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Jon: Hey, everyone.
Welcome to Build your SaaS this is the behind the scenes story of building a web app in 2019.
I'm John Buddha,
Justin: a software engineer.
I'm Justin Jackson, and I read the ads.
You're an ad guy.
I'm the, I'm the ad reader.
Uh, yeah, we just kind of fell into that.
It's not like that was an executive decision.
No, we didn't have that on an agenda.
We certainly didn't.
It's weird to think about how decisions get made actually like some of our decisions we make in slack, some of them just get made by us individually.
Yeah.
Jon: I don't know.
When we decided about the ads, we just fell into a routine of.
Did you read the ads?
Justin: Yeah.
That's just kinda what happened.
We can change it anytime.
I mean, you can take over this whole show if you want, you can call it the John Buddha show.
Jon: That'd be, I dunno if that'd be too exciting,
Justin: people probably dig it.
Yeah, actually, that, that, that would be a good topic for the future is how we make decisions.
That's a weird thing to figure out as co-founders is what decisions do we make together?
And then how do we make those decisions?
Does like, does decisions need to be made over a phone call?
Face-to-face do decisions just be, are decisions just made in chat or.
You know, other things and what decisions do we make individually?
Right.
And in the beginning, I think a lot of, you know, we defaulted because we're, we're working together for the first time we defaulted to making a lot of decisions together.
Yeah.
But eventually we're going to have to, I think, loosen the reigns on that.
I think we have
Jon: a little bit, I mean, we certainly there's certainly.
Yeah, there's certainly parts of the company that I feel like are our own individual domains sort of.
And we, I think we make it make some decisions sort of unilaterally and don't, I don't think it's ever been a big deal
Justin: really, but yeah.
I mean, I didn't ask you if I could order those 5,000 Transistor pinatas.
So
Jon: I didn't even know about that, Justin.
Justin: I, I, I didn't, I didn't, uh, double check with you about our new corporate condo in the, in the French Alps.
Yeah.
Um, that sounds all right.
Yeah, that, that, that was at school with me.
I figured you'd be okay with that.
I bought a,
Jon: I bought a minivan with the transitional logo on it.
And I'm going to convert it into a camper
van that I would say it and tell you about that.
Justin: I would support that too.
Uh, and actually folks out there, if you have a co-founder or founders, it'd be interesting to know how you make decisions and how that stuff gets split up.
Uh, cause it, it can be funny like, you know, what people care about.
You know, if you've ever had a significant other, um, you've run into this all the time.
It's like, oh, I didn't, I didn't realize that was a big deal to you.
I just went ahead and did it.
And, uh, you know, sometimes, you know, sometimes you buy the wrong type of cereal and that, that can be a big deal.
Right?
Yeah.
I don't know if, yeah.
I feel like the decisions we've made separately are not necessarily decisions that would impact.
Of the trajectory of the company.
I I'm mainly thinking about financial decisions, but now I'm even thinking there's other things like what I decide to say publicly on Twitter.
Sure.
And, uh, I should talk to Jason and David at base camp about that because David is such a shit kicker on, on Twitter.
Yeah.
I wonder if that ever bugs Jason.
Jon: Oh, like he's like rolling his eyes, like,
Justin: oh, what'd he do now?
Oh boy.
Like, do we have to call our lawyers about this?
You know,
Jon: I'll go, Hey, I don't know.
I mean, certainly gives them some press, like the whole apple credit card thing.
He was on.
He was on the
Justin: national news.
Yeah.
It's true.
I mean,
Jon: whether or not I don't, I don't, that
Justin: was their intention, but yeah.
And does that actually have a.
Does that have a positive effect on the business?
All right.
They must be.
I wonder if they have like, do they have some sort of liability insurance for that?
No idea.
These are the things we need to know.
If folks, again, you can tell, we can test it out at
Jon: 2020.
I'll just start, I'll start starting fights on
Justin: Twitter.
You'll go off the rails.
Yep.
We are talking about, uh, reviewing 2019 predictions today, and also we made these predictions last year.
And then also, maybe if we have time looking ahead to 2020, maybe if we don't have time this episode, we'll do it next episode.
Uh, so maybe we'll get into that, John.
You, you can make your goal just to, to raise a ruckus.
Um, last year, this is crazy.
Where were we last year at this time we recorded this episode.
I'll put it in the show notes where we made these predictions.
But we started in that episode, I was just listening to it by saying, oh yeah, right now we're at, it was just like offhand, like, oh right now we're just under five K in MRR.
And I was like, what?
Wait a second.
I rewound like five K last year.
At this time we were under five K in MRR.
Last just last year, just 12 months ago.
Jon: Yeah.
That's really wild.
Justin: So we, it's not weird to think.
Yeah.
Cause it, I don't know.
There's just something, there's something really strange about that.
So we've, we've increased our MRR by about 10 times in the span of a year.
Jon: Yeah.
I, I know I've said this on multiple episodes, but I still am kind of blown away by it.
And I feel like it almost feels like.
Justin: It can't be right?
Yeah.
Like some, some someone's just going to show up at our door and go, actually,
Jon: w we're missing something, some big amount of money that we owed as someone,
Justin: or, or that the revenue's not really ours.
Like, someone's gonna say, oh actually, sorry, Stripe's gonna call us and go, sorry.
That was actually for a different, the
Jon: wires were crossed.
Sorry.
Justin: Um, that is a pretty epic achievement that like.
T to have in the span of a year, all of the stuff happened.
Um, yeah, it's just really weird to think about that.
The
Jon: one thing we, I haven't looked at for this episode yet, I don't know if I'll be able to do that while we're recording this, but I don't know where that actual code base was at last year.
Like what.
What has changed since last year until now?
I guess I could look that up somehow, but it be a little difficult, but
Justin: yeah, yeah, yeah.
If we can see what yeah.
How much code was added and deleted versus
Jon: like, what did it look like a year ago?
I mean, it's not, it's, it's not
Justin: unrecognizable, but is there a way back machine for like that you can have running internally on your app that just takes screenshots of your app every day?
You know, week or every month.
And then I don't know.
It'd be interesting.
That would be a cool Ruby gem to, you know, just to have something like, just go through and take screenshots and stuff.
Yeah.
Um, yeah, I had, I have a friend who's they have a new SAS and they just hit 5k MRR, and they're growing by 25% month over month.
Right now.
That's kind of what we were doing.
Yeah.
And I was like, wow.
So I was able to say, cause.
They feel kind of like we did a year ago.
Like if you listened to that episode, we're like moving along.
It's exciting, but we're kind of like, oh, well we're not full time yet.
And you know, this is just a side thing and you know, I think they're feeling a little bit.
Of that, you know, is this going to happen for us?
Right.
And I said, if you keep growing at 20 to 30% a month, you will be amazed at how fast it grows.
And like after five K we hit 5k.
We hit that in January of this year.
It really accelerated after that.
Yeah.
Let's, let's dig into some of these predictions.
So the first prediction I, we made last year, it was smart.
Speakers will not be big for podcasters.
Do you remember this?
There was a lot of news stories like this year was supposed to be the year of the smart speaker.
It's hard to say.
I mean, we
Jon: don't, it certainly isn't big in our analytics.
Uh, I on the radio and I listened to the radio and I listened to NPR.
They will frequently reference it and say, you can, you know, ask your smart speaker to play whatever NPR show they're talking about.
I don't know how many people do that.
I, it doesn't seem like anyone's talking about it now.
And I I'm certainly wary of smart speakers and just.
The
Justin: whole listening aspect of them.
Oh yeah.
That's an interesting dynamic is 2019 was really the year of skepticism, cynicism and, um, negative attitudes towards.
Companies that were listening in or attracting us.
And that may have had a, I know for this is just anecdotal, but in our house, my wife is saying, I don't want that.
I don't want Amazon to have a thing on our house listening to us.
Jon: Right.
I mean, you have recently you have, well, you S you had the FBI having this report out.
That's like, Hey, if you bought a smart TV, make sure you know how to turn off some of the features because hackers can get in.
And like, some of them have cameras and microphones and they can start watching you and doing all kinds of stuff.
And then there's the smart speakers.
And then there's these articles that are like, You know, don't buy smart speakers or I think the ring is one of them, which is like a, uh, front door camera.
I think it's Amazon part of Amazon now, or Google . These headlines are like, don't buy these for people you love,
Justin: but by him for your enemies.
Yeah.
Jon: Right.
Well, it's essentially like.
Surveillance mean weird surveillance technology without, you know, I'm just totally going the tinfoil.
Justin: Yeah.
I'm waiting for the, the cheap, you know, knock off that, that is going to get sold on Amazon.
And then it's going to be discovered that, oh, wait a second.
The people manufacturing this or the government that manufactured, this is listening to everything you say.
Right.
Like, it would be pretty easy to do.
Jon: Yeah.
I don't know.
I don't know if the lack of popularity of those is due to that or like conspiracy theories or if it's just that like people aren't sitting at home listening to podcasts, which probably is
Justin: yes.
Yeah.
I'm reading this report from, uh, June 26th, 2019, and they say.
Listening to podcasts on smart speakers is so low.
Like they don't, it doesn't even really show up in most people's stats.
Uh, it's not even, it's not even in the top 10, you know, like of devices.
Like it, there's all these other things that people will listen to first.
I can't find an exact percentage in this article.
It is very low, they say, yeah.
So a lot of people own these smart speakers, but podcasts listening is still very much a personal thing you do on your, you know, in your ear earbuds.
Yeah.
So I think that prediction came true.
Um, the next one I had was Spotify will grab 35% of market share.
Now this one's tricky.
Uh, what what's interesting about this time last year is you and I were both surprised by how many people listen to podcasts on Spotify back then.
Yeah.
Like we were kind of incredulous about it.
Jon: Yeah, I was, yeah.
I was just like, eh, it doesn't seem like, I didn't think people would, um, you know, maybe it's a Testament to how much they've improved it.
I still haven't really used.
Spotify for pockets, mostly because I don't pay for the premium
Justin: Spotify, but yeah.
Well, I've been surprised that they, they did this year end kind of marketing thing where you could show, like, take screenshots of your most listened to podcasts and music.
And by the way, folks, any, anyone who's tweeted about build your SAS.
That was really cool to see that.
Um, but even like that, that on its own.
You can see you're a podcaster and you can see people tweeting or posting on Instagram about, you know, listening on Spotify.
It was just, I didn't realize they were growing that fast.
And for some of our shows, uh, like this one here, what is he doing?
Um, yeah, Spotify is a huge portion of his it's like maybe not as big as apple podcasts, but it's.
A giant chunk of listenership.
Do you have any indication of why that is for certain shows?
Again, this was only when I investigated a few accounts and I talked to the podcasters, but there are certain demographics that definitely listen more frequently on Spotify.
Uh, the demographics seem to skew towards women, um, LGB queue.
Is that right?
Did I say that right?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Um, and, um, younger folks for sure.
Uh, teenagers, college, age folks.
And so, you know, our show, um, doesn't have as many people listening on Spotify are our demographic, uh, is a little bit older for
one reason and has been listening to podcasts for quite a while.
And so a lot of people who have been listening for quite a while, I already have a podcast player or whatever.
Yeah.
So I think that's one reason.
I mean, the, what Spotify has really done it seems is they've grown the pie.
So they had all of these subscribers that were already listening to music, and then they started surfacing podcasts in the city.
App.
And now we just have more folks listening to podcast.
Jon: Yeah.
It's yeah.
It's interesting from their perspective, because I know they're using podcasting as a big way to grow their user base, but they don't make any money on it.
So I'm, I'm still like waiting for the shoe to drop or they're just going to start inserting ads everywhere.
Yeah.
Justin: Yes.
Yeah.
And yeah, it's an interesting one because.
I know, I, I read some initial kind of year-end stuff from Spotify and it seems they're not getting as much ad revenue as they thought they would from podcasts.
Um, it's increasing the amount of time folks spend listening to Spotify and, you know, maybe it's, it's hitting all the marks that they wanted to hit, but.
You do start to wonder, is this, is that big investment they made, it was like 300 million or 400
Jon: or 500 or 400 million.
Yeah.
And at some point they're going to have to sort of, you know, make that investment worth it and, or.
Their investors are going to be upset.
So what does that, what does that mean?
Like,
Justin: yeah.
Um, that just remind I'm, I'm adding a prediction for next year.
Um, um, again, maybe we'll get to it this time.
Maybe we'll have to wait.
So yeah, Spotify, I think I wouldn't be surprised if they grabbed 35% market share.
Um, the annual.
Vox nest report.
Won't be out until later this month, but 53% of monthly Spotify listeners, 12 to 24 years old, also listened to podcasts in the last month.
From 32% in 2018.
So that's a pretty big jump.
And especially 12 to 24 years old, you can see there, they're increasing the number of people who are listening to podcasts.
I can't imagine there was a lot of 12 to 24 year olds that were listening to podcasts previously, right?
Like this is a growing sector.
Yeah.
Jon: Yeah.
I mean it, from that perspective that I think that's a good
Justin: thing.
Totally.
And the other interesting thing, looking back dynamic content will be big.
And so you and I back then were thinking about adding this dynamic content feature in 2019.
And it is so interesting to listen
Jon: to.
We planned it all out.
We actually had stories written for it.
We had a plan of action to actually make that happen.
Justin: Hey, have we fully described why we decided not to?
I
Jon: don't think so.
Do we know why we did?
Justin: I mean, my perspective is that we, we wrote it all out and then we heard about.
This base camp shaping process.
We got a little bit stuck.
Like we, we had written everything out on our retreat in Portland.
Yeah.
And I think once we started reading shape up, one of the thoughts in my head was, are we sure this is what we want to invest our time?
Right.
And why are we doing this part of the thing that was driving?
It was, we'd lost a few customers to megaphone part of it that was driving.
It was, I just thought it was a really cool feature.
Like it just seemed something really neat that a lot of other folks hadn't thought about.
But when I kind of thought about the cost of doing that feature.
Cause it's, it was, it's a massive, like, even, even the initial version.
Yeah.
I think
Jon: there's still bits of it that might, we might be able to pull out and use, but yeah, it was a, it was a pretty hefty feature.
Yeah.
I'm, I'm glad we didn't build it because it would've, well, I would have taken a while, but I, I feel like the support.
That would have been generated for that feature probably would have been pretty big just in terms of how it, how it would've worked.
And.
Intricacies of, you know, stitching audio together and stuff like that.
And
Justin: yeah, totally.
It sounds like this is one of the great things about having a podcast where we talk every week is we've got this time capsule of how we thought back then,
and then we can see how time has elapsed and really like all that pressure.
That, you know, we, we had created back then of, we have to build this, you know, nobody else has done it this way, and this is our way in.
And, and then just to think, I mean, we certainly get people reaching out, asking for dynamic ad insertion, but it's surprising how many people really didn't care that we didn't build it.
It,
Jon: yeah.
There wasn't that many people asking for it.
Justin: We had some big accounts that signed up and said, you know, they were really hoping we would build it in the future.
I can't think of the organization's name right now, but it'd be interesting to know if they're still a customer because they had asked for it.
And sometimes people leave and you don't know why, but I'm just continually surprised by.
You know, sometimes a rush of requests will come in from customers and we'll feel this pressure of, oh no, we have to add this.
And then when you test it out over time, the number of people who continually come out of the woodwork to say, Hey, what, what about that feature?
You said you were going to build?
Or what about this?
Or, you know, I really need this.
It's actually surprisingly low.
And it, it kind of re it, it shows you that talk.
It really is cheap in a sense, like it's easy for someone to request something, but for them to actually be in a place to act on it,
the percentage of people who can act on that is much, much lower.
As opposed to something like private podcasting, we had all of this evidence that people wanted it, people were using it and they just needed more functionality.
And so when we offered that, that became, you know, that, that made sense.
Right.
And even with that feature, you know, it's going to be a slow build.
Like there's rarely a feature.
You're going to introduce that all of a sudden going to.
Like resonates so big that it's, it's gonna mean everything, right?
Like it just, that doesn't happen.
Yeah.
Wow.
We've already talked a little while.
I gotta, I gotta, I gotta just interrupt and talk about postmark.
You know, lots of people are making year-end decisions.
I hear a lot of folks switching from one provider to another.
And, uh, particularly in these slack groups, I'm in, I'm not sure.
Maybe it's because of the year and people are sending a lot of email in.
December, you know, account renewal emails, um, all that stuff.
Lots of folks switching off their email provider, especially for transactional email and they want something more reliable, something that won't be flagged as spam.
Well, if that is you right now, and you've got some budget, you've got to head over to postmark app.com/loves/build your SAS, um, because they do transactional email better than anybody else.
Um, what's more, they, they build tools for developers, but they, their stuff looks great.
Like their developer dashboard is really well done.
You can log in and you can see, you know, did this request go through?
Where did, where was this error?
Um, was this successful?
What stage is this at?
It's all right there in postmark.
If you use the coupon code, build your SAS.
All one word.
You'll get a free month of sending.
So go to postmark app.com/loves/build your SAS.
Yeah.
Anything else about dynamic content?
Uh, only
Jon: that I, I, I feel like I still don't run across it very often.
Maybe it's the shows I listen to, but I they're all, all the ads I come across are host read or not.
I don't feel like they're dynamic.
Maybe it's just seamless.
I don't know, but they're not, it doesn't seem like I'm getting random ads for, I don't know, like.
Justin: Things near me or there's actually the other thing I've noticed.
Cause I do notice them, uh, and maybe this will play into our predictions episode, which I think we'll have to do next time.
Cause I can see we're already, we're going to go along on this one, but next week on the predictions episode, uh, I've noticed a lot of Gimlet shows we'll often say we'll be right back.
And then they'll come right back.
Meaning there is no ad.
And I think this is a there's something here that is worth thinking about and investigating my sense is that the sell throughs, the sell
through on those dynamic ads is not as good as people were hoping.
I think dynamic ads actually introduces a, a problem.
Which is a mix.
It, it increases the quantity of ad slots available that you can then programmatically, uh, sponsor.
And there's way more supply right now than there is demand.
Right.
And so, We'll have to see how this plays out, but I'm increasingly, I'm hearing shows as I listen that have no dynamic ad where there should be one.
Um, also, uh, folks like anchor that introduced their own marketplace.
Like, Hey, you can get your own ads.
On your anchor show, the rumblings I hear on Reddit and people who are using it is that initially anchor was sponsoring a lot of those spots.
And since then it's been very quiet.
So, um, yeah, it'll be interesting to kind of think about that and watch that, uh, because maybe there is maybe there's something going on there.
Jon: Yeah, that'll be interesting.
I wonder what I wonder what that means for that particular.
Subset or that part of the industry or the industry as a whole.
Justin: And I mean, we've been arguing that part for awhile.
We've said look at what happened to, uh, web advertising, right?
Like it used to be just banner ads on daring fireball.
And if you want it to reach daring fireballs audience, that's how you'd sponsor.
And as soon as it went to tracking and programmatic ads, the bottom fell out of the market, right.
It just, it was a race to the bottom.
It was a dirt cheap kind of ads compared to the CPMs folks were getting before.
And there's just so much more supply.
Right.
And it killed them.
The kind of ad revenue for a lot of publications.
And so I think the ruckus that a lot of, of folks like Seth Godin and us and base camp and, uh, you know, other people are raising Marco about advertising and programmatic
advertising in podcasts is, um, Legitimate it's this is something that I think we should be making noise about because I think it will affect podcasters negatively.
Yeah.
Well,
Jon: yeah, probably like what happened with online advertising, where it just ends up that you ignore all the ads.
So, yeah.
I mean,
Justin: yeah, because they're so bad, do you mean because they're so
Jon: bad and they're just like, not really relevant to you and you just.
If that happens with podcasting where it's just an ad that you, I mean, it's pretty easy to skip ads
Justin: anyway.
Yeah.
I mean, and the argument of course, is that with more tracking and more programmatic advertising they'll know you better, but in practice that doesn't seem to actually happen.
Right?
Right.
Like if you, if you want to reach folks who are building SAS applications, sponsor this show, Right.
Like, that's, that's the way to do it.
And, um, we've heard from a lot of our advertisers that say, this is one of the best paid channels they have.
So.
And w w they've basically outsourced all of that targeting work to us.
Right.
We built the audience and then we're allowing them to communicate with that audience.
So, yeah, we'll see what happens there.
Ah, I can just feel, this is one of those episodes.
We're going to get people emailing us about which I love.
Go folks.
Definitely get in touch with us.
Um, more podcasts live stream.
So I definitely saw more interest, uh, in this, uh, not in the sense, not in the way you would think a lot of people, you know, some people might think, oh, maybe there'll be more audio live streaming.
Um, I don't think that is as, as compelling.
People think, uh, but there are a lot of folks, especially YouTubers who are already on YouTube and had built a big audience there that were live streaming, the recording of their show.
Kind of like what we're doing right now.
Yeah.
I remember you.
Jon: Yeah.
You were big on that.
I think at the beginning of the year.
Yeah.
Right.
Justin: We did it a couple of times and I think it's, that's still going to be bad.
Folks live streaming, but people want to see if you're going to tune in live.
There's no sense in listening to just live audio.
You want to see people you want to behind the scenes, look at, you know, how does this show get made?
You want to see what they look like, how they respond.
Do you want to get all of the, the bits that get edited out later?
And I think.
Video live streaming for podcasts is going to be continued to be big.
And, uh, I don't think we're going to see a big surge in audio live streaming.
It just, it, it doesn't feel as compelling.
But people will, you know, record shows on YouTube and other places on Twitch.
And then they'll, um, edit up the audio and then publish it on a platform like transistor later, um, once it's been cleaned up and, and edited into a nice, yeah.
So yeah, I
Jon: personally haven't watched any live streams of podcasts.
I have watched videos of podcasts that are.
Produced, I guess some of the shows I listened to actually have video components, but, um, yeah.
Yeah, I dunno.
Justin: And actually I think we're going to see, because for a lot of kids, like my kids, my, especially my teenagers, uh, who are, you know, uh, 17 and 14, uh, a podcast for them at least.
They knew what I was doing with transistor was, uh, folks with microphones on YouTube.
Like that was a podcast.
And, uh, it's been nice actually that Spotify has been introducing kids, younger people to audio only podcasts.
And so I think we're going to see more.
I think we're going to see more of that.
Like YouTube will still be a force in podcasting just because.
There's this trend of, Hey, we're doing a podcast, but it's, we've got video cameras and we're switching the video cameras live and everyone has a microphone.
It's kind of like doing a talk show or a panel show.
Uh, but what's encouraging to me is that a lot of those folks are then distributing their audio via RSS feed.
So yeah, YouTube owns the live part.
But then we have this beautiful RSS technology that's open and free and not connected to the giant behemoth.
So yeah, let's, we'll keep an eye on that.
And, uh, yeah, kind of closing up the predictions.
Uh, this was interesting.
I had a bunch of predictions about apple, so I predicted that iTunes would be deprecated.
That apple will make its own podcasts.
I don't know if that happened.
I don't think they have.
Now.
I think I was wrong about that.
I was really thinking with this, like with Spotify, doing so many branded shows, I thought for sure apple would jump in, but they have it.
Jon: It's surprising because of how much money they've thrown at apple TV plus or whatever that they haven't even put any money into making their own products.
And I think as we've experienced recently, they probably haven't put that much money into their podcast platform at all, because it's kind of been shitting the bed a little bit, but yeah.
Justin: Yes.
Yeah.
And I think so on one hand, if anyone from apple is listening, I love apple in one sense, because apple has invented the medium in some ways, or at least, um, made the medium a thing.
They have been very generous with their podcast directory.
Um, and making that open, they, uh, have also been very generous in making this a not-for-profit venture.
Like this is just a thing that they do seemingly because they understand.
The spirit of podcasting, like all of their official marketing material is, you know, we don't, we don't own your content.
It's we're gonna still use RSS.
We're not going to rehost the audio.
Um, this year also saw the, like the podcast analytics.
Uh, did they come out of beta this year?
Maybe they're still in beta.
I think it was this year.
Yeah.
And they did introduce some, some nice things for podcasters.
Yeah.
On the other side of apple, there are ways you could be killing it right now.
One give us a submission API right now.
Spotify has a way for us to submit podcasts through an API.
They show up right away.
It is beautiful podcasters, new podcasts, especially continually tell us that the moment of magic happens when they create their first episode.
And then they submit it to Spotify and they see it in the Spotify app right away.
And all of those good warm feelings are all being applied to Spotify when they could be applied to apple, like their music.
Jon: Yeah.
I don't even know how many times we've had customer support messages.
Hey, my episode is on Spotify, but it's not an iTunes yet.
What's up like in the past month or I dunno, like just yes, and
Justin: many, many dozens.
I mean, how, what percentage of support requests do you think are us really doing a support for apple?
Jon: I don't know.
30, 40%.
I mean, it's probably pretty high.
Justin: It's just an, I mean, in the industry, it's kind of.
It's it's easy to kind of, um, disparage apple one because they are the number one platform.
And so once you're number one, everyone's kind of attacking you, but there just seems to be some low hanging fruit that they could.
They could, it w it would take some investment, like honestly, hire John and I, we will do it.
Uh, w it'll cost you way less than it would to hire, uh, San Francisco folks.
We'll build you a submission API.
We'll like, we'll get it done.
And, um, we'll do it for the, our competitors.
And the industry will do it for everybody as a whole, like, we just want to see some of this stuff.
Yeah.
I
Jon: just, I don't know if they do they, do you think that.
Obviously, they're not putting a ton of resources into it, but do you feel like they're, they feel like they're obligated to, to have it around, but they're not really putting too much effort.
I mean, I know they don't
Justin: make money on it, but I think it's a, it's a missed opportunity because they basically have the number one platform for podcasts.
Yeah.
Jon: And they're gonna, yeah, that's going to start dropping, I think
Justin: pretty quick, what they need to realize is that.
So now, for example, with Gimlet being acquired now at the end of every Gimlet show, they don't say subscribe on apple podcasts.
They say, subscribe on Spotify.
Right.
But you also have to realize all of these new podcasters who like the only place they can get their show.
Submitted quickly is on Spotify.
And by the way, Spotify has account processes also easier.
Like there's tons of PC users and windows users that don't really have an active app.
Account apple ID and for them.
So they sign up for an ID, but then there's all sorts of errors and stuff because they have like validated it in the, an iPhone.
So until you validate it on an iPhone, it doesn't work.
Now that I say it out loud, it's just frustrating.
And it's a missed opportunity because those folks, a lot of those folks are just saying, well, screw apple.
I'm just going to, I'm just going to submit to Spotify.
Right.
And all of those kind of warm feelings of, oh, this is so exciting.
I've just released my first show.
And guess what folks it's on Spotify.
Those could be applied to apple podcasts.
Yeah, it could be.
And here's the other request?
Apple is so there's pub sub hub, Bob blow, let, whatever that is, we want, I don't know what you would call this, but a way to trigger an event.
Through an API, when a new episode is published.
So apple you right now, you're pinging our RSS feeds all day long, just waiting, like, but even,
Jon: even then they don't get updated right away.
So that, that's the that's the strange thing is that I, I think what apple does is they sort of determined behind the scenes, what they think your schedule is.
Justin: Uh, they're trying to guess.
And then I
Jon: think they probably guess, and then probably check your feed more that day or something.
Something's going wrong, where episodes are showing up like a day
Justin: later and technology is there.
Like Google podcasts is brand new and they've just released websites and it's working.
Uh, I think you, you put it in, like, it didn't take you very long to implement.
No, it was,
Jon: it's very, it's a really simple protocol, so that's, that's not hard.
So yeah, I th I think apple could build something on top of what they have.
They don't have to change everything.
Just.
Build a way for us to say, Hey, this
Justin: is a, hasn't an episode.
This has a new episode and use that same protocol for submission.
Yeah.
Like just make it easy.
And we, all we do is we put a little bit of metadata in the RSS feed and it's just automatic and it just happens.
And then when somebody new signs up for transistor and they go through that step of create episode upload episode, publish episodes.
Instead of it just saying now your episodes on Spotify, it will also say your episode is also on apple podcasts.
And the beautiful thing is that all these other podcasts listening apps that are just using Apple's directory would then get updated more frequent.
Right, right.
So it would, it would solve this one of the biggest problems right now in podcasting.
If we really care about the medium is people being able, having to manually submit to apple podcasts is just, I really hope this is my prediction for 2020.
Not because I think it's going to happen because I just want it to happen so badly.
Jon: Yeah.
So what, what are the other productions capture?
So the D.
Deprecate iTunes in the new iOS and yeah,
Justin: and they, I predicted that they would have three new apps in 2019 TV and movie streaming that happened news and magazines that happened.
And these were all like, things I'd read.
And in blogs that said, this is probably going to happen.
And then apple music had already been released last year.
Jon: Yeah.
And then podcasts split off into its own
Justin: app.
Yeah.
On the desktop.
Yeah.
So, I mean, that was, that was encouraging too.
Maybe I know they're a big company and it takes time to move things, but yeah.
Yeah.
So that's, that's our episode tune in next week.
We'll maybe we'll try to, we'll try to do a predictions episode.
Uh, I liked it.
I liked this one, the hopes and dreams and predictions said dreams that, oh yeah, we gotta write that down.
I got to write.
Right then in our show notes for next week, just hopes and dreams.
That's the worst kind of business.
Uh, you know, when you're just hoping and dreaming that something will happen.
Uh, thanks to everybody who supports us on Patrion.
John, do you?
Oh yeah.
You see, I read the ads.
You read the bit.
That's how, that's, how it worked out.
Okay.
Jon: Yeah.
Thanks Dan.
Thanks to everyone.
Uh, uh, on Patrion who supports us, uh, we have word from a member space.
Justin: Who just, they just started a new podcast on, uh, on, on a transistor.
Jon: Nice, very cool.
Uh, Eric Lima, James sours, Travis Fisher, Matt Buckley from nice things that I O Russell Brown evangelists, sassy bread, a Umesh and Becker, no appraisal.
David Cogan, Robert Simplus, CEO, Colin gray from elite u.com.
Josh Smith, Ivan Kerr.
Kobek Brian Ray.
Shane Smith, Austin Loveless, Simon Bennett, Michael , Paul Jarvis, and Jack Ellis.
Uh, Dan Buddha and my brother Dan
Justin: buddha.com.
Jon: Darby Frey, some already.
I Gusto Dave young, Brad from Canada, Sammy.
Shukert Mike Walker, Adam to Vander Dave
Justin: Giunta June.
Now for sure.
You know, we do.
Okay.
We do have to get Dave on at least one episode.
Yeah, we should.
Absolutely.
Maybe next time I fly into Chicago, I, we should, we should have a real sit down.
Yeah.
Jon: He would have some good feedback about lots of things.
Cool.
Let's do it.
Yeah.
All right.
Uh, Kyle Fox from get reward for.com and our sponsors this week.
Uh, clubhouse.
Justin: Thanks everybody.
We really appreciate you listening and we'll see you next.