There's No Direct Path to Becoming an Audio Producer
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Is your Apple Podcast app kinda wonky?
I used Apple Podcasts as my go-to app for the longest time, up until late 2019, when it more or less stopped working on my phone. It was slow and almost non-reactive. I would try to click on a show, and it would either take forever to open, or not open at all. I have an iPhone 7 from late 2017, and I’m sure this is partially Apple prodding me to get a new phone.
For much of the last decade, people have been talking about the phenomenon of Apple slowing down older iPhones to either “preserve the battery life” or, more maliciously, to make you buy a new one. But it does seem that this new Apple Podcasts update is causing frustration for more than just those of us with geriatric phones.
Joe Berkowitz wrote about the app’s UX design flaws for Fast Company, which is a cathartic read if you’ve been feeling like throwing your phone across the room. Andrew Liptak wrote a handy guide for navigating the new app for LifeHacker.
The new app also brings paid subscriptions to Apple Podcasts. This all just launched last week, but we’ll be keeping an eye on which shows with Patreon supporters migrate over to Apple’s paid subscriptions, whether shows will start running paid subscriptions in multiple places, and whether this inclusion will actually help smaller podcasts earn money.
In the meantime, I will be over on Spotify and Shuffle, apps that don’t make me want to throw my phone across the room.
There’s no direct path to becoming an audio producer.
Some people learn skills in school. Some take the initiative to teach themselves. Some work at places like community radio stations to learn the ropes. But as a profession, there’s no standard when it comes to education; we’re doing surgery on tape, not on people. And I think that’s a good thing!
You don’t need to go to school to learn how to produce podcasts.
But you do need to learn, somehow. Especially since a big part of making podcasts is the editing process, and to edit, you need to be able to use a DAW (digital audio workstation).
When I’m perusing different job boards for positions worth sharing with you, our lovely readers, I try to find a mix of entry level-ish and more senior positions. But even the most junior jobs I can find usually require (or at least prefer) that candidates are proficient in Adobe Audition, ProTools, or some other DAW.
But being proficient in a DAW alone doesn’t make a good editor. Editing podcasts is ultimately about storytelling, and although the process and the format are nothing like reporting and writing an article, many of the skills are the same. You need to provide context for what you’re talking about. You need to figure out which quotes to keep and what’s destined for the cutting room floor. You need to determine the structure of the story.
There’s also a lot of unlearning that needs to happen for people making the jump from print journalism to audio. I loved this article from Catherine St. Louis in Transom about how to build editorial muscles. She was an editor at the New York Times for 18 years, and is now the executive editor at Neon Hum Media. She writes that while she had a wealth of knowledge when it came to journalism, there were aspects of podcasting she wasn’t yet equipped to do—like hearing mistakes in the audio. She points to NPR’s ear training guide, which is a good place to start if you’re learning how to work with tape.
Before going back to school, I had no idea how I could possibly teach myself how to produce audio. That was a big reason why I went back at all—to give myself the time and space to learn a brand new skill. There are some people out there who are super capable of teaching themselves new technology—I am not that person!
With audio, I learn by working with others. When I run into an issue on a show I’m editing alone, I text a friend to ask how they’d handle it. When I’m working on a show with Vocal Fry, I have a whole team of wonderful producers I can turn to when I’m having a problem. Having a community has helped me become a better producer, and I hope I can do the same for others.
Which is to say—we have people on our team who can answer lots of questions!
If you’re a freelancer running into editing issues, send us your Qs, and we’ll answer them in a future newsletter.*
*Note: we won’t be able to answer time-sensitive questions
Until then, I highly recommend reading Stephanie Fuccio’s story about the podcast editor power struggle for Discover Pods, which explores some of the other challenges around getting started in the podcast industry.
CBC is hiring not one, but two producers for Front Burner, the daily news podcast hosted by Jayme Poisson! Both are full time; one is an eight-month contract that starts mid-July, and the other is a one-year contract that starts mid-August.
The Toronto Star has a few positions open in their journalism job bank for future opportunities, including for a podcast host/producer! If you want to throw your name in the hat for an eventual job, now’s the time.
If you loved Slow Burn Season 1 (about Watergate) and Season 2 (about the Clinton impeachment), you can apply to work with Leon Nayfakh at Prologue Projects! They’re looking for an “experienced producer to help make an ambitious new comedy chat show hosted by a high-profile entertainer.”
They’re based in Brooklyn, but are open to remote candidates, especially if you can travel. Send a cover letter, resume, and references to jobs@prologueprojects.com.
And here are some jobs we’ve shared before that have been re-posted:
Looking to get into freelance copywriting? Here’s Bizzy Coy’s super secret guide to freelance copywriting. I cannot for the life of me recall where I first came across this resource, but it’s valuable for any freelancer—there’s great advice in there about how to charge day rates, retainer fees, and more.
I’ve never worked on retainer as a podcast producer, but there are projects where it makes a lot of sense, like when a client wants to make two episodes a month, but aren’t sure when they’re going to be able to get you the tape—if any of you have done it, let me know how it went!
Mallika Rao is the author of the 2019 Atlantic essay, Why Everyone Should Sleep Alone. Now, she’s the host of a new show, produced with Headspace Studios: HiberNation. There are three episodes out right now, and in the first one, Sleeping Together, Rao explores what it means to share a bed with someone. She speaks to people who once shared a bed, but have to contend with what it means to lose their partners when it comes time to sleep.
While I found the structure a little all over the place (there’s a fair amount of jumping between stories), it’s a tender and thought-provoking look at this huge part of our lives that often gets deprioritized.
Bonus: s/o to Max Collins for flagging the special Indigenous People’s Day show on CBC Vancouver’s The Early Edition on Monday. Hosted by Angela Sterritt and Stephen Quinn, the almost three-hour show features stories about “strength, resistance, and healing in local Indigenous communities.”
This week on Well Said, we hear from Mark Carney, former Governor of the Bank of Canada and author of the very large book, Value(s). As a person who has spent a lot of time feeling frustrated about the way the world of finance was dealing with the climate crisis (or, more realistically, wasn’t dealing with it), I found it interesting to hear his thoughts on the relationship between the market and climate.
Victoria Stunt wrote about how to make radio for international outlets- a good read for anyone whose internal passport is tugging at them now that pandemic travel restrictions are *probably* *maybe* *possibly* starting to lift.
Victoria became a full-time freelancer based in Colombia in 2018, and her blog post is filled with tips that will definitely be useful for anyone who wants to try freelancing abroad.
We also have a blog post up from Cormac O’Brien about some of the best queer podcasts in Canada for anyone looking to celebrate Pride.
We want to hear from you! What are you looking for in your podcast news? Let us know on Twitter, Instagram, or by email at info@vocalfrystudios.com.
Thanks to Emily Latimer for editing this newsletter, and to Katie Jensen for designing it. We’ll see you again on July 2. Until then, here’s an update from producer Ren's dog, Kali.
Yours in friends and fries,
Michal
