Is Blogging Easier than Podcasting?

I’m sure that many don’t feel this way, but for me, everything associated with the podcast takes literally 10 times longer to accomplish than for the blog. Blogging for me is fun, fast, and….easy, I suppose. Writing is quite enjoyable for me, and I just sit down and bang away at my keyboard for a few hours and *POOF* a whole new set of blog posts is wrapped up and ready to go.

But there’s nothing easy about podcasting! Even though I’ve recorded, mixed, and published over 100 audio and video episodes for Contrabass Conversations, the process seems to take just as long as it did for episode 1. I think (or I hope!) that I’ve gotten better at it, but no matter how efficient I get on my end it still takes a lot of time to collect user feedback, write up show notes, contact podcast guests, set up interview times, e-mail questions, set up gear to record the interview, edit the interview, record my dialogue, mix in music, encode to MP3, upload to the sever, write up show notes, set publish dates according to the podcast schedule, do follow-up e-mails, and (this takes the longest) promote the show through virtual and physical means.

I must spend 12-15 hours each week (and sometimes much more than that!) on the podcast, all for a once-a-week show that lasts about an hour. This is a lot more time than I spend blogging, especially with my new system of writing in a few chunks each week and then future posting all my content.

But I strongly feel that the podcast is the real substance of my online double bass activities, the sort of thing that will have permanence and be a useful part of the lives of bass players worldwide for years to come. I see such power in this medium, and I really think that this activity will have profound implications for the greater double bass community–much more so than doublebassblog.org.

I’m starting to frame the podcast as the Contrabass Conversations ‘network’, and I think that this is an apt term for it now that there are so many interrelated offerings falling under the same podcast umbrella.

For instance, we’ve now got the following mini-shows running at regular intervals:

• interview episodes
• all-music episodes
• excerpt analysis and educational shows
• virtual lessons
• Exploring Chamber Music series
• Story Time gig stories
• recitals
• video performances

While most of these offerings are audio, we’ve also got a lot of video that we’ve published, and we’ll continue to do so, both as pre-produced content and live content (more on that in the next few months–you’ll be into it!).

______________

I am a writer, or at least I’ve become a writer over the past few years, and I manage doublebassblog.org, a community site with bass news, resources, links and stories. But I really think that the podcast will be what people are accessing 10 or 20 years down the road. Doublebassblog.org is a good bass site (a darn good bass site, if I do say so myself!). I enjoy running it, and I will continue to do so for a long time to come and keep expanding it as a community resource. I will also continue to write articles, stories, books, and the like, about the bass and music but also about a wide range of other subjects. This is something that I enjoy doing, and while I do so under the guise of double bass and classical music at present, it may very well evolve into something else over time.

But the podcast is really something special, and I know that it will continue to evolve over time into an ever-greater resource for the bass community. The hope is to have it become essentially an audiovisual double bass channel, like the Food Network or the Travel Channel, but for bass, and accessible for free worldwide. We’re kind of at this point already, and I know that this will only be reinforced over time.

So stay tuned! And, if you feel like contributing in any way, don’t hesitate to get in touch! We’re featuring music from bass players worldwide now on Eclectic Bass, we’re interviewing new bassists from all genres each week, we’re doing educational projects like our excerpt breakdowns and virtual master classes, we’re putting out video performances, and we’re always on the prowl for new ideas, so please let us know if you’ve got ideas for the show or would like to contribute your time and energy in some fashion. As I mentioned earlier, this podcast takes a lot of work, and we’ve always got more tasks to do than time available, so if you’re feeling brave, let me know and I’d be happy to put you to work!