If you frequently listen to Podcasts, you might just get the idea of producing one yourself. Many podcasts sound like normal radio shows but you don't necessarily have to immitade a radio producer. Furthermore, you need to make sure you don't run out of topics or ideas so you should always choose something you're passionate about.

Getting Started

Consider subscribing to popular podcasts and take notes on what you particularly like or dislike about them. Then try to model your own podcast along the same lines. This includes the duration of your podcast, the rough outline of each episode as well as the music that you'll be playing (you can use free mp3 for the background music).

Required Hardware & Software

In order to create a podcast you'll need a PC with a microphone and an Internet connection. Laptop owners should probably not use the embedded microphone as it will also record ambient noise. If you want your podcast to also contain video, you're obviously going to need a webcam.

As far as software is concerned, there is a wide variety of free as well as commercial sound recording applications. One of the best, free, ones is called Audacity and it's open source software. Simply do a search on Audacity and you should easily find a place to download it. Audacity also supports plug-ins that can improve the quality of recording. You'll also need software to convert sound files of various formats into MP3. Audacity can handle MP3 encoding as well. All that's needed is the LAME MP3 encoder plugin, which is again freely available on the Internet.

Recording

To start recording using Audacity, simply click on the red button. You can add background music if you like, by selecting Project -> Import Audio. Bear in mind that you are only allowed to use free MP3 files for podcasts rather than copyrighted songs, as these will be broadcast all over the Internet. Finally, audacity plugins will enable you to add special effects to your podcast.

After you've finished recording, you need to export what you've just recorded into an MP3 format. If your podcast is of a talk show type, a 32KBps bit rate is usually enough. If it includes music, it is suggested that you use 128KBps for the encoding.

Publishing Your Podcast

So there you have it! Your first podcast is ready. All you need to do is publish it on the Internet. You need to upload the MP3 file of your podcast on the Web (most ISPs usually provide some basic web space for users) and then create an RSS feed for it. This can easily be achieved by going to feedburner.com which will create the feed for you. Remember to add every new episode to the RSS feed of your podcast. After that, simply go to iTunes and click on the "Submit Podcast" button on the main page.

You're all set. User can now subscribe to your podcast and you'll soon be broadcasting on the Internet!

Thomas Jackson
http://www.musicdownloadsguide.com