March 22, 2022

Creating The Ideal Podcast Intro

Was it hard to get over the sound of your own voice?

Next to launching your podcast is making all the decisions needed to make the perfect intro. And with that we make it the focus of today’s deep dive and what we cover it all from how long, who should do the talking, and what makes for the best outro to conclude your podcast. 

·     Amazon Launches AMP live radio broadcast tool (2:46)

·     Creating the perfect Podcast intro and outro (11:11)

·     Getting over the sound of your own voice (18:57)

·     Finding the right balance of pre-show conversation (15:38)

·     Working with licensed music (28:19)

·     Is it ok to work with indie music artists (38:04)

Thanks for Listening!

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Transcript

Speaker 2 (00:02)

Hello and welcome to Podcasting Anything and Ask me anything for all things podcasting. I'm your host, Ben CLOY, and I'm joined here in the studio with Mathew Passy. The podcast control. Matt and I wanted to move the conversation beyond the Podcasting 101 topics and move into the intermediate to advance podcasting strategy. To reach your goals, to interact with the show, submit your questions to be answered live, book a podcast audible with Matthew, or find the notes from today's show. Head on over to Podcastnamething.com. Well, I have one question for you today, Matthew. We're going to open up a little bit different. Have you seen My Car?

Speaker 1 (00:37)

No. What exactly?

Speaker 2 (00:39)

I've always wanted to say that, and I've always wanted to produce a podcast because the 90s TV show, I don't even know if it's 90s, early 2000s. Dude, Where's My Car? Every time I jump on a Zoom call, I just want to jump on and say, Dude, you see my car? And so I decided to take an opportunity to lighten it up a little bit, change the mood and to put a smile on your face before we dive into some serious podcasting topics.

Speaker 1 (01:02)

All right. That's a very dated reference you just threw at us.

Speaker 2 (01:06)

I feel like we're both dated people. Maybe the listeners are a little bit more fresh and they may not be aware of that 2000 classic of Dude, Where's My Car? Which isn't worth going back and watching, but it's probably worth watching a few clips on YouTube to understand the reference, but that's probably about it.

Speaker 1 (01:22)

I don't know. Is that movie hold up? Like, if you watch it today, is there a reason why we have to cancel that movie or the talent in that movie?

Speaker 2 (01:30)

I mean, there might have been some stereotypes of aliens that might some future might require to be canceled or some stereotypes with women that might have been applied there with the aliens that showed up in that movie and how they were represented. Maybe, but I don't know. There's a bigger list of ones that probably could be canceled before, Dude, Where's My Car?

Speaker 1 (01:51)

Fair enough.

Speaker 2 (01:52)

But the premise of it was just crazy.

Speaker 1 (01:54)

Yes, it definitely was.

Speaker 2 (01:56)

And unique enough, it's one of those movies where you're like, what mindset were they even in when this type of movie was written?

Speaker 1 (02:04)

I assume under heavy influence of marijuana, alcohol and or something else.

Speaker 2 (02:10)

Yes. And you know what else we did by today with this random rant is I've always loved and appreciated the podcast that opened with banter. That has nothing to do with the podcast. And that's exactly what we did today.

Speaker 1 (02:20)

Cat talk, as I used to call it, cat talk.

Speaker 2 (02:23)

I haven't heard of that. Is that the official radio term for banter?

Speaker 1 (02:25)

No, it's just what I used to say because anytime I was like, oh, I just want to talk about stuff for a few minutes. So you want to be Mark Marin, who talks about his cat for 20 minutes before he actually brings on the guests. And most of the time, I'm like, I don't care about your cat anymore. Mark, enough.

Speaker 2 (02:41)

The world doesn't care about your cats, even though you do desperately love your cat.

Speaker 1 (02:46)

Yeah. I mean, I could see the charm. Listen, if you're an entertainer and your whole point is to make people laugh and create that sense of relationship and community and connection and personal connection, then, yeah. You want to talk for a few minutes about what's going on your life, something funny that happened to you an anecdote. I get it. If you're a brand or a business podcaster, like. No, if you're talking about startups, entrepreneurial life, real estate, like most of your audience is busy and they just want you to get right down to it.

Speaker 2 (03:18)

Well, with that said, let's get down to it with some news out of Amazon. And before we talk about the news out of Amazon, I want to go back to maybe the news, I think was like last summer. That when Amazon bought and purchased podcasting.com. I think for some insane amount of money, they essentially did it Spotify style, just making these big, giant purchases to staple and symbolize what they're meaning to do. And some recent news out of Amazon is that they launched an entire new kind of idea. It's not new. It's just their take on it, which is called Amp. And Amp is essentially a live radio broadcast without any of the FCC regulations of owning a tower or any of the half a million dollars it takes to broadcast FM or Am radio stations. And it allows you to integrate radio licensing and everything else that maybe seems complicated, especially like even just being a DJ playing music. It also allows you to be a virtual DJ on a radio station playing live. And it's just a really interesting idea that takes the podcasting space even to a different level entirely.

Speaker 1 (04:20)

Yeah. I mean, this is kind of like Clubhouse or Twitter spaces for people who want to do this and also use music. Or it's like Spotify now says if you're a podcast or using their hosting solutions, you can incorporate music into your show, and that music will be allowed to be played for folks who are listening on Spotify as opposed to other platforms where putting music on your show is a big no. So it's a very interesting idea, and it's an interesting concept that kind of gets Amazon in the Clubhouse discussion without having just launched the same old boring. Oh, here's another version of Clubhouse. Now, this is for only Amazon users, but with Amazon's breadth and reach of products and services and intellectual property and licenses, like all those different things, it's a very smart move. It allows them to have a bigger content platform without having to spend all the money on hiring content creators. They don't have to have a DJ. They don't have to get a Joe Rogan. They create a platform. They say, you know what, Ben? You could be our next Joe Rogan. Here's the platform. It doesn't cost them anything to invite people to do that kind of stuff.

Speaker 1 (05:32)

They've already got the license, I assume, from Amazon Music. And I'm sure they had to pay a little bit to apply it to this platform. But to Amazon, this is probably nothing.

Speaker 2 (05:43)

The irony that you just described the way you did it is Apple in its early days, like when they just launched, like the ipod, music was the crux of how they reinvented themselves beyond just the Mac and the ideas of when Steve Jobs took it over. Music was one of those core things that they reinvented. And they've had itunes for the last 20 years now, and they've had access. They've had all the digital rights to it. They were the kind of the space that defined digital music. That wasn't like a postnaster era of music licensing. They were the start of podcasting. And they missed the boat in both of these of how to marry them together. And in this case, Amazon launched Amazon Music kind of quietly just to add something probably do. Amazon Alexa was probably the first basis. Maybe they had something in down road for this that they just launched, but they start these little projects that then integrate with themselves and it becomes this ecosystem that they can just keep adding on to and letting those purchases kind of build off of each other. And like I just pointed out, like, Apple had the opportunity to and it didn't.

Speaker 2 (06:40)

And now Spotify is doing it, and I feel like Amazon does it a little bit more liberally. Like, they're less worried about all the ecosystem containers and they're more worried about just creating something for content players. I'm interested to see what your thoughts on this is. When I first described the first thought that popped in my head because there was one fine print in it and it wasn't like fine print. It was a feature. People could call in, like a phone number of like a radio station. And to me, like, my instant thought was like a Doctor Laura type podcast or any political commentary where people want to call in and provide questions or answer questions. Or even my own selfish idea was like, I could actually create like, a live dad radio show and have people call in and I give dad advice like Dr. Laura. And that idea could work on Clubhouse. It could work on the other ones. But the way that Amp wrote the description of their product, I instantly saw my idea of fitting into it versus the other ones where I hadn't truly seen it plugging into there as easily as it could potentially on Amp.

Speaker 1 (07:36)

Yeah, I mean, I guess the benefit of this platform potentially over the other ones. Like everything else, Amazon comes with massive brand recognition. Amazon comes with massive connectivity to lots of people. When Amazon launches this, they've got billions of people who they're already emailing all the time because they have Amazon accounts. Right? You've got Amazon Prime. People already have a direct connection to this company. So Clubhouse had to grow from nothing. And if you recall, it was like, invite only. You could only get a clubhouse. You can only get into the clubhouse originally with an invite. And then as soon as Twitter was like, oh, we'll launch something like that, a bunch of people left Clubhouse because they've already got a built in network on Twitter. And so Amazon has that same benefit. They've got a built in community that is already aware of Amazon and the products that it puts out and people who want to access their content without having to do the social media thing. And so I think that gives them a lot of power and scale. But also, to your point, I think the benefit of amp over even Twitter spaces is that amp really does replace the radio clubhouse and Twitter spaces.

Speaker 1 (08:51)

Are people talking? Yeah, I'm sure people are playing music on there. I'm sure at some point they're getting in trouble or they're going to take down and someone maybe Twitter will even get the licenses so that people can do that. But the fact is, if you want an experience where you have choice of not just getting into a talk portal like Clubhouse or Twitter, all those other things, and you want a place to like a lot of entertainment to check out, then you've got Amp. And that's going to give you the best of both worlds. And you're right. It'll probably integrate into Amazon music. It will probably integrate into your Fire TV. It'll probably integrate into other devices. And Amazon doesn't care. They'll put their apps on anything. They just want more people to think of Amazon when they think of any type of commerce.

Speaker 2 (09:37)

And I could even see Alexa give me a notification that says, because you listen to the business of fatherhood podcast. Have you heard about this new a new radio show on Amp? Because they're always recommending things based on things you previously purchased. So they have the metadata that Google does with search, but also Amazon has the ecosystem of products that actually tied together. And I feel like Amazon recommends more things better to me than Google does. Google may pop up an ad better than Amazon does, but Amazon is saying, like, hey, you purchased this. You also might like this, or you're listening to this. And it would also figure that out as well. So the future is pretty bright, and it's already pretty good on day one. It is invite only. There is a code in the Pod news article that was mentioned called Twitter, which is an invite code. And I just tested it at the time of this recording, which still works. So if you're looking to get an invite code, use the word Twitter. And however long that will last, it's still working, even though it launched about two weeks ago. So that is something that I'm just really excited for going forward.

Speaker 1 (10:37)

And you know what? Maybe in an upcoming episode we'll actually try an amp channel and we'll do one of these live out there and see how it works out.

Speaker 2 (10:45)

That would be also a good experiment of bringing in the experiment into our live videos that we've already been talking about. And we've did specific episodes back in December on how to do live production and producing a podcast versus, like a static recording where you're worried about more about the audio quality you got in person recording devices versus going over the Internet so open to a whole new world of ways that we could take podcast anything and podcast more about anything in a new, unique live way.

Speaker 1 (11:12)

And then we could play music as dated as Dude, Where's My Car?

Speaker 2 (11:15)

Exactly. Bring in some 80s themed music, too, to do, like, rock and roll themes. The world just gets bigger. And especially when we talked about licensing before, there's a lot of things you could trip. It's like a giant trip wire mess. If Amazon has figured out a way to avoid that trip wire, it will go to the moon very quickly because there are very few other ways that get you good music that has no trip wires for you getting banned.

Speaker 1 (11:41)

Yeah, true that.

Speaker 2 (11:43)

Let's go into our deep dive today, and today we're going to kind of take the ideas of what we were just talking about and doing live stuff like that. But we're going to take a specific part of your podcast episode. And it's probably the one once you get past the idea, once you get past the description in writing, once you get past the cover art, the first real thing you probably start really stressing about whether it's good enough quality is the podcast intro. And if you're going to work on it, a podcast outro. So if I were coming to you, Matthew, as a brand new client and I just said, you know what? I've worked on my podcast intro for two days. It's stressing me out. How would you walk me back so I don't get stressed on about it. And what would your advice be to design the perfect podcast intro?

Speaker 1 (12:26)

Well, first thing I would say is, if you haven't already, like, make sure you kind of followed our guideline for creating your podcast description, which is what is the show about? Why should I listen? Who are you? What qualifies you to talk about this and your call to action? If you have that written out, if you have those questions answered, I basically take that information, and I kind of flip it around. I condense it a little bit. I usually use that as, like a basic template for writing out my podcast intros. So for most of the shows that we work on, we like to do a show intro, generic repeated intro that every week says, Hi, welcome to Podcast Me anything to show that will help you create a better podcast. Right. Then I'm Mattie Barletta, podcast consultant, Ben Killoy, veteran dad, podcaster and podcast producer and consultant. Learn more about Podcast Me Anything.com. Right. Every week you're going to hear the same thing. What's the show about? Why should I listen? Who are we and where can I go to get more information? Then I would have the episode intro, which would be a spot where I would come on and specifically say, hey, everyone, thanks for joining us this week.

Speaker 1 (13:36)

Today I'm talking with Ben about the new Amazon Amp app, how to write a good intro for your show, and some of the legal tripwires about podcasting music that are still coming up in regular discussions. Right. And so I'm going to describe what you're hearing today on the show. That's your episode intro. And then I would get some music or something like that, and I would go into the actual content of the show. The temptation there is that what you want to do is you want to try and get all that information in there without taking up too much time, without having too much cat talk and making people wait for the value to show up in the show. People are going to make a decision about if they're going to keep listening pretty quickly. And so what you don't want to do is you don't want to hold them for ten minutes with a laundry list of call to actions or housekeeping stuff about your show or reminders about the traffic and the weather and make people wait to get to the value. Or if you're going to include all those components, then you better make it very clear upfront what value people are going to get if they stick around.

Speaker 1 (14:45)

And so a lot of people try and do that with like a tease, right? Either they'll come on the show and they'll be like, today in the show, we're talking music amp and how to avoid legal troubles, all that's coming up. And then boom, right. Their music comes in and then they go through their show intro and all those other components, or a lot of people will drop like a clip. Right. They'll take a piece of the episode from later in the show, they'll play that clip, and then after that clip plays, then they'll go into their show intro. And it's not a terrible idea, right. It could be fun if you're really good at identifying clips that make people say, oh, I need to hear more of that. If you have that skill set of hearing something that makes people say that is both helpful and interesting and also makes me want to hear more. And you could do it without picking a three minute clip, then go for it. But a lot of people get, you know, they pick out these 42nd clips, these two minute clips. And what happens is unless you've got music underneath or unless you've got a voice that starts with like coming up on the show, what happens is you start just playing a clip dry.

Speaker 1 (15:50)

And after a while people are like, did I screw up playing the show? Did I start in the middle of what happened here? So you have to kind of be careful with extra elements beyond that kind of standard show intro. And I could keep going, but I could see you pondering a question. So I'm going to stop and let you kind of break in here.

Speaker 2 (16:10)

As the show host, I would just like to clarify, it is my job to always be pondering questions. There is always a question pondering because if you're not being a good host, you will have like dead air and you're like, I don't have a good question. So you did call me out and I do have a question. You answered it a little bit with the trailer. What about the other side of that show intro? Because there's the other part that people have to do is they want to jump on. And I did this when I first launched and got feedback that like, oh, man, it took me to ten minutes to get to your episode and they got annoyed. How do you find or even do you not recommend like do you recommend going right from your intro right to the episode, or do you recommend some banter of maximum five minutes post that show intro again.

Speaker 1 (16:55)

Going back to what I said earlier, it really comes down to what is your show about and who are you right for? Most of the people that we work with and what I assume most of the audience that would check this kind of show out are businesses and brands who are using this as a tool for marketing themselves or networking or growing their sales, things like that. If that's the case, then no, I don't care about your cat. I want to find out what information I am investing time in listening to your show. I can be doing other things at that time, whether it's listening to something else, reading a book, watching something. Right. So if you are asking me to invest my time for your content, give me the value that you've promised me as quickly as possible. On the other hand, if I am listening to your podcast, because that is a way for me to enjoy my time, I listen to smartlist is one of my personal casual podcasts that I listen to.

(18:00)

Right?

Speaker 1 (18:00)

It is Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett. They interview various celebrities and famous people. It usually runs about an hour. And it's like the show I put on any time I'm driving somewhere and just want to fill the space with something that is fun and light and enjoyable. And what I enjoy about that show, sometimes more than the interview, is the three to ten minutes of banter that those three do before they bring the guests on or the banter at the end of the show after the guests, where they're kind of wrapping it up and making jokes and talking about each other. But I'm listening to that show for the enjoyment of the time and also because it helps me kind of get deeper connection to these three famous people that I like and admire and respect. So it really comes down to how are you using your podcast? What is your relationship to the audience and what are the expectations there?

Speaker 2 (18:57)

Let's go to a sub thread in the intro. And it's also if this is your first podcast and if you're in the Indy category of just trying to figure out what podcast you guys and try to utilize it for your brand and you don't like the sound of your own voice and you've got this question, do I do my own intro or do I pay a voice personality to do them? I've struggled with this personally as well because voice personalities sound good, they sound really depth, they sound perfect. But it also feels a little bit disconnected sometimes on certain podcasts. Whereas, like, your brand, your person who you are is the brand. Why would you let someone else introduce that? Like, why wouldn't you introduce yourself as that person? So I'm interested. Where do you draw the line on hiring a voice personality to do your intros or sucking it up and getting past that? You don't like the sound of your own voice and that other people do, because honestly, I hated the sound of my voice. I have literally been complimented that your voice sounded like chocolate. And I was like, I have never heard that in my entire life.

Speaker 2 (19:58)

But I'll take it as a sign that I should keep podcasting. So I'm interested to see how you work through this.

Speaker 1 (20:03)

Well, a couple of things. One, we all hate the sound of our own voice when we hear it back. And that is just science. When you are talking right now, as I am speaking, I am hearing my voice internally. I'm hearing it through bone conductivity. My voice is not traveling out of my mouth and going into my ears. It's kind of racking around inside of my brain. So it sounds one way when I hit stop on this and I play my voice back through headphones or speakers. Now my voice is coming directly in there. It's like you're hearing it in a different way than what you were accustomed to hearing it. And so it sounds foreign and therefore it sounds weird. And therefore, most people like because they don't know what they actually sound like. So it's science. Everybody hates the sound of their voice pretty much. One, if you're going to do this, get over it. It's going to take time, but get over it. If you can't stand the sound of your voice enough to not do the interview, you probably can't stand the sound of your voice enough to do any of this.

Speaker 1 (21:03)

So that shouldn't be an issue. Truthfully though, when it comes to whether or not you should use a pro voiceover versus whether or not you should do yourself. Honestly, I think it's just a personal preference recommend voiceover people for a couple of different reasons. One, I think it adds to the professionalism of it. Right. Like you said, you get a pro voiceover, somebody using a really good microphone, somebody who knows how to deliver. Yeah, it gives a first impression right away that's like, oh, this person is serious. Too often I see people using different gender people to break up, possibly the monotony. So if you are a male host, mostly interviewing other males, it might be nice to get a female voice and they just kind of break things up a little bit and like change the dynamic and have a little bit of a separation in what's going on. So that could be another reason to get a voiceover. But also I can agree and understand the people who are saying, no, this is my show. Like, I want to be the one who welcomes you, right? I want to be the one who's making that personal connection and that's okay.

Speaker 1 (22:12)

I just think it's a matter of what you personally want. I think both can work equally as well.

Speaker 2 (22:20)

And I think if your brand has all brands have to really sell trust and authenticity. But if they really have to trust the person completely, like if you are the person they're buying from as a professional Speaker, I think any chance that they just get to add more trust and authenticity to the sound of your voice, I think that will just alleviate and increase the likelihood of them potentially doing business with you in the future. Because if you're in their stream of listening every week, they're just going to get more used to it. They're going to trust the intro. They're going to trust what you claim to do in your intro. So I think it could also be a fine line of what kind of products does someone need to buy from your brand? Hopefully down the road by you doing this podcast as well. There was one other thought that I popped up in my head that I had to learn the hard way of going back to the banter before you start your interview shows. If you're doing an interview show is to actually avoid having to do that banter. I really just get them really excited.

Speaker 2 (23:17)

I share a few little tidbits of what got me excited about this interview. Sometimes I'll do an intro depending on what type of guest it is, but I'll actually tease and say, hey, if you want to hear what my big takeaway of this episode is, hang on to the end of this episode and I'll be back on the microphone to let you know this interview impacted me personally and I'll jump back on here and explain like this was the one thing that I am taking away and now implying in my life, because then it gives you a reason to come back, gives you a reason to close out and offer any other things and not have to worry about filling it up in the beginning. And that probably took me like two years to figure out that, hey, why don't you just invite them to come back on the other side and then talk about what you want to talk about and give them a reason to as well?

Speaker 1 (23:57)

Yeah, I mean, that's a good opportunity, especially for folks who want to use their podcast as a way to elevate their brand, their expertise, and show off what they know about whatever the topic is. Because truthfully, it's hard to tell everyone, hey, I'm the expert in the room. Welcome to my podcast. And then not talk for 90% of it because you're interviewing somebody else and you're interviewing that person because they are possibly smarter or the expert on whatever it is. So that's a great way to kind of showcase your knowledge on something while not taking over the entire show. Something else I just want people to think about that comes up often. Maybe you were going to ask about this, but the outro of the show, there's a thought that really outros are a waste of time. Most people, once they hear the music, start to come on, they kind of like, alright, I'm out of here, I'm done. Like, I might even listen. So why bother? I think the outro is a great spot to jam in all of your extra call to actions. So maybe you don't want to overpopulate your intro with too many things.

Speaker 1 (24:59)

I think it's a lot to ask people to rate and review. Subscribe sign up for the newsletter, Donate to our Patreon, go to this. Go to that right. Like you are asking people to do a lot of stuff before they've even had a chance to listen to the content. And so that might get onerous. And so the back of the show is a good place to be. Like, hey, by the way, here's all the other ways that you can help the show out. And to your point, you can ensure that people listen to it by holding something to the very end, right? And so you can say, hey, Matthew, thanks for being on the show. That was a lot of fun. Hey everyone, coming up, my hot take on this interview. But first we want to tell you that you could find the show here. Find the show that way, if you've created a feature that people look forward to, and they're willing to wait until the end for you can slip in all that housekeeping beforehand and make it worthwhile. The reason why I bring this up is that I also think it's getting better.

Speaker 1 (26:00)

And I'm starting to encourage more often for people to do their show intro live as part of their episode intro. So instead of having something that is prerecorded and that you just insert every single time and it's pretty static. And we kind of talked about this a little bit with dynamic insertion possibilities. But what I'm starting to recommend more often is script out your intro so that you repeat kind of the same things. Hey, welcome to the show. It's about X. Here's what you're going to say. Here's who I am. And then your call to action and then go into so today on the show. And it all sounds a little bit continuous, but that gives you an opportunity to rotate that call to action week to week, month to month, whatever it is. So that if maybe you've been saying for the last month subscribe to the show now, you could say, by the way, we've got a Patreon and tell people to do that. Or, hey, we've got this great email newsletter, or we're running an event, and you could do that without it getting stale and old by saying the same thing over and over and over again.

Speaker 1 (27:08)

Because if you do something over and over and over and over again, it becomes white noise and people start to tune it out. So I am starting to encourage a little bit more of that. Yes, have a show intro, but maybe read it live with your episode intro, and that'll give you a little bit of flexibility to insert something timely and maybe something a little bit more personable without getting too far off the rails. The reason why I say scripted, we don't love people who read on podcasts, but we also don't love people. We make a decision about a podcast pretty quickly. And so we also don't love listening to a podcast. And the first thing here is, hey, everyone, welcome to what was it called again right away? That's going to be a red flag because I'm like, this is not going to be good. And I'm gone. So you want to come off confidently in the beginning of that show. And so when you're starting off scripted and by 7th, 8th, 10th, 12th, whatever episode, you probably don't even need that script anymore because it just becomes second nature. And you can just say, hey, everyone, welcome to the show.

Speaker 1 (28:10)

Here's what we're doing today and move on. And then you can decide if you've been doing it long enough, your audience has grown enough, you can maybe scale back on some of that intro content. But remember, if you're listening to us, you're probably thinking, how do I get more listeners? If you're thinking about how to get more listeners, you're probably going to start getting more new listeners. And therefore, new listeners need to be told. Here's what this is about. Don't always assume that everybody has already heard it before. The people who have heard it before, they probably know how to skip over. They probably know it's a minute and they'll get away from it if they don't want to hear it. But the people who are new, they need to be welcomed. They need to be told, and you need to pound it into their head. Here's what you're going to get from us if you stick to the show.

Speaker 2 (28:51)

Let's take that closure on that topic. But then also let's go to what's in the background of all that topic, which is music. And I got a two part question. Our question of the day is tied to copyrighted music, which ties into this question of how do you pick the right music to underlay or underlying the actual intro? Because one, I tell you, next to getting over my own voice, the second most stressful thing next to picking your WordPress theme, probably because there's 15,000 of those as well, is finding the right tune to play in your intro. There's just so many options, just playing them over and over, and it's usually a gut feeling. But man, you could listen to 50 before you got like, OOH, that's the one.

Speaker 1 (29:36)

I would say a couple of different things. How do you pick the right music? So one, first of all, don't pick commercial music. Like, I could go over the whole long argument. I'm sure there's someone like, but it's fine, whatever. I don't need to repeat this over and over again. Don't pick commercial music. There's a lot of good reasons not to and very few good reasons to use them. And nine times out of ten, they're the good reasons are not worth all the hassle and the headache and the possible legal ramifications and losing your show. So don't pick a Mercury music. What I look for is I always talk to clients and I always say, what is the tone of your show? Right? If your theme has a playlist, what would be on that playlist? What kind of artist, what kind of music, what kind of sound, what kind of feel are you going for? And then I use one of two royalty free libraries typically to find my show music. And increasingly, we've got someone on our team who can produce unique music and compose music for people to use. But for most people listening, these two spots are pretty easy.

Speaker 1 (30:49)

One is called Pond Five. Pond the number five.com. And Ben will have a link on the show notes, I'm sure. And the other one is called Premium Beats. Pond Five is a huge, massive library of music. What I typically do is I will find either that artist name, that song title, or maybe some of those keywords, like rock, rap, poke, country, jazz, thrash metal, whatever it is, put that in the search bar. And then I usually add like the word corporate or bad music or something else that kind of tells the search directory, like, yeah, I want it to sound like rock and roll, but I also don't want it to be distracting. And so when people think of corporate music or bad music, they think of something that establishes itself quickly, right? Sets the tone in the first few beats, but then quickly fades underneath and just helps to move along the voiceover. The music is not the show, right? People should get familiar with the music, they should hear it and automatically think, oh yeah, that's the show I'm listening for. But the music should not be the feature, it should just be there to help move things along.

Speaker 1 (32:01)

So Pond Five is the one that I go to because their library is just massive. I mean huge. And for most of the tracks are very reasonably priced, and if you need to get a business license, it's going to be more. But even though it's a good marketplace for finding royalty free tracks because the options are limitless and only a few times have I ever heard somebody using the same music as somebody else who I've worked with because of that library, it's just so big. The other one is Premium Beats. And the thing about Premium Beats that I really like is that when you buy a track from Premium Beats, you don't just get the one piece of music, but you get this suite of music. And so it comes with what they call stems and loops and different versions. So you might get a 1530 62nd version of a song. You might get like just the drums, just the horns, just the piano. They give you all these different pieces of this song that make it easy for you to play with and use them in different spots. So maybe use the main music as your intro, but then you take one of those loops or the stems or just the drums.

Speaker 1 (33:11)

And maybe that is a transition that you use later in the show so that it maintains the theme that you've got going, but without repeating the same thing over and over and over and over again as your transition elements every time. The only difference with Premium Beats is their library is not nearly as expansive. It's good. Don't get me wrong, it's a very large library, but I have heard a few shows that all use the same track more than once. And so your chances of running into somebody else using a similar time, using a similar track is a lot higher. And then of course, you go down the road of getting somebody to compose music, which would be all yours and totally unique. But that can often be a little bit more expensive and it can take some time for that person to really understand what it is that you want that music to sound like for us, we typically try and find something and then we say, hey, can we create something like this as opposed to we're looking for rock music. Like rock music can sound like anything. Is it 70s rock? Is it 80s rock?

Speaker 1 (34:16)

Is it glam rock? Is it pop rock? Right. You need to be a little bit more specific because just saying I want something light hearted. I can give you light hearted. That sounds like a poker song. I can give you light hearted. That sounds like California Beach surfing. I can give you light hearted. That sounds like, you know, EDM music. So you've got to think a little bit more specifically about what is the tone and the feel and what is going to not just move your audience, but what's going to move you, what is going to make you hear this and be like, yeah, I'm into this because it's your show and you've got to love it.

Speaker 2 (34:51)

And I think there is a subconscious like magnetism that happens because the right beat to a music will definitely get me more excited to listen to it. And it also becomes like the digital sound logo. No, it's not the right term.

Speaker 1 (35:07)

What's the logo you're thinking of? The Sonic ID.

Speaker 2 (35:09)

Sonic ID, like where there's just like NBC Bell type thing and it gives you that identity. And I also want to just point out, because I don't think people consider it a lot, but the podcast or the opportunity to produce, if you have a budget for it, to produce your own music, to create maybe even a unique audio feeling to each episode. I don't discredit that. I always appreciate the episodes like 20,000 Hz, where there's this entire subway of almost like an Orchestra, like in a Disney movie where the music changes as the story is going. That to me can really upset the value, the production value of your episodes and just overall increased. I think the feeling that you leave your audience with and I don't think most people even consider that as an option because unless you're in that world, you don't even really think that there's a whole group of people out there custom composing music. But the industry is probably millions, if not billions big of custom composing stuff.

Speaker 1 (36:06)

Yeah. I mean, the truth is, is it nice when you can listen to a show that has different music that helps to tell that story uniquely from yesterday's episode or last week's episode or this, the music is sad, it's happy, right? That is a great thing to have, but that is an expensive fee.

Speaker 2 (36:28)

Agreed. It takes good sponsors and good attraction and millions of downloads to produce that type of quality as well.

Speaker 1 (36:34)

It's not even good sponsors. It's just the fact that it's what's known as sound design. And it is a very special skill. And unless you're the person who knows how to do that, and can either create that music every single time or has the time to find that music every single time and buy new music every single time to do this or subscribe to a good library or whatever that looks like it's just owners. And while I think you're right, I think it adds to it. I think there definitely shows that I appreciate more because they do it. I think for our target audience, the return on that investment isn't necessarily worth it.

Speaker 2 (37:18)

I would agree with that as well. Where it's not the right person.

Speaker 1 (37:23)

Yeah. Again, listen, if you're the daily yeah, you've got millions and millions of listeners and you've got to make a lot of money off this and say, yeah, your sound design is very important. You don't want the same sound effect when you're talking about the outcome of an election versus the bombing of Ukraine. Right. You need to set that tone very differently. But if you're talking about how to be a better entrepreneur, well, you're still talking about how to be a better entrepreneur in the next episode and the episode after that and the episode after that and the episode after that. Right. It's just not as important. Plus, most people, they don't use a ton of music outside of that intro and outro. It's set the tone, get me into the show, and now we're out. So pick something that you like that has a memorable theme to it, so that when people hit play and they hear those first few chords or those first few beats or whatever it is, right away they go, yeah, I'm ready to listen. We've got a couple of clients who the music that they've been using. They've been using it for five years now.

Speaker 1 (38:22)

And I can literally hear the one chord and be like, oh, that shows coming on, and it just puts me in the right mood for it. And it is memorable and relatable, and it's that sense of consistency that you, as a podcast, really want to create.

Speaker 2 (38:36)

Yeah. It's the goal that you really don't think about in the beginning because you're stressed about all the things. But long term, it's that long term feeling that you're going to sit with. Before we close this episode out, I got one question that just popped in, so I want to close it out and put a cherry on it. Where's your opinion on indie artists? Because there are a few podcasts that have, like, say, artists as friends that are still trying to break into different platforms and they say they can sing, they can play guitar type stuff. Do you ever recommend any types of that, or would you stay away from it just as much as commercial music? And it just makes it complicated for someone to even know whether you need to be policed or not.

Speaker 1 (39:13)

So here's the tricky part about that. I love the idea of being able to support your independent musician friends. The problem arises when either a your independent musician friend decides to sign with a label. And in those negotiations, they don't bring up the fact that you, your buddy, is using the music as a podcast, and then the labels all of a sudden like, oh, yeah, we almost now you can't do that anymore. Now you're back to the original problem, which is don't use commercial music on your podcast. I don't know how often that happens. I don't have a lot of independent musical friends who have turned big or have gone a label, but that is like the legal tripwire that you are thinking about. The other thing that could happen again is just the algorithms. That's my bigger concern. Even clients who have spoken to have been like, I don't care what it cosbas I can afford to buy the license. Like, yeah, you probably can't afford to buy the license.

(40:13)

Maybe.

Speaker 1 (40:13)

I mean, some people think they can and then they find out what it really is. It's like, oh, really? But what happens is the algorithms don't know that you have a license. And so you could be putting music on your show thinking it's all good. And then remember, we did a story about two months ago, Facebook is just muting music on podcasts if it hears something that it's not supposed to. And Spotify is flagging shows and removing episodes. And YouTube is banning channels when people put music in there, they're not supposed to, right? All those things can happen anytime you put music in there that you are not supposed to and that you don't own the license to. Even if you own the license, you spend whatever, 10,020, $30,000 to get the Taylor Swift song to put as your intro. You're probably still playing whacka Mole with having to convince these platforms every time like, no, I own this. Their algorithms are going to be like, cut. And now you have to go and say, But here's my license, here's the thing, right? Fill out the form, fill out the blah, blah, blah and get them to reverse it, as opposed to just not having to worry about that.

Speaker 1 (41:24)

Personally, I would rather just not have to worry about that. It is. Very few people have ever said, you know, I wasn't going to listen to this crappy podcast, but they started with a Taylor Swift song. So now I'm in.

Speaker 2 (41:37)

Yeah, they pay the big Bucks, they've got to have something big to deliver.

Speaker 1 (41:43)

I think it's mostly an ego driven decision because I can. Yeah. I mean, one of the most popular podcasts I've ever listened to is, Wait, wait, don't tell me. And they use that piano intro. If you heard that music outside of the podcast, you'd be like, this is nothing. This is nonsense. But because it's there and it's been doing the same thing, it's now become this iconic piece of music and it's so much more interesting that it's theirs. And unique and relatable as opposed to if they had just decided to use I don't know, they started 30 years ago so maybe they pulled a Phil Collins song right now, 30 years later they're still using a Phil Collins song like what is this right? It just doesn't have the same it's not as important to have to be able to say, oh, I'm using the latest you two song and that's probably still a dated reference. As you can tell.

Speaker 2 (42:40)

I'm not going to have a music channel Anytime soon but the point is I don't think there is a significant return on that investment and I'm glad I asked the question Because there was probably a listing out there somewhere either currently listening or catches up on the past listening to this that was considering it. You know, there's probably this world Where I could avoid this whole trip wire of corporate and copyrighted music. I could just hire someone and support my local podcast or support my local indie music creators and then really hopefully we really highlighted that the upsell is low. Well, it's a feel good thing. It's not going to provide the production value that you want to bring in those extra custom artists but in this case that you need to focus on those two resources that will be in the show notes to find your theme, find your jingle, Find your vibe and own it and run with it and let that be that digital feeling that people get when they first start listening to your podcast.

Speaker 1 (43:39)

I like it.

Speaker 2 (43:41)

Well, that officially puts a nice bow on this idea this episode. We done intros, we done outros. We even tackled and got excited because the future world with amp doesn't have the copyrighted music and we get to although it's not going to be distributed Most likely to all the different platforms so it's going to be an eco contained system on amp but still the idea of being able to use that kind of music and having fun with it, I think the opportunity there is really fun and really all upside so Matthew, as always, you didn't find my car and you have no idea where it is but we created some great audio today and until next week.

Speaker 1 (44:14)

Guys have a good one, Sir.