Podcast Media Hosts Uncovered: Features That Matter

Hey, if you're not aware, I am the head of podcasting at PodPage and I run our community over there.

If you're not familiar with PodPage, we help build websites for podcasters.

Check it out, podpage.com.

but Amy Paul said, hey, can someone guide me?

What's the best hosting platform with the least amount of friction with PodPage?

And the first thing is, as long as you have an RSS feed, it doesn't matter where it comes from.

Pod Page will use it.

And so answering that question, which comes up almost hourly on Facebook groups, what's the best host?

And the answer is as is always the answer.

It depends.

It depends on what you are doing with your show.

So I realize for some of you you might be going, I'm good.

I've been using the same host forever and they're amazing.

And that's fine if you want to tune out, but I'm going over features that some of them have come out over the last year or two and you may not be aware that this is available.

And I'm using chapters in this episode so you can kind of jump around if you want to just jump to the who I think is best.

But realize it's who I think is best is based on what I do.

And what I do may be different from what you do.

So we're going to do a deep dive today on the features available for media hosts.

What do they do and what can they do?

And do you need them?

You can find everything@schoolofpodcasting.com 959.

Hit it, ladies.

The School of Podcasting with Dave Jackson, podcasting Sense 2005.

I am your award winning hall of Fame podcast coach, Dave Jackson.

Thanking you so much for tuning in.

If you're new to the show, welcome aboard.

This is where I helped you plan, launch, grow and monetize your podcast.

And today I'm just helping you avoid buying the wrong media host.

My website is school of podcasting.com use the coupon code listener.

That's L I S T E N E R when you sign up for either a monthly or yearly subscription.

And don't forget, that comes with a money back guarantee.

One quick thing I want to point out before we get into media hosts is I do have a Black Friday email list and I've already got a link on the website for some of the Black Friday deals.

And if you want to keep up with me as I find more and more of these deals, look for the link in the show notes out@schoolofpodcasting.com 959 to not miss out on the deals.

Now let's move on to media hosts.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I have been putting pen to paper, or in this case, fingers to keyboards.

This week I've got an article about Black Friday deals.

Captivate right now has a great deal going on.

And I wrote this article on choosing a host.

I also have an article about replacing blog talk radio.

If you're a person that was using blog talk radio, they've gone away.

And so I've been spitting out the blog posts over at school of podcasting.com and I started this one.

And we've talked about media hosts.

We Talked about how SoundCloud is not a great host back in the day.

Still surprised they're still in business.

And instead of saying, here is who, who's good?

I said, let's come at this from a different angle.

Let me explain what media hosts can do.

And no sense paying for features you've never gonna use.

So also, I should say right up here in the show notes, some of these hosts have affiliate programs.

And you know how that works.

You basically buy it, it doesn't cost you anymore, and I get something that's kind of a finder's fee.

So the first thing you need to ask yourself is, what does my host need to do?

What does my host need to do?

Now, if you're brand new, you're like, I don't know.

Well, that's for you.

But if you're a seasoned veteran, you may not realize that there are other features that have come along, especially in the last couple years, that you go, oh, I wouldn't mind having that.

And I will say this, moving from one host to the other, you're going to lose your stats.

Kind of.

Some of them let you bring them over.

But also, if you're not super techy, work with the host you're moving to and have them help you.

Because you can shoot yourself in the foot.

In fact, you can shoot your foot off where there are things like rebranding your name and uploading artwork as kind of outpatient surgery.

This is major surgery.

It's not hard, but it's also not hard to shoot yourself in the foot.

So this is not something you want to do while you're watching Netflix.

You want to have your undivided attention.

So first things first.

Your show's popularity has little impact, as in, like, zero from your media host.

I always use the analogy of a Corvette on a flat.

You know, the airport, the Runway.

So put a Corvette on the Runway in Texas.

And that thing is going to go around 200 miles an hour.

Take that same Corvette, move it from Texas and go to, I don't know, Iowa, and put it on a flat Runway.

And guess what?

That car is going to do about 200 miles an hour.

Why?

Because it's not the Runway, it's the car.

So it's not the media host, it's the content.

Nobody's going, oh, man, Dave, you got to check out this show.

Why?

Oh, they're hosted on Buzzsprout.

Oh, listen to this one.

They're on Ken.

No, nobody's doing that.

It's the content.

Now I have, I think a Toyota Camry.

Is that what I got is some Toyota.

It's, you know, it's a Toyota thing.

And my brother has a minivan.

If I'm doing long distance traveling, I'm taking the minivan because it's got extra cup holders, it's got a better stereo, the seats are definitely more comfortable.

Right.

So when it comes to media hosts, sometimes it's the interface.

Is it easy to use?

Does it have.

Is it confusing?

Things like that.

So we're going to talk about that as we go along, but I wanted to be upfront.

If you're like, well, maybe if I move to a media host, I'll get more downloads.

That, my friends, is.

Is just not going to work.

It's just not.

All right.

It's not that.

Not the media host, and it's probably not the microphone if you're using it right.

It's the content.

It's content delivery.

Remember those two things.

All right.

Another thing, I see a lot, and this is not a bad question.

This is a question from somebody who's brand new to podcasting.

But some people are like, well, should I.

Isn't Riverside my host or isn't Squadcast my host or whoever?

No, those are all ways along with clean Feed, by the way.

Zoom, Squadcast, Riverside Descript.

These are all fine tools for editing and for recording remote interviews, but they're not a media host.

So let's talk about the features I don't care about because they all.

It's kind of funny as I did this study.

They all kind of say this stuff and I'm like, yeah, but here's one.

Audiograms.

You know, you can make a little clippy with the little blinking.

Oh, look, the little blinking light as the word is talking.

Oh, yeah.

Is it flashy?

Sure.

Is it effective?

I'm going to say, no, not really.

It does keep Your brand in front of people.

But I don't know anybody that was like, oh, man, did you hear that sound clip?

I have to go.

Because usually you're posting those to social and social is like, I know you're over here looking for something for yourself.

Like whether that be I'm catching up on the news or what's going on in my community.

It's something that you're looking to do, but I want you to quit looking at what you want and look at what I want.

Look at me.

Everyone look at me.

Yeah, they usually don't do that.

Now, if you are part of that person's community, maybe.

But from what I mean, I've heard this like seven times where people just like going, yeah, social media is a drip.

It is, it's.

It's not completely ineffective, but it's not, you know, so that's what I don't care about.

I worked at Libsyn for eight years, and aside from maybe one or two very, very niche times, the fact that they give you a feed for each destination, I personally, I never quite got that.

I guess maybe if you have one destination that allows you to have built in ads and the other one doesn't, that would be a good use of that, you know, so if all of a sudden Spotify goes, there might be a way to turn off the ads in just that feed.

So I get it.

I've just never really ever saw it used.

Another one is automatic social media posting, where it automatically sends it to Facebook and LinkedIn and blah.

And look, you know, here's the thing.

This is not a bad feature, but here's the problem.

And it has zero, zero to do with the media host.

And that is the social media platforms change their back end a lot, which breaks the feature.

And then the.

Whoever it is, the media host has to retool their code.

And about the time they get it fixed to where you can just hit publish and it goes to your social places, they break it again, I'm looking at you, Facebook.

Holy cow.

I cannot tell you the number of times that I've seen Facebook break stuff.

It's just kind of like.

And as a coder, which I'm not, but I know the coders that did, they're like, oh, geez, we just fixed that to the point where I kind of want to go, we should all just shake hands and kumbaya and go, we're just going to take that feature away.

Because it's really expensive for companies to offer that.

Because about the time you paid that developer to fix it.

It's broken again.

Thanks, Facebook.

Thanks, LinkedIn.

Thanks, Twitter.

Ugh.

And the other thing about that particular feature, now that everyone is going to Blue sky, you know, I'm leaving Twitter and I'm going to Blue Sky.

I don't.

I'm taking my ball and I'm going home.

To which I kind of want to go.

Have we all forgotten there was a block feature?

But Dave Elon is the Antichrist.

Okay, easy to.

Which.

Because here's the thing.

If that feature were to actually go away, because we all right now are copying and pasting our tweet over to threads from when Elon bought X and now we're copying and pasting them to bluesky.

And I've seen this because I'm following the same people and we're all just copying and pasting and copying and pasting and copying and pasting to where I'm like, if we all just use the block button, we wouldn't have to do this, and we'd have one big giant audience.

Buddy's the antichri.

Okay, easy.

Just keep that in mind.

But that's the thing.

All you have to do to get your stuff on Social is copy and paste.

It's really not, you know, that feature.

Which leads me to another feature, and this one, you're kind of like, what, Accepting donations?

Really?

I mean, yes, some hosts have this built in, but a feature is supposed to, you know, fix a problem.

And I'm like, did we have a problem?

Did we not know about?

Buy me a Coffee.

Or PayPal or Venmo or all the other, you know, streaming satoshis.

I mean, it's nice.

And if you want them all in one place.

Yep, absolutely.

But that's one that I kind of go, yeah, I kind of got that covered already.

Now we will talk about selling a premium podcast.

That's different than taking donations.

But now let's move on to one of my favorite subjects that I've been talking about for decades.

And that is, of course, free media hosts.

Yeah, this should be a power rant.

But here's the advantage of being in Podcasting Forever Pod show, which later changed their name to Media Mevio.

August 2005 to April 2014.

That's 116 months.

They spent $38.8 million.

I'm going to say that one more time.

38.8.

So if we're going to round up $39 million and went out of business, why?

Because they're a free media host trying to make it go on Advertising.

Padango, September 2006 to December of 2008.

And for those of you that were around for that, it was the week before Christmas.

They're like, hey, we're going out of business.

By.

They gave you like a week to move your stuff.

That was 27 months.

Wild Voice from July 2006 to July 2009, three years.

See you by my podcast.

2007 to 2011, that was four years.

Audiometric IO, which I really liked.

They had a cool, dynamic thing.

They were purchased by Panoply and then they removed it.

I hate when people do that opinion.

Podcasting lasted 23 months.

Zcat lasted 36 months.

Whooshka, which was a really cool platform.

53 months before somebody bought them and shut them down.

And then Libsyn.

Libsyn is still around, but they tried a free version for a while and then said, yeah, this is a bad idea, and then did it for.

They shut it down after 10 months.

But, Dave, you're not bringing up Spotify.

In fact, I'm only bringing up about four or five.

And I realized that in the whatever 18 minutes it's taken me to record this, another media host has opened up.

And for me, I like things that are kind of tried and true, and so we'll get to that.

But is one of them Spotify?

And the answer to that is a resounding no.

Because I have been around a while and a never, ever forget that the people that are running Spotify are people from the music business.

And people from the music business, as David Letterman used to call them, are weasels.

They're just.

Ugh.

So with that going in, podcasting is built on an open system.

That's why some of you are listening to me and Apple podcast.

Some of you are in Overcast, some of you are in Pocket Cast.

It's open.

You can listen wherever you want.

Spotify builds features that only work in Spotify.

And why wouldn't they?

Right?

It makes sense from their business if we're talking about business models, but they just don't embrace any of the other players in the space.

Like, I hung out with Buzz Spray out people, the podcast movement in a Libsyn shirt.

Like, you know, that's.

It's.

We're all in the same boat.

But when Spotify did their thing for transcriptions, did they use the podcasting 2.0 spec?

No, because they made their own.

That only works.

I don't know if it only works in Spotify, but no, they didn't.

And this is the thing I've just seen so many of this over the years.

They announced things, and the one that always.

I always like to use because it's so Spotify.

They said, hey, everybody, you can listen.

You can use music in your podcast.

And I went, what?

I literally was like Ebenezer Scrooge getting out of bed on Christmas morning.

I'm like, what did he say, people?

That there's music and podcasting.

Holy cow.

You know, it was crazy.

Well, they always have an asterisk.

So, like, right now, they're saying you can put your video in Spotify and make money at that, and there's always an asterisk.

Right?

But with the music thing, you can play music in your podcast as long as you only listen on the app, not the website.

And you're only going to get paid for those people that are paying customers.

And only after we approve the episode.

That's just a little different from, hey, everyone, you can play music in your podcast.

Oh, I want to curse so bad right now.

Oh, and also, a few months after they released that feature.

Yeah, they killed it.

Yeah, of course.

So Spotify.

I just want to just Spotify.

Oh, God.

Look, I love their music app.

I totally support them.

I mean, I adore them as a music app, but as a podcast host, they're a closed garden.

And even more.

Just one more.

If you go to podcast events, my favorite.

I wasn't there for this one, but I've seen them do this multiple times.

When you go to these big podcast events like Podcast Movement, they will have a ginormous booth that you're only invited to.

Like, you can't just walk in and meet the people from Spotify, because why would they want to make friends with people in the podcast space?

No, only the big people get to go in there.

So just.

Just.

Anyway.

I know, but it's free, Dave.

It's free.

Yeah, I get it.

I get it.

All right, if you must.

If you must use free, because have you ever noticed that we pay for things that are important?

Little Susie's braces.

They're what, how many thousands of dollars?

We somehow found the money for that.

Wait a minute.

I got a flat tire.

Somehow we found them, you know, But I can't afford $7 from Libsyn.

I've always said if $7 is going to break the bank, you don't need a podcast, you need a job.

But if you must use free, Red Circle is free.

And I would recommend them over Spotify because pretty much, I would recommend anyone over Spotify watch the movie the Playlist on Netflix.

Listen, I'll put a link to Mary.

Nope, not Hartman, but Mary somebody.

She's a musician and she gives the actual kind of play by play of what's going on with the music industry.

And I'm just here to tell you, the people in the music industry are weasels.

And those are the people that are running Spotify.

They own a big chunk of the money that goes to that.

Yeah.

All right, let's move off Spotify.

Let's just have.

Let's all together just go.

And I let it out.

Okay.

I feel better.

Also, when it comes to media hosts, they all do this.

What is that?

Well, they host your files and they provide stats.

They provide an RSS feed to syndicate your show to Apple and Spotify and any other place that will host an RSS feed.

I'm still fired up.

I gotta calm down.

So when they say things like, we help you get in all the directories, it's kind of a duh statement, as that's kind of what a host does.

You know, it's like when a waiter comes up and goes, hi, I'm Mike, I'll be your waiter tonight.

I'll be taking your order and later bringing you your food.

Yeah, Mike, that's what a waiter does.

So when a media host goes, we help you get into all the directories.

Yeah.

And you provide stats and you host my files.

That's kind of a given, you know, they also provide a basic website and they should provide a player that is customizable to match your brand, not theirs.

One other thing to pay attention to, and I love the fact that I don't work for a media host anymore, I can say this.

If you have a media host that says insert big number Here, you know, 47,000 people joined this podcast hosting company this week.

Ask them how many of those are free if they offer a free trial.

That's a good question right there.

All right, let's talk business plans.

There are three types of business plans.

Two are, shall we say, logical, and one is absolutely bananas.

All right, so the first one I'm going to call Limited Uploads.

And that sounds bad because it has the word limit in it, but really it's not.

But most hosts offer a plan where you have to figure out how many episodes are you going to publish a month, and then you go, oh, okay, well, I'm only going to do, like, for instance, if I'm doing two 15 minute episodes a month, I could probably get by for $7 on Libsyn.

Right.

And Other companies that do this are Buzzsprout, Blueberry, Libsyn, RSS.com is another one.

And so you have to plan that you can get.

You know, this is how much I'm going to upload a month.

And here's the plus side.

I can have as many downloads as I want.

If I get on Oprah or, you know, Joe Rogan or whatever, and I get a gazillion downloads, doesn't matter.

I'm still paying my 7, 15, 20 bucks, whatever you're paying at these places.

So that's business plan number one.

We charge you X amount of money.

You can upload this much, you can have as many downloads as you want.

Business plan number two, you pay for more downloads.

Now, this one where the other one, you had a limit on how much you could upload.

This one you can upload.

You can have as many shows as you want.

You want to start your own network.

There you go.

How many episodes can you have?

Doesn't matter.

Upload as much as you want.

Your plan does not change.

Your plan only changes when you go over.

And I'm gonna use Captivate for this one.

Captivate says 30,000 downloads.

And so, you know, you might hear the other companies that have this go, oh, you're moving to Captivate.

All right.

Hope you don't get popular.

30,000 downloads is very popular.

And here's the other thing.

If I got my Captivate hat on, if I got my transistor, that's another company that uses this business model.

If I got those hats on, I'm going, look, if I'm Getting.

Transistor has 20,000 downloads a month.

Captivate has 30,000 downloads.

If you're getting 30,000 downloads a month, I'm pretty sure you can monetize that to pay for the increase in your business plan.

If you are a person that plans on starting multiple shows, then this would be where you'd want to go.

Option number two, I can have as many shows as I want.

I have a ton of shows right now on Captivate where the other plans and they have their pros and cons of this, you could have, hey, this show's only gonna do one episode a month.

You can have a really small plan, but if you then have a second show that needs a medium plan.

So Now I'm paying $15 a month.

And then I got this other show that's gonna be daily.

I'm paying X amount.

Okay?

Now it gets expensive because you have to pay for every show.

With business plan number two, you can have as many shows, as many episodes as you want.

It's based on the number of downloads.

Now, for the record, just to keep this in perspective, according to.

If you're not listening to the feed from Libsyn, they say the average podcaster in September was getting around 1,100 downloads per episode.

And the median meaning 50% get less, 50% get more, was around 125 downloads.

And so I have Ask the Wait.

I have a bunch of shows on Captain.

I'm nowhere near 30,000.

You know, this show gets somewhere between one and 2,000 downloads.

It depends on the deal.

So for me, a man with multiple shows, I like number two, business plan, and we'll get in again.

Captivate and Transistor are two places that offer that business plan.

Now, option number three is a really bad idea.

It's bananas.

That's absolutely bananas.

And people have tried this, and they go out of business every time.

And that is no limits on the number of shows and episodes you can have, and no limits on the number of downloads.

Yeah, that's just like saying, kick me, because I could actually go over, give you $15 for this unlimited everything plan and start my own media host and just have everybody sign up through me, and then I'll put your show into you.

I'm paying you 15 bucks, and I'm charging everybody else 20 bucks.

It's absolutely stupid.

And people are still doing this.

And I felt bad because it's.

It's not going to work.

I've seen this multiple times, and it takes one show and you're done.

It's really.

But that is the thing.

It's still happening right now.

I felt bad.

I heard the guy on a show because he came to me and I'm like, that's.

That's a bad business model.

And then he went to somebody who's really respected in the podcasting space, and that person said, yeah, that's a really bad business model.

And he's still offering it.

So whatever it is, those are the three business models.

Now you understand how they work.

Pick the one that's best for you.

All right, here's a feature that some offer and some don't, and that is dynamic content.

It allows you to insert a file into your episode.

So in.

Somewhere in this episode, you'll hear me talk about the question of the month, and it inserts a file that, in this case, as I record this, we'll talk about the November question of the month.

But if you're listening to this in December or January or February or whatever, you will hear about the whatever Question of the month, because it makes no sense for you to hear about the November 2024 question of the month.

So that is dynamic content.

Now, obviously, you can use this as a way to promote your own stuff, or if you actually have an advertiser, you could have it for ads.

But I always want to point out the dynamic content.

If you're promoting a webinar that you're doing, don't, you know, get your tickets now?

It's, you know, blah, blah.

And then when the webinar is over, you swap out that part of the file in the middle and you say, hey, if you'd like to buy a recording of the webinar, it's here.

It's dynamic content.

It's not static.

It's things that you can put into the middle of it.

Now, just to go a little deeper, there is pre roll.

You'll hear people talk about that.

That means this is the stuff that happens before the show starts.

Then there is post roll.

That is thing like the show's done.

And then you'll hear things come after that.

So that's post roll.

And then you have mid roll.

And that typically means it's obviously in the middle of the episode and you pick where it goes.

Now, Buzzsprout has a feature that it will pick where it thinks it should go.

Captivate now has AI tools.

We'll talk about AI in a minute.

That suggests, hey, here's where we think it should go and here's why.

And in both those cases, you can say, no, no, no, no, I'm going to put it here or there.

So here, if you're like, hey, that could be really cool for me.

Here's who offers this Captivate.

And in my opinion, they have the best AI tool hands down.

Not even close.

Buzzsprout, they offer all the above, right?

Pre roll, post roll, mid roll, all of them do.

Now Blueberry, for $10 extra, will give you a pre roll edition Transistors Pro plan, which is $49 a month.

Not their, their $20 one includes again, pre roll, post roll, and mid roll, but you got to pay 49amonth.

Now Libsyn and Blueberry, but they both offer a kind of pro.

Like, you'll hear people talk about Libsyn Pro.

They have a pro version that is for like, it's really awesome and you can see how many times the file was played.

It's made for like, people that really, really want to do advertising.

And so there's that Blueberry has a similar option, but those start at probably three figures a month.

It's made for serious advertising people.

And so those are the ones that do that.

Now, there are probably other ones out there, but these are the companies I'm focused on because they've been around for a while.

I know them, I trust them.

I'm not going to build my house on Jim's, you know, media host, because come, come put your files on me.

I'm Jim.

I'll take your files.

Oh, my God.

So the other thing, since we're kind of here and we're hinting about ads, if you're going to be running ads that aren't yours, you want a host that's IAB certified, not compliant.

Compliant is like, oh, yeah, that whole certification thing.

Oh, yeah.

We're just like them, really, because you didn't pay for the company to come in and double check everything and make sure that you're not fibbing a little bit.

I get it, it's expensive.

But if you're wanting to have ads that aren't yours, you're going to want a host that's IAB certified.

And I'll put a link to where you can see a list of those I personally like for me, because again, I'm running ads for me.

I don't really care if my numbers are IB certified, but if you're going to be running ads for, you know, Casper mattress and BetterHelp and all that, you're going to want an IB certified.

Again, not compliant.

Compliance.

Kind of like, oh, let's use a word that begins with C and see if nobody will notice.

All right, next up, we're going to talk about stats.

Yes, stats.

Let's talk about, oh, yay, stats.

And stats are good.

You want stats, but let's talk about what they typically do.

And they all should, by the way, you should expect stats from your media host.

And so they all show download stats, like how many downloads this episode got.

They show audience locations.

Now, Libsyn charges for geographic data.

You have to be on their $20 plan, but you can get it.

Everybody else just gives it to you.

And there's typically a 30 day breakdown of like how many downloads you got after 30 days.

Because that's kind of the stat.

People want to know, how many downloads did you get after 30 days?

And that's the one that advertisers want.

Now people like Buzzsprout and Libsyn offer like a 73090 breakdown.

So they break it down a little more.

All of Them, by the way, allow you to download your stats.

So if you want to do like you're an Excel number crunching nerd, you can do that.

And if you want to see listener engagement, check your Apple podcast and your Spotify dashboard.

And never, never.

I'm.

I'm looking at you, Spotify.

Never let someone submit your show to Apple for you.

I think RSS.com offers this.

We'll submit it for you.

And I'm like, mm, I get nervous when I hear that because here's what happens if someone submits your show to Apple for you.

It sounds great.

Oh, how lovely they are.

But that ends up putting your show under their Apple id, which means you can't see these.

Cool.

Awesome.

How far did people listen Stats.

So again, be careful of that.

And if RSS doesn't, I apologize that I even threw remote shade check whoever it is.

But I've seen that in different things, so that's.

Be careful with that.

Keep that in mind.

Now, downloads again, just to.

We're going to go super like start at the bottom here.

Downloads or how many downloads are you receiving?

How many times did that file go from their server to someone's phone?

Doesn't mean they listened to it means it successfully got from point A to point B.

And again, if you're going to have advertisers make sure they're IAB certified.

Geographic Insights are.

Where's your audience coming from?

Are they in Exactan or Europe or Ireland or Canada or wherever?

And then some of them will show you how, like what state.

And I know Blueberry and Libsyn will show you not so much cities, but kind of like media areas.

I think Captivate does that as well.

And in fact, when I looked at Geographic Insights, it's almost kind of like one of those where like, ah, everybody does this.

So when they go, hey, yeah, we'll show you the media areas, so does everybody else.

So comparison stats are a really cool stat.

I've never really used them much and then I started playing with them and it's a great way to see is my podcast growing Libsyn has a great spot where again and you can do this.

Anybody that gives you that 30 day, how many downloads did I get?

That's an easy way to compare, but a comparison stat.

And this is done by Captivate, Buzz, Blueberry and Transistor.

It's where you can say, let's look at a show.

I'm sorry, let's look at an episode from say six months ago and compare it to today's episode and you can see over time which one is doing better.

And that's an easy way to see, huh?

I do have more audience than I used to now.

So those are statistics.

Now if you're looking for like how many people are male or female, how many, how old are they, all that demographic stuff you have to get from doing your own survey and you're going to go, dave, Dave, there is one place you can get it and I know there's one place that you can get it.

Who would have the information that everybody else is.

Feel like a little too intrusive and maybe GDPR not compliant or whatever.

Who could do such a thing to reveal the secrets of your.

That's right, it's Spotify.

So but you don't have to host with them to get that.

Go over and claim your feed in Spotify and you can see how much your audience is male and female.

And you know the fact that for me it was really weird, like they liked Blake Shelton and like Lady Gaga or something and I was like, wait, what?

Yes, you can get that information there, but those are stats.

And now Blueberry and Captivate both say, and I think Blueberry does it on the server side.

They can give you how far people have listened.

And I believe that's also in Captivate.

Most of that is from a website listening on a website and just it's the people that listen on your website.

It's a small percentage.

So I don't want to like poo poo that.

But it's not.

And the Blueberry stat is not very granular.

It's like broken into like 25, 50%, 75 and 100%.

So but they do give that information.

Blueberry has really beautiful stats, so let's look at some other features.

Next up, we have transcriptions.

Transcriptions got very popular, especially when Sirius Satellite Radio got sued over them.

Everybody, you know, Apple added transcriptions, things like that.

Some require you.

Some media host require you to bring your own.

That would be Libsyn.

Others make them for a fee.

That would be Captivate, Buzzsprout and Blueberry and others offer them for free.

That would be transistors.

Are they important?

Yes, because there are people that can't hear and they want to read your content.

And yes, I know that Apple will make transcripts for you, but that's only for people that listen to Apple.

And there are other apps.

I know, hard to believe, but there are other apps.

So it's good to have transcriptions because not everybody can hear.

Next up, we Got Chapters.

Chapters.

I love Chapters.

Chapters let the listener jump to different sections of this episode.

So maybe if you are in an app, they kind of hide them.

I wish the different apps would have different ways of finding them, but I've been using Chapters for years because this show has multiple topics, so you can jump them around.

And so right now, Libsyn won't alter your Chapters.

So if you've made them in Hindenburg or there are other tools you can use to make Chapters, Libsyn won't mess them up.

Because with Libsyn, whatever you upload is what you download.

Blueberry, Captivate and Buzzsprout and Transistor, they let you make and manage Chapters right there on their platform.

Is that important?

I don't know.

Do you do a show with multiple topics or are you just doing one topic?

Again, the whole goal of this is to let you know what they do.

And the other thing about Chapters is you can make them clickable.

So, like, right now, I'm talking about Chapters, and you'll see where this chapter has a link to whatever software I will find that makes Chapters.

So you can actually lead these to clicks.

So if you're a marketing person and you want people to click on stuff, Chapters can be very, very cool.

And I track my chapters to see how many times people are clicking these chapter links.

And it's a lot, but I thought I'd get like four.

But no, there are people that actually click these links.

So I'm a huge fan of Chapters.

Next up, we have dynamic show notes.

So what this means is you can go into your media host and you type this one thing.

Maybe it's there's a webinar coming on this date in the future.

Click here to get your tickets, and you can then go into episodes and go put this particular block, we'll call it, and it puts it there, and then it puts it into the show notes.

Then later, after the webinar has gone away, you can go back to that original box and you can see there's the note you typed, and it's now on 17 different episodes.

And you change it in the original box and you say presale for the webinar, you can buy that we had back in whatever.

You can buy it here.

And when you change it in the original box, it changes it in all the episodes that you put it there.

So, again, this could be really handy.

So who has this?

Right now I know of Captivate and Buzzsprout.

Buzzsprout does this with sponsors, which is Kind of cool.

Captivate has a lot of really cool things.

So dynamic show notes, pretty handy tool.

Now, I will say Libsyn has a feature that lets you do what I would call kind of text expander.

They're called snippets.

So if I wanted to, I could say, hey, my book is available on the website.

Buy it here.

Join my newsletter.

Anything that you type over and over, you can make a snippet.

And then you basically when you're typing your show notes, you go to snippets, click on newsletter.

And there's the thing about your newsletter, what it's not is dynamic.

So if later you change something in the original block, it doesn't go back and change it in all the other episodes.

Still a big time saver, but not quite as cool as actual dynamic snippets or dynamic show notes.

Podcasting 2.0 features.

Now, this is a tough one because explaining podcasting 2.0 in two senses or less is almost impossible.

It aims to enhance the functionality of RSS and also ensure a place for all podcasters.

So as people getting kicked off platforms and stuff, podcasting 2.0 is kind of maximum free speech for everyone and new functionality has been added.

One of them is Pod Roll, where you can actually put a list of.

Here are other shows I recommend.

And then if people implement these, we could end up making charts based on actual recommendations.

And I realize that the minute this rolls out and people start adopting it, it's going to take, I don't know, 10 to maybe 15 minutes before somebody goes, hey, I'll sell you a spot in my Pod Roll.

Yeah, that's going to happen probably.

But it will only be implemented by the app.

So if we make a.

I'm just going to use Pod Roll, it will only be implemented by the apps, you know, where people consume the content if the host implements this feature.

And right now not many hosts have implemented this in this case of Pod Rule, now many of them have.

So for instance, Blueberry right now is leading the way.

They have 26 items that are podcasting 2.0, RSS.com has 15, Captivate has 12, Buzzsprout has eight, and Libsyn has two.

And right now the apps using these features unfortunately are nowhere near as popular as Apple and Spotify.

So the whole podcasting 2.0 thing, it's one of those things, much like growing your audience, it's going to be a marathon, not a sprint.

To get these new features into the apps.

I love where it's going.

I love the whole streaming satoshi thing.

And if you are a person that wants to embrace these new features and have them there when the apps finally start adapting them, then that would be something you'd want to look into.

Next up, AI assistants.

And I'm sure as I record this In November of 2024, there are more people jumping into this.

These are tools that help you create episode titles, chapters, summaries, etc.

And currently captivate, because here's the thing.

This is one of the things I really liked about Captivate.

This sounds weird, but if anybody adds AI to anything, you're going to get a bigger bill.

So when Canva, which is a graphic tool, started injecting AI, I was like, oh, here we go.

And they went to jack up, way up their price.

And people went, hey, wait a minute, hold on a second.

So AI adds expense.

And Captivate over the years has been adding as really?

For the record, all media hosts have been adding features over the years and not raising their price.

Media hosts haven't raised their prices in a very, very long time.

Can you say that about McDonald's or Walmart?

No.

So kudos to the media hosts for that.

So when AI was added, I thought, I actually want them to charge me because I don't want these media hosts to go out of business.

And this would be something that could add a sizable amount of expense.

So Captivate has an AI tool that does exactly what I just said.

It lets you.

It'll pick a title, it'll do summaries, it'll do show notes, it'll do takeaways.

It's really, really cool.

It's five bucks per minute because you're getting charged for the transcription.

The AI kind of just comes with it, which is kind of cool.

Buzzsprout, it's going to be, depending on which AI tools you want, an additional 10 to $20.

So again, captivate an additional $5, and Blueberry has one for an additional 10.

And for all these hosts, again, it's an additional charge because AI is expensive.

They're not gouging anybody.

But for the record of those three, and I've never used Blueberries, I've heard a lot about it, and I was looking for a video on it and couldn't find one.

I did reach out to Mike over at Blubrry, by the way.

All these companies have great support, and Mike said they just changed the interface, so video is coming on that.

But it's one of those things where AI, I don't care who does it, it's going to get you almost all the way there.

You're still going to have to do some tweaking.

So that's another feature that you can have in your media host, some sort of AI tool.

Now, if you go, dave, I already got an AI tool, then it's not really important that your media host has one then, is it?

Next up, we have selling ads on your show.

Now, Buzzsprout has a marketplace for podcast advertisers to upload their ads.

And they pay you $14 for 1,000 downloads, which is much better than the programmatic ads that you see in other places.

We'll talk about those in a minute.

Right.

You need at least five published episodes that are at least 23 minutes long and a minimum of 1,000 downloads in 30 days.

So you heard me talk about the average before in the median one, which is like 125.

So this is still a bit of a challenge, but at least it's.

It's attainable if you really work hard at Captivate has a tool that allows you to accept money for just about anything on your website.

So if you want to sell ads, there's no limits.

You can just say, hey, I've got a niche podcast here.

Click here.

Now, they're going to take a percentage of that.

And they also say on Captivate that the marketplace is coming soon.

Blubrry has a plan where you can accept programmatic ads from day one.

Now, when you hear you can make money from day one, it's usually not great.

And so with this, they're going to pay somewhere around $5.

Now, that could be a little less, could be a little more.

But programmatic ads are not great.

It is one of those, well, it's better than a poke in the eye, but so is getting kicked in the shin, you know, depending on how much shin pain you can absorb.

But that's for, you know, around $5 per 1,000 downloads.

With RSS.com you need a thousand downloads a month.

So again, that's something they're working on.

And they have this thing now, Libsyn, who owns Advertised Cast, now known as Libsyn, ads for Those that get 2,000 downloads a month.

And again, that payment is going to be around $5 per 1000 downloads.

Also, if you're like, I have a tie between these different companies and they all have this, ask them how long it takes to get paid, because that's a nightmare.

It takes a while to get paid for these, you know, $5 cpm.

Because in many cases it's a 30 day thing and then 30 day to get the check, and then 30 day, it's like you start selling ads and you get paid in like 20, 28.

That might be a slight exaggeration.

Going back to Buzzsprout ads, you don't have to wait.

And the thing I really like about buzzsprout ads is it's a, it has to be a win win.

So let's say somebody wants to advertise on Ask the Podcast Coach.

They can submit it to me and I will say, I can go over and say, is this a good fit?

Et cetera, et cetera.

And if so, I can accept that.

Likewise, I can approach other shows and kind of say, you should be advertising on my show.

And they can then confirm.

So both the advertiser and the advertisee have to agree.

And then Buzzsprout handles everything in between.

It's actually $20 for the ad.

They take six, you get 14 and it's a double opt in.

Which means you should be getting sponsors that fit your show.

And if they don't fit your show, don't let them.

Don't do that to your audience.

Next up is private podcasting.

So this is where you want to have a podcast that is only available to either people that pay or people that you add.

So for example, one might be you could start a private podcast for your company and then add your employees to that.

Then they could then follow the show and get the information there.

It's not always about selling it.

It could be just that, private.

And then when you basically you can remove them and it removes their access to it.

Now if they've downloaded the files to their phone, it's not quite that private, but it's one of those things.

But you can also sell these.

Keep in mind.

And so with Captivate again, they're using that model where unlimited shows, unlimited episodes.

You could add a show that's nothing but private stuff and then sell it.

Captivate is another company that does this and they're more where you could have private episodes.

Like if you want this episode, you have to pay to get it.

So it's like bonus content.

If you wanted to do just a private podcast, you'd have to have a separate show.

And so with that, it's kind of a, you know, now I'm paying X amount of money, which is fine.

If you're selling it, why not?

And you might actually just need the smallest plan on Buzzsprout.

I know Blueberry has this as well on their website.

It said the prices started $150 a month because that's a truly private kind of setup because they have a custom app, things like that.

That's a little different than what Captivate and Buzzsprout are offering.

Libsyn has Glow, and it was reported in POD News that right now Libsyn is changing some things with Glow, and they're not accepting new customers right now.

But I know Libsyn has a lot of things going on behind the scenes that they'll probably be.

I can't say when they're announcing because they don't know I don't work there anymore.

But expect some new things from Libsyn.

But this may again be a feature that you're, like, not really needing it, and that's fine.

I'm just letting you know these are options.

Also, one other thing to keep in mind, probably about 3% of your audience, if you offer a premium show, would do it.

But I was sitting here thinking that I should have had my audio book.

I could have added it as a podcast to Captivate.

Don't submit it anywhere and only sell it as a private feed, and it wouldn't cost me any more.

And then Captivate, I believe, takes around probably 12 to 15%, as does Buzzsprout when you're selling premium things.

One last thing about Buzzsprout, when you have bonus episodes in your podcast, they make it ridiculously easy for your listeners to subscribe to that premium version.

There's no copy and pasting of a feed, which is a big plus.

Last feature before we get into things that are somewhat unique, is service and support, and you want somebody, it's not so much, hey, they're a great company.

How great are they when things aren't going well?

That's really what you want to know.

And you know, when I mentioned Captivate, Buzzsprout, Libsyn, Blueberry, RSS.com, i know all those people and they care deeply about podcasting and keeping it open, and they understand what podcasting is and they offer great support.

So what you can do, and they're going to love me for saying this, you could email their support if you're like, I'm not sure who I should pick.

Email all of them and ask them, hey, do you support 301 redirects?

Because all the companies I'm talking about do.

And then check their response time.

If so, if you have a tie between this company and that company, email them both.

You can go out and check their knowledge base.

How easy is it to find how robust is it?

You know, type in some questions that you might have and see if they have the answers for you.

And then the other thing, some of them, and I always think this is cool, they have a status page, so you can see when the last time they had a problem, because you have a status page, because maybe you're going to be doing some maintenance or something like that.

And they'll be like, hey, scheduled maintenance is happening on the 14th from 7 to 8, whatever.

So you can see when the system is going down on purpose because they're doing maintenance.

And you can also see when it's like, hey, the thing on the thing isn't working right now.

We are aware.

We'll let you know when it's fixed and then you can see how long it took them to fix.

So if you want to check their support, that's a way to do that.

But it is an important part because as someone who used to work with Google, their support was hideously bad, as in, like, didn't exist.

So you don't want to be in that situation when you need help and you can't get a hold of someone.

All right, let's talk about some unique features.

So if you're a YouTuber and you're like, hey, I hear that audio actually outperforms video.

And yes, that is true, unless of course, you're listening to people from YouTube.

You know, I've heard it from multiple people that they get more downloads and especially more of a completion rate on audio than video.

And you're like, hey, all right, well, I'm a YouTuber.

I want to be a podcaster.

Blubrry has a service called vidtapod, and it will import your videos and convert them to audio episodes and whatever notes you have in YouTube will pull over.

That's really cool.

That's a unique feature.

Episode planning.

Captivate has a Chrome extension that easily lets you save websites to your Captivate account.

So as I was doing this one, because this show is on Captivate, I took the link to Zeta's article and I saved it.

And now you'll see it in the show notes.

Hey, this is Future Dave.

I took that segment out for length.

It'll be in next week's episode.

So that's kind of a cool thing if you want to erase old baked in advertisements.

So I mentioned how, yes, Buzzsprout has dynamic content and so does Captivate.

Captivate has this tool that if I have.

We call them baked in, like the ad today where I was talking about Ariana Grande.

That's an ad for the school of podcasting Again, Future Dave again removed for length.

And if later I'm like, yeah, Wicked's old, nobody knows what I'm talking about.

I could go in and just highlight that audio and say, hey, replace this highlighted stuff with this ad.

That is cool.

And it's the only company I know that does that.

It's really, really handy.

Automatic volume leveling.

Now, what's funny about this is both these companies offer this and it's where your levels are automated, you know, to where they're kind of leveled out behind the scenes.

They're both using all phonics.

So if you're like, oh, my media doesn't do this.

You can use Auphonic and they have a free plan.

But Buzzsprout and Blueberry offer some sort of mastering, so it's fine.

You can also just, I don't know, record the right levels in the first place.

That's good.

Guest booking.

Captivate has a feature that allows your guest to fill out a form that can be added to the episode notes later.

And if you're like, oh, I'm not using.

Well, if you're using POD page, we don't care who your host is.

We have that feature as well.

Full disclosure, if you didn't know I worked for BOD page, If you want to publish to YouTube, Libsyn can convert your audio to a video with a static image and push it to YouTube and display your YouTube stats in your Libsyn dashboard.

Where other people, yes, you can go to YouTube and you can give them your RSS feed and it'll pull in your episodes, but you have to go to YouTube to get your stats.

With Libsyn, you can get your YouTube stats in your Libsyn dashboard.

Blueberry will post the first two minutes and RSS can do basically the same thing.

They can create the static video, but at least according to their website, you would need to post it.

And for the record, the whole static image YouTube thing, I am of this ilk on that feature.

If you're not doing anything, as in zero on YouTube, it is better than nothing.

But I wouldn't expect much from that.

I know some people like, I'm getting some listens, okay?

And it's free, so why wouldn't you?

If you are a big WordPress fan, hands down, it's Blueberry.

Blueberry has the best WordPress plugin.

But what's fun about Blubrry, they also realize not everybody's using WordPress, so they also have their dashboard.

If you if you want WordPress integration, Blueberry's power Press is the best.

Captivate also has a plugin and it works great.

Libsyn used to have one and this is kudos to Blueberry and Captivate.

Having a WordPress plugin is not fun because again, WordPress is constantly updating and to me I'm always like, you do realize the thing you have to do if you're not using a WordPress plugin is copy and paste.

Like that's the problem you're solving.

Copying and pasting future Dave again.

Or you could just use POD page, which brings in your player naming your ad price.

So with buzzsprout again, it's much, much better than the CPMS of the programmatic $5 kind of stuff.

You're getting 14 bucks.

With Captivate you can again receive payments for services and anything you want on their websites.

Now again, if you have PayPal or buy me a coffee, you can do this without Captivate, but other tools.

And those tools, by the way, will take a lower fee.

But Captivate has that built in.

So finally to the question you've probably been waiting from Dave, who's your favorite?

And again, I'm a guy that is promoting his own service here, so I love dynamic stuff.

I'm on a show that has multiple topics, so I love chapters.

So consequently and also I'm an old musician and I want the file that I upload to be the file I download.

So I want my stuff in stereo.

And this is one of those flip flop kind of things.

Buzzsprout will convert your show to Mono and for 95% of you that's perfectly fine.

For me I'm like, I want that music, I want my ladies in stereo.

But the flip side of that is with Buzzsprout you can upload pretty much whatever file you want and they will convert it to mono so you don't have to worry about the bitrate and all that stuff.

They're going to take it for you.

But for me, my favorite is Captivate, their dynamic tool.

Their AI tool.

I love that their AI tool because buzzsprout has an AI tool.

I like Captivates better because I can say write this in first person.

I'm kind of funny, but serious, do this and that and their their AI tool is much, much closer than the stuff I would use.

Buzzsprout is a great choice and my number two if you're looking for ease of use combined with robust features.

Their interface has got a lot of white space and it's tough for all these media hosts.

The more features you add, the more cluttered your interface is.

And so again, none of these, let me see this up front.

None of these are a bad choice.

None of them.

It all matters on what features.

We go back to that original question I asked, what do you need your media host to do?

And you pick the one that does the stuff you want it to do.

Bluberry is an excellent choice for integrating your show with WordPress.

Its AI tools will save you time.

And again, it's leading the charge in podcasting 2.0 Libsyn.

If somebody's like, I was kind of looking for a free, I just need a podcast.

I'm only going to do it twice a month.

Libsyn is a great choice because plan start now, they start at $5 a month, but that's if you don't want statistics.

So if you add the extra two bucks, it's seven bucks a month, you'll get download stats.

It is the oldest media host and you don't get more solid and reliable.

Again, full disclosure, I used to work there for eight years and why I left is not because there was anything wrong with Libsyn.

I just thought the job at PodPage fit my skillset better.

So if you want the latest features though, Libsyn would not be my choice.

Now again, I expect announcements from them in the next, I would say three to six months probably because I know they're working on stuff and I told him I wouldn't say anything, so I'm not.

But I just know they're working on stuff.

And so we shall see.

But right now, as I record this In November of 2024, that's me.

But that's for me, a guy that has multiple chapters and dynamics, if you like.

No, I'm just doing a show twice a month.

Maybe I just need private podcasts.

Well then that's gonna leave out Libsyn and Blueberry on a budget, you know.

So this is again, the goal of the show was to let you know what these do.

And trust me, there are probably more features because I know Blubrry has a thrive function.

And this show already is close to an hour.

If you have any questions, let me know.

But this is the gist of it.

And just realize the other thing I want to make sure is when they say things like, hey, we provide stats, we give you an RSS feed and we help you syndicate.

Yeah, that's what a.

That's what a host does.

So what else you got?

Is the question you have to ask.

And I'll have links to all this stuff out@schoolofpodcasting.com 959.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I could go for hours on this stuff.

I was just thinking, look, if you have more than 10,000 downloads an episode, well, then go see Libsyn.

That'll get you higher than the $14 cpm at Buzzsprout.

It always depends.

And I realize it can be kind of overwhelming.

And that's why I'm here to help you.

Everything we talked about today you can find at school of podcasting.com 959.

I'm hoping to make kind of a spreadsheet to make this easier to consume, where you'll see the features and the host and you'll see which one has the most features that you need.

Because we're all snowflakes.

We're all completely different.

There really isn't a one size fits all.

I'm Dave Jackson from the School of Podcasting.

I help podcasters.

It's what I do.

And next week we've got a cool because of my podcast story, and I will tell you, what does Ariana Grande have to do with podcasting.

It's all coming.

I'll see you next week.

Until then, class is dismissed.