How to make a podcast
Have you ever asked yourselves how to create a podcast? Or how much does it cost? or would I be able to create one myself?
This is (will be) a series of technical articles about everything involved in producing a podcast, from recording to publishing. It will show how Marmita de Redon (a portuguese podcast about 90s and 2000s) was created and published.
This will mainly answer the following question: How do you make a podcast (for free)?
"Roscoe Considers Recording a Podcast” by zoomar is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
How do you make a podcast (for free)?
I asked this question myself. How does things work, how do you start with an idea, a voice which is recorded and edited, and it is sent to the cloud, and gets magically available on my podcatcher (app from where I listen to my podcasts)?
There are lots of answers to this questions over the internet. Most of them will tell you about third party (paid) services that will abstract the complexity of the system. But I’m just too techie to solve my problems that way - I need to know how things work. And if I happen to know how things work, why not taking advantage of this knowledge and do them myself?
When the idea for this podcast came, I got my hands dirty and now I’ve decided to share my journey and conclusions, so other may get some suggestions on how to do the same.
Available alternatives
There are many ways to produce a podcast. Here is a small comparison chart about some of those options.
| Full Professional Service | Podcasters platforms [1] [2] | Media hosting (soundcloud) | Self-Hosted | This tutorial | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recording Hardware | ✓✓ | ? | ? | ? | ? |
| Brand/Theme | ✓✓ | ✓! | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio edition | ✓✓ | ✓! | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Website | ✓✓ | ✓! | ✓! | ✓ | ✓ |
| Hosting | ✓✓ | ✓✓ | ✓! | ✓ | ✓ |
| Analytics | ✓✓ | ✓✓ | ✓✓ | ✓✓ | ✓ |
| Monetization | ✓✓ | ✓|✓✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ? |
| Full control | ✓✓ | ✗ | ✗ | ✓ | ✓ |
| Cost* | $$$$$ | 0-$$ | 0-$ | $$ | 0 |
| Invested time | 🕒 | 🕒 | 🕒 | 🕒🕒 | 🕒🕒🕒 |
| Maintenance ($|t) | $$$$ | 🕒 | 0-$$ | 🕒 | $$ | 🕒 | $$ | 🕒 | 0 | 🕒 |
| To whoom | Big brand | Most People | Who wants to experiment and avoid big corp control | Who has technical knowledge and wants control | Who has technical knowledge and wants control and does not want big expenses |
✓✓ - Provided by the service
✓! - Included, but not ideal
✓ - Available (manual effort)
✗ - Not available
* costs do not include recording hardware because this is common to every service.
[1] Paid Podcasters Platforms: Acast, Blubrry, Buzzprout, Captivate, Castos, Descript, Podbean, Simplecast, Speaker, Transistor, etc…
[2] Free Podcasters Platforms: Anchor, Breaker, Castbox, etc…
To whom is this article for
This article is for those who…
- …like to know how podcasts work under the hood
- …want to experiment, make, test, do, learn… without being concerned with monthly fees attached to a private server
- …do not have a private server already
- …want to make a small podcast (and be able to scale if necessary)
- …want to have a professional content with minimal expenses (and maximum effort)
This article is NOT for those who…
- …want to share big brand or service
- …intends to have thousands of weekly views
- …does not want to know how podcasts work on a technical level
If you want to make any question or suggestion about this articles, you may contact me
What is going to be written about
The planed articles are the following:
- Podcasting for free (the essentials)
- Recording and capturing
- Sound editing
- Brand: music, image and licencing
- Website
- Submission and publishing (iTunes, Spotify, etc…)
- Social Network
- Automation