I got into podcasts quite early. It was mainly due to the ABC and BBC, who quickly realised they could ‘capture’ broadcast radio shows, add some tags and make it available for us to download and listen.
AFAIK , the name podcast comes from from iPod and Broadcast as the iPod was the first successful portable, digital music player.
I’m only talking about audio podcasts here. They are usually really nothing more than mp3 ‘music’ files. Some may have extra tags inside them, but they are still mp3s. Here’s some quick tips that should help you with current podcasts (aka feeds/subscription) and using older ones (archives).
The Podcast App I Use – for current podcasts
I’m on Android and use the free BeyondPod app. I’ve been using it for years. It lets me manage my subscriptions to the current podcast feeds, so I automatically find out when new episodes of a show/series are available. Plus it’s the player. Why I like it:
- You can arrange your podcast shows into categories
- You can speed up the playback rate without the chipmunk (higher-voice) effect. So useful as you can listen at (say) 1.5 times the speed. I’ve always been impatient 🙂
- You can disable any ‘auto download of new episodes’. I do this, then look at the ep’s description and go yeah/nah, then manually download if it’s a yeah.
There’s lots of other apps, including for iPhone, iPad, Windows etc.
Archive Podcasts – MP3 Downloads
The above software downloads the episode’s mp3 file in the background. You never see the file per se; the episode’s name and details just magically appear, ready to play.
I call these the current episodes/feeds/subscriptions. A nice little bonus is that a lot of providers have large archives of older episodes. They may not be available in the subscription (feed) but are available as mp3 files to download.
For example my GoTo podcast is ABC RN’s Late Night Live. And their podcast archive looks like this:
I’m on the PC and I found a podcast file I’m interested in. I just right mouse on the Download link and select Save Link As (or similar)
This saves the podcast’s file lnl_20100507_2205.mp3 to my PC’s drive. I copy that to my phone and can listen to it. See next item for the software I use to play it back.
Note: On my PC, if I just click on the Download link it plays it in the browser. Could be my set up. In fact you may just want to do this.
Some archives may provide you with the more modern .m4a or .mp4 audio files. The same steps apply, including for the next sections.
Phone App to play back archive MP3 Podcasts
Your music player can just play the podcast .mp3 file, but – like me – you may wish to keep music and podcasts separate. So you can speed them up, for example.
On my Android phone I have a separate folder; say mypodcasts. I put lnl_20100507_2205.mp3 there.
After some trial and error, I found a free mp3 player called Pulsar that supports variable speed playback. The only folder it is configured to use is mypodcasts; so it doesn’t try and read and play my music mp3 files.
BeyondPod can play these downloaded mp3 files, but it’s a pain to set up and would sometimes have problems. Again, similar software for iPhones etc available.
Advanced/Optional: Change the MP3 tags
This is still for the archive mp3s I have downloaded. It makes them easier to navigate and use.
On the PC, I use the free MP3 tag editor Mp3tag for both music and podcast files, to easily change the tags, like Album, Title and Artist. I do this before copying them to the phone (the app can change it, but easier on the PC).
If not already set, I just change:
- Artist: ABC RN (or BBC or whatever. The provider.)
- Album: Classic LNL (Show/series name. Make it the same for all from the same show/series)
- Title: Billy ‘The Texan’ Longley (short description of that episode. Can copy from web page)
Then Save and copy the mp3 to the phone.
Pulsar then automatically shows my Albums (akin to the feeds/show) and associated Artist on the first screen, nicely sorted:
When I click on Classic LNL, it then lists each mp3-podcast’s episode (Title), ready to play:
Note: if you put each each Show’s (Album) mp3 files in it’s own sub-folder, you can even add an image, like the photo of Phillip, above. Pick one that’s more square in shape and call it folder.jpg