Podcasting Software Review

 

Podcasting is all the rage these days as it seems like everyone starts a podcast when they try to promote their newest, latest, and greatest item or service that they are in charge of. Podcasting really is talk radio when you think about it but the nice thing about it is that it is totally customizable to your interests and needs. Listening to podcasts for learning is something that many people are doing nowadays as well as entertainment with the proliferation of true crime podcasts. 

The 3 podcasting sites that I chose to try out were Anchor which is owned by Spotify, Buzzsprout, and Red Circle. 

Anchor was the most user friendly and while it didn't have as many options as the other two it was also free and gave a lot of features that were super helpful for a beginner like I am when it comes to figuring out podcasting. It was pretty self explanatory and it helped me through the whole process of getting my podcast episode out there in a rather quick turn around. The features that I liked the best were the drag and drop of audio files and the fact that you could record audio right from the browser. You can also export the podcasts to all of the big name podcasting apps like Apple and Google podcasts. 

Buzzsprout was the 2nd website that I looked at and while it was rather intuitive as well, there was a content limitation of 2 hours a month which isn't a lot considering some podcasts that I listen to run an hour each episode. A lot of the best features were hidden behind the paywall such as magic master which helps fix your audio and co host AI which helps with transcripts and promoting your podcast on social media. 

The 3rd website was Red Circle and it had a lot great features that the other two included like analytics and custom subtitles and more bibliographic data for each individual episode. It was by far the easiest to start monetizing your listeners as it allowed you to get that set up before even making an episode of my podcast. It was nice that I could also transfer any podcasts that had already been set up and change the hosting platform to Red Circle. I didn't explore this one as much as Anchor was so easy to use that I went with the easiest one as a beginner. 

Here is the podcast episode that I created with Kayla creatively named the Copyright Corner with Matt and Kayla as we discussed all things copyright related for the teachers and students out there who might be a little confused on what they can use legally in the educational setting as well as throwing in some humor. https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/jU5XMwrtBBb

Educational podcasts can be found all over the place on any of the platforms and as an avid user of all Apple products I go with the built in one that apple provides. The search function works really well for finding what you want and two that I subscribed to after looking for educational podcasts were Ed Tech Weekly AI takeover https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ed-tech-weekly-a-i-takeover/id984989235 as well as Ed Tech Hour https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ed-tech-hour/id1516896661. There are so many to choose from but one of the biggest issues when searching is that you find something that piques your interest but then look and it might only have 3-4 episodes or hasn't been updated in years. Hopefully you find a website that helps make your podcasting dreams come true.