Ep 67: An Apple Podcast Update MADE for Lazy Girls

[00:00:00] Verity Sangan: Just last week, Apple Podcast released the news that they are going to be introducing transcripts on Apple Podcasts, making it easier for anyone to access podcasts.

[00:00:11] Verity Sangan: Hello everybody, I'm Verity.

[00:00:13] Verity Sangan: This is the Lazy Girl's guide to podcasting.

[00:00:15] Verity Sangan: Before we get started with this episode, I wanted to give a shout out to rain who left me a message on Twitter for one of our previous saying great episode.

[00:00:26] Verity Sangan: Also, I consider myself a lazy boy, so I love your content.

[00:00:30] Verity Sangan: Rain.

[00:00:30] Verity Sangan: Thank you so much for getting in touch and for dropping me that comment.

[00:00:33] Verity Sangan: So glad that you consider the content to be useful and that you are enjoying the episode.

[00:00:39] Verity Sangan: So thank you so much for getting in touch and letting me know.

[00:00:43] Transcripts on Apple Podcasts: A Lazy Girl's Dream

[00:00:43] Verity Sangan: In this tech Thursday episode, I am diving into this new feature of transcripts automatically being generated on Apple Podcasts.

[00:00:53] Verity Sangan: Now what I absolutely love about this is that it is right up a lazy girl's street because it provides it.

[00:01:01] Verity Sangan: Being Apple Podcasts will provide you with AI automatically generated transcripts on your episodes for free, which I just love.

[00:01:12] Verity Sangan: Not only is it lazy, but it's also free and we've got to love that.

[00:01:16] Verity Sangan: So how is this going to actually, I've got the podcast Apple podcast website right in front of me on my phone and this little bit, I'm just going to read it verbatim because it really could not be put any clearer exactly how this would work.

[00:01:33] Verity Sangan: So with transcripts, your audience can read the full text of an episode, search the episode for a specific word or phrase, and tap the text to play from that point in the episode.

[00:01:42] Verity Sangan: As an episode plays, each word is highlighted, making it easy to follow along.

[00:01:47] Verity Sangan: Transcripts can also be accessed from the episode details page.

[00:01:51] Verity Sangan: Touch and hold a podcast episode to reveal an option to view a transcript.

[00:01:55] Verity Sangan: Apple automatically generates transcripts after a new episode is published.

[00:02:00] Verity Sangan: Your episode will be available for listening rights away and the transcript will be available shortly afterwards.

[00:02:06] Verity Sangan: And later in the page it actually says that you could be waiting up to 24 hours for the transcript to go live.

[00:02:12] Verity Sangan: There will be a short delay whilst we process your transcript, and as I said, it does say around 24 hours.

[00:02:17] Verity Sangan: If portions of your episode change with dynamically inserted audio, Apple podcasts will not generate the segments of the audio that are changed.

[00:02:26] Verity Sangan: Since the original transcript music lyrics are not displayed in the transcript.

[00:02:31] Verity Sangan: This is currently only going to be available on iOS 17.4 and higher and in the languages of English, French, German and Spanish.

[00:02:41] Verity Sangan: And currently this is only going to apply to any new episodes that you publish going forward.

[00:02:47] Verity Sangan: However, Apple Podcast does say that over time it will be working on creating these transcripts for your back catalog of episodes.

[00:02:57] Verity Sangan: It doesn't say how long this will be, it just says over time.

[00:03:01] Verity Sangan: So I don't know whether or not that's going to be in up to a year.

[00:03:05] Verity Sangan: If that's going to be over a few months, I really don't know.

[00:03:07] Verity Sangan: But I have to say I do really like this feature.

[00:03:10] Verity Sangan: I think that this is really cool.

[00:03:13] Verity Sangan: If you are somebody in particular who has not started going down the transcript route for your episodes now, if you are already paying a service or already get transcriptions for your episodes, then this is potentially not going to actually affect you at all, or it's going to be a feature that you're probably not going to bother with.

[00:03:35] Verity Sangan: I'm not going to bother with it as a feature, and I'll come on to that in a little bit.

[00:03:39] Verity Sangan: But if you are somebody who you are not creating transcripts for your episodes, then you don't really need to do anything except for log on to your Apple Connect account, accept the new terms and conditions because your settings will automatically be set, that your episodes will be automatically transcribed by Apple Podcasts once the episode goes live.

[00:04:07] Verity Sangan: So, as I said, it will take, according to Apple podcasts themselves, up to 24 hours for that transcript to go live.

[00:04:15] Verity Sangan: But I think that's really cool that if you just don't have the energy or the want or the will or whatever, it will do it for you.

[00:04:23] Verity Sangan: Now, I did say that this is going to be a feature that I'm not bothering with in the short term.

[00:04:29] Verity Sangan: I probably will at some point or another run a little bit of an experiment on this.

[00:04:33] Verity Sangan: I'd be interested to know how effective the actual transcript is and how accurate it is.

[00:04:42] Verity Sangan: You'll know that I use summarize for my transcripts, and personally I have found summarize to produce more accurate transcripts than descript.

[00:04:52] Verity Sangan: Now, I will caveat that and say I haven't used description about nine to twelve months now.

[00:04:56] Verity Sangan: So in all fairness, that could have been overtaken.

[00:04:59] Verity Sangan: That was just my personal experience.

[00:05:02] Verity Sangan: So I will probably run a little experiment at some point just to see what the quality of the transcription is like, just as a bit of a comparison.

[00:05:12] Verity Sangan: However, at the moment I use summarize.

[00:05:17] Verity Sangan: As I said, I pay for summarize.

[00:05:19] Verity Sangan: I get my transcripts through summarize, so I just use those.

[00:05:23] Verity Sangan: The other reason why I'm not going to be too fussed about using this feature as well is because I've got a large amount of my audience that doesn't use Apple podcasts to listen to this podcast.

[00:05:37] Verity Sangan: So I know that I've got something like 45 ish percent of my listeners who will access lazy Girls Guide to podcasting through Apple Podcasts.

[00:05:46] Verity Sangan: But that then means that I've got up to 55% of my listenership who are listening through Spotify primarily is the second biggest.

[00:05:55] Verity Sangan: But then other podcasting apps and platforms after that, or on the Internet through my website or what have you.

[00:06:01] Verity Sangan: So because of that, I am still going to be uploading my transcripts that I generate from summarize to my hosting platform and then they will be going out on the RSS feed with my episodes.

[00:06:18] Verity Sangan: One of the cool things about the Apple podcast transcriptions is that once the transcription has gone live, once Apple Podcast has generated that transcription, the website does say that you will be able to download that transcription.

[00:06:33] Verity Sangan: So then in all fairness, if you wanted to, you could then download that transcription, copy paste it, whatever, go across to your podcast hosting platform and as long as they support having transcripts, you could upload that transcript to your hosting platform and then it will push the transcript out with your episode via the RSS feed.

[00:06:56] Verity Sangan: Now personally, I'm not going to bother with that because it just seems like an extra step for me.

[00:07:02] Verity Sangan: And for me, that's a little bit pointless.

[00:07:04] Verity Sangan: As I said, I'm getting my transcripts when I go into summarize to get all of that content anyway.

[00:07:08] Verity Sangan: So for me, it doesn't make sense for my workflow to go into Apple Podcasts, get the transcription, download it, go back to my hosting platform where I've already published the episode, replay with the back end of things to put the transcript in and then have the RSS feed to push out again.

[00:07:29] Verity Sangan: To me that's just like an extra step.

[00:07:30] Verity Sangan: However, if you are somebody who you want to dabble in using transcripts, or maybe you're somebody who the vast majority of your listenership is on Apple Podcasts, or even if you just want to use free transcription service and you're not that bothered about the additional step, then that is really useful to know.

[00:07:53] Verity Sangan: I think that you can get your episode transcribed by Apple Podcasts, download that.

[00:08:00] Verity Sangan: Like I said, you do have to wait up to 24 hours, the website says, but then you can download the transcription and then put it on your RSS feed.

[00:08:10] Verity Sangan: And the other cool thing about that is then you could also put it through something like Chat GPT to generate show notes.

[00:08:16] Verity Sangan: Like I said, the only backward bit about that is that you are going to have to do that like a day or two after the episode has actually gone live.

[00:08:24] Verity Sangan: But if that doesn't really bother you, then that could be something that you look at doing.

[00:08:31] Verity Sangan: So on that note, as I said, it's not going to be a feature that I'm using at the moment.

[00:08:35] Verity Sangan: However, I do think that it is going to be a fab feature for all of you lazy girls out there.

[00:08:43] Verity Sangan: I am going to put a link to the website, to the official webpage on Apple podcasts down in the show notes for this information.

[00:08:53] Verity Sangan: Because then if you wanted like me to switch off this setting, then it has instructions as to how to do it.

[00:09:00] Verity Sangan: And it's really, really easy.

[00:09:01] Verity Sangan: I did it in like 20 seconds.

[00:09:02] Verity Sangan: It was so, so easy.

[00:09:04] Verity Sangan: So I'll put that link down in the show notes.

[00:09:07] Verity Sangan: And equally, if you just want to explore this new feature of Apple podcasts, of putting transcripts on your Apple podcast episodes, then you can dive into that a little bit more.

[00:09:18] Tech Thursday Episode

[00:09:18] Verity Sangan: I hope that you have enjoyed another tech Thursday episode.

[00:09:22] Verity Sangan: Make sure that you hit those five stars.

[00:09:24] Verity Sangan: Give us a five star review.

[00:09:26] Verity Sangan: You know I always appreciate it.

[00:09:28] Verity Sangan: It's been great to spend time with you as ever and I will see you next.

[00:09:33] Verity Sangan: Happy podcasting.