Podcast Sound – PCI 329

0:10 Hey everyone. Welcome to Podcast Insider. My name is Todd Cochran, of course. Join my, my co-host, Mr. Mike Dell. Mike, how you doing? Doing good. Winter is back up here, which is a little weird. . Well, that's interesting. It's just raining down here, so I, I'd rather have it just snow and cold or for, forget it. Let's just get on with it, you know, so. . Yeah, it won't last long. Looks like we're, it's all gonna melt off. So. Yeah, the, the gray, you know, if you live somewhere, it's not gray. Just feel, feel confident. , you know, the only artificial light I get is from, uh, uh, lights in my office. That's it. You know, , there's no me, there's no sun, uh, adding to the, uh, vitamin D. But hey, we've got some good news for you. Best practice. We've got some blueberry news, a pro tip of course. The question of the week. And, uh, we kick right off with the news.

1:05 Do listeners want video? Yeah. There's a study that's been going around, uh, says that 46% of podcast listeners prefer consuming video or podcasts with video in them, compared to 42%. Who would rather just listen without the video. And, you know, and I, I just think that this comes up a lot. Uh, you know, there's, there's something cool about video and, you know, it doesn't hurt to add that as a component. We've done that here, uh, at times, and you do it with your shows and, and all that. And there's, there's nothing wrong with that, but I think that kills the advantage of audio.

1:45 You, you, you can't really be doing a lot else while the video's running now, you know? Go ahead and, uh, you know, you were saying. Well, I, I think what I think what it is, is that some people like to have the video up and then they glance up and they look at . I think that's, you know, my audience on my tech show, 75 25, and then 70 30 on new media show for who listen and who watch. And, um, I'm sure they just glance up and there's something interesting and there's some sort of debate going on. I think if you look at some of the more popular video podcasters, those are doing video as a regular part of their show. They're often in a studio, it's a professional studio. It's four or five people, they're throwing spit wads at each other. It's, it's, it's a little different vibe than just doing an, an interview show where you have someone on that maybe's never been on camera before. So I think it really, it really depends on the show and the type and the makeup and what you're doing. People though, you know, we've moved into a generation of, they have to see it. So I understand why some people wanna watch, but again, I don't think it's like, if I'm watching YouTube and there's a channel that I'm interested in, sometimes I don't always watch the video.

3:00 I listen to them talk while I'm doing dishes or something, so, right. I can understand why a percentage of people want to, to watch versus listen. Yeah. And then of course, there's the opposite article here by the podcast host , why Video Can't and Won't Replace Audio and Podcasting. And he makes some good points here. Well, I, I think what it boils down to is that there will be shows that you can obviously listen to a lot more than you can watch. Oh, yeah. When you're driving or on the bus or wherever you are, that's a different consumption time point. , I, I can't watch a video at the gym, but I can surely listen. So there's definitely more audio listening hours, but at the same time, I dedicate certain number of hours a day to video. So I think, oh, yeah, it goes both ways. I think, you.

3:49 Know, it's a different, it's a different thing. You know, the stuff I watch on video is a way different thing than what I listen to on audio. But I love one of the, the quotes here, he says, video takes you, but audio goes with you. Well, that's true. That's true. But I think at the same time where I'm consuming the majority of my content now is, um, for audio, obviously in the car, but when I'm at home, it's, it's about 90% video. I very rarely listen to audio alone, you know, singular as a content consumption when I'm at the house. So I, I think everyone's a little bit different. Oh. But. Oh yeah, for sure. You know, like, you know, I like to listen when I'm tinkering with something out in the garage or, you know, working on stuff or, or, you know, that kind of thing. And again, you know, we s I don't have cable or, or anything like that, so I, I watch a lot of YouTube and a lot of, uh, that kind of stuff. And, and those would be considered in air quotes, podcasts, sort of. But, uh, you know, I, there's very few what people call podcasts that I watch the video on. Um, yeah. That's just me. And.

4:56 I, and I think too is there is this move, it's very, very obvious that a lot of more people are adopt, adopting live, and it's for the interactivity. Sure. So I think from a podcaster standpoint, their desire to go live is more about getting an audience and getting interaction during the show, versus really worrying about that being put out as a, as a video podcast. But anyway, it's, there's room for both. That's fun. Oh. Yeah. They're, there's nothing wrong with videos. Yeah. Video podcasting was pretty popular when podcasting first started. Yeah. That's, it's growing now considerably. Yeah. So that's. Good. Yeah. But anyway, we'll see podcasts have been removed from search at Google. It was, uh, an interesting announcement, uh, of, or discovery.

5:41 Discovery, uh, uh, Cridland over at, uh, pod News wrote this up, but, you know, when you used to search for podcasts, you would come up with, you know, three sample episodes of, of some of the results and all that. And that is now gone. It's gone. Yeah. And that, uh, and, and Google told, uh, James that, uh, as intended. So we're constantly experimenting with ways to improve the experience, you know, the typical. Yeah. So what answer, what really means is it was not getting any traction. People were not clicking on those search results. Yeah. If they, if they had been Google would've left it. So this is just an obvious shift because Google is definitely gonna move stuff into YouTube. Will the Google podcast app go away? It's, we'll see, but we know that the podcast, uh, group has been moved into the YouTube team, or, or vice versa. So something is coming with YouTube, I just don't know what it's gonna be or how it's gonna be shaped or formed. Um, I still don't think that unless you have a video component, people are gonna listen to very many podcasts on YouTube. So that again, yeah, that's, it feeds that video mantra.

6:48 Yeah. Well, you know, they, they've got that YouTube music service, which is, you know, kind of like Spotify music and, and Pandora, whatever. And, uh, maybe they'll roll their podcast efforts into that app, but who knows? Yep. But interesting. So, uh, there's an article about, from The Verge saying New a k a new shows podcast creation has drastically dropped since 2020. I, again, we're. Not, were they're seeing that here as much. Were were, were they getting this, this messaging? Yeah, I'm not sure. Uh, Ashley, I think that wrote this, uh, it, it was actually the newsletter over there, so it's only one chunk of that article. But you know, they, they say that 2022 had lower new shows than even Pre Pandemic.

7:34 So they had like 337,000 podcasts were launched in 2019 compared to 219,000 in 2022. So I don't, you know, they might be getting those stats from Apple. I, I don't know where they're getting those, but that's possibly true. I mean, you know, in 2020. Well, here's what we know right now. Things are pretty flat. Yeah. There's, there's, there are, there is growth. It's very, very small. But at the same time, what they had in those 20 20, 20 19, 20 18 timeframes is a podcast host that came on that offered free podcasts. Millions of people went over to launch shows over there, which are now dead.

8:16 And the folks that are just not seeing that many, you know, Spotify now say at 4.7 million shows, yet the indexes that we rely on are just over 4 million. And the number of dead shows over at Spotify really number in the multimillions. Yeah. So they may have that many over there. So, so numbers can get skewed based upon players like Anchor having come on the, the space offering free hosting, and then people kind of figuring out that's just the place where, uh, shows kinda launch and die. Yeah. They either launch a die or they graduate to a better platform at some point if they take it.

8:59 Seriously. Right. So, I, I don't put a lot of number, a lot of, I do know things, number of episode creations are, have taken, have been pretty flat. It's again, slowing, you know, slowing down. And I think there was like 20,000 new shows launched last month. So still considerable number, but we'll see. The podcasting spaces went through a little bit of lulls and, and, and, but it's always continued to have a steady climb. And I think that's what's happening here. Everyone thinks they're gonna be massive growth all the time. And that's, that's not just the case. So I guess onto our next thing, uh, best practice, while not always accessible to everyone, if you have the means, consider upping your bandwidth to reduce issues while recording, uh, assuming with a co-host or a guest. Right. And yeah, that's true. I mean, the better the bandwidth, the better the product.

9:52 So I added some stuff there. Uh, you know, if you can't upgrade your bandwidth, you know, there's some tricks that might help. Uh, definitely do not use wifi. If you can avoid it, use a wired connection to your router. That makes a lot of difference. I know here, I've tried it on wifi and it just, you know, it's, it's way less, uh, right. You know, way less bandwidth or it seems to be. Everything I run here is wired. The only thing I have on wifi is my live audio stream. Everything else is, is wired hard. Ah, good reason. So, uh, you know, like I said, if you can't upgrade to a faster internet, cuz look, you know where you live, it's, there's not any real options there. Yep.

10:34 Uh. So you have to have that office there with a good bandwidth, uh, do a double ender, uh, it's a little harder, but, uh, have each host record themselves and then just use the phone or Skype or whatever you're using to, uh, so you can hear each other, but, uh, you know, record yourself and have them record themself if that's possible. And then you just stitch it together and uh, post. Yep. And, uh, you know, that sounds like you're both sitting in the same room, cuz essentially you, you are as far as. It works, it works out if, if you have a regular co-host doesn't work so well if you have a guest. But yeah, you can get around that by using a lot of the services are out there and leave the video turned off. Don't use video.

11:20 Yeah. That's the, the third thing I put in there is just like, turn your video off on both ends because, you know, incoming and outgoing, uh, on either end, it's just better to have, have that off. Uh, and you know, I think too is you can, if you, if you think about it, the bandwidth needed to carry audio is very, very low. I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's small. Maybe 30 to 60 kilobits. Yeah. Whereas you add video, you could go to two or three megabytes of required video bandwidth going both ways. Yeah. So really if you're, if you're doing interviews, if you wanna start off by doing the pre-interview in Zoom, let's say with the video on mm-hmm. , and then when you get ready to do the actual interview, turn the video off.

12:07 Or if you're seeing, you know, normally what will happen is the video will start wavering first and you, you know, the audio will give out last. But, um, you know, be prepared to tell your co-host or the person that you're recording with that, Hey, we're, if things get funky with the audio, we'll turn the video off to try to save this thing. So yeah. We, we have a, a co-worker that is, uh, part of the year and really bad bandwidth and he does Okay. Uh, you know, we've turned the video off and Yeah. And works out. Plus he uses a, a service that records locally and then stitches it together afterwards. So, you know, that works out pretty good, but there's a little lag sometimes, but I've recorded with him before. So . Yeah.

12:56 Well it's been a busy, busy week here. Yes. At Blueberry, this, uh, we, we launched Quicklinks Quicklink was launched for blueberry hosting customers. And you ask, what is a quick link? Well, a quick link is the ability for you to have a solitary landing page at podcast show slash your keyword. Whatever you wanna use. Uh, we pick podcast for Podcast Insider. So it's podcast show slash podcast if you want to go over there and see it. And, uh, really what we've do designed is some of you may not have the perfect domain name. Maybe you're trying to figure out how to get someone to get access to all your information at once. The quick links allows you to have the ability to have your social, all your subscribe on locations, subscribe and follow locations, allows you to have the ability to link to your website, has a player on it with close captioning support enabled, uh, whole host of other functions, uh, that really gives someone, it's kind of like a link tree type of Yeah. Replacement for podcasters.

14:00 So definitely check out quick links. Yep. And we should, uh, be having a a, a pro version of that coming or whatever we're gonna call that, uh, soon. Yeah. It's gonna have a whole bunch of additional features that we're, uh, finish finishing up. And of course, a tool Mike and I have used for many, many years and was released just today, it's called me, uh, media Mastering. Media Mastering Bio Phonic. And I've used the pH oph phonic software tool for probably the, since their inception. I don't even know, I think the company started in 2013. It seems, seems longer than that, but it's. Been a while. But, uh, yeah, yeah. I, I use it, uh, on everything I do.

14:41 And, and now it's built right in, so in the uploader there's a little checkbox if you wanna do media mastering, and that basically runs it through a phonic, it sets your loudness levels, uh, you know, if you have two different hosts on different levels, it sets that it, uh, brings it up or down to the, uh, the, the proper loudness and, uh, cleans up some noise. It's, it's, it's pretty, uh, comprehensive and it's free until. Until February 18th. Yeah. February 18th. So then after that, it's gonna be an add-on, uh, for hosting customers at. Blueberry. So I, I'm, again, I'm really jazzed about this, uh, this add-on in this integration. It just for, you know, I didn't know if I would use it because I've had another tool that from APH Phonic mm-hmm. . And, uh, while I was, uh, doing my show production on Monday when I tested, I got done editing my little bit of editing with the Wave file.

15:39 I dropped it in the uploader, turned on media mastering, continued working on what I was working on. And then just as I was ready to publish the show, the media file came back and had been mastered. So what happens is, is let's say a 60 minute program really will take about 10% of the show length. So it's about six minutes to master. So you send it off to get it mastered, and then you continue work on your show notes. And then by the time it came back, I was ready to publish. Yeah. And I thought, wow, that it essentially saved me one step. It saved me from having to load it in the tool that I have that I paid big money for . And then, but instead I just, it did the same exact process, but I probably saved myself a step or.

16:25 Two and it converted it from Wave to mp3, which is, that's kind of handy too, cuz that's yet another step. You know, I have to, you know, when I do, I do a wave, I run the wave through my APH phonic software, and then I have to put it back into my editor Yeah. And then save it out as an mp3. Yep. This kills both those steps now. Yep. And you can set in the settings what bit rate you want the media file to come back. If you wanna come back. Stereo mono, you've got the ability to set the, the levels. We do, uh, lock minus 16 lumps in. We'll talk about that here in a few minutes. But I think the main piece of this is if you record on Audacity or whatever platform you record on to get your WAV file, again, name the Wave file as if you wanted to name it in your release.

17:13 It's in for me. It was, uh, GNC dash 2023 dash zero one dash the date Wave I sent it up to, uh, for media mastering. It came back as an mp3, GNC 20 23 0 1 dash the date mp3. Bam. I was done. Like you said, I saved that additional encoding step. So, uh, I was actually kind of surprised myself that Wow. I I figured I'd probably save myself at least two or three minutes. Yeah. And you know, that adds up over 1500 episodes. Yeah. And if you do this day after day, episode after episode, and you're gonna get a beautifully mastered media file, and this is a great product if you've never used it, ladies and gentlemen, uh, you've got a whole month here to test it, so please do so.

17:59 Yeah. Listen to your audio before and after when it comes back too. You'll, you'll, you'll hear the difference. Absolutely. So we've, uh, added podcasting 2.8 features to Blueberry Publisher and, uh, I found some more stuff they need to integrate yesterday into Power Press. Yep. Forgot about all the channels, categories, taxo me, uh, post type publishing those, so he's getting those features added. So I'm hoping next week we're gonna have an update to Power Press that is going to include value for value Live tag and everything else that wasn't in part of the dashboard. I think those were lowering two main things, but Yeah. But we've, uh, you know, we've, we've kind of tried to synchronize what we offer in both Power Press and on our publisher, and we're gonna be adding some new features in this next round.

18:50 So, uh, shoot me an email or shoot us an email and suggest what podcast 2.0 feature you'd like to see us embrace and, uh, and put on our platform. I think the Cross app comments one is gonna be, yeah, that'll be a good one. Pretty high on my list, but here's the features that we've added, just so you know, transcript locked, in other words, you lock your show so it doesn't get moved. Chapters supporting basically post-show editing of chapters location. We've added credits. In other words, you can credit your host, co-host guests producer. Known as the person Tag. To put live, live item tag, which allows you to set yourself as live if you're doing live streaming audio or video. Although right now it's really working well with audio mm-hmm.

19:37 , then we have the Value for Value and we're doing integration with Get Alby. So you'll be able to get a, uh, participate immediately in this value for value ecosphere and start teaching your podcast listeners about it and funding. Yep. And, uh, so those will be on all of our dashboard and Power Press. We hope early next week. We know it's, it's in the dashboard already. We may not have released value for value in the dashboard yet, but we have, uh, it all built and tested and just now trying to sync our, our releases. So, uh, big, big, I think we're gonna be one of the, you know, most integrated, at least initially Podcasting 2.0 podcast host.

20:17 Yeah, that's, uh, that's a good thing. And uh, like I said, if you want something in particular that you see on their list of tags and features, let us know. Of course, we also implemented, uh, pod Ping, which makes everything update quicker on the new apps. So go check out new. And that's just a behind the scenes thing, you don't even know it's happening. Yeah, yeah. But go check out new podcast apps.com, I believe, and, uh, that that'll show you all the new podcast apps that are, uh, embracing some of these new features. Yep. Also, I'm speaking at, uh, pod Fest Expo in Orlando. I think it's only, yeah, I'm speaking Thurs maybe Thursday and Friday. Yeah. So if you're in the area and you, uh, have some, and we do have some expo only passes available. If you want one, um, email Mike, myself or Mackenzie immediately so we can get you the expo only pass. But, uh, I'll be in Atlanta and you're.

21:10 Keying too of, of note . So, yeah. And I'm one of like, it's like, it's a, it's a shared keynote, so I get about 20 minutes to talk about value for value. So, alright, we got a, a blueberry pro tip, uh, from Kate. Kate is, uh, joining the, the Blueberry pro tip sequence and her blueberry Pro tip is what do use sacrifice with bad sound? The human voice, it's the instrument we all play. It's the most powerful sound in the world. Probably it's the only one that can start a war or say I love you. And yet many people have the experience that when they speak, people don't listen to them.

21:56 Julian Treasure said that one of the foremost authorities on sound and how to be heard, his book, how to Be Heard, and his accompanying Ted Talk have had over a hundred million views. So today we're talking about how bad audio can ruin a really great podcast. Back in 2018, a study was authored by Norbert Schwartz and Irwin Newman for usc, the Australian National University. And they had 196 participants listening to versions of the same academic experts delivering talks and being interviewed. It was interesting when they decreased the audio quality, the participants listening thought that the talk was worse, the speakers were less intelligent, less likable, and the research wasn't important.

22:45 Imagine taking all of your acumen, all of your wisdom, all of your knowledge, putting it in a podcast, sharing it with the world, hoping to grow your business, your community, your hobby, circle your life through this podcast, but you have bad sound. You could have the cure for cancer and people aren't going to listen. Getting audio conscious isn't that difficult. A phonic is a great tool and you'll be happy to know that blueberry has just announced an alliance with aph phonic and aph phonic. When you load your file, it automatically masters levels and reduces the background noise so you can increase your audio quality in one step.

23:30 So imagine that small change can drastically improve the quality, intelligence and likability and perceived importance of you and everybody on your podcast. There's been an age old argument, you never sacrifice the content of a show for the quality of the audio. That isn't true. You can't sacrifice either one. And the truth is, every single show in pod land could be 40% more effective, successful, impactful, shared, liked if your audio quality was better. So the pro tip for today is become quality conscious. Use the APH phonic tool that Blueberry has now, and if you need a little more support or more production, help head over to blueberry pro production.com.

24:19 We're the production arm of Blueberry and we're happy to help. I'm Kate and it's been fun talking to you. See you next time. Kate, thank you so much for the pro tip of the week. And again, Kate is part of our Blueberry pro team. Blueberry pro.com, definitely check that out. If you're looking for a production services, Kate and the team take care of this show to make us sound better than we actually are. So Mike, we got a question of the week. What are Ls? Why is minus 16 Ls the standard for podcasting? Well, I don't really know why or who decided that, but LS stands for loudness Unit full scale, which to normal people means as loud as a system can handle.

25:09 Uh, for podcasters, it just means your show's audio will be as loud as it should be. And if we all do it at 16 minus 16 loves, people won't have to change the volume on their device between shows. And I think that's a good thing. You know, nothing worse than, you know, having to jump at the volume knob when a new show comes on you, on your playlist, you're like, ah, you know, why is this? It's just like when you're listening to a radio station or a stream of music, all the music is, you're not gonna have to bump your, uh, your, uh, volume between the music. So music has its own standard and a spoken audio has minus 16 bluffs. Now, if you want to get geek out on it, uh, there's a link to a, a really geeky article that I looked at.

25:55 One, one thing is too is I was at a meetup last night for No Agenda. It was a bunch of, uh, no agenda fans and, uh, they, we were talking about these ad insertions and the guy says, I, I've stopped listening to some shows because you're listening in a certain audio and all of a sudden the ad comes on and jumps up and it's, you know, it's 10 decibels higher. And I said, you need to tell the host I said that they need to conform to the lu standard with the ads as well, so that you don't have this big bump in in audio. Most of the time the ads are are right. Uh, it's usually that the show is recorded lower. Well, you know, it's hard to say.

26:35 Could be, could. Be , it could be. But if everyone does minus 16 lofts, and again, what our integration with, uh, a phonic sets all your audio at that exact level that it's supposed to be. So, uh, definitely check it out. All right. Hey, if you got a question you'd like us to answer in the show, drop an email to mike@blueberry.com. Audio texts our video and we may use it. You can also post a question on the Blueberry Podcasting Facebook group as well. Yeah. And the best place for support with any blueberry product or service is our ticket system that gives the whole team access rather than direct emails or direct phone calls. Of course, you can also call our, uh, support line. And of course it's at blueberry.com for slash support. Now, we've been coming to you this week from the new Media Production Studio Quarter Michigan and Mike Dells Road Studio and Traverse City Michigan produced again by the Blueberry Pro production team. Of course, next week I'll be in, in Florida, so you'll have another guest. So locations will, we'll change, will change.

27:33 likely Mackenzie, but yeah, might have a surprise for. You. All right, so. Fill out our listener survey at surveys.blueberry.com/podcast Insider. And you can always schedule one-on-one with me hosting customers only. Email todd blueberry.com. And you can schedule a tech checkup with me hosting customers only. Again, email mike blueberry.com. And we have plenty of swag. So send us your podcast stickers with a Self to Sam address envelope, and we'll send you a Blueberry Care package. That email, that mailing address is on the, uh, the mainPage@podcastinsider.com accompanying these show notes. Yeah. If you don't have a a sticker, you can, uh, just email Mackenzie.

28:16 Yeah. Then she'll, she'll hook you up. She'll hook you up. Yeah. We don't have to send her a, a SAS . So Mike, that's gonna wrap us up for Podcast Insider. We gonna thank everyone for being here with us this week, and, uh, I'll be back, uh, near the end of the month. I think so, uh, yep. Everyone, thanks for being here. Hey. Okay, you later. All right, bye-Bye.