Podcircle Podcast

[00:00:00] Kyle Cummings: it's the easiest platform to start a podcast on for the first time. You can create unlimited podcasts

[00:00:05] Mickenzie Vought: in unlimited shows, not

[00:00:07] Kyle Cummings: Uh, exactly. you can create a basic website. We talked about this again in the last episode. have the ability to create private internal podcasts for organizations. Dynamic Ads, dynamic show notes. you can auto post your audio episodes to YouTube

[00:00:23] Mickenzie Vought: Welcome to the Podcircle Podcast, where we bring practical tips and insights for every podcaster.

[00:00:28] Kyle Cummings: you're just getting started or you're already a seasoned pro, these conversations dive into all the topics that matter most to you.

[00:00:35] Mickenzie Vought: last week we began our discussion all about podcast hosting. And we're not just talking about hosting a podcast, we're talking about the platforms that distribute your show to all the different platforms. Specifically what we talked about is what it is and what are some of the differentiating factors between platforms.

And today we're going to answer the question, which podcast hosting platform is right for you? So we'll be breaking down seven podcast hosting platforms, discussing their features and providing some key differentiators. We highlighted those things you could be looking for in the last episode, and today we're gonna tell you which ones meet those specific needs.

also gonna tell you the platform that we use for 99% of Podcircle clients. so what podcast hosting platforms are we talking about today? Kyle?

[00:01:21] Kyle Cummings: Yeah. The seven we're gonna go over are Libsyn, Simplecast, Buzzsprout, Omni Studio, Anchor, which was just rebranded as Spotify for podcasters. We'll talk about that. Megaphone and Transistor fm. So before we get into any of those, I wanna define one more time what a podcast hosting platform does at a very basic

level. And that is that all of these platforms distribute your podcast content to listening apps like Apple Podcasts, Spotify, they all do that.

[00:01:53] Mickenzie Vought: And that's the basic feature.

[00:01:54] Kyle Cummings: that's a very, the most basic feature. Now, what they do beyond that. key differentiators. We talked a little bit about that in the last episode. We're gonna dive into that even more in this episode for each of those seven platforms.

[00:02:07] Mickenzie Vought: So maybe you're saying, you're listening and saying, I don't really need more than that. I don't need all the bells and whistles. Why are we even having this conversation? Keep listening because we're gonna discuss the features that these different platforms have and don't have, and ultimately tell you which one we use and why?

Because I think maybe you are looking for a feature you don't know. That you need. Right? So we're gonna start with Lipsy. As we mentioned in the last episode, it hit the market in 2004, about six months before Apple even started, like supporting podcasts and iTunes. So it's been around the longest. And I'm gonna be honest with you, you can tell from the UI that it has been around the longest it is.

Um, kinda looks a little dated. It looks like it came from the early

aughts.

[00:02:51] Kyle Cummings: unfortunately,

and we're not trying to make any enemies in the podcast space,

[00:02:54] Mickenzie Vought: No,

[00:02:54] Kyle Cummings: but we're not, we don't have a lot of great things to say about Lipson.

[00:02:58] Mickenzie Vought: no, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you, I started, our living centered podcast on Lipson. I launched it from there in 2021. And really, I've been using it, it's fine.

It meets the needs, but it really has a failed to adapt as like other hosting platforms have. And, and they've started to come on with better features and they just haven't caught up. I'm noticing right now they're starting to put features on, but I feel like they're a little behind

[00:03:20] Kyle Cummings: Yeah, they're in

catchup mode.

[00:03:21] Mickenzie Vought: they just stuck with like, we're, we're the OGs.

We don't need to evolve. We've already got this larger thing and I think they're getting a hit for it. They also have an antiquated price model. Their their plans are based on size uploads. So for instance, $15 a month, you can get 324 MBS per month. But I had a situation where we were trying to get ahead and upload some things.

I went on maternity leave and I had to up my plan to be able to schedule four or five weeks of content, um, which was really frustrating. We also started another podcast and. We had to like create a separate, completely different account. Um, so that we had two different shows where other platforms, you have one account and can have multiple shows.

So I think there's just some things that are missing on this one. And I don't really love the ui, the user interface. It's clunky. Um, let's talk about ads too, Kyle, because you, you kind of understand this a little bit better, and you've been even with me on this journey of what does Lipson offer in, in terms of ads?

[00:04:21] Kyle Cummings: Yeah. Uh, not a lot. Um,

you know, this is something we'll talk about a lot in this episode. So let's first define what

dynamic ads are.

and we're gonna go into that in even more detail in next week's episode. So if you notice there's a cumulative effect that some of these episodes here.

generally there are two ways to handle ad reads in your episodes.

The old school way is, baked in ads, which just

simply means you manually edit your ads into your episodes and they exist there forever

With dynamic ads, your ads are not baked into your episodes forever. Rather, they are dynamically inserted via your podcast hosting platform. So that's why we're talking about this because some of these platforms do this. Some of these platforms don't do this, and some of these platforms do this really, really well. So

that's, we're starting to get into these key differentiators. So. Up first you record your ad or ads, and then you set them up as an ad campaign in your podcast hosting platform. And then you can select which episodes you want to run that campaign and where in those episodes you want those ads to appear. And then you can run those ads across all of your episodes or just a select few. But what's awesome is that it gives you total control over all of

that. But that's only if your podcast hosting platform supports. This feature, the Dynamic

Ads feature. So let's go back to Libsyn and talk about that.

[00:05:42] Mickenzie Vought: It's a bit confusing.

[00:05:44] Kyle Cummings: yeah,

their Dynamic Ads feature is confusing at best. have to have a certain number of downloads per month in order to even apply for what they call their automatic ads campaign. And it's pretty unclear to me if you can record your own ads if Libsyn just slots in ads from their ad marketplace. for most of our clients, I don't really care about, about running ads for other people.

I want for people to be able to advertise themselves. I've, like we talked about all the time,

[00:06:10] Mickenzie Vought: Market yourself,

Bet on yourself.

Yes.

[00:06:13] Kyle Cummings: So I'm a little hard on Libsyn for this just because they've, they were the first to market in the podcast hosting space. They've been

at it for over 20 years. Like, come on, I've been migrating clients from Lipson over to Transistor for two years now. I mean, I

just have to think that they're bleeding customers like crazy.

[00:06:30] Mickenzie Vought: for sure. I am one of them. I went over to

Transistor. So let's talk about the next one, simple cast. Kind of tell us a little bit about this platform. I know vaguely about it. I think it's just fine. That's what I would say.

[00:06:42] Kyle Cummings: Yeah, Simplecast is a, is a fine platform. I really like the uni user interface.

A little,

um, that I learned is, and we talk again a lot about Transistor, is that one of their co-founders is, was actually one of the, original founders of Simplecast.

And he, he split off and helped co-found Transistor. but they have drag and drop for uploading files, which if you listen to last episode is a big deal to me.

and I still use Simplecast for actually for one of our clients, just 'cause it meets their needs.

They're not really running dynamic ads or anything, so it's

totally fine for them. Um, they appear to have a dynamic ad insertion and campaign management system. Although I couldn't find any public pricing for it. I think it's only available

under

their

professional

Yes. And their enterprise level tiers.

So you have to contact them for pricing on that, which I don't love just because I like transparent pricing. And other platforms offer transparent

pricing for dynamic ads. So, let's move on down to Buzzsprout. Buzzsprout is, uh, another very, very popular

podcast

[00:07:44] Mickenzie Vought: And they bug you because you are an audio nerd. Tell us why

[00:07:49] Kyle Cummings: Okay, so let's talk about it. it's fine.

[00:07:52] Mickenzie Vought: Yeah,

[00:07:53] Kyle Cummings: I'll never use it again, but it's fine. Uh, it's, there's one very, very annoying thing about Buzzsprout and it's that if you want your podcast to play in stereo, which you do because you have

two

ears and not one ear, You have to pay extra for it. And they're not very transparent about this, so they, they make you pay extra for something called Magic Mastery. so if I produce a beautiful stereo recorded, uh, podcast episode, which I do every day, uh, upload it to Buzzsprout, they they didn't reduce that to a mono episode and then put it behind a paywall to make

it possible for me to make it a stereo fight. It's the weirdest thing I've ever seen. It's a strange thing to put behind a paywall and I'm just not a fan. Just

plainly put, I'm not a fan. I don't know any other podcast platform who does this. It's just a very strange thing to do. So

[00:08:42] Mickenzie Vought: I am not sure they're still doing it. But as of a few months

[00:08:45] Kyle Cummings: as of a few months ago, they were doing it 'cause I just moved yet another podcast client,

off

their

platform and migrated them over to. transistor.

so that they

[00:08:54] Mickenzie Vought: you

sensing a theme

[00:08:56] Kyle Cummings: are you sensing a theme here?

Okay.

do you wanna speak a little bit about Omni and you're,

I have one client that I've moved over to Omni

It's a, it's a wild platform. It's, if you love dynamic ad insertion and want to get really granular about it, nobody does

that

better than

Omni.

[00:09:11] Mickenzie Vought: I remember reaching out to you maybe a year and a half ago, I think it was right before you had gotten all in with Transistor

and said to you, Hey, we'd like to look into dynamic ads. I'm not happy with Lipsy. What would you suggest? And you said, I've had a couple clients who have had good success with Omni.

So I just took a call with them and said, Hey, tell me about your platform. It is a powerful platform when it comes to dynamic ads. What I took away from it was that's a lot of features that I'm not ready to utilize. Um, but I think if you've got a large podcast and you are an organization that wants to be able to run ad campaigns, if a lot of your revenue is coming from ads and you have to report back to the people who are purchasing ads for you, There is a lot of potential and a lot of features. So it's really popular with Podcast Network. So I can think of like armchair expert, like those type of things that have really expanded because they may have an ad partner that advertises and they sell ad slots and they sell a certain number of episodes, or, you know, you can get really granular in the details there.

And so it's really also targeted based on people who are listening and, Generally what we'll say is it's really powerful, but for 99% of podcasts, it's probably overkill.

Anything else you'd add on? Omni, I think, I mean, it's got all of the other features you would want from distribution and analytics and dynamic ads is really, I mean, they're basic and producing what you want, but they're gonna, they're gonna really shine and go above and

beyond

[00:10:38] Kyle Cummings: Very popular with big podcast networks who have large advertising partnerships

that they run across all of their different podcasts. So if that's you, if you're a podcast network, you probably already know about Omni, they're

fantastic. They have, um, you can geotarget what ads play where based on

where

it's being.

It's, it's really, really powerful. Um, but again, that's just not where most podcasters are. one thing I will say is that I'm not sure if Omni has the ability run dynamic show notes,

I really love this feature about transistor, we'll talk about it later. is that whatever ad campaign you're running, like I know your podcast, uh, the Living Centered Podcast is running, a big promotion, right? now.

Not only are the audio ads that are in the episodes dynamic, but we can also put tags in the show notes that also are reflective of that campaign. So

[00:11:33] Mickenzie Vought: Kyle, I'm just now learning this on

this call,

There you go.

[00:11:38] Kyle Cummings: So you can, we can go in and you can add tags for those. And

so

[00:11:42] Kyle Cummings: whenever you change that campaign All of those show notes are the links, whatever you're promoting, they're all, reflective of that. I just think that's killer. I mean,

I

think

that that is such

a huge feature.

Yeah.

[00:11:54] Mickenzie Vought: Okay, so we'll talk offline about implementing

that

[00:11:57] Kyle Cummings: I feel bad that

I, I didn't tell you about that.

[00:11:59] Mickenzie Vought: okay. I think I threw you this campaign like at the last second of like, oh, we're ready to do this now. So this is not your fault, it's our fault. okay, so let's talk about Anchor, which I have some experience with that, but not a ton.

I actually tried, we used Anchor lots years ago for a podcast in our organization that I wasn't a part of, and then I was kind of handed the keys to try to get some analytics a few months ago. And I was like, I don't even know how to find this. Where's Anchor at? And I realized, oh, now it's, it's, uh, Spotify for podcasters.

So this is a free platform that's owned by Spotify and it's a pretty basic platform. Right? but you also, the differentiating feature here would be able to put video on Spotify and then I think that's something that's growing popularity.

a couple of different shows that I listen to now are starting to do video there and I'm really enjoying it.

I didn't . I didn't think I was a video podcast person, but I have watched, Noah's podcast several times in the last week or two since discovering it, and I'm loving the video. I have it like just running and I watch it occasionally, but it's interesting. It kind of adds a new depth and layer to the conversation.

[00:12:58] Kyle Cummings: Yeah, it's really cool because if you don't wanna watch it anymore and you just wanna listen,

that's fine too. You can,

you know, you can lock your phone, turn your screen off, and it's gonna continue to play. with Anchor, with Spotify for podcasters, I'm pretty sure it's still a free,

uh, free platform.

So another kind of cool thing that Spotify is doing that you can do through Anchor is that you can add listener questions

in app. You can customize them when you publish your episode and you can do polls ad listener. I think that's really nice for engagement

[00:13:30] Mickenzie Vought: It's a fun way to engage with your listeners.

[00:13:32] Kyle Cummings: Yeah, totally. So if you were have kind of like a question and

response or

like a call in type, the fact that a, a, you can direct your listeners, your Spotify listeners to go right there

to that episode that they're listening to and pose a question that you can respond to in the next episode. I think that is really, really cool. And I think that you're gonna see more apps become more interactive like that in the future. I've, I've kind of predicted this from a couple years ago, I think

That to compete in this kind of crowded podcasting marketplace, I think the key is to make it more interactive like

that.

[00:14:04] Mickenzie Vought: Yeah. I feel like it's blurring the lines between like social and the way to interact with your audience and podcasting. 'cause there's such a direct access to them. Why would we not more want more interaction,

[00:14:15] Kyle Cummings: agree more. And

last

thing on this one is that there doesn't appear to be a dynamic ad insertion feature. Which is gonna lead us to, megaphone.

which is a, another podcast hosting platform that is also owned by Spotify. It's, it's not a free Platform. It's definitely more souped up in what you can do, but it does have a robust dynamic ads feature, which I like.

Um,

and it's got some other of the advanced features like Geotargeting that you'll find with Omni. not sure if they support dynamic show notes. I couldn't find anything online about that. I haven't seen anything. That's not to say they don't, I just, I, I didn't find anything. So, and then from what I can tell It starts at about a hundred dollars a month, which in my opinion is a little steep

considering some of their competitors. But they do have the ability to host video

on Spotify, so you are kind of paying that

so it might be worth it to you. So,

[00:15:12] Mickenzie Vought: Then the dynamic ads in the video, like I literally had that this morning where I was watching Trevor Noah. It went to an audio ad. . With like a graphic

and it just rolled into it and talked to it. And I don't, not sure if they have dynamic show notes, but I do know on Spotify and for those types of ones that have more dynamic ads, I saw a feature yesterday where it prompted me to see like the last six ads I'd gotten on this podcast.

So it's smart and it's keeping like which ones were targeted to me and I can return to what were the last few ads that I got.

So if there was a deal in there or a promo code or something, I could see who had advertised to me.

[00:15:48] Kyle Cummings: That's really cool.

Yeah, and I'll admit, I don't have a ton of experience with megaphone. I

have one client that currently uses it, we'll talk, the very last one we're gonna talk about here is transistor.

The

only one left. and I'll go ahead and tell you that for me. If you're asking the question, which one do you go with, which is the best? It's gonna be either megaphone or transistor. I think

megaphones a really powerful platform and I'm excited to learn about it a bit more. So, um, last and certainly not least,

talk about transistor fm. it's the easiest platform to start a podcast on for the first time.

getting your show started, created and then pointing to all the different podcast players, it makes that process so streamlined and not, I I just can't say that about many other podcast

apps.

They've really done a, a nice job about, handling that distribution and getting it out and just making that easy, like it It, I mean, the links that they provide, I feel like every time I I start a new podcast or migrate a podcast over transistor I feel like they're holding my hand through the process,

even though I've done it a million times, it's still a, a good bit of work.

So I love that about Transistor. even with their base account, I think it's like a 20, or maybe it's a $19, I think it's $19 a month. You can create unlimited podcasts

[00:17:05] Mickenzie Vought: which is incredible. Like in unlimited shows, not

[00:17:08] Kyle Cummings: Uh, exactly. unlimited

shows. Yes. Um, and that's their starter plan. It starts at $19 a month. That's amazing. I you can create a basic website. We talked about this

again in the last episode. Use four different customizable templates.

You can change colors. There's a lot that you can customize about it. I think that's awesome. That's a huge value add that podcasting. We're gonna do a future episode on this, but this is actually how I discovered Transistor is that they, have the ability to create private internal podcasts for organizations. just a lot of different use cases there.

[00:17:41] Mickenzie Vought: you're someone who has courses or want access to people or have some kind of subscription or private community, it's a great thing that a lot of people aren't really tapping into that I think could be a great resource for you.

[00:17:51] Kyle Cummings: E For sure. You can manage user access

with permission based roles. So, admin roles, member roles, analytics roles. Again, we talked about that in the last episode. I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail, but I really, really like that as an option.

and I mentioned that the way that I found transistor is that I was looking for a private podcast

hosting

solution. And I had a lot of questions about

like,

[00:18:14] Kyle Cummings: cause I was, I was working with a very large organization, And I never started a private podcast and they really walked me through it.

And

their chat is, um, they're very responsive and thorough and so especially at the very beginning, switching over and just kind of falling in love with their platform. had a lot of questions and they were, they were there for all of that.

So, talk a little bit about their professional plan.

It starts at $49 a month. They also have a yearly package that's discounted.

is what we use here at Pod Circle. Um, with that pro plan, it gives you access to dynamic ads, which again, we're gonna talk about in depth in the next episode.

Dynamic Ads, dynamic show notes. They do this better than any platform that I've seen other than maybe Omni,

[00:18:57] Mickenzie Vought: and it's simpler

[00:18:58] Kyle Cummings: Exactly. It's so much simpler. it's really powerful. I, I've been really, really pleased with it. Um, ad campaign manager.

It's much simpler than Omni In the dynamic show notes, I'm just a big,

big fan of that. So another key differentiator and the thing that you get under this, professional plan is that you can auto post your audio episodes to YouTube so they have a YouTube integration.

Um,

Lipsy used to have this way back in the day.

I

don't think they do anymore. Frankly, it never worked very well. Um, and I loved when I saw that transistor had this, For those clients who just, they don't have the budget or they're ma, they're not ready to make the investment into a video podcast,

they do have a YouTube channel that they wanna get their, their episodes over there. So I love the fact that they have this and they make it really simple. wrapping things up here, if you probably already know the answer to this question, but which podcast hosting platform do we recommend we're gonna recommend Transistor fm given everything we've just talked about. the exception is that if you are trying to host a video podcast on Spotify,

and that's a big deal to you, that I would really recommend looking into megaphone. So if you have any questions around this topic, maybe you're on Libsyn, you're not happy, you're on Buzz Sprout. You're, you're wondering why you're.

[00:20:14] Mickenzie Vought: Why you're not getting stereo

[00:20:16] Kyle Cummings: yeah, while you're not getting stereo sound and it's 2023, you don't wanna pay to have stereo sound,

reach out. You can see me in, uh, send me a personal email at kyle@podcircle.com. That's KYLE@podcircle.com. If you're interested in transistor, we always have a link in our show notes.

if you just scroll all the way down. if you have questions about hosting, but you have a lot of other questions too, recording gear, about recording remote interviews via Riverside.

Maybe you're, you know, you've done some on Zoom, you just have a lot of questions.

Go to pod circle.com and grab our podcast starter kit.

Um, it's a collection of PDFs

[00:20:53] Mickenzie Vought: It's a lot of our intel in one place. We're just like, let us equip you. We want you to be successful

[00:20:59] Kyle Cummings: totally, totally.

So we rounded all that up for you. Again, you can find that at podcircle.com/start.

[00:21:06] Mickenzie Vought: All right, I'm excited to jump into the next episode, which is gonna be all about dynamic ads and baked in ads, and what you should be doing and all the things around monetizing. We're gonna answer all your questions around ads, so see you next week.