Hi, Gareth here. I'm the producer of podcasting people. And I know I don't usually appear on the show, but this week I've been at the podcast show London 2024. Uh, chatting with show creators, speakers and exhibitors. And I managed to get a few soundbites on my way around the show. So I thought. I gathered them together for a special bonus episode, to give you a feel of what it was like to be there from both an independent creator and company point of view.
And to hear from a few of the exhibitors as well. So let's get into it. Oh, if you want more bonus content around being an independent creator, including behind the scenes of podcast producers. Reviews of stuff, including the podcast show of course, uh, just head to podcastingpeople.community and sign up for the emails. There's a free tier and a paid tier so you're welcome either way. Uh, right. Let's hear from some visitors to the podcast show London 2024.
Hi Gareth, nice to meet you. I'm Andy. Um, I'm the CEO of Our Media. It's a media business based in Bristol and we're here today really to find out a little bit more about podcast, network, meet people like yourself Gareth.
It's always nice to see friendly faces, um, and see if we can push our own podcast production to the next level, gaining quite a bit of traction in some of our specialist sectors, particularly science and the outdoors, um, and it's really useful to see what other people are doing to help us grow as well. So that's what we're doing here today. And the name of your podcast?
The name of the podcast is called Instant Genius, and it's a science podcast, uh, produced by our media and, um, BBC Science Focus brand.
Hi, my name's Rachel Richards. I have the Teenagers Untangled podcast that is downloaded in a hundred and sixty countries and it's an award-winning podcast too. Um, and I'm very much hoping to get lots of tips here about. I don't know, I think I'm at the stage where I might like to try and monetise it and I also want to get better tips on how to, uh, publicise it. And I'm not quite sure how to do, um, a visual podcast. Everything's audio at the moment.
I do the odd riverside recording of guests, but I'd quite like to be able to do double shots. I'm an ex TV presenter, but I don't know how to do that stuff myself. So I'm looking for tips.
Hi there, my name's Victoria Elizabeth Turnbull. And I'm the CEO and founder of MIC Media, which is a profit for purpose, podcast production and trading agency. Lots of P's there, lots of plosives, but you've got a nice muff on. So I think that I'll shield my P's. Um, I'm also the founder and co runner of MIC's podcast club, which is an international community for podcasters. And why am I here today? I wasn't going to come. And then I got a FOMO and I was like, let's go.
Let's speak to loads of people. Let's make connections. And let's bother loads of people that got stalls. That's why I'm here. I'm not really here to learn anything. I'm here to bother people.
Hey, this is Steph Fuccio from Coffeelike Media. I am in London at the podcast show to do a few things, one of which is to get off of a screen and to meet people in person, both the people that I've met on screen in the past seven years, as well as to meet new people first in person. I also want to learn a little bit about where the industry is going. But the primary, primary thing is to meet people.
Oh, and to pressure them to do newsletters and static image YouTube videos and all that kind of stuff that produces engagement spaces for their projects, for their podcasts. Mostly just to meet people off screen like you, Gareth.
Hello, nice to meet you. My name is Kim Kerton. I've got two businesses in podcasting. My first is my own show called Unemployed and Afraid, which is on a mission to help a hundred thousand business owners start and stay in business, primarily stay in business by having real conversations about the personal growth we have to experience along the way and all of the micro steps that are so important. So that is my show.
And I'm also a consultant and an advisor to brands looking to start their own show, so their owned original or also create a network of shows, which is a fantastic opportunity for brands as well. So the name of my business is Good Side of the Ben.
Do you have a tip for independent creators?
Absolutely. I have so many tips. So it's always hard to pick which one and I think it's so important to place any tip into context, which is an inadvertent tip and not the one I was going to leave you with. It's to hold in the same importance the desire to create a show that you want to create. with the cultural insights of those who might be listening to it, your ideal audience.
So how do you create something that matches the tone or the need that's a little bit more outside of yourself, so that you can create that purpose and value and longevity, which is so important in this game.
Hi, I'm Elia Jayo and I work with the BBC and I am the co founder of Debut Podcasts.
We are a podcast production company specialising in classical music podcast formats, especially for younger musicians, hoping to inform and inspire a whole generation of musicians who have no access to music education. As a new little indie, we are hoping to learn so much because podcasting has really, really taken off and just being in this room full of stalls and full of people who are experts, we want to get some of that help and information and learn as much as we can in this big, big room.
Hi everyone. Um, my name is Kirsten Mackenzie. Um, I'm from Glasgow and I have a podcast called Scotland's Women. It's about women telling their own stories because every woman has a story to tell and how we should be real influencers in our life. And this couple of days here at the podcast show, I'm hoping to build a network and meet new people because podcasting can be quite a lonely place. So it's nice to, it's nice to meet Gareth today. How are you doing Gareth?
Oh, nicely turned around there.
Reverse psychology. Yeah,
yeah, yeah. I'm doing very well. Uh, speaking to lots of really nice independent creators like yourself. Um, I'm speaking to I'm the
best one. Oh,
by far, by far.
Editors side note. I had to say that you're all my favorite. Anyway, back to it. I'll be going around the stalls in a little while as well and see what they have to say. And they'll be offering tips for the likes of us, independent creators. Yeah. We'll see how that goes. Thanks
for having me. Cheers, Gareth.
Thank you. Hi, my name's Oliver and I'm from Warble Audio. I'm here at the podcast show this year to connect with others and meet like minded individuals and just talk about everything audio. Uh, if it's a podcast, if it's an audio drama, whatever. I'm here to talk about it. And just Yeah, meet new people and maybe also like look at the new technology as well. Like there's a fantastic flat pack sound booth over there that I really kind of want. If it was in my budget, I totally have that.
Hi, I'm Tim Steemson. I'm a composer and sound designer. I guess I'm hoping to just kind of be a big sponge and just sort of soak in like as much as I can in terms of like learning a bit more about um, Stuff like, I don't know, Dolby Atmos and stuff, which I have no idea about, which looks very cool. And I'm just meeting a load of people who are also doing podcast things, really.
My name is Ruth Barnes. I'm the founder of an independent production company called Chalk Blade. And I am at the podcast show to meet lots of brilliant people. For the first time, I think, since its inception, it feels truly international this year. I'm meeting a lot of Australians. I met a guy from Finland. I met a lovely German woman. It feels like people are actually coming from around the world. All the Americans are here.
Finally, they've come to the podcast show, so it feels like it's really on the map this year. So, uh, I'm enjoying the sense of the podcast industry being more than just the Americans know how to do it, and we're all following suit.
Hello, it's Giles here from The Telegraph. I'm head of podcasts, entertainment, lifestyle, and Sport. It's here, uh, with a few meetings lined up back to back from about one o'clock, hoping to speak to far more important people about far more important things.
And also I've got my festival director hat on for the Cheerful Earful podcast festival where we're looking to soak up some comedy and entertainment podcasts, particularly from independent creators, uh, for the third festival, which is taking place this October. If you're interested in performing or signing up, it's completely open applications. You can sign up at cheerfulearful. co. uk slash perform.
Hello, hi, it's Sam Sethi here, CEO of TrueFans. I'm here at the London podcast show, looking around at all the exciting, uh, events and booths. Now, TrueFans, what is it? It's a new podcasting 2. 0 app. What the hell does that mean? Well, it's really taking RSS, the old thing we love, 20 years old, and we've extended it with new features and functions. And TrueFans enables those functions to be used. So, let's give you a good example.
Uh, you may have seen on Apple Podcasts a picture of a celebrity. Maybe you've thought, well, how can I put my face onto Apple Podcasts? Well, unfortunately you can't, because Apple won't let you, unless you're super famous too. But there is a new thing called the person tag, which is a feature that you can use and you can upload your photo, put your name in and suddenly everyone who looks at your podcast will now know what you look like as well.
So there are a lot of features and functions in TrueFans like that, that extend or enhance the discoverability of your podcast or the interactivity. Uh, and that's what we really want. Don't we want more people to find our podcast, listen to our podcast and give us feedback. we're not in an app store, we're a, what's called a progressive web app. So really, really simple. Go to any browser, type out truefans. fm, and you'll get prompted to add it to your phone.
Um, which is a one click phone access. Now you have an app on your phone, which is TrueFans, and that's how you find us.
So how about the exhibitors as well? I didn't get soundbites from everyone, but certainly had lots of lovely chats. It was interesting seeing the split of user-focused companies against the big B2B companies, which took up a lot of room on the floor, to be honest. But more about that in my review of the show coming soon to the paid tier of podcasting people.community. link is in the show notes. Uh, so let's hear from a few of the exhibitors.
Hi there, I'm one of the co founders of Podlife Events, Toby West. We run an events company built exclusively for live podcast events. We're here to talk to as many podcasters as possible and looking to partner with some festivals and also production companies.
Fantastic, how are you finding it so far?
Really good, really good. We've spoken to a lot of podcasters, looking to do events and we've just been discussing the benefits we believe that events bring through monetization, building your community and kind of that engaging content you get from an event.
Hi, so I'm Sam and I work for the BBC as a digital producer, which means I kind of repurpose content to put online and promote the podcasts. And, um, I'm hoping to get from the show a better understanding of How people are approaching news this year, um, particularly political news around the elections and how they're going to be marketing that. It's a big year for the country and it's going to be an interesting to see how it all goes. So, yeah.
Question. Do you have any tips about how independent podcasters can approach their social media?
Yes, I'd say make sure you're putting quality out over quantity. Uh, people want Content that they can resonate with and is actually well produced and looks good. So using a scattergun approach doesn't necessarily work. I think if you put, your passion into it and your expertise into it and just get that point across succinctly, under 30 seconds if possible, I think actually that's the way to approach social media.
Hello, my name is Liam. I'm from, um, broadcast radio. Uh, we've been supplying radio stations for 27 years, but we're here at a podcast show today, uh, to, to work with podcasters about creating their own radio stations. basically the idea is that people could create a radio station to keep people on their brands, discover new content and to aid would be to have your own mobile app because people can then take you with you wherever.
And if you're running 24 7 then they can listen to you in the car, they can listen to you at home, they can listen to you when they're on the treadmill or wherever.
Hi everyone, my name is jeremie, I'm a French citizen. I live in Montreal and the co founder of, uh, this initiative, a non for profit initiative that we call Podcasthon. And the basic idea there is to convince as many podcasters, maybe just like you, to, uh, dedicate one episode for a charity of their choice and to release this episode altogether in a coordinated way in March to create a mass effect.
So last March we had 400 podcasters, to be frank with you, mainly in the French speaking countries, but we are extending it. To any other languages and countries.
So 400 podcasters will release an episode with a charity and that was really great for all the charities We desperately need to bring awareness on what they are doing and to better connect with your audience Because podcasts and we believe strongly into that podcasts are the best media to convey emotions And those charities they need emotions to better connect with their future donators Future volunteers and anyone else eager to be interested in what they're doing.
Hello, I'm Nick Williams. I work for Black Cat Music and we are the UK distributor for the Studio Bricks booths.
Edits a side note. Nick is actually speaking to me. Inside one of his boots.
Uh, we make booths that, um, basically come in kit form, uh, Uh, they click together using a patented system. So no gluing, screwing or sealant so they can be moved or, um, you can use them in a temporary situation like this at an exhibition. Um, or if you want to move location or within your building easily done.
Um, so we make our booths by basically two or three very, Thick walls with acoustic insulation in them that is what causes the noise reduction because noise reduction is dependent on mass and then we have, um, acoustic treatment inside the booths that's actually made from recycled plastic bottles. It's made from PET. Uh, we make it ourselves. It's a proprietary system and that's what gives us the, the dry reverb sponse inside this room that we're talking in right now.
We do booths from about 1. 5 by 1 meters, which, uh, is, for, uh, use. And then we go up to, uh, nine meters by five meters, uh, that were principally made for, for music production and TV studios and whatever you need a big space for. We have standard options like things like standard heights, but it's completely customizable. So we can do wider doors, different types of doors, wheelchair access, additional windows, air conditioning interfaces.
Yeah. The, the, the product is pretty much customizable. For whatever you need it to be. Um, and they, like I said, they're made in Barcelona and they arrive, arrive in a big crate and you can, you can assemble them yourself.
There we have it. I hope that's given you a sense of what it was like on the floor of the podcast. Show London 2024. Thanks to everyone who contributed it's really appreciated. Your links are in the show notes now. So you can find them in whatever app you're using back to normal with the next episode. So have a brilliant day, whatever you're doing and keep going, keep creating. You're doing great. Bye for now.