So you have a podcast you'd like to promote? That's fantastic! Come along with me, as I painstakingly detail all the ways to not succeed in doing that.
Not a podcaster? That works too. Everyone is welcome, to what should be a farce about the road t...
No thanks to all your effort so far, your podcast has gotten a few listens trickling in from people who somehow stumbled upon it in the dense and vicious jungles of podcastdom. Maybe understanding something about these people will help you get ideas on where to find more of them.
You might see some aggregate data from various podcast platforms on your podcast host, but it likely won't be as detailed as what the individual platforms provide. So you'll need to get on each of those separately. Let's stick with the big ones.
Sign up with Apple Podcasts, providing your name, phone number, birth date, home address, and firstborn child, and claim your podcast.
I mean, assuming you can get in. Have your phone ready. They require two-factor authentication on login. On everylogin. As of this writing, no other common non-security-related consumer service I'm aware of mandates 2FA on 100% of logins. Not even the Apple App Store. Or say, PayPal. But podcast analytics. If that's not protected. Oh god.
Once you do get past all this top-notch podcast security (isn't it cute how they have a "Remember me" checkbox?), you'll probably start having connectivity problems. That means running into screens like this:
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There is no hint of what one is meant to do with a "correlation key." And yes, that's just a box up top there. Maybe it's the hole where the key goes. Try back in a few hours.
It will still be spitting random alphanumeric keys. Try again.
Gateway Timeout.
Try another browser.
Well, alright! The login page loads. It querulously demands two-factor authentication again. Get your rear up out of your chair and go find where you left your phone.
Type in those numbers, aaaand...Gateway Timeout.
I don't know what you were expecting, really.
Go get yourself some snacks or something. You're going to need rations for this next part.
After you give it about another hour, it will actually connect.
Only now it will automatically log you out again. You'll need to log in at least four more times before the next screen that loads isn't still the login screen. Once you're logged in, the resulting screen will be blank, and you'll need to refresh that a few times and probably log in a few more times before you can see anything.
At this point what you see will likely be: "There was an error.Services are temporarily unavailable. Try again later." I'll just go ahead and let you know that trying again later will not help, so let's keep at it.
Since you clearly have nothing better to do, log in seven more times (are you tired of 2FA yet?), receive white screen of death, wait, it resolves into being logged out in about thirty seconds. Log in, it shows text, click your podcast, oh my god it's loading...loading...for ten seconds...twenty...thirty...the suspense is killing you...or the tedium...one minute and counting...you know what's going to happen if you refresh...
