According to Edison Research, the number of Americans listening to a podcast each week has grown 120% over the past four years, with 90 million Americans listening to a podcast every month. As the audience for podcasts continues to grow, there has never been a more opportune moment to start a podcast, be it for your business, or as a personal hobby. This guide will walk you through the entire process of starting your first podcast.
With the rise of the internet, there has been a tremendous surge in the amount of information that can be available to us instantly, at the click of the button. It’s difficult to ignore everything else that wants your attention to focus 100% of your attention on reading an article or watching a video in its entirety.
Here’s where the convenience of podcasts comes in the fore. Since the podcast is audio content, one can listen to it while doing something else simultaneously. Your audience can multitask and listen to your podcasts while cleaning their house, driving in their car, jogging, or cooking. As opposed to video where you have to devote both of your vital senses of sight and sound, podcasts don’t require too much of your concentration as audio content is portable and convenient.
Another advantage to start a podcast is its minimum involvement of expenditure as far as equipment is concerned as compared to video production. All you need to do is download a free podcasting app and you can start recording your first show.
You don’t even need expensive audio equipment as Smartphone audio recorders will give you good enough audio quality that you can clean up with the help of the podcasting app. It’s a great business for starters as you practically need no upfront investment. Of course, once you become a professional podcaster, you can create a high-end podcast studio.
Podcasts let you expand your network. If you host a podcast in which you interview various guests for your show, it could be great to expand your network. A podcast is a great platform to leverage and reach out to people you might not have been able to otherwise. As your audience grows in size, your ability to reach out to the high profile experts in your industry increases.
Blogging and YouTube marketing have reached the saturation point with over 10 million blog posts published every day and more than 500 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute. The competition for podcasts, thankfully, is still relatively new and low, so it’s still possible to get found by your listeners.
When you start a podcast, it’s important to choose a format that fits what your podcast is about and you should be comfortable about it. When it comes to discussing podcast formats, there’s a lot to talk about. Let’s take look at the most common podcast formats:
If you want to start a podcast, it’s relatively easy as you would need little overhead or even experience for that matter. If you are just starting out, you can do so by just recording on your mobile phone and a pair of headphones.
The bare minimum you need to record a podcast is a computer with a USB microphone and access to the internet. But remember, the more limited and low quality your setup and equipment is, the more limited the sound quality of your podcast will be.
If you choose the right mic, simple USB microphone setups can give good results. Plus, if you are just starting out, it’s better to see whether you are actually satisfied with the quality of your equipment before forking out big sums of money on high quality audio equipment.
If you want to deliver a professional podcast, you’ll need to spend quite a few dollars on professional equipment, including:
Of course, you’ll also need somewhere to record. A quiet office space or a studio room in your home is usually a good place to start. Famous podcaster Marc David Maron started recording his podcast WTF in his garage, and even interviewed former President Barack Obama there. So, don’t fret if you do not have access to a well designed and soundproof studio room.
To start a podcast, you would need some software to actually record and edit the audio after you plug your USB microphone into your computer. The good news is that there are a few free options for acing the editing process.
1. Audacity: Audacity is one of the most popular free-of-charge audio editing applications for beginners and professionals alike. For the majority of people, it caters to all your podcasting needs.
2. Adobe Audition: A high quality Pro-level production tool, Adobe Audition is a feature rich editing software and has a great workflow, and feature-rich. It’s available through a paid subscription.
3. Alitu: The Podcast Maker: If you haven’t used editing software before, the easiest possible experience would be Alitu. This is a web app that can automate audio cleanup, and also acts as a great editing and episode building tools.
While there are podcast hosting sites that you can use to launch your podcasts, we would recommend you to opt for a professional audio streaming/podcasting platform like Muvi to create your own podcast website/app. While an OTT platform providing solution may not be your first choice for hosting podcasts, there are quite a few advantages that an audio/video streaming solution can actually give you as far as audio-only streaming is concerned. In fact, broadcasting live/on-demand audio via a streaming solution is actually more suited to professional podcasters. Here are the reasons why you should consider Muvi as your podcast hosting solution:
Muvi lets you launch your own branded, fully featured podcast hosting apps and websites. You get fully featured native apps across 20+ platforms, devices, and ecosystems such as iOS, Android, Roku, Apple TV(tvOS), Amazon Fire TV, Android TV, and more. Most podcast hosting platforms like Spotify or iTunes will not give you this option and not to mention the fact that your brand name will get affected in the long run.
You can create and upload podcasts as on-demand content for your viewers. You can categorize the podcast playlist as per genre such as entertainment, sports, motivation, mind management, wellbeing, religion, and more. Muvi’s Advanced Enterprise Video CMS, makes it easy to manage all your streaming apps, website, and content in a single CMS.
You could not only host on-demand but also live stream uninterrupted podcasts to your audience. Not only that, you could launch a fully-customized live streaming podcast hosting app and website that aligns with your brand persona. With Muvi’s DVR-enabled livestream, you can enable your listeners to pause, rewind, and replay live podcasts.
An online video/audio service provider lets you deliver podcasts with ultra low latency by using a powerful live-streaming Content Delivery Network (CDN) for scaling to reach a global audience.
Not every solution has this functionality, however, so make sure to do your research.
Monetization is a major feature which most podcast hosting platforms won’t give you. A video/audio streaming solution like Muvi provides multiple monetization options like SVoD, AVoD, TVoD to monetize your podcast based on your business requirements.
Video/audio platforms may also include some perks that podcast hosting services don’t include, including features like security, analytics, API access, 24X7 support, M3u8 playlist support, and more.
Audio streaming is a growing market you would love to tap into if you are interested in starting out a podcast. Forty-two million Americans listen to podcasts weekly. With the growing popularity of audio-only streaming, opting for an audio streaming service like Muvi can tick all your boxes when it comes to podcasting.
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Written by: Sreejata Basu
Sreejata is the Manager for Muvi’s Content Marketing unit. She is a passionate writer with a background in English Literature and music. By week Sreejata spends her time in the corporate world of Muvi, but on weekends she likes to take short hiking trips, watch movies and read interesting travelogues.
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