Not sure if you’ve had the chance but I’ve been recording (almost) daily audio recordings of the things I’ve been up to. It is a little bit a of yik yak and not always well organized. There are a few ideas behind this latest effort:
- One, is to keep me productive in the audio realm as I want to speed up my production while also keeping things a bit “rough” or “real”. These recordings aren’t meant to be polished like my podcast episodes.
- Two, to give daily updates of what life is like as a working traveller, not just in China but also the things that occupy someone who lives “overseas”.
- Three, it’s meant to be listened to and not be overly distracting. Unlike video, you can listen to this audiocast of whatever and still get along with your day.
- Finally, I wanted to try out the few different podcasting platforms and see what the differences would be like.
Here’s an example of the layout I’ve had for Soundcloud and Podbean:
The three (free) platforms I’ve used so far include Soundcloud, Podbean, and Anchor. I was also thinking of uploading a video version on YouTube since they are short and some people (including myself) use Youtube just to listen. The only issue is that it becomes a video rather than audio which increases the file size.
Anyway, for a brief overview of each, here they are:
Soundcloud
Soundcloudwas the easiest and most familiar as I’ve used it for my other works before. I was able to upload WAV files directly from my phone and also pictures. No editing was required, no compression, nothing. I was also able to create little write ups of each episode and paste those write into the description of the file. The only issue I had with these was that they were buried and so, unless you knew where to look, you would have a tough time finding the write up. Finally, it seems that spam has taken over Soundcloud as a lot of the comments I received were fake accounts trying to promote something or other. As with all free things there is a time limit, and for that Soundcloud gives three hours free storage before they either hide old episode or you pay to keep everything visible.
Podbean
Podbean has a great sales pitch and is free for up to five hours of storage, but its usability isn’t as great as Soundcloud’s. Further, it only takes MP3s which means, unless you have a converter on your phone, you have to export it to your computer to compress then re-import to your phone. This adds to the time it takes to publish an episode. Next, in terms of images, you also need to make sure that the image is not only scaled below 1400×1400 pixels, but it also has to be beneath 1 MB in size. Otherwise, the file, though it will upload, it will use the default picture of the channel rather than the episode-specific picture.
Anchor
Anchor is owned by Spotify, it also accepts WAV files directly from my phone and any sort of pictures. There doesn’t seem to be a limit to how many minutes you can upload, which sounds great, but I wonder what they’re doing to make money from it. It seems pretty obvious that they would be selling ads against it or re-purposing some of the content to fit their marketing and advertising needs. This is one of the reasons I don’t think I will host my podcast with them but would continue to try out these daily recordings.
Conclusion
Given the different tests I’ve run so far, I’d say Soundcloud was the easiest to use but had the most spam while Anchor seems to beat Podbean in its usability and free features. I’ll look at these again in another month once I’ve done more work with Anchor.
I do like the daily audio recordings but I want to keep these simple. I also may move to a Monday to Friday only recording schedule so I can have some time to do other things on the weekends, or at least just move to one update on the weekend.
I like the format, I like the short blog post, and I like the picture selection so I don’t think this is something I’ll give up just yet. It does, however, almost eliminate the need for any sort of blog posts that don’t have a specific purpose. I’m okay with that, as that means my blog posts can be longer form and a bit more detailed. These audio recordings are supposed to be more like a phone call than an informational beating.
Find them here: