An Important Message for Indie Podcasters, and a Small Format Tweak for 2025

Intro: 00:00:01

It's not just for the the geeks and OGs, this show's for those in and around podcasting.

Mark: 00:00:06

Hello there and welcome to In and Around Podcasting, the industry podcast that highlights a range of powerful podcasting perspectives.

My name is Mark Asquith, the MD and co founder here at Captivate. And joining me as always on this special bonus episode is the man, the myth, the will probably become a legend at some point. Danny Brown. Hello.

Danny: 00:00:37

Hello. Maybe I'm a legend in my own mind. Who knows?

Mark: 00:00:40

I think so. I think we all are.

Especially when we do something that's unseen, like catch something that no one gets on camera and we're like, did anyone see that? Yeah, we've all been there. We've all been there.

All right, today we're gonna just talk a, a little bit about a slight tweak to the format of In and Around Podcasting. We, we set this show up to be an industry show with a bit of a difference.

You know, we wanted to highlight this genuine range of powerful podcasting perspectives.

But, you know, we work in the industry, we are podcasters, we work at a podcast hosting platform, and even we find it difficult to make schedules work. Do you know the pain in the neck is me being in England? Like, if I just live with you, Danny, it'd be fine. You know, everyone's in the U.S.

It'd be fine.

But genuinely, the issue that we're coming up against is that, you know, we, we can, we could put out a good show, but we could really just do it with Danny, myself and one co host. But everyone's doing that. Everyone's doing sort of interview shows and so on. We want to stick to our guns.

We want to make sure that we're highlighting that range of indie podcasting perspectives alongside professional podcasting perspectives. That's the promise that In and Around Podcasting made. And we struggled to do it.

We struggled to get two people on every single episode purely because of scheduling.

Not because of a lack of demand or people wanting to be on the show, but just because we just cannot make people get together in the same room at the same time. It's just so difficult. So we are going to change things up, but we sort of wanted to do this bonus episode.

We'll talk to you about what we're going to be changing, how we're going to be changing it, and what the new schedule will be. But Danny, you mentioned it pre recording, like, what? I've been doing this eleven years, ten, eleven, twelve years.

I can't remember when I start my first podcast anymore. Two thousand eleven probably with Gaz two thousand twelve. And you've been doing it for pretty much as long, I guess. And it like, even now, dude, we still struggle.

We work in the industry. We can do this all day, every day if we want to, but we still struggle to get a podcast out.

So the indie podcaster, sat there with like a couple of hours per week to put into their show. Man, they shouldn't feel bad about not being able to get things out every week, should they?

Danny: 00:02:49

No, mate. And it's life, right? Like I say, we, we work in industry. We.

We have scheduling tools at Captivate, you know, we have the tools and the platform, but getting people that are in different parts of the world aligned at the same time, especially when everybody's super busy, it's just hard. And I don't feel - like you said, it's a great point, I don't feel indie podcasters should feel bad because they're missing an episode one week, or they're missing episodes for two, three weeks? Sometimes you know, your audience, as long as you're giving great content and delivering what you promised to your audience, they'll.

They'll stay there. We can see that with our numbers. I know you had that with your old show. You took a year break to have a kid and, you know, change your personal life.

Where we saw and everyone and your numbers were still there. They kept growing even, you know, so I feel a lot of times that we're told by industry pros you have to push out every week.

You've got to be there, there, there all the time, and it's not true. So no, just be aware that life gets in the way. Scheduling issues happen, and that's okay.

Mark: 00:03:43

Yeah, I actually saw a report, I think, in Podnews last week. I was off work for two weeks. I had two weeks off to do a vacay, but I was still reading Podnews because I'm a nerd.

And James, I know you're listening to this. Do not, do not get a big head about that. But I did still read it, and there was a report in one of the days there that said actually a hiatus is.

I'm sure it said something like, it's good for your numbers. I should have dug this out. I didn't expect us to talk about this, to be honest, but I'm sure I read it, that it works.

And I think the reason for that is that, you know, Christmas is a good example. And this was something that was in the report that.

And I think Colin Gray mentioned this recently as well, that the demand goes up, but the supply goes down insofar as episodes stop during the holidays and the demand for that because people aren't working or whatever goes up, which is sort of interesting because people, you aren't commuting, but then maybe they're walking the dog or maybe they're in the gym. Not me, but maybe they're in the gym. And it's always fascinating.

So, yeah, I've always sort of found this, that if you have a hiatus and if you, if you tell people and communicate it really well, which we're gonna do, here's when I'm coming back. Here's what you can expect. People actually are fine with that and they actually enjoy it. They go and listen to the back catalog.

Like, I have genuinely seen that across several shows that I've done. The people that say you've always got to publish every single week.

Like, unless you're a big show that's making, you know, genuine money each week, and if you don't put an episode out, you're not getting that ad revenue, then it doesn't necessarily harm you. And the people that are saying that you've got to put an episode out a week.

Are normally the gurus, mate, I saw one on Facebook the other day, in one of the Facebook groups, some poor soul was saying, look, I'm really struggling. I've got Christmas with the kids, the kids are off school. I'm not going to be able to put my episodes out. I feel really bad. What should I do?

And like, some plonker just said, well, if you're not publishing every week, you're not committed enough and you'll lose all your audience. I was like, you absolute jerk off. That's number one. Just an absolute assholey thing to say. And then number two, like, it's wrong, it's wrong.

So, yeah, I just. It's important, man, that people don't feel bad and that there's a lot of this in podcasting where people are made to feel bad about little things.

Oh, your pod faded after seven episodes. You should feel bad, like, you know, get out, get in the sea. Like, so what? It's fine. It's a hobby to most people.

So, yeah, dude, you know me, I could rant on about this.

Danny: 00:06:03

Well, the thing is as well, mate, like, podfade probably comes out a lot of the times because people are being forced to ship content out every single week to meet a predefined schedule they've been told to have, as opposed to taking a break, getting the mental wellness back in place, and then coming back Refreshed and back in love with the episodes, et cetera.

Mark: 00:06:20

And I think we've got to consider the quality aspect of it, which leads us onto, In and Around Podcasting. Like, we've had some really fantastic episodes. Really fantastic.

Like, I don't think we've done a bad episode whatsoever, but I think it's easy to fall into a hamster wheel, and I've talked about this before on the Podcast Accelerator and a few other shows, is that you can churn stuff out just because you've been told that you need to, or because you've set some arbitrary target for yourself and you end up becoming a quantity versus quality. You saw this back in the day with, you know, JLD did EO Fire for years as a daily podcast. Fine. Good. Was every episode as good as the next?

I don't know. It's, you know, maybe you go and listen and figure it out, I don't know.

But then what you saw was everyone doing the same thing, and it was just a numbers game. It wasn't good content. People that were setting up XYZ On Fire, they weren't doing good content.

And, you know, John really put a lot of effort in to batching up his episodes, being very diligent and putting out the best content that he could. Like I said, I don't, I don't know the variation in quality per episode, but he went to weekly because he wanted to keep the quality a hundred ten percent.

And when you exhaust a hundred ten, you've got to stop, think, how can I keep it there? How can I keep it as good as it was? And that might require change or a break, you know. So, yeah, it's a very interesting problem, mate.

Very interesting problem. You've put shows on hiatus before as well, haven't you? Put a few on a break.

Danny: 00:07:49

Yeah. Yeah, that's.

That's probably why you keep saying I've got, you know, all these shows, because there's like two episodes and then I just give it up or whatever. Right?

Mark: 00:07:55

Yeah, you span a podcast up, did two episodes and we're like, oh, hiatus, that'll do it.

Danny: 00:08:00

Exactly. Going on hiatus. Be back soon. Nah.

And then especially, like, I had an old show called Pod Chat, that was an industry show, you were on it, and I really enjoyed that. But I got to the stage where I wasn't enjoying it anymore. I was finding I wasn't getting the same quality content out.

Mark: 00:08:15

And it can get repetitive as well, can't it? Sorry to interrupt you, you know, if you were doing like a one to one interview about anything.

You'll get to a certain point where you start talking about the same stuff you talked about six months ago or a year ago. That's difficult to avoid.

Danny: 00:08:29

Yeah, and that was exactly one of the reasons was I was seeing the guests were awesome, but I was seeing a lot of the conversations were very similar to what came before because, like, you know yourself, sometimes there's only so much you can talk about based on the guests that you have on and their expertise, especially in the podcasting industry. So, yeah, and I used to feel bad about that. I felt like, as you say, I failed.

Maybe I should just stop podcasting because I can't put the content out that I promised.

But there's nothing wrong with either stopping and trying something new or taking a step back like you say, take the hiatus, take a year out like you did even, and decide, okay, do I continue with the show, do I do a new one or a different format, that kind of thing. There's nothing wrong with that.

And I feel you made a point earlier that's so important for people to hear that and indie podcasters especially to hear that, because it will help them be better, it will help them grow and get to where they want to, whatever that looks like for their own, their own podcasts.

Mark: 00:09:21

Now, I'm going to let you tell the audience in a little while when we're going to be coming back, because we are going to have that little hiatus over Christmas, we are going to have that little break over the holidays. And the promise that we're making is that we want to keep that quality up.

We want to make sure that we are delivering on what the trailer says we're going to deliver on, which is, look, we're going to try and get an industry pro and an indie podcaster to talk about some of the pressing issues and to highlight this range of powerful podcasting perspectives. Because it's easy to get podcast pros talking about it because that's what they do, that's what they want to do.

It's difficult to get podcasters to talk about it because they're busy, they're doing other things, they've got lives. So. But we really want to try and hit that.

We really want to try and do that because it's those indie voices that I feel are a little bit underrepresented. And, you know, we saw the Indie Pod Awards in, in London. There's an immense talent pool out there, an immense passion pool out there.

So it's, it, it's remiss of us not, you know, think what was our promise? Can we actually make sure that we're focused on delivering that?

So I think that's important for us and I think that hiatus will really help just to kind of make sure we get all the ducks in a row. So we are going to break. This is going to be the last piece of content that you will see from In and Around Podcasting until the new year.

But, Danny, what's the new format? What's the new skedge and when are we coming back? Yes, I did say skedge. It's two thousand and nine.

Danny: 00:10:42

Is it skedge or shedge?

Mark: 00:10:44

Oh, don't start this niche and niche stuff. I'm not into this.

Danny: 00:10:50

So, yeah, so like you said, we're going to take a break. We're going to do this, obviously, with this bonus episode today just to give the update about the break in the format.

We'll be back in a new year on January fourteen, I believe is the first episode date drop of the new schedule. Schedule, whatever. And we'll be looking at going to bi-weekly because I feel that we talked about that, mate.

We feel that's going to be a really better option for calendars to work for indie podcasters especially, so we can get them on. Regardless of where in the world you are. We'll make it work. So, yeah, January fourteen, twenty twenty five, bi-weekly.

And we'll really be delivering on our promise to get indie voices on and share what they're seeing in the industry and how it's affecting them and what the industry is doing to podcasting, so to speak.

Mark: 00:11:35

Yeah, I love that.

We will be back on January fourteenth and if you need us to talk about anything, if you've got any questions, if you're thinking, you know, what's this mean for us in podcasting? What about this whole video thing? What about this whole Podcasting Two Oh malarkey?

What about this whole making money when the big shows are trying to take all of our money? We'll answer any question. Just hit us up X.com/inaroundpodcast. And I don't like saying x.com just go to Twitter and just search InAroundPodcasting.

But we'll be back on January fourteenth. So wishing you a very happy holiday, Danny. Happy holidays to you, sir.

Danny: 00:12:12

Thank you very much.

And to you and to our listeners, I'm just wondering, do we want a link out in the show notes to the old promo, like the trailer promo, and have them contact us? They'd be interested in being on the show.

Mark: 00:12:24

Absolutely, we do. We'll get that in there. Yeah, so go ahead and look at the, go and look at the show notes. We'll get that link in there.

And if you want to be on the show, if you want to register, if you want to drop us your trailer, we'll cut it in to the episodes inside our, well, our fantastic wave file segment which will be quite interesting. So yeah, go ahead and do that. InAndAroundPodcasting.com we'll put the link in the show notes. You can get it.

You can get it wherever you get your podcast. You know the drill. But have a wonderful holiday season. Look after yourself. Have fun. Spend some time doing the things that you want to do.

If that's podcasting, all well and good. If it's not podcasting, you do want to take a break, do not feel bad about it. And we'll be back on January fourteenth. Bye bye for now.