Podcasting on Substack is unique: it creates a two-way conversation that lends itself to publishers who favor cultivating loyal and dedicated audiences.
Today we’ll answer questions on how to get started if you are tinkering with podcasts or how to bring over a podcast you distribute elsewhere, plus anything else on your mind.
Getting started: If you already have a Substack publication, you can start a podcast in minutes and start publishing directly to your existing subscribers plus distribute to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, and more. Your podcast will have it’s own page with an about section and showcases all of your episodes in one place. Learn more.
Growing: We’ve just added transcripts and audiogram clip sharing to the podcasting toolkit making your podcast more accessible and easier to promote. Create an audiogram, download and share the video clip on socials.
For monetizing: The flexible paywall makes it simple to share a free preview of your podcast with anyone and without extra production work. From the podcast post editor, you can simply choose the section you’d like to send to free subscribers. Learn more.
Not ready to start a podcast but want to test the waters with audio? Record voiceovers of your texts posts.
offers voiceovers as a paid perk. You can reap the benefits of publishing on Substack, but distributing wherever people listen to podcasts by submitting voiceovers to RSS feeds so your posts travel further. Learn more.
Where are the Substack podcasters at? What's the sharpest piece of advice you can give other podcasters about getting started and monetizing their show?
Hi all! I've been podcasting on Substack for almost two years now and it has been SUCH a pleasure. Thank you to Substack for these incredible new additions to the line up.
I think my biggest suggestion for folks getting started would be to have a couple of episodes already ready to go before you launch. Podcasting takes a lot of work, and if one week you're sick and your voice is scratchy or something else comes up, it can be really hard to catch up!
Monetizing is hard, to be honest. I think a lot of people expect podcasts to be free, which is too bad because they're A LOT of work. Right now I offer my podcast with ads on Spotify and ask people to donate to support the ad-free versions here on Substack. I also offer bonus episodes to paying subscibers, which are usually shorter and easier lifts.
Substack is the reason I started a podcast, although once I started making the moves, I had difficulty with the format so ended up going to Spotify for podcasters. I have been less than successful in moving the episodes from there to my Substack page. I find it to be very confusing... And I have put A LOT of time into try to problem solve it. If I could get some direct help from the team, my life on Substack would be so much more rewarding!
Hi Rachel, thank you for the feedback. Could you elaborate on what difficulties you encountered with the format, and how Spotify for podcasters solved that for you?
"I have been less than successful in moving the episodes from there to my Substack page" - could you elaborate on what you're trying to do here? If you're hosting your podcast elsewhere, episodes won't automatically appear on Substack, unfortunately. Something you can do is embed your episodes (from Spotify, etc) in Substack posts.
"And I have put A LOT of time into try to problem solve it" - I'm sorry we weren't able to help you with this. Did you try reading our help documents, or contact our Support team?
Two parts to my answer. 1. I kept having trouble with recording on the substack podcast itself because of a strange fast forwarding of the playback of recording. So, I gave up on that and recorded on Spotify. 2. Moving my episodes to substack after they are published. Can that happen one at a time, individually, or does it have to happen en masse all at once? Because substack seems to only have one option when I am trying to import. Its hard to explain exactly but it only gives me one option to import them all at once. I have only been able to make it happen once, so only half of my episodes are on my substack podcast page.
1. Well the fast forwarding sounds incredibly annoying and I'm sorry about that. Does this happen every time that you record? Is it possible that you clicked the "1x" icon in the podcast player on your publication? If you go to a podcast page on your publication, you can look at the playback speed on the audio player (between the forward 30s button and the current timestamp). That should say 1x. If it does, and you record and still hear it sped up, that is a bug and I'm sorry to hear it. Please report back!
2. How were you importing your episodes? From an RSS feed that spotify gives you?
🟧 I'd like to hear more about this, too, as I could see adding my podcast from Spotify For Podcasters to my Substack to increase my reach beyond Apple, Spotify, etc. Following...
🧠 I added podcasting to my Substack content strategy on July 6 after delaying for a long time with mountain of excuses. Some of which are my own comfort of sharing via Audio and listening back to myself. As well as excuses of not having assets like images and headers.
My advice is to just start. Since July 6 I have published 40 episodes for my daily podcast. I get a real kick out of the fact I can podcast on Substack and the episodes are distributed out to Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Amazon Music. My little revision of the old saying, "Perfection is the enemy of progress!"
🟧 Something I was curious about from the interview with Laura is how she uses the podcast as a paid perk. I like the idea, but the implementation currently requires duplicate posts: one for the original text, then a duplicate for the podcast version (only for paid subscribers). Is there a neater way to get the same result?
The paywall feature in theory can be used for this, but I suspect (anecdotally) that a lot of readers are already trained to ignore 'preview' posts, assuming the main content is paywalled (even if it's only a specific section/bonus bit).
This might vary for different 'stacks and readerships, but I find that my essays that have paywalled voiceovers on valorieclark.substack.com don't get fewer open rates than my completely free posts. Across the board, the posts that go to free subscribers have a 47% average open rate, paywalled or completely free. That may not be the case for everyone, but I think if readers know that only the audio is paywalled but they can still read for free, they'll still open things.
If it were me I would go ahead with the paywall approach. I'm not aware of any data showing that previews are likely to be ignored, but I admit I'm not positive of that.
If you've already been doing the approach using a second post, you might try with the paywall and see if the numbers are very different.
Thanks, Sam! Haven't started doing audio yet, but this is really useful advice.
The notion of 'previews' being off-putting to free subscribers is entirely anecdotal, possibly just me projecting, but I've seen a couple of other writers mention it too. If the data doesn't back up that feeling I'd be very happy to be corrected, though!
🧠 Just want to share my interview for Substack's The Active Voice with E. Jean Carroll, Mary Trump and Jen Taub, who are bringing serialization into the mainstream. The Active voice is such a great podcast! https://read.substack.com/p/the-active-voice-backstory-serial#details
🟧 Are there plans to let us enter our own transcripts? The machine generated ones don't, for example, do a good job distinguishing speakers in an interview.
Also, I've brought this up before, but it would be a huge help if podcast episode pages would more clearly display links to the show in the various podcast apps, and also if the /podcast home page on one's site displayed those links as well. Right now if feels like Substack is intentionally obfuscating links to outside podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Spotify, etc., to get people to subscribe to our shows on Substack itself. But that's just not how most people listen.
Thank you for getting back to me, Becca. For the podcast links, inputting them myself would be super easy, especially since we'd only have to do it the once.
✏️ - If I don't have any professional equipment or software or anything fun like that to hand, just your straightforward computer and Chrome browser and/or app, is it even a good idea to do a podcast as a feature, or would I need to get something in the way of a mic setup to make a go of it?
I wanted to add that if you get super sensitive recording equipment you may pick up extraneous noise that you don’t want.
If you don’t need overly produced shows (with bumpers, splicing different audio pieces together, cutting ums-ahs out, etc) then it’s very easy to just record on your phone and upload.
Hi Michael, thanks for your question. You can definitely get started with just your computer. You can record using your phone or webcam (if you're doing a video podcast). If you're having a remote conversation with someone you can simply record the Zoom. If you're recording with remote guests you could use recording software like Riverside. Descript is a popular podcast editing tool.
This is totally doable, but if you want to get started with just your computer's mic, the room you record in really matters! It has to be quiet and preferably small, with a lot of soft surfaces around you. Large rooms with hard surfaces echo more, and as a pocast listener it always gives me a headache to hear the podcaster's voice repeated in an echoey room. When I record in my "studio" I use a professional mic *and* I'm surrounded by books on three sides, which limits echoing. But when I record at my parents' house, I still have my professional mic but I have to record in a closet otherwise even my phone's mic picks up the echo in their house.
✏️ Are folks covering additional content in their podcasts, or just reading posts aloud? I would assume some of both. As a much more natural writer than speaker, I would gravitate to the latter, but I'm curious what the appeal of having my posts in audio format would actually be.
On my history podcast, Unruly Figures, my content is meant to be listened to. I've been publishing transcripts myself for the last two years (so this new tech here is exciting!) so it could *look* like I'm just reading my post aloud, but it's really happening the ohter way around.
On my writing 'stack, Collected Rejections, I read posts aloud for paying subscribers. It's meant to be read, so this is just bonus content.
I think reading posts aloud for your users is a major win and something that you should go ahead and do if you're toying with the idea. In my opinion the major benefit is that you have another way to connect with your users, and it will help reduce churn. You'll be able to reach readers not only in their email inbox, and in the substack app, but also in their podcast apps. So you can think of it like another way to make sure your content gets in front of your readers.
Speaking anecdotally, it also makes the connection with your readers more personal. I subscribe to a number of substacks that I don't have the time to read, but because they have voiceovers I'm still an engaged reader/listener.
Ben Thompson of Strachery (not a substack, but still a subscription newsletter), reads all of his posts aloud and he regularly talks about what a good tool it is for retention.
Hi! Did you know there’s a UI issue for recording natively? The drop-down box covers part of the text so it’s not possible to read and record at the same time. Would be great if this was resolved!
The Youtube model of podcasting works really well, with both long-form and short-form. If possible, creating some sort of clips or snippets of podcasts to share in Notes would help with growth. One of the most popular forms of podcasting is uploading clips to Youtube as well as other social media platforms. Maybe in the future Substack could implement this?
Unfortunately not. Perhaps you could try saving to PDF and printing from there - not sure if this will produce a different result. If that doesn't work you could try an online PDF converter like this https://cloudconvert.com/
🟧 I have been scheduling my podcasts to publish at 5:05 AM NY time each morning. The strategy being to cast the widest net possible for my financial audience. Hoping I pick up London audience in their afternoon and the early birds in East coast. I then restack the podcast on Substack Notes and other social media around 11am NY time to remind West Coasters. But my question is will Substack be releasing more podcast analytics so we can make more data informed decisions on what time of day is best to publish a podcast episode, what times of days audience is engaging the most and least etc? Something like Spotify, https://podcasters.spotify.com/resources/learn/grow/spotify-podcast-analytics
If you're looking for more analytics about when to post on social media, Later (and probably other similar tools) have "best times to post" analysis that is tailored to your followers and audience.
🟧 ✏️ hi! I create a voiceover for every newsletter and I'd like to have the voiceover go directly to my podcast feed. I have tried selecting the "Add voiceover to podcast RSS feed" when publishing the post, but it doesn't show up in the podcast thread (on substack or elsewhere). I am not sure what am I doing wrong... help appreciated! Also interested to hear from folks who have had success engaging with readers and listeners around the same essays (rather than posting separate podcasts vs. newsletters)
All subscriber currently are free, I started one month ago. I want to create podcasts on my substack . Do I need to switch to paying subscriptions for this?
I have a PC windows 11 - it cannot have Google Play Store - I canno download google podcast app nor spotify podcasters - what should I use to create my posdcasts on this PC? any clue?
Depending how fancy you want your content to be, you could just record directly onto the substack page. Once you set up a podcast and create a new episode, you'll be able to record directly into the browser. If you decided to use a standalone app, I'd search for various audio recording tools. I'm afraid I don't have any good ideas offhand!
Always excited to start a new thing. I am currently figuring out the possibility of starting a podcast with several different people. I have done podcasts before, though am still on the lookout for people that I 'click' with and could have in-depth discussions with about a variety of different topics. My ideal podcast would be a person that I know/trust and having a weekly / biweekly discussion on a topic / topics of our choosing, or something that's in the news, etc. One day I will find that perfect podcast person. 😄
✏️ I have also used both professional (studio/condensor mic) and more basic recording hardware (decent usb mics, headsets) and boy do I notice the difference now. Obviously I would like to have a proper microphone, but I'm not sure yet if it is really necessary for now, especially considering a lot of talking is going to be done online and other people/guests usually do not have professional mics anyway. Is the investment on my end really necessary, or could I also get by with more basic hardware for a regular podcast, I wonder?
If it were me making a podcast, I wouldn't let the professional mic stop me. You're right that guests would be on different quality (some big podcasters ship mics to their guests before each episode). I'd dive right in and start with what you have. You can always add a fancy mic later as you get into a groove and start gaining a following.
🧠 I been getting back into podcasting and now am experimenting with using Descript which now has combined with SquadCast. I get excellent tracks for remote interviews and can make adjustment on Descript to make the remote interviewee voice sound, recorded on a webcam, sound almost as good as if they were using a professional mike. I am publishing this week a video podcast which was challenging but fun to so and it came out looking and sounding good. Take a look and listen.
🟧✏️ Question: I filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) with the CDC for missing VAERS reports. I was expecting to get processing fees waived acting as a journalist aka a Substacker. My waiver was DECLINED! Can Substack content creators be considered journalists? see: https://imgur.com/gallery/ZHqfO6x
This sounds like a question for the federal government and/or society at large. A lot of people don't consider independent journalists to be "real" journalists because they're not associated with a news organization. That's changing but it'll probably be years before we see that change reflected in government agencies/programs like the CDC or FOIA.
Where are the Substack podcasters at? What's the sharpest piece of advice you can give other podcasters about getting started and monetizing their show?
Hi all! I've been podcasting on Substack for almost two years now and it has been SUCH a pleasure. Thank you to Substack for these incredible new additions to the line up.
I think my biggest suggestion for folks getting started would be to have a couple of episodes already ready to go before you launch. Podcasting takes a lot of work, and if one week you're sick and your voice is scratchy or something else comes up, it can be really hard to catch up!
Monetizing is hard, to be honest. I think a lot of people expect podcasts to be free, which is too bad because they're A LOT of work. Right now I offer my podcast with ads on Spotify and ask people to donate to support the ad-free versions here on Substack. I also offer bonus episodes to paying subscibers, which are usually shorter and easier lifts.
Substack is the reason I started a podcast, although once I started making the moves, I had difficulty with the format so ended up going to Spotify for podcasters. I have been less than successful in moving the episodes from there to my Substack page. I find it to be very confusing... And I have put A LOT of time into try to problem solve it. If I could get some direct help from the team, my life on Substack would be so much more rewarding!
Hi Rachel, thank you for the feedback. Could you elaborate on what difficulties you encountered with the format, and how Spotify for podcasters solved that for you?
"I have been less than successful in moving the episodes from there to my Substack page" - could you elaborate on what you're trying to do here? If you're hosting your podcast elsewhere, episodes won't automatically appear on Substack, unfortunately. Something you can do is embed your episodes (from Spotify, etc) in Substack posts.
"And I have put A LOT of time into try to problem solve it" - I'm sorry we weren't able to help you with this. Did you try reading our help documents, or contact our Support team?
Two parts to my answer. 1. I kept having trouble with recording on the substack podcast itself because of a strange fast forwarding of the playback of recording. So, I gave up on that and recorded on Spotify. 2. Moving my episodes to substack after they are published. Can that happen one at a time, individually, or does it have to happen en masse all at once? Because substack seems to only have one option when I am trying to import. Its hard to explain exactly but it only gives me one option to import them all at once. I have only been able to make it happen once, so only half of my episodes are on my substack podcast page.
1. Well the fast forwarding sounds incredibly annoying and I'm sorry about that. Does this happen every time that you record? Is it possible that you clicked the "1x" icon in the podcast player on your publication? If you go to a podcast page on your publication, you can look at the playback speed on the audio player (between the forward 30s button and the current timestamp). That should say 1x. If it does, and you record and still hear it sped up, that is a bug and I'm sorry to hear it. Please report back!
2. How were you importing your episodes? From an RSS feed that spotify gives you?
🟧 I'd like to hear more about this, too, as I could see adding my podcast from Spotify For Podcasters to my Substack to increase my reach beyond Apple, Spotify, etc. Following...
To help organize the conversation, please use one of the following emojis when you start a new comment.
🧠 - when sharing strategy or advice for fellow writers
✏️ - when asking questions or seeking feedback from fellow writers
🟧 - when asking a question you hope the Substack team can help answer
Use your emoji keyboard or simply copy and paste the emoji at the beginning of your comment.
🧠 I added podcasting to my Substack content strategy on July 6 after delaying for a long time with mountain of excuses. Some of which are my own comfort of sharing via Audio and listening back to myself. As well as excuses of not having assets like images and headers.
My advice is to just start. Since July 6 I have published 40 episodes for my daily podcast. I get a real kick out of the fact I can podcast on Substack and the episodes are distributed out to Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Amazon Music. My little revision of the old saying, "Perfection is the enemy of progress!"
PS you can check out my podcast here: https://nyugrad.substack.com/podcast
🟧 Something I was curious about from the interview with Laura is how she uses the podcast as a paid perk. I like the idea, but the implementation currently requires duplicate posts: one for the original text, then a duplicate for the podcast version (only for paid subscribers). Is there a neater way to get the same result?
The paywall feature in theory can be used for this, but I suspect (anecdotally) that a lot of readers are already trained to ignore 'preview' posts, assuming the main content is paywalled (even if it's only a specific section/bonus bit).
This might vary for different 'stacks and readerships, but I find that my essays that have paywalled voiceovers on valorieclark.substack.com don't get fewer open rates than my completely free posts. Across the board, the posts that go to free subscribers have a 47% average open rate, paywalled or completely free. That may not be the case for everyone, but I think if readers know that only the audio is paywalled but they can still read for free, they'll still open things.
Very interesting! Thanks, Valorie.
If it were me I would go ahead with the paywall approach. I'm not aware of any data showing that previews are likely to be ignored, but I admit I'm not positive of that.
If you've already been doing the approach using a second post, you might try with the paywall and see if the numbers are very different.
Thanks, Sam! Haven't started doing audio yet, but this is really useful advice.
The notion of 'previews' being off-putting to free subscribers is entirely anecdotal, possibly just me projecting, but I've seen a couple of other writers mention it too. If the data doesn't back up that feeling I'd be very happy to be corrected, though!
🧠 Just want to share my interview for Substack's The Active Voice with E. Jean Carroll, Mary Trump and Jen Taub, who are bringing serialization into the mainstream. The Active voice is such a great podcast! https://read.substack.com/p/the-active-voice-backstory-serial#details
🟧 Are there plans to let us enter our own transcripts? The machine generated ones don't, for example, do a good job distinguishing speakers in an interview.
Also, I've brought this up before, but it would be a huge help if podcast episode pages would more clearly display links to the show in the various podcast apps, and also if the /podcast home page on one's site displayed those links as well. Right now if feels like Substack is intentionally obfuscating links to outside podcast platforms like Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, Spotify, etc., to get people to subscribe to our shows on Substack itself. But that's just not how most people listen.
Thank you for getting back to me, Becca. For the podcast links, inputting them myself would be super easy, especially since we'd only have to do it the once.
✏️ - If I don't have any professional equipment or software or anything fun like that to hand, just your straightforward computer and Chrome browser and/or app, is it even a good idea to do a podcast as a feature, or would I need to get something in the way of a mic setup to make a go of it?
I wanted to add that if you get super sensitive recording equipment you may pick up extraneous noise that you don’t want.
If you don’t need overly produced shows (with bumpers, splicing different audio pieces together, cutting ums-ahs out, etc) then it’s very easy to just record on your phone and upload.
Limited but easy.
Hi Michael, thanks for your question. You can definitely get started with just your computer. You can record using your phone or webcam (if you're doing a video podcast). If you're having a remote conversation with someone you can simply record the Zoom. If you're recording with remote guests you could use recording software like Riverside. Descript is a popular podcast editing tool.
This is totally doable, but if you want to get started with just your computer's mic, the room you record in really matters! It has to be quiet and preferably small, with a lot of soft surfaces around you. Large rooms with hard surfaces echo more, and as a pocast listener it always gives me a headache to hear the podcaster's voice repeated in an echoey room. When I record in my "studio" I use a professional mic *and* I'm surrounded by books on three sides, which limits echoing. But when I record at my parents' house, I still have my professional mic but I have to record in a closet otherwise even my phone's mic picks up the echo in their house.
✏️ Are folks covering additional content in their podcasts, or just reading posts aloud? I would assume some of both. As a much more natural writer than speaker, I would gravitate to the latter, but I'm curious what the appeal of having my posts in audio format would actually be.
On my history podcast, Unruly Figures, my content is meant to be listened to. I've been publishing transcripts myself for the last two years (so this new tech here is exciting!) so it could *look* like I'm just reading my post aloud, but it's really happening the ohter way around.
On my writing 'stack, Collected Rejections, I read posts aloud for paying subscribers. It's meant to be read, so this is just bonus content.
I think reading posts aloud for your users is a major win and something that you should go ahead and do if you're toying with the idea. In my opinion the major benefit is that you have another way to connect with your users, and it will help reduce churn. You'll be able to reach readers not only in their email inbox, and in the substack app, but also in their podcast apps. So you can think of it like another way to make sure your content gets in front of your readers.
Speaking anecdotally, it also makes the connection with your readers more personal. I subscribe to a number of substacks that I don't have the time to read, but because they have voiceovers I'm still an engaged reader/listener.
Ben Thompson of Strachery (not a substack, but still a subscription newsletter), reads all of his posts aloud and he regularly talks about what a good tool it is for retention.
Tx: I have the same posture and the same questions as you do...
Hi! Did you know there’s a UI issue for recording natively? The drop-down box covers part of the text so it’s not possible to read and record at the same time. Would be great if this was resolved!
I've noticed this too--you have to make the window big enough to not cover the text, which is fine on a desktop but trickier on a laptop.
Yes! I’ve done it using two devices, one for recording and another for reading. Super annoying!
🟧
The Youtube model of podcasting works really well, with both long-form and short-form. If possible, creating some sort of clips or snippets of podcasts to share in Notes would help with growth. One of the most popular forms of podcasting is uploading clips to Youtube as well as other social media platforms. Maybe in the future Substack could implement this?
Does something here do what you're asking? It sounds like perhaps something like the audiogram feature:
https://on.substack.com/p/transcription#details
✏️ - Is there a print friendly format function in substack? I have older readers who print the newsletter and the pictures and text is unorganized.
Unfortunately not. Perhaps you could try saving to PDF and printing from there - not sure if this will produce a different result. If that doesn't work you could try an online PDF converter like this https://cloudconvert.com/
🟧 I have been scheduling my podcasts to publish at 5:05 AM NY time each morning. The strategy being to cast the widest net possible for my financial audience. Hoping I pick up London audience in their afternoon and the early birds in East coast. I then restack the podcast on Substack Notes and other social media around 11am NY time to remind West Coasters. But my question is will Substack be releasing more podcast analytics so we can make more data informed decisions on what time of day is best to publish a podcast episode, what times of days audience is engaging the most and least etc? Something like Spotify, https://podcasters.spotify.com/resources/learn/grow/spotify-podcast-analytics
If you're looking for more analytics about when to post on social media, Later (and probably other similar tools) have "best times to post" analysis that is tailored to your followers and audience.
Very excited to get more analytics!
Sweet! Looking forward to that. Any eta?😁
The recording of the podcast is speeding up and it is very annoying. How to stop the speeding?
Where and how does a writer post on her
Substack blog?
I plan on doing this soon.
🟧 ✏️ hi! I create a voiceover for every newsletter and I'd like to have the voiceover go directly to my podcast feed. I have tried selecting the "Add voiceover to podcast RSS feed" when publishing the post, but it doesn't show up in the podcast thread (on substack or elsewhere). I am not sure what am I doing wrong... help appreciated! Also interested to hear from folks who have had success engaging with readers and listeners around the same essays (rather than posting separate podcasts vs. newsletters)
🆘do I to swith to the paying option in order to have the app register directly my podcast?
Thanks for your question Frederic. I'm not sure I understand, can you say more?
All subscriber currently are free, I started one month ago. I want to create podcasts on my substack . Do I need to switch to paying subscriptions for this?
Ah, nope! You can just start podcasting and your subscribers will have access to the normal feeds.
Tx Sam.
I have a PC windows 11 - it cannot have Google Play Store - I canno download google podcast app nor spotify podcasters - what should I use to create my posdcasts on this PC? any clue?
Depending how fancy you want your content to be, you could just record directly onto the substack page. Once you set up a podcast and create a new episode, you'll be able to record directly into the browser. If you decided to use a standalone app, I'd search for various audio recording tools. I'm afraid I don't have any good ideas offhand!
Tx sam - yu say: ecord directly onto the substack page.
I tried that - there is a count dowmd 3 -2-1 nd then it is blocked, does not register
Always excited to start a new thing. I am currently figuring out the possibility of starting a podcast with several different people. I have done podcasts before, though am still on the lookout for people that I 'click' with and could have in-depth discussions with about a variety of different topics. My ideal podcast would be a person that I know/trust and having a weekly / biweekly discussion on a topic / topics of our choosing, or something that's in the news, etc. One day I will find that perfect podcast person. 😄
✏️ I have also used both professional (studio/condensor mic) and more basic recording hardware (decent usb mics, headsets) and boy do I notice the difference now. Obviously I would like to have a proper microphone, but I'm not sure yet if it is really necessary for now, especially considering a lot of talking is going to be done online and other people/guests usually do not have professional mics anyway. Is the investment on my end really necessary, or could I also get by with more basic hardware for a regular podcast, I wonder?
If it were me making a podcast, I wouldn't let the professional mic stop me. You're right that guests would be on different quality (some big podcasters ship mics to their guests before each episode). I'd dive right in and start with what you have. You can always add a fancy mic later as you get into a groove and start gaining a following.
Yes, that has also been my thinking. Wow, they ship mics to them, that is amazing.
🧠 I been getting back into podcasting and now am experimenting with using Descript which now has combined with SquadCast. I get excellent tracks for remote interviews and can make adjustment on Descript to make the remote interviewee voice sound, recorded on a webcam, sound almost as good as if they were using a professional mike. I am publishing this week a video podcast which was challenging but fun to so and it came out looking and sounding good. Take a look and listen.
🟧✏️ Question: I filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) with the CDC for missing VAERS reports. I was expecting to get processing fees waived acting as a journalist aka a Substacker. My waiver was DECLINED! Can Substack content creators be considered journalists? see: https://imgur.com/gallery/ZHqfO6x
This sounds like a question for the federal government and/or society at large. A lot of people don't consider independent journalists to be "real" journalists because they're not associated with a news organization. That's changing but it'll probably be years before we see that change reflected in government agencies/programs like the CDC or FOIA.
🟧 - Does Substack have a print friendly format function? I have older readers who print the newsletter and the pictures and text is unorganized.
Hi Adam! Sorry to hear that there are issues with the printouts. I'll pass along the feedback to our team that this could be improved.