What Does It Take to Get Podcasts Featured on iTunes!?!
So I’ve been spending a lot of time, money and energy on video podcasting. After doing nothing but making games for 10 years, this is a big departure and a big risk for me. I’ve invested about 1.5 salaried positions in video podcast production, and we have 6 shows up and running on CleverMedia.tv. Two are regular weekly programs, and one is a daily. We think the quality of our shows, particularly Podcast Salad and Book Stories, is quite high and we’ve received some great feedback from the podcasting world.
But ultimate success depends on people finding the show and watching it. And that boils down to one thing: the Apple iTunes music store. They list lots of podcasts, including ours, in a searchable directory. But the main way people discover new podcasts is by getting featured in their “Featured Video Podcasts” section.
I assumed the way to get “featured” is to simply work hard and produce good, quality stuff. Eventually, we’d get rewarded. Right? But week after week, I see us passed over while they accept some odd choices. Some are nothing more than commericals in an RSS feed, others are re-purposed TV network content. Some of the podcasts have very simple production values and are created by one or two people, while others come from huge broadcast corporations. There doesn’t seem to be a common thread as to why those shows in particular are featured.
Now I hate to wine about something like this. I know it is sour grapes and all that. But there is a lot at stake here. I would hate for our video podcasting efforts to fail simply because someone at Apple randomly decided not to feature us. That’s sad. I know that they want to feature the best of the best, and I truly belive that we are — or at least that we deserve a shot.
So, there is one way you can help. I figure if they get a lot of reviews of our shows, then they can’t keep ignoring us. Go to Podcast Salad, Book Stories and The Daily Vlog and give them a look. Then open iTunes, go to the Music Store, select Podcasts and then search for those podcasts and add a review. Your help is greatly and humbly appreciated.