Best Free Podcasting Tools

Jordan: 0:00

If you're creating a podcast for a project, it might not make sense to invest a lot of time and money into it. So what are the best free tools to get the job done? I'm Jordan, host of Podcasting Q&A, where we answer your questions about how to start, grow and monetize a podcast. This week's question is Ross.

ross: 0:24

Hi, my name is Ross Campbell, and I am producing a podcast as part of a Toastmasters project. I wanted to do six episodes at least 10 minutes long. Ah, my difficulty is I'm not very good at the editing. If you can give me advice of where can I get free music that I can use as a part of my podcast? And just what do you recommend for the software to do the editing? Thanks a lot.

Jordan: 0:46

Thanks for your question, Ross. To help me answer it, I've enlisted help from the host of The Short Box Podcast and a regular face on the Buzzsprout YouTube channel, Badr Milligan! Thank you for joining me, Badr.

Badr: 0:57

Hey, Jordan it's good to be on. Thank you so much for reaching out.

Jordan: 1:00

The thing that's interesting about Ross's question is that it sounds like it's for a project, more than just him starting a podcast out of the passion for it or an idea for it. I think that this kind of ties into "Can I podcast for free with minimum knowledge of audio editing?"

Badr: 1:20

As someone who fits that exact same description for many years when I first started, the answer is yes, you can absolutely podcast for free, if not minimum overhead and cost.

Jordan: 1:34

With the editing, you know, a great resource that's free, and actually, the place where I learned to do audio editing, is YouTube. YouTube is a fantastic resource. And there's so many people who know all about audio editing, that are willing to share tips and tricks, even like down to the software and step by step instructions.

Badr: 1:56

There's basically nothing that you can't learn from YouTube university that has got a degree in almost every single skill out there. And audio editing is one of those things that you can go down a very deep rabbit hole and find so many resources when it comes to editing. You know, and they especially if you've got a certain question, you know, whether it be, you know, how do I equalize? How do I use compression, you can even go at a very high level and just, you know, type in something like how do I make my podcast sound good. And, you know, the results that you get are going to be wide ranging. And this might be jumping ahead a little bit. But my favorite editing software, and one that I still use is audacity, you know, I know is considered by many as the entry level program, you know, it's the digital audio workstation that a lot of podcasters start out with before going on to purchasing some, you know, more robust software. But for me, it's one that I've been using for the last couple of years, for a few reasons. You know, first of all, it's free with also open source. So that means that it's always having tweaks and updates being made by very dedicated user base, you know, users that are chiming in about what they want to see, and even building updates and patches to the program to make it better. And then in addition to that, it goes back to my first point where there are so many detailed tutorials out there that cover everything you could possibly imagine when it comes to editing within Audacity. And then there's even a resource called The Audacity Forum. It's formed on Audacity. team.org. And I have learned so many things as far as like the intricacies and the nuances to editing audio, and you don't really have to go down such a deep rabbit hole, I think. I think you could learn the very basics of editing within audacity for your podcast and make it sound good. And you'll be set.

Jordan: 3:40

Yeah, it's so funny that you say that because I actually used Audacity first. And I used it for like, a couple years when I was podcasting. And even to the point where I was monetizing my podcast enough that it became my job was podcasting. And I was still using Audacity because it got the job done. It was free. And it was simple, like just really simple and straightforward. I think it's a little bit less intuitive than people would like it to be. But like I said, like if you use those YouTube videos, like they have step by step instructions, and it's actually not as intense as it may seem. But yeah, Audacity definitely gets the job done. Like you said, it's open source, they have the software for multiple different types of computers. So whether you have a PC or Mac it does work a little bit better with PC, the Mac, I know once I switched from an Acer laptop to a MacBook, I ran into more problems and then I finally switched to a different program but it really gets the job done!

Badr: 4:43

For programs like Audacity and we're looking at maybe a free one, a starter one for Mac. I know folks that swear by GarageBand. One of my best friends, Warren Evans of the Simpsons is Greater Than podcast. We are always having like debates over Audacity in GarageBand as a better free workstation. So he's always champion GarageBand you know, it's also free on Mac, plenty of tutorials out there. And Mac I think gets into a little bit more gives you a little more range when it comes to compression and equalization and etc, etc. But I think the important thing here is maybe going the route of one of these free programs to get your legs underneath, you know, once you get feel comfortable, and you start learning the terminology, I think that's when you can look into purchasing software that's dedicated to audio editing.

Jordan: 5:28

And something that you just kind of reminded me about is the compression normalization, vocal leveling, mastering things like that. And that can feel really, really complicated. But let's see here, he said that he has six episodes that are 10 minutes long each, so for a total of 60 minutes. So if he took those six episodes, he could run them through Auphonic on their free plan. So Auphonic is a great option. If you don't want to mess with like leveling your audio and normalizing and mastering it, it just kind of makes it sound a little bit better, they can do noise reduction, so you don't have like background noise going on. Like if a fans running Ill have that like hum in the background. And Auphonic is really good about cleaning that up. So that's a good free option. Because I think you can upload up to two hours of audio on their free plan.

Badr: 6:24

I think you can save yourself a lot of time in the later editing phases. If you focus on recording the best audio that you can. That can of course get very expensive if we're to talk about like equipment as such, but there's also free ways to you know, ensure that you're recording the best audio as well you know, recording in a quiet place buying a semi decent mic, you know, headphones, things like that, I know there's plenty of videos on Buzzsprout that we've done talking about getting the best possible quality on a budget. So I think if you can eliminate a lot of the you know, bumps and fan noises and background, etc, etc. In the recording phase, it saves you a lot of trouble in the editing phase. And then to your point, you could run your audio through something like a phonic and it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

Jordan: 7:09

I think that that's what I did when I first started my podcast I had, I think it's discontinued now an ATR microphone, and I would do the Stonehenge method of like the couch cushions. And that's what I recorded in for like a long time. But I mean, that whole setup cost me like I want to say like $80 or something, it was it was very cheap. But for a project like this, you could potentially record using like a phone microphone or something like that. Because, yeah, especially if you're in a sound treated area, like not in your kitchen, not in a bathroom, not in a hallway, like maybe in a walk in closet or something like that. If you record that way, then yeah, you will get sound that's a little bit more crisp than if you were to be in a echo chamber kind of room.

Badr: 8:01

And then, as far as free music, I'm going to shamelessly be plugging the Buzzsprout YouTube channel. There's a lot of great videos that cover some of these topics here. But for me, I've been fortunate enough to where I've actually worked with local producers to make custom music for the show that are royalty free. And you know, I can use. But there have been occasions where I myself have needed like free music and you know, sound effects and things like that. And the two that came to mind when I was listening back to Ross's question is, you know, start with like YouTube Music Library as it sounds like it's a music library, it's got a lot of free options, you get unlimited downloads, I think everything is royalty free, so you don't have to worry about being sued, which is a very important thing to consider, you know, when you're using music. And then the second one that I mentioned, you know, and I've used this site more so for like sound effects. And, you know, if I want to throw in some clapping and audience applause or a lightning strike, just you know, if I wanted to jazz things up, I've been a big fan of freesound.org. And it's a huge database of audio snippets, it's got samples, recordings, like all sorts of just sound effects that are released under Creative Commons license. So you can you know, you're allowed to reuse them as you like. And I've found a lot of great sounds there, you won't find that you know, music or things that you can use for that purposes. But as far as like kind of increasing the production and audio design of your podcast, I find that freesound.org is a great resource.

Jordan: 9:25

Some of the sites that I really like to go to for Creative Commons is freemusicarchive.org. They have probably one of the largest libraries of Creative Commons music I have ever seen. And it's by independent composers, musicians, and they have stuff for just every genre of music you could possibly want. There's some really, really wonderful things I've used from their website. You can also go to Pixabay and Pixabay is normally used for like clipart and stuff like that, but it turns out that they actually have the music tab and their music tab is pretty solid. It's it's really good. So that's another option that you can do. And then there's also Incompetech, which is by Kevin MacLeod I think is his name. And there's a ton of music on there that a lot of podcasters really like to use as well. All of these sites that we have listed out are going to be really helpful. I will put links in the show notes, and I wish you luck with creating your podcast. So better. Thank you so much for coming on this episode and helping me to answer Ross's question.

Unknown: 10:32

My pleasure. Best of luck, Mr. Campbell.

Jordan: 10:36

I hope this episode of Podcasting Q&A has been helpful to you. If you have a question you'd like us to answer on a future episode, go to pod inbox.com/buzzsprout or click the link in the show notes to leave us an audio message. And as always, Keep podcasting