Diving into Podcasting 2.0: Setting up a Podcast

As some of you might remember (at least if you are coming here from Fosstodon) I have a podcast called Code Sprint. I haven’t really done much with it since I kinda forgot about it over as the semester went on, but I have one. And I decided to use the whole Podcasting 2.0 thing as an excuse to start making episodes again, while also learning what it’s like to create a podcast that is compatible with Podcasting 2.0 players. Now of course, every podcast is compatible, but I decided to see how I could make use of some of the new features of this new standard in my own.

Hosting
It all starts with choosing a hosting platform. Now, there are quite a few different podcast hosting platforms that support Podcasting 2.0 features, but I chose JustCast because it was free to use. The only issue I had with switching was the fact that I was already hosting the podcast on Anchor, because that’s what some other friends of mine were using, and it was also free to use. Since mine was new and didn’t really have much of a listener base, I just downloaded the audio of each episode and uploaded them to JustCast, then deleted my Anchor account since JustCast also supports distribution on Spotify. Of course, you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to. You can always just continue host your episode on Anchor (or whatever your current hosting platform is) and continue to upload to both it and your new Podcasting 2.0 hosting platform. Other than that, hosting on JustCast is really easy! It lets you easily submit your podcast to the Podcast Index as well as other podcast providers, and uploading new episodes is just as easy as it is on other hosting platforms. Just start a new episode, upload the recording, add some information and presto! You’ve got yourself a shiny new podcast! But it’s the new features that information is used for that’s really interesting!

Features
JustCast includes a lot of the features that I mentioned in the previous post. For example, they have implemented Value for Value to allow people with compatible podcast apps to send you a certain amount of Satoshis a minute, or just send a certain amount your way at any time. I haven’t set this up yet as I don’t have a wallet to collect them yet, but I will probably do this in the future. You can also add a funding link as well if I remember correctly, but I haven’t looked for how to do this yet. As for features I did decide to implement, chapters are a thing you can add to your podcasts. This one can be a bit harder to add since you need to know where each chapter starts in the podcast, but it still only took me a few minutes to set up when I imported my first episode. You can also add Soundbites so that people can hear little snippets of your episode before listening to the whole thing. I also haven’t added this yet, but this seems like a cool and useful feature. You can also choose to make your podcast private, so if it’s something you only want a certain group hearing, then you can not only set it to private, but add a password to it. It unfortunately doesn’t support the PodPing notification system yet, but it does let you set up an automatic tweet to be sent out when you post a new episode, which is kind of nice.

I’m kind of excited to not only start making episodes of my podcast again, but to see what kind of fun stuff I can do with all of these new features!

This is post #2 of Diving into Podcasting 2.0, and post #2 of #100daystooffload. If you want to give my podcast a listen, look for Code Sprint Podcast in whatever app you use for listening!