Should you record your podcast live? What are somethings to think about when deciding weather or not to record your podcast live

Welcome to podcast answers, the show where I help you start and grow your podcast answering

any podcasting questions along the way.

And this is one that we've seen a lot of lately people talking about going live, people talking

about recording their audio live, recording their video live, doing live in person shows.

So today we're talking about recording your podcast live, things to think about.

Should you do it?

Should you not do it?

But first, before we do that, I want to say thank you for a few generous donors that I

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Roadcaster Pro here and talking about it on the show. The Roadcaster Pro 2 will

help me do a better show, help me have better sound for this show. Currently,

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Going live, why would you want to record your show live?

That's something that, well, honestly, for me,

it gives people a behind the scenes look.

It's one of the things, it can give people

behind the scenes look because it allows people

to see what you're doing.

You can go live a little early for them.

You can go live a little early, let them see you're getting ready.

One of the podcasts that I listen to, the podcasting 2.0 podcast does that.

They start their show a little early.

They're stream a little early, send the signal out so the apps notify you a little

bit early. And that way you kind of get that little first behind the scenes of

Dave and Adam chatting and talking and just kind of doing their thing before

they start the show. Honestly, that's why I tune into that because I like to see

that. And a lot of times I don't have time to listen to their whole show. Their show is usually

over an hour. And so I just tune in live just for that banter part at the very beginning. And then

I catch everything else on the recorded podcast because I can't get that anywhere else. So it's

kind of an extra look behind the scenes. And you could do this for supporters only if you wanted

to do it. Like let's say you were you're going live, you could do it in in YouTube or whatever,

but just give your listeners a link to the stream behind the scenes for your supporters

if you wanted to do that.

Just give it something extra for them.

Another reason you may want to go live is to get input from your audience.

So that can be from live comments.

So if you're on YouTube, you can see the live comments coming in.

You can see reactions.

People can ask questions just like they would if you were in a live studio audience.

But the other way they can do it too is if they're listening live, you can send

boost diagrams and we've talked about that a little bit before, but it's something with a new podcasting 2.0 initiative.

It allows you to send small amounts of money as you're listening to the show,

but it allows you to also get comments too.

And so this is another way that you can do that from your behind the scenes episode.

So that's one of the ways that you can you can do that because it allows you to

It allows you to go ahead and

Get some input from your listeners. It allows them to put feedback in and

Another thing is it gives people something extra to you. So one of the podcasts that I listened to

they

Do a little bit of pre-show banter, but then they also do an after show recording to like a Q&A a question and answer time

with the live audience, but that doesn't make it into the recorded podcast. So if

you want to ask questions or even hear what the questions are, you have to be

there live. And so again, it gives people live something extra. So they do their

show and then they stop the recording, but they're still streaming and that way

those people can ask questions of either the guests or the hosts and just

something extra that you don't get to do. It's not gonna make it into the show,

show, but it's something extra to do for people who support your show or, you know, or just

live in general.

So what do you do?

What are some of the ways that you can do a live show?

Guys, you have to forgive me here.

I just had my eyes checked.

I was at the eye doctor and they dilated my eyes.

So I'm having a little bit of tough time reading my notes here.

So here's some of the ways that you can do a live show.

You can do live streaming video like YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Twitch.

One of those services that allow you to do a live video.

And so you could do any of those.

And we'll talk about each one of these different things here in a minute.

You could do a live audio.

So in one of the new podcast apps that support live episodes, you can listen to live up live

audio.

You can listen to it.

You can see, you can hear.

So it's a little bit easier to do because it's not all involved as video.

But in one of the new podcast apps, you can listen to live audio episodes just like you

do with a live streaming like on a radio station.

radio station. A lot of times they'll have some sort of streaming audio that they do from their

website. This is the exact same thing, except for it also shows up in your podcasting app.

And then the last thing is you could also record in a place where a studio audience comes in and

watches. So this would be a truly live episode where you're doing it in front of a studio audience

They're there. They're able to see you. They're able to be in the same room as you.

So,

live streaming video. This is probably the most involved of

the options for doing a live show,

but it also has the potential of reaching the most people.

You can use

any number of different apps to do live streaming video.

You could actually even do it probably right from your phone if you wanted to just do a live

Something on Facebook you could do it right from your phone

but you could use something like StreamYard or Riverside.fm or my very favorite is Ecamm and

One of the reasons I like Ecamm is it's just really

it's just really

Involved there's a lot of things that you can you can do with it

but that

You can you can go live with any number of different apps. It doesn't have to be a cam my favorite one

It could be any anything you can do live video with

But one of the things you need to keep in mind is that you need to have a live a camera of some sort

Webcams do work, but they're not the best quality

Because they're just they're meant to get your video out there, but they're not necessarily meant to be a high quality

TV show type of a of a thing

So you have to keep that in mind.

You may need to buy a camera, but you can do it with something as easy as a webcam.

But many options of different things allow you to bring in comments right up on the stream.

So that's one of the reasons I like Ecam is if anyone's watching live,

they can just comment right on the Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, whatever.

And the option for me to bring up their comment right on screen is amazing

because it allows me to to bring that in show it on screen, show what we're talking about,

show the comment and then react to it. And then some apps also allow you to multi-stream,

which means multiple platforms at once. So again, Ecamm can do that and StreamYard can,

I don't know if StreamYard can do it, but Restream can do it where you're streaming to

multiple platforms at the same time. And so this is handy because it allows you to

to reach a wider audience if you want. It doesn't have to be in one place, but you can do it all

places. So the great thing also about Ecamm is it allows you to set up scenes that show your

desktop, show multi-cameras. If you have multiple, more than one host or a guest, you can put them

all on the same screen. And it is Mac only. But if you want to check that out, I do have an affiliate

link. It's at podcastanthers.com/ecamm. You can go ahead and check it out. There's a free trial there.

and I do make a little commission off of it, but I wouldn't recommend it unless I really really really believed in it.

And I do because it is one of the most amazing

software that I've ever used, especially for live streaming.

But just in general, the community is amazing there.

And then again, this isn't an episode all about Ecamm, but I do urge you if you have a Mac to check out Ecamm.

So live streaming audio.

This is one that's fairly new to the game.

thanks to the new podcasting namespace with the podcasting 2.0 initiative.

New podcast apps can play a live audio stream of your podcast, like I said, just like you

do with a radio station.

You can tune in with the radio station's app and hear their station.

You can do the same thing with a lot of the new podcasting apps.

And we will link, I will link in the show notes to the apps that do support live stream,

live audio.

Technically, most of the apps can also show live video too,

but that's not necessarily,

that's a whole different animal

'cause you can't just tell it to use the YouTube stream.

You have to use a different application.

So it's a lot harder for people to get to get a start.

But one of what you do need for this is a shout cast

or an ice cast server to stream your audio to and from.

So for instance, I use streamer.co, so S-T-R-E-A-M-E-R-R.co.

It's a few bucks a month to stream audio, but it's worth it because it allows you to have your audio in any podcast app and any podcasting app that supports this.

And it's really pretty easy and you can even embed that a player onto your website and you can and you can do a lot of stuff.

So I use streamer.co, S-T-R-E-A-M-E-R-R dot C-O.

And that allows me to have a shop cast, ice cast server to serve stream my audio from.

And so then you use a program that can connect to a Shopcast Ice Cast server.

So for mine, for me, I use Audio Hijack and I just take the output from my mixer,

from what I'm doing and shove that out to the Ice Cast or Streamcast server.

So, and then as I'm recording, it's taking the audio from that output

and sending it to the server.

And then in order to get it into the new podcast apps,

you need to enter a podcast or entry into the RSS feed

that you have and you need to put it in your feed.

So it's using the live item tag.

This tells podcast apps where to look for for that stream

and where to look for for your episode as well

as giving you the title and the description

and things like that.

Some podcasts hosts actually support this,

not many do yet, but Blueberry is one of the podcasting hosts

that does support this and they support it in their PowerPress plugin for WordPress.

And that allows you to basically set up a live stream audio and go hit live.

And then as you go live, listeners get a push notification in some apps that you go live.

So they know right away that you are live and they can come and watch you just like they

do on YouTube if they subscribe to you.

And then they can listen to your live episode.

So it's great as you're recording.

again, they'll see the whole behind the scenes, they'll see how you're making the sausage,

they'll see your bloopers, your mess ups, the things that you normally cut out when you're

editing the show is something that you'll see that they can listen to as they're streaming.

So well, it's not quite as involved with gear requirements as the doing a live video would

be.

It's still not really, really super easy to do this because you have to do that and

And you have to send what's called a pod ping, which allows it to go out and notify the apps

that it is live.

I can help you with this.

I do both this, I do this podcast live, both in audio, you know, in a new podcast app,

as well as I publish the video to YouTube as we're going.

And that's at youtube.com/atpodcastanswers.

But that's one of those things that I enjoy doing because it allows me to give a behind-the-scenes

look to the people.

I do both at the same time.

And again, you're not limited to one or two of these things.

You can do all of these different things for your show, but it allows just another way

to for your audience to connect to you and to be able to send you feedback as you're

recording and listen to you behind the scenes.

Now the last way that you can do this is you can do this live in person.

And this takes some time to do because you need to actually,

do you sell, you need to decide,

are you gonna sell tickets to this?

Are you just gonna invite everyone?

How are you gonna let them know how big your venue is?

You know, you don't wanna get too big of a venue

because if you only have 10 people show up

but you have a whole concert hall,

it's gonna look pretty sad.

The other thing is you need to get a good location.

Do you need to reserve it?

Do you need to pay for it?

Is this room gonna be good audio for you to record in?

Do you need to borrow equipment

or does your normal equipment work in this room as well?

So that all can hear you?

For me, my normal equipment wouldn't work.

I could do this, I could take my equipment with me,

but at this point without the ROCaster Pro

and some extra speakers,

'cause I don't have the ROCaster Pro yet,

I can't actually send the audio out to a PA.

This wouldn't work for a public address system.

So you need to kind of think about those things

as far as what would work for a live show, a live recording.

This is not something that you'd wanna do every week,

like you can do with the other two options.

You know, with audio and video,

you can send these out and do them every week,

every episode if you want.

But with a live in person,

you're probably not gonna record it live.

You know, the wait, wait, don't tell me

from NPR is recorded live in front of a studio audience every week.

You as the average podcaster are probably not going to be able to do a live show every week

because you don't have the resources to do it.

You don't have the space to do it.

But it's good to do.

Every now and then it's good to do to get because it allows your fans to connect and

interact with you in person.

It meets you in real life.

So I wouldn't do it as you're just starting out a podcast because you may not have

anyone show up. But it is cool to do when you have a bunch of people listening and they

can show up and come and meet you and hang out. This is probably the most involved of

the three different live options that I've given you and can take the most time to do.

So it's good to do every once in a while, maybe every year, maybe every other year. But

It is a good option because it does allow people to come and hang out with you.

And so it allows them to see who you are.

And in this case, what I would also recommend doing is maybe having a mic set

up so that your studio audience can actually come and ask a question in studio or in,

in the room while they're with you.

Guys, if this seems like something that you want to do, I can help you with this.

This is something that, that we do all the time.

Like I said, I record this podcast live. I record one of my other podcasts live.

So if you want to do this live, definitely get in contact with me.

You can do that at podcastanswers.com/contact.

I would love to help you think through and do your live episodes,

whether it be in the new podcast apps, just doing audio or doing video.

I've got lots of experience using e-cam and doing live shows.

So guys, with that, we'll see you again next week for another episode of the podcast answers.

Guys, have a great week and until next time, keep podcasting.

I'll see you later.

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