YouTube Podcasts and More March Podcasting News

To paraphrase a great philosopher of the early 2000's.....FINALLY.....The Jag Show....has come back....to podcasting.

First, apologies for the hiatus. I've spent much of the last six months on a passion project - the WJPZ at 50 podcast - interviewing alumni from a half century of my college radio station. Look for a case study on that show soon in this space.

Also, on Tuesday, April 4, I'll be co-presenting "How to Launch a Podcast," with my client Angela Buccellato of The Resume Rescue. I'll be talking about how to get started, and Angela will talk about how she's used her show, That's Business, as a marketing and lead generation tool. If you're local, the event will be at Bamboo in Royal Oak, Michigan. If you're not local, you can watch virtually. https://bit.ly/startapodcastwithjag

Now, onto March's podcasting news. The biggest news is the integration of podcasts into YouTube. YouTube is one of the top discovery methods of podcasts, and I've long said that even if your show is audio-only, it still needs to live there for SEO purposes. Well, if you've organized your episodes into a playlist on YouTube, you can now categorize that playlist as a podcast. Also, YouTube's got some great analytics available to creators - from watch time to device type and operating system, as well as the traffic source they came from. For me, the only downside is that YouTube isn't pulling from your podcast's RSS feed (yet), so the YouTube metrics and your podcast download numbers will have to remain separate - for now.

For audio podcast consumption, the debate rages on between Apple and Spotify. Spotify has the most listeners from a quantity perspective, but they only download 3 episodes on average. Apple's listeners download 30. So more listeners on Spotify, more consumption on Apple.

Edison Research's Annual Infinite Dial Study was released in early March, possibly the most important analysis in podcasting, IMHO. Key takeaways are that after a bit of a COVID dip, podcasting is back on the upswing. This of course relates to the return of commutes. Two thirds of Americans age 12+ have listened to a podcast, almost half have listened this month, and a third have listened in the last week. Full study here: https://www.edisonresearch.com/infinite-dial-2023-from-edison-research-with-amazon-music-wondery-and-art19/

The PodFest Global Summit is live this week https://podfestglobal.online/tickets/

Some fun tools for podcasters include PodSqueeze, which uses AI to generate show notes, summaries, and social media content from your uploaded audio file. I tried it this morning. Pretty good, but like most AI, not nearly as good as a human doing it the old fashioned way.

Auphonic, a popular online production tool, has revamped its system.

And Podfast is an app that's coming soon which will deliver short audio summaries of longer podcasts, like a Cliff's Notes version. They claim it's totally legal. We will see.

Here's my key takeaway - as AI continues to get better and better, the list of potential tools for podcasters keeps growing. But we aren't at "set-it-and-forget-it" levels yet. We'll get closer, but we'll never be all the way there. The best thing for you to do, as a podcaster, is see which of these tools can cut down your production time for your podcast, but check and tweak everything.

Hope you continue to be well, and I'll see you next Tuesday in Royal Oak. Lata!

Find jag on social media @JAGPodcastProductions or online at JAGPodcastProductions.com

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