We loved having James Crildland on our show back in 2018 when we fussed about podcast discovery when there were a half million podcasts in the universe. There are now 2.5 million and we have so many more questions to ask. In this episode, I get a little help from my Podcast SuperFriends Jag in Detroit and Catherine O’Brien who are heavy consumers of James’ Podnews and Podland, the latter now into its second year. we discuss Apple v. Spotify, what Indie podcasters are still missing out on, and how North America radio is faring overall. We also get into the weeds on some ad tech stuff that should fascinate you, even if terms like “dynamic ad insertion” and AI make your eyes glaze over. You get a lot of junk email everyday, but this will not be one of them Subscribe to Podnews and get the latest on everything happening in the world of podcast. There's also a companion podcast available everywhere... I listen to it daily in a flash briefing via an Alexa Skill. We also discussed the first year of Podland, which is co-hosted by James and Sam Sethi. My thanks also to Jon Gay From Jag in Detroit Podcasts and Catherine O'Brien From Branch Out Programs for lending some questions to the episode. You can check out their episodes in this series below. We think this is a very fine place to record a podcast. James needed to vacate his home studio because of the prospect of noise from renovations, so he ventured up to a high point for excellent cell coverage where we could get a nice feed through Squadcast. We use Squadcast to record most of our episodes, and if you want to sign up, use the promo code SOUNDOFF to get your first month free. Would you like a transcript of the show? James was on the New Media Show at Podcast Movement and spoke about the importance of having a transcript. Our Network site has a copy of a transcript. It is powered by PodPage and they support the transcription space. James provided a solution that is powered by Microsoft and yes we pay for that and above is how that solution turned out. Going forward we will be working to make these available on both the network site and this site. There is indeed a fair amount of catch up to do.

BJ Shea is the morning show host at the legendary KISW in Seattle. The BJ and Migs show has anchored the station since 2005; if you aren't familiar with KISW, it's the famous underground and later grunge station that's been home to great DJ personalities such as Bob Rivers, Howard Stern, Gary Crow, Mike West, and more. BJ Shea currently hosts the 5AM-10AM morning show, BJ & Migs, on KISW with his co-host, Steve Migs. Imagine being a fly on the wall of a group of friends that goof on one another, while making each other laugh & think. That is what listening to BJ & Migs is all about. BJ Shea is trying to do a show, but Steve Migs is incapable of taking anything seriously. The Rev likes to nerd-rage, Vicky’s mind is always in the gutter, and Danny is busy watching Titanic and listening to Good Charlotte. Oh...and BJ’s kids, Joe and Sara, are here and we are not sure why...other than to make BJ miserable (these are BJ's words, don't look at me!). BJ also appears as a co-host of Geek Nation, a geek-centric podcast about all things nerdy, from movies and television to tech and comics. Check out an episode of this podcast linked below, where BJ reviews the latest comics from Spiderman, Oblivion Song, and Fantastic Four, and deep dives into a crazy new SyFy show. It's good, solid fun, with the added flavour of some good recommendations for new binge-worthy content. We talked a lot about Tom Leykis. You can heard the episode we did with him here. Click here to listen to Geek Nation Episode, "The Eagle Has Landed" Bob Rivers: Where is He Now? You may know of Bob Rivers from his DJ antics, but what has he been up to these days? Before BJ joined the ranks of KISW, his predecessor was belting out Christmas tune parodies (his album, Twisted Christmas, was certified Gold from the Recording Industry Association of America), spending 11 days on-the-air during a Baltimore Orioles losing streak, and appearing as an extra in Star Trek: Enterprise. But what is he up to now? Well, guess what? He's got a podcast! Bob co-hosts The Bob & Zip Show with Ed Kelly where they discuss absolutely everything from world events to television and beyond. He's still making parody tunes; check out his latest below, entitled "You Gotta Wash Your Hands", the content of which should be pretty self-explanatory. Click here for full listing of episodes of The Bob & Zip Show with Ed Kelly! Listen to Bob's newest twisted tune below: Remembering Steve Young BJ had the distinct honour of working with one of the great radio programmers of our time, Steve Young. By all accounts, he was a fabulous mentor, a great friend, and simply one of the most talented radio programmers ever in Canada. Here's a tribute to Steve, written by Jaye Albright, that sums up his presence and impact perfectly: "Young spent eight years working with Jones Radio Networks (now Dial-Global) where resonances of his smile will long reverberate in the halls, he had programmed such high-profile stations as WAXQ (Q104.3)/New York, KISW/Seattle, CJAY/Calgary and CITI-FM/Winnipeg. He also was operations director of WNEW/New York and spent some time as Nationwide's western region group PD, overseeing a roster that included KLUC/Las Vegas and KRQQ/Tucson. He joined Jones Radio Networks in October 2000 as director of rock and pop programming, transitioning to senior programming consultant when the company became Dial-Global in June. Young started consulting at Joint Communications Corp. in 1986, and eventually opened his own firm, Youngradio Management, in 1995, working with a lineup that included WHTZ (Z100), WKTU and WTJM (Jammin 105) in New York. At WAXQ, Steve took the station from a 22nd place ranking in the 25-54 demographic and in three Arbitrons, moved it to 5th place in the New York metro. Steve also served as a research consultant for Z-100, WKTU and WTJM during his time with AM/FM Inc. Steve worked on the air in several Canadian markets at such stations as CJFM, a Montreal Hot Adult Contemporary station; CKRC, a CHR in Winnipeg; and CITI FM an Album Rock station also in Winnipeg. Trained in Communications at York University in Toronto, Steve was also the Program Director of one of the first campus radio stations in Canada, for two years. To say the least, he was an expert in research analysis and strategic thinking, database marketing, and talent development. Steve was reportedly struck by a heart attack on a cruise to Cabo San Lucas, was hospitalized and died Monday. Young unselfishly gave his intelligence, friendship and enduring wit to those of us whose lives he touched during his 32 years spanning all aspects of radio, on-air and management." For more on BJ, check out the KISW website, or follow him on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Amanda Cupido is the new Director for Talk and Talent at AM640 in Toronto. Her hiring sends a clear message about where News/Talk radio is headed - and that's towards storytelling and multi-platform. AM has seen its numbers shift drastically over the last few years. Listening is longer, shorter, terrestrial, online and on smart-speakers mores than ever. Unquestionably the pandemic has created some super-uses of radio, but also the growth in podcasting has made radio news outlets take notice. In this episode, we talk Amanda's journey through the industry (including receiving military training before working as a journalist in Afghanistan), as well as her thoughts on how Canadian broadcasting could evolve. There are University dissertations shorter than Amanda's resume, so for brevity's sake, she is currently: Director of Talk & Talent at AM640 in Toronto, entrepreneur, freelance podcast consultant herself, author of a best-selling book, and a Journalism instructor at both Ryerson University and Seneca College. Amanda and Matt also go deep on podcasting and discuss Canada feeling behind terms of podcasting, but Amanda shares some excellent ideas about how we can elevate quickly. And the best news - there is plenty of space for more Canadian podcasts. At the outset of the show, Matt mentioned that Amanda's hire is ideal for the 2020's. Given the data that has surfaced from Edison Research and analyzed from Steve Goldstein at Amplifi Media, radio could use a few more audio disruptors in the Director's chair at talk radio stations. Do not pass up Steve's blog post if you are in radio... I'll even give you a second chance to click to it. If you are looking to start a podcast - please contact myself or one of the Podcast Superfriends. We are full of useful information to get your brand soaring to new heights. For reference - follow Amanda on LinkedIn or her personal website. If you're somehow still not convinced about her expertise, or just want to connect with her personally, check out her LinkedIn or her personal website. I'd also highly recommend picking up her book, Let's Talk Podcasting, or listening to any of her speaking engagements if you want to hear more of her sage wisdom. Finally, we mentioned Larry Gifford near the end of the show, and you should definitely give him a listen on the Radio Stuff Podcast. We noticed that the podcast was not in all the places we would expect it, but Larry has a really important podcast called "When Life Gives You Parkinsons" which we featured before its second season. Subscribe to it here.

My New Year's resolution is to call more people and speak to them, rather than pretend I know what's going on in their lives because I follow them on Facebook or Instagram. Natasha was my first victim. After 12 years, I spoke with her about her ascension to morning radio in Montreal, her stint working for Entertainment Tonight Canada, her experiences as a mom, and coping with life's unexpected changes. (Including her departure from ET Canada) One of the true successes of her morning show career is the special relationship she has with Freeway and Lee, and she spoke about that in detail. We also swapped a few wine suggestions which can be found here: Natasha's: Liano (Italy) and Farnito (Italy) Matt's: Fagus (Spain) and Ruffino (Italy) The title of this episode was taken from the project that Natasha started with one of the women she met on that trip to Tuscany. Maddy K is an event architect and business coach, and has teamed up with Natasha to create Women’s Luxury Retreats that empowers, renews and redefines. Natasha also spoke about Debbie Travis who convinced her to go to Italy and it led to a reboot in her approach to life. Debbie offers those trips on her website and her new book is now available.

Will Nash is the afternoon drive host for Fresh 93.1 in Barrie, Ontario, as well as the midday host on Energy 95.3 in Hamilton and Toronto. He's a radio veteran who's been all over Ontario, and has dozens of celebrity interviews under his belt- but his career didn't exactly start out that way. In this episode, I talk to him about working on street teams, moving to a small town in northern Alberta for his first full on-air gig, his transition to a bigger stage in Toronto, and all the shuffling around that eventually brought him to the position he's in now. Will tells me about his struggle to come to terms with being gay, which as you might imagine, was quite the challenge as an on-air personality in Peace River, Alberta. He also shares his experiences teaching Radio Broadcasting at Mohawk College, giving us some insight into the changes the radio industry has gone through and the way schools have adapted for the future. He's hopeful the next generation will stay enthusiastic and keep radio evolving. You can visit Will's personal website here Listen to him here from 2-7pm Or here from 9am-3pm

On this week's episode, we enjoy the company of writer, blogger, YouTuber, and overall lover of rock music, Lauryn Schaffner. Lauryn works as a writer for Alternative Nationalist and interns in public relations at Bread & Circuses Inc., a music agency devoted to providing bands with music business services such as publicity, management, and booking. We ask how her passion for rock music took her down this path, and find out what role radio played in getting her there. Not surprisingly, radio did play a role. But not surprisingly, it was her parents who listened to the radio - not her. She is living out her rock and roll dreams by writing for alternativenation.net, and she recently started Vlogging on her YouTube channel. As we found out during our conversation, she's had the YouTube channel since 2008 but used to it post her favourite videos, which earned hundreds of thousands of hits in an era prior to Vevo. On her page, you will find conversations with Taylor Momsen, The Pretty Reckless; Shaun Morgan, Seether; Josh Kiszka, Greta Van Fleet; and Myles Kennedy. Last week, she graduated with a degree in criminal psychology from Florida State University. She explains that writing for AN (Alternative Nation) meant embracing the opportunities and immersing herself in her passion for music, which pushed her to be honest with myself and follow it instead of a career in criminology. Lauryn will be on tour this summer wherever great rock festivals are taking place. Massive Update! Lauryn has been working for Loud Wire for a few years now and got to interview her idol, Slash! She cried shortly after the interview ended.

Imperfectly Kind is the name of Julie Adam's first book. The President of Rogers Sports & Media had a unique pandemic experience that she shared with us and led her to write this book. In this episode, Julie and I catch up after nearly 4 years between recording podcast episodes. We spoke about baseball in the last episode and it came up again this time in a couple of places. While I normally would love to ask a zillion questions about the future of radio, I wanted to stay close to the theme of her book because the broadcast business could use a little more kindness. We also spoke about identifying who your competition is and the benefits of embracing them. You can order Julie's book here in Canada. And in the United States. Order it in bulk because all your employees or classmates should read it. In this episode, I made mention of my Sunday morning Yoga routine with Darlene Sveinson. She's a Phys. Ed Teacher, Wellness Instructor and hockey coach. I take the class in person Sunday mornings but the online version runs Sundays at 12:15pm Eastern, 9:15am Pacific. The cost is $16.80 Canadian and you can register with this link right here. I also might have blabbed on about the great stuff conjured up by Steve Pratt and Dan Misner at Rogers owned Pacific Content. If you are a serious podcaster, give the blog a follow. It is full of resources that will help you build your audience.

Around Montreal, mention the words "Queen of Rock" and that title goes to Sharon Hyland, longtime on air host at CHOM-FM. Last month she eclipsed 25 years of broadcasting at the legendary radio station. And while her name might not get lumped in with the CHOM Alumni who came before her, (just yet) her knowledge of rock and the station's more recent history is second to none. In this episode, you'll hear why Sharon went into radio, and how her path from Algonquin College led her to Ottawa's legendary rock station CHEZ 106, and then later to CHOM. We break down the various eras of ownership and throw a few PD's under the bus along the way. We also talk about the friendships along the way including that with Steve Anthony and Pete Marier, and also how cancer has touched her family deeply. We also talked about an online petition to have Sharon as morning show host. On February 4th, 2022 - came the announcement. Jay recently left 1010 News in Toronto and has a really extensive and impressive track record of radio success. Jay if you are reading this... let's do the podcast! Chantal has recently been doing a podcast with the Montreal Canadiens and travelling the world doing stand up. The new show starts February 28th.

Charese Frugé is the Net News Editor at AllAccess.com and has 20+ years in the radio business with a proven track record in multiple formats as both an on air personality and an award winning programmer. She's been successful in markets like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston, Las Vegas and Denver. She's been recognized as one of Radio's Most Influential Women by Radio Ink on multiple occasions and has several awards for Excellence in Management from both CBS Radio, and the Alliance for Women in Radio. Charese owns her own Radio and Talent Consulting business and is also a Voice Actor and Voice over talent. She is one of few female talent consultants in the business and is ready to help you bring a fresh new approach and strategy to your talent or brand. Five Articles From Charese I love: Email Grenade (We talked about this in the episode) Life after Radio How to Improve Radio The Art of the Voicetrack The Deeper Issues of Consolidation If you would like to work with Charese - we think that would be a good idea. She can be reached at Charesefruge@att.net or 310-499-8726. Her e-mail for All Access related stuff is cfruge@allaccess.com. The All Access Audio Summit is back! A Virtual Event, April 20 & 21, that will bring together audio thought leaders and experts from the U.S. and around the globe to share their knowledge and discuss innovations in radio, streaming, and podcasting. The best part about this is no travel required. Also there is a special price if you are out of work.

I see these questions every day in Facebook groups: "Should I use Anchor? How about Soundcloud?" Instead of typing out the reasons into Facebook groups daily, I'm taking this moment to write a rare blog piece. I have experience using both and can speak to their limitations for podcasters. When Soundcloud first came onto the scene, it was this handy place to share audio. Having managed a few radio stations in my time - it was a great way to share audio socially. It's something I became very used to, ugly orange audio player and all. In 2016 when I started to podcast, I used Soundcloud as my host. It was right around this time that standardized metrics were called into question and the "what constitutes a download" question became important to podcasters who were serious about making agency advertising money and/or measuring their audience. Now my background is radio and most of my working life has been dedicated to understanding audience behaviour in order to grow the show. Radio consultant and podcaster, Mark Ramsey told me about the issues regarding Soundcloud measurement after we had stopped recording a podcast episode back in 2017. That's when a red flag went up for me. The second flag was the financial stress that the company was under. The third was Podtrac discontinuing counting any Soundcloud plays that happened outside the RSS feed. That was enough for me - I moved my podcast out of there and blogged about the podcast numbers I was seeing. So if someone use the Soundcloud player or listens directly from the website - it counts as a ZERO towards to your listener stats. While you might feel it is unjust or harsh, consider that no can truly determine if that listener is really a human. Anything that involves the manipulation of stats is bullshit - and no one wants or needs bullshit. The end result was that I moved my podcast to an IAB 2.0 Certified host. You can read more about what that is here - but know that the numbers were going to be counted according to industry standards and not bullshit. At its core, Soundcloud isn't even a podcast host. They are a music host who have managed to take money from podcasters. They haven't updated their category tags to reflect Apple's since 2018. That means you can't properly categorize your show into Apple's catalogue. Yes you can submit the show to Apple Podcasts, but you likely won't get it into the category your show need to be in. This is like hiring an interpreter that only knows one language. Finally, the price? Their free model has storage limitations that will have able to keep only your last 8 episodes in Apple, and their paid model is the same price as a real host. So why not use a real host with real metrics and real support? Hope for the future: Pandora / Sirius XM purchased a piece of Soundcloud in February 2020. Maybe they will clean this shit up. UPDATE! (Jan. 2022) They haven't cleaned this shit up. Another host people ask about every day is Anchor. Full disclosure: My company carries three podcasts on Anchor, so we know of what we speak. The first thing you need to know is that free is never free. You are giving up something when you put your podcast on Anchor. Namely, control, flexibility and YOUR stats. Understanding your stats is important in growing your show. It gives you a glimpse of what works and what doesn't work. Trying to grow your show without proper stats is like driving at night without lights; you may or may not get there and you're likely to hit a few things along the way. Understanding that, Anchor stats remain a mystery. While they are IAB certified, the stats back some incomplete on the dashboard. Ir's not very indepth. Anchor also does not offer the ability to add the enclosure tag to make that happen. This is likely to prevent you from using other services like Podcorn who are also in the advertising game. I sent a note to Anchor asking about this and how they compile their metrics and here is the response I received: Remember that thing I said about keeping control of your podcast? Well it's clear you don't have it with Anchor. One of their big selling points is "We do everything for you and get you on to all platforms." Don't do that by the way - that's a big mistake. It is work you can easily do yourself. By letting Anchor do that, you will lose access to valuable stats in the Apple back end, like consumption. Yes we are all big on downloads, but it's consumption that really tells the tale of your podcast success. After all, what good is a download if no one listens to your show? The same goes for Spotify, (who are the owners of Anchor). Spotify offers a backend and some interesting metrics you want to keep your eye on. Some good news though for Anchor users - they are going to allow you to see the Spotify metrics you could already be seeing, had you submitted your podcast yourself in the first place. (Makes sense because Spotify is their parent company, right?) Anchor once made it hard for podcaster to leave to another host, but they have since conformed to industry standards and allow you to leave with a 301 Redirect - which means you can take your subscribers with you. Now if you have already allowed Anchor to "submit the podcast for you" and you are full of regret as you should be, you're going to need to jump through some hoops to recover your podcast and have it associated with your Apple ID, Spotify, Stitcher etc. I've rescued a few podcasts from their grips and it is becoming easier as people figure out that "We do it all for you" is not helpful. People also get sucked into the sponsorship offerings. I'll just cut to the chorus on this: You will not be making what you could make if you involve yourself with Anchor Sponsorships. If you are getting 1000 alleged downloads per episode and take an ad at a $10 CPM (cost-per-thousand) - enjoy your ten dollars. If you are subjecting your listener to 60 seconds of you selling something for $10, then you don't think much of the listener. Which is the root cause of why your podcast is struggling; because this is about your listener. Again, if you don't care about growing your audience - feel free to use Anchor and join podcasting's largest cemetery of shows. All things being consistent with stats from December 2018, (and I have no reason to believe these numbers have changed) more than 50% of the podcasts have three episodes or less, and are inactive. Anchor is littered with quitters because podcasting is hard and takes a lot of time and mental investment. I can't tell you which podcast host is best for you. Anchor is actually an ideal podcast host for one of our clients who wanted to see the impact of repurposing audio he was sharing through email and Facebook. When it comes to podcast hosts, there are many different features and price points that you will need to explore to determine if it is right for you. But know that free is never free. And avoid Soundcloud. Update February 2022: A story in Podnews details that Anchor has been altering the audio on their podcasts and it is causing apps to produce nefarious results. See this tweet from Marco Ament who is the creator of the Overcast app: