Buzzcast
Buzzcast is a roundtable discussion about podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. We'll cover current events and news, podcast strategy, tools we are using, and dip into the Customer Support mailbag to test our podcasting knowledge. If you want to stay up-to-date on what's working in podcasting, Buzzcast is the show for you.
Buzzcast
Leveraging Current Events as a Content Strategy
In this episode, we welcome special guest, Brian Johnson, from Buzzsprout! Brian joins us to discuss the latest updates in Audacity 3.6, including new master effects, an advanced compressor and limiter, and sleek themes. We also explore capitalizing on timely events to grow your podcast. We share strategies to maximize SEO and discoverability, emphasizing the power of straightforward titles and cross-promotion.
View the discussion thread on Twitter/X
Sound-off question: What is your podcast about, and what kind of current event can you leverage for growth?
Links mentioned in this episode:
- Check out Brian's podcast, Fandom from Afar!
- Audacity 3.6
- Buzzsprout Conversations episode: Jack Rhysider: How I Create Darknet Diaries
- Elle magazine article: The Rise and Rise of the Political Podcast
Contact Buzzcast
- Send us a Text Message
- Tweet us at @buzzcastpodcast, @albanbrooke, @kfinn, and @JordanPods
- Send a "boostagram" through Fountain or Castamatic
- Email us at support@buzzsprout.com
Thanks for listening & keep podcasting!
I'm hearing a lot of thunder. You guys having like a big storm or something.
Alban:As it goes. Yeah, there it is again. Yeah, very big and kind of quick storm out here at the beaches. Brian, do you have it at the office?
Brian:I can hear the thunder, but it hasn't started raining or anything yet.
Alban:Okay, Brian and I are about 20 miles apart, so he may not get it, but we're getting pretty heavy rain. We've got a lot of lightning thunder. Have either of you seen Twisters? No, but I want to.
Jordan:I really want to Like so bad. I keep seeing videos of people seeing it in 4DX .
Alban:like in theaters, their popcorn's flying and the water bottles are jiggling in the seats We saw it in 4D or 4DX or box some kind of thing with, like it moves the s. Yeah, not very intense, I mean. It kind of was like what? Yeah, my experience was if somebody was like sitting behind your chair and like rocking it. That's about the level of intensity that you get really no, well, no way.
Jordan:I have a friend who went and saw it in 4DX like here in Boise and he said that it was one of the most jolting experiences he's ever had in 4DX seats. And I mean it like sprays you with water and you get like the wind and then like you're getting like.
Alban:it would probably be more intense, but it was a lot of like they're driving the truck and then they swerve and then it's like your whole seat kind of goes to the side. That was it. Well, then there's like a storm and it does a little twist and it does like a rumble, and I don't know exactly how they calibrate it, but we had a bunch of bouncing around. I feel like if I was getting filmed doing it, it would be a very boring video, so I would probably amp it up. I'd probably like knock my popcorn out of my hands or something and pretend that it was more intense.
Brian:Maybe Alban had a broken chair or something.
Jordan:Yeah, I don't know, and maybe it depends on, like, what theaters you go to, but I've seen people they're hoping to get like the full like spectrum of experiences because apparently it has like 10 different settings. It can do like tickles on your back or it can do movements and you can get wind, water and all these different things. It just it looks so cool. It reminds me of, like if you go to theme parks and they'll have the videos where, like the seats I think of, like Bugs Life at the Animal Kingdom, where, like, the beetles go underneath your seat and it's like I picture it like that where it's just like a little bit more of an immersive experience. I don't know if they have like smell and stuff like that. I haven't seen that.
Alban:I've never liked any of those experiences really. All they are to me is like how do we make water spray in this video so we could spray you, like one time with a little bit of water? It's kind of like the whole story is trying to work in like oh, there's a smell of cookies, and then they like pump out the cookie smell. They're like check it out, it's immersive. And I'm like it's actually less immersive for me because now I'm like looking around like oh, where's the water going ?
Brian:That was in the original, like 3D movies they would have like a guy with a rubber paddle ball for no reason, just so they could have like the ball coming out the audience.
Alban:So many moments in like movies when 3d was big, you'd know like they stab a sword at the camera or something and even if you watched it not in 3d, you knew that was a 3d moment. Like they were like gotta make it like intense for us to get a little jump scene. Exactly, exactly.
Jordan:Welcome back to Buzzcast, a podcast about all things podcasting from the people at Buzzsprout. Kevin is out for this episode, so joining us today is Brian Johnson, member of the Podcaster Success Team at Buzzsprout. And, brian, this is your first time on Buzzcast.
Brian:It is, it's exciting. I have big shoes to fill, but I had my Jocko energy drink on the way here trying to channel my inner Kevin, so I'm ready to go. You speed listening to episodes. I was already on team 1.5, so I didn't have to worry about that.
Jordan:Yeah, so this is your first time on Buzzcast, but it's not your first time on a Buzzsprout podcast, because you've been on Happy to Help twice now with Priscilla, which is actually a pretty big deal because we're not that many episodes in.
Brian:So yeah, that's exciting First time to be brought back as a guest, and so I feel like I'm just turning into a regular Buzzsprout personality here.
Alban:Brian, you're also a podcaster yourself. Before you joined the Buzzsprout team, you had a show. What is your show?
Brian:So my podcast is called Fandom From Afar. I'm originally from Colorado but live down here in Jacksonville now, and so I like to interview other fans that are fans from a different city, like far away. They have the struggle that I do, where maybe I have to stay up till 1 am watching a game on the West Coast or something like that, where they have to keep their fandom alive in a different city.
Jordan:Oh, that's interesting.
Brian:Very cool.
Alban:What are some highlights from episodes you've had, or who are the most intense fans from afar?
Brian:So I had an interview with my friend, brad, who's a Texas Rangers fan and they just won the World Series and he is so superstitious that he would not watch the games live because he felt like it was good luck for him just to watch the score updates on his phone. And so, even though his favorite team was in the World Series, about to win a championship, he did not watch. He just waited for the updates on his phone because he did not want to be the reason why they didn't win.
Alban:I can. Superstition is so funny because I don't think anyone really believes it, but yet the feeling is so strong that you end up going. I'm not going to watch my team win the World.
Brian:Series. He said if they would have lost and he was watching, he would have felt responsible. So he just kept it going.
Jordan:Yeah, I feel like it's like one of those things where you just don't want to risk it.
Brian:Because you'll never. You'll never know if it went the other way.
Jordan:Yeah, Like there's a lot of things in this world that I'm like that's probably not real, but I'm not going to chance it.
Alban:Exactly. There's a wide receiver who is recently being interviewed and it was like video and there was like the chirp in the background from a you know, from one of the smoke detectors and they're like oh man, how long has that been going off? And he's like for a year. And they're like what you got to change the battery man? He's like no, no, no, no, no. He's like I know what to do. He's like but it started and then I had like a good game and so he'd left it for a year because he was like I'm superstitious, I don't want to like change anything. Oh, my goodness.
Brian:So, so. For a year he's been sleeping with this chirp in the background His neighbors probably love that.
Alban:I couldn't believe it.
Brian:That would drive me crazy. I'm the same way. I cannot stand that chirp. That's like nails on a chalkboard to me.
Jordan:So what's the sports team that you cheer on from afar?
Brian:So I'm loyal to all my Colorado teams, but my favorite by far is the Denver Nuggets.
Jordan:I'm a big basketball guy. Oh, it's basketball. Oh yeah, it's so funny, cause when I hear like Denver Nuggets, like I, I know, I know in my heart that it's like gold nuggets, but for some reason I just picture like a chicken nugget and I can't help it.
Alban:Everybody does A hundred percent.
Jordan:Everybody does. Do people like wear like chicken nugget costumes and stuff to the games?
Brian:There's some of those, but I have it in my email signature for all the support emails that I answer that I'm obsessed with the Denver Nuggets. And it's funny because, yeah, people that maybe want some of our international podcasters, or just people that aren't familiar with sports, they're just like wow, you really like nuggets. You can tell. They're just very confused. I'm just like I like both kind of nuggets. I'm fine with you thinking either way. I'm just like I like both kinds of nuggets, so I'm fine with you thinking either way.
Jordan:On our last episode, we talked about the podcasting gear and software that podcasters are using.
Alban:And one of the ones that is the number one audio editing software for podcasters. One of the ones that's the number one, one of the number ones, the number one, one of the number ones, actually the only number one, the greatest free editing software of all time.
Jordan:Number one of number ones is audacity, oh my gosh. Okay, oh man. What were you saying about audacity, jordan? Oh man.
Alban:What were you saying about Audacity Jordan?
Jordan:So the number one of the top podcast editing softwares Audacity. They just released Audacity 3.6, where they have a whole bunch of new effects and new features. So what they're saying is they have new master effects and their effects that will apply to the entire project at once, and I know that this one is a feature that people are really excited about. I saw on our Facebook group people were really pumped about this ability because apparently you weren't able to apply effects to like the entire project. You had to go, like, track by track, which does sound like it's a major time suck. So hopefully that'll help people with getting their podcast editing down a little bit quicker.
Alban:And then, additionally, they have a new compressor and limiter, one that stuck out to me was they've added some new themes and they've improved. I mean, audacity is wild how much they support. I think that it's easy for me. I've done this before. I've gone in, looked at it and gone, wow, what the heck are they doing? It's so there's so much going on and that I complain about it online. And then the actual Audacity team like shows up and they're like we're doing our best.
Alban:But when you think about it, it's cross-platform it's at least on Windows, mac and Linux and they're supporting all these old versions, there's all these old UI themes, because they're trying to keep all the way it used to look for people who use it in the past, and now they're slowly updating the UI, trying to make it look better and better, but they still support all these other themes. I mean no other software that I can think of. At least modern software is still trying to do that. So they've still got the classic themes I can think of. At least modern software is still trying to do that. So they've still got the classic themes. They've got some older themes, but they've improved the defaults and the defaults have light and dark mode.
Alban:So there's just so many pieces going into this, but overall it just is looking cleaner and cleaner and I think it's going to make it really easy for people who they're starting out podcasting. They want something that's free. They don't want to start spending a ton of money. Day one and boom, audacity is there. It's got more than enough of the features that you need to get started and you can jump in now and it looks quite a bit better. So I imagine the learning curve is significantly easier.
Brian:We get emails all the time in support of people that are just starting out podcasting and they're just like please tell me what to do. And we obviously recommend Audacity and GarageBand pretty often, and so I love seeing updates like this. And obviously, albin, just like you mentioned, if they can make it easier for a beginning podcaster but then also have new features that make it easier for an experienced podcaster, then I think that's a great step forward.
Alban:The biggest complaint I saw online would always be the UI destructive editing which. I don't know if that's been changed. I don't think it has. And then the third was sometimes for larger projects people would say that Audacity would crash.
Jordan:That was for me. I lost so many projects because of Audacity.
Alban:Do you remember? This was like I don't know two years ago. There was all this like worry. People were like Audacity, spying on you. Do you remember this?
Jordan:Yeah, I remember.
Alban:So what happened? I'm pretty sure that there is nothing else beyond this. The company that develops Audacity it's open source, but there's a company that, like develops it does all this work. They added the ability for them just to see when there'd be a crash because they wanted to see, like, if there's a crash, we get the info about that crash. That's pretty normal for software and everyone saw oh, this thing got added and they're getting some data back. It's obviously like spying. They're trying to figure out all sorts of weird stuff. They're stealing our files. All they were doing was just trying to catch crashes, and one of the big things they said is Audacity is quite a bit faster, especially working on larger projects. Larger screens should reduce crashes, and I wonder if we're seeing a little bit of the improvements that are coming from. Hey, this is kind of a modern software. I'm not that modern, but like this is the way you have to do software. You can't figure out when things are crashing and why they're crashing, you're probably going to have lots of crashes.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:And so now they're starting to get a little bit more info Sounds like they've been able to improve the performance quite a bit.
Jordan:It's so funny because I've said so many times I'm like technically challenged, but audacity, saying that it's improved the performance on larger screens, baffles me. Like from a tech standpoint, I don't understand how, like using a bigger screen can like cause a software to just go nope and crash Like that just-.
Alban:They have to turn on all the little light bulbs. Jordan, Every screen is just tons of little LED light bulbs.
Jordan:Yeah, I just saw that and I was like what that's actually a thing. Maybe that's why it was crashing for me so much it was just like no, the screen's too big.
Brian:I know in the last episode, Jordan, you said that Audacity is kind of a little tough to use as a podcaster. So I'm interested to see after these updates. If you do, let's say, edit this episode or another episode down the line in Audacity, if you find that these updates maybe improve that a little bit.
Jordan:Yeah, that would be. That would be an interesting test. I think if I did it, I would have to do it on a Snapcast, where I don't risk losing like seven hours of my life using Audacity. Another thing I thought was really funny they say you can now paste audio files into audacity using ctrl v, which is so shocking to me that that was not a thing that you could do before like I said, you feel bad for people when they add something like a little bit later, because they know like oh, this is a big improvement for people who are able to paste.
Alban:But then everybody who doesn't use the software didn't know it wasn't there. Now it's just like ragging on it, like oh, you didn't have control V.
Jordan:I know, and it makes me feel bad, but like I mean that's just one of those things, that was like what. But I mean good for them. You can now control V your audio files into better late than never.
Jordan:At least it was added. But yeah, I think that, especially with it being a free software, it actually is pretty darn comprehensive. I remember I follow a professional podcast on Instagram and it's like a huge network and stuff and they posted a behind the scenes video of like one of the hosts laughing at something while editing an episode and I saw that he was using Audacity and I'm like this person makes like 90,000 a month and they're still using this free software. So I mean, it's just one of those things where it's like tried and true and I guess it's number one for a reason, but them continuing to make these improvements is very cool, especially since it's a free software.
Alban:In that vein, I've been trying to post a few more things on social media for Buzzsprout and recently I asked people like where have you recorded? Like in your home or car or whatever? Like, what have you turned into a recording studio? That's like the most unusual. And then I posted a photo of Ira Glass recording in his closet during COVID.
Jordan:Remember this photo, Jordan. Yeah, I remember this photo.
Alban:Okay, so Ira Glass is in there like no shoes on and recording in a closet, and I post that and one of the first responses I got was you know, if you invested in a decent microphone, you wouldn't have to do silly things like this.
Alban:And I was like you know that's like one of the three most famous podcasters in the world. I was like it's so funny that we all have in our minds especially about the things that we don't. You know, we're probably a bit more of like amateurs in. We just have in our minds like if I want to be a YouTuber, I have to have the best camera gear. If I want to be somebody who's into video games, I have to have like the best gaming setup or whatever it is. And then you find out what the like true pros are using and sometimes just the true pros are just using like much more basic gear than we would expect because they know I mean, ira Glass knows better than anybody. The story matters so much more basic gear than we would expect because they know, I mean, ira Glassman is better than anybody. The story matters so much more than the slight difference he would get between a $400 and $4,000 microphone.
Brian:I think that's so true. Again, going back to the emails we get in support, people want to spend thousands right away just to launch a podcast. And I'm saying just launch, get it going. Starting is the hardest part. You don't you don't need the multiple hundred dollar microphones. Get a Q2U and you're good to go.
Jordan:Yeah, absolutely. I mean Alvin's talked about that how there is like a level of procrastination with gear, like you can really spend a lot of time on the gear and like saving up your money and researching it and making sure you have the right stuff. But really this $70 microphone sounds basically the same as like a $500 microphone.
Alban:Yeah, because you're being honest with yourself sometimes, rather than getting the best mic where you'd rather have, as an excuse to not have to do this podcast. That's kind of scary. It's so much easier to say oh, I would love to be able to get in shape, but I really can't because the gym's too expensive. Now I don't ever have to get in shape, I don't even have to try because I'm already off the hook.
Alban:So I think there's times where you can kind of hype up oh I can't really get into this hobby. Woodworking would be so difficult with my garage or whatever it may be. We kind of want the excuse. But every once in a while, actually, with this, where do you record? You meet somebody who's on the absolute opposite end of the spectrum.
Alban:Somebody was explaining their home setup and they pretty much had no place in the house. Multiple kids at home, they start during COVID and there's no ability to record small home and so they're like so I would just walk out, I'd get in the car and I'd record in the car every time. I'd take stuff out blankets, whatever and set it up to be the best it can be and I'm recording on this cheap little mic and I'm like you're one of the people who had to podcast. You would have gone through anything you had to go through to get the podcast done. Where some people and I'm in this group are in the like I'll podcast as long as it's easy, and are almost looking for a reason to find out it's a little too hard and I'm like, ah, this isn't the thing I need to do.
Brian:If you can find that thing that you have to do, you're going to do it, no matter what the obstacles. Like this woman in our Facebook group. That's the thing to go after. I love that. It's a mindset. You just have to figure out how to do it, rather than why not to do it. I use the example in some of the emails. It's like a plane taking off. The majority of the energy is used during takeoff and then they just kind of get to glide through the air. Same thing with launching a podcast. It's a lot of effort at first, but you can really just kind of glide once you get your systems down.
Alban:Yeah.
Brian:Brian, is this a true airplane fact? 47% of facts are made up, so I'm going to say I'm not sure.
Alban:I was like that's pretty impressive. Airplanes use most of the energy during the takeoff and the rest is gliding. I'm like that's surprising.
Brian:I think I heard it on a podcast one time and just assumed it was true and just went with it.
Alban:We'll have to fact check this off the air, but I like it. It's definitely true for like starting new things, like when you start that first episode is 30 times harder than episode 100.
Jordan:I mean.
Alban:I know that somebody asked like oh, you've been doing Buzzcast for five years. How hard is it? How stressed out do you feel about it? Oh, it was you, brian. You were asking me when we invited you on the show.
Brian:Yeah, because I was nervous for my first appearance. Oh really.
Alban:Yeah, and I was like no, jordan sends out an outline. I might suggest a couple things to add or things to take away. I spent like an hour prep and then I show up and we goof around for two hours and then Jordan turns that into 45 minutes of like good podcasting and I love it. I love it, it's a great system.
Jordan:Yeah, cause the recording is a little rough, but I think that we've gotten to a point of like trust in each other. We just trust it's going to turn out okay. I used to get super stressed about these episodes for, like the first, I don't know 20 or 30 that I was in, and now I'm a lot more chill during our recordings because I have faith that, even if our topics aren't that interesting, we're at least going to like make the best of it and have fun with it.
Brian:And to bring it back around full circle, it's because of wonderful programs like Audacity that you can cut out all that fluff and it just turns out gold.
Jordan:Nailed it, brian. Current event and news podcasts are having a really big bump in popularity due to all these big, big stories that are going on. Just this summer, I mean, we have had the massive IT outage that just affected literally everybody, and then we've had, you know, the presidential race and, you know, one of the candidates drops out, and then we also have the Olympics coming up. I mean there's just like a lot of stuff going on right now and so it's really having an impact on podcasting. I mean, brian, you actually recently had an experience where you were trying to turn to podcasts because of some of these events.
Brian:As we mentioned earlier, I'm a big sports guy, so I was looking just to see what podcasts are out there that are focused on the Olympics, and I was kind of surprised, because NBC has multiple podcasts out there.
Brian:Obviously they are the host of the Olympics. You're going to watch everything on NBC and Peacock, and they have multiple podcasts, and other than that, there wasn't a ton out there solely dedicated to the Olympics. Wow, and it kind of got me thinking as far as, like, how can podcasters take advantage of big events that they know are coming up but are timely, and so any content that you create for that is not going to be evergreen. It's definitely going to be something that you want your listeners to consume around that time, and so I wanted to kind of get your guys' thoughts on how can a podcaster be successful, maybe, in creating something like that, or just how can a podcaster fit that into their normal podcast along with doing their weekly episodes or whatever their schedule is. So kind of wanted to see what you all thought about Olympic podcasts or just another topic, like you said, the presidential election, or I know a lot of movie podcasts pop up around the Academy Awards or stuff like that.
Alban:Yeah, I was pretty surprised by this. I shared some of the PodTrack numbers a few days ago. They released like what the top podcasts were for June and these are only the podcasts that enable PodTrack but it's a pretty big amount and it was like eight of the top 10 or seven of the top 10 were news related shows and obviously one piece of that is they publish every day. One was a few of the very biggest shows weren't using PodTrack, but I think a big part of it is what Brian's saying.
Alban:When a big event happens, you kind of want to engage with the news. So there's this big IT outage, crowdstrike sends out, this update, crashes tons of Windows machines around the world and has all these massive effects. And what did I do? I went and I downloaded the latest episode of the journal and I listened to their story about what happened. And you know, there's just a big event and you kind of want to engage.
Alban:And if there's a podcast that you trust but you maybe don't listen to all the time, I think you're much more likely to tune in, listen to it and maybe share it with a friend. It's a huge opportunity for a podcast that is at least tangentially related to something that's in the news, something that's caught the moment to get a big boost and have a much better chance of getting shared. I think maybe that's caught the moment to get a big boost and have a much better chance of getting shared. I think maybe that's another piece is like the shows that hit a topic that's really popular People are talking about. They have a much better chance of getting shared from normal listeners to potential new listeners.
Brian:And I think that would be even tougher because it was kind of breaking news that nobody expected. So the fact that they had an episode out like that is a huge advantage. That they had an episode out like that is a huge advantage that they were able to act fast and then I'm sure you were not the only one that found them and shared it with their friends to just for people to get more information about what's going on.
Jordan:Yeah, that's a really good point is that they're acting fast on these stories. I mean, I think about when something happens literally the next day there's a documentary out on like Hulu or something or Netflix, and it's just like wild. It's like I think I remember when the queen passed away, I think it was like last year and literally the next day there's all these documentaries out and I've heard I don't know if it's true, but word on the street is that they have all these like documentaries queued up and ready to go in the event of something big happening. And so, yeah, I think that there is like a timeliness that this broadcasting industry understands and they know the value of it, of being like the first one to have the story out.
Alban:Yeah, we've all seen these obituaries get published early on accident out. Yeah, we've all seen these obituaries get published early on accident. There's like a report that somebody passed or there's a mistake at some online websites or maybe even a newspaper, and they publish the obituary and then the person's like yeah, I'm not, this person is not dead, and so you know like these get written up and 90% of a lot of famous figures, like we know what would be in the obituary, so I'm sure they pre-write it and then they would change the end so that they can be first to publish. I mean, I guess, if anything, that's proof of what Brian's saying. These are moments where being first is a really big advantage, and that's probably why they've already invested in writing all these stories up front.
Jordan:Yeah.
Brian:So let's take the Olympics, for example, because I was doing some research into these podcasts, I think, with something that you know is going to happen at a certain time, to me it seems like maybe starting to produce episodes maybe a month before the actual event could be beneficial to podcasters, because it's not so far out that people aren't thinking about it yet, but it's also given your listeners enough time to maybe consume not only your content, but maybe multiple episodes or podcasts that have to do with that. And so I think the timing could be right, because if you do it too early, people are gonna be like what I'm not thinking about, the Paris Olympics, it's 2022, like I don't care about that right now. So timing could be a big factor into the success for known events.
Jordan:Yeah, or reaching out to the athletes as soon as they like qualify for the Olympics and get interviews with them yeah, just basically like paying attention to what's going on, and I'm surprised that there's not more like Olympic podcasts out there. I saw on Sounds Profitable that Peacock and NBC are selling ads for the Olympic spaces and it's also like the replays and the live events and the commentary. They're selling ads at a $60 CPM, which is astronomical. Like that's got to be like up there with like the Superbowl, and so I think it's interesting that there's so much value in the audiences that are interested in the Olympics and yet there's not a lot of podcasts that are like jumping on this.
Brian:I was really surprised. I wonder if it's just nobody wants to take on NBC, because they have access to all the athletes. They have all the kind of inside stories.
Brian:But I was shocked at how few other options there were, even to the point where I just Googled like top Olympic podcast for 2024. And the first half of the list was pretty much all the NBC ones. There was like a BBC one and a couple others, but then the bottom half of the list was podcasts from the Tokyo Olympics that haven't posted an episode in years, but it just they're, I guess, still some of the top Olympic podcasts, just because there's nothing else out there.
Alban:Now, brian, do you think maybe that could be because you might be a track and field podcast and you're going to do a ton of information about what's happening in the Olympics on the track and field side, but for a lot of the other events you may not be interested at all and not be reporting on it, so they don't get categorized as like Olympic podcast, but maybe it's like oh, it's a basketball podcast that's talking about the basketball events or the volleyball events and the volleyball podcast.
Brian:Yeah, that'd be interesting to do more research on, because I think we normally recommend podcasters try and find their niche and just really dive deep into a certain subject and not try and be so broad. So, yeah, maybe there are a lot more podcasts out there like that. They're just focusing on the individual sports because they can be experts in that field and not they're not going to have access to all the athletes, but maybe they do have some relationships with the track and field athletes and can really produce a quality podcast.
Alban:One of the things you mentioned a second ago that kind of got some wheels turning in my mind was many of these current event type shows are not evergreen, and I started trying to piece together ideas like how could you make it evergreen? And it reminded me of this story and this is probably 10 years old now. But we had a podcaster reach out at one point and was like hey, I think you need to look at my podcast, it's gotten hacked or something. You know there's a bot. We said what do you mean? You know, it was just way too many downloads. And all of a sudden, and maybe like one of the first people ever to ever reach out and say hey, I'm getting too many downloads. Everybody else is like I've been hacked, I'm not getting enough. But we went and looked and we're like, no, these look legit.
Alban:What it was is it was a doctor, a doctor of virology, talking about different viruses and at some point he'd done an episode on Ebola and there was an Ebola outbreak years later. So what do people do? They search for Ebola. They want to learn more about it. What does it do? How has it spread? And they find his podcast. Some of them were people who weren't just journalists or somebody trying to learn about Ebola only. They actually wanted to learn about the larger context, and so they ended up listening to other episodes as well.
Alban:And for him, I think that's just the benefit of the more evergreen episodes you make. You're not going to have the benefit of being able to pinpoint what, in the future, will be important, but you do kind of have a lottery ticket or something. You've got something out there that, yeah, this could end up being really big in the future and, if it is, my podcast could be a really excellent resource. I don't know. An example might be you're 99% invisible a design podcast. You know the Olympics are going to happen this year and it'll happen in four years and again in eight years at least the summer Olympics. You'll have off years, you'll have a winter, but you know they're coming up. If you did an episode about the Olympic rings, you know, and the design of the Olympic rings, then you can republish that episode every two years and say, hey, you like the Olympics, right? Did you ever think about the design of the rings? Like, we're rebroadcasting this episode and, boom, you've got something out there.
Jordan:It's so funny that you use that as an example, because literally yesterday, 99% Invisible released the 2024 Olympic Spectacular episode.
Alban:Really.
Jordan:Yes, oh nice.
Alban:I thought who would have something that would be so focused? Who would do this? That was who I thought of. That's funny. Is it actually about the design of the logo?
Jordan:Let me see here. From TV commercials and branded soda cans to Emily in Paris Spawn Con, the Olympics are once again everywhere In the Olympic spirit. We're bringing you four stories about the games in all their international theatrical glory. Bringing you four stories about the games and all their international theatrical glory. So it's talking about non-traditional sports, a former forgotten part of Olympic history financial strain brought about by Montreal's host venue in 1976. They're talking about the opening ceremony from Seoul's 1988. And then a twist on the traditional Olympic host country format. And then a twist on the traditional Olympic host country format.
Jordan:So, surprisingly, it's not a whole lot about, like the design of the rings or anything like that, or the torches, you know, but it's just stories from it. So they definitely are focusing on that. But, like Alvin was saying, that type of episode, they could publish that every two years and you'll get downloads. Like people would be interested in those stories. Yeah, because, yeah, it's not actually like focusing on just, you know, the design of the Olympics in Paris logo or something like that. Like they're not going into that. They're going into, like these historical ones, and so it is sort of evergreen content.
Alban:Yeah, another example that I think of are there's a few podcasts that talk about big legal cases in the United States, that talk about legal issues, and so if you went and did a podcast that touched on I don't know, you did 50 episodes on the 50 most important Supreme Court cases of all time, and there's a few podcasts that have done things like this.
Alban:Well, three or four of those are going to have something change every few years, so there might be a new case that interprets an old one differently, or maybe something gets overturned, or maybe there's just a continuation.
Alban:Well, if you have an old case, there's an old case called Chevron, which is about how to interpret administrative stuff in administrative codes Very boring case, but it's a very important one. If you'd have done an episode, that would be huge right now because the Supreme Court just overturned it and it's totally changed the way that those types of things are interpreted, and so if you had that out there, you could be the first person to publish like, okay, here's what you really need to know. We have 45 minutes diving into what the case has done for years and now 10 minutes at the end talking about how this has all changed, or maybe add a new intro on there. You can kind of guess if I'm going to do a podcast. Is there any benefit to setting myself up thinking about episodes that, hey, these have a chance of being really, really important in the next few years and being a real avenue to collect a lot of new listeners?
Brian:I really like that angle of thinking, or not being afraid to republish a podcast that you know is important at that current time, and if you've done it in the past, do it again. Just know that new eyes will see it and new uh new listeners will come from it.
Jordan:And it doesn't have to be just current events or like uh, political, like major world stuff. For example, for my bedtime story podcast, when the little mermaid came out, I reran my little mermaid episode and I've been sitting on snow white. I have not done that story yet and it's been like over four years and I'm just sitting on it because at some point they're going to release Snow White and then I'm going to have that episode like ready to go.
Jordan:And I don't think that we're saying in this I think it could be misconstrued where someone like makes episodes in anticipation of major events and then like publishes them or something like that. I don't think it's it's so much that we're talking about, but just more like figuring out how to take these events and, you know, capitalize on it within the topic of your podcast. I mean, you could even go into the news and look through the news stories through the lens of, like, your podcast topic and just figure out how to pivot those stories or use those stories as a sort of anecdote to talk about a topic within your podcast, even if it's not necessarily related.
Alban:Or how do you even collect those stories as they're happening? Jack Reisider, who does Darknet Diaries. I asked him about how he comes up with all of the ideas for his podcast. He said, well, one of the big things he does stories about hacks and cyber exploits. And he was, like what I do is I set up Google alerts for news stories that have the words hacker sentenced and some other variations of that he's like, because as soon as the person has been sentenced now the court case is done, All of the story has kind of been done by. You know, like the news has put it out.
Alban:It's unlikely to have a big update and that's the time for me to start working on the story. And it sounds like almost kind of obvious when you hear about it, but I know that Jack is probably doing a hundred times better than a lot of other podcasters at picking up all the stories that could be potentials for him to dive in deeply. So what are the stories that you would want to know about? I mean, we do it for Buzzcast, we collect newsletters and we have alerts set up so we find things that we might talk about on the show, but for your podcast, I would recommend our listeners to think like what types of events could you put together an episode that would be related to your topic, that you might be able to capitalize on a current event?
Brian:I love that and it's a creative process. So if your audience just kind of shows you and tells you by the numbers that they weren't interested in that type of episode, then you can move on. But at least you tried and who knows, maybe you'll find that they absolutely love that angle and you can continue to do more.
Jordan:Yeah, Elle magazine actually talked about how there was a huge bump in political podcast popularity this year because of like the general elections and like UK and France and the upcoming elections in the US.
Jordan:And I mean huge bump when I when I say that there was a bump, it was sizable. Acas said that their political podcasts had a growth of like 53% and then Spotify said you know, it was like a similar increase of it, and then the hours played of these podcasts increased by like 49% over the last year, which is pretty crazy. One of the people that they interviewed was Mariana Spring, and she's from the BBC's newscast and AmeriCast and she said that her episodes where she asks for like listener feedback and it's like called undercover voters she said that is like by far the most engagement that they get on their episodes. The listeners get to put in their two cents and, you know, say what they think about the take on these political podcasts and stuff, and so I think that it definitely could be a really good way to increase listener engagement as well, because people are interested in these current events and people have opinions on it, and so this could be a way to increase that for your podcast too.
Brian:This may be a bit of a rabbit trail, but have you guys ever I don't know a better term for it, but hate listened to a podcast?
Jordan:Kevin has.
Brian:Like I'm sure there's people on both sides of politics that listen to other sides just to be like, oh, that's ridiculous.
Alban:I've never hate listened to a podcast. I did have a roommate in law school who he was a pretty strong Republican and he would watch the Democratic debates and be like, oh, this is terrible. And I'm like why are you doing this to yourself? Turn the TV off off. And he's like no, I gotta see what's going on. And I was like I can't imagine like this gives me no enjoyment. I mean, really to watch any debates gives me no enjoyment. So I'm just like I'm perfectly excited to turn the channel over to a baseball game that I'm not interested in. That could be fun for me, but the idea of watching the news to see what you disagree with is totally foreign to me.
Brian:Sad to say, I've hate listened to a podcast during the NBA playoffs. When we're playing another team, I'll listen to their team's local breakdown of the game just to hear what they thought about my nuggets and I'll just be like, oh, I can't believe they think that. Oh, I can't believe they think that I sound like a grumpy old man.
Alban:That is definitely a sports thing. They're like you watch the exact same game and you're confident you would have won if it wasn't for the terrible refs. And then you go listen to the other side is like man, we would have won by so much more if it wasn't for those terrible refs.
Jordan:Yeah, exactly, we talked earlier about how, like a track podcast may have interviewed some of these Olympians that have now made it, and I think that a lot of like what goes into discovering these podcasts is making sure that your podcast is like optimized for the search engines in these podcast directories like Apple Podcasts and Spotify. So you need to make sure that you are using the episode title to really say like Olympian, so-and-so, or interview with this, or how this Olympic person got in. I mean just making sure that you're really clear that this is an Olympian or like have something about. You know how this person is on track for the 2024 Paris Olympics, and so just having those keywords in your but there are other podcast players that do so make sure that you are really clear about what things are discussed in the episode description. Apple Podcasts transcribes all the episodes and they use that for the search as well, so there's lots of different things that you can do that will help your podcast be found using these current events.
Alban:Yeah, jordan, and where I focus so much of my time, if I'm trying to optimize something for SEO, is on that title itself. If you think about it, there's so many podcasts. They put the episode number and then they put kind of like a cute inside joke or maybe like a funny phrase from the episode. Which we've done, it's not crazy. Yeah, it doesn't work. Which we've done. It's not crazy. Yeah, it doesn't work. It doesn't lead to new listeners, but it's fun and you feel kind of cool doing it.
Alban:But let's say you are fortunate enough. You land a great interview. You get to interview Noah Lyles, one of the top sprinters. He's going to compete for two different gold medals this year American sprinter. And if you got an interview with Noah Lyles, don't put in a title that's like as fast as the wind. You know that could be anything you want to put. I got an interview with Noah Lyles. Noah Lyles interview. You know going for gold twice. Like make sure his name is in there, because if he wins or if someone is searching for an interview with Noah, you've got to be up there. And if Apple Podcasts sees 10 that have interviews with the name, those will show up at the top. The one that won't show up at the top is the person who put in as fast as the wind or something like you know. They thought it was cute and it was cute but it didn't lead to listeners.
Alban:So often I'm recommending to people be a little bit more boring with your titles, but as long as it's clear, like get interesting and different. As long as what you're still mentioning is super clear because you want to make sure we're one communicating. What's this episode about? If it's about the global it outage, say, like crowd strike outage or Joe Biden drops out of presidential race, like put the big story first and then the creativity is probably in the description or the episode itself, or it can be in a tweak to the title, but, like, that title needs to be very clear. We're talking about this big event, so that one, it's findable and two, when it's found, that people click on it because they go, oh, this is definitely the episode I wanted to listen to.
Jordan:Yeah, Maybe not like punny. Like don't have puns in there, because if you have a different spelling of something then it's not going to be found.
Alban:Yeah, I mean, a pun is like a pun. Spelling is like the worst thing you can do for a podcast and yet so many people want to do it. You know you've got someone doing a cat podcast. It's called like the podcast. It's funny, but it's going to be really hard for people to find that podcast when they're searching for it. You're going to be really hard for people to find that podcast they're searching for it.
Brian:You're going to have to spell that title every single time. Yeah, exactly.
Jordan:Yeah, and I think that when you really embrace these like current events or big topics, I mean, you can also use that to your advantage to grow your social media following. I think a lot of podcasters really struggle with getting found on social media and so if you're able to like write out those hashtags like this episode is about this or we're using this as an anecdote for like parenting styles, I don't know you do get in front of more people. And the thing I think that could really help with podcast growth is cross promotion with other podcasts that are covering the exact same thing. It's really easy to reach out to other podcasters and just say, like hey, I actually love your episode on this topic and I actually reference it in my podcast. Like would you like to do a cross promotion or can you post about this episode, since I talk about your show on your social media, things like that? Um, I think that that's a really good way to make friends in the podcasting space and grow your show at the same time.
Brian:It really allows you to reach a whole new audience if you're able to interact with them and then somehow get on their podcast as well and you can promote yours, and then that new audience kind of falls in love with your personality and is like, oh, I should check that podcast out too. So I think that's a huge positive and recommendation for capturing the moment, with these big events where everyone's online searching up these new people that they just found out about, or just looking at a city that is beautiful and they didn't realize all these cool things that it has, like you can find connections in some way for your podcast to relate to another one and then, oh, look at that, you've just gained a whole new audience.
Alban:Yeah, what you're trying to find is like a Venn diagram of your podcast, another podcast that the center is like this current event. I think the people who I I mean the thing that pops in my mind are radio stations. Whenever the local Jacksonville Jaguars are playing another team, they will call the radio station from that other team and they'll do a interview and they'll say okay, so how are the Jags going to play the Green Bay Packers? And if you've got somebody who follows the Green Bay Packers and they go, oh well, you don't understand like this guy's hurt and this is happening and both audiences are very interested in learning about the other one. I only care about what's happening in Green Bay Packers world one day out of the year. It's right when we're about to play them.
Alban:But if you're a travel podcast, you're going okay, paris is really big right now. I'm going to find somebody who talks about the Olympics and I'm going to talk to them about what people should be doing if they're in Paris right now. And then the Olympics is like kind of the center of the I don't know, maybe the sports podcast and the Paris podcast. And you get together and you go oh, let's talk about what's happening right now at the Olympics. Like, try to find something where you're pulling in a subject matter expert who's super excited to talk to you about this topic. You're super excited to hear their perspective because for a moment in time, you both are talking about the same thing.
Alban:A lot of times I see cross promo as being we're the exact competitors. We're both talking about the exact same thing, we're the two Denver Nuggets podcasters and now we're doing it together. It can work. But even better is, how can I work with somebody who's not a competitor for one episode where we're both kind of interested in the same thing and boom, that's a really awesome opportunity.
Brian:Yeah, I love that. It's beneficial for both sides, because if you're running a podcast, you're looking for interesting guests all the time, and so if you find that angle where the interests meet, then that's great for everybody.
Jordan:Yeah, and it gives you a different perspective. I think a lot about the true crime podcasts and they all cover the same stories, like the same big stories, over and over again. And yet I listen to all these podcasts, even if I've heard the same story five times, but I've heard it from different people, from different viewpoints, and I think a lot of podcasters might think like, oh well, everyone's talking about the Olympics or everyone's talking about the presidential debate or whatever, and so I'm not going to cover it because there's already all these different shows. Yeah, but you have a different perspective and especially if you're bringing in someone else you know on your sports podcast from a rival team to talk about it, there's people that are going to be like, oh man, I would love to hear this story from both perspectives, and yeah, so I think that's really great.
Alban:So another example I'm just trying to help people brainstorm these. You're a podcast that talks about shipping and logistics and travel, and so you would regularly report on something like hey, there's a bunch of airplane delays right now. Well, instead of being like, hey, I'm a podcaster who knows a lot about shipping and logistics and travel, but I don't know much about IT, go get the IT podcast person and say, hey, come in here and tell me this massive CrowdStrike outage, what happened and why is that messing up the travel world? And the IT person is going oh, this is cool, because I can tell you what's happening, how the CrowdStrike had access to the kernel and messed some stuff up, and I can talk about that. But now you can tell me no, this is what it looks like in Atlanta right now, because once four planes get delayed, here's how that cascades. You both are bringing something interesting and together making a much better episode than either of you could have created individually.
Jordan:Albin, we have that example in our own catalog. Back when we had the DDoS attack Travis for the like podcast about why podcasts were down, he brought Jack Reisider on to talk about what a DDoS attack is. So that's actually yeah.
Alban:That's a perfect example. So, travis, great job.
Jordan:Yeah, and then one of the final things I can think of that you can really use current events to grow your podcast is to get featured on podcast apps. So Apple podcasts for creators they actually have an article I can link to it in the show notes, but they have an article about how to get featured in Apple podcasts and what kind of things they look for, and one of the things that they do look for is current events. So if you have something that is like very timely or relevant to today's I don't know topical climate, you want to call it you are very likely to get featured in one of their editorial lists.
Alban:Yeah, I think that's a huge opportunity If you are talking about something that is current. That's what Apple is trying to highlight. So make sure, if you do hit one of these moments, you do hit something that's popular, go and start submitting to be featured. Apple Podcasts would be my first spot, but then I'd look around for other opportunities and different apps, or even reaching out to blogs and news publications, because this is your opportunity to get in front of lots of new people.
Jordan:It's time for SoundOff, the segment where you send in your responses to our podcasting questions. Kicking off, we have some fan mail. First one's from Ira Garr, Wedding Pro CEO podcast. Going to listen to the Orlando meetup episode Enjoyed talking with Kevin and Albin at the end of the meetup. Thanks for all you do.
Brian:Thank you, ira, it was great to meet you as well. I'm from Oregon. I host Farm to School podcast. What you say about Oregon is true. Funny that the movie Goonies that, yes, cannon Beach is relatively close to Astoria, but not within biking distance like when the kids go on their adventure from Albany, oregon.
Jordan:I guess that makes sense. They did bike.
Brian:So maybe that was had to use a little movie magic.
Jordan:Yeah, just a little bit. Suspend the disbelief.
Alban:Lowell, massachusetts, looking for something to help with audio quality and connectivity issues. So are we. If you find something, let us know. I don't know if this will be in the episode, but as soon as we started recording we noticed a pretty significant delay. So we did kind of our clap test, where we go one, two, three and we all clap together. Jordan's is about two or three seconds delayed from ours. So you get the best audio you get. You get the best internet connection you get. You do your best with your computer, you restart and still there's times where there's enough lag that it's frustrating. So we're doing our best and that's all I think we can recommend for you. Sometimes, too, is you get the best that you can get and we have to make it work.
Jordan:Sometimes yeah, I think that you could also write into our awesome support team at support at buzzbradcom and give a little bit more information about you, know what you're working with, and maybe we can make some recommendations based on that.
Brian:Yeah, please do. We're excited to help and if we can, we definitely will. But, as Albin said, sometimes there's just nothing that can be done that can be done.
Alban:Yeah, it's funny Like we I mean we all have fast internet, we're running speed tests, we're restarting computers, we're checking mics and the best thing that we could come up with in the end is we just leave a little bit more of a dramatic pause after we speak and give space for Jordan to react. Thank you guys.
Jordan:All right, and our sound off question last episode was what microphone do you use? Our sound off question last episode was what microphone do you use? Damian? The DM says we are a five person D&D podcast slash audio drama. We use five Zoom ZDM one mics into a Zoom L12 mixer, all recorded in the same room.
Brian:Oh my gosh the mic bleed must be insane. I bet that's fun, though I've found that people that like D&D, really like D&D, so I bet, I bet they're into it and I bet that's an awesome podcast.
Alban:Yeah.
Brian:Uh, Alessandra, the Dom sub living podcast says I use and love the ATR 2100 X USB. I told myself that when I get to a hundred episodes I can upgrade to a shore MV seven or or an SM7B. I'm at 40 episodes so far, so on your way.
Alban:Congratulations on 40 episodes. That's huge and I love the idea of giving yourself a goal, saying, okay, once I get to here then I can upgrade. Yeah, I did the same with golf equipment at some point. I was like, all right, once I start shooting, like in the nineties and then in the eighties, then we'll look at upgrading these clubs.
Jordan:I don't think the clubs are what's holding me back. For quite a while I think I did that too with like Patreon subscribers or something like that. I was like, ok, when I get 200 subscribers I'm going to do this. And then I didn't quite reach that and I was like I'm going to do it anyway, might as well D.
Alban:Might as well. D Sparkly Life Coach Podcast friend of the show wrote in about her microphone. My microphone is the PseudoTac Condenser Mic Kit purchased four years ago for under $60. It included a boom arm, shock mount pop filter. I recently purchased the Q2U Dynamic Mic hoping it would help my podcast's atrocious audio. Hoping it would help my podcast atrocious audio, lol. But I returned it and I think it was because of my soft spoken tone and my voice sounds better on the condenser mic. Still trying to figure it out, I just have no idea what I'm getting yet. Thanks, goodness for magic mastering. By the way, great job on the podcast. You made simple presentation. It was really nice seeing y'all while you speak and yes to a live episode That'd be so much fun to attend. How about Podcast Movement 2024 in DC? One bit of real-time podcast support?
Alban:Dee, I'm not imagining you did this, but just in case, because I have had this happen before.
Alban:Somebody told me I got the Q2U and it was broken. I got a new Q2U and it was also broken, and the third one I got then I realized that you had to turn the Q2U on and there's a switch and I was like, oh, that's so frustrating to go through, but I think it isn't totally intuitive. If you go from a condenser mic which isn't being turned on because it's not dynamic, it's not using, it's not drawing power, if you switch from condenser to dynamic, you might not realize you plug it in. You've got to flip on the switch so that it pulls some power from that USB port. So if you have the Q2U and it sounds really, really soft, it might be because it's not turned on and maybe you're picking up the audio from your computer. So something to check, though. We've met Dee and she's smart and she's also been podcasting for a while, so I'm guessing that's not it. But for anybody else out there troubleshooting the Q2U, that's a possibility.
Jordan:David John Clark of the Late Bloomer Actor podcast says I use the Rode PodMic and the Rode A1 interface recording in my study. No soundproofing et cetera. My equipment, coupled with Riverside FM editing and Buzzsprout Magic Mastering, ensures I sound like I know what I'm doing. Technically. I'm, like Jordan, very untech in the audio space, so anything that automates my sound input is wonderful. David, that sounds exactly like my setup three years ago. That's almost exactly what I had, so I know it works.
Brian:Kyle Pickens from the Pocket Parlay podcast. For my podcasting setup I went with the Zoom PodTrack P8. It was way bigger than what I need but with having the sound pads and all the lights on it it sure looks and feels official when guests come over to do an episode. For the microphone I have the ZDM-1. For a $40 microphone it is great. Ps, not a sponsorship for Zoom products.
Alban:Rob and Hannah from Wicked Wanderings Podcast reached out. We use the Shure NV7X. We didn't start with them, but we switched in February. Before that, we used some cheap mics the Movo Podpack 4T, 4-Pack, Universal, XLR. That sounds like some keyword stuffing right there inside of the Amazon listing. But yeah, I love when people say I started out with a cheap mic, I found out something that worked and then I upgraded. So very cool. Rob and Hannah, I hope that the MV7X is treating you both well.
Jordan:Hey Buzzcast. This is Graham from the Manifest Big, with Drunk Astrology and a Daily Dose of Stars podcast. I'm going on 4.5 plus years of podcasting and I'm still rocking with the Samsung Q2 Mike and recording on the voice memos app on my MacBook. Yes, maybe it's time for Riverside Audacity. I mean, if it works, you know.
Alban:Very cool that we got something from Graham. I don't know if we've ever met Graham, but I know Graham's podcast Drunk Astrology, because there was a period when we rolled out Buzzsprout subscriptions. I don't know if this is still the case, but Graham was one of the first adopters of Buzzsprout subscriptions and was like flying up the leaderboard. It was Jordan, it was you and Graham were like number one and number two for quite a while. So obviously some stuff is working very, very well with your shows and so congratulations, and I love hearing like Samsung Q2U $60 mic free app on the MacBook. Probably not a whole lot of editing and yet really fun, really well done podcast. So keep up the great work. I love people with these simplified setups.
Brian:Yeah, graham sticks out for me as well. I feel like Graham was one of the first people that I answered in an email when I was starting to work at Buzzsprout, and so, for some reason, his podcast is always stuck in my head, and so it's been fun to see it grow and grow over the almost two years that I've been here now. So I love when Graham writes in to support.
Jordan:That's cool.
Brian:Julio from New York. Here I splurged on my gear, but I've had it for years now, so I feel like it's well spent, even though I've been inconsistent with podcasting. So I have the Rodecaster Pro. I switched between the Heil PR-40 and the Shure SM7B and I use Audio-Technica ATH-M40 headphones.
Jordan:That's an expensive setup.
Alban:That is. That's a Rodecaster Pro. We're looking at $600. The Heil PR40 SM7B are both about $400, plus microphones. Those headphones are depending on the price. I think they're under $100, but still are pretty awesome headphones.
Alban:So, you know, one of the nice things is, when you buy good quality gear, you get to keep it for a long time. You just want to make sure you're sticking with podcasting. You're going to be here in a few years. Then this stuff starts paying off. It's the people who spend $800 on gear only to do two episodes and then move on. You end up having that gear in your house for years going. Oh man, maybe I shouldn't have bought all this stuff.
Brian:I used Julio's strategy recently. I felt like my kids were at the right age that we needed a PlayStation 5. And obviously that's not cheap. But I used that method of convincing the wife that hey, yeah, it's expensive now, but we're going to play this for like the next 10 years. So if you think, about it.
Alban:It's really not that bad. Yeah, I love the idea that you're like don't worry, we're spending a lot of money on these video games, but we're going to be playing video games all the time.
Brian:She's like great we actually recently did that.
Jordan:We had a, an Xbox series X, in the Amazon cart during prime week and there was a lot of back and forth, because we do use our Xbox a lot in this house, but we use it for like streaming too. So it's also, you know, it's not just the gaming console, but we also use it, you know, for all of our like movies and TV and stuff like that. And so we were trying to figure out, like okay, do we justify this, buying another Xbox for the house?
Brian:There you go. Jordan and I are going to be big gamers pretty soon.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:Marty in Nepal reached out. Hi guys, Love your show. I just ordered the ATR 2100 X. I couldn't see the point in spending more when for the past three years, I've been recording directly into my zoom H five. In so far no one has complained about sound quality. But I'm setting up a new recording space so I needed a mic that suits me better. Marty, that sounds awesome and I think you're not alone. There's lots of people who are using a little bit cheaper setups and not getting any complaints because when you do some soundproofing, you do a little bit of. You make sure you've got some clothes, you've got some rugs, you've got things that make it a better environment. The sound quality gets way, way better, even if the mic quality is still not like the top notch.
Jordan:Yeah, and I think that the Zoom H5n I think that's the one that you see in movies all the time, like when podcasters are out in the field I think that that's the one that you see always featured and so I think that's actually a very popular one for, like, field reporters and stuff like that. Not a bad setup.
Alban:Now is that? Because with the H5N for people who just to imagine this, it's kind of like it's almost the size of like a large cell phone and it's got two little like mics on the top and you'd like hold it up to the person's mouth for when they're talking Is the point of these field recorders? Is it to actually get a little bit of the background noise so that you do get some of the ambiance when you're interviewing someone in the field?
Jordan:I think so, and I know that there are some sound designers that will take the Zoom H5n and literally like go out to a coffee shop and just sit like with it out on the table so that they get the ambient noise for like audio dramas or things like that. Or they'll be on the subway or they'll go out into a field and just record like the natural, like wildlife sounds. So I think that, yeah, I think you're right. I think the point is to have that kind of like ambiance. Tom Raftery wrote in saying I'm currently using a Shure SM7B into my Rodecaster. I treated myself to the Rodecaster for Christmas as I felt I'd been a good boy. Previous to that I used the Rode Procaster, which is also an excellent mic.
Brian:I like it.
Jordan:Good for you, Tom. That's what I have.
Brian:So the Folkloring Podcast wrote in and said I just bought the ATR2100X based on your recommendation on Facebook. When I try to use it, it records at 1% volume, even though all the settings are at 100%. Then after a few tries to fix it, audacity just crashes when I try to select that microphone. I am beyond frustrated.
Alban:Uh, yeah, I, I would be frustrated too. All right, so this is again. It's funny that we've had now two of these. Uh, somebody trying out a dynamic microphone. That's giving them really a lot of trouble. I'd really be just trying to figure out, you know, is it the physical connection? Is it that it's not turned on? Is it maybe the USB port? Is it maybe not selecting this microphone? Or maybe is it an audacity issue and see with those, try those things out. Maybe try the same things again with the mic that you were using before, and once we limit it down to okay, the issue is coming from this one area.
Alban:Mostly that stuff is pretty easy to solve. Something I found super valuable when trying to problem solve these types of things now is chat, gpt, go and write I just bought this mic, this is my computer and write out just way too much detail. Put in all the detail you can and then ask it all right, walk me step-by-step through troubleshooting this problem and let's start with the most obvious things and go through it together. And this has been so valuable with trying to learn about new areas and troubleshoot technical problems. I've solved a few kind of weird ones with an Apple remote recently. So if you run into something like this, I might recommend just pulling up ChatGPT and giving it all the info you can and asking it to walk you through, and I bet you'll be able to figure it out.
Jordan:All right, so do we have a question for our next episode?
Alban:We talked a lot about these big events, big news stories and trying to cross collaborate with another podcaster. So I would like to hear from podcasters what is your show about and what type of event could you leverage to have a big growth episode? So you know, for us it's hey, we're talking about updates in the podcasting industry. Well, for me it would be. I want to talk to one of the founders of podcast movement and talk about why they did podcast movement and then talk about things that were announced at podcast movement. You know, try to pull in that news information. But for other podcasts, like, tell us what it is, tell us who you'd collaborate with, tell us the big news that you would talk about and we will feature it on the show. And if you don't know who to collaborate with, maybe we'll be able to connect you with somebody who would like to work with your show.
Jordan:Fun. I love it.
Alban:I like it.
Jordan:All right, so to have your response featured on our next episode, tap the link in the show notes to shoot us a text. And, as always, thanks for listening and keep podcasting.
Brian:So I got lucky because I was flying up to New York on the Friday when the big crash happened. No way. But I got really lucky because I was on Southwest and apparently they use an archaic version of Windows so they were not affected by it and so I just got to go on the plane and go right up to New York and it was great. So we were heading up there to go to the Baseball Hall of Fame. My family back in Colorado they're still huge baseball fans.
Brian:I've kind of lost touch with it a little bit, but the Hall of Fame was a good excuse for us to kind of get together. And our favorite player from when I was growing up was getting inducted as the newest Hall of Famer and so we all went up there and we got to go to the museum and then to the induction ceremony and really all that stuff was really fun. But having the family there we just spent so much time reminiscing about like when we're all obsessed with baseball and we would watch every game all season long. And we've gone to spring training for 20 years in a row down in Arizona and the gentleman that was getting inducted his name's Todd Helton. He played for 17 years, yeah, and so when he started, my sister was 13. And by the time he retired, she was 30.
Alban:Wow.
Brian:And so a lot of life happened in Todd Helton's career and it was just so fun. I feel like we just all told stories all weekend long as far as just oh, remember when this happened. Remember when this happened and it was like somewhat related to baseball. Baseball like we might have been either on a trip to see a game or just sitting around the living room watching the game, but like it just brought up so many fun memories and so it was just I knew the weekend was going to be great, but it ended up being just above and beyond what I was expecting, so it was really fun that sounds like my husband grew up in the Seattle area and he has.
Jordan:he is so funny because, like we're not really big into like sports or anything like that, but he looks back so fondly on like his season passes, you know, with his family at the Mariners games, I mean and he still has like a hat that was signed by Ken Griffey Jr, and he has like all these different um, he has all this like sports memorabilia that he holds on to, not because he wants to like sell it one day, but just because there's so many like great childhood memories tied to it.
Brian:I think that is it really does. Like my dad and my sisters and I, we used to collect autographs, like, like you said, getting hats or balls signed or whatever. And the majority of those are completely worthless now, but we have those memories of either waiting outside the ballpark, getting there super early, or we would go to like celebrity golf tournaments and just try and like get the guys to sign stuff. And it's not the actual autograph that ended up being valuable, but it was the memories. So look at me getting all sappy on the podcast.
Jordan:I love it.
Alban:Todd Helton had a pretty remarkable career First person to have his number retired by the Rockies, number 17,. But also 17 year career, five-time all-star gold glove winner three years in a row or three years not in a row. Three years not in a row or three years not in a row. Three years not in a row. And also won a batting title in 2000. It is fun. My family, we all grew up watching Yankees games, so you know we have kind of the same Like. You remember all these sports events, but you remember them because of, like, where you watched the event and what the family was doing and who you were with and some. You know one person's career, like Derek Jeter. I remember it as early as when I was nine years old watching him and I remember it as old as graduating law school watching him retire. And some of these careers they can last 20 years and a lot, especially for a kid, changes in 20 years between nine and 29.
Brian:It is amazing when you think of it like that and you, being a Yankees fan, you had a lot more fun memories from the actual games themselves. So I'm kind of jealous there, but the Rockies tried hard.
Alban:I hope they had fun. The Rockies went to a World Series right In that period they did.
Brian:That's like. The highlight of our franchise is we went to a World Series one time and got swept by the Red Sox, but yeah, it was great and Todd Helton was by far the greatest Rocky ever Like. It's really not a question in our franchise, and so there's not going to be another Rocky getting inducted for a long time. So it was the time to go and it was a great trip. How old are the Rockies, Brian? Are they an older?
Alban:They're not. They started in 1993. Okay, so they were part of. Did they come in when the Diamondbacks and the Rays came in, Just before that?
Brian:they came in with the Marlins oh interesting.
Alban:Okay, so Marlins have had a little bit.
Brian:they've had some ups and downs but they've had a couple pretty big ups. Yeah, marlins have won a championship, so they're a step ahead of us there. We gotta, we gotta, catch them with that. But uh, yeah, it was such a big deal to 12 year old me when the Rockies were starting and just becoming a four sport town. I loved it because then that meant there was games to watch all year long oh, that'd be crazy.
Alban:Jordan was just talking about this. All of Idaho doesn't have a major sports team yeah. I bet a lot of.
Brian:Idaho people end up being fans of the Colorado teams.
Jordan:Actually, I think it's mostly Seahawks.
Alban:Oh yeah.
Jordan:Yeah, like Seattle teams, but I think I'm sure that there are a lot of Colorado teams. I know that there's a lot of Raiders fans here, because they're Las Vegas now I think. So we do have a lot of those. But yeah, we, we just mostly like it, we're.
Brian:We're like the epitome of the fandom from afar, like there's there's nothing for miles I'll just start interviewing all your friends on my podcast they'll just all be bitter that we have nothing here.
Jordan:but yeah, it was funny because we were. We were literally just talking about this, uh, yesterday, how there's like nothing and like I feel like that would just be, like that would blow my mind for Boise to get like a pro like hockey team or a pro baseball team or something like that. Like that would just be so cool and I'd probably get really into it if that was the case.
Alban:Oh, yeah, it's a really special thing. I mean, I remember when the Jaguars came to Jacksonville the team was awarded in 1993. We just moved here. I was, I don't know, seven or eight years old and it was like this huge news because we really never should have gotten a team. We were way smaller than the other markets. I think we were supposed to be like a distant third chance to get it and I don't really remember how the upset happens.
Alban:But somehow we get the team and over the years all I've heard my entire adult life has been Jaguars are obviously moving. Jaguars are obviously moving and every year we fight it out. We get enough people to the stadium and we've kept them in Jacksonville and it's the one major sports team that we have and the city loves it. I mean, you go to the games and it's like one of the few events. You get people from way out in the rural parts of Jacksonville and people from the beaches, people from all different areas, all sorts of different people all come together just screaming and sitting there in the sun.
Brian:It really is fun Cause, like you said, it's the, it's the only game in town and so when they're good the whole city is all in on them and it's you can just like feel the buzz in the air. Whereas in Denver there's Bronco fans, there's Nuggets fans, there's there's like you kind of break off into little sections and then you appreciate when the other teams are doing good, but there's always like you have your top team. But in Jacksonville it's like Jaguars, everybody's Jaguars, yeah.
Alban:A lot of college football people. But none of that is, in the city itself.
Jordan:Yeah.
Alban:Look at you, jordan talking sports.
Jordan:I did it yeah.
