Infamous America - UPDATE | Bonus content is here!

Episode Date: May 26, 2020

Black Barrel+ premium listening experience is now live. Subscription plans that offer bingeable seasons, early access, and exclusive bonus episodes are now available for both Legends of the Old West and Infamous America. Thank you in advance for your support! Subscribe here: https://blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, it's Chris. I'm back with what I hope will be the last major update about our bonus content system. And the update is that it's here. It's finally done. The system is up and running. It's called Black Barrel Plus. It's our premium listening experience. And you can go subscribe to it right now.

So let me quickly tell you what it is. And then I'll tell you how to get it. And there's one simple easy way. If you're listening to this episode, you will see a link to it down at the bottom in your show notes. But I'll get to that in a second. So what it is? Black Barrel Plus, like I said, is our premium listening experience. It is our bonus content delivery system. There are three plans for you to choose from. It's a monthly subscription plan process. So the three plans are one for Legends of the Old West, one for Infamous America, and then an all-access plan. If you sign up for that plan, you get everything for both of the shows. So it's a pretty standard concept. Individual plans for legends and infamous. are $5 per month. The all access plan is $8 per month. And so here are some of the features of these plans. Here's what you're going to get for your money aside from my eternal thanks

for helping us produce these shows. So the first major feature is the big one. This is the one most people have asked for. I get this request all the time. It's finally coming true. It's going to roll out a little bit in stages, but it is available right now for Infamous America. It is bingeable seasons. You can listen to the entire series at one time if you subscribe to any of these plans. So as I mentioned, that is available right now for Infamous America. If you're listening to this on the day of its release, this update episode is either Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on where you live in the world. If you sign up right now, the Alcatraz series, Escape from Alcatraz, is available for you to listen to in its entirety right now when you subscribe.

So the first big feature is bingeable seasons. Second is early access. And that one's going to be a little bit staggered. Because it took so long to get this system up and running, there were some bumps in the road, as you would imagine. It seems to always happen. Early access is going to happen fully after the Alcatraz series on Infamous America and after Apache Wars on Legends of the Old West.

Starting with the seasons after those two seasons, subscribers will get early access to the entire season, which means they'll get access to the whole series one week before episode one comes out for everyone else. And then the final feature is exclusive bonus episodes, which you already heard me mention on the episode, Rathbone and Robinson on the Infamous America series. If you're only listening to Infamous America, that season did have a bonus episode to it. So bonus episodes will become available for both shows, Legends of the Old West and Infamous America. In fact, at the end of the Apache Wars series, there will be a bonus episode.

bonus episode related to somewhat to that series. At the end of Alcatraz, they will probably also be a bonus episode there. Bonus episodes are going to be exclusive to subscribers, and they will take on different dimensions. They're not always going to be tied to the series you're listening to. Sometimes they're going to be totally stand-alone, one-off episodes that I just thought were interesting and fun, but they were not, the story wasn't long enough to be told in a full series. So that's what it is. So now, how do you get it? As I alluded to a second ago, wherever you're listening to this, if you just scroll down and look in the show notes of this episode, you will see a link to the subscription process. It's incredibly simple.

If you are listening to this on your desktop or you're just more comfortable doing things on a computer, go to our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. If you scroll down on the homepage, you'll find a huge banner that advertises BlackBarrell Plus, our premium listening experience. You can hit join there and you can follow the steps, the series of prompts. There's also at the top of the page a Black Barrel Plus tab. If you click on that, it will take you directly to the whole subscription process. It is incredibly simple. We've chosen a system that really streamlines the process of delivering this bonus content stuff. You do not have to create an account.

You don't have to worry about remembering another password. If you're like me, you've already got lists of them written down. You don't need another one. So it's incredibly simple. There are very few steps. I think it's a total of like five or six clicks or taps of your finger. It's really simple. In fact, this is how easy it is.

It's so easy. My dad did it on his own. If you know my dad, my sister will probably laugh at this. If my dad hears this, I'm sure he will laugh at himself. He did it on his own with no guidance from my sister or I. If you know my dad, you know that is a damn near heroic feat. So here's my commercial pitch to you. If my dad can do it, you can do it.

Once you pay for the plan and you're ready to subscribe, here's what happens. Now this is the critical step. This is why we chose this system. Each bonus content system like this does it a little bit differently. But here's what happens. Once you've paid for the plan, the system itself will generate a new podcast link for you that you will click on and it will open automatically in whichever podcast player you're listening to me right now. So once you've subscribed, you will then be shown a list of all the different podcast apps where you can listen to this show.

You click on whichever one you're using and it will automatically give you a new subscription link. When you subscribe to that link, you're done. You now have a new podcast feed with all of this bonus content coming to you. You just start listening to that feed and you're good to go. You should see no difference, no lag time in your listening or delivery. It's all right there. It's incredibly easy. But of course, like everything, there's a catch.

It's a relatively small catch, but there's no way around it. The vast majority of podcast listening apps support this bonus content system. Unfortunately, there are three that do not. Spotify, Google Podcasts, and Stitcher do not allow their apps to work with the bonus content system. To my knowledge, they don't allow their apps to work with any bonus content system. I don't know why, but for whatever reason, they have refused to allow their apps to work with any kind of bonus delivery system. So if your primary listening application is Spotify, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher, I would humbly ask you to maybe try a different app. Certainly if you're an iPhone user, you already have the Apple Podcast app built right into your phone.

You don't have to go download a different one. But unfortunately, that's a reality of the situation. Almost every other app, virtually every other app, all the major. ones with the exception of those three are supported. You shouldn't have any trouble subscribing. It is available right now. Like I said, Infamous America listeners can go listen to the entire series of Alcatraz as soon as you click on the subscription link. And then coming in, like I said, just to reiterate, after Alcatraz is done and after Apache Wars is done on Infamous and Legends respectively, everything really kicks in. All the seasons will be

bingeable. They will all be available early, and you'll be getting exclusive bonus episodes. So we wanted to get this out really quickly now, because infamous America listeners can take advantage of the bingeability, if that's a word, of the Escape from Alcatraz series. So I hope you all enjoy it. Please let me know what you think. If there are any problems, there are support mechanisms within the system. Certainly, of course, you can always send me an email through our website or reach out to us on social media. Happy listening. I hope you all subscribe. Enjoy yourselves. Cheers.