Oh, no, please, delegate away!
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Definitely.
Absolutely! 
I’ll see how far I get Sunday the 19th. Next day i have time for it is Monday the 28th.
What would you consider to be examples in this regard? I also use podcasts… but almost exclusively to listen to BSWA Dhamma talks… 
EDIT: If you wish to add me to the SC GitHub, my profile is https://github.com/rpdejonge
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Has made / supported smaller ‘upstarts’ some podcasts I find interesting, in places for different sets of reasons.
I haven’t really listened to many of their offerings, but early episodes of Start Up—their first offering, before they new they would survive—documents a guy (ex public radio chap) trying to start up his new Podcast company, and goes some way to giving an account of why the space is interesting / what can be done with it / the potential he has seen.
Then less on the ‘company’ side, but just a couple of things that I’ve found can be engaging (and also interest me with respect to why I think they’re engaging hint: it’s not necessarily about production values, but people sharing what they love and being thoughtful about what they do, the world around them etc and setting up a good conditions for conveying that).
https://stackoverflow.blog/podcasts/
Then just a random episode that stuck in my mind of a podcast I’ve only listened to once:
Episode 656: Why Management History Needs to Reckon with Slavery
And well this is I guess just my final admission that I have some issues, but I can’t help it, I love it:
I trust you’ll take this as more or less a 5sec scribble that I’m not expecting to make a great deal of sense, but it is on the back of listening to things like these and a bunch of others (I didn’t even mentioned the awful ones which are also valuable reflection material when considering the components of something that works well) that some general ideas can be extracted.
If I’ve done it right you should have been sent an invitation. I’ll add you to the relevant tickets once accepted.
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Thanks for sharing, that’s a neat intro to Podcastland! 
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Well, it’s certainly an intro. There’d be many others. Including ones that maybe aren’t so USA centric. Funnily enough, I think I first only started listening to podcasts to get BBC Radio 4 content when I wanted it. That’s a different type of podcasting, much more along the lines of the streamed mp3 idea. I think it’s a very broad space in which a whole bunch of things happen.
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Today I listened to a lot of podcasts, which gave me some thoughts on the SuttaCentral Podcast (SCP). I’ll first share my ideas here to get some feedback, Monday the 28th i’ll get to the tickets. 
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The best podcasts feel energetic and strike a balance between arousing curiosity and satisfying it. The listener feels like they are around friends, who have interesting stories to tell. I’d like to soak the SuttaCentral Podcast in these qualities as well. That’s why I’d recommend waiting until we have human-narrated audios. Even though Amy, Raveena, and Russell are amazing—I love listening to them—I believe a podcast needs human voices. @Viveka, is this something you’re working on?
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With regard to structuring the actual podcast episodes, I also have a few thoughts. I’d like to keep the music to a minimum so that people who keep eight or more precepts won’t have to feel uncomfortable to tune in. Optionally we could use a gong sound, like SuttaCentral Voice (SCV). Then a short introduction to the sutta/suttas/vagga at hand, followed by a live or prerecorded narration of the sutta/suttas/vagga. Perhaps we might address sutta parallels afterward; giving some more depth for those interested–while keeping commentary on the sutta to a minimum. And then finish with a simple ‘thank you for listening’ message. Maybe 18-25 min total/episode.
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With regard to sutta/vagga selection: I envision loosely following the structure of the Pali canon, without dogmatic adherence. Episodes could also be grouped in larger wholes, for example, episodes on the Middle Discourses, perhaps in three “seasons.” I like the idea of publishing one episode per day, like the BSWA podcast. But maybe just start out with one episode/week.
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It would be amazing to use Ven @yodha’s artwork for the icons of sutta episodes. I’m thinking of using one doodle for each larger whole of episodes, analogous to how @Gus used one drawing for the first volume of the Middle Discourses, and another for the second volume.
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I’m leaving the question of podcast client and audio software selection open. Just for illustration purposes, I have created one sample episode with Podbean. Unfortunately, Podbean is not free (I think the BSWA uses the premium version). However, the free version is pretty good. This test episode consists only of an mp3 downloaded from SCV. In a way, i like the rawness of it, but i don’t think it would work well with a broader audience… Don’t worry about the web address; the SuttaCentral Podcast will get its own.
Some concluding remarks…
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Everything I have proposed here is up for debate. Please share your ideas and suggestions!
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I’m not a native English speaker myself, so for the introductions and thank you message I’d need some help.
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Sorry, I haven’t read the rest yet, and I can’t give it anything more than the quickest skim just this minute, but really, you’ve nailed it in just this sentence. It gives me the warm and fuzzes to read that you hear these qualities too.
Thanks so much for the magnificent work you’ve put into this, I can’t wait to have a more leisurely read.
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Yes this is something that I can start working on next week. I’ve been working on Pali pronunciation, within the English texts, but that aspect will be a continuing learning process.
Perhaps what you want for the podcast can direct the order of voice recordings ?
Plus I have to mention, that while I’m willing to do this I don’t know how pleasant my voice is to listen to. Perhaps I should do a bit of a test, just in case 
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That’s great to hear. Just so you know, I haven’t forgotten! In fact I have made some inquiries about getting a mic, and we may have one here soon. We’ll see how that goes and see about getting one for you, too.
I’m thinking of doing some recordings myself. Reading my own translations is really useful, you get a feel for the cadence of it.
It sounds like the best thing to do with the podcasts will be to have a single session, reading and introducing the sutta.
That sounds fine.
I’m sure she’d be happy to do this.
Remember, we have our own SC theme music, from the Vimeo video. We can use this, or get it remixed.
So how does this work? When you make a podcast, does it go over a “channel”? Do only some clients work with it, or all of them? How are things discovered?
Should the timing be consistent, or should we follow the sutta? The basic issue is that SC itself is strongly structured around the sutta as an entity. If we start doing things like breaking up a long sutta into several sessions, or combining short suttas into one, we make the integration with SC or SCV bucketloads harder. Perhaps we should start by choosing suttas of about 20 minutes reading time, and worry about the length problem later.
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Looking forward to this!
I think it is a great thing to read one’s own translations aloud. For the few I have done so far I always did this, and it also helped me in fine-tuning the translation itself.
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Thanks for this. Now I’m finally established back home I can get into a nice routine again
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Great, well, we’ll let you know as things evolve.
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This is amazing!
Sure, perhaps we can start with the Majjhima. They seem the most straightforward to adapt to podcast episodes.
Sounds good to me.
Thank you for the reminder. That sounds wonderful. Is there an mp3 with the SC theme music?
If I understood it correctly, you first need a “host” for your podcast, like Podbean. They store your audio files and allow you to create a podcast and episodes. They also give you an RSS feed for your podcast. This RSS feed can be used to distribute your podcast to popular directories like iTunes. I found this overview article about distribution:
I agree. Perhaps start with the Majjhima?
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I’ve been surveying the podcast world a little bit, and I’ve learned some things!
- The ecosystem is built on RSS, so effectively you can DIY.
- It’s pretty easy to set up on something like Jekyll. We use jekyll for our monastery website, it’s handy cause it’s just markdown files on Github.
- That kind of system is good because we can ensure that it’s always ad-free. However
- You still have to host the audio files somewhere.
- Another option is to host on a podcast provider. After a bit of checking, it seems the cool kid on the block is Anchor.fm.
- Unlimited use for free, forever.
- Okay!
- The catch? So far as I can see, they rely on a similar model to Lulu.com for books: they assume most creators will want to make money, then they take a cut. So it should be fine for us.
- You can edit audio in their app, which may be okay, so long as we keep backups.
Thoughts?
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This is a great idea! When I was recording the voiceover for the promo video I wondered if there would be a chance to do more. I wouldn’t have access to that same engineering situation, but I’m happy to do some work in Striped Bath Towel Studios. 
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Thank you, I didn’t know about Jekyll or Anchor. I signed up for Anchor with username SuttaCentral and my own email address. Is there another email address we can use? After changing the email address i can PM the password to the relevant parties.
That’s nice to hear! Seems like we have quite a team! 
@Nadine, if you’d like to record a ‘welcome to the SuttaCentral podcast’ and ‘thank you for listening’ message for at the end, that would be awesome! I might know someone who could remix the SC theme music (for free), but then i’d need an mp3 of the music. Does anyone know where i can find this? It would be cool to integrate the (possibly remixed) theme music and the welcome and thank you messages.
I think it’s best to make two separate recordings for the suttaplex description of each sutta and the sutta itself and edit them together in the podcast episodes. Speaking of podcast episodes, let’s start small with one try-out episode. Is there any discourse you’d like to record first, @Viveka? Afterward, we can post the episode here to get some feedback, and take it from there.
Suggestions are welcome, as always
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I haven’t read the whole thread but you’d be most welcome to use the doodles for this.
If you need a doodle for a specific sutta or topic, let me know and I’ll see what I can do.
I’ve uploaded some doodles in low quality because I’ve had to save bandwidth lately. If you need a better resolution, let me know.
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Well this is excellent!
Cool, well let’s go ahead with that. Can you assign multiple emails to the account, or how does that work?
Shouldn’t be necessary, we can ask the composer to do it!
Sounds perfect. It seems, in fact there might be a series of things;
- opening theme
- generic intro
- Blurb
- sutta
- generic outro
- closing theme.
probably each should be a separate segment?
Thx v much!
We have someone coming over today with a mic, so we might be able to do a first pass later today. It sounds like it’ll be a communal thing, with different readers, so that with be nice!
I asked Blake whether it would in principle be possible to integrate audio with our new Bilara translation engine. He said it shouldn’t be too hard, so that may be cool. The advantage there would be that we can record on a segmented basis, interspersing pali and English optionally, and adding other languages over time, much like the voice app. But this won’t happen any time soon!
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That’s so kind of you! Thank you!
Unfortunately not.
Okay!
I think that would be best.
Absolutely. I didn’t mention it in my first post, but I envisioned different people reading the suttas. Implicitly emphasizing how the suttas are humanity’s shared heritage.
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