Death of Stitcher: an ideal lesson of how podcasters ought to future-proof their distribution, syndication and promotion by Allan Tépper

Stitcher (initially referred to as Stitcher Smart Radio) which started in 2008, simply introduced that it’s going to voluntarily finish operations on August 29, 2023. However, this text isn’t a lot concerning the finish of Stitcher, however the ethical of the story (or la moraleja, in case you converse Castilian) for podcasters concerning the easiest way to distribute, syndicate and promote ourselves in future-proof methods. As a 2x award-winning podcaster and guide since 2008, I’ve noticed too many fellow podcasters who primarily promote susceptible platforms like Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Apple Podcasts and numerous extra, as an alternative of primarily selling their podcast’s personal web site and their very own Branded RSS. Too many fellow podcasters even try this audibly throughout their present, the place they’ll by no means discover time to re-edit and re-publish episodes from their again catalog, the place they had been selling platforms which, in some instances now not exist, as an alternative of selling their present’s personal web site with its personal area, which may probably exist ceaselessly so long as it’s paid.

My methods and proposals to all podcasters (those that are my purchasers and host with TecnoTur or not) is:

• Use a Branded RSS feed, the place the RSS feed incorporates the present’s personal area identify, not anybody else’s. Of course, host your podcast on one of many few podcast hosts that permit for Branded RSS, be it TecnoTur or one other one.
• Syndicate your present to as many podcast platforms as potential utilizing your Branded RSS feed, with the first aim of constructing the present be found by listeners who don’t know us but.
• Primarily promote the present’s personal web site with its personal area, not susceptible podcast platforms (particularly inside the audio content material of the present and within the episode notes).

Why?

• Our present’s personal web site is the one platform that we will completely assure will live on sooner or later.
• Other platforms like Stitcher (which has already introduced its personal loss of life), Google Podcasts (which has already downscaled itself from its prior great function set to a a lot easier one) might not exist sooner or later… or might determine to cost us an unaffordable amount of cash to proceed to be syndicated there.

Examples

The following examples could be with your personal voice or with a third-party skilled voice expertise. I exploit a mix of those on my exhibits:

• «Sonríe queridooyente, estás escuchando CapicúaFM en CapicúaFM.com. Allí es donde puedes escuchar todos los episodios pasados, presentes y futuros en CapicúaFM.com».
• «Smile, you’re listening to BeyondPodcasting at BeyondPodcasting.com. That’s the place you possibly can hearken to all previous, current and future episodes at BeyondPodcasting.com.»
• «Smile, you’re listening to YourShow.com at YourShow.com. That’s the place you possibly can hearken to all previous, current and future episodes at YourShow.com.»

Conclusions

By solely selling our personal related web site inside the present content material itself, our valuable evergreen audio recordings shall be futureproof. (Many listeners nonetheless eat previous episodes after looking on a subject listed within the episode title or within the episode notes.) Of course, we will have — and will nonetheless have — hyperlinks on the present’s web site to a few of these podcast syndication platforms. The web site could be up to date to take away out of date hyperlinks infinitely extra simply than re-recording and re-editing previous episodes. (It took me lower than 33 seconds for me to take away the Stitcher hyperlink from my podcast web sites like CapicúaFM and BeyondPodcasting. I’m so glad I by no means promoted Stitcher in any audio recordings.) But even these hyperlinks on the podcast’s devoted web site ought to be a lot much less outstanding than different worthwhile content material on that web page. Getting guests to our web site and listening instantly from there may be the holy grail, since there, the one distractions we place there are issues which might be crucial to us. Sending guests elsewhere (the place we will simply be forgotten) is senseless. The solely exception which I proceed to suggest is Pocket Casts, for causes I’ve coated in prior articles.

For extra info, go to TecnoTur.

Lee este artículo en castellano

Fin de Stitcher: una perfecta lección de cómo los podifusores deben organizar la distribución y promoción a prueba de los cambios del futuro