Music Podcasting is Hard. Why it’s worth the effort Part 4: “Musical Talent aren't good at Podcasting and/or are hard to manage.”

We are not even going to attempt to refute the mountains of evidence to back this up. There are plenty of musician-centric podcasts that are tedious and rambling, full of industry "inside baseball," knocked off in a hurry, etc. There are plenty of artists who struggle verbally (this is often WHY they are musicians), who can't commit to a schedule, or even keep to one when they do, who run out of things to say after a few episodes, or just lose interest in talking rather than singing or playing.

While the above is also true of many journalists, comedians, and sports personalities, we won't contest the fact that musicians (rightly) prioritize making music. We've heard stories from musicians who rejected podcasting because the producers expected them to show up to work every Tuesday morning, or who have been asked to do host-reads for products they find off-brand or downright offensive.

If these kinds of challenges scare you away, they shouldn't.

Because musicians have great stories. Music podcasting is still about stories and connection with the listener, and musicians excel at both.

Here's the good news.

These challenges apply to every endeavor in a musician's career, from recording to touring to promotion. There is an entire creative class of music industry pros who have spent their lives working within and around these limitations. It takes four things:

·      Patience

·      Planning

·      Experience

·      The creative mindset required to position a project for success

Patience: Successful musicians may be verbal or nonverbal; mercurial or dependable; principled or craven; but what they are all is BUSY. Recording, touring, and promotion are the main business, and they demand a lot of artists' time and attention. So, it may take them a proverbial minute to latch onto a podcast project.

Planning: Related to the above, the only way to work successfully with artists is to make sure they allocate the time in their schedule. This may mean doing all your recording for a dozen episodes in a day, in a studio, at their home, or on the road. It might require recording late into the night and on weekends. It always requires time for approvals. It means having the experience to know when a schedule is going to be workable.

Planning also encompasses understanding the cycles of the industry. The various phases -- Record, Release, Promote, Tour, and (the underappreciated) Hiatus -- are often repeated, but not always across the same timetable. A podcast production needs to fit into these cycles. If it does, it can be a fantastic continuity tool, and enhance marketing and revenue. If it doesn't, it will probably not be renewed.

Experience: The music industry brings joy and excitement to the people. It can also be unforgiving -- mercurial, unrelenting, physically and mentally punishing. For every career professional on and offstage, there are 10 others who bounced off of it, either by choice or not. Not many people stick around long enough that the unpredictable becomes predictable -- that they can read the signs that keep things on the rails, even when the artist has gone off them. If you work with these people, your production will work out just fine. If you don't, well, we warned you.

The creative mindset required to position a project for success:

This is another way of saying: "An understanding of both the podcast medium and the artist ecosystem." First of all, whatever you do and whomever you work with, it's gotta be a great show. Most of the time, you can't just throw a musician and a sidekick into a studio with two microphones and let them go (though if you do, it can be a better soporific than Ambien). But it is possible to frame out a limited or continuing series that constantly refreshes itself and doesn't kill the Golden Goose (the artist). There are many, many models. Choosing the right ones involves understanding the needs of podcast and the needs of the artists, presenting sustainable podcast options while listening to the artists and their teams. These are, after all, people who have built their own brands from scratch. They know a few things.

So yeah, most music talent aren't good at podcasts, and most are hard to manage. But the former is common to all sorts of talent, and luckily, there are folks who are pretty good at the latter. (Guess who?)

Next: "Rights and licensing are too much of a hassle/too expensive."