The ABCs of podcasting
Car rides and long commutes have been mitigated by the immense popularity of podcasts. What's great about podcasts, unlike radio, is that they're largely democratic endeavors. Anyone and everyone is free to record, edit, and publish their own podcasts.
In an effort to help out any aspiring podcasters out there, we've decided to outline the process in a guide. Now's probably a good time to plug our kickass No BS Podcast, because it'll act as our benchmark for what we're trying to accomplish. We can't guarantee that your podcast will be the next Serial, but we'll teach you how to get your finished product out to the masses.
Planning the Podcast
The first thing you'll want are some compelling talking points. What's your podcast going to be about? Will you talk about a specific game or community? Brainstorm some ideas and try to avoid direct overlap with existing podcasts.
Once you have a great idea in hand, you'll need to gather up some people to talk about it. Friends and close colleagues work best because you'll want to do everything you can to avoid awkward silences and people talking over each other. Podcast listeners tune in to be a part of the discussion—despite the lack of actual input. Try to find participants that have good chemistry to keep things conversational.
Set up a date and time to record your first episode and then get cracking on some rudimentary show notes. You want to establish a basic outline (and some specific details) of what you and your guests will be discussing on each episode of the podcast. Think of this as a sort of script that guides you through the show, but don't read from it verbatim. The show notes can also be published alongside your podcast as a visual guide for listeners with links to specific products or websites mentioned during the show.
Recording the Show
Now that you've got everything ready—speakers, show notes, and talking points—you should be good to sit down and actually record your show. For a professional production, you'd probably want a microphone for each person hooked up to a mixer, but for amateurs it's easier and cheaper to go with one quality microphone.
We haven't yet done extensive testing on any standalone microphones, but the Internet seems to be abuzz about the Blue Yeti. It's racked up over 1,900 reviews on Amazon with an average four-and-a-half star rating. It supports four different recording modes (stereo, cardioid, omnidirectional, and bidirectional) and even comes equipped with a headphone jack for live monitoring.
Make sure that your audio levels hover around -12 decibels.
Set up your microphone and start up Audacity to do the actual recording. We've already written up an Audacity Crash Course, so we won't go too in-depth here, but we'll cover the basics. Before you click the big red record button, make sure that Audacity has correctly selected the appropriate microphone (in this case FrontMic (Realtek High Definition). Hit the record button (or the R key) and check your levels. The audio meter toolbar (denoted by the L and R) displays both playback and recording volumes in green and red, respectively. Keep the levels around -12dB and avoid anything even close to 0dB to avoid clipping.
Once your levels are good to go, hit the record button and start doing a mic check for each and every speaker. You want to make sure that the volume is similar for everyone. In a professional setup, a mixer would be used to raise and lower individual levels, but with a single microphone you'll have to balance the input volume slider with physical manipulation of the microphone. Try to keep it in between everyone and make sure that ambient noise is kept to a minimum (close windows, avoid rustling or fidgeting, and silence phones).
As soon as everyone's comfortable, you can jump right into the podcast. All of the pre-show banter and mic checks can be cut out in post-production. Start off with an introduction that introduces the podcast, what you'll be talking about, and who the speakers will be. Follow your show notes and keep the show moving along at a nice pace to keep things from getting too drawn out. When you run out of talking points or just feel like wrapping things up, you can close with a mention of when listeners can expect the next show, along with any appropriate shout-outs (mentioning twitter handles, thanking guests, listing websites, etc.). Hit the stop button to cease the recording and you've got the makings of a podcast.
Click through to the next page for instructions on editing, exporting, and publishing the podcast.
Editing the Recording
If you've been particularly careful to avoid pauses, interruptions, background noise, and lengthy mic checks, you could publish the entire show un-edited, but production value goes a long way toward legitimizing your podcast.
Get rid of any protracted pauses, interruptions, or breaks.
Cut out anything that doesn't belong. That includes leftover mic checks, small talk before the show open, and the silence at the end before you stopped the recording. Cutting is as simple as highlighting the area you want to remove and hitting the Delete key.
We'll pass on Ouroboros, but there are plenty of other songs that would make great choices.
With the fat trimmed off, we can add in some finishing touches. Incompetech is one of many websites that offers royalty-free music fit for podcast intros and outros. Having a little music play before you introduce the show and a bit after you end the show provides some much needed consistency for listeners. Download a song that you like, make sure the terms of service allow you to use it in a podcast, and use part of it for the intro and outro.
Keep both under five seconds and fade them in and out appropriately. Audacity has built-in effects under the "Effect" dropdown menu for both purposes. Simply highlight a short portion of the intro and select 'Fade In'. Then grab the part immediately before you introduce the show and fade it out. Do the same thing for the outro to make everything sound natural.
Exporting the Podcast
By default, Audacity doesn't support exporting MP3 files. That's a problem because MP3 has become the de facto file format for podcasts the world over. Fortunately, there's a simple fix that's outlined on the Audacity website. Follow the official step-by-step guide to install the LAME MP3 encoder and export your final product as an .mp3 file.
Our folder ID here is "0B54Hkqn1KSBqREdQd3ZLaXdtOHM" and the file name is "maxpc_235_20141030.mp3."
With your mp3 file in hand, head on over to Google Drive and create a folder for the podcast. Set the sharing settings to "Public on the web" and upload your episode into the folder. While the file is uploading, get the sharing link for your podcast folder and the filename of the podcast itself. Google Drive doesn't provide direct links to uploaded files and we need one to get our podcast published. Extract your folder id from the URL of the folder you created (see image above) and fill out the URL template below.
https://googledrive.com/host/FOLDER_ID/FILENAME.MP3
Getting it on the Web
Now that we've got an episode on the Internet and ready to go, we've got to set up a blog that will be the online home of the podcast. Although most listeners will probably find and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes or their favorite podcast app, the website also works in the background to generate an RSS feed that services like iTunes use to retrieve new episodes.
It looks a bit rough, but it'll do.
This time around we've settled on Wordpress, which natively supports embedding mp3 files. We don't have to mess with third-party plugins to get the podcast up and running. In fact, it's as simple as creating a new blog, writing up a post, and embedding the URL that we created earlier. Either click the Add Media button while editing your post or simply enclose the URL in [embed] and [/embed] tags.
Google's FeedBurner might look dated, but it's still a capable tool for podcasters.
We'll be using FeedBurner to handle our podcast's RSS feed. There are a bunch of alternatives, but FeedBurner is completely free and provides rudimentary subscription statistics. Log into your Google account and burn a feed by entering in your blog URL, checking the "I am a podcaster!" radio box, and hitting the "Next" button. Follow the prompts and you should end up with a FeedBurner URL like: http://feeds.feedburner.com/MaxPcTestPodcast. We'll be using that to create an iTunes page for the podcast.
Make sure the "Include iTunes podcasting elements" box is checked.
Before we submit our podcast to the iTunes Store, we'll need to set up SmartCast in the FeedBurner settings for our feed. This feature lets us attach metadata to our feed. iTunes requires that podcasts have album artwork, and the rest of the information provided by SmartCast helps flesh out the iTunes page for the podcast. It might take a while for things to work perfectly, but we should be ready to get our podcast into iTunes.
As much as we hate relying on iTunes, there's no getting past it if you're a serious podcaster. The otherwise bloated application provides a curated experience for podcasts. Submissions to the store are reviewed by Apple staff before being listed alongside established podcasts. Follow this link to submit an application for your completed podcast. Apple should send you an email once they've decided for or against you.
One potential alternative to iTunes is Stitcher, which is a self-described "Radio On Demand" service with iOS, Android, and Desktop apps. Just like with iTunes, you'll have to submit an application to be considered for the content listing. Submit a Content Provider application here.
Wrapping Things Up
With your podcast listed on iTunes and Stitcher, you should be all set to produce spectacular shows on whatever schedule you set for yourself. With each episode, you'll have to upload the file, convert another Google Drive URL, and post the episode on your blog. FeedBurner and your content providers will do the rest.
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