69: Don't Ignore Spotify When it Comes to Your Podcast
"If your podcast is not already on Spotify, you’re doing yourself a disservice. "
Spotify is fully invested in podcasting and they’re rapidly gaining in popularity among podcast listeners. If you haven’t been paying to attention Spotify, you want to change that.
In this episode, I explain how I know Spotify is serious about becoming a top player in the podcasting space, what your losing by not being on the platform, the features you have available to you as podcaster on Spotify that can help you promote your show, and why some outlets are saying that Spotify is now even more popular than Apple Podcasts.
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Spotify for Podcasters (Submit your podcast to Spotify via Libsyn or this link)
Spotify Podcasts to Instagram Stories
Spotify’s paid subscribers accelerate as podcast listening grows 200 percent
Spotify Pays $250 Million for Ringer in Podcasting Drive
Apple Podcasts vs. Spotify — Which is more popular?
the smart audio report winter 2019 from npr and edison research
Podcasting for Coaches on Instagram
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My Launch Consultation Packages
Online Course | How to Start a Podcast (For Your Coaching Business)
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 69 of podcasting for coaches. In this episode, we are very obviously going to talk about Spotify. So if you are wanting to start a podcast, or you already have one, I would hope that by now you've realized that Spotify is in the game. They are shaking things up, and they're causing quite a stir, especially lately. So if your podcast is not on Spotify, right here, right off the bat, I'm going to tell you to get your show on there immediately. Now, will it completely changed the game for your entire show? Will it suddenly explode? And now you'll have this massive audience you didn't have before? No, it probably won't. But they are getting more and more serious about this. And it's growing like crazy. And I am going to talk about the data behind all of that in this episode. So if it's not on there, get it on there. And this episode is going to explain why. If your show is already on there, this is still an episode you want to listen to because I want you to pay attention to these industry changes. Because the language that we use when we talk about our show should reflect whatever is most popular among listeners at the time. So for the past few decades, podcasts have pretty much been Apple's bag like they have had it on lockdown, how however, Spotify is coming in, and they're starting to change that and they're doing it pretty rapidly. So I only anticipate this actually happening more and more in the future. Spotify is going to become more and more popular. And there's data suggesting that's already happening. According to an article from Bloomberg, which I will link to in the show notes for this episode, which you can of course find by going to podcasting for coaches. com, click on the podcast tab in the main menu, and then go to episode number 69. They're reporting that Spotify has spent over $600 million so far, just to acquire four companies that are related to podcast. Three of them are essentially production companies. So they are buying up podcast content. And then the fourth one is anchor. And it's a podcasting tool. Kind of like a recording platform slash hosting service. It's a weird little mix, it's not my favorite, I don't recommend people go with it. But it is a free and great way to get started. If you're wanting to maybe start a podcast as a hobby, you're not sure how serious you are about it. That lets you test the waters pretty easily. And then I recommend switching to something like Lipson when you get a little more serious about it. But for you, the person who is podcasting as part of a business, this is not your hobby, you want to take it seriously from the start. Don't even worry about anchor. But $600 million is no joke, especially for a company that actually generally operates at a loss. Spotify until now obviously has been a music streaming platform. But they have to pay so much to the record labels and the artists that they don't really make a profit from that. So they are really literally banking on podcasting being the thing that makes them profitable. Now that they have invested all of his money into it, they're not just going to back out, they're going to double down and they are really going to try to see this thing through. And they're only going to get more and more serious about this. In addition to Spotify being so serious about this, it's also interesting what they've been able to do in the short time they've been in the podcasting game. There's actually some bells and whistles that you may not be aware of. And this is where it comes in handy if you already have a podcast to listen to this episode, because people your listeners, even yourself can create playlists with podcast episodes. So you could do like a highlights reel. Or you could create playlists depending on what topics you're talking about. Say you're a business coach and you talk about different stages of building a business. Well, you can create a whole playlist of your episodes that are great for people who are getting ready to launch their business or their new Signature Course and they're in launch mode. Or you could do a whole series on social media engagement and building your following and those types of things. A whole series on marketing a whole series on building your email list. Whatever you want to do, you can create these various lists. And then your listeners, of course, you can encourage them to create lists of their favorite episodes. And then if you're in that, and they send it to their friends, they check it out. That's just more exposure for you. So another thing that you can actually do with a Spotify app, you can or your listeners can, is Sharon episode directly to your Instagram stories. Now, it won't play like the full episode. But it will essentially be a direct link from your Instagram stories to that episode in the Spotify account. So this might be something to change up a little bit with how you share your content on social media, specifically Instagram stories. And then they also have an embed player for a website. Now, if you host with Lipson, I do recommend just going with the Lipson embed player, because that's going to be a much better experience for your listener. And something easy for you to find. You don't have to wait till the episodes published, you can get it right away, put it on your show notes before the episode goes live. So you can schedule everything in advance. But if you have other places that you want to share your show other websites that you want to promote it on. If you know someone who is creating a list of like the top 10, whatever podcast they want to include you, they can include a Spotify player, and you can do this as well to share the love with other shows. You can include a Spotify player for that episode directly in your app, so you don't need access to the back end of a podcast in order to get that embed code and that embed player. So one other thing that is great about Spotify. And to be fair, Apple podcasts announced the same thing at the same exact time, maybe even on the same day. But it was for sure within the same week, that podcasts are now available on Alexa enabled devices via either Apple podcasts or Spotify. What this means is that any device that has Alexa on it so echoes your phones, like literally any device with Alexa on it, you can just ask Alexa to play the podcast. Now it gets a little bit tricky if you have a unique show name, which is why I say it is really important to be clear and not clever. If you have show names that have fake words in them, like honestly, solopreneur is not a real word recognized by the dictionary. It is popular in pop culture. So maybe it might still work. But really anything where it's a fake word, you've got symbols in the word because you're self censoring, which by the way, you're not supposed to do anyways as against Apple policy. But anything like that, where you're just getting too cutesy with it, it is a little difficult for these voice assistants to recognize those names and actually pulled them up. So keep that in mind if you haven't launched yet. And you're working on creating your show. And I bring this up because listening to podcasts on smart speakers. And just smart speaker use in general, is also increasing. So you want your show to be available on smart speakers with Alexa enabled devices or like Google homes or anything like that. And having it on Spotify and even Apple podcasts is a great way to do that. So as mentioned in the most recent edition of the podcasting insiders club newsletter, which is my monthly newsletter that I send out at the end of every month, and if you want to learn more to that you can of course go to the show notes for this episode, or go to my website, I've got it all over there for you to find that information. It's actually super cheap. It's only five bucks a month and you get the most relevant news, you don't have to filter through all of these different places. And you get the news generally before I talk about it on the show here. So as mentioned in the January edition of the newsletter, 54% of all adults in the US have used a voice assistant like Siri or Alexa or Google, and 24% of those people say they use it on a daily basis with 24% of adults. So that's 60 million people in the US saying they own a smart speaker. And they are catching on, especially now with this development here recently, being able to listen to podcasts via Spotify or Apple podcasts on those devices. podcast listening is only going to grow on these platforms. So a little side tangent there about smart speakers while we're talking about Spotify, but it's connected because Spotify is aware of this and they are adapting they are evolving their services and their offerings to keep up with the demands. So you want to pay attention to what Spotify is doing. So I mentioned earlier that Spotify is becoming more and more popular for podcasts listening, and this is why you need to be on these platforms. And that is evidenced by the fact that there's an article I'm going to link in the show notes, where Spotify said that over the last quarter, the people listening to podcasts on their platform has grown by over 200% it is growing so much to the point that there are some media outlets that are claiming Spotify has actually overtaken Apple podcasts as the number one most popular platform for listening to podcasts. Now, there's been some debate about that in the industry. A lot of people have their doubts about that and they're looking at data in ways that kind of skewed to get the results that they want. I am going to link to an article from chargable in the show notes for this episode that kind of break down why people think this and give you the real facts to let You know that Apple is still number one overall. But Spotify is actually second. And honestly, in some countries, Spotify is number one, Spotify does outrank Apple podcasts in terms of downloads in some countries. So all of this is to say, if your podcast is not already in Spotify, you're doing yourself a disservice, you're losing out on potential audience members, and you're really falling behind the game. So if you're serious about your show, and if you're serious about using it to grow your leads, grow your brand awareness, get you in front of new people, then you do not want to sleep on Spotify, get your show on there. And if it already is, or when it does, get on there, promote it and let people know, there are still a lot of people who are not aware that you can even listen to podcasts on Spotify, because it is relatively new. It is your job to educate your potential audience members on where and how they can listen to your show. Now, if you host with Lipson and maybe a couple of the other platforms, but I don't know for sure about them, you can submit your show directly to Spotify from inside your Lipson account, just one of the reasons I love Lipson, but you can also submit to it directly via Spotify, his actual website, so I will have that link in the show notes in case you want to submit directly to them. Because Spotify does offer some additional stats that Lipson won't, including the average length that people listen to the episodes, the gender of the listeners, and some other data like that. Now, if you do submit via Lipson, you can still get access to those stats. I'll include a video that I posted on my Facebook account, explaining how to kind of do this the back way. You have to rig it a little bit to get it connected, but you definitely can I have access to those stats for this podcast. And I did submit directly via Lipson so check out the show notes where all of this information will be podcasting for coaches.com click on the podcast tab in the main menu, Episode 69. Thank you so much for listening and I want to invite you to come back next week we're gonna have an interview with yet another successful podcaster Have a fantastic day. 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.