The Realm of Podcasting is Endless!

Musical podcast for those who love music and podcasts!

Nowadays, podcasts come in various forms of styles, formats and genres. They are just as diverse as movies. I recently came across a podcast show that labels itself as a musical podcast, called Women of Tomorrow and is produced by Broadway Podcast Network.

My first thought when I heard “musical podcast” was that it might be a podcast show covering issues related to music or musicians. But it’s not. Women of Tomorrow covers issues that women are facing in their everyday’s lives. It’s actually an interview kind of podcast, but what makes this podcast “musical” is because they feature songs that set the stage for the topic being discussed. Not just clips of music, but full-length songs. To me, this format is not only cool because it incorporates musical themes and podcast, but also a solid proof that there is unlimited ways of creativity you can explore with podcast as the medium.

The move to voice activated shopping

Word on the street is that Amazon has been developing its home assistant, Alexa to incorporate more and more live concerts, music and podcasts. This is mostly prominent in their acquisition of Wondery, another podcasting company powerhouse.

Interestingly, their direction is not simply just having to create better audio experiences but they are planning to develop more in their voice activated shopping. Basically telling Alexa to buy their groceries for them.

Although some people find that idea weird since most people have used their voice assistants to either searching for quick information, making calls or texts, play music, etc but very seldom to actually shop. But this doesn't close the possibility that voice based shopping can be very much a thing.

Imagine having to listen to a podcast ad and immediately asking Siri to buy you a new pair of shoes from that ad. Seems quite appealing, doesn't it?

Remove that annoying background music

Imagine spending hours looking for clips to put in your podcast, and finally you found one that fits perfectly. You open the link and woop dee doo... you hear music in the background.

Now I'm not saying having clips with music are bad. I'm just saying if I want music under the clip, it has to be from me, and I should have control. It could be because the timing doesn’t seem right or you just need that one part to be clear or even copyright issues for your podcast.

There are a lot of services online that separates this music from the clip, but the one I use is vocalremover.org. Even though it's called vocal remover, what it actually does is separate the vocals and the music files so you can have your clips without music. It's not perfect, but it gets the job done.

This saved me a lot of time when looking for clips on youtube as it gives me options of clips from the news, vlogs, film clips and just remove the music.

Be a Good Conductor for the Orchestra

Recently, I picked up a good advice on -- or rather, was reminded of -- how responsive an interviewer must be in orchestrating the flow of an interview.

Like an orchestra, an interview is a dynamic act, and an interviewer is not unlike its conductor: anyone can sing their song, it's the conductor's job to bring the best music out of it. For example, an interviewer can command the tempo of the conversation by way of intonating his responses, or elicit impactful answers by portraying the right questions.

I realize that it's a role which requires both strategic thinking ("Let's make the best story!") and active empathy ("Let's make an authentic story!"). A good grasp of this skill will definitely help elevate the story you're making and more importantly, make it much livelier!

How to monetize my podcast?

We get asked this question all the time. The most effective way to monetize your podcast is to first focus on making the best content that you can consistently and allocate all your resources to that instead of thinking about monetization from the start.

If you do that, you will be laser focused on producing your content and your audience and engagement will grow. You will then have stronger personal reputation and greater awareness which are the foundation for why someone would pay you for endorsements, place ads or pay you for your services in the first place.

Without quality content you won’t have an audience or awareness and without both of those, you will never be able to monetize, if that’s what you are trying to do.

So, to monetize, double-down on making your best content!