This is the show for creative entrepreneurs who have a message to share and want to live a life of freedom, learn how to grow your network and net worth, hear from exciting guests and more. My name is Dylan Schmidt and welcome to Digital Podcasts. Welcome to digital, Podcasts. My name is Dylan Schmidt, so today I wanted to talk about a new update from Apple Podcasts. Apple Podcasts for Creators had an announcement yesterday introducing three new updates for Apple Podcasts, which is exciting. Feels like it's been a little while since we've gotten any update for Apple Podcasts, so let's go over them real quick at a high level. What they are is first up is introducing subscription analytics. Second is More Delegated delivery partners. And third is Link Fire for podcasts. So first, let's talk about subscription analytics coming straight from the Apple Podcast for Creators page. Creators can easily see how listeners engage with premium subscriptions and grow their audience using powerful marketing tools provided by Linkfire. So these subscription analytics says, and I'm looking at their page as I'm saying this, sharing this basically, creators will be able to see how listeners engage with their premium subscriptions on Apple Podcasts. Once a subscription is selected from the updated analytics tab, creators can use the Overview tab to see how many listeners started a free trial, the number of paid subscriptions, the percentage of listeners who converted from a free trial to a paid subscription, and the estimated proceeds generated from their subscriptions. Creators can also view breakdowns of subscriptions by country or region and by subscription status, such as monthly versus annual plans. These modules can be filtered to display the real time analytics for various time periods, such as the past 30 days or the previous month. And then, on the Trends tab, creators can leverage a powerful visualization tool to gain insight into the performance of their prescriptions over time and using various filters. For example, creators can filter the Trends tab by active subscriptions to view a visual breakdown of subscribers by subscription status, such as those who are in their first year versus those who have been subscribed for more than one year. Creators can also use the Trends tab to view their subscription events such as activations, cancellations and renewals and filter sales on the Trends tab by subscription duration to see a breakdown of estimated proceeds generated by monthly versus yearly subscriptions. That's awesome. Last thing, subscription analytics are available worldwide today for all creators with at least one active subscription and an admin, finance or legal role in Apple Podcast Connect. And then it says creators can continue to access downloadable reports for their subscriptions form for their subscriptions from the analytics tab. And listening analytics remain available for all creators and shows. So, real quick, just kind of taking that in for a second. What's cool about this is just more analytics, especially if it's something that you're taking seriously. Paid subscriptions, premium subscriptions for your listeners for your podcast. This is going to be cool because I think it's going to be more and more frequent that we see podcasts use Apple Podcast premium subscriptions as a way to monetize their podcast. I'm already seeing it in a lot of the podcasts I listen to. They offer an ad free version and it's like $5 a month or whatever. And you get access to an ad free version for certain fans that really enjoy their podcast and they listen to it frequently. This makes a lot of sense to incorporate more analytics into this and just grow it. We're already kind of seeing Spotify come out with more analytics and they have made announcements previously about how they're going to be opening up videos to more platforms. And these platforms, they got to evolve. And Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, those are like the big three right there. So when it comes to mean they got to evolve and they got to make it worthwhile, this is also kind of stepping over kind of like nudging with Spotify. Had a big announcement, I think it was last week, about it might have been two weeks ago the video and seamless integration with Patreon, which is another common option. Basically, if you've got a premium subscription, you're going with Apple podcasts or you're going with Patreon, really. And with Spotify announcing that integration with Patreon, this seems like Apple podcast logical kind of rebuttal to that. What I do like is just analytics. I don't have obviously Apple podcast premium subscriptions set up for this podcast. But one thing that is kind of surprising me is like, I thought this would have already been set up. I kind of thought these analytics would have already been in here. But it really goes to show how little analytics were already in there for Apple podcasts subscriptions, paid subscriptions. So that's cool. I really also like the conversion rate to be able to see at a glance, like how many are starting the free trial and then converting. Data tells the story, but it always doesn't tell the whole story. There's a lot of determining factors when it comes into people converting from the free trial to the paid. And if you're the type of podcasts that incorporates a lot of ads, then yeah, it totally would make sense for subscribers to sign up for that. But also just kind of like, remember, the bigger podcast you have, more likely the lower conversion rate you're going to see, but also you're going to have more people sign up. So that's pretty cool. I don't have any initial reactions other than, yeah, we need that stuff. This is stuff that I think should be standard in having something that you're going to be making money know, I just sold a bunch of things on ebay and I wasn't thinking like I wouldn't be able to see certain think that's I think that's important to know for us. And then next there's new delegated delivery partners. So in January they say Apple podcast launched Delegated delivery, making it possible for creators to publish subscriber episodes directly from their participating hosting provider dashboard. Now over 50% of new episodes from Triton Digital's OmniStudio are published to Apple podcasts using delegated delivery. And then they say, today we're pleased to share the following hosting providers will support delegated delivery by the end of this year. Audio means captivate, podbean, podspace, transistor. Then it says, Podbean will begin supporting delegated delivery starting today. Creators who host their shows with these providers are encouraged to reach out to them to learn more about launching Apple podcast subscriptions and publishing subscriber episodes to Apple podcasts. So it seems like there's just better integrations happening between paid subscriptions and hosting service providers. So they just announced these five hosting services. Audio means captivate, podbean, podspace, transistor and podbean starts today. It looks like the other ones are by the end of the year. I would expect they would announce more. Also what's a little weird is it doesn't say Blueberry there unless Blueberry is already there, but it says Blueberry and RSS.com in the image but then it doesn't list it under that. So maybe they're already there, I'm not really sure, but looks like they're coming one way or the other if they're not already there. So that's a little interesting to me. I'm kind of surprised Buzzsprout's not on there. Kind of surprised, oh, they got Captivate, definitely. I guess you're not going to see Apple and, you know, working too well together there and that's just at a loss of podcasters. That's the thing that really just sucks about the whole podcasting space is it's confusing. So what this is basically saying, if none of this made sense to you, is they're basically making it, again, easier for creators to publish subscriber episodes like if you had a paid subscriber from their participating hosting provider dashboard. So just making it easier for you to get out your episodes to paid subscribers. So cool. I guess. Again, this is something that feels like should be happening. If apple really wants to grow this and make it easier for people to monetize and actually compete with patreon more and spotify and patreon now, since they're working together, they've got to make it easier. They've got to make it work with these hosting providers or else we're going to just go to whatever the easiest thing is to use. And right now that's kind of confusing with Apple podcasts. Not to say it's not worth it, but it is confusing. It might be easier just to do Spotify and Patreon, but we'll see. This feels like an update, but it's not all there. I feel like there's still more to just that's just my intuition here, this isn't enough. And then Linkfire last update here is Linkfire. The marketing platform used by the world's top artists and labels is expanding into podcasting this fall with a powerful toolkit built for podcasts featuring an exclusive integration with Apple podcasts. So Linkfire is like a Danish music analytics platform and not to be confused with Linkfire but basically it says here with a Linkfire account, creators will be able to generate an unlimited number of smart links to landing pages for their podcasts and measure the ways listeners engage with them while respecting listeners privacy. So if you're not familiar with smart links, what they are is they just give you more data and sometimes they also open easier too if you use them in like an Instagram bio. Like if you've ever opened a link and then it was like would you like to open in this? Sometimes smart links will just work around that so it will go directly where you want it to go, like it'll open up podcasts, Apple Podcasts and go right to the episode that you linked. They're just more robust link, like they have more features they can do and they are made to give you better analytics which just like a simple link doesn't always tell you that much. So that's cool. Analytics through links are great, especially when you're using social sharing or using like paid ads, you can see more about how something is interacting with your link and that's one of the suggestions I use, especially when it comes to tracking listener growth. If you do use Link Tree or anything like that, is you've got to know how many people are clicking the link in your profile, clicking the link in your Instagram stories, wherever in your email if you want to be able to measure if something did all right or not. So that's pretty cool. But there is a little bit more to this and it's not just kind of cut and dry. So let's dig in just a little deeper because I saw something here that caught my eye. So it says using the Link Fire Insights dashboard, creators will be able to measure real time user engagement with these links and pages, including anonymized visits and click through rates. Cool, that's what we would expect here. As listeners use these pages to access Apple podcasts, creators can view all new engagement insights, including whether a listener has played an episode or followed a show on Apple podcasts. That's pretty cool that's new. Creators who offer Apple Podcast subscriptions and are enrolled in the Apple Podcasts affiliate program can add their affiliate token to also measure free trials, subscriptions, subscription proceeds and affiliate commissions generated using these links. Cool, so they really partnered up with Link Fire here all so, and then there's like a couple of other things that they say about. They mentioned again, protect user privacy. It can be viewed across links and over various time periods basically can kind of tell you exactly what's happening, but it's also anonymous. They have a quote here from the Link Fire co founder and CCO which I think is kind of funny because you would think this would come from someone else, not the co founder of the app, but it says Link Fire for Podcasts is an absolute game changer for podcast marketing. And I don't know how to say his name. Shepe farfelt through our exclusive partnership, blah, blah, blah, blah. Yeah, okay. Well, of course he's going to say this is like absolutely amazing and whatnot. So Link Fire will be available to all creators and shows worldwide for free this fall. Awesome. Additional features can be unlocked with a subscription to Link Fire for Podcasts starting at 999 per month. And then it says you can learn more and register to be notified when Link Fire for Podcast is available@linkfire.com. Podcasts. So this is cool. I'm guessing it doesn't say this. I don't see this anywhere on here, but because it says Linkfire will be available to all creators and shows worldwide for free this fall, I'm guessing if there's any monetization, if you're making money, they're going to want to make some money affiliate attribution and more paid subscription. And to see it's going to have the free version and the paid version, I'm expecting the light version to just kind of be really basic, nothing crazy, and then the paid version to be more robust. And I think when it comes to what's the deal behind this, my guess is that they were a little bit integrated with Charitable, which is they also have smart links. But my guess right off the top of my head just seeing this is this is something about like they worked out something that they didn't work out with Charitable and that's what Linkfire is like. Hey, we can come to you with this pure speculation. I have absolutely no idea. That's just completely an idea. It doesn't really matter. Even so, anyways, yeah, I think Linkfire will be interesting to see how it's utilized and if the data is worth it. If you are heavy with smart links and monetizing your podcast through Apple podcasts paid subscriptions, then this is going to make a lot of sense. If you're not, then yeah, you might get some more analytics and it might be helpful for you to determine where people are coming from. So that could be good. I think we'll have to wait and see more once it's launched to have a better idea just how powerful of a tool this will be. So when it launches, you can expect something from me about talking about the features and the paid versus free. And if it's worth it and we'll take a look at it then. But for now, I'm going to sign up for the waitlist. If you want to sign up for the list too for this Link Fire, just go to Linkfire.com slash podcasts and we'll take a look when that comes out. All right, that's it for this episode. I just wanted to cover some of these things because it's not too often we get Apple podcast updates, and that's something I want to cover more of on this show. And I hope you're doing well. I will catch you in the next episode.