeks to a month. So all of the obscure apps and websites that have indexed your RSS feed and have it listed in there have a chance to update because they don't all do it as fast or as well as Apple does. And some of the other apps that when you redirect your feed, you know, they'll notice it within hours or a day and update their systems. But a lot of apps take longer time to update their systems and that redirect needs to stay in place longer. So I think they're going to have to do that in some way.

But we'll see because I mean they ran out of money. So the reality is is when they're, when their billing date is due for their cloud service or whatever they're using, they're out of there. Right. Because they do not want to pay another month.

Yeah. All of them are reason why people that were on bcast really need to make this move sooner rather than later.

Yeah. So that's the last thing I want to do before we leave Tom and before we end this subject is really just recap a little bit of the order of operation of things. So the first thing everyone should do is go pick a new host, right? Like pick your new host, identify where you're going to go, make sure you have a call with them or you've gotten all the details on what's needed from you and go and get your new account.

Yep. That is step one, get your new account. Step two, import the RSS feed into that account. Some platforms like yourself, some platforms require to do it for you. It doesn't really matter, just do it, get it imported and it should copy everything, every episode and all aspects of.

It, including some of those links that you don't want. But don't worry about them today. Just make sure you get it over.

You know what, the links can be cleaned up even though there's some long term pain. I mean coming to politize, we do it for you, but it doesn't matter. Go get it moved. Get it there so that all the episodes are the same. And beware of any episodes that you've scheduled to publish in the future that haven't published yet because they will not import, because guess what, they're not in your RSS feed yet until they're published. So you may have to do some manual reactions, uploading of some MP3 files, titles and descriptions. If you have a deep calendar of scheduled episodes going out three, four weeks or more.

Yeah, absolutely. And the other thing just I want to say on that side of it is that when you're importing that show into the new hosting company, it's not syndicated yet. It's not out there yet, because until that redirect is done, they're not putting it out on. You're not duplicating your show by importing it. Importing it is just getting it into the hosting company's ecosystem. It's not putting it out there. So keep in mind that when Tom and I said that this is not what syndication, not creating a second Apple account or anything like that, this is just straight moving your show and making sure everything gets over to the new location. Then when it's over there now you give, you get a feed, you get a feed URL and you take that and you bring that back to your old host and you say, I want to redirect with this.

And some platforms will let you do it yourself. Other platforms, you need to provide that to their support team through email or a chat and they'll do it for you one way or another. It can happen. And once it's done, you should be able to instantly tell. And here's a little tip. You go and either click on the old RSS feed if it's clickable, or copy it and paste it into a clean browser tab or window, hit Enter and let's just say in this case your feed was from Bcast and you've moved to Poditize. Well, when you enter in the BCAST RSS feed, it should immediately pull up your show feed, but it would be then showing you a poditized URL at the top.

It's kind of like just a forwarding URL does that. So if you type in the old one and it moves and it changes to the new one, you, you know it's working, right?

And you need to verify that before you sit back and say, okay, I've done this, right? No, no, no, you gotta make sure that it's actually working.

And then in our case, this is when you would export your stats and import your stats into the new. You can do that after the fact, you clean up those links. But the other thing is, is that over time you want to keep checking all the apps and make sure it has filtered. So while it may be working immediately on Apple or on Spotify, but it might not be working at all of those smaller apps, as soon as you know that it is working on all those other smaller apps and everything, then you can go and close your account.

All Right, so two little tips here came to mind. Tracy, I'm going to give everyone a little tip. When you're doing this yourself and you want to verify on the listening apps. Am I seeing on this app is what I'm seeing from the new host to the old host, and you really can't tell that by just looking at an app. So here's Tom's little tip for how to make sure. Go into your show settings and make a ever so slight change in the new host. In the new host. Yes. Good. Thank you, Tracy. Make an ever such slight change to the show description or the show copyright line. Take one of those and make a tiny change. I've even done it where the very last sentence, I take the very last word and there's a period at the end of that sentence and I go after that word and I put another space in there between that letter and the sentence. It's not proper written grammar, but I know if I look at that description on any listening app and I see that extra space, I know it's coming from my new feed because I didn't make that change in the old feed. So that or the copyright line is the same. You could do that too. There's a lot of little tips like that where you can do that. And then the second tip regarding your analytics, exporting your downloads from the previous platform, you've got to be aware of how the platform works because not all are equal in this. I prefer to wait till after the redirect is done and then export my stats. Why? Until the redirect is done, there are downloads still occurring on that platform. So you could export your stats before you've redirected it and 50 more downloads come in. In the few minutes between when you exported the stats, you redirected it. Now you've lost 50 downloads that really happened and are not in your overall show. And the longer your show has been around, the more downloads you have per month. We could be talking hundreds or even more downloads too. So normally we do that. However, there are a few platforms and this really does a disservice to the podcaster. There's a few platforms, including what? Captivate is one that once you redirect your show, you're locked out of everything and you can no longer export any downloads. So they force you to export all your downloads before you redirect it. So in that case, you are going to lose some of those downloads. You just have to accept it.

So what I like to do, and this is what I recommend to anyone who's doing it themselves is before you put in the redirect, download your stats and then if you can get back in and go check again and you're sure that the redirect is completed, then download your stats again. That's how I recommend.

Yeah, but as I was just saying, in Captivate, they don't allow you to do it. You are literally, once you redirect, they close your show and you're done.

But if you got it before then, you were covered. So you did it in both right now, you will lose those stats on Captivate. You know, that's what's going to happen in that interim period. You're going to have a gap. It's going to happen. So. Well, anyway, we hope that this, like, doesn't scare you off. Like, I mean, these things are going to happen to you. You're going to make a decision. I mean, a lot of times when we make a choice of a podcast, Tom and I had a different podcast host when we started our show because we didn't have our own platform. Right. So we had a. We chose a host and there were lots of drawbacks to it that we wouldn't have known if we weren't using it. So once you have a host, you have some things that you were like, I wish it did this, I wish it had that. I wish it didn't do this. Like, you know, you just are going to have this list of things that you would like to see. Make those and make your choice smart.

And for us, that was sort of the mother of invention of poditized platform because we experienced a lot of problems with others and like, well, that's dumb. That shouldn't be the case. Let's do that differently on our own platform. So that's what we've done. I mean, so because we're podcasters, we've experienced it.

Yeah. But it doesn't mean it's. So this is the other thing. It's like, so bcast is quitting you, but when you quit your host, don't get hostile about it. There's some of us hosts out there are very happy to help you move on to a better place, move on to something that's better for you. So be really careful. Because I've seen people harm the show because they just got pissed at their host.

I agree. And I've even seen people abandon a show just because. For very irrational reasons and they really hurt themselves and it's really sad to see. So anyway, the point is really good, Tracy, make sure you're aware.

Try to give yourself some perspective here and take a breath. There's a solution out there and we're always here. Like, message us. We're happy to give you our view of what you're doing, what might be best for you, what you should look out for. Message us podcasters, united.org is here for you to ask questions. Pretty soon, like, really soon, you're going to be able to ask our AI too. So go check that out. You're going to be able to do that in about two, three weeks maximum. It'll be really fun.

That's going to be not too long after this podcast publishes if you're watching it as a podcast. If you're live streaming, yeah, you got to wait.

Yeah, you got to wait a couple of weeks. But.

But it's cool stuff. Yeah. So, all right, well, I agree with Tracy. Don't be scared by it. But if you're at all concerned, just get some support. And honestly, that's the thing I think most podcasters overlook when they choose a host, is what kind of support can they get? Right? So just get some support, ask some questions, and this can all be handled. And it can be handled for you, or you can do it yourself. Just know what you're getting into. So there you go.

Well, thanks everyone, for listening. We so appreciate you. We'll be back next week with another feature brand, but you can always go. As I mentioned, the podcasters united.org check out our entire tip library with all kinds of questions, like about your host, about how to do stuff. Tutorials are in there. There's all kinds of things for you and resources, and they're absolutely free to podcasters, so go check it out.

Heard something valuable today, but didn't get a chance to write it down. No worries, we've got you covered. We partnered up with podcasters united.org where podcast hosts like you can get free resources, free masterclasses, the largest podcast tips library assembled, and free promotion opportunities. While you're there, don't forget to follow us on YouTube and on social.

So.

You can get feed your brand live. Until next time, keep podcasting.