HPR2503: My journey into podcasting

Summary: How I Got Into Podcasting The Background Audio production has always been an interest of mine: my late grandfather was an audiophile, my dad ran an AV studio in Woking (the one where the Spice Girls were formed - my dad got mentioned in a couple of their autobiographies) and now runs his own AV consultancy business, and my cousin also runs an AV consultancy... so there’s a definite family history in there. I dabbled briefly with hospital radio (as a technician, rather than a presenter) in the late 80’s, and I was a technician and presenter on College Radio in the early 90’s where I hosted a show called “The Barry Manilow Fan Club” on Friday lunchtimes. Yes, I am a huge fan of Barry Manilow - he’s given me a lot of inspiration as a musician - no, I didn’t play any Barry on the College Radio show. I’d also had a few people say that I had a good radio voice. Others say a good radio face, but I don’t like them anymore. The Catalyst In 2007, I discovered this podcasting lark through a couple of friends who had their own podcasts. One was The Random Three: a personal musical journey where Mark - the host - would play three seemingly-random pieces of music from his own collection (thus, not podsafe) and explain the reasons why he chose them. Most of the time, these seemingly-random tracks actually had a theme, but it didn’t necessarily become apparent until after the second track. It was a great show - now sadly defunct - and I really miss it. I even submitted my own music choices for Mark to present. The other was Dumbed Down Life: three chaps nattering about “stuff” and playing some music along with it. Another great show, which - although it still exists - currently releases episodes every year or so. What drew me to these shows - apart from being friends, was the fact that these were regular guys, not professionals. That led me to think “I can do that”, so I set about proving - to myself, mostly - that I could. The Start One Thursday in early March 2008, when the wife had gone to the gym for a couple of hours, I grabbed my Logitech headset, my Linux laptop, a handful of tracks from the Podsafe Music Network, and a piece of software called IDJC, and recorded the first ever episode of The Bugcast. It was just over 22 minutes long, and it was dire. Utterly dire. Every so often, I go back to it and listen and cringe and marvel at how much better the show is now! The music back then wasn’t strictly podsafe either: the first track I played was Moloko’s Sing It Back… but I didn’t worry about it then, as I got the track from a source that gave implicit permission for use in podcasts. I did do a show - episode 20 - which was a nostalgic trip back to my college years, where I played tracks by Chad Jackson, Japan, and Dream Warriors. This was a complete and intentional violation of copyright on my part, which led me to pull the show only a few weeks later. I did rerelease the show two years after that, but with the offending tracks removed. However, there is a story to the show, so I would recommend you go listen. Back then, it was just me and a small listener-base of friends, their family, their families’ servants; their families’ servants’ tennis partners, and some chap I bumped into in the mess the other day called Bernard. But as time went on and I got more experience, I was really enjoying what I was doing, and