304 - Automated Podcast Workflows, Event Buzz & Spotify Play Counts

0:06 Good morning podcasters. Today is Wednesday, May 14th, 2025 and today is Newsday. We're going to tell you about all the events happening all over the podcasting world and a few other goodies. And if you're listening via podcast, please share this episode with a fellow podcaster. And now give us about 30 seconds ish and we'll get to things. We'll get things rolling. And as always, thanks for being here. Good morning, podcasters.

1:25 I'm Dr. Fey. I am filling in for Mark, who is still in. Where is he now? Is he in Portugal? Is he in Spain? He's over there. He's having a great time, but we are looking forward to having him come back on stage. With me is Ashley, Dan, Jonathan, Nick, Sid, Amanda, and James is joining us today. Thank you so much. How is everyone today? So I had three ice breaker questions that I had people vote on and they came up with option number C. So here is the ice breaker question today. If AI could instantly handle one, just one podcasting task for you forever, what would that task be? And remember, oh, Ashley, go ahead. So technically you could do this if you have Operator, but I'm not ready to splurge and I think it's 200 bucks a month for Operator.

2:32 But it would be to always correctly number my podcast episodes. I have this thing with numbers. If you asked me to write down a series of numbers, I would probably get some of them wrong. So I'm super self-conscious when it comes to numbering podcast. So if I could have AI make sure those numbers are always right, that would be great. I guess some platforms have it to where you can put bonus episodes and the ones that don't have that bonus episode feature, it screws up all the numbers. All the numbers. Jonathan, I see your hand up. I would love if it automatically spit out SEO optimize show notes and a title.

3:16 But can't you do that with the right prompt? Yeah, but I want it to happen automatically, like not even thinking about it. Like it records it in a poof. It's there the right with the right title. Right, right. And I would be amiss if I didn't call out Nick on this. He is our resident AI guy I. I don't know if they use AI. So many things already, yeah. I know, and that's why. It's a weird thing. The. The thing I use the most would probably be more along the lines of what Jonathan's talking about for SU optimized other content. So I personally like taking the audio or video content and then turning that into more content.

4:02 So I will take a podcast episode, turn it into a blog post, or take a YouTube video and then have AI and then slide down into a blog post so that you're not just creating one piece of content. When you do finish an episode or a video, you're actually turning out multiple pieces which give you more opportunities for SEO because now you have more content on the topic and websites. SEO, at least as of right now, still love the rich media on the pages. So additional videos, audio, pictures to compliment the blog posts.

4:43 That's something I was actually doing a lot with the YouTube videos is create a YouTube video, get it turned into a blog, publish the blog and actually embed the video right on that page and that can help a lot, as he was. One, thank you. I appreciate it. Good. Good morning. I would say that I want AI to do everything related to guest management. So finding the guests free, interviewing the guests, scheduling the episode, giving me notes about what I should talk about, what I should ask the guests of, anything in their thank you notes, like follow up, all that, anything relative to guest management. I agree guest management is tough. I don't know what my answer would be because isn't a lot of this stuff already. I mean, you can prompt it to the hilt, right? I consider myself a pretty good prompter. Every now and then I get screwed up and I have to go to knit and say how would you prompt this?

5:39 And also, I kind of feel that I am getting overwhelmed with SEO, that I'm kind of losing the other aspects of podcasting, that everything is the chase, the SEO chase, and I'm starting to resent it a little bit within myself. That's all within myself. So I'm thinking of just outsourcing the whole SEO thing. That's what I'm thinking of doing because I want to start loving what I'm doing again and I just don't love the whole world with SEO. That's where I'm at today. I'm. Going to jump in here. Yeah, go ahead. One, once we get to the AI news, remind me to address Jonathan and Sid's comments about AI. But two, on the the SEO side of things, you have to remember like SEO for one is a moving target. So it's always going to be changing and it's if it's not your full time job to do SEO, there's no possible way that you could ever account for every aspect of SEO. There's a lot of times when we talk about here in the room is just the on page SEO, what people are seeing. And there's a whole other back end side technically that plays into SEO as well.

7:02 And it can be incredibly overwhelming. So rather than totally overwhelming yourself, beating yourself down because there's too much to do, focus on a few elements. Focus on your titles, focus on your subheading, focus on the linking, how you link your pages to each other. Like little things that you do can make a big impact. And you don't have to spend your entire life worrying about every aspect of SEO. As long as you can get some of the the major things down, you're going to be way better off than a lot of people who are out there doing their podcasts and just slapping something together and throwing them on a website.

7:47 So don't let it overwhelm you. Just focus on a few things that you can control and that you know you can focus on and it's easy to kind of knock off the list. Just those little things can make a big impact. Yeah, words of wisdom. Oh, look who came up on stage. Oh, look who went back down into the audience. That was fast. OK, well, Mark was here for a second and then he he left. So. Oh, he's coming back up. Let's see if you can give us a little something. Something. Very good morning. Hello, Mark. Good morning. How are you? I'm doing well. We are currently walking over to a boat to take a ride, but about a three hour tour.

8:32 And for for those that might know that reference. And then we're going to they're going to take us both dolphins watching and also through all these beautiful caves. So we're going to spend most of the most of the afternoon doing that today. But yeah, good to hear you guys and good to talk to you guys. Good to hear you. We can hardly wait for you to come back. I'm excited. I actually I do. I really miss you guys and I'm looking forward to jumping back in. It's been a great trip and I was just telling my wife I'm I'm having a little bit of creative withdrawal. Even though I'm thoroughly enjoying myself here. There's something about, I don't know, it's been almost two weeks and I just feel like it would be really nice to get back to it. So I actually posted something this morning just to get some of the creative juices out.

9:22 Awesome. Good to see you Mark. OK, so we are going to resume our news and Ashley is going to help me today with some things that Mark usually reads off and so Ashley take it away. Thanks, VR. Let's start with the top podcast as of May 13th, 2025. Here's a quick look at who's sitting at top of the charts at #1 The number one show is the Mel Robbins podcast, and that's for Apple. And as far as Spotify goes, the number one show is, I bet you can guess it, that is the Joe Rogan Experience. Shocker. And as far as podcasts published, there are 202,699 podcasts published at least one new episode over the past week, and that is down slightly, about 0.8% lower than the previous week. But it's still a huge sign showing the creators are staying consistent.

10:19 And you've got the next one right, DRI? Do and by the way, most of this news comes straight from Pod News and we have James Credlin on stage with us. So James, thank you so much for being such a great source for us. We really appreciate you. Let's see Spotify, I don't think we have the drum roll without Mark here, but that's OK. So #5 on Spotify is the daily #4 is good. Hang with Amy Poehler #3 this is a surprise for me #3 is Club Random with Bill Maher #2 is this past weekend with Theo Von and #1 We all know Joe.

11:02 OK, so I don't think that I have seen Club Random in the top five ever. I mean, since at least since we've been doing calling out the charts and the random chart of the week. This week is going to be business. So #5 is the Game with Alex hermosi #4 is the Morning Brew Daily. I actually really enjoyed that. Morning Brew Daily is number 4 #3 is PD. I'm sorry I screwed it up. PBD podcast #2 is the Ramsey Show. And number one, I mean, this is kind of like a Joe Rogan thing.

11:45 Number one is Diary of a CEO with Stephen Bartlett. So that was through the charts. And what we're going to do is we're going to go straight to Nick. I know he has an early leave, so we're going to go straight to Nick for some AI news. Take it away, Nick. Before I get to the news, I do want to address quickly what Jonathan and Sid were talking about and that was the automation of a lot of the AI things that they want to do. So SEO titles, show notes, blog posts, content, etcetera. So right now in the AI tools themselves, as I'm sure you guys all know, ChatGPT, Gemini, etcetera, without prompting that, without physically going to it and saying, hey, give me this thing. There isn't a way to just have it do it for you necessarily. But with tools like Make and Zapier, you can make that automation happen.

12:44 And it's actually a very similar process to what I was doing with the AI briefing to basically set a trigger to be OK when I drop a transcript from this episode or when I dropped a script in. I want you to carry out tasks XY and Z and for the AI Briefing that include give me a title for the episode, give me a description of show notes for the episode, give me YouTube tags that I can include in that. And all of that was set up through make. And just before you called my name, I was looking through the YouTube videos that we have on the Night Stream podcaster channel because I did do a pretty in depth tutorial on make.com and I want to share that in the show notes. If I can find that link here, I'll put it in the chat as well because it's a pretty simple tool to use. And this could bring you some of that automation that you're looking for, Jonathan and Sid, where you get done recording the episode, you transcribe or you drop the episode in. And that essentially triggers an entire workflow of AI content. It can save you a lot of time, even if it's not perfect first time around.

13:56 Like you basically are setting up a prompt ahead of time that says grab this file, grab this transcript, grab this, whatever and run that prompt. And it it is a pretty powerful workflow. make.com actually is, as far as I recall, I think it's free for so many scenarios that you want to run and you can get a lot done in a single scenario. So I'll kind of find that link, but said, I see. Yeah, you kind of. So I just want to simplify this for those of us in the room that need simplification. So I grab a transcript from the Google folder and I go to stat GPT and drop the transcript in there. I ask it to write a e-mail and a LinkedIn post about based on the transcript about that podcast.

14:44 I grabbed bus sprouts blog and edit it and use it. But in theory, basically what you're saying is I could make all of that automated, right by dropping the transcript into make or whatever and say these are the tasks that I want you to do. And a few minutes later all those tasks are done. And did I simplify that enough, Nick? It's even SIM. Yeah, that, that was good, good breakdown. And it's even simpler than that. Once that file hits your Google Drive, that starts the automation. So you don't even have to take that file and you're saving everything into Google Drive. As soon as that file hits Google Drive, that triggers the automation. Or you can set it up on a specific time to run.

15:26 You can set up a bunch of different triggers like that. But yeah, as soon as that file hits Google Drive, it starts running it through the workflow. And that workflow, the way I had it set up in the video link that I just shared in the chat, it automatically calls out to ChatGPT or Gemini wherever you want to call out to and starts running the whole post thing. OK, so one last question. So could I also tell it to go publish the blog in Kajabi and go write the e-mail in Kajabi and send it to my list at on Tuesday at 9:15 in the morning? Can I even go that detailed with it? I would have to verify if Kajabi is one of the connected apps. I'm not positive if that is or not, but if as long as it supports Kajabi, I'd be willing to bet that that's possible.

16:12 I know they zappier and make they both basically connect to different applications and as long as they already have a connection built, they already have prebuilt like publish A blog post or schedule a newsletter kind of thing. So we just have to make sure that Kajabi was one of those supported apps. But yeah. OK, so I. Mean the the transcript, TBT and Bosprout saved me a lot of time. Usually this task per episode takes me Takes me about an hour to get the blog post copied, uploaded, published with the specific date to publish in Kajabi, the e-mail. The LinkedIn post usually takes me about an hour to do all that. So what you're saying is if I can figure out how to set all this up, it could end up taking me 5 minutes to do it if it works fully.

16:59 So that's saving quite a bit of time. So it's a great example. Thank you, Nick. Yeah, absolutely. I would check out that video. Ashley is going to put it in the show notes hopefully. I actually said putting this in my notes perfect. So I would definitely check that video out. It's a it's more specific to how I was doing the AI briefing, but the setup like the concept of how it all works is you'll get a pretty good grasp on how it works. But then if we need to sit down or if anyone's interested and talking about their specific use case or like you said, wanting to connect to Kajabi and stuff like that, we can hop on a call maybe and kind of go through that a little bit more. But yeah, definitely, in my opinion, Zapier, everyone talks about Zapier. I think make is a lot easier to use my personal preference. Now as far as the news goes, one of the big things that I saw this week with ChatGPT.

17:52 Some of you may know that they have this function inside of ChatGPT called research and you can basically give it a topic, give it a something that you want to go deep into. Then you can tell ChatGPT to do that research for you. They'll spend a significant amount of time, like it'll go 520, sometimes even 30 minutes digging through coming the web, finding all the information it can on that topic. And one of the kind of features they added into that was being able to generate APDF report out of that research that it created, which doesn't sound too crazy. But one of the examples I wanted to share, one that I actually used recently and actually a different tool, not chat you can teach specifically, but same kind of concept, was shortly after Mark had talked about J Klaus recognizing that we were talking about his episode and he's talking with Jay about getting an interview done on the show.

18:55 I thought, I wonder if AI could do some like deep research on Jay, find content topics, questions to discuss, kind of dig into Jay's history a little bit and generate a report for me, almost like a prep sheet for the host. So I set AI on that task and it went deep. It went through basically Jay's entire career, from the beginning of his creative elements show to the communities and things he's building now, to some of the interviews that he conducted on his show, and basically spit out this very detailed PDF report for me. And then it went as far as bringing up some possible interview questions, some actually really more deep interview questions that I probably would have thought of on my own and basically combined with all into one report. I know some podcasts, some of the bigger podcast hosts, they have people that'll go do the research forum, give somebody APDF and say, here you go.

20:08 Here's everything you need to know about the guests that's going on your show. Have at it. And that's kind of their research. And this is kind of. Able to serve as that research you say I'm going to be having Sid Meadows on my show. I need you to tell me everything you can about Sid Meadows as it relates to my podcast and help me develop the the outline for the show essentially. And that's kind of how I see this ChatGPT, this deep research, even the PDF functionality of it playing. So I'll leave it at that. I'm talking quite a bit. Any thoughts on that kind of functionality? Would you guys use it? I think it would depend on the price point to be honest with you. So I used deep research before Nick once before only once and it comes with my $20 membership to chat TPT a month, right? And I think you only get like 5 or 6 of them and it took it about 30 minutes or so and I don't even remember the top. Oh, I was asking it to do research about small business manufacturers in the office furniture industry to give me some statistics and things that I could use to potentially write articles about or we could use on, you know, social media, that kind of stuff, right?

21:18 And it took it. So it was a topic that, you know, I can spend hours researching, but it took about 25 minutes. So it came up with some really, really good stuff and reference some great articles that we're able to capture. So I've used it. I think it's great. You just got to really know what it is you want to research before you ask it because it takes so much time. I think that's a very good point, having the prompt ready to go. I guess something like that, if you're going to do guest research, giving it the background of your podcasts, understanding maybe the direction that you want to go with the show or where the direction you're thinking you want to go with the show. Feeding all that upfront is definitely huge. But Dr., to your point, depending on how much it costs, if you have a ChatGPT Plus subscription, you already have access to Deep research and it's just a little button underneath the little text box there that says Deep research, and you click that, turn that on, it'll automatically be in deep Research mode.

22:15 Yeah, I'm on the the $20.00 a month tier. Do you know how many I would get? Is it a day or a month? So do you know is it? I think. I'm not sure if it's five, it's a month. DRI think you get 5 a month is what I think. I've only used it one time, right. So but again, I think you have to be very intense about you have to be very intentional about what it is you're trying to research and why you want to research that thing. Because a lot of times you can just ask a prompter or ask a question to ChatGPT is going to give you information. But if you feel like you really need to go deeper, then you want to click that deep research mode. So you just got to be intentional about what it is you're trying to research, why you're trying to research it. What do you hope to do with the information that you get? Because I think a lot of times that, you know, ChatGPT or any of the other platforms will give you the basis of what you're looking for without having to go into the deep research and using your tokens, if you will, for deep research. Excellent, Nick, thank you so much. I appreciate the the AI news today. Was there anything else on your on your agenda? No, that is that is what I got.

23:20 I didn't want to hog the show today. That is your AI news for today. OK, Well, Jonathan, I think that you have a couple of things to say about social media, in the social media news. What is going on in the social media world today, Jonathan? Yeah, so just a few updates in the social media world this week. Facebook does have some algorithm updates. They've implemented some algorithm changes that prioritize authentic interactions and reduce spammy content, including irrelevant captions, excessive hashtags, and engagement baiting. So they're minimizing the reach on those sort of things and they're looking for more authentic interactions. So that is over on Facebook.

24:03 On Instagram, they've got, oh goody, the notes feature, which they've gotten rid of on a post, but they still have notes out there. Get some great updates like you can customize the color because everybody cares about that and the emojis on that. So I'm sure everybody is very excited about that one. LinkedIn did make profile verification easier, So if you use an alternate name there, you're now allowed to verify as long as they have your additional legal name on there and oh wait. A minute which? Which platform is that which? One that's LinkedIn. Is Jonathan. Yep. I just want to clarify that. So I tried to do this was before because I don't use Sydney, which is my name. I use Sid on LinkedIn.

24:48 I can now go through the clear process and become verified, verified using. OK, I'm going to do that today. That's good. You what you have to do is add your your legal name as a secondary title. Right, I'm going to try. If I get stuck, I'm calling. OK, don't call me. I wish Facebook, I wish Facebook would do that. I know. Having a hard time with the Dr. Diane Romel thing and it's just it's been trying for a while. I'm OK, you did. John Poop. I'm sorry. No problem. Would you like for me to call? I'll call somebody about that, but I don't know if. Yeah, I get them on the line, will you? And then the only other thing is really that Metaview did release a new the new version of their AI chat bot.

25:36 Now Metaview is for the the glasses, the meta glasses, so they did release a new AI chat bot that's powered by llama 4 and that is the those are the updates on social media right now nothing huge there was if you haven't already go and watch the video. If you're interested in what's going on in Instagram, Adam Missouri did put out a video, I believe not yesterday, the day before, where he talked about just things going on in Instagram. It wasn't groundbreaking. It's mostly stuff that he's talked about before, but it's always good to see where he where his head is. Put a face with a yes. Yes. OK, Good deal.

26:18 So Ashley's coming back to tell us some events happening in the podcasting world. And this information is directly from pod news. Thank you, James Kriblin, for being such a great source on that. Ashley, go ahead. All right, here's our events roundup. We're going to start with the Empowered Podcasting Conference and this is September 26th through 28th, 2025 and it is at the Hyatt Centric in Uptown Charlotte, NC. You can get your tickets at empoweredpodcasting.com. I went last year for the first one, got to meet several of you. I'm very grateful still for that experience. I encourage everybody to go.

26:59 It's going to be awesome. And the next event we have is an on online event and it is Wednesday, May 14th and it is called the Lower St. office hours and it is at noon Central Time, 6:00 BST. And the description I have says join the crew for Lower St. for a laid back but value of your Q&A session. And this is great for whether you're working on your first show or you're refining your 50th. It's a great chance to get some insights from industry pros and maybe share a few of your own. And then, of course, coming up across the pond, we've got the Podcast Show 2025. It's going to be Wednesday and Thursday, May 21st and 22nd in London, England.

27:40 And there are tickets available on their website. I'll make sure to have that in the show notes for you. And this is one of the biggest podcast industry events of the year. They'll be creators, platforms, marketers to networks. It's where everything will be happening across the pond. And to go with that, there was a free podcaster happy hour also happening in London. And it is Wednesday, May 21st and it is a ticketed event. And this will be a great event to go alongside the podcast show. And I hope everybody who's attending has a great time. I. Have a comment? So yesterday I went and booked my hotel room for the Empowered Podcasting conference. Thank you, Mark, for the rate, hotel rate.

28:21 I just have a tip for everybody. I booked it because the event is Friday to Sunday and I tried to book my hotel room Thursday to Sunday and it would not let me. It told me that there were no rooms available. So my, my tip, my pro tip if you will, is to be sure that you book for the day the conference starts, which is Friday and check out on Sunday. Then you'll see the room options that are available. Great tips. That's all I've got for events. Back to you, Dr., and thanks so much. I just wanted to mention that we also do have the speaker call opened currently for Empowered Podcasting. So if you're interested in speaking at the event, please fill out your application. Go ahead, Diane.

29:03 Well, I just wanted to add then that if you or your company are interested in sponsoring, we have opportunities to get involved with the Empowered Podcasting Conference. Reach out to me or Ashley. You don't mind putting my e-mail in the show notes, do you? I'm happy to do that for you. Thanks. OK, absolutely. I well and I'll throw it out here then it's Dan at Dan W dot US. Just put sponsorship in the subject line. Awesome. Well, thanks Dan Dr. back to you with some more news bites. And just for the people who are listening on on the replay, empowered podcasting is basically the child of what's going on in Mark's brain. This is the empowered podcasting meet up. And of course, there's the powered podcasting page on Facebook that is Mark's.

29:59 And so this is his second one that he's done. And it's going to be, it's going to be so good. It was great, great, great last year. And this year it's going to be even better. So we're looking forward to that. James, do, are you available to speak right now or are you running around just listening to us? Not quite sure. Hello. Hello. Yes, I am. I can talk to you. Absolutely. I'm always fascinated to hear what the big news is. And the big news apparently, apparently appears to be something to do with AI. So that's OK. Plus, we read all your content, James.

30:41 We want to make sure. So James talk a little bit about the the show going on in London podcast show. It's a very big deal. So this is its fourth year. It claims to have 10,000 people going, which I think is it's an interesting camping exercise. I'm not entirely convinced about that, but it's certainly a very big event. And I think what I've seen in the four years that I'm going there, so I'm doing the opening keynote and I think what, what I, what I see over the four years that I've gone there is that it's become really, you know, the event for people to come to. It seems to have passed the podcast show. Sorry.

31:25 It seems to have passed podcast movement in, in some ways as being a really interesting event for both people in the industry, but also people who are podcasting as a side hustle, as something that that they just want to get better AT. And the fact that it's in my hometown, it's always a good thing. So I will be jumping on the plane and going all the way over there and looking forward to him. Awesome. So this is a subject that we have had a couple of times on this show about the intimacy of the smaller groups versus the huge blow out groups. So let's let's talk a little bit about that for you. What do you what is your take on that? Yeah, I think that there's definitely a, a bit of both. And it's one of the reasons why I worked on this events board so that anyone can post any event, big or small. And it can be an online event, it can be a, you know, it can be a, an in person event because I think that, you know, small, small events are really worthwhile. I I think I went to the New Zealand podcast Summit, which I think the last one of those was last was last weekend, but I went to one a couple of years ago and that was great. That was about I guess about 60 people and it was really good because you really got to meet everybody and talk with everybody and understand what everybody was coming from. And that was really good.

32:51 But you know, these large events are also pretty good as well because you can see people who you know, you've been following for many years and you know and understand what the what they're up to as well. I went to the podcast movement when it was here in Nashville and it was my first time. And of course every everything was a shiny penny. I just wanted to be everywhere. But as the years have gone on, I realized that I really get so much more knowledge out of the smaller groups because of all the rooms that have speakers and stuff and courses and things going on at the conventions.

33:33 I just, I learn a lot more at those smaller intimate groups. But certainly the networking possibilities at the big ones are amazing. Amazing. The networking opportunities are fantastic and I think you know it. It just takes, as with any of these, it takes 1 good meeting or one really good learning, which changes the way that you do things and, and that's it. And you've paid for the entire thing. So I think, you know, certainly worthwhile, you know, doing, whether it's a big one or a small one, certainly worthwhile doing that. That's really helpful. I think, you know, podcasting is a very solitary thing and I think it's, you know, it's always useful being able to meet other people who are in in the same boat as you.

34:21 Can I cover a news story because I'm interested in what other people are up on stage? It's not really an exclusive because it was a news story that broke last week at the end of at the end of last week, which is that Spotify is adding plays to the Spotify app. So any day now, and some of you may already have it, you'll be able to see how many plays a podcast has had in the Spotify app. You'll be able to see it in much the same way as YouTube. And I was just curious from others on stage as to whether you think that this is a good idea, whether this is the worst idea that's ever happened. They've been some podcasts that have said that's it, we're coming off Spotify.

35:10 How dare they? But other people saying no, that's absolutely, that's absolutely fine. So I'm just sort of curious as to what as to what other people think about them. Well, James, it's like you have my rundown in your hand because that was a story that I was going to get to a little later on. But I'm glad that you you got me on it. I see Dan's hand up. Go ahead. Well, yes, and I happen to have cheated and saw those notes. I was very interested in this discussion, but I will just quickly answer and say that I am on the side of. I believe in transparency, though whether it's a good thing or a bad thing I don't think matters as much.

35:50 And I read some more of the notes, but if the idea from podcasters is that it's going to drop their listener count because they don't have many plays. Actually, this tied this ties to a comment made earlier about the. It was was it the random news Dr. or the random chart? I have. Yeah. So interesting side note, and this plays well into that, Ed Mylett, Ed Mylett's podcast often touts that they are the number one business podcast in the world. But I've been doing some homework and that chart made me actually go dig in again today.

36:32 And they are consistently in the top 20, but not even close to the top ten in a consistent fashion. So there's some food for thought. That might be, that might be he might be a victim of Listen Notes. You know, where Listen Notes takes all these programs, all these podcasts that haven't published for several years and they put them in a big bowl with the some with some that are publishing and they mix it up and they say, hey, you're number one. Well, hopefully you are #1 if you're going against, you know, 10 dead podcasts that haven't done anything, yeah, you better be #1. Absolutely.

37:13 I could see that being part of it, but I wonder how much of it is a promotion strategy. Anyway, that's my thoughts. I believe in transparency. I think it's a good thing for an industry, maybe not such a good thing for podcasters. And James, what is what is your take on this? What do you think the pros and cons are of this feature? I've got plenty of pros and plenty of cons. I agree. In terms of transparency, I think that transparency is a good thing. And I publish all of the stats for the shows that I do because I think that that's an important thing. Particularly when you're asking your audience for money, as I do, I think it's pretty important to actually say how well you're doing. I think that that's, you know, a good thing. There's a tool called OP 3, which is free and which gives you information that you can then use and you'll find that at OP 3 dot dev.

38:05 So I think that that's one thing. The, the only thing that I would say on the on the reverse side is that Spotify haven't said what a play is. There's no definition of what a play is. And so therefore we don't know quite what it's measuring. What I can tell you is that I have a show on Spotify obviously, and as well on Apple Podcasts. They both have the same amount of people tuning into them according to the figures. But the amount of plays on Apple Podcasts is five times as much as the amount of plays on Spotify. And that's not saying that Apple Podcast is doing better. That's saying that Apple Podcast is measuring a play in a different way.

38:48 And So what what it will give you is it will give you the opportunity of comparing individual shows on the Spotify platform. But of course, what it won't show is any plays that you're getting elsewhere. And if you're a show, which is a, if you're a podcast about podcasting as I do, then typically that means that you won't do very well on Spotify. For whatever reason, those shows aren't very popular on on the Spotify platform and are more popular on Apple Podcasts. So you're not necessarily seeing the whole story is what I'm basically saying there. And we don't know quite how a play is measured. By the way, we also don't know how play is measured on YouTube either, $35 billion industry and YouTube has never once actually explained what a play is. So there's a concern.

39:41 But I do think that there's a good a good thing. And by the way, if you want to see other people's data, then the sister publication of of POD News, which is called the Podcast Business Journal. If you have a look at podcast business journals data page, then you'll see a ton of data in there, including loads of data for individual shows that are sharing their information out there. So if you are in the arts category or you're in the business category, then you can actually see probably 20 other shows in that same category that you can compare with your own. So it's a good, it's a good place to go and find.

40:23 You know, additional stats and information. Awesome. So getting back to this feature that Spotify is going to be doing. Although I have a story here saying that Spotify hints at tweaks after podcaster backlash on to the play count roll out. So they might be tweaking it a little bit, but who knows. But I want to know your take on this. Do you think that this feature I I really don't know what else to call it, that this feature will hurt the smaller shows when it comes to listen or discovery? I don't really think it will.

41:04 I don't know how many people would look at a show. You have to get into the show page, is my understanding. Before you, before you actually see that number. So the algorithm's already done that job in terms of chosen a popular show anyway. That's how the Spotify algorithm tends to work anyway. So I don't think that this additional feature is going to kill anybody. You know who all of a sudden you look at it and you go, oh, it's only got 20 listens. I, I don't think I'm going to go and have a listen. I'm not sure that that's a particular thing that we have to worry about. If you find a great show that only has 30 people tuning into it, well, you've found something special, haven't you?

41:48 Very. True, very true. James, thank you so much for joining us today. I really appreciate good luck on that keynote speech. It's a pleasure. Yes, I should have. I should have written it by last Friday and I still haven't, but still, there we are. Say I. Yes, or maybe not. That's great. So we're going to get back to little news bites that we have. And Ashley, you're going to talk to us about something about Metacast. Is Metacast related to meta that we know about meta. Facebook meta?

42:28 I don't think so. And actually when I found this news story, I was actually thinking about you because it's it's a type of podcast player and I know you're into listening on different players. So this one's for you. So this is the new, the newest with Medacast. It has human readable URLs. Gone are the random strings of letters and numbers. Medacast has slugified all URLs. So now I looked at it when they published the story, instead of having a bunch of random characters, you can actually see your podcast website in the URL and it's just, it looks a lot nicer. There's also cleaner copy links when you share a podcast or episode, only the link gets copied now. No extra clutter.

43:14 Like the title, it makes pasting into the notes, slack and text a lot cleaner. There's an AirDrop bonus for Apple users if you're sharing from an iPhone to a Mac via AirDrop. I know this won't apply to you. Dr. Medacast links now auto open in your browser and this is great for pulling the full transcript or referencing episodes on a bigger screen. And it also does deep linking that it still works. I guess that might have been something that they had some problems with that they fixed. It says if you copy a specific transcript segment, you'll still get the quote plus episode title and a deep link that jumps right to the moment in the episode. So that's pretty cool.

43:55 And lastly, better cross device flow. It says all Medacast links now open in your web browser and you'll see a open and medacast button at the bottom of your episode page. And on mobile it opens in the app and on desktop it can show you AQR code and you can scan that and open on your phone. So this player might be worth checking out. Oh yeah, thank you. I am going to try and download that today. That sounds awesome. So you have here on the rundown why this matters for podcasters and listeners alike. These changes make referencing, quoting, and sharing podcast content easier and faster, especially if you're pulling notes for an interview or collaborating the script.

44:41 So the quick question for the room is, are human readable links and smooter sharing features a big deal to you or are you just pasting links and hoping for the best? I want them to be a big deal. You know, I think that placement really matters and the ease of access for people really, really matters. And sometimes when you post a link and it's just a bunch of jumbled garbling gook, it can put a bad taste in some people's mouth, maybe make them not want to click on it. But I think that if you had your brand recognizable in every aspect of what you share, then that could really help. So I think this is a really cool tool for making things more visually pleasing and making it easier for your folks to find you.

45:29 So my whole thing is that if I'm working this app on a phone, it's all, you know, I've got fat finger syndrome. So whatever I point to, whatever my intention is to copy and paste, it's totally different because my finger is like all over the fricking screen. So but if it's on laptop, then I'm all about it. I'm all about it. But the phone thing is, is a challenge for me, that's for sure. Anyone else? All right, yeah, I'll jump in really quick. We're talking about meta, and meta tracks everything, So I much prefer a human readable link that I can go out and separately follow versus clicking on directly if there's something that I want to explore a bit further.

46:20 Agreed. Agreed, Jonathan. I'll say that links do matter. I use pretty links for all my stuff and I just bring it in and and direct it to whatever, you know, link I want to send it to. But yeah, an easy to read link is key when you're sharing stuff, so. So here's a random question here that has to do with what you name your file like on YouTube. I'm still trying to understand YouTube and everything. That's that's why I have sourced it to someone else. But if you name your file something, something that only I would understand, you know, the initials of the show and the date, they count that against you or do they? Does that have an effect on the algorithm? Anyone.

47:07 Jonathan, do you know? So my understanding is it does impact your SEO, maybe not the algorithm, but it does impact SEO from my understanding. But Ashley might have a different understanding. She's got her hand up. I don't know how true this is, I'll just say that, but I have been told that your file name and the title of your video should match and therefore it could perform better. But again, I I don't have any evidence or foundings and that's just something I've been told many times. Yeah, Janae, I see has thumbs down on that. OK, Janae. Well, I'm I'm still learning.

47:47 So anyway, everyone, I appreciate you all being here today and we're going to cut it short and give you a few more minutes of your morning left to you. And again, I want to thank Ashley, Dan, Jonathan, Amanda, who is on The Who we didn't speak to today. Amanda, how are you dude? Did you have anything to say today? Anything to ask? Good morning. Well, you know, Newsday is always so I just sit here in silence support. OK, thank you. I appreciate it here today. And of course, much thanks to James Criblin from podcast. I'm sorry from Pod news and everyone have a great day.

48:31 We're going to leave you a few minutes early so you can go out and enjoy whatever you have to enjoy. Is there sunshine where you're at? Because it's completely overcast where I'm at. So we will talk to you tomorrow and next week. Mark will be back for Newsday. OK, bye.