Micro.Blog Podcasting + OP3 Stats

I've been playing around with Micro.blog's ability to publish a quick podcast either by uploading an MP3 directly on the web, or via their app called Wavelength, and I'm having fun with minimal to no edits on episodes whenever I feel like hitting record. You can subscribe to Faraway, So Micro wherever you get your podcasts.

It's a bit more work to get the Micro.blog podcast set up in other podcast listening apps like Apple Podcasts when compared to traditional podcast hosting services like Transistor.fm (best podcast host you can use for your podcast!) who take care of all that for you, but that's a one time set it and forget it process you can also do yourself.

Micro.blog Doesn't Do Stats Though? 🥲

I have sufficient vanity online to at least be curious if anyone is actually listening to my micro podcast, and Micro.blog doesn't have any sort of built in stats or analytics at all—that's kind of the point of using the service so I wouldn't expect Manton and co. to build it in. But my vanity must be served!

Then I remembered that OP3 exists. It's an open source project run by John Spurlock to enable stats for podcasts independent of any one podcast host or company. Any podcaster can prepend https://op3.dev/e/ to their MP3 file enclosure link in their RSS feed and then OP3 will automagically track downloads for them.

You can see an example stats page here for my yet to be launched podcast, or OP3's example stats page here.

How to Add OP3 to your Micro.Blog Podcast

Thanks to the reach of the internet, it took one post Bluesky that caught John Spurlock's attention for him to write up a Micro.blog plugin (log in required for Micro.blog) to automatically add the OP3 prefix to your podcast feed on Micro.blog.

All before he even had lunch:

Thanks John! And thanks to Manton and Micro.blog for making a cool service like this to hack and play with.