"Talk Show": How to create, develop and listen to podcasts

Patrick Breitenbach / CC

The format of podcasts (despite the fact that this direction seemed unpopular and “fading” a few years ago) every year attracts more attention and returns to its former popularity. As invited guests of podcasts, movie stars and famous politicians are more and more often noticed.
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The number of radio stations is constantly growing, as well as the number of applications through which you can listen to podcasts, there is a new, more accessible equipment for recording sound and software for editing releases. In our today's material we will talk about what is happening now in the podcast industry, as well as what famous podcasters and popular publications recommend using to listen to and record shows.

Podcasts: entertainment or business?

The podcast industry is developing, but not as fast as we would like. According to Google research, over the past few years, interest in podcasts has grown by 30%, but only 17% of the world's population listens to podcasts on a monthly basis.

Techcrunch conducted its research on the podcast market, the results of which revealed what the industry is lacking at the moment: podcasting has now faced a number of problems, the largest of which is the slow growth in the number of listeners and the relatively low income from recording the show. Here you can see a more detailed description of the research results.

Of course, large companies, such as Serial or Gimlet Media, do not have such problems. In view of the fame of their podcasts, these companies are always "on the ear" (in the literal and figurative sense), and every day the army of their fans is growing. But for smaller shows, these questions are quite critical.

What do podcasters live on

The main income of Internet radio stations and podcasters brings advertising. According to the results of the survey , the audience of which was about 169,000 respondents, approximately 63% of the listeners buy goods that were heard in the podcast. This is not surprising - a talented author of the show can not just read a text prepared in advance, but tell more about a product or share its experience of its use, create a “face” of a product.

So, the producer of the WTF podcast can guarantee that about 325,000 people will download any release. This means that each of them will hear an advertisement and, possibly, make a purchase. The cost of advertising in this podcast ranges from 18 to 25 dollars per thousand listeners.

As a result, the advertiser company pays a little more than $ 8,000 for each advertising "insertion" in the "top" American podcast. Of course, this amount cannot be compared with the earnings of the television industry, but then even for the recording of a podcast you need far less effort and money.

But advertising for earnings is not enough, especially if the podcast does not have thousands of fans. “We really want to get income from different sources,” said Gimlet Media co-founder Matt Lieber. “There are a huge number of ways to motivate the listener to purchase, for example, subscriptions, participation in events or other joint activities for listeners and presenters.”

Live shows are another source of income for podcasters. Stand-up comedians Doug Benson and Greg Proops began recording their performances and broadcasting them as podcasts.

The proceeds from the speeches are quite large: almost the entire hall is full, and for the listener to become part of something larger is extremely pleasant. As a result, podcasts become a "by-product" of the main "work" of artists and attract an additional audience - including those people who, for one reason or another, can never come to live performances of comedians.

Approximately in the same way, podcasts work under the label of large “colloquial” radio stations (which is especially popular with us in Russia). Sometimes, various podcasts (or even families of podcasts) group together parts of large morning talk shows, and sometimes the entire show as a whole. So the content of the “live” performance (whether it’s air on radio or stand-up in the concert hall) becomes the material for the podcast.

For those who "write"

If you are fascinated by the prospect of making money on releases of your own show (or simply creating your own podcast and telling it about loved ones and things that are interesting to you), it's time to think about special equipment. For immersion in the subject can refer to the materials of Jason Snell (Jason Snell) - the founder of the portal Sixcolors. On his website, Jason talks in detail about his personal experience in managing and recording podcasts.

“... you can start recording podcasts with primitive equipment. The main thing is a great interest in what you are going to talk about. ”

- Jason Snell

Jason's first podcasts were recorded on the simplest microphone. As needed, he bought additional tools and equipment to improve the quality of the recording. The two main things that Jason pays special attention to are the microphone and headphones.

When using a good microphone, the quality of the recording increases markedly - various parasitic noises cease to be recorded, and high-quality headphones will allow you to hear all the nuances of the recording and protect the presenter from extraneous sounds. Here you can see the full list of equipment that Jason and his interlocutors use.



Podcaster Serenity Caldwell (Serenity Caldwell) uses a microphone for radio and video Audio-Technica AT8010 to record sound effects and record podcasts away from home

It is also important that there is no echo in the room. During recording, the doors must be closed, the carpets must lie on the floor, and the curtains hang on the windows (as a last resort, you can record a podcast in a room with a lot of textiles or - strange as it sounds - even in the closet).

In almost all podcasts, Jason uses Skype. Neither he nor his industry colleagues see any other alternative to this program, so the vast majority of podcasters who record releases remotely work with it.



Shure PG42USB USB Microphone - John Syracuse's choice, best known for reviews for Ars Technica and one of the most popular American technology podcasters

When working with Skype, the main thing is the quality of the Internet connection. If it suffers, it is better not to experiment with the format of “invited interlocutors”, because the quality of communication will be low, there may be gaps, and this will significantly worsen the sound (if you record yourself and the interlocutor), and creating a relaxed atmosphere for an interesting conversation is unlikely will contribute. But if everything is fine with the Internet, then during a conversation it is quite possible to create the feeling that the other person is in the same room with you.

Directly about the podcast recording process - Jason and his colleagues use two recording options:

• Everyone records himself, and then the recorded file is sent to one of the podcasters who will mount everything.
• The entire podcast is recorded on the side of one presenter.

According to Snell and his colleagues, with the first version of the recording (all podcast participants record their tracks separately) the quality of the recording may be higher, but there are more difficulties. Since in the end you will have several audio files from different people, you will need to combine them into one.

The main difficulty in mixing files will be the process of joining them. According to Jason, the signal to start recording a podcast at the same time is not as effective as we would like. As practice shows, people still begin to record at different times, but end up at about one. Therefore, Jason recommends reducing the records at their end, not at the beginning.

Finally, a couple of words about why you should not record podcasts on iOS devices. As we already understood earlier, for most podcasts, Jason uses Skype to talk to people he speaks with:

“The problem with iOS devices is that only one application can record / play sound. For example, if you are listening to music and you want to watch a video on YouTube, the music will turn off and the video will start playing.

The same story with Skype. As soon as the Skype call starts, the program takes control, takes control of the microphone and turns off everything that prevents it [including, of course, any audio recording applications] ”

Thus, to record sound during a Skype call will not work. In this regard, the only sensible way to record a podcast using an iOS device, according to Jason, is to phone Skype from a phone or tablet through headphones with a microphone (for example, Earbuds), and put a high-quality microphone (or voice recorder) next to it and record on computer.



To connect the microphone to the PC, Andy Ignatko (Andy Ihnatko), a podcaster, TechHive main columnist and columnist for the Chicago Sun Times, uses a Shure X2U XLR-to-USB USB adapter

If you do not need Skype, then you can use the standard audio recording application, or, for example, the Opinion application, which is also very popular with Western podcasters. Through it, it is easy to edit the record, cutting out the unnecessary and putting all the fragments in the required order.



If you record sound on a computer, you have no desire (or ability), you can use a portable TASCAM DR-40 recorder, as journalist Glenn Fleishman does

For those who listen

Not so long ago, The Verge portal compiled a list of the best applications for listening to podcasts. For users of Apple products the best application, according to The Verge, has become Overcast. With him, according to journalists, you can enjoy podcasts to the fullest. Sophisticated design makes it easy to navigate the application.

The function of accelerated playback will remove the pauses in the recording, so that the time spent on listening will pass with maximum benefit, and the function of voice amplification aligns the volume of the participants, so when listening there will not be situations when someone is hard of hearing. For those who like to use the application to the maximum, there are a number of functions that allow you to set up your own playlist or, for example, set a “sleep timer” (for those who listen to podcasts before bedtime).

Perhaps the only drawback, if it can be considered as such, is the inability to play live broadcasts. The application plays only fully downloaded podcasts, thereby protecting the listener from possible delays or interruptions to recording.



Overcast / CC application interface

For Android users, The Verge recommends the Pocket Casts application. The main feature of the application is design and usability. The application is convenient to make playlists or find new podcasts for yourself. In addition to Google Play, the app is in the App Store, so for users using devices on both platforms, this is the best choice.

Of course, these are not the only applications worth using. You can view the rest of the list of popular solutions suitable for listening to podcasts here .

It is hoped that in the future, podcasting from “IT geek toys” will finally turn into a permanent source of interesting and high-quality content for many people. In the end, the Podcasts application has long been installed on Apple devices by default - this giant clearly does not intend to part with podcasts in the near future.

And we, for our part, are ready to contribute to the popularization of podcasts with new releases of the Sound program - in the last of them we are talking about Dolby Atmos and modern home theaters.

Our materials on the topic:

• Read more about the Sound podcast.
• Discussing the context of modern sound.
• How audio equipment gets on store shelves
• Other episodes of the Sound podcast