I've learned a lot about making micro podcast episodes since I started with this project last August. If you haven't listened to one recently, I recommend them! They're very short -- usually around 5 to 7 minutes long, and each one includes a song, sometimes written just this week, about a very recent event.
Making the podcasts each week, whether they include a new song or one written slightly less recently that's relevant to this week in one way or another, has become a preferred method of communicating with the world for me. I've become a big fan of the format -- a short audio essay followed by a song. Both forms of communication have strengths and weaknesses, and I think they work together well.
The micro podcast project has been well-received, which is very nice, because it's quite a bit of work. Every week there are many hours involved with writing episodes (especially if they include a new song), a few hours recording them, and and a few more each week in distributing them through many different outlets.
The podcast phenomenon differs somewhat with other forms of broadcasting. One of the particularly nice things about podcasts are how relatively easy it is to make them accessible on many different platforms. In the age of Too Much Information, one of the biggest problems many of us (including me) have is keeping track of things I actually want to keep track of. Different methods work better for different people than others. This seemed like a good occasion to run through the various platforms where my podcast is available each week.
- The podcast is embedded on my website, so every time there's a new one it appears at davidrovics.com/thisweek. That's also where I have all the info about the podcast and where people can find it and support it -- it's the podcast's home page.
- I send an announcement about each new episode to my email list, which people can sign up to on my website at davidrovics.com.
- Every time I upload an episode via Podbean it appears there and gets automatically distributed every week to iTunes and Google Play. So whatever podcasting app you have on whatever device, whether it's an iOs device that came with Apple's Podcasts app, or if you downloaded a free podcasting app such as Podbean or Podcast Addict, you can subscribe to the podcast by searching for it by name -- This Week with David Rovics. On Podbean there's also an RSS feed available, as well as links and code for embedding the whole podcast or any individual episode on any website, blog, etc.
- Every episode appears on Spotify, SoundCloud, and YouTube, so if you don't use a typical podcasting app but you do use one of those platforms, you can follow me on any of them and hear about new episodes as soon as they're up.
- If you follow me on social media like Facebook or Twitter I post new episodes there, too (but good luck ever hearing about them on a consistent basis that way -- it's not a good way to do it, especially Facebook, because of the way their algorithms work, and for other reasons).
- The David Rovics app is available on both iOs and Android, and includes the latest podcast episode each week, first thing.
- I upload each episode to the Pacifica Audioport for use by radio programmers looking for FCC-friendly, syndicated content each week.
- I maintain a podcast blog where there's an entry for each episode that includes an embed of the episode followed by the transcript of the podcast. And of course for those of you who follow blogs, the blog can be followed, and it has an RSS feed.
The podcast, like everything else I do, is made possible most especially by members of my Community-Supported Art program.
