Would it surprise you to learn the most popular podcast listening app, as reported by actual listeners, is not Apple Podcasts or Spotify, but actually YouTube? 

Yes, your podcast’s analytics package reports something quite different. That’s mostly due to differences in accounting between listening platforms and the podcast industry’s obsession with the pointless metric of “download”.

But it’s also because podcasters aren’t playing to the strengths of listening/watching services used by living, breathing humans to more than just listen to podcasts.

Far too few of us make the type of content that works well on YouTube, preferring instead the low-effort (and low-result) approach of uploading full episodes only.

Few, if any, of us are experimenting with alternate cuts and remastered versions of our episodes on Spotify, when that’s been a staple of the music industry since the music industry started.

Every year we hear from consumers that they listen to our shows in ways we have trouble wrapping our heads around. And every year, we close our eyes to the reality staring us in the face and resume our efforts of trying to distribute our episodes everywhere with as little effort as possible.

What would you change about your podcast publishing if you considered your Apple Podcasts audience different from your Spotify audience, which is distinctly different from your YouTube audience?

Because they are all three distinctly different audiences. Perhaps it’s time to treat them as such.

Links Mentioned:

• Edison Research Podcast Consumer Tracker - https://www.edisonresearch.com/the-podcast-consumer-quarterly-tracking-report/

• Tom Webster’s article - https://tomwebster.media/archive/platform-wars/

• Overcast - https://overcast.fm/

• Podcast Pontifications In Your Inbox - https://podcastpontifications.com/#subscribe

• Coffee Membership: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/evoterra

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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/facing-podcastings-round-peg-square-hole-problem

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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. Subscribe today at https://PodcastPontifications.com

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