did a short question and answer with a listener after he emailed me. totally informal, but i wrote a novella, so i want to put it up here.
How do you advertise your blog?
1. i advertise my blog and podcast primarily through word of mouth. i also get links from all sorts of sites like podshow.com, musicpodcasting.org, etc. but all of it is incidental. i don’t go out trolling for links (aside from the companies or associations i work with). i think i should actually do more of this, but i don’t as of yet. feel free to link to me anytime! 😉
What software do you use to create your podcast?
2. i used to use garageband until recently, but now i’ve moved to soundtrack pro. i also use ableton live for my dj sets. if you are on windows or linux, you can use Audacity, which is free (google it), or if you’re on mac like me, you probably have garageband. with it you can either drag and drop or use quicktime/iTunes to pipe songs or outside tracks to garageband. it’s a snap, really.
How do you get other people’s music so you can lay it during your podcast? Licensing agreements? Temp agreements?
3. all of the labels i work with i have verbal or written agreements with, though these are at the formality level of a handshake rather than a contract. the trouble with most labels is reaching the right person; once you do this, it’s almost unfeasible they’ll say no – it’s only happened once to me. i’m also finding a lot more high calibre music on the Podsafe Music Network – more on that on my podcast in the near future.
Is there anything you use to back up your shows (either hardware or software)?
4. i back up the originals AIFFs and Garageband files on an external drive. however, the nature of my work is that my podcasts are kind of transitory in nature, so if some of them get lost, i’m sure it’s not a big deal since i’ll just make more anyway. i’d be more upset if i lost my DJ sets since those took a lot more work to mix.
What are you looking to do with the medium in its current form? What are you planning on doing with it next?
5. i seek to entertain and enlighten primarily. i think every track i play rocks and they aren’t chosen with some vacuous top 40 attitude in mind. with my talk i want to get people to see the way i see the world.
i’m not one of those podcasting technology preachers since i think it’ll mostly speak for itself over time. because of that, i don’t really seek to do anything different with the medium than the one i seek with regular relationships, except my podcast provides it in a more compact form with a lot of the filler removed (and much of the juvenilia). i feel like podcasting is as close as one can get to hearing someone speaking to themselves, and i think it produces some of the best content.
honestly, i just plan on making my podcast better by reading books on producing good content and educating myself on the technical aspect – right now i’m really enjoying o’reilly’s podcasting hacks
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