Sharing Yoga Teaching Audio Recordings As Podcasts
Recording the classes that I teach allows me to share the recording with others as well as be a student in my own class and see how the practice lands with me when I'm on my mat. I use a Sanyo Xacti ICR-XPS01M but there are many new digital voice recorders on the market now.
I use Audacity to edit the audio files. It is a free app and they have a version for Windows and Mac computers. To edit the ID3 MP3 tags on the mp3 files, I use a Mac app called tagr, Windows users could use mp3nity. After I've adjusted the levels and trimmed the beginning and end of the audio files in Audacity, I export my mp3 audio into a constant bit rate format at 96kb and save the files to mono not stereo (to keep the file size of the audio tracks smaller).
A friend who runs a podcast recommend that I setup an account with libsyn.com. I chose the $15/month option because each one hour mp3 I have is about 45MB. If the classes that I teach go well, I'll be uploading at least four classes a month, so I chose the 250MB/month plan. I found a discount code on a podcasting website to get the first month free with this code: TBW.
The podcast show art was created in Photoshop, but there are several free online image editing tools that could be used. Pixlr is one I've heard of people using. Libsyn lists the requirements for show art file sizes here.
Once I'd created my show art and tagged my mp3s, I uploaded my files and filled out the show notes for each audio recording.
Getting the podcast published into the iTunes directory was a matter of following the steps on Apple's podcast site, testing my RSS feed with iTunes (each hosting provider will have a way for you to find the RSS URL of where your files will be found by iTunes or Google Play. As a Libsyn user, I had to take my RSS URL (http://jentechyoga.libsyn.com/
If you see your podcast content in itunes, you know the RSS feed is working properly.
The next step was to validate the podcast through Apple's Podcasts Connect. This was a little trickier because the steps listed in Apple's how-to document online didn't work. I found the link to Podcasts Connect after doing some googling.
The next step was to validate the podcast through Apple's Podcasts Connect. This was a little trickier because the steps listed in Apple's how-to document online didn't work. I found the link to Podcasts Connect after doing some googling.
Now the audio classes I've uploaded are viewable in iTunes and Google Play. You can subscribe and download the mp3s for your home practice or if you'd like to take a class from your hotel room when you're traveling for work (like I sometimes do).
Putting my recordings into iTunes and Google Play took a little more time (and money) than setting up profiles on Bandcamp and Mixcloud did, but I've seen way more activity with the podcasts than in Bandcamp/Mixcloud. I hope you enjoy some of the classes I've published. If you do, please let me know!
Putting my recordings into iTunes and Google Play took a little more time (and money) than setting up profiles on Bandcamp and Mixcloud did, but I've seen way more activity with the podcasts than in Bandcamp/Mixcloud. I hope you enjoy some of the classes I've published. If you do, please let me know!
