Wisconsin Union Blend

A characteristic intro sequence that includes your show’s “theme-song” can really improve the overall sound of your podcast. Short music segments can also provide effective transitions between different parts of your show.

But how can you use music without getting sued? Your safest bet is to use “podsafe” music, or music that has been pre-licensed for use in podcasts. Luckily there are a number of great resources out there that make finding podsafe music very easy. I keep a growing list of podsafe music resources here. You’ll also find extensive information on podsafe music and other “sharable” media at creativecommons.org.

Want to see how easy it is? This short tutorial walks you through the process of finding podsafe music at magnatune.com, one of the largest collections of pre-licensed music.

If you want people to subscribe to your podcasts, don’t bury the feed URL too deep within the directory structure of your website. It should be at the homepage of your site or off a ‘podcasts’ page. The feed URL should be short and easy to remember. Something like http://www.yoursite.edu/podcasts/feed.xml.

If someone subscribes to your podcast and receives it via their favorite aggregator, then they are less likely to be going back to your website to get information. That’s one of the points of subscription — the information comes to you so you don’t have to continually search it out.

But what if you want to get people coming back to the website AND listening to the podcasts. When recording, just remember to end the podcast with something like “For more information on this and other topics, please see our website at www.someplace.edu.” Very short. Very simple. Very effective.