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Welcome to Podcast Answers, the show where we help you start and grow your podcast answering

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any questions along the way.

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That's right, today we're going to be talking about a couple different things, but first

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And foremost, we're going to be talking about episode art because it's important now.

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And I will tell you why. It's important before, but it's really important now.

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And we're also going to be talking about Descript and Squadcast and what the integration means for you

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because they just got bought, Squadcast got bought by Descript.

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And so what does that mean for you?

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We'll talk about that here in a few minutes.

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But here we go guys.

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Episode art, it's always been important.

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It's always been something that, that I've always done for as long as I could.

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I've always chosen to include the episode art work for all of the things that I do

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for all of the podcasts I do.

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But you know that you need to have artwork for your show.

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You need to have artwork that that indicates what your show is kind of a

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little bit of your branding, things like that.

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So people know when they're looking through a, when they're looking through a

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catalog of podcasts, they know that what yours is, what they can trust for you

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and figure out what yours is about.

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But episode art.

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So similar to the show level art, your episode level art is going to be a new

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piece of art for every episode that you put out.

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That's right.

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A new piece of art and the same, I would say the same things apply as far as

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creating it, but we'll get into a little bit more.

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Why is it important now these days?

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Cause it's been around for a while.

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The Apple podcast has included it in their spec for a long time.

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They've said, "Hey, we want you to have episode level art, and here's why, but they don't

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ever actually display it."

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So Apple doesn't even display the episode level art in their app, but they've finally

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gone on board and they've finally said, "Hey guys, we're actually going to be including

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this in our episode art. We're going to be showing this in the podcast app. And so it

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is important now, and lots of other apps have done this already. You know, lots of other

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apps have already showed the episode level art, but Apple podcasts for whatever reason

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never did it themselves. They never took it on themselves to go and actually show the

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episode level art. So I don't know if people did or not. I always did because I knew other

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apps always show that art Spotify shows that art cast a manic shows that art.

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The only thing that doesn't is Apple podcasts.

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So with the new release of iOS 17,

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album art, it's going to be more important now than it ever has before.

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And the reason I say that is because lots of people use Apple podcasts as

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their podcast player. It comes on Apple devices.

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It's easy to get.

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It's easy to see people know.

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Oh, by default, you know, a lot of people are going to use that as their

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podcast app because it is coming on their, on their device.

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And so what now that Apple podcast is showing that we need to include that.

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In our episodes.

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So essentially it's going to be the same thing, 1400 by 1400.

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Up to 3000 by 3000 pixel square.

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It has to be exactly square.

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So 1400 by 1400 up to 3000 by 3000.

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I would suggest doing the larger of the two

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because with Apple podcasts,

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it's gonna be showing up on things like the TVs.

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And so you wanna have a better quality art showing up.

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So I would go with the 3000 square pixel square art

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and it can be a PNG or a JPEG.

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It needs to be in the RGB color space

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and it'd be less than 500 kilobytes.

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So usually with that, I say make it a JPEG.

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And I like doing mine 3000 by 3000, but again, it can, it doesn't have to be.

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It can be either one of those, you know, 1400 to 3000.

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But I say make it as big as you can, because it's going to show up on a lot of the apps.

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But again, there are things to consider.

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You don't want to bloat your feet up.

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You don't want to have it to be too big.

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you know, well, that would kind of affect your feed. But, but if you include that art in your MP3 in the

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ID three tags, because in a wall, we'll talk about that a little bit, but it makes the file a lot

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longer to start downloading. So the, it needs to be a unique file name. So you, I would name mine

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something like EP01 or EP02 or episode three, or whatever you're naming your show, I would name your

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show art, I wouldn't just call it like show art or episode art, I would call it something that's

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going to be unique to the, it's going to be something that's unique to that, that episode.

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So some, some, some podcast apps though, like I had mentioned, like Overcast, use the ID

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three tag art instead of the RSS, whatever's in the RSS.

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So normally you, when you create an episode, you take it through an ID three tag editor,

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which actually puts the tags in the MP3

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and so that's how you title your MP3,

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you create the art on your MP3,

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and you can put chapters in there and things like that.

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So the file itself has that information,

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but then your RSS feed has all that same information,

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especially with podcasting 2.0,

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you can include a chapter file in there,

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you can do, you could be four,

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but you could do the episode art.

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the chapters and things like that, but

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Some apps again don't use the RSS

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Tags they actually use the ID 3 tags in the MP3 player

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And the MP3 itself so in that's the case

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I would maybe recommend going down to the 1400 by 1400 just because the MP3 actually stores when you put things in the ID 3

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It's at the very beginning of the file.

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And so, especially people on slower connections,

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if that header is gonna be larger

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because you have a larger image in there,

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it's gonna take longer before they actually hear the audio.

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So you may wanna take that into consideration

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if you're putting the episode art into the ID3 tag,

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just let that stuff, it's in the header.

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And so it takes longer to download the file

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when you start downloading the file.

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So another thing to consider

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when you're making your episode art is

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don't have the title in the lower 15, don't have any words in the lower 15% of the art,

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because it can be covered in some places in the Apple podcast. Apple podcast sometimes

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covers up the lower section of the art with something else that they put in there. So

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I would just not put anything important, any words in there in the lower 15% of that.

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So why create show art? It's episode art. I mean, it seems like a lot of work. It seems like

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like extra work that you need to put in that may not be relevant to you.

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Is it going to actually help anything?

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So yes, I would say you put episode art in.

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It's going to take you a little bit longer to make because you have to make that art

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every time you do it.

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But the nice thing is it displays on the podcast apps.

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It displays on CarPlay as far as what that episode is about.

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It shows that episode.

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It shows something a little bit different.

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So they know what they're listening to.

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They know what they're doing.

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You don't have to do this.

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not a rule that you have to do, but it does cause your episodes to stand out and to be

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unique because each episode is going to have a little bit different art.

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So things to keep into consideration when making the art is make it relevant to your

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episode.

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If you have a guest, put the guest in the artwork.

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So I always do that for this show and my other shows that if I have a guest on, I go ahead

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and put them their art as the episode art because that way people know who they're talking,

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who they're listening to.

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People know who they're listening to in this podcast episode.

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And then I would also say if you're talking about a product, put the product in there.

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If you're talking about the new MacBook Pro, put a picture of the new MacBook Pro in there

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So people can see what you're talking about.

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And the cool thing about this is if you actually use chapters, you can do chapter art with

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the podcasting 2.0 spec and those images will show up as you're talking about what you're

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talking about.

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So it's cool.

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People may have their phone in their pocket, but if they have it on an out or if they have

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it on a stream like Apple CarPlay, they can see what you're actually talking about.

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The other thing to do is keep the same artwork or close to what you have.

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This is another idea you could do. Keep the same artwork or close to what you have as

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your show level art, but maybe put the episode and the season number in there because that

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will allow people to see that this is what episode this is, but just by looking at what

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episode number this is, just by looking at it. Again, episode number is not super important

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because who cares what episode you're on just as far as what the title is. So maybe put

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the title in there so people know what they're expecting and what they're listening to.

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The last consideration is make it large, make text large.

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So you don't want to try and cram a whole book into the section of your episode art because

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people aren't going to be able to read it.

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The image is going to be shrunk down to something the size of like your thumbnail.

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And so you're probably not going to be able to actually hear or see what that actually

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says.

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So you want to make sure that any text that you do have is brief and very large so that

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it's legible in that area that is the squished down to a tiny little thumbnail.

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So those are the things to consider about why episode art is super important now.

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And again, that iOS 17 is not out yet.

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It will be out very shortly.

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And so those are just some things you may want to go back and start putting episode art

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into your files or into your feed.

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If you've not done that yet, it's really easy to do.

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A lot of most of your podcast hosts are gonna have a section to upload your episode art

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as you're creating the episode.

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And so, and that will display in the RSS feed.

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So it's really super simple.

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Like I said, things to consider also putting it in your ID3 tag just because some podcast

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apps don't show that artwork in from the feed, but they show it from the ID3 tag in the MP3

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itself. Now, on to Descript and Squadcast. So Descript, if you've never used it, is a

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great tool. It allows you to do a lot of visual editing of your podcasts. So it's a editing

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tool, but it's also a recording tool. You can record right into it. Think of it as a

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Word document. As you talk, as you record, as you put your mp3 file into Descript, it

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It shows the words.

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You can edit it out.

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You can just edit it like a document.

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You can read the documents, move things around, and just use it like that.

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It's pretty easy to edit.

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It sounds great.

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You can use it to pull out filler words.

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If you say um and ah a lot, you can do that.

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Then you can also use like a regenerative AI things.

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You can train it to create.

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It's a clone of your voice and you can train it to, if you have to say something different,

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if you said the wrong day, like, so let's say I'm saying, "Hey, meet us next Thursday

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because we're doing a live show."

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And I actually mean Wednesday.

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I can edit Tuesday out, Thursday out, and I can just type in Wednesday and it'll put

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that into my voice.

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It's really cool.

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The one thing that they had been lacking though is a way to get your guests recording, too.

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So there's lots of different products for this squadcast as one Riverside FM is another

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clean feed.net is another one where you can get your audio in.

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The nice thing about squadcast and Riverside FM is it does like progressive uploads and

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it records directly on to the local computer of your guest and yourself.

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So if I was talking to let's say my friend John, if we have a bad internet, let's say

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John has a bad internet connection. His audio would be recorded as he's talking. So if you

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do know of resume and you have a bad audio connection, you're going to end up with that

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weird artifacting robot robot type sound that happens when you have a recording over the

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internet and the internet is not super great. But the good thing about Riverside and Squadcast

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is they do local recording on the browser on the one end, local recording on the browser

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on the other end, and then they do what's called a progressive upload.

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So you don't need to wait when you're done recording for it to upload into Squadcast,

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but it takes that and uploads chunks of it as it's recording.

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And so then by the time you're done, or pretty close to the time you say we're done and hit

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end, that audio file is up in the cloud at Squadcast.

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you have a complete file, a separate track, you can audio edit it.

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It's great.

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It's a great way to do remote guests.

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And, and so Descript was lacking that in their, in their tool set.

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And so they went out and actually purchased squadcast.

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And now it's still as of this point, which is August 24th, 2023.

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It's still a separate product.

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If you log into squadcast, it says squadcast by Descript.

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But it's become part of their product line.

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So if you have Descript, if you pay for Descript, you get squadcast for free.

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You can go log into Squadcast, you can marry your accounts together and you have it for free.

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So there's no extra payment for Squadcast.

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It's just included in Descript because they're trying to make a whole tool set for podcast editors

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to be able to record their interviews, record their podcast, edit it, do it right there.

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And so if you have not checked out Descript, do it because it's kind of a cool product.

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And we have no affiliate link or anything for them.

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It's just, it's a cool product.

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But then you also have now the ability to record your guests remotely and make it sound

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like they're in the same room.

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If they've got a high quality mic, it's going to sound like they're in the same room with

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you.

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I've heard lots of podcasts that are recorded like this and you can't tell the difference.

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You can't tell that they're not in the same room.

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You can't tell that they're not sitting right next to each other, that they're actually

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across the world from each other.

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So guys, definitely go ahead and check that out.

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I would encourage you to do that.

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Guys, it's been a great time with you today.

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Like I said, if you've not done your artwork, if you've not done going back and put the artwork

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in there, go ahead and do it right now.

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You still have time before iOS 17 is out and you can get your artwork in there.

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Guys, if you like this content, consider supporting us by going to buymeacoffee.com/podcastanswers.

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That helps out a lot.

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It allows us to get new hardware, allows us to support and do things to try out and help

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you better your podcast.

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Have a great week.

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(upbeat music)

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(upbeat music)

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(upbeat music)

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[MUSIC PLAYING]

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