Podcasts and the Tools to Make One

Written by: Sara Feske and LaKursha Vykukal

Click Here for 👉The Librarian Girls Podcast

    Podcasts can be found everywhere today. Celebrities host them, your favorite author has one or has been featured on one and you can find them on every topic you can possibly think of. Podcasts are a great way to keep up to date on current events or the latest information in your field. Depending on what device you have can influence where you listen to podcasts. As iPhone users, we prefer to listen through the Apple Podcast app. Stitcher and Spotify are also well-rated apps. One podcast that we recommend is Leading from The Library by Shannon McClintock Miller. Podcasts can also be a great way to engage students. With all the options out there for free podcasting sites and apps, students could make their own podcast as a way to demonstrate their learning. We could see students in middle and high schools utilizing the library as a place to research and create their podcasts. Within the elementary school setting podcasting book talks or about favorite authors would be a great way to get students started in the world of podcasting.

    After reading the article by J. Garcia about different podcast hosting websites we decided to look at Podbean, SoundCloud, and Libsyn. Podbean was the first site we looked at and it has a very simple easy to follow layout. It was easy to customize it to reflect the type of podcast you want to make. It allows you to import audio that you have already recorded. From what we explored through the web-based version of the site it does not allow record directly on the site. This is a good site if you are a beginner podcaster and have somewhere else that you like to record your audio. Another bonus to this site is that it allows you to store up to 5 hours of recordings which is more than double of other sites we reviewed. 

    Originally we picked Libsyn because it was the first in the podcasting game. Unfortunately, it is a paid site and we decided not to pay for so we switched to Soundsprout instead. Soundsprout is unlike other podcasting sites. When you log in you see all kinds of music recommendations and it looks more like a music app than a traditional podcasting site. When you go to upload then you have the option to upload music or audio clips. Just like on PodBean you have to record on another site or app and then upload the audio to Soundsprout where you can edit the audio and then publish it to different platforms. 

    The third site we picked to review was Buzzsprout. Buzzsprout walked you step by step in creating your profile for your podcast. One feature we really enjoyed was the integration of Canva in being able to custom design the logo for your podcast. The logo we created for our “The Librarian Girls” podcast looked so professional. If you want to give your podcast the most polished look this would be the site to use. One drawback of Buzzsprout is that you only get 2 hours of content every 30 days. This may limit some people on the kind of podcast they want to build. Overall it is an easy website to navigate and they provided you with several different getting started tutorials in the first email they send you. If we were producing a podcast on a weekly or monthly basis this is the site we would choose for its ease of use and ability to publish to multiple platforms. Even though we really liked Buzzsprout we actually ended up using an app called Anchor to record our podcast. The thing that we liked the best about Anchor is that you can invite others to record with you at the same time. This allowed us to record together rather than having to edit our parts together. It also allowed for a better flow to the podcast episode. 

Garcia, J. (2021, August 4). The Best Free and paid hosting sites for your podcast. Tooltester. https://www.tooltester.com/en/blog/podcast-hosting/