Podcasting Hall of Famer Dave Jackson from the School of Podcasting obviously loves the medium, he just doesn’t like one of the players within it – Anchor.
The company made news this year when they were purchased by Spotify, but Jackson still grimaces at the idea of a business who provides their services free of charge. Presumably, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is (to good to be true).
Jackson warns that Anchor will only let you list your podcast in one category (for Apple Podcasts), not the usual three. He also doesn’t like that Anchor doesn’t tell you when you sign up for their service that you won’t get access to Apple stats in PodcastConnect, nor your Stitcher stats. Not to mention, Jackson points out, the stats from Anchor themselves are very basic. Additionally, the owner email that shows up in iTunes won’t be your address.
There were even times that Jackson emailed Anchor and had to wait four days for a response.
Dave Jackson and his conclusion?
Jackson told Indie Pod News, “They make it easy, but starting a podcast is not the hard part. Staring a GOOD podcast is the hard part.”
He has even more complaints about Anchor. Read his full blog entry here.
He’s not wrong, but there are a lot of great things about Anchor, one of them being it lets people jump in and get a feel for podcasting without a huge barrier to entry. It’s also a great way to work on your hosting skills. As a hosting solution though, it definitely leaves a lot of room for improvement.
“grimaces at the idea” rings of ‘elitism’ to me. So the service is free. So what. If they have a business model that works, great – way to go Anchor! And if your podcast has a narrow focus, do you really need more than one category? And the only reason I can see to be so focused and worried about stats is if you are “all about the money.” I’m sure the same complaints came about during the explosion of blogs.