Better Seasons with Podcasting 2.0

Better seasons with podcasting 2.0.

Daniel, future of podcasting episode number 45.

We're gonna ramp up. We're gonna pimp out our seasons. Now that'll be

awesome. Maybe get some flames on the side, some nice

spoke tires, something. I don't know. But, we had super

chapters last week. Are these gonna be super seasons or just

They're more like seasons 2.0, but they do bring some pretty

handy features to it. So do you remember

when Apple Podcasts actually, back then, it was called iTunes

still. Do you remember when they launched Seasons? Yeah.

Vaguely because it was for me, I was like, oh, that's a cool feature that

I'll never use. But I can see where

people, like, back in the day I think it was probably invented for

cereal because that show is so popular, and that's one of those shows where they

announce about 34 people at the end of their show that worked on

it, and they fly all over the world doing these interviews. And

so those people need to take a break when their their season is over. And

I was like, well, that makes sense. And ever since then, they've they take

I mean, I know they just released, I think, a new season of Serial.

I thought I heard rumors or something like that, maybe. But,

any any of those big shows or or somebody who just like, I need a

break, and they wanna they'll break it off in the season.

So, but I just remember they came out, and I was like, I don't

know. What about you? What what was your initial thought? Yeah. It was in 2017

when they came out with it. And I thought it was great because, already,

seasonal podcasts existed. And Podcasts would

talk about what season they were in. And I'm a proponent for making

the seasons actually make sense to your audience. If it doesn't make

sense months from now, then you probably don't need

seasons. In other words, if it's a schedule based thing, you

probably don't need it. But if it's thematic, then it's a good idea. And,

like, I was hosting a TV show fan podcast at that time for

the TV show Once Upon a Time, And the TV show has seasons.

Each season would have a story arc. So I liked the introduction of

season and episode number. And, by the way, this came out

when Apple had done nothing with their podcast

spec for years. And then, they dropped all of these new

features like episode numbers, the season numbers, the

specific iTunes title tag, and some of these other features, and also more

categories. So this was fantastic that they brought new

features to their spec, and then other apps followed suit.

And this was all before podcasting 2.0 when we let Apple

decide what goes into a podcast feed. Well, I loved

it because it meant, like, for my podcast about the TV show,

I could divide my episodes into seasons

because my episodes match the seasons of the TV

show as well. And I think that works

great for when you have chronological seasons

like a TV show would have. But

a show like Serial, does season 2

have anything whatsoever to do with season

1? Yeah. That would be no. Right.

It's completely different. Now, yes, it is a different

season. So it's fine that they use a season tag. But

to call it season 2, when

I see something that says season 2, you know what I'm thinking

immediately? I need to go back and listen to season 1 first.

Right. Otherwise, I'm going to be completely lost. So

it was someone who used to be with NPR who came up with this

idea and proposed it and everyone jumped on board of how

about we allow seasons to have 2 new features

in podcasting 2 point o. So they could still be numbered

seasons like Apple Podcast supports with the Itunes namespace

spec. But the Apple spec is limited to

whole numbers. So you can only have season 1, 2, 3, 4,

like that. So with podcasting 2.0 seasons, we can

have decimals in that. So we could have season 1.5,

1.6 if you wanted to or whatever. So you can do that. But the

other cool thing, and this was the more exciting thing about it,

is that you could give your seasons a name. And I think that

makes a lot more sense than a number. I'm a

name, not with a number. Well, I know,

Colin Gray from the podcast host does seasons,

and I remember there was one season where they just talked

about microphones and then another season where they just talked about

they were all all podcasting related, but they separated their chapters

by topic. And so that would be great if you could name that differently.

And then I think you said, is there something in the spec about having a

different picture? That's the new proposal. And this is

something that I think is a fantastic idea. We'll link to more

information, like, both from podcasting2.org about the

season tag as it exists right now. And, also, the

idea here that it was Dave Jones who wrote this up, and I I can't

remember if someone else actually came up with this idea, and he's just

writing it up to start the conversation. But the

idea is that you have your seasons as you do with the

numbers and a name and you could add an image to

it. Just like we can have images on

individual episodes and images in individual chapters if

you want, You could potentially have images for the

whole season. And I think that

helps to enhance the experience

and potentially enhance how that podcast is displayed in a

podcast app. Because you could think of it this particular way. As imagine,

you're looking at a podcast, a seasonal podcast that already has multiple

seasons in your podcast app. And as you're scrolling through the

episodes, this episodes that are in

particular seasons have a different background image

to them. And maybe some color scheme thing around that just

like we see how color schemes are changing for chapters artwork and

episode artwork. You could do that same kind of thing. So

in a way, a season might be the blue season, then there's the red

season, then the green season. Just based on assuming that those are the

primary colors used in the cover art. You could do that kind of thing to

really enhance the experience and make

a podcast app look more visually

interesting, kind of like you would see in Netflix

or Amazon Prime, Hulu, and places like that where you see that

every time you visit a show, it looks like you're on a

page that was designed for that show, Not

just data fed in from text and a couple images here

and there, but actually built to look beautifully branded for

that show. Yeah. That's interesting. I was trying to figure out

how that would work in the back end of most media

hosts Because right now, you just put your season number and

your episode number, and so somewhere you'd either have to

make the season, and then maybe

you say this is season 1 JSON. And then later, when you go into an

episode, you just have a drop down of which season is this for or

something of that nature. I was just trying to figure out the the fun thing

about adding all these features. It's, you know, it can definitely

improve the experience. But the more features we add, the

the fun part of that is adding it on the back end of the the,

you still wanna make it easy to make an episode in that whole 9 yards,

but it's, that could be a tricky one. Yeah. And Thomas Rhine in

the GitHub that we'll link to for this episode where this is being discussed,

he brought up a good point that we're starting to complicate

a tag that will be pretty much just

duplicated across several episodes. And that's

unnecessary bloat Because you really don't need

like, even right now with the podcasting 2 point o tag, it has the

title for the season in that season tag.

And you really don't need to repeat the season title

across every episode. And whenever you do have to repeat

something like that across

capitalization that's off could

confuse podcast app and make it treat that one

episode as a different season. If it's capitalized or spelled differently or

there's an extra space in it or anything is one character off

about the name, it could trigger some

confusion in that. And besides that, as long as the

information is the same across the whole season,

it's not all that necessary to repeat it. So

Right. When you start to add then an image on top of

that, well then you have to add that same image to every

episode that is in that season and it starts to get

unnecessarily bloated. So one

proposal that I put out literally minutes before we

recorded this episode So this is just one idea, and then I'm

not sticking to this as saying this is the best idea. And there will be

other ideas, and we'd love for you to contribute on the GitHub too. If that

doesn't scare you off, you just write something if you have an idea of how

this could be structured. But, an idea that I had for this

is we re simplify the individual episode

season tag. That all it contains is a number.

And that number becomes an index number of a

sort. And then at the top of the RSS

feed before all the episodes, then you have a sort of

index of the seasons where then you can have the season tag

up there. But this season tag includes the number and

the name and the image and maybe

someday further down the line, we decide to add more to the

season tag and it could include that there too. So then you

very easily get a table of contents

for the seasons as well as

having one place to maintain this stuff so you don't have

to ensure that you're getting everything exactly right

from episode to episode. You just have this one place. So

then in the publishing systems, the

interface could be something like how you create a

new episode. You just click create new season, it adds the

season to your RSS feed and then when you're creating your

episodes, you could either manually

type in the season number or just pick

from one of the seasons you've already created. So that could make it very

easy on the user interface side too. So even, like, for

the podcasters, they don't have to worry about copying and pasting the title. They don't

have to worry about typing it correctly the same time. They just

see these are the seasons I've already created. I want to add it to one

of these seasons. Yeah. Because I've seen people do that.

They will have no seasons and then they'll add

1 or if they do have a season, they'll type in the wrong

number And depending on how things are set up, in some cases, it'll go

way to the bottom of your your RSS feed. And you're

like, hey. I published this episode. I don't see it anywhere. And

they'll, like, in in the case of Libsyn, they'll try to upload the file again,

and they can't because it's already there. But they're like, but it's not here. And

that's where you have to go in and you do a search, and you're like,

oh, you put season, you know, 11 when you

really meant number 11 in your episode title or whatever. You just

get the wrong number in the wrong place, and it messes everything up. So, yeah,

I I like that idea. Build it once and then just pull from some sort

of down, drop down list would be great. And I think, yeah, that

simplifies it for the user. That makes it less likely that they would

make a mistake. Makes it easier for them. And it moves away

from the dependence on numbers. I'm kind

of against episode numbers in most cases. And the same

thing now that we have the ability, we've had this ability with podcasting

2.0 to give seasons names. I think that's so much

better so that, like with, Colin in

his podcast, The Podcast Host, that they could name the

season the microphone season. Or the first time that I saw

a season used in a really good way in a

podcast was a web design podcast I listened to many, many years ago. I'm not

sure if this podcast is even still going. It was called the BOAG World Podcast,

and they did that same thing where for one season, it was all

about best tools. And then another season, they interviewed

website owners to talk about the experience of running websites. Another

season, it was just top ten things. So every episode was

a top ten of something. And that was really clever. It was

thematic. You knew what you were getting into. And they could then name those

seasons something like that. This is the top 10 season. This

is the website owner interview season.

And that's a lot better than season 1,

season 2, season 3. There's nothing

compelling about a season number.

Yay. I was hoping I could listen to season 3 today of

something that I don't know, and it would be great if you if if this

all makes them more obvious. I remember somebody told me there

was a a podcast about a local radio station here

in Ohio called WMMS, and it broke Bruce

Springsteen and Rush and all these other bands. And so I

went to the podcast, and it was, like, episode

or season 1, but they were on, like, season 3. And so

I click on it, and they're talking about this amusement park

in Ohio. And I'm like, this isn't about WMMS. And it wasn't

till later that I scrolled down and I was like, oh, it's way down

here. So I I have to go back and look at it. But if there

was something that just really made it obvious that, hey, this is season 3.

This is season 2. This is season 1. Because I think what they were

doing where they were changing, they were adding the tagline

to their show. So it'd be like future of podcasting

dash season talk or something like that. And then they would

do 5 or 6 episodes on seasons, and then they'd be like

future of podcasting dash, you know, whatever

the next thing was. And so it was kind of confusing because you're like, wait,

this says this, but the thing I want. So

it's just anything that would make it more obvious that this is a chapters,

and you wouldn't have to hack the name of your show, anything like that. And

I just wonder, I'd have to go back and look at the show. They might

not have even known that, you know, seasons 1.0

were available. They might have just missed the whole boat. But I just remember being

very frustrated when I was like, I've been lied to. And then I was like,

oh, wait. No. I haven't. It's down here. So that's always fun.

Yeah. And then you can even look at this further as we're thinking of

ways that we could add images to seasons.

What size, what dimension should that image be? Should it be

a square image just like the cover art is and the episode artwork is and

the chapter artwork is. They're all square images. So should

the season artwork be square? Or just like there have

been some proposals for other images that you could include with your podcast,

should we maybe say season should be a

wide image? Like a wide screen, 16 by 9

ratio. Something like that that might be a little more interesting to

integrate into a podcast app. Or would we allow people to

add multiple images? I would be a bigger fan

of that actually. I like having the options to optimize it as

I'd like. So being able to give it a square image and

a 16 by 9 widescreen image. So that then the

podcast app can display that in a way that

works well. And we could put certain

guidelines around these things also to say something like, keep the

bottom 10% clean of text. So that way, if there's

any kind of fading going on, we could get into that, but the best thing

really is not to have to define margins

and colors and that kind of thing and the requirements for what kind of image

you can put in there. Just focus on the technical aspects of it of

this is the kind of format it needs to be. These are the dimensions or

the the ratio that it needs to be. So

at this point, you said the 2 point o spec, they have a number which

can have decimals because I I forget what there was a pretty popular show

that released their whole season in chunks. Like, they gave you, like, the

first five episodes, and it was like a TV show of some sort.

Or it might have been Game of Thrones where they really like their

last season was like, here's the first 6 episodes. And then they were still recording

it. There was and here's the last 5 or whatever it was. But,

so I could see people wanting to do that. Maybe, again,

depending on the content, maybe you want to have a big cliffhanger half the way

through to get people talking about your show, and then they're ready for, you know,

bring us part 2 of the season. So but right now, you have

season names and season numbers that include decimals. That's what we have

available now. And then the proposal is for

the ability to add images. And then what else am I

missing that we're Well, my fix for

the proposal, and I'm not stuck on this, but is a way to maybe

restructure this to make it easier on the RSS feed and

easier on the users. And this is totally open to someone else

to suggest something better as well, but it's just an idea of a way to

simplify it of breaking out like an index, a season index,

basically. As you are the man that loves stats,

do we have any clue or is there any way to figure out

what percentage of podcasts are using season numbers? If

I'm a person that's making an app or from a

media host or whatever, and you're like, hey. We got this new thing. You should

code into your system. I could see where they might go,

wait. Hold on. Before we go adding all this extra work and

redoing our interface, they might wonder, you know,

exactly how many people are using seasons. I know a lot of the the bigger

shows, you know, the the NPR style shows and things like that

and true crime and all those people with the the teams of

18. Right. Where the first season is great, but

not so much after that. Yeah. I haven't been tracking

what number of podcasts used seasons, and it looks like John Spurlock, the other guy

who loves tracking data and some of the other people haven't been tracking it either.

One of the reasons that it's more complicated is because it means you need to

look at the RSS feed. And, realistically, you have to look at every

episode in the RSS feed to know if a podcast uses seasons.

You could maybe assume it by their latest episode.

But still that means evaluating every single RSS feed out

there. But I would guess, just pure guess based

on what I see out there, I would guess

maybe 4 or 5% of podcasts,

active podcasts right now. Maybe 4 or 5% are using

that is purely conjecture just based on my observation of

podcast. So don't cite me on that. I could be way off.

That's just a guess. And I'm sure those people, that 5% are

sitting there going, oh my god. That'd be amazing if we could have seasons that

were all sorts of pretty and things like that. So,

I I could see you know, we'll see what happens. It's I like the idea.

And what I really like from this, since I come from a design background, I

am a web designer, is that this gives

podcasters the opportunity to more beautifully

brand their experience inside the podcast

app. Because for years, all that

you could do to brand your podcast listing

inside an app or a directory was text

and your main image JSON that was it. And the one

main image. Nothing else. You couldn't influence the

colors. You couldn't give it any kind of background image or

extra images like widescreen or anything like that.

So some of this stuff and there are other proposals too for branding guidelines

and certain things like that. But some of this stuff is bringing it closer

to making it really easy for podcasters to make their

podcast listing look beautiful. Like, if you look in Apple

Podcasts, it's some of the most popular podcast. In fact, probably,

if you click on almost any podcast that's on the front page of Apple

Podcasts, you will probably see a custom designed page. And

I see pretty frequently, maybe every couple of weeks,

someone will ask, how do I get my podcast listing to look

like this in Apple Podcasts? And the way you get that

is to be invited by Apple to submit artwork to

them because it's not something that you can influence. But now in

podcasting 2.0, we've got things like the person tag, which gives you the

opportunity to give credits in your podcast. So you can have pictures

of everyone who participates in your podcast. That can now be included with your

listing powered by your RSS feed. And this

proposal gives it the opportunity to have the

season branded in a particular way that's visual without

having to rely on the episode artwork

or do something like only pull the latest episode artwork

or have to display every episodes

artwork something like that. And then you just end up with the same image

multiple times if you change your cover art for every season.

And even that, that's the other thing too. Is if you think

about now the only podcast I know of that does this is No

Agenda where they change their podcast cover art.

Their top level podcast cover art. They change it

for every episode. So that's an extreme example of

this. But that is a good example of the idea of

if you're changing your cover art for

every episode or for every season, more specifically, relevant to

this context. Your old seasons

will still get the branding from your current cover

art. So this proposal to be able to give a

season an image would allow you to lock those

episodes with a particular overall

visual branding in addition to their potential individual

episode branding if you change that. Yeah. That would, again, make it

easy to identify what's what,

because the older seasons would have the

older branding, you know, potentially. Yeah. That'd be

interesting. Well, that, I I think this is the end of the season

about seasons then. So, how about, how do we do in the

old land of boostograms? We got a bunch.

Alright. So big thanks to everyone here. We've gotten

4 BoosterGrams in addition to the streaming Satoshis, and so we're very grateful

for this. We got 16,000 sats

from Eric, r dash podcast. He said, hello, Dave

and Daniel, longtime listener and first time booster to your show. I'm a huge fan

of John Spurlock's o p three project, and it would be great to see the

principles behind the project set a trend for others to join the

space of transparent metrics and analysis. As part of

my quest to contribute my data science skills to podcasting

2.0. Dude, that's awesome. I just created a

new r package. R is a statistical programming

language called 0p3r as a front

end to the 0p3 API. Lots of

letters here. Yeah. I consider that a small demonstration of

value for value in action linked to my package, and it's

rpodcast.github.io/0p3r.

And we might have that link in the notes for this. So Yeah. Huge thanks,

Eric, for that boostagram. Yeah. Very very cool. Thanks, buddy.

Appreciate it. We also got 2 boostagrams from Brian

from relaxedmail.com. 1 for 5,000 sats and another for

10000 sats. His first message, Dave,

you might be able to read this one better. Yeah. Brian said

poo you at the same time. What is that? I

believe he is referring to, I believe the show the

movie is called Scent of a Woman featuring, Al

Pacino, who is this,

snarky old military guy that's blind.

And every time somebody says something that kind of a zinger, he'll just go,

hooah. And so I think that's where he's getting that from.

Okay. And then Maybe. And then he sent a

10,000 SAP boost saying thanks for sharing the info on super chapters.

Gets my brain moving. Good. That's what we wanted it to do. That's

it. And 2,222 sats. That's

a row of rubber duckies as I like to call it. Marching ducks, rubber duckies,

whatever you wanna call it. From Andrew Gromit.

And my apologies there. I think of Wallace and Gromit, so that's why I

pronounce it that way. He said, thanks for explaining chapters.

I've seen it mentioned but didn't know how they worked.

Now, I do. Yeah. Andrew is OG

podcaster. He goes back to the days of pod show for those

of, of us that remember that. So, Andrew, great to hear from

you. And did we ever figure out what we're calling the

purely positive Peter Piper Peck

something, whatever it was? Peter Piper picked a peck of podcast praise

report. That's it. I wanna praise,

John Spurlock because I decided to put my money where my mouth is

and went over because you can there's, like, two levels of sponsorship,

and then there's the I'm just a poor podcaster level, which I think is like

something like $10 a month that I'm like, look, I I added another

show to OP 3 and was like, you know, I'm using

this now on 2 or 3 of my shows. I'm like, I should probably again,

value for value should give something back. And so

I, thank you, John. And I he was very nice. He said, hey, I just

noticed you signed up. Thanks so much. I'm like, well, again, I've only

been using this for a year and a half now. Maybe I should pay something

for it. So that would be my particular

positive praise. Well, thanks so much for listening to

the future of podcasting. If you know somebody else who's nerdy

and is into this, definitely tell them to go over to future podcasting.net/follow,

and you'll never miss another episode because that's gonna wrap it up

for, this episode of the future of podcasting. Keep boosting and keep

podcasting.