Can podcast AI really help me (and you) save time and energy?

It’s a great feeling when you’ve completed all the editing, added the intro, outro and music, and you upload your podcast episode to your host.

Hoorah, that’s another episode done.

Except it isn’t.

Now you have to come up with an attention-grabbing title, write show notes so people on the podcast apps know what the episode is all about, and write social media captions so you can shout about the episode to your audience. (Some podcasters also like to write full newsletters about an episode.)

I can do these things – I’m actually quite good at them, as a text editor by trade I can write pretty well – I just don’t want to!!

I’m not being lazy, it’s just a job I wish someone else could do for me.

Someone else can, of course, I just can’t afford them. I don’t make any money from this show, I do it for the love (unfortunately the starving artist myth is not so mythical when it comes to my podcast).

So, it’s back to the computer for an extra hour of composing ‘listen-to-my-show,-it’s-great’ sales material.

‘What about AI?’ I hear you cry. Surely a bot can write all that for you.

You’re right, theoretically a bot can do that for me, and, do you know what, there are a number of podcast-specific platforms that do just that.

Ginger cat inserted because ginger cats are cool.

So rather than saving myself time, I decided to put extra time and energy into comparing a number of those platforms to see which one I liked best.

The answer is, annoyingly, a little bit from that one, and a little bit from that one.

None of them are completely perfect, for me.

Now I don’t expect any platform to get it spot on. I know I will need to edit, make it my own, tweak it, etc., but which one is the closest to what I want, will save me the most time, and is cost effective? Which one do I want to spend money on and won’t get annoyed with?

To be honest, I haven’t decided yet, but I have made a table (I love tables)! And I am happy to share it with other podcasters who share my frustrations and want to choose the right AI platform to help them save time on their show.

Here’s what I did

I put the same audio file onto five platforms

• Swell AI
• Podium
• Castmagic
• Buzzsprout Co-host (my show’s hosting site)
• Podcast Marketing AI

In the table I have popped the results from each platform in the categories of

• Titles
• Summary
• Answers to a specific chat prompt

 On the first page of the table I have included a summary of what each site offers and costs.

In a separate table I have added the same section of the transcript from each platform, with the addition of Otter AI, who I currently use for transcripts and chapter markers, but they do not do the show notes, social media, etc.

Do you wanna see my tables?

I bet you’re chomping at the bit!

Before you access the files via the links below, please note that this article and these tables do not rate the platforms or claim that any one is better than the other. They are a tool for comparison only.

You may like the style of one of the platforms and not another. The platform you like may have a style that I don’t like.

But I’m not here to claim that any one of them is the best, that’s for you to decide for yourself and your show.

Apologies to Anna

And finally, I’d like to apologise to my guest, host of The Story of Woman podcast, Anna Stoecklein, that none of the platforms spelt her name correctly, although that is not surprising, it’s not like her name is Brown!

Here's Anna with Hillary Clinton and Cherie Blair. Like ginger cats, Anna is cool.

The episode in question is Episode 80, released on June 12th 2023. The comparisons were made in late May 2023.

Click here for the titles and summaries table.

Click here for the transcripts table.

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