How To Start a Music Podcast?

The music industry encompasses a broad audience, so starting a music podcast is a way to incorporate a love of music with your own unique spin and style. Music is a powerful way that people are connected, and since 2020 hit us with a global pandemic, we could use that connection now more than ever.

Podcasts are an exciting way to engage people, promote a business, or showcase a hobby you enjoy. There are multiple ways you can utilize the topic of music within a podcast, and it’s possible that you already have been thinking about what you will cover.

There are some key components that you should follow when starting a music podcast, including honing in on your proper focus and developing your audience. Here are some essential tools and tips to take on when you begin your music podcast.

Create Your Show Theme

Your first step in developing an authentic music podcast is deciding what type of music show you want to produce.  Each podcast needs an overarching focal point that it always comes back to, sort like the “moral” of your storyline. Consider and answer some of these questions:

• What is the main focus you want you and your guests to explore? 
• Are you creating this podcast in tandem with a business endeavor? 
• Do you plan to interview musical artists? 
• What sort of audience will you be promoting to? 
• Are you focusing on a specific genre of music?

There are multiple ways to go about this. Hopefully, you have already thought about this portion and have an idea of what you want your theme to incorporate. Whatever the theme you focus on, just be sure that to take the time to research and develop a deep understanding of it.

You can learn as you go, but it’s helpful to be as prepared as possible when recording your episodes. If you have a successful music career, you might want to focus on a specific aspect within your business that you’ve found helpful and can impart to others who might be trying to make it.

The other aspect of creating the theme is that you must make it enjoyable. Take something that most other music podcasts out there are doing, and create your own take on it, twist it differently, or make something completely new. If you can combine your music expertise with another hobby, that’s one way to help you stand out.

For example, maybe you enjoy traveling as much as music. You could create your show focused on bands that specialize only in touring. You could develop episodes surrounding logistics, road crews, and more.

Create Your Episode Content

Taking steps to determine your podcast style and surrounding content music will lead you into the next part – developing your content within your episodes. Creating your content includes licensing music for your theme song, which, honestly, will be much more important in a music podcast than any other. You may want to keep in mind that you may also need to acquire licenses for any music you feature on your podcast.

Using specialized intro and outro songs is helpful to your brand and should coincide with your theme. Since music is your forte, you might consider showcasing your own musical style here.

Once you have your style and music in line, you are ready to work on your narration. The introduction and end of each podcast episode can be pre-recorded to be the same throughout. You can always change this as your podcast grows, or you want to change things.

Setting your schedule for consistency is helpful here. Think about how often you plan to record your episodes. When you first begin, you should have a solid handful of episodes to launch with, so having a good amount of content is crucial to your upkeep.

You also need to determine your equipment for recording. You could simply use the recording device on your smartphone, and you can utilize some free audio software for editing. At some point, though, you may want to invest in some more upgraded equipment, such as a digital microphone and headphones, as well as a compressor filter, so that you can provide your listeners with quality audio.

Market and Analyze Your Audience

Podcasting is not something that you should do without a specific purpose in mi; otherwise, you will not get very far. Determining your audience and who you need to market to is an essential piece of your music podcast’s success. It also provides you with more accuracy when it comes to branding.

For example, maybe you want to target music fans and give them information on favorite bands or live shows. You can promote assistance to those who are just getting started in the music business or provide helpful information for independent musicians. The more specific about your listeners you can be, the better you can serve them.

Identifying your audience goes hand in hand with marketing techniques. Marketing will help you reach your audience and provide them with an easy way to find you. Utilizing social media platforms across the board can help you see who is interacting with your podcast and help you to learn more about them. Then you can work on tracking your podcast’s performance and analyzing trends.

It would be helpful to obtain a system for managing links to easily access and provide yourself with insight into how well your podcast is performing. You can identify what episodes are being downloaded more, which ones reach more listeners, and take those trends to help establish new content for future episodes.

You can also survey avid listeners and find out what is interesting to them. Interacting with your audience is a great way to help with your marketing as well as your content. You can find out who is listening – demographics like age, gender, education, and more – and you can find out what they enjoy the most and what they have in common.

Podcast Growth

Most likely, your podcast growth at first will be slow, but eventually, as you work each of the steps and guidelines noted above, you will soon gain listeners and followers. Continue to promote and work on analyzing your listeners, engaging with them, and expanding your music podcast through new insights and innovative ideas for episodes.

Be sure to listen and take from other successful music podcasts as well. Find out what episodes they receive the most engagement from or what spin they utilize in their niche. Treat your music podcast as you would any business. Continue to work and learn new things so that you will find success and solid growth.

About The Author: 

Before having her kids and shifting her career toward teaching students how to play their first instrument, Nicole was pinching pennies in her 20s while singing at dive bars and coffee shops across the country. She took what she learned from those formative years on the road and now spends her days contributing to music blogs, penning new songs, and learning new production skills. She finds great joy in sharing her insight with other musicians trying to make it in the industry.