Fortunately, musicians know that the labels are all screwed up in the way they handle licensing. For many musicians, the publicity they could get from their songs being played on a podcast far outweighs the couple of dollars they might make from a licensing deal. So they’ve created a new category of music licensed especially for use in podcasts, called “podsafe music”.

There are several places on the Internet where you can download music to use in your podcast. Podshow’s Podsafe Music Network and Podsafe Audio are good sources with thousands of choices, arranged by genre, and artist. In most cases they ask only that you mention the artist, title, and the source of the song; some sites and artists ask that you let them know where they can find their songs being used, which seems like a nice thing to do in any case.

You could also record your own music, if you’re at all musically inclined. Either way, adding music to your podcast is fairly simple, using multi-track software like the free, open source program Audacity. What you’ll do is record the music and voice as two separate tracks. To do this, drag the song’s file into the Audacity window. The program will process for a moment and then a new track will appear with a waveform image of the song (showing the relative volume of each moment of the song).

Once the song is in place, you can crop it down to just the parts you want to use (highlight the part you want to keep and select “Edit > Trim” from the top menu). Then create a new track (“Project > New Audio Track”) and record the spoken part of your podcast (using the big “Record” button at the top — it’s the circular button with the red dot in it).

When you’ve recorded your spoken parts, select the “Time Shift Tool” — it’s the button at the top left that looks like a two-headed arrow) and you can click-and-drag your music to where you want it to appear — under your voice, maybe, or at the end of the show, or in a break. If you want more than one selection of music, you can keep adding new tracks by dragging in audio files, trimming them, and dragging them into place.

To make it sound really nice, you can adjust the volume of each track separately — there is a control (marked only “-” at one end and “+” at the other) on the left-hand end of each track. You can also add fade-ins and fade-outs, which are especially useful for the music that ends the show — click the button at the top-left with the icon that looks like an “I”, highlight the piece of music you want to add a fade-out to (or just the last 10 seconds or so), and select “Effect > Fade Out” from the top menu. To do a fade-in, do exactly the same thing but select “Effect > Fade-In” instead.

You can also cut parts you don’t like; just highlight them and select “Cut” from the “edit” menu. If you’re really patient, you can go through and edit out coughs, sneezes, and the inevitable “umms” and “uhhs” that creep in — you have to zoom in (using the button that looks like a magnifying glass) and listen carefully for the start and end of the piece you want to silence — highlight it and select “Generate > Silence” from the top menu.

Audacity has tons of features that are used by professional musicians to make their work sound better; you can play with it for a long time, discovering new effects and developing a cleaner, more polished sound. But the basics here are pretty much enough — as I said at the start of this series, people don’t seem to care all that much about the sound quality of podcasts, as long as it’s clear — what matters is what you have to say. For now, at least, people are very forgiving about podcasts, and a little bit of roughness around the edges seems to be reassuring. We listen to podcasts to hear ordinary people talk about their lives and passions; when we want slick, highly produced voices, we turn to professional radio.

A lot of fiction authors read their own work, either a short story or poem per episode, or a chapter of a longer work. There’s even a website, PodioBooks, devoted solely to author readings of their novels in serialized form. This might be a problem if you plan to later sell your work, as some publishers may balk at paying for work that’s already available for free online, but a few authors have managed it very well. Or you might choose to podcast work that you don’t intend for publication — and later collect that work for publication when you’re better established.

If you don’t write fiction, or just don’t feel like reading your work aloud, you can talk about topics related to your niche. Review books in your genre, or interview other authors, or talk about the writing process. Talk about news in your area of interest. Describe the places you traveled, or the people you’ve met, while researching your latest feature article.

You can think of a podcast as an audio (or video) blog — whatever you might blog about, you can podcast about. It’s probably not a good idea to simply read your latest blog posts; try to add something in your podcast your audience can’t get in your blog. But if you can add something to what you’ve blogged, it’s not a bad idea to use the podcast to expand the stories.

One thing to keep in mind is that podcasting is a very intimate medium, and just like talk radio, people value the interactivity of it. Make sure you give out an email address and tell your listeners that you value their feedback. You could also get a toll-free number and ask your listeners to leave you voicemail; Kall8 offers a personal toll-free number with lots of features for only $2 a month. Make sure you read your emails and play your voicemails on the show. And for the ultimate interactivity, use a service like BlogTalkRadio and take callers live on the air!

There are plenty of services that will host your files, though; Libsyn is a good choice that offers a lot of features, starting at $5 US a month. Another good choice is WordPress.com, whose free accounts allow you to store up to 3GB of files; you could have your podcast and notes on each episode at yourname.wordpress.com and just post the RSS link at your main site.

Now that it’s available, you want to start telling people about it. Mention it on your site, of course, but also make sure your podcast gets listed in the big podcast directories. The most important is iTunes; there’s a “Submit a Podcast” link in the podcast section of iTunes. Zune software also has a “Submit a Podcast” link in the podcast section. Just cut and paste your podcast’s feed address where instructed. For both iTunes and Zune, you need to have downloaded and installed the software here: iTunes and Zune. Note that you don’t need to own an iPod or Zune to use their software — iTunes works especially wll as a player and directory on your computer.

You should also submit your podcast feed to the big online directories, such as PodcastPickle and Podcast Directory. These are online sites that have built large communities of podcasters and podcast fans; they don’t require extra software. Again, find the link to “submit your podcast” (or something similar — each site is different) and cut and paste your site’s podcast feed address where directed.

Another option — especially if you want to do interviews or have more than one host — is to use Skype and a program designed to record Skype calls. This page lists several software options. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be any free software for this task yet. Or you can use a service like BlogTalkRadio to record podcasts using your telephone (you can even take live callers!) — BTR is free.

Video podcasts are a little trickier — you could use a webcam, but for real quality, you’ll need to use a video recorder that can download onto your computer. Most computers today come with rudimentary video editing software that should be fine for putting together your show.

20 years later, it’s almost embarrassingly easy to broadcast your voice to hundreds, thousands, even tens of thousands, using the power of the Internet. If you have something to say, it’s almost trivially easy to put together and distribute a podcast — and you can get started for practically nothing.

At its root, a podcast is just an RSS feed with audio or video files attached. Your listeners or viewers copy the RSS feed’s address into their podcast software, which automatically downloads each episode as it’s released and moves it onto their portable media player — an iPod, a Zune, or some other mp3 or video player.

To make one, all that’s necessary is a way to record yourself, a website to host the files and the feed, and… well, that’s it. You don’t need a deep “radio” voice or special broadcasting personality; what makes podcasts popular is the direct, one-on-one feel, their “homespun” qualities. Professional-sounding podcasts don’t do significantly better than amateur’s efforts — what’s important is that you say something worth listening to, not how you say it.