Seasoned podcasters have learned to expect a delay between time-of-publish and when the latest episode will publicly appear in various directories. But we’ve assumed that subscribers/followers bypass the public directory update so our episodes arrive on the devices of those listeners within minutes of publishing.

We’re wrong about that.

James Cridland of Podnews has an excellent breakdown of the infrastructure change Apple has put in place that exacerbates this problem for podcasting. 

Specifically, Apple is determining which shows are worthy of lighting-fast updates, and which podcasts are not worthy. Surprising absolutely no one, podcasts with much larger audiences that publish content on a very frequent basis are deemed by Apple as more worthy of more rapid updates than the rest of us plebes. 

If you are as troubled by this as I was troubled by this when I learned of it, you’ll be more troubled—as I was—to learn this is how just about every podcast directory works. It’s not just Apple. 

Podcast directory developers write algorithms to evaluate the worthiness of each show in their catalog based on a variety of factors to determine the optimal update frequency for that show on their platform. If your podcast isn’t deemed as worthy, your episodes will take longer to get onto the devices of your listeners who use that directory. 

In hindsight, I think we all knew something like this was happening in podcasting. Many of us didn’t give it too much thought because we wrongly assumed we could bypass the slow lane by getting our listeners to subscribe to/follow our shows. 

But we can no longer safely assume that.

The reason we can't trust podcast directories to deliver our content in a timely fashion is because it’s not a one-to-one relationship. We think it is, but it’s not. The directory sits in the middle, and they control the terms of the relationship. Not us. Not our listeners.

But email is a one-to-one relationship.

Yeah, I know you don’t want to listen to a podcast in Outlook. Neither do I, so I’m not suggesting you stop publishing an RSS feed or anything resembling that behavior. 

Instead, I’m—once again—suggesting you start establishing a one-to-one email-based relationship with as many of your listeners as you can. 

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A written-to-be-read article and a full transcript of the audio of this episode can be found at https://podcastpontifications.com/episode/pondering-podcastings-partiality-problem

Follow @EvoTerra on Twitter for more podcasting insights as they come.

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Evo Terra produces Podcast Pontifications four times a week to provide ideas and ask questions every working podcaster should be thinking about.

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