59: What You Need to Know About the Death of iTunes
“Your show is not going anywhere just because iTunes is going away.”
By now you might have heard the shocking (to some) news that Apple is effectively killing iTunes. For those of us who’ve been in the podcast space for a while, we’ve seen this coming. But, if you’re anything like most people in podcasting Facebook groups or the people who’ve emailed and messaged me, this seems to have come out of nowhere and is a cause for alarm.
In this episode, I explain what this news means for your podcast and what changes you might need to make.
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Transcript
welcome to podcasting for coaches i'm Britany Felix and i'm a podcast launch consultant who specializes in helping coaches and consultants utilize the power of podcasting as a way to build brand awareness and generate new leads for their business i realize not every new coach or consultant can afford to hire someone to help launch their show so i created this podcast as a way to guide you through the process of launching and utilizing your very own podcast to help you grow your business and reach a new audience of adoring followers and potential clients if you're ready to get your voice and podcast out into the world head over to podcasting for coaches.com to learn more welcome to episode 59 of podcasting for coaches i know the title of this episode seems a bit dramatic but honestly people have been freaking out so much that it seemed appropriate in case you haven't heard apple announced at their worldwide developers conference that is happening right now actually as of the time of this episode being recorded and going out june 3 through the seventh 2019 that they are effectively killing itunes for those of us in the podcast sphere for the past several years this does not surprise us this is not anything shocking we had an inkling that this might be coming but if you're not really in touch with this industry and what's happening and you're not a service provider in the podcasting sphere this may have come as a huge shock to you and it may leave you a little bit worried about what's going to happen to your podcast now before i answer that question i do want to say there are some things you need to be aware of and you might need to change with your podcasts so make sure that you listen to this episode all the way through to the end but right off the bat i want to say that as far as your podcast goes don't freak out it's not a big deal and essentially nothing is going to happen to your podcast the reason for this is because people don't listen to podcasts via itunes anymore not really it's a very very very small subset of your audience all the way back in late 2017 apple released their mobile app apple podcast and that is what the vast majority most likely of your listeners are using to listen to your podcast the difference between itunes and apple podcasts because there is a difference they are not the same thing they are not interchangeable apple podcast is the mobile app so that's what's on iphones and ipads itunes is the desktop version so if you have somebody who is choosing to listen to your podcast on their desktop both mac and pc and they're not doing it through your website or some other app they might be doing it through the actual itunes store that they have downloaded onto their desktop again that's a very small number of people in nearly every case and even for this they are technically keeping itunes for pc users although if you're anything like me my itunes has been broken for about a month now none of the images are showing up whatsoever and i know i'm not the only one because i have seen people post about it in podcasting communities on facebook but they are replacing itunes for mac users with a standalone apple podcast app for desktop so really nothing is going to happen to your show it's not going to disappear off of apple's platforms you're not going to lose all your subscribers it's going to be okay now with that aside hopefully that eases your mind a little bit i do want to talk about a couple of things that you should be aware of because they may require you to make some changes to your podcast workflow or your rss feed coming up very soon the first one and i'm just reading this from the email that apple said because by the way this news was news to everyone literally everyone in the podcasting space nobody knew that any of this news was coming from apple they were very tight lipped about it and they did not even consult with podcasts service providers they didn't even consult with podcast hosting services like lipson major major major players in the podcasting game had no idea this was coming so from this email that apple sent out it states apple podcast will allow listeners to discover shows based on audio transcripts topics and people moreover show in episode pages will display images of hosts and guests as far as what all of that means your guests might be just about as good as mine this is literally all the information we have on these new searchability features as they call them the things here that i want to point out are the audio transcript section and the images of the host and the guests now i have read in one of i can't remember which one it was but one of the many many many articles that have come out about this since this news was released earlier this week and those articles stated a little bit more information about how the transcripts are going to come in play they thought so they surmise that apple is actually working on some technology that will allow their search feature to actually pull from the audio itself so this might be what they're referring to with the audio transcripts it might be that they are developing some new technology where if somebody searches for a word or a phrase or something like that they'll actually pull from the spoken audio now that seems a bit lofty to me i mean obviously it could be developed and if anybody can do it apple can but what seems to make a little bit more sense to me and it wouldn't surprise me if this is the case is if they have you upload or submit in some way an actual written transcript for your episode and then it uses that for its search features so again not entirely sure how this audio transcript is going to come into play i'm not necessarily saying that you need to run out and have transcripts written up for every single one of the episodes that you've released or that you need to start doing it right now at this moment going forward i would not feel comfortable recommending that until i have more information because it does cost extra money to have audio transcripts created the other thing here is the host images and the guest images again not entirely sure what this is going to look like not entirely sure where this is going to be submitted my guess is it's going to have to come from the hosting service where your actual rss feed is created and your files are stored and you upload them and it's pushed out to the platform but this means that if you have not already been collecting your guests images you need to start doing that now if you want to have this feature enabled for your podcast again no idea on what size what style as far as landscape horizontals square not a clue and we won't have one until we get more information from apple but again things to just be aware of and be on the lookout for information for over the coming months as these things start to roll out okay the other main thing is that apple has finally finally finally finally updated their categories so not only have they added a bunch of new categories they've actually renamed some and they have removed some so whatever categories you have selected for your podcast right now so this is like you know management and marketing or business careers those types of categories is what i'm talking about whatever you have selected now that may not even exist in late summer 2019 is when they're saying they're going to roll out these new categories so i want you to go to the show notes for this episode which you can find by going to podcasting for coaches.com click on the podcast tab in the main menu and go to episode number 59 in the resources there there's going to be a link to a page on my website where i have the full list of these updated categories and i want you to go through this list and make sure that your categories are still there if they're not you're going to need to select some new ones up until this point apple has allowed you to select three category options now your rss feed does allow you depending on your hosting service to still select multiple options but they have specified in this email that apple podcasts will only recognize whatever your first choices so make sure that your first choice is the most relevant category for your podcast they do also state that you can go ahead and change these categories now so that they're ready to go and and place by the time these new categories are rolled out later this summer however because none of the hosting services knew that this was coming they're now having to play catch up and they're now having to redo entire sections of their platform to adjust for these changes so yes apple says you can go ahead and update these now but it's going to take the hosting services a little while to get their platforms updated with these new category lists so that you can make these changes i will keep an eye out for this because i actually have to change my category because even though they are updating their podcasts category list someone had the bright idea to remove the category of podcasting it is no longer available as a category selection so i have to go through and change some of my things as well i will announce either on the podcast or most likely more quickly via social media when this feature is available at least for lipson users because that is of course who i recommend going with now if you do not follow me on social media i am on facebook and instagram i have a twitter account technically but i do absolutely nothing with it so don't follow me there but i'm at podcasting for coaches on instagram and of course just search for podcasting for coaches on facebook as well there will be links in the show notes for this episode okay so that is the update that's what apple has announced we have some changes coming up your shows not going anywhere just because itunes is going away because it's been an apple podcast this entire time now i want you to make sure that you are no longer using the verbiage of itunes i have been preaching this since late 2017 i have actually been doing itunes slash apple podcasts is how i have been saying it because there are still some people who knows itunes and use the desktop version but since that is pretty much going away they are effectively killing it let's remove itunes everywhere so not only from your vocabulary remove it from your podcast intros and outros you need to redo those if they say to subscribe on itunes and anywhere that you share this on social media stop using the term itunes replace it with apple podcast and anywhere on your website or social media profiles that says itunes you need to switch that to apple podcasts so any icons any images any watermarks any links all of those things need to be updated to say apple podcasts and not itunes okay that wraps up this episode if you have any questions about this please feel free to follow up with me you can reach out to me via instagram or facebook or you can email me Britany br it a ny at podcasting for coaches.com and i would be more than happy to help shed a little bit more light on this for you thank you so much for joining me and i will see you back here next week for an interview with yet another successful podcaster and that wraps up another episode of podcasting for coaches if you'd like to connect with me further you can do so on instagram at podcasting for coaches if you know it's time to finally get serious about starting your podcast go to podcasting for coaches comm and click on the work with me tab in the main menu to learn more about my one on one launch consultation packages or my self paced online course and i look forward to seeing the podcasts that you create and put out into the world