Category: Podcast Discussion

Red Apple Creative And SNK Studios Rebrand To Forever Media

~ Jen Thorpe

Specialist audio agency, Red Apple Creative, and award-winning audio post production house, SNK Studios, have rebranded to Forever Studio. The group has previously operated as standalone brands within the same company based in London and New York.

The business of around 50 people was founded in 2005 and includes a creative team who specialize in short form advertising and long form content. The creative team at Red Apple have grown a reputation for the level of innovation they bring to projects and industry events. They are Spotify’s preferred creative partner, working on global campaigns in multiple languages, as well as working with agencies indirectly with brands.

On the content side of the business, they work with multiple platforms and have recently completed a world-first project with Audible, adapting 6 books inspired by the popular Hilda series on Netflix into fully immersive audio scripts and productions with an ensemble cast. They have produced, recorded, edited and mixed podcasts for several organizations, most recently Goodstuff and Haringey Council.

SNK Studios are renowned for their work on global ad campaigns, from Amazon and Adobe to Range Rover and Sky, delivering voice casting, voiceover recording, sound design and mixing for TV and online. Their facility on Tottenham Court Road is home to 11 studios, includes 3 ARD stages, a Dolby Atmos suite and welcoming reception space. Their music services cater for every need, with in-house bespoke composition, internal library music catalogue and sync licensing services.

The Studios side of the business has also been approved to handle sensitive international ‘pre-release’ film and TV content for the major streaming platforms and Hollywood film companies. They have provided dialogue recording for The Crown, Bridgerton and Oscar winning film, Dune, which won the ‘Achievement in Sound’ category.

Company co-founder, Seb Juviler, spoke about the rebrand: “We’ve always worked really closely behind the scenes, with the studios sound designing and mixing everything that the creative teams write and produce. We felt it was time to lose the heritage names that we started our journey with back in 2005 and bring everything together under one overarching brand.”

Co-founder Paul Golliker added: “There’s no business that offers the number of audio services that we do all under one roof. We’re completely unique and on a daily basis we’ll have studios recording voiceovers for animated series and feature films. Then we’ll be creating bespoke sound design and mixing TV ads, audio dramas, audiobooks and podcasts. We’ve got specialist composition teams creating sonic identities for brands, writing teams who are experts in audio short form commercials and long form content.

“And we have media planning and buying across all audio platforms, plus a digital team who are completely focussed on interactive digital experiences for all audio platforms. That’s a lot to communicate when everything is under a different brand! So the rebrand to Forever Audio is really designed to bring all of these amazing offers together and give clients a clear understanding of everything we have to offer.”

Executive Creative Director, Kathleen Moroney, has led the Red Apple Creative team since 2005 and feels that now is the perfect time to rebrand.

“We live and breathe audio across all of our departments and we have done, quite literally forever. SNK and Red Apple Creative are really well known names, but clients might not have been aware of the breadth of services we can help them with across those brands. Now, agencies, marketers and businesses are thinking more strategically than ever before about their multichannel audio strategy and are often dealing with multiple vendors to deliver various audio assets. We offer long term partnerships as the specialists in every area of audio you can imagine, and we wanted to communicate that simplicity by bringing everything together under one name with one collective goal; to deliver world class audio services.”

Triton Digital Announces Executive Promotions

~ Jen Thorpe

Triton Digital, the global technology and services provider to the digital audio and podcast industry announced several executive promotions. Stephanie Donovan has been promoted to Global Head of Revenue, Alex Fournier to Chief Technology Officer, Benjamin Masse to Chief Product Officer, and Molly Glover Gallatin has joined the executive team as SVP of Marketing and Jelli Customer Experience. The promotions further support the company’s recent integration of Jelli to accelerate the development of innovative technology that serves the entire audio ecosystem across radio, streaming, and podcasting.

“At Triton Digital, it’s our mission to provide innovative technology and services that power the continuously evolving global audio landscape,” said John Rosso, President and CEO, Triton Digital. “These recent promotions within our executive team are key to maintaining innovation and operational excellence within our best-in-class audio streaming, podcasting, audience measurement, and advertising technology. Complemented by the integration of the Jelli team and technology, we are the industry’s most comprehensive suite of audio solutions.”

Stephanie Donovan is a recognized leader in the audio industry and a long-standing member of Triton Digital’s leadership team. In her previous role as SVP of Publisher Development, Donovan contributed to expanding Triton Digital’s client partnerships in North America while also advocating for digital audio strategies and publisher development expansion within and beyond the 80+ countries Triton Digital currently serves.

Alex Fournier has extensive experience leading technology and operations and has played an internal role in driving Triton Digital’s growth and performance. As Chief Technology Officer, Fournier will be responsible for leading the company’s technology roadmap and increasing its ability to meet evolving client expectations, specifically in regard to security, privacy, availability, and performance.

As part of Triton Digital’s integration with Jelli, Molly Glover Gallatin has been appointed SVP of Marketing and Jelli Customer Experience. Previously, Molly was the SVP of Marketing and Customer Experience, Glover Gallatin will oversee all marketing and communication activities for Triton Digital. In addition, she will continue to lead customer experience for Jelli products.

Benjamin Masse has a proven track record establishing synergies between business stakeholders, clients, and software development teams as Triton Digital’s Managing Director of Market Development and Strategy, As Chief Product Officer, Masse will lead product strategy and operations to ensure Triton Digital remains adaptive in the evolving audio marketplace. Masse will also play an intrigue role in integrating Jelli’s platform technology for the radio advertising market into Triton Digital’s suite of advertising technologies.

With Triton Digital and Jelli joining forces, Triton Digital’s audio industry. The combination of complementary products and technologies accelerates Triton Digital’s development and growth of innovative solutions that benefit the global audio ecosystem.

Third Coast International Audio Festival Calls for 2020 Entries

~ Jen Thorpe

The annual Third Coast / Richard H Driehaus Foundation Competition is here! Since 2011, the Competition has celebrated masterful, experimental, groundbreaking, and radical works in audio storytelling, and has awarded over $300,000 in cash prizes to many of the most innovative makers of the past two decades.

This year, they will award eleven winners in the following nine categories: Best Documentary (Gold, Silver, Bronze), Best Serialized Story. (NEW) Best Documentary: Short, Best New Artist, Best Documentary: Non-English Language, Impact, (NEW) Audio Unbound, Director’s Choice, and Best News Feature.

The Early Deadline (your chance to enter with reduced rates) is May 1, 2020, at 5:00 pm CST. The final deadline is May 25, 2020, 5:00 pm CST. Winners will be notified and announced in Fall of 2020.

This year, Third Coast has restructured their pricing to make the TC/RHDF to make competition more affordable for independent and freelance makers (entry fees starting at $45), as well as first time entrants working in countries underrepresented in their competition (entry fees start at $10).

Audio Unbound is a new category. It is described this way: “We’re breaking audio out of the podcast feed & the broadcast airwaves! It’s time to honor audio work that experiments with embracing other mediums, and artists from other mediums embracing audio.”

Best Documentary: Short is a new category. It is described this way: “We hear some of our favorite audio storytelling in short work – 10 minutes or less. We believe short documentaries are just as powerful as the rest, and deserve a bigger platform and spotlight”.

This year, for the first time, Third Coast will publicly honor finalists of the Competition in addition to the cohort of award-winners.

In 2020, Third Coast is taking the judging process completely virtual. (More details about this year’s panel of 2020 Competition Judges will be revealed later this month). They will also be featuring standout works from the Competition through their virtual programming.

Those who are considering entering the competition should visit the Third Coast website for more details about categories, pricing, deadlines, and more.

Spotify Might Buy The Ringer

~ Jen Thorpe

Vox reported that Spotify is in conversations to buy The Ringer. It seems to me that Vox would likely have some insight on the situation. Vox owns Recode, which has a commercial relationship with The Ringer.

According to Vox, The Wall Street Journal was the first to report about Spotify being in talks to buy The Ringer. The Wall Street Journal reported that Spotify and The Ringer teamed up in September to launch a podcast hosted by Bill Simmons, The Hottest Take. That podcast streams exclusively on Spotify.

The Wall Street Journal described The Ringer this way:

The Ringer, a sports and pop-culture outlet founded by former ESPN commentator Bill Simmons in 2016, has a podcasting network that attracts more than 100 million downloads a month. In addition to “The Bill Simmons Podcast”, the Ringer produces “The Watch,” a discussion show about TV and pop-culture; “Binge Mode”, which dives deep into pop-culture franchises, and “The Rewatchables,” a show that breaks down popular movies.

Vulture points out that these talks are early, and states that there is a good amount of details that probably need to be ironed out if a deal is to materialize. In other words, it is probably best to wait and see what happens, rather than speculate that this is already a done deal.

NOW Can We Call It Cool? A Perspective on The New Rode RODECaster Pro

~ Mike Wilkerson
The Logitech Over-The-Ear Headset - Circa 2005I have been capturing, editing, promoting, producing and creating live capture facilities where the focus is talking about podcasts since 2005 and guess what? I’ve never required anyone give me a “multi-track series of files” to get any editing, production or podcast-based generation done – ever.
While I know this probably knocks back the sneakers of a variety of you reading, I wanted to first talk about what was, what is, and what shall be in the very near future.
My first podcast in 2005, was recorded as a Windows Media Player .WAV file, created with two el-crappo (that’s an official designation) Logitech, over-the-ear gaming headsets a ton of frustration and more ums, ers, uhs, y’knows and lipsmacking than anyone on planet Earth has ever experienced – as one, single file.
My most-recent podcast, captured just last night (2019), was captured via a Zoom H6, via Heil PR-40s, captured into a single-track .WAV file.
While each featured editing, post-production and an ever-shrinking UmErUhYknow Reel, each of them featured a couple of guys talking, that didn’t generally “talk over” each other.

“Where are you going with all this, Mike?”

I have used probably every device, doo-dad and “what if we try this” that’s been put out to capture podcast content over the years, and recently, a marvel of concept, technology and project completion was release by a company called, Rode. The device is a complete, in-on-simple small console device podcast recorder called The Rode RODECaster Pro. Put as simply as Doc Brown did inside the original Back to the Future feature film when referring to Mary’s camcorder as a “portable television studio”, The Rode RODECaster Pro is literally the central component to anyone’s future, much-portable Podcast Studio. Everything from the mic inputs, to the headphone inputs, to the cell phone inputs, to the optional sound/firing buttons for media files and sound effects, that even saves all of the information locally so that two mics, some cables, and a power source net you a literal, portable podcast studio. It. Is. Amazing. It. Is. Simple. And when it came out, it was resoundingly “hated” by all of the people that thought it was “kind of a good idea” except of course for the fact that it “didn’t record in multi-track.” Well, that’s getting a deployable software fix so – now it WILL capture and provide multi-track for anyone that has one.

NOW can we call this officially a great idea and product?

I guess what I’m driving at the most is that, especially inside an edited program, how often is crosstalk/talking over each other/whatever your team calls it – a giant problem? When you have an interview show that has lots of new guests or perhaps people that just don’t care of they’ve not taking appropriate turns – I guess i can see it. But I’ve literally never had a problem leaning across the desk, or into the teleconference suite speakerphone being used to capture the interview (that’ll be yet ANOTHER !GASP!-creating article) and asking the person to “remember, let’s take turns speaking so that people can hear what point both of us is trying to convey.” It’s one of the largest frustrations I have when reading “reviews’ of the Rode RODECaster Pro. My very brief note of it above DOES NOT DO THIS INSTRUMENT justice, but let’s be plain – this is newfound technology collective magic, for a good price, from an experienced company, in a burgeoning industry, that will be changing the podcast environment.
To whine incessantly because it “doesn’t record in multi-track” is something I just don’t comprehend, especially knowing that “the fix” was coming/will be a software update. There are a handful of other detracting elements (most-notably, that it will only record currently to an on-board micro-SD card – it is small, it is persnickety for those of us with reasonably el-crappo eyes) that just can’t possibly pile up to plunder the potential podcast punch this product promises to deliver.

What’s Your Worst-case Crosstalk/Talk Over Each Other Sample?

So I ask YOU – tell me YOUR “worst crosstalk/talk over each other moment, and why you let it continue so much that you now REQUIRE to have multi-track recordings for say, editing jobs where interjecting some simple direction would make things simpler, smaller, and much more straight forward!
Do it in the comments below!

What is the Value of your Podcast Brand?

~ Todd Cochrane ~ 1 Comment

It’s never too late as a podcaster to take control of your brand. It’s important though to consider the ramifications of not doing so.

When you say Starbucks everyone knows that company it has global brand awareness. Most podcasters will never achieve global brand awareness but some have. Some podcasts have created massive shows in the content space that has gained them national attention. Let’s look at the Lore Podcast everyone in Podcasting, Hollywood and 100’s of thousands of Lore fans have heard of the podcast and the team behind it has had monumental life-changing success.

Both brands have several common elements of brand awareness but I want to focus on one. Each has their own branded online destination that they own and share with no other! Starbucks.com and LorePodcast.com

Can you imagine Starbucks having an online presence that was at Starbucks.TheirPodcastProvider.com. this would be considered brand suicide.  It also is hard to even imagine that Lore Podcast could have achieved the success it has had today, building its brand at LorePodcast.ThierPodcastProvider.com.

When I started my show, I had already been a blogger for a couple of years, before I became a podcaster. The one thing I learned in the time before I started podcasting was that my website at its own .com started opening doors to people in the space I was writing in, and the brand became as valuable as the guy writing the blog posts. I spent a lot of time building my sites brand, and my own personal authority to go with it so that when I launched my podcast it was just another content angle that for many years dominated the website.

Today Podcasters are joining the podcasting space in the thousands monthly, and they are competing for ears to their shows and their sites. Sadly many of the shows cannot even be found on Google. It’s really not there fault, most podcasters are very creatively and assume that if they create great content listeners will come. Many take the easiest path to start their show in the excitement of getting started on their hosting provider’s sites.

Podcasters often realize when their shows are not growing that they have to find a way break out, part of that process is getting the branding of their show under there full control. Sadly though some never do and are happy being the product for their hosting provider to attract more creators.

My team understood though that a lot of podcasters jump in with both feet, often not knowing these pitfalls. I wanted our customers to have a way to get started fast, and then graduate their shows when they got dialed in through our guidance and provided a simple upgrade path to control their brand, so their shows could become the next Lore Podcast.

Today we see a lot of shows have that light bulb moment and understand the value of separating their brand from their hosting provider’s sites. Not all Podcast Providers provide an upgrade path where a host can bring their own domain, some host would rather the podcaster continue to be a product of their brand and would never suggest they get their own domain.

My teams first and foremost goal is to get a show host started using all the best practices before episode one drops this includes a site with their own domain. To our relief, nearly 80% of our customers are dialed in from the beginning, and we see very low show failure rates. For those shows that get started fast, we make it easy for theirshow.blubrry.net to graduate to theirshow.com by a couple clicks of the mouse.

The number of top-level domains has exploded so finding a domain is no longer difficult. My personal site/show which has resided at the same domain since 2002. The domain and thousands of content pieces on its brand brings in significant revenue. I would not take anything less than 1 million dollars for my sites domain and brand but back in 2002 if someone had offered me $500 I would have sold it without thinking.

In hindsight, I really did not know I was building a brand that would sustain my family and be that valuable. But I do today and I want every podcaster who has started or is getting started podcasting to consider the importance of building your brand, your show, your podcast, straight out of the gate. So hunt down that perfect domain today and align it to your show and quit being the product of your hosting provider.

Todd Cochrane is a Podcaster who has hosted the Geek News Central Podcast since October 2004, and is the CEO of RawVoice/Blubrry who’s services power 80,000 podcasts globally while respecting their brand and content.

Proven Social Media Strategies for Podcasters

~ Todd Cochrane

Many podcasters struggle with trying to build their audiences, yet we find podcasters that only have their podcasts on their hosting provider with limited information being posted about each episode. It’s like they purposely want to fail. The following presentation was presented at Podcast Movement 2017 to a standing room only crowd, and also repeated on International Podcast day. This is not a video teaching you how to tweet, but proven social strategies to grow an very large audience. If your struggling or just want some new ways to build your show I cannot stress enough how valuable this presentation is.

Bit Bandit Is a Handy App for Calculating Audio File Size

~ Shawn Thorpe

BitBandit LogoWe live in an ever-increasing world of “unlimited” services. But one place that utopian vision of “everything all the time forever” doesn’t really apply is podcast media hosting. That’s why it can be useful to know how big your media files will be before publishing them to the web. But the only method that’s usually available to determine file size is to simply encode a file and check its properties. That process works but it’s far from efficient.

Billed as “A bit rate and file size calculator for audio engineers,” a new mobile app called Bit Bandit can help you calculate file size before encoding:

Use it to quickly calculate the bit rate of a piece of audio based on its sample rate, bit depth and channel count. Display the results in units of your choice.

Bit Bandit can also calculate file size based on bit rate. Commonly used bit rates are included by default.

I downloaded Bit Bandit and did some testing. It has two sections. A Bit Rate section and a File Size section. The Bit Rate section is really more of a curiosity than anything else. But it might be fun to play around with if you’re a math nerd.

Bit Bandit Bit Rate
Bit Bandit Bit Rate Calculator

The File Size calculator found within Bit Bandit will definitely be of use to podcasters. In the example below, I told Bit Bandit to calculate the size of a file that’s 1 hour, 30 minutes long, and is encoded at 96kbps. The app told me that my file would be in the neighborhood of 63.3MB.

Bit Bandit File Size
Bit Bandit File Size Calculator

Bit Bandit is a free download for both iOS and Android. The app developer has suggested there will be a paid version of Bit Bandit with enhanced features in the future.

Good Moderating of Comments is Key

~ Jen Thorpe

Screen Shot 2016-02-28 at 6.50.07 AMThere is a commonly shared piece of wisdom that says: “Don’t read the comment section”. The reason is obvious. If there is a space online where people can post a comment, and that space is poorly moderated (or not moderated at all) things have the potential to get ugly. Good moderating of comments is vitally important.

The Longest Shortest Time podcast recently shut down its Facebook moms group. The podcast is hosted by Hillary Frank and produced by Abigail Keel. The show is described as “the parenting show for everyone”, so it makes sense that they would have a Facebook group for moms who are fans of the show. (It also had a Facebook dads group for fans of the show.)

According to an article at Neiman Lab, the moms Facebook group had 18,000 members. The same Neiman Lab article notes that not all of the people in that Facebook group were listeners of the show. Some joined simply because they enjoy parenting-related Facebook groups.

An article at The Cut notes that discussions taking place at the Facebook group got contentious after the size increased. It also notes (and I am summarizing greatly here) that the content of the discussions became more negative after things got political.

Between the two articles, it appears there was a point where Hillary Frank and Abigail Keel considered increasing the number of moderators. In the end, they decided to close the moms Facebook page in favor of focusing more time and energy on the podcast itself.

I once was a moderator for a podcast about a video game. The podcast did live shows. I found the experience of moderating the comments posted by people who were watching the live episode to be exciting and exhausting (at the same time). I learned that good moderation of comments was key to keeping the fans of a podcast engaged and invested.

I also learned that moderating comments is a difficult task. It is easy to make mistakes about what to allow and what to remove. It can be difficult to discern when a moderator should get involved. There are people who will complain about decisions made by a moderator – and that can make things stressful for both the moderator and the fans who read the angry comments.

What can podcasters learn from all this? Lack of moderation (of comments, Facebook fan groups, and forums) can lead to a lot of disgruntled listeners. Some people won’t want to return to a space that has become very negative. The plan you created to moderate a small group needs to expand as the group grows. Be proactive and add more moderators periodically as your fan base grows in number.