Top Podcasting Gear of 2024

This episode highlights Overcast's game-changing features like Voice Boost and Smart Speed, which significantly enhance audio quality and eliminate awkward pauses. Learn about Spotify's approach to listener comments compared to YouTube's system, and hear our thoughts on the impact of requiring podcaster approval for comments. We also cover The Podcast Host's survey of top podcasting gear, and discuss the marketing prowess behind the Blue Yeti microphone, its pros, and cons, and explore affordable alternatives like the Q2U and ATR2100X.

View the discussion thread on Twitter/X!

Sound-off question: What microphone do you use?

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Overcast's app update
• Spotify adds comments
• The Podcast Host's 2024 Podcaster Gear Survey
• Joe Casabona Blue Yeti video
• Adobe Podcast Studio
• Riverside's Conversation Studio

Transcript

Kevin: 0:00

We are right in the throes of Amazon Prime Day right now. Yeah, I mean, what marketing genius came up with Prime Day? Probably Jeff himself, but it used to be one day, now it's two, but somehow they've done a great job of thinking, making everyone think. Think about how much money I can save by going and spending all this money. I wasn't planning on spending on Amazon on these two days.

Jordan: 0:21

In Australia they have Prime Week. Oh my gosh.

Kevin: 0:25

I saw an ad for that. Prime Week is going to be worldwide soon. But yeah, so many people talk about this Like we're going to save all this money. No, you're going to spend a bunch of money that you weren't planning on spending.

Alban: 0:33

There's some items that I know about what the price is you know, golf balls or podcasting gear and then I go on and I look and I'm like, oh, is these, are these things that I buy, cheaper? And some of them were definitely not cheaper, but they were prime deals and I'm like this is just a normal deal. This is not really.

Jordan: 0:52

They have like a higher price crossed out and then it's like the actual price that goes for normally. No joke, I saw one.

Alban: 0:57

It was a ice tub, it was a cold plunge and it was marked down 90% and I was like dang, that's awesome. And it was like how much was it? And it was $1,000 for an ice plunge and I'm like that's pretty wait, does this include the cooler? No, it's just the like tub piece and I'm like, yeah, that's actually a reasonable deal. For a hundred bucks that feels like a hundred dollar purchase. There's no discount built into this. That's just a you. You wrote a higher price above it.

Jordan: 1:25

My local grocery store. Oh, it drives me crazy, cause so many people are like they have the best deals on meat, they have so many sales on meat and I'll go there and it'll be like chicken breast and it'll be like 60% off. I'm like great and I'll look, but they're selling it at like 17 something a pound and I literally will like take pictures and send it to the people that are like oh my gosh, they're having a huge sale. I'm like this is not a sale. What? This isn't mathing.

Alban: 1:51

What's annoying is that the psychology still works. We all know how dumb it is and it still makes you feel like I am on Amazon looking at a range finder. I'm like I do need to do range finder and I'm like this does seem like a good deal and I'm like, but this isn't a good deal. I know this isn't a good deal, but it still feels like it.

Jordan: 2:08

Oh, maybe I should get it.

Kevin: 2:10

Yeah, I took all three of my kids it's about 10 years ago now Took them to Lowe's on Black Friday and they were little like four, six and eight at the time. Lowe's had put out their Christmas stuff, say the Christmas tree, and then this really cheap looking train running around it, a plastic train, and the box was there and it said, you know, like regular price $9.99, like a thousand dollars, you're like Black Friday special $29.99. It was the cheapest thing, like it probably wasn't even worth $29.99. And my kids were losing their mind. They're like we want a train to go around our Christmas tree. It's a thousand dollar train, dad. Like we have to get it so for $29,. I'm like fine, we'll buy the thousand dollar train. And so 10 years later, I still set this train up. Every year I store it in the garage in a box. The box has a label on it that says thousand dollar train and every year I make a big deal about it's time to bring out a thousand dollars Sounds like you've gotten $1,000 worth out of it Honestly.

Kevin: 3:11

this is only convincing me I should go buy more on Amazon Prime.

Alban: 3:14

Day. Well, I did see one deal. There was a real deal that I think anybody who's listening to this should check out. Well, actually, I guess you might. It might be too late.

Jordan: 3:23

It might be over. It's too late.

Alban: 3:25

It's Friday. Yeah, all right. Well, go verify if this ever was a deal, but $39.20, $39.20 for an ATR 2100X Seems good. Oh yeah, that's a heck of a deal. Yeah, I mean, during COVID they sold them for $100. It's now $79. Sometimes you see it marked down into the sixties on Amazon, but that's a good deal. $39 for really to me, beneath $400 microphone setups, that's the mic I would do If I was redoing everything. I would buy ATR 2100 XI, would use that, and then I'd wait until I was ready to upgrade all the way to an XLR system. Earthworks Ethos would be the mic, and then I'm spending a lot of money for the whole setup. I think for a long time that ATR2100X is just a ridiculously good deal and $39 is a steal beyond the steal.

Kevin: 4:21

Yeah, I bought a bunch of those last Black Friday. They were on sale on Amazon and we've been bringing them to conferences and handing them out to new podcasters who are getting started. So if they're back on sale for 39, I'm going to write myself a to-do. I'll grab a few more.

Jordan: 4:39

Welcome back to Buzzcast, a podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. We have a happy birthday wish to Overcast. It is their 10th birthday and, Alban, it seems like they are doing some fun things in celebration of the birthday.

Kevin: 4:55

Yeah, that's so sweet that you just wished them happy birthday. I'm sure they also wished us happy birthday on our 15th last week.

Jordan: 5:01

Oh, absolutely.

Kevin: 5:02

Sure, I just missed it. Yeah, no, how fun is that that our birthdays are around the same time. So we're 15, they're 10. Congratulations, marco, you have a great app.

Alban: 5:11

Yeah, overcast for anyone who doesn't know, fifth largest podcasting app, at least, according to our data, 1.1% of all podcasts on Buzzsprout are listened on Overcast. Wow, and it's a true indie podcasting app. It's run by one person, marco Arment, who lots of people know. He also built Tumblr, cto for Tumblr and then built Instapaper, and it's an app I think in a lot of ways aligns with a lot of the things we think about at Buzzsprout. It's very focused on the listening experience. It's never going to have video. It's just a really solid app. It's very privacy focused. Like us, he's constantly annoyed by things like dynamic ad insertion and all of the big tech stuff that tries to break its way into podcasting. So I think in lots of ways are aligned with Marco. But I went back. If you go into the app store, you can do. You know this, kevin. You can scroll back through all the apps you've ever bought and you can see when you first downloaded an app.

Kevin: 6:15

I don't know if I knew that or not. That is interesting.

Jordan: 6:17

I didn't know that.

Alban: 6:18

So sometimes when I set up a new iPhone, I will not restore. Instead, I I'll go. I'm just starting a fresh start and I'll go back and download apps that I've had before. And so I scrolled back. Looks like Overcast has been my daily podcast app since August of 2016. And every few months I try out a new app, because we're in the podcasting space, I want to see what else is out there. I try Apple Podcasts when they launch a new feature and then a new app comes out that's focused on something like Fountain and I go okay, I got to try this out.

Alban: 6:53

But Overcast really matches my mental model of podcasting. It's shows. You click into a show. You just click the latest episode. I mostly have been in the state to listen to specific shows. I'm rarely wanting to open my app to go search for new episodes or get recommended shows, so it just feels good to me. And today it's got a totally new, modern design. It's faster, it's more responsible, it's more reliable, it's more accessible. I'm not sure how it is all of those things, but that's what the blog post says.

Kevin: 7:29

So let me focus on one of those words, because I thought you were going to say responsive, meaning like snappier, but you said responsible.

Alban: 7:35

I did say that, but now I'm wondering if I misread it.

Kevin: 7:40

I was wondering if he was talking about like privacy, like listener privacy or something.

Alban: 7:44

Let me go Let me pull this, the quote much faster, more responsive, more reliable, more accessible. It is responsive. There we go All right. So this is why you copy paste and you don't just type in your notes as you're reading the blog post. But I've really enjoyed it. The app looks good and it's definitely faster. One of the best updates in this is what was deleted.

Alban: 8:12

I love when stuff gets ripped out of apps. I love when someone has like I don't know it's like it's a bit of a brave thing, just like the courage to go yeah, this is a dumb thing. I'm taking this out of the app. This feature is no longer here. It takes a bit of courage. You know you're going to get complaints.

Alban: 8:27

One of the biggest gripes I had with Overcast was when I would get new episodes for new podcasts and I would click to play them, it would automatically stream the episode and whenever an episode would stream if it was, it would try to buffer and then it would play, but it would hang all the time because of dynamic ad insertion. So Overcast would make a request to download the episode or start streaming it from whatever podcast host was out there, but then that podcast host is waiting on all the dynamic ad people to try to find which ad they're going to serve to me. It was just so painful and so I got in the habit of I wouldn't click play, I would click download. I download the whole episode and click play because of how often that caused issues and I saw one of the things here is Marco is like yeah, dynamic ad insertion broke so much stuff. I'm just done with streaming. If you click play, I'm going to download the whole episode.

Alban: 9:29

Bandwidth is fast enough. Now everyone's phones are modern. It's good to go. This isn't going to be a problem and I'm very thankful for that. That's a personal benefit for me.

Jordan: 9:40

Did they fix the um? I think it was over where if you shared like a clip of something, it wouldn't actually play in the app. Do you know if they fixed that?

Alban: 9:49

There was a bug, I know where if you sent a timestamp to an Overcast episode that sometimes it wouldn't load at the right spot. I don't know if that was fixed. I haven't seen it. I have seen little improvements through the apps. I've used it this morning. I've noticed that chapters have links. At least it makes it a little bit more obvious that there's the link to the chapter, and so I was listening to Buzzsprout Weekly this morning and the link popped up nice and big, so I clicked it to click through. That's a really nice improvement.

Alban: 10:21

And then the thing I'm most excited about is this little note at the bottom about things that are coming up. There's going to be some improvements to the Apple Watch app, which I use all the time, but then something else that's coming soon with the audio engine, which is all the same, which is what drives this thing called voice boost, which makes everything just sound better, and smart speed, which removes all of these delays and pauses and people's speech. It says there's more sound engine features coming soon. So the whole build is built around. New features are going to be easier to deploy. These are all modern technologies.

Alban: 11:01

It's a 10 year old app so there's some legacy code in there that Mark is able to pull out. Voice Boost and Smart Speed are why I use Overcast. I remember James Cridland at one point said it really is those two features and everything else is kind of like a really nice package for this listening experience. And if there's something else coming, those two things are what constantly pulled me back to Overcast. So whenever I try other things they have cool features but I can't handle the slow cadence in some people's voices or that.

Kevin: 11:37

it just sounds a little Sounds like you're advocating for listening at a slightly faster speed.

Alban: 11:41

It's not listening at a faster speed. It's effectively a faster speed.

Kevin: 11:47

You are listening probably at like 1.1, but all it's doing is you know what I always say, Alban if it's worth listening to at 2x, it's worth listening to at 1. Or if it's worth listening to at 1.1, it's worth listening to at 1.

Alban: 11:58

You're speeding up the words, I'm only speeding up the pauses. Speeding up the pauses, yeah, so happy birthday to Overcast. Congratulations to Marco. Very cool app and it's really wonderful to see somebody out there really pushing in indie podcasting and making a really good app.

Kevin: 12:15

Yeah, and I really like those features as well because, especially for you know, we are big advocates of people starting podcasts and helping people start podcasts and getting all that stuff dialed in right from the beginning is difficult and it can impact your listenership. So if you are still working on your cadence, if you're still stumbling over filler words or awkward pauses and at the same time, you're new to editing, so that stuff takes you a very long time to fix and clean up. The better apps that we have that can help with some of that stuff. That can make it sound better. That's that's really good for podcasting in general. It's really good for beginner podcasters to help make their podcast sound as good as possible so more people will listen to their content and enjoy it, and so we offer similar tools on the publishing side, like magic mastering and co-host and stuff same sort of ideas of just trying to help people who don't have expertise in all these areas right from the beginning get a quality show out as easy as possible, and so I would like to see more podcast apps doing it.

Kevin: 13:12

Now, most of the podcasts that are in my playlist, I don't think that you're getting much of an advantage of the voice boost or the what's?

Kevin: 13:20

The other one called Smart speed, where it takes out the awkward silences and stuff, because most podcasters that I'm listening to have been doing it for a while.

Kevin: 13:26

But from time to time I do jump in and listen to brand new podcasters, just, you know, because I'm curious about what they're podcasting about, or I happen to find a topic that's interesting to me, or I'm helping a podcaster launch a new show and I will say I really think this is a benefit to getting more podcasters in and learning and honing their craft if the apps can make them sound a little bit better. So I don't think we have a lot of stuff like this in sort of the bigger apps, you know, and I understand why. But you don't have this stuff in Apple podcasts. You don't have this stuff in Spotify because they probably don't want to deal with the pushback of podcasters who might not be happy that the app is changing the way that they sound. But there are small indie apps that, like you think Marco is going to care if I write in and I say I don't like that. You have spot smart speed enabled for my show.

Alban: 14:09

He's going to be like email delete, don't care, or he's going to go perfectly happy to take Buzzcast and the 200 listeners that you've ever had in this app out and drop it.

Kevin: 14:21

Right, but that's the fun thing about podcasting. The open side of podcasting, anyway, is that your show gets to be published anywhere, and so if you're somebody who enjoys going out and discovering the hot new show and the talent on that show might not be completely dialed in yet and they might use some filler words and they might have some gaps and their editing isn't all snuffed yet, wait, great, here's their apps out there for you that can make that sound really good, and so you still get an enjoyable listening experience.

Alban: 14:45

I mean, I'll tell you, I think I enjoy listening to myself more with those features on. If I ever am listening to our show, you know just like I take notes and I'm trying to go. Okay, I could do that better. Here's how we could improve Voice boost makes my voice sound better.

Alban: 15:00

Smart speed makes my cadence sound better. I don't have as many of these awkward pauses in the middle of my speech. It sounds good, I just like it. And so when I go to other apps, I notice oh, there's so many podcasters I listen to who just kind of leave big pauses in between words and it just can sound awkward, especially when now I'm used to those being tightened up a bit and it never sounds artificial. It just sounds like somebody who's a little bit more rehearsed in what they're going to say. They're a little bit crisper, a little bit faster, and everybody sounds that way. It's a nice experience and when you look at it it tracks how many hours of time you've saved by clipping out half a second here, half a second there from between the words.

Jordan: 15:45

Yeah, All right. Well, I'll have to check that out, and if you've been thinking about switching to a new podcast player, it sounds like Overcast is doing a lot of great work, so definitely take this time to check it out.

Kevin: 16:00

The comments on Spotify. I think this is a really great opportunity for open podcasting to learn like. Do comments in actual like audio first, kind of true to the old school definition of podcasting. Do they actually work? Do people engage with them? Are they helpful? I mean there's a little bit of Spotify has done their own implementation which I'm a little bit concerned about. Like, does that stifle the conversation? That happens. And when I say they're an implementation which I'm a little bit concerned about, like, does that stifle the conversation that happens. And when I say they're an implementation, like comments don't go live right away, yeah, by default. They're all approved, right, they all go to the podcaster and then the podcaster approves them to get published, which is it's not a bad move. Like it's safe. But it's not what people are used to.

Jordan: 16:42

It's actually smart too, because they don't have to have their own moderators. The podcasters moderate it.

Kevin: 16:46

I agree, but it's not what people are used to like in the YouTube world. In the YouTube world you can leave a comment, boom, it shows up. There are moderation tools, but they're mostly like reactive. Like I'm gonna take that off and I get why Spotify did it. So I'm just saying is that going to stifle the participation? Like, are people like I post comments on podcasts all the time and they never show up, so I'm done with that. You know podcasters, if they don't go in on a regular basis and a quick amount of time also and publish those comments? Like, if I put a comment out there, I'm probably going to only check back once or twice in the next 24 hours to see if it's actually published and if anybody responded to it, including the podcaster. If I don't see it within 24 hours, I'm probably never going to come back and check again.

Kevin: 17:29

So it's like I tried to participate in the conversation. It didn't happen quickly so I forgot about it and I moved on. But on YouTube most of the time, anyway, you publish something, it goes live right away and then you get notifications when people follow up on that thread.

Alban: 17:43

If you have those notifications turned on, yeah, it always goes back to what's the expectation. You talk about this a lot when we talk about customer support. If you go on live chat and you chat something and it says people respond mostly in 15 minutes, you go oh, what a really bad chat experience. But if you send an email and someone writes you back in an hour, you go what a great email experience, because the expectation was I send it and it probably comes back within a day or two. You know, it's just a different expectation, right, and that's how I feel with fan mail.

Alban: 18:14

You know I'm just sending a text, it's just going out there. They're getting it all good, but when you are leaving comments, you kind of expect it to show up, and when you are leaving comments, you kind of expect it to show up, and when you don't see it show up, you might be going. I thought it would pop up like right here below the other comment I responded to, or I'd be able to see it, and so if you don't see it, it might feel like, oh, I guess this doesn't work when really Spotify is saying we just want to make sure that the podcasters are approving this and they're happy with what comments they're getting, because sure that the podcasters are approving this and they're happy with what comments they're getting. Because, I mean, jordan, your experience was, when you turned on the Q&A feature, you were really just getting spam.

Jordan: 18:51

Or kids writing poop.

Alban: 18:54

Yeah, this is a good way to avoid spam, but it could end up, in the long run, having a bit of a chilling effect on how many people leave comments if they don't see it happening right away.

Jordan: 19:06

I mean honestly, the listeners could also potentially feel jilted by the podcaster If the podcaster doesn't get to it within a day or two. I know for, like my podcast, like sometimes I'm busy and I don't even look to see if I have any responses on a lot of things for Dreamful and I will sometimes go wow, it's been two weeks since I checked on this and I'll go and look and I'll have a bunch of people sending stuff in and it makes me feel bad but I am not publishing these comments and I could see my listeners being like wow, she's rude, she's not even going to respond to me. I could see that happening.

Kevin: 19:43

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. So two things. First, to your guys' point about expectations, unfortunately, I think expectations around comments have been defined online already yeah, by YouTube, by TikTok, by Instagram, by Facebook. We all have an expectation of how comments work. This is not that and again, this is not a criticism of it. It's just we might not be getting an accurate reading of do comments really work for podcasts, because this isn't the general expectation around comments. This is a different approach.

Kevin: 20:13

But to my original point here was that I feel like it's a good testing ground for comments in audio because the open podcasting people who are working in that area. So with the podcast namespace project and some people from podcast standards projects, I've been trying to figure out cross app comments open comments for a long time. It's a very complicated problem. I'm not convinced it's completely worth solving. There's very few people in my camp. Most people are very excited about it, but because it's so complicated, I'm not sure it's worth pursuing because we don't even know how effective these are going to be yet as a way to interact with listeners. And so what I really like is that Spotify has a way to go out there and do it kind of easier than everybody, because they're not trying to solve cross app comments, they're not trying to solve open comments, they're trying to solve Spotify comments Much easier problem.

Kevin: 20:55

Now they've done it and so we can see. If people are like I love having my podcast on Spotify and making sure I'm listed there because I get a lot of interaction, then that's the answer to that question of are comments important for podcasts? And then we can go and say, okay, let's do the hard work of figuring out how to make comments open and available for all these third-party apps as well, because they don't have as many, the audience size isn't as big for somebody like an Overcast or a Pocket Cast or any of these other third-party apps that they like. Comments in and of like for that audience of itself won't drive enough engagement. But the dream is that if you leave a comment in Podfans and then somebody else listened to that same episodes in Overcast, the comments show in both. It's just a hard problem to solve.

Alban: 21:37

Yeah, you need a certain critical mass for it to really take off. You know, if we get 2000 plays per episode and we have a pretty large number of people who are on overcast, but let's say it's like 200, there's 200 people download, I get you're going to get one, maybe two comments an episode. Maybe, yeah, and so, and it's mostly me going hey, anybody else here?

Jordan: 22:02

testing.

Kevin: 22:03

Yeah, and we've seen this in what's the app? Good pods, good pods, there you go, and pod chaser they both do comments, but they're just you know for themselves, they're not cross app comments. Youtube, of course, does comments and you can do podcasts on youtube, but the audience isn't really there. Like, can you do comments in youtube music? Can you do comments in youtube music?

Alban: 22:23

I don't think so you can definitely do comments on a audio only podcast in YouTube. Right, I think we've we've gotten some, but there's just a difference between when there's one or two which is like the one, the first comment often is like good video, you know, you just get like a. It is a comment, it's not a discussion. And the magic happens when I watched a video this weekend on how to set up a drip irrigation system and then somebody came into the comments and they wrote this long thing about oh, actually, instead of doing these corner brackets, you could do this way and do it differently. And there's this full discussion like oh, that's so useful to me trying to set up this drip irrigation system. That's what I would hope we could get out of Spotify comments is you're not just getting compliments, you're now bringing in subject matter experts to add to the conversation and it actually gets better.

Alban: 23:16

Sometimes, that's why they're doing the approval.

Kevin: 23:22

Heavily moderated.

Alban: 23:24

I'm glad they're trying it. I think you're right. It's a good proving ground and I definitely want to extend a lot of grace in judging it because YouTube comments were so bad For the first 10 years of YouTube. If I worked on that team, I would have said hey, I don't think comments should be on videos on the internet because people can't be trusted to use these in a responsible and kind way. It was just, it was gross, it was, you know, really mean things at best. And somehow YouTube figured it out. Where you go into YouTube comments now and they're mostly uplifting, they're mostly positive, they're good and like they stuck at it for something like 15 years before they really figured it out.

Kevin: 24:10

And it seems like they figured it out with really good technology, right Like they're blocking troll accounts or bots and all this other stuff, and it took them a long time to really hone in that technology. The simpler solution is certainly what Spotify seems to be doing, which is we're not. There's no incentive for someone to program a bot to go and leave comments on Spotify podcasts, because they know that's not going live without a human looking at it, a human being, the podcaster or somebody from the podcaster's team, and so it's never going to get through. Of course, the downside is that if the podcasters aren't responsive, then the conversation never really takes off.

Kevin: 24:48

So, we'll see what happens.

Jordan: 24:49

Yeah, man, it really feels like Spotify is just gunning for YouTube hard. They're just like oh, you can leave comments on YouTube, you can leave comments here now too, and you can do this, and that Like it just feels like they're going at it.

Alban: 25:02

Yeah, I mean, with video content being added to Spotify, video podcasts becoming a pretty big thing on Spotify they're adding comments. I'm sure those comments will make their way over to like the non-podcasting video content they have in there, like the Mr Beast type videos. Yes, this is such a audacious attempt. I mean, this isn't like this is a big goal You're taking on Google in video. So difficult. There's moderation issues, there's so many things to tackle and I'm just impressed by like somebody is willing to even go for it.

Alban: 25:35

Yeah, this is an established company that has a real'm just impressed by, like somebody is willing to even go for it. Yeah, this is an established company that has a real business and they're like we're going to take on one of the toughest challenges. Even to put a dent in it would be impressive. Not as much just from the podcasting side, just from like the business model side of it and the business side of it. I'm going to be very interested in kind of keeping up with this story.

Kevin: 25:54

Yeah, so what's your theory? Do you have a theory behind why you think they're taking this on?

Alban: 25:59

I mean, my theory is that music is not really good for internet companies.

Kevin: 26:06

Right, that's just not a very good business.

Alban: 26:08

All of software is predicated on build it once, sell it forever, and that's how the economics work. You spend a ton of money upfront, you build things that are really tough and you collect content and you buy it, and so that's Netflix, that's YouTube. You get it for free from your users. You do whatever you can to get a ton of stuff, you do all the hard work and then you sell it an infinite number of times pretty much, and it costs you nothing for each additional sale.

Alban: 26:34

With music, obviously, that doesn't work, because all of the labels are getting paid for every stream or they're getting paid a percentage of all of Spotify's revenue. And so I think that's why Spotify got into podcasting, because they go oh, this is free content. The more podcast content people are listening to, the less we have to pay the record labels. And then audiobooks was maybe we could figure something out where we buy the rights to audiobooks and we don't have to pay the record labels anymore, and it's just about getting those margins to work. And so now they're like it seems like they're looking also over at video and they're going. You know, maybe even video could help us get people off of just listening to music 24-7. And it's not that they want you to listen to less music. They just want music to be a lower percentage of all the things you're doing on Spotify, so that they can pay the record labels a smaller percentage of their overall revenue. So that's my theory.

Kevin: 27:31

Yeah, and I think it's a good one. It makes sense and it aligns with something that James linked to in pod news last week, which was there seems to be a growing frustration with people who are Spotify premium customers and they're getting frustrated with the number of ads that they're hearing in podcasts. Because their assumption and it's not crazy to think this is, as a lay person who's not in the podcasting business, to think, hey, if I subscribe to premium, no ads right, I get all my music with no ads, I can listen to whatever I want. Hop over to the podcast tab should be the same deal, right, but it's not. And some of that, of course, is Spotify pushing their own ads into their own podcasts, whether they're be hosted on Spotify for podcasters or megaphone. So some of that is Spotify's responsibility. Some of it is just podcasters doing their own ad deals, but they're listed in Spotify and so Spotify has no control over it. But the expectation from the person who's paying for Spotify is the same, right? I pay $15 a month for Spotify. Why am I hearing?

Alban: 28:26

ads. Well, whatever you the number you just said, I think it just went up a couple more times. I started getting larger bills. I'm almost there.

Alban: 28:36

I don't really want to listen to podcasts in Spotify. And so now when I'm out for a run and I'm like trying to set up music on my watch and the Spotify app's like listen to your shows and it's like trying to listen to podcasts, I'm like I understand why this is important to you, but I have a podcast app I have Overcast on my watch. It's great for on my watch. I don't want to use Spotify to listen to my podcasts and I don't love that. My daughter has Spotify on her iPad and then she's like you know, her YouTube time runs out. She's like, oh yeah, we're not doing YouTube. But then you hear the YouTube video. It's like, oh yeah, well wait, am I allowed to do it if it's on Spotify? Yeah, now there's all this. You know this is not watched by YouTube. I don't know how good Spotify's moderation is. Now I feel like we have to pay more attention at all.

Alban: 29:27

I totally feel for Spotify and the deal that they're. You know they are fighting uphill to try to make this work and it's difficult and they're up against Apple, who basically doesn't need to make money off of Apple Music. They make, you know, near infinite amount of money on iPhone. So I feel for the Spotify team, but the product is getting worse so that the business model can get better.

Jordan: 29:53

You know what that reminds me of is Amazon is starting to sound a little bit reminiscent of that, you know, especially with them adding all this media, because they're like, oh we're, we're doing music, and now we're doing podcasts, and now we're doing audio books, and now we're doing video, and this is sounding very reminiscent of Amazon, and I'm wondering how long it is until we start seeing Spotify original TV shows popping up and you know, like how much are they going to take on?

Alban: 30:19

It's funny. I just, even when it's an additional benefit to me, I am like resistant to it. You know, amazon's like, oh, you got a new deal. And I'm like, no, no new deals. Like the deal we had was good, let's just keep that deal. It was like $79 a year and for some reason, that covers all the shipping forever. That's great. I can buy stuff on the app and it just keeps creeping up. And they're like oh, we've got NFL games now. I'm like, no, don't, no, we've got NFL games on the other networks. They're like, oh, we've actually got some really cool shows now. And I'm like, oh gosh, it's just every time. I'm like I hate that every app is trying to be every other app as well and it gets to like a little bit overwhelming and things aren't just one thing, they're trying to be 10 things and they do them all poorly.

Jordan: 31:12

The podcast host released a survey of over 500 podcasters about what gear, software and setups they use and, surprisingly and much to the dismay of many in the podcasting space, the number one microphone used by podcasters. You guys know what it is the Blue Yeti.

Alban: 31:32

It's the Blue Yeti.

Jordan: 31:34

Blue Yeti.

Kevin: 31:35

Yeah, that makes sense. It just makes sense Does it. Because Blue has done such a really good job of marketing that product towards new podcasters. I mean, they've marketed it as the perfect podcasting mic. Now, it is not that and we know that, but that's how they market it and I think they're the only ones that are really doing a good job of pushing it hard as the mic to start your podcast.

Jordan: 31:55

Yeah.

Kevin: 31:59

They have tons of images that somehow they've gotten out all over the internet, like in stock art and other stuff. Like I don't know if they've had to pay stock art companies or if they've just hired photographers to take stock art images and then just given them to the stock art companies and stuff. But you can't go on a stock art website and search for podcaster without seeing blue Yetis all over the place. They just do a great job.

Jordan: 32:14

You know, what's so funny is I actually hired like a professional photographer to get some photos done and on the day of the shoot we show up and she brings out like the prop box and she goes to set a blue Yeti on the table in front of me and I said no way.

Alban: 32:33

You're totally destroying my cred.

Jordan: 32:35

Yeah, I, I'm sorry, and she's like well, it's gonna look really cool. I'm like no, absolutely not. Like I can't in good conscience put that on the table in front of me. No, I'm not gonna promote this.

Kevin: 32:45

So I think you're right yeah, and that's the other thing. The design of it is like it's not bad.

Kevin: 32:50

I mean it's kind of looks like a professional mic yeah, it looks a little bit like something like know, I think they're prop mics that like Johnny Carson and Jimmy Fallon and stuff have on their desk for late night talk shows and stuff. It looks a little bit like that. Sure Actually makes like the something 55. It's actually like the cooler retro version of that, but that's a really expensive mic. Okay, kind of like a ribbon mic. Yeah, they're Kind of like a ribbon mic. Yeah, they're super expensive. So what Yeti did is they came up with their own design that kind of looks like. That looks really cool, and then they just flooded the internet with images of it in front of people who are supposedly podcasters. It's a little bit embarrassing for me to admit, but it was one of the first microphones I bought way back in 2009,.

Kevin: 33:31

2010 was a Blue Yeti. It just goes to show that they've been doing it for a very, very long time, yeah.

Alban: 33:36

They were around when I first started working for you, kevin, so 2014,. We had one in the office and I remember thinking it's that one I bought. Oh, this is. Hey, it's still going strong.

Kevin: 33:48

It still works now.

Alban: 33:50

But I remember thinking like, oh, this is a great mic. And you're like, oh no, it really this isn't what you want to use. But it's funny looking back on it now. They were invested in the podcasting space well before a lot of the other companies were. That might've just been partially the marketing, partially it's. They were just early to podcasting. It's got a distinctive look. So where you might look at an ATR 2100 and a Shure Envy, whatever you know you look at all these other mics, they all kind of have a similar shape, profile and so they don't stand out as much. I bet Blue has kind of combined some of this brand presence being early, great marketing and, if we're being honest, it is a good microphone. Now it's a bad microphone for new podcasters. So Jordan's giving me the squinty eyes, so let me. Skeptical eyes, so let me try to justify this take.

Alban: 34:46

If you give it to somebody who knows what they're doing. They know good microphone technique. They know what all those different presets are on the Blue Yeti, the little circles. You know which cardioid pattern you're going to get, polar pattern. If you know which pattern you're going to get, you know which part to talk into on the mic. You've got it close to your mouth. You're using good mic technique in a good room All of those things which are all chances for it to break.

Alban: 35:16

If you do all of that, it is a good sound. It does have good sensors. So I think Joe Casabona did a video where he makes it sound good and you hear it and you're like, yeah, that's actually a pretty good sounding mic. Now he knows what to do with all that stuff. And so I've gave you six caveats or something. I would never recommend it because I know one of those is going to break. And then I'm going to get an angry email saying this mic stinks. You just don't want those fail points. But if you can get past all of that, it does actually have good sensors in there. It can actually do a decent job picking up audio.

Kevin: 35:53

Yeah, I think what I hear you saying is that if someone's listening to this and they have that mic and they bought it, that is their mic. Like you don't have to go return it, you don't have to go buy a new one. You can make it work. I'm not going to judge you. It's just going to be a little bit more difficult. There are some microphones, like the Q2U, the ATR2100X, that are less expensive and more forgiving.

Jordan: 36:11

Yeah, I think that that is the thing is. Like nine times out of ten, the people who have the blue yeti are the ones that are using it because of its like round design, to like slap in the middle of a table and have them and their friends sit around and talk into it all together, and so it just doesn't work that well for that kind of situation or worse, you get two of them and it picks up a ton of crosstalk and you're trying to record on two separate channels.

Kevin: 36:33

And you, you think because they're USB I've got two USB ports on my computer. I can just plug them both in. That doesn't work well. Got a bunch of hoops to jump through to make that work. But good. On Blue, they've done a great job marketing. You know there's a saying in advertising that the fastest way to kill a bad product is a good marketing. But that does not hold true for Blue. They have a kind of a bad product. They've done a good job marketing it and they've still. They're still going strong. So All right.

Alban: 36:55

So Blue Yeti is up there at the top of the list. What else are we seeing? Come in at the top Jordan.

Jordan: 37:01

I mean unsurprisingly, samsung QTU came in second and then the Shure MV7. I think the MV7 came in third, which I was actually surprised because that's a higher price point microphone.

Alban: 37:14

Maybe 250 bucks.

Jordan: 37:15

Yeah, it's pretty expensive. I think why it came in. Third is because it is like 100 to I don't know what was it $150 cheaper than the SM7B or the SM7DB that they just came out with? And it's also a mix of XLR and USB, so it works really well for having good sound for podcasters that don't have like an audio interface. So I think that's why it's pretty high up there.

Alban: 37:41

Yeah, samsung Q2U another, you know, like the ATR 2100,. Awesome microphone, awesome price point, great sound quality. I know we recommended. I mean we have some blog posts that have had millions of reads and hundreds of thousands of clicks, so we really blew it. We're not putting affiliate codes on all our stuff.

Jordan: 38:02

Yeah.

Alban: 38:02

Because if 8.1% of podcasters are using that mic, I think like 1% of those are people who at some point interact with a Buzzsprout piece of content interact with a buzzsprout piece of content.

Jordan: 38:16

You know it's a funny point that you made, Alban, is that you would not recommend the blue Yeti to anyone that was an experienced podcaster or like knew what they're doing. But what's really funny in this survey is that when you look at microphones by experience level, when you get to one to five years of experience, blue Yeti still in the lead, but when you get to five plus years of experience, it completelyi is still in the lead, but when you get to five plus years of experience, it completely drops off, is gone, like it's off the list Okay. So I think it's really funny that there's this like weird thing where you shouldn't use a Blue Yeti, maybe if you don't have the experience or the know how to run it, but then, like when you do reach the level of experience, when you know how to use it, you're not interested in using it anymore.

Alban: 38:58

Now which is it? Is it that people are buying new microphones and they're replacing the Blue Yeti with the Shure MV7 or something else SM7B? Or is it that everybody who bought the Blue Yeti actually pod faded because they were so frustrated editing out crosstalk?

Jordan: 39:16

That could be.

Alban: 39:18

Could be a little bit of selection bias or survivorship bias.

Jordan: 39:21

You know, what was also surprising to me is the SM7B didn't make that list. You have the Shure MV7, you have the Shure SM58, which I think is like their little dynamic microphone. I think it's pretty affordable. That's a great mic, yeah.

Kevin: 39:34

Like $100. Yeah, that's a great mic. Yeah, like a hundred dollars. Yeah.

Jordan: 39:36

That's a good one, and then the Q2U still holding strong in that five plus year range, so that's kind of cool.

Kevin: 39:43

Yeah, and all three of those mics under a hundred dollars and you never need to upgrade them, like regardless of how big you get. You would only upgrade them just because you want the look of something more than the sound. Or you've really gotten to the point where you are such an audiophile that you can tell the difference in your sound between one and the other, but it's so minute and you're you're basically kind of just doing it for yourself at that point. Now, your audience you already have high quality audio.

Kevin: 40:07

You know how we're all super critical of how our voice sounds in a recording. You might like the way your voice sounds a little bit differently between this one and that one, and usually the one you like better is hundreds of dollars more. That's just the way it goes.

Alban: 40:18

That's just how branding works. I have this $400 mic on my table and I go, oh yeah, this thing's good. I probably couldn't pick it out of a lineup an audio lineup but when it sits there on the desk, I feel good and that's why I have it.

Kevin: 40:37

It just gives you the extra confidence you need to sound confident as your podcast, all right.

Jordan: 40:42

So next up we have audio interfaces and mixers. Only 52% of the podcasters surveyed use audio interfaces, which I'm not super surprised about that, especially with how many digital mixers, like digital mixing software, is popping up, you know by Shure and Rode, and they're just making it really easy to um yeah, like tune your sound without the need of a hardware device. Yes, exactly Like it's. They're just making it so easy to do that without buying this extra interface, and so I could see why that would not be a little bit higher.

Kevin: 41:16

Yeah, I agree, you really don't need a hardware device unless you're running an XLR microphone, and most entry level podcast mics at least offer USB as an option. If they're not USB only, they might be a combo device where they have USB and XLR, and so there are some people again who can tell the difference between something that's running through an XLR cable versus USB. I'm not one of those people, but some people claim they can do that, like I think that there's a pod mic that is available in USB and XLR. The Q2U is both, the ATR2100X is both. I can't really tell the difference when I run it through like a Scarlett 2i2 or a Rodecaster. Now, again, there's super high end interfaces too that are thousands of dollars, and maybe that makes a big difference.

Alban: 41:58

This reminds me of all the audiophile people who they go and they buy the record players and they buy the really high end speakers and you know you're buying all the specialty headphones and amps and all this stuff. There's a guy in Japan who got his own power station, his own transformer, set up so that he said the electricity coming to his house had to be better for his audio. It just goes to the most extreme levels.

Jordan: 42:27

What a snob.

Alban: 42:31

Everyone's got their hobbies. I don't want to judge it I have plenty of dumb hobbies myself but I think there's just like this desire to feel like there's probably a difference. When I'm pretty confident, we do a game show on this podcast where we'll say, hey, we're recording with different mics. You pick them out, there's going to be 1% of our listeners who know it and they all are like audio engineers, like people who are real audio engineers. They are really good at this, yeah. But almost all the rest of us are like we hear it. When we can tell we're like something's off and it's like, oh, they recorded that entire episode with their laptop computer or their laptop mic. Like that's the ones I noticed. I'm like that was really bad. That's the difference. But for everything else, I really never noticed audio quality, except for when it's really really bad.

Jordan: 43:26

So when I first was getting into podcasting, I had a USB microphone and I didn't understand what an audio interface was for other than translating your audio files into a digital readable file for your computer. Right, that was the only thing that I knew about it. However, now that I have gotten more comfortable with audio interfaces and a little bit more educated on them, I realize now that some of these audio interfaces, like the Rodecaster or I think the Vocaster, does this too. But I mean, not only are you able to plug your XLR cable into it and then it goes into your computer, but you can also manage the levels, which you can do with the Scarlett too, but you can also manage how your voice sounds in the microphone. You can have a de-esser run.

Jordan: 44:17

If you have sharp S's, like I do, you can change the mid tones and the high tones and the bass tones and you can add all these different like effects. And it almost makes it so much easier for audio editing. And I didn't know that when I first started. I just thought it was just a fancy thing that you plug in and people just spend money on it because it looks pretty and yeah, I suppose part of that's true. It looks great on my desk, but it also makes my audio actually sound very good because it has all these additional features.

Kevin: 44:48

Yeah, and it's very convenient. So most of that stuff that you just listed out you can actually do in post. So in your audio editing, whether it be something like Adobe edition or Hindenburg or even the free one which is audacity or garage band, you can of course apply all those effects in there and they will, at the end of the day, pretty much sound exactly the same as if they were running through a high-end audio interface and had all those controls up front. It's just usually the fastest and most efficient way to get good output is to get good input.

Jordan: 45:15

Oh yeah.

Kevin: 45:16

So if you can capture it exactly how you want it on the way in, then you don't have to worry about it in post. So it reduces your editing time by a lot and how much extra effort you have to put in at the end. So you just dial in the settings one time on your audio interface and then all your recordings from going forward you don't have to worry about in post. You just edit it up, tighten it up and hit publish and you're done. And so it is the thing again. Yeah, for the beginning podcaster, probably not something that's necessary, but you get 50, a hundred episodes in and you want to streamline your production workflow a little bit. Audio interfaces are a really nice way to do that. They're not super expensive. You can get really great gear for a very reasonable price, the Rodecaster Pro being more at the high end of that, because it's like you know what's the. Is it 400 for the two?

Jordan: 45:58

Oh for the Duo.

Kevin: 45:59

For the Duo. That's what I call it. Oh gosh.

Jordan: 46:01

I think it was 499 for the Duo. So you do save money on it. If you only have like one to two people Right, you can totally save money on that.

Kevin: 46:09

Right. But the Scarlett 2i2 is great also and rate also and that's like 150 or less and you can't do all the compression and the de-essers and stuff like that right on the hardware device. But it comes with companion software that you can dial all that stuff in and then you just load up the software when you plug in your scarlet and then it runs through that software before it goes into your recording.

Jordan: 46:27

Uh, daw oh, I didn't know that.

Kevin: 46:30

Again, not something that everybody needs to jump into, but that's the advantage of audio interfaces is they can make you sound a little bit better on the input side, so that on the output side, in the post-production, you can save some time.

Jordan: 46:41

Yeah yeah, and it's not as scary as you might think if you're technically challenged like me. I figured out pretty quickly with a little help from YouTube, right?

Kevin: 46:50

So and usually the best advice I could give on stuff like that is usually less is more. Like we all have the instinct to go in there and just crank all the dials. Oh, that makes me sound a little better. I'm going to go even more. I'm going to sound like Howard Stern Bass boost. No, you can go too far quickly. So less is more. Just a little bit of compression, a little bit of DS, a little bit of noise gate, a little bit of you know, big bottom or whatever effects your interface has, just to kind of tune your voice, not change it. You don't want to go roboto, you don't want to go AI voice.

Jordan: 47:20

I think, podcast hosts. Last time they did it was 2019. And if they choose to do it again in the near future, I think with recording software, obviously Audacity won by a landslide because it's free to download Though I don't think it's the easiest thing to work with and I think that a lot of people are going to be moving more towards some of these other free editing softwares, especially now that it's out of beta the Adobe podcast that's available. You can do voice enhance and edit right in the Adobe podcast, the podcast adobecom site. So I think it might creep up on Audacity a little bit next time.

Alban: 47:56

Another one that might creep up is the Riverside new conversation studio. Riverside is obviously we use it, used it for a long time really wonderful recording software. They started out really just for hey, let's get you know really good audio, but now they're moving more and more into the editing side and this new conversation studio is a really intuitive way to edit a podcast on your phone or in the. I think you can also do it through the browser, is that right?

Jordan: 48:29

Yeah, you can.

Alban: 48:31

Yeah, this was kind of. I think Descript was probably the ones who pioneered the. Hey, we transcribe everything and then you edit the text, and when you edit text, that actually edits the audio and it's just genius. It was such a breakthrough and lots of people have started using that type of UI and Riverside is one of them and it's so nice just be able to highlight text, click, delete and boom, now that part is pulled out of your audio.

Jordan: 48:59

Yeah, and I love playing with their. They have magic clips where you can just like generate these short videos for like reels and stuff and I love playing with that and seeing what it comes up with. Obviously, I haven't posted anything because I sometimes feel like, yeah, maybe that's not really of worth, but I also kind of feel that way about a lot of our conversations, like it usually pulls the ones that are a little weird.

Kevin: 49:22

It's really hard to find good clips.

Jordan: 49:23

It's really hard. We're looking for the best of in a sea of pretty average. It usually pulls things from, like when we're just bantering before we start recording, or if we get off on like some tangent that gets cut later. I don't know, there's something about it.

Kevin: 49:39

That's always the best stuff, but yeah, it never makes the show.

Jordan: 49:42

That's true.

Kevin: 49:44

That's what I think. If we had a behind the scenes, you get the full, raw, uncut buzzcast episodes. I think we'd make a killing. This is where the big money is. I think we'd make a killing this is where the big money is.

Alban: 49:53

I think they would just be. Nobody would be interested. I think it would be like we'd have two listeners. They'd be some of our biggest fans and we'd be very, very thankful for them, but almost everybody else would listen and go. What the heck is this? Why do I need twice as much with half the content in there?

Jordan: 50:12

I might be like overly optimistic here, but I actually had a thought the other day about where I was like I feel like we're kind of really getting this honed in and potentially we could do like a buzzcast live. I'm feeling confident like maybe we could do this.

Alban: 50:26

We're doing a buzzcast live now.

Jordan: 50:29

I don't know. If you asked me like a year ago, I'd be like no, absolutely not.

Kevin: 50:37

But no, I, I, if you asked me like a year ago I'd be like, no, absolutely not. But now I'm like, yeah, we can probably do it, it'd be fine. What's the worst that could happen? Yeah, if you don't want to ask that question, a lot of bad things could happen. Uh, yeah, but maybe I mean that that.

Kevin: 50:49

So this is going to be live on Friday. I think podcasting made simple. Live event is on Thursday, so we're talking about it now, but we talked about it in Snapcast. Hopefully anybody listening has attended that yesterday, but that was basically live. I mean, I think Alex was going for about 20 minutes. We talked for 30. So I don't think he's going to cut out much and I think, you know, we were kind of all over the place a little bit, but Alex did a good job of keeping us reined in, and so I think, jordan, I think you're right, I think you probably could keep Alban and I a little bit more focused. If we were trying to do something live, I might have to limit the number of Jocko goes. I drink beforehand so I don't steamroll conversation in unproductive directions, but yeah, we probably could. It'd be fun.

Alban: 51:28

I've enjoyed this. What I've seen podcasters live is seeing their faces, because you know, like, their cadence, and you know their intonation, their inflection, like you know how they speak. And then you see it coming out of a person's face and you're like, oh, that actually strikes me different when I see the person talking. I had this experience. I saw Nilay Patel do a live podcast and I knew all these ways that he spoke. They came off very, very differently in person and I was like, oh, it's funny that I've listened to this for years and I know you have that habit, and now I see it as like an audio tick, but I wouldn't have thought of it as a tick. I thought of it as like a intentional pause. Well, I love these pieces. Podcast host always does a wonderful job putting these types of things together and they've got a handful of different things that they've seen change since they ran this back in 2019. So if you're interested in it, I'm sure Jordan can drop a link in the show notes and you can go read the whole thing.

Jordan: 52:38

It's time for SoundOff, the segment where you send in your responses to our podcasting questions. First off, we have fan mail, and this is coming full circle from the very opening of the show. Hey, all enjoying the podcast. Does Magic Mastering use Marco Arment's forecast silence reduction tool or should I run my podcast through that before using Magic Mastering?

Kevin: 52:58

Okay.

Kevin: 52:58

So I didn't know that Forecast had a silence detect feature in it, because that tool is primarily designed to help podcasters who use a podcast hosting solution that doesn't do chapters for you or give you a tool to do chapters. It allows you to create chapters. So if you're on a podcast host like competitor X, y or Z, they don't have the built-in chapter marker tool that Buzzsprout does, so you might need to use a third-party tool. Marco provides one of these tools for free. That was my understanding of all Forecast did. When I saw this fan mail come in, I did a little bit of research and the forecast does have this silence detect feature, but it is specifically looking for large chunks of silence to alert you that you might have a problem with your podcast. It's not going to pick up. I don't think it's going to pick up just like an awkward silence or an awkward pause or a second or a half a second. It's looking for like two or three or four seconds where it would then alert you that like oh, maybe you had an editing mistake here, and I don't even know. In the documentation that I found online, it doesn't even look like it's going to correct it as much as it's just going to make you aware of it. So it's going to say hey, I processed this episode, I put in your chapters just so you know. Warning, there's like four seconds of silence here. Magic mastering will not do that.

Kevin: 54:18

Magic mastering does something different. So magic mastering goes through and it doesn't even tighten up the silent stuff, it just makes all your audio levels sound the same. So let's say, on this recording we have three people If my voice is coming through super powerful and strong, and Jordan's a little bit lower and Alban somewhere in the middle, it will even out all three and it does that in a very sophisticated way. So there are some rudimentary ways to do that, that you can get an audacity and stuff, and then there's more sophisticated ways to do that and that's what magic mastering utilizes. So they are very different tools. If you want something to look for like alert there's probably an editing mistake here then forecast might be a tool to continue to use. But if you're just looking to make your audio like polish, it master it better. That's why we call it magic mastering. Get all the levels the same, some very minor noise reduction if it picks up on that stuff. That's what magic mastering is.

Alban: 54:54

All right. The next one, justin, from the Blind Exorcist podcast. The new company logo looks exactly like the old one, but maybe it's just me. But when you're blind, everything is black. A rebrand is as obvious as a ninja in a coal mine. Justin, I appreciate the humor. Seriously, though, keep up the great work. I went through a rebranding for a corporation I worked for, which took a year.

Alban: 55:20

The amount of time to find a logo and a slogan and a tagline is insane. If rebranding was simple, there would not be companies dedicated solely to helping others rebrand, so I'm excited to see where y'all are headed over the next year. So fun. Thank you, justin.

Kevin: 55:36

That's great. Thanks, justin John from Delaware wrote in said Jordan spoiler alert. You might want to look away, but I listened at 1.2 using Pocket Casts. That means I've never heard Jordan's laugh at normal speed. Oh my gosh.

Kevin: 55:50

She and I were bumping into each other at a conference, I might not recognize her laugh. I don't know, I think you still might. I did the first time I met Jordan in person. I still recognize the laugh and I said you must be Jordan. And she said was it the hair? And I said no, it was the laugh, yeah, um. And then he goes on to say does this mean a person can maintain their privacy when their voice or laugh is not recognizable in real life, given the speed demons? Maybe so. And he also followed up and said just so, you know, cannon Beach, oregon, is not all that close to Astoria, oregon. I don't really know Oregon geography.

Jordan: 56:23

I disagree.

Kevin: 56:24

Jordan, you disagree with that.

Jordan: 56:25

That's a very East Coast thing to say, because Cannon Beach is only like an hour away from Astoria, which is like a jaunt over here.

Kevin: 56:33

I know it's a ja know.

Jordan: 56:34

Yeah, it's a jaunt right.

Kevin: 56:36

Especially for Alban and I cause we live in Jacksonville, which is a very, very large city. I think it might even be the largest.

Alban: 56:42

I can leave my house, drive to another part of Jacksonville full speed the whole way, no traffic and it's over an hour. Like that's a totally reasonable thing to happen.

Jordan: 56:52

Yeah, so yeah, I could drive to Oregon in an hour from here, so it's it's to me that doesn't seem very far.

Kevin: 56:59

No, I guess it's your perspective, but maybe Oregon folks Oregon folks, you know they're they're very aware of the environment and stuff, which I love this about them and they bike a lot of places and walk a lot of places. So maybe if you had to walk from Cannon beach to Astoria, you'd be like this isn't as close as I thought, but if you're in a car, an hour is not a bad drive.

Alban: 57:15

Yeah, a 60-mile bike ride or walk is different than a 60 miles in your big diesel truck.

Kevin: 57:22

Everyone in Jacksonville drives these audacious trucks.

Jordan: 57:25

You know what? I've also heard that over on the East Coast if you ask for directions or how far something is, they say it it's so many miles away. But here we go by time. I couldn't tell you how many miles I am from. You know the Oregon border, but I can tell you exactly how many minutes it takes to get there, and so maybe that's part of it too is like it seems like a lot of miles, especially if you're used to like traffic.

Alban: 57:49

Do you not have a? Yeah, I feel like traffic is a big concern there.

Jordan: 57:53

We don't have traffic. That is not a thing.

Kevin: 57:56

Let's test this out, Jordan. How far away is the Panda Express?

Jordan: 58:00

Panda Express. That is about five minutes from my house. What are we?

Alban: 58:04

talking about? For what was the other one? Kfc, the like $70 KFC that you have near you, or something.

Jordan: 58:10

No, that was Popeye's.

Alban: 58:11

Oh my gosh, oh Popeye's or something no that was Popeye's.

Kevin: 58:13

Oh my gosh.

Jordan: 58:13

That's actually right next to the Panda Express, and so I'm going to opt for Panda.

Alban: 58:19

Express every time. Our sound off question last week was what's a character that personifies Buzzsprout to you? So we were talking about our rebrand and kind of trying to come up with a persona for the brand, and a few of you wrote in with ideas. The first is from D Sparkling Life Coach Podcast, a personal friend of the show for Kevin. I met her. Great to hear the thinking behind the rebrand and love y'all. But the new logo looks even more like it belongs to a gardening channel, so maybe the character of a farmer, master, gardener or a beekeeper would personify buzzsprout. Cute, which is funny. I don't know if dc'd this, but the original uh website that kevin put up for buzzsprout has a bee on it there are little sprouts and there's a bee flying out of one of them, so I'll have to put that in as the artwork for this chapter all right.

Jordan: 59:13

Next up we have juliet. From how to start up, the character I see you guys embodying is the cast of family guy warm, approachable on your side, funny, obviously with a variety of strong personalities. Love the rebrand and your sport team are still the number one customer service I've ever experienced the family guy.

Kevin: 59:31

That's the show with like stewie, yeah, right, I.

Alban: 59:33

Right, I do not see that one, juliet, respectfully.

Kevin: 59:38

Is Alban Stewie.

Alban: 59:40

They're all so flawed. I feel like Family Guy is like everybody deep down is like kind of a bad person.

Jordan: 59:50

I don't know, enough about it. My husband loves that show, I don't watch it enough to comment on it.

Kevin: 59:53

I know there's a dog and there's a baby and I don't know enough about it. My husband loves that show. I don't watch it enough to comment on it. I know there's a dog and there's a baby and I don't even know I don't know the main guy. What's the main guy's name? Peter?

Jordan: 1:00:02

Oh yeah, I don't know enough about it All right.

Kevin: 1:00:06

Maybe I'll queue up some shows and see if we relate. Kevin Lowe, with the podcast Grit, grace and Inspiration, wrote in and said Buzzsprout as a whole, obviously the roadrunner, always moving forward at a rapid pace, beep, beep. Buzzcast, though, however, might be more saved by the bell. Jordan is obviously Jesse, Alban is totally AC Slater and Kevin is so, zach, much love to Buzzcast.

Jordan: 1:00:33

Isn't AC Slater supposed to be like, really cool.

Kevin: 1:00:35

AC Slater oh, he was totally cool. He's like captain of the wrestling team.

Jordan: 1:00:39

Did you see Alban look? He was just like what.

Kevin: 1:00:42

I want to be AC Slater.

Alban: 1:00:43

I don't know enough about Saved by the Bell, but I was very happy that I didn't get screeched. That's what I was thinking. That was a definite possibility, as I'm reading that one when it came in. I went. I'm getting screech, oh yeah.

Jordan: 1:00:56

Jesse, I would be happy to be Jesse. Looking at this, I'll take it.

Kevin: 1:01:02

Yeah, the good thing about Zach is Zach was always, wasn't he? His girlfriend was Kelly, who's Tiffany Amber Thiessen, and I will say in high school I did have a crush on her. I had moved on in my life, but at that time back in the early nineties, she was one of my celebrity crushes.

Jordan: 1:01:20

Kevin, you don't have to worry, your wife doesn't listen to this podcast.

Alban: 1:01:24

Kevin was dating his wife in high school, though, so maybe, maybe a little bit of worries.

Kevin: 1:01:34

Yeah, you could still have a celebrity crush. I remember my wife in high school. I went in her room and she had pictures of you know new kids on the block on her wall and stuff. Oh wow, I didn't have any posters of Tiffany Amber Thiessen on my wall.

Jordan: 1:01:42

You better be careful. Aren't new kids on the block reuniting for a tour?

Kevin: 1:01:46

Yeah, she went to one of their concerts when she was in middle school and she tells me about how this was a life-changing event for her because she was front row and I think she got to touch one of their shoes.

Jordan: 1:01:55

Wow, I mean, that's a big deal when you're in middle school.

Kevin: 1:01:57

This was a big deal yeah.

Alban: 1:02:00

Our last one that came in about what character personifies Buzzsprout. Julio from New York wrote in Regarding your sound off question, I can't think of one character to represent Buzzsprout, but I think of the cast of Buzzcast. When I think about Buzzsprout, it's a company of characters that mean well. So, with that in mind, I think of the show Cheers, where everyone knows your name. I like that. I think of the show Cheers every time I go into the Buzzsprout office, but not because of anybody who works for Buzzsprout. Buzzsprout is part of a larger company called Higher Pixels and for the medical company we have the person who leads it. Lloyd looks to me almost identical to Ted Danza during his Cheers years.

Alban: 1:02:46

I mean they look it's.

Kevin: 1:02:47

Ted Dan-son. Sorry, ted Dan-son.

Alban: 1:02:51

You're thinking of Tony Danza. Tony Danza, Ted Dan-son. Tony Danza, Ted Danson.

Kevin: 1:02:55

Tony Danza, Ted Danson there you go.

Alban: 1:02:57

But does Lloyd not look a heck of a lot like yes, oh, like a young Ted Danson. Like Ted Danson in the first season of Cheers is now Lloyd now?

Jordan: 1:03:06

Thousand percent yeah.

Kevin: 1:03:07

Yeah, oh, and speaking of celebrities that age well. Ted Danson is aging so well. He's on a curb your enthusiasm now and I can. I can tell you he's aging Well. He looks amazing. Hair is amazing. This is from a guy with very little hair.

Alban: 1:03:20

He pretty much just looks the same as, except his hair went white. And if you've got full head of hair and it's white and that was the main change from you when you were in your early thirties things are working out, yeah.

Kevin: 1:03:34

Funny as ever, great actor.

Alban: 1:03:39

Well, thank you, julio, and thank you to everybody who wrote in with an idea about what character personifies Buzzsprout Some of them. I did not expect any of these, so these are all good.

Jordan: 1:03:46

No, no, this is surprising. I loved it All right. So for our next sound off question, you know we were going through the podcast host survey of what podcast gear 500 podcasters use the most and I want to know what podcast gear our podcasters who listen to the show use. So I want to see if it's a little bit different. So let us know what microphone you use for your podcast and you can send in that response by clicking the link in the show notes to send us text.

Kevin: 1:04:15

Yeah, I love it.

Jordan: 1:04:17

And with that, thanks for listening and keep podcasting, Guys 116.

Kevin: 1:04:25

That might be the tightest ever.

Jordan: 1:04:27

I think it was. I'm telling you live show, live show. We're doing it.

Kevin: 1:04:31

We can do this, yeah, I mean. So what would that even look like? So we're doing this meetup in Nashville in October.

Alban: 1:04:39

Is that right? Yeah, we're doing a meetup in October. We're going to have some Buzzsprout customers there, hopefully, and we're going to be with the entire team. I can tell you, if you want this live Buzzcast to be a complete, abject failure, it's. Let's do it where half the audience are people who've worked with us for the last 15 years plus. Like that, having you know, tom and Priscilla and John in the audience is just going to mean like these are all the people who could not be less impressed with us as podcasters specifically me. I feel like I'm just going to get so much grief from the audience that I won't be able to like podcast perform.

Kevin: 1:05:21

That's true, they will try to tank the whole production.

Jordan: 1:05:23

Oh, a thousand percent? No, what I was thinking is more like when I did like pod news weekly review live in Vegas, I was like we could do this. But once we get it like reeled in, I feel like we have it like reeled in a bit more, so maybe that was at a conference, on a conference stage, but they just set up the show.

Alban: 1:05:41

It was really easy. But also all the people at that conference have like respect for James Cridland, Sam Sethi and for you. Everyone there is like, oh, these are people who know what they're talking about. The people who are going to be at this meetup are going to be half people who listen to this show and like, oh, this is cool, Like it's the bus cast people. It's another half of people who don't listen to the show all that much and instead make fun of the show to our face. No, they do not Wait, I'm confused, are we?

Jordan: 1:06:11

we? Are we for or against the nashville thing? Because I thought you were like against it and I was like yeah, and so I'm not talking about nashville, I'm talking about like a podcast movement or an evolutions oh yeah, I think that's smarter, I, I think it is smarter, the idea of me, I would never do it with our company meetup like we're gonna do a live show. This is part of our team building experience. You guys cannot heckle us.

Alban: 1:06:36

It's part of our team building. You can watch us podcast.

Jordan: 1:06:40

And don't give us any critiques. Just tell us we did a great job and that's that.

Kevin: 1:06:45

There's a part of this idea that I think is fun For sure I get all that. There's also a part of me that is very against the whole idea of live podcasting and I find it ironic that one of the people who does the best job of doing live podcasting is Adam Curry and he does the Podcasting 2.0 show. They do that every Friday. I think he does no Agenda, I think there's a live stream for that and he does a podcast Curry and the Keeper with his wife. I think that might also have a live component to it.

Kevin: 1:07:17

I find it ironic that one of the most exciting things for him when he was inventing podcasting with Dave Weiner was that he was like I want to be able to create the ability for anybody to do basically a radio show and now we have the technology where you can record it, you can put it on the internet and the next morning it will be like in their podcast player, whether that be on their computer or if they had like a mp3 player at the time this was a long time ago, so we didn't have iPods, but they had mp3 players.

Kevin: 1:07:42

It could be downloaded there and the idea like when he talks about that, one of the things he says is that you don't have to be that great at doing live shows. You're like, you don't have to be a professional radio DJ, like like I am, because not me, kevin, but him, adam Curry because you can edit and you can tighten it up and you can make it sound really great and then you can just put it out there and publish and for him live works, because he is obviously an amazing talent and he's honed it over, you know, a 40 year career or something like that, and and it and he can pull it off. But the idea of encouraging regular people in podcasting who are interested in podcasting to go to live to me feels very much like the same idea of saying, oh, like, you should explore video, it's just exponentially harder to create good content. Yeah, not, not that, not that live is the same as video. I'm saying it's just harder, just like video is harder.

Jordan: 1:08:39

Yeah, I think it's just I'm hitting that like five year mark where I'm like feeling a little bit more confident about it and I'm like maybe I could. Before I was like absolutely not, no way. And now I'm like you know what Could be fun.

Kevin: 1:08:47

I mean it says, like I don't want to make people feel like they have to do lives or something like that. I don't want to encourage like, just like I don't want to encourage people that you need to really do video. If you're a serious podcaster, I don't want to say, well, you should be thinking about doing live events. If you're a serious podcaster, you can get there. And maybe Jordan, what you're saying is I'm feeling like we're getting there, that's fun, that's exciting. Just make sure we's not a barrier. Don't freak out about that.

Jordan: 1:09:14

Just special occasion experiment.

Kevin: 1:09:16

Special occasion experiment yeah.