The Jag Show

Podcast Movement Week 1

Episode Notes

For years, I've been singing the praises of Podcast Movement - the convention that got me into this space full time.  This year, as with all other things, they've gone virtual.  And I really like the format - the seminars and panels were Tuesday/Thursday this week and next.  Staggering them out allows me to run my business during the off days, and more importantly, avoids the dreaded "Brady Bunch Square Zoom Fatigue."  I watch what I can live.  When I hit my saturation point, I can go back and watch recordings for an hour or two on the off days.  Brilliantly put together.  I'll mention two panels from week 1.

1) The always brilliant Tom Webster of Edison Research (Tuesday keynote):

2) Spotify's panel from Thursday.

Brene Brown's "Dare To Lead" now up as  Spotify exclusive. https://newsroom.spotify.com/2020-09-23/the-ever-curious-brene-brown-comes-to-spotify-with-two-exclusive-podcasts/?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2020-09-24

Billy McFarland - Dumpster Fyre Podcast from Prison, with Jordan Harbinger (via Podnews): https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2020/10/fyre-festivals-billy-mcfarland-has-recorded-a-podcast-from-prison?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2020-10-21

Descript launches video editor...stay tuned.https://www.descript.com/video-editing

If you're looking for help launching, refining, or editing your podcast - you can always feel free to reach out to me:

Website: https://jagindetroit.com/

email: JAG@JAGinDetroit.com

Phone: (313) 757-2JAG (2524)

Instagram/Twitter/Facebook: @JAGinDetroit

 

Episode Transcription

For years. I have been singing the praises of Podcast Movement, the convention that really got me into this space full time. And this year, as with all the other things, they've gone virtual. And I gotta say, I really like the format. The way they've set it up is that the seminars and panels were Tuesday, Thursday this week and next week.

So because they're staggered out, this allows me to, as a solo preneur to run my business during the off days. And more importantly, it avoids that dreaded Brady bunch,  Zoom, square fatigue, which we are all feeling at this point. So I watch what I can live. And when I hit my saturation point, I walk away.

And I can go back and watch recordings for an hour or two on the off days, of the previously done sessions. Brilliantly put together- a huge credit to the Podcast Movement team for the way they've done it.

I'll mention two panels that I watched from the first week. The first was the always brilliant Tom Webster of Edison Research. He was the Tuesday keynote to start things off. 43% of the U S population now listen to spoken word audio daily. That is almost half. And in isolation, the second quarter of 2020, when the coronavirus lockdown was really in place, podcast listening at home was 73% of total podcast listening. We were all home, weren't going anywhere.

And here was the most interesting stat-  I tweeted about this earlier in the week. 58% of monthly podcast listeners actually spend time listening to some podcasts with other people, sharing ear pods or, you know, listening on a speaker. The pandemic has shifted the mentality around podcasting from intimate-  someone walking around with their air pods-  to having a sense of community, which is something we all are desperately craving in these times.

I thought that was really interesting. In 2020 podcasting is more about a community than an intimate one-on-one relationship. Yesterday, Thursday, I watched a Spotify panel, a little bit of an ad for a Spotify for Podcasters, but still some really interesting information there. Worldwide, Spotify is the dominant app to listen to podcasts in. In the US, Apple podcasts, still rule because of the iPhone proliferation, but around the world, there are a lot more Android devices and Spotify, of course, being available on both Android and Apple, Spotify is really the worldwide leader. Spotify now has 300 million users. Half of them are premium users. That is a 200% increase year over year. And as Spotify starts to bridge the gap between podcasting and music, they have access to some really great data. In your podcasting dashboard, you can actually see the artists that your listeners like the most, and you can get really detailed analytics about your listeners- when they tune out, when they tune in, demographics info and more. Spotify has all that. And they're going to let you look at it. So really good Spotify analytics. I think they're a lot more transparent than Apple is in that department.  That's something to keep an eye on. And then of course they promote a lot of tools that Spotify for Podcasters have, which include notifications if you get on one of their charts, if you're featured in one of their editorial selected podcasts. They also offer a lot of assets for social sharing and these little visual promo cards, too.  If you wanna promote your podcast episode, also their version of QR codes to have say you were doing an event somewhere and you wanted to put a code for people to scan up on a poster someday. If we ever get through the Corona virus. 

So looking forward to what is to come in podcast movement again. Great, great job with everything so far in the first week, I'll give you three quick podcast news hits before we wrap up. 

The great Brene Brown now has a second show as a Spotify exclusive, and it's called Dare to Lead.

Billy McFarland. You may remember him as the crook behind the infamous Fyre Festival, subject of a couple of documentaries last year. He's got a podcast. From jail. The name of the podcast is appropriately Dumpster Fire, spelled F Y R E. 

And finally, Descript has launched a video editor. They announced this this week. Descript is a service that will transcribe your podcast and let you edit your audio as a Microsoft word doc, as you edit the transcript.  Now what some other folks in the Podcast Editors Club, including Steve Stewart and I have noticed is that the Descript audio editor is generally pretty good at removing ums and uhs. You can kind of knock them all out with one button, which is pretty cool. But when you try to take out other crutch words, like, like sorta kinda, and other words that sometimes run into the next word, the editor is not as good with those other crutch words.

So, because it's not perfected yet, I'm really curious to see how the video editor is going to work. Supposedly you can edit it in a word doc, just like you can, the audio. But as we all know, video editing is much more complicated than audio editing. So they've just launched this. I have not had a chance to play with it yet. I hope to in the coming weeks and also to look at other people and what they're saying about it, but supposedly Descript is now letting  you edit video with the ease of editing a word doc. So we'll keep an eye on that 

As always, that'll do it for this week's edition of the JAG show, stay healthy, stay safe, and I will talk to you next week. Lata!