Create Your Own Podcast Under the Holy Trinity of Indie Rock
Easy, Cheap, Professional, Amen: How to Create Your own Podcast Under the Holy Trinity of Indie Rock
In 1990, a movie came out called Pump Up the Volume. It’s the story of a lonely teenage guy that starts his own pirate radio show. Our hero, Happy Harry, uses his show to launch a revolution of sorts in sleepy suburbia. The movie closes with a memorable scene in which the camera zooms out over the city at night while a chorus of voices come out of the darkness, representing people all over the world starting their own pirate radio shows.
At this point, the viewer’s little heart swells with inspiration and the conviction that she too can start her own pirate radio show. Except she hasn’t a clue how to go about it, and even if she did, where is she supposed to get the impressive array of equipment required that’s displayed so casually in Happy Harry’s basement bedroom? It is thusly that another dream rolls away with the closing credits, and the viewer remains, in the words of Happy Harry, “a legend in her own mind.”
But now, more than a decade later, the indie voice crying out in the wilderness has returned in greater form and with more ferocity than ever in the form of the Podcaster. And in these heady days of the people’s media revolution, you don’t need much more than a laptop, a mic, and a bit of techie know-how to get your sound on those newly digitized airwaves.
As a Musician, You’re Already Halfway There
Creating your own Podcast is getting easier every day. This is especially true for musicians, who already have all their own recording equipment, right? Right? In fact, you might already be ready to Podcast without knowing it, as were London-based indie poppers The Shakes. “We made a Podcast by accident,” they say of their popular Shakecast. “We thought it would be cool to do a little 20-minute show with loads of new stuff and give it to our fans. It was initially just supposed to be a free download or giveaway, but as we looked more into getting this out there we discovered Podcasts, and this is what it became.”
For others musicians, it may not be so easy. Those feeling strapped for material should be making recordings of live performances, studio sessions, and even cool stuff that happens on tour. But before you find yourself Podcasting from a filthy bathroom in a dive that swore it could fit 300 people while your drummer is screaming at you to come haul your shit back to the van, it’s probably good to figure out just how you’re supposed to get your podcast online and available for syndication.
Podcast Hosting
If your band already has its own website or blog, you can host a Podcast yourself on your server. And if you go this route, you’ll need to create your own RSS feed, which is complicated and involves the risk of quickly maxing out your bandwidth as you gain new listeners. So though you already have a site, you’ll probably want to get a unique hosting service, which will both create an RSS feed for you, and host your show on its server.
If you have a blog, you can post your Podshows on it, and link to a service like Feedburner which takes care of the rest. “Feedburner was an important find for us,” say The Shakes. “It turns your blog into an RSS feed and then syndicates it to various websites where people can subscribe.” This takes care of bandwidth concerns and of getting on directories like iTunes, which is key to having a successful podcast.
Many podcasting services don’t require you to have a band site of any kind (although Sonic Weekly strongly recommends that you do.) Some, like Odeo, allow you to record your Podcast directly through their site. All you need is a mic and a dream. With new applications, sites, and services jumping on the Podwagon every day, your biggest challenge may be to sift through it all and figure out which service is right for you.
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Author's biography:
Anne Stewart is an author, music journalist, and songwriter based out of Victoria, British Columbia. While biding time awaiting the publication of her best-seller and subsequent retirement on a yacht Ken Kesey-style, she writes for multiple online publications and runs her own successful web design firm, Float Solutions.
