I did a lot of podcasting over the last decade: I scripted, recorded, produced, edited, and published 370 episodes across two shows. I did every single thing the hard way. Thankfully, things are a lot simpler and cheaper these days – not only for getting started, but also to produce a professional-sounding show without entering a studio. And you can bring others along for the ride just as easily.
Here’s an overview of the best podcasting tools to help you go from having a good idea to a published podcast that includes remote guests.
Content
- Modern Podcasting Workflow is Much Easier
- Best Apps for Recording Podcasts with Guests
- Improving Your Podcasts
Modern Podcasting Workflow is Much Easier
These days, podcasting is far easier than before, thanks to better software and cloud services.
Podcasting platforms now have all the tools you need to publish your podcast about as quickly as you can record it. They let you record separate audio tracks for each of your remote guests, grab video feeds from all of them, support screen sharing, and offer powerful editing tools that clean up your audio and video streams.
Best of all, you don’t need expensive hardware. You can get started with a pair of affordable Bluetooth earbuds or an even cheaper pair of wired headphones.
If you want to record your next show, we’re here to help you pick the best tool for the job.
Best Apps for Recording Podcasts with Guests
I tried several of the best modern apps for recording podcasts. Here’s what you can expect from the current crop on the market today.
Riverside
You can think of Riverside as a complete recording studio in the cloud. Riverside makes it easy to get started with recording. You just fire up your studio, send an invite to your guests, and you’re all set to record. The service lets you create an online studio where you can invite guests from anywhere, record your podcast, edit it quickly, and get it ready for publishing.
I was most impressed by the post-recording tools on this app. It automatically generates a transcript, adds subtitles, chapter markers, and even show notes for your podcast episode. This greatly reduces the workload you’ll take on when you launch a show.
Having an AI-generated transcript opens up a lot of interesting possibilities. Before I used Riverside, I avoided sharing podcast clips on social media because it was too much work to use different tools to find an interesting or funny clip, export it, and share it. With this app, you can use the search feature to look for a phrase, select a few sentences around that phrase, and create a social media clip with the right resolution and subtitles in a jiffy.
The best thing about Riverside is that it records audio and video locally. Even if your internet connection is spotty, the quality of your recordings doesn’t suffer, which allows you to create high-quality recordings without the hassle of setting up lots of equipment.
Riverside has a free plan that lets you record up to two hours of audio with separate tracks for each guests. The free plan limits you to 720p video and watermarks exported video files, but is otherwise good enough to get you started. If you decide that this is the best tool for you, the paid plans start at $19/month with reduced prices for paying annually.
Looking for inspiration? Tune in to our favorite positive podcasts to lighten your day.
Descript
Descript recently acquired podcast recording app Squadcast, which means you can now access a complete suite of recording and editing tools on its platform. Descript is the tool you should go to if you want to incorporate AI in your podcasting workflow.
Descript’s AI allows you to remove repetitive phrases such as “um” and “ah”, offers transcriptions, lets you quickly improve audio quality by removing background noise, and it can alter your gaze to make it look like you’re looking directly into the camera. These features can be game-changing for podcasters. The best part is that the free plan lets you export one video without a watermark per month. For a low-frequency podcast, you could get by easily without paying anything. Paid plans start at $15/month.
And while they work great, I must say Descript’s AI features may be a bit too much for some people.
Take for example Descript’s AI voice editing feature, which lets you create an AI clone of your voice to fix recording mistakes. When you record a video, you can put an on-screen caption to acknowledge errors, but there’s no easy way to fix these errors for audio-only podcasts. You could theoretically use Descript’s AI voice editor to correct errors, but it’d be considered unethical in many newsrooms and podcast studios.
Zencastr
For those who want an all-in-one platform that takes care of hosting your podcast and lets you monetize it, Zencastr is a good choice. It does a good job of recording and letting you edit your podcast as well.
Zencastr also gives you a neat dashboard where you can see analytics and even monetize your podcast. These are nice to see, because podcast analytics can sometimes be difficult to track (each publishing platform has its own analytics data).
This app uses AI to put the speaker in the spotlight during video podcasts. This takes away a production pain point because you don’t have to manually highlight anyone’s frame. You can also use its editing tools to remove background noise and get rid of long pauses.
Zencastr has a neat live soundboard too, which can be used to play other audio files during your podcast recording. This can be used to comedic effect by playing funny sounds at the right moment, or to play intro/outro music, or even to play pre-recorded ad reads.
While all of these are good features to have, it should be noted that Zencastr no longer offers a free tier. You can use its 14-day free trial to see if you like the service and then pick a plan starting at $20/month, with discounts for paying an annual fee upfront.
Tip: check out some of the best podcasts we are listening to in 2024.
Detail
If your iPhone is the only podcast production tool you have, you should take a look at Detail. Detail has interesting features such as linking two iPhones in the same room for a multi-camera recording setup, and the ability to record from your iPhone’s front and rear cameras at the same time.
Detail lets you select the shape of your video frame, and has a few layout options such as showing your video in a small thumbnail and the guest in a larger frame.
As with others on this list, Detail uses AI to streamline your workflow. It includes automatic transcription and has an AI editor that Detail claims can make video editing obsolete.
This AI editor can prioritize the speaker’s frame in the video podcast and it can speed up the editing process a lot, but you’re going to miss out on fine-grained controls that you get with professional audio editing tools. We’d say that if you only have your iPhone to create a podcast, Detail gives you enough to get the job done, but for greater control over your edits, you should try other podcasting platforms.
This app also can create clips from your podcast for social media distribution. You should be aware that Detail is a great content creation tool, but you’ll need to export your files and manually publish them to the platforms of your choice. This isn’t a complicated process, but it is an added task. Detail offers a three-day free trial, after which you can use all its features for $9/month.
Streamlabs Talk Studio
If you want to livestream your podcast instead of uploading a recorded show, you might want to consider Streamlabs Talk Studio, which is owned by hardware brand Logitech. This app lets you stream directly to YouTube, Facebook, Twitch, and LinkedIn at the same time.
The free tier allows you to stream to one platform at a time, but the paid plans remove that limitation. With the free plan, you can stream for four hours per month, which is enough for podcasters who are just starting out.
Improving Your Podcasts
Podcasting apps can handle all the technical aspects of production for you, but there are a few things you can do to improve your podcasts and save yourself the hassle of fixing basic errors:
- When appearing on camera, remember to keep yourself in the center of the frame and leave a little bit of space on all sides. You don’t want parts of your face being cropped out on social media, where people will see a vertical video on smaller screens.
- Even though you have all kinds of AI tools to improve your video, there’s no substitute for good lighting. Even if you don’t have a ring light or any other lighting accessory, being in a brightly lit room is going to enhance your video. You should be aware that the front camera on your phone or laptop probably isn’t great and it’ll suffer if you record in a poorly lit environment.
- Finally, you should record in a quiet room with lots of curtains or other padding material on the walls. Bare rooms can sometimes be echoey and that hurts the quality of your recordings.
Beyond that, all you need to focus on is the content. Have fun creating your show!
Image credit: Marty O’Neill (Unsplash)
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Pranay Parab
Pranay Parab is an independent tech journalist based in Mumbai, India. He specializes in tutorials, reviews, and in-depth features.
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