Taking Time Off to Hone Your Craft

Last week, I blocked my calendar and was hoping for a summer getaway with my wife and dog.  Well, Rona made that less appealing, and my wife ended up having some work commitments anyway.  So I decided to turn the week into a "staycation."  Yes, I made Costco runs and other miscellaneous house stuff, but I really set out to spend some time looking "under the hood" of podcasting and honing my craft.  I did two things.  I watched a bunch of videos from this month's Podfest Global Summit - turns out buying the ticket to have all the recordings on demand was money well spent.   I also joined the Podcast Editor Academy - the new venture from the Podcast Editors Club Facebook community I'm in.   There's a wealth of current and archived knowledge there.  And I also took a class on the high-end editing software I use, Izotope RX 7, from YaYa Podcasting.  Huge thanks to people like Steve Stewart, Chris Curran, Mark Deal, Chris Krimitsos, and Carrie Caufield Arick.Side note for audio geeks - I bought several "Plugins" for Adobe Audition to adds some processing and bells and whistles to audio - Audio Engineer Chris Curran's Top 10 list of audio plugins is a great read.Podcast host Buzzsprout has a great article on how to use music in podcasts. (Spoiler: You still can't use copyrighted music, even for a few seconds, even for a review). https://www.buzzsprout.com/blog/free-music-for-podcastsSpotify's charge into the podcasting world is affecting a shift from downloads to streaming, and making ad impressions easier to measure: https://www.adexchanger.com/digital-audio-radio/podcast-measurement-is-finally-improving-as-the-landscape-consolidates/?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2020-08-18If you have a Call To Action (CTA) in your podcast , consider simplifying how many things you are asking of listeners, and make sure you illustrate the benefit for them.  I also believe they should go at the end of the show, not the beginning. If you're going to ask for something, do it AFTER you've provided valuable content. https://medium.com/@awrd/why-podcast-calls-to-action-matter-43cffbfcaa9eSpotify is in some hot water over Anchor, the free podcast host they now own. Apparently Anchor was "stealing" feeds of podcasts from other hosts and posting them in their own feeds. Spotify has since apologized and taken them down - but it exposes a major flaw in protecting the intellectual property of podcasters: https://digiday.com/media/game-of-whack-a-mole-spotify-has-a-counterfeit-podcast-problem/?utm_source=podnews.net&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=podnews.net:2020-08-24I highly, highly recommend my friend Matt Cundill's Sound Off Podcast episode with maybe the smartest guy in all of podcast research -Tom Webster of Edison Research.  I had so many takeaways from this interview - including the future for smaller and medium podcasters, radio's place in the space, and the idea to try YouTube for my podcast - just for starters.  You'll find the episode here:  https://www.soundoffpodcast.com/post/tom-websterFinally, Podcast Movement's virtual event this October will be hosted on a platform called Swapcard - hope to see you there. Here's the announcement. https://podcastmovement.com/events/learn-more-about-our-pm-virtual-platform-plus-prices-go-up-tonight/As always, if you have questions about podcasting, or need help launching (or even tweaking) your show, feel free to reach out - [email protected] or on social at JAGinDetroit. Find jag on social media @JAGPodcastProductions or online at JAGPodcastProductions.com Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.