🧼It's time to clean up your podcast

It's 2025. To get attention, you have to give attention first

It’s the end of Spring Cleaning here at PMM, and we’re going out with what may be one of our most difficult suggestions yet. We’ve told you about cleaning up your CTAs, your trade partnerships, and your promos. Now, it’s time to talk the big one: it’s time to brush the dust off the quality of your podcast overall.

It’s 2025. Gone are the days when laptop mics and no editing could still result in a beloved show. If you want more attention for your podcast, you have to give it that attention first.

If you only have time for one thing…

Keep an eye out for sales on Izotope RX. Not sponsored, just correct. (Though hey, Izotope, we’re wide open 😉.)

🎤 The audio quality

Way more often than you might think, we have to reject potential swap partners for clients because the podcast in question simply doesn’t sound good. Even if the content is there, we don’t want to set up pitches where we know the audience will bail on the podcast friend in 10 seconds because of the sound.

By now, podcast audiences have ears trained for quality. I think about this in terms of video games: we started with an audience used to Lara Croft Triangle Boobs, and we loved her for it, but now that shit would not fly if not for the nostalgia. Now, we need Lara Croft with Visible Flyaway Hairs. And we love her for it!

The same is true for podcasts. The audience can hear when you’re in a room with no sound treatment instead of making a blanket fort or resorting to the tradition of recording in your closet. The audience can hear when the gain on your Blue Yeti is way too high or you’re speaking into the top in front of the side (rookie mistake, read the manual babes) – in fact, they might even be able to hear that you’re on a Blue Yeti to begin with.

Via David Jackson on YouTube, thank you hero

You don’t have to invest lots of money to make big changes. I’m serious about the blanket fort/closet as recording studio. There are so many incredible budget mics out there that can make a world of difference.

At the very least, I cannot recommend Izotope RX enough. This plugin is the GOAT, to the point where audio professionals use it like a verb (“I gotta Izotope this raw audio”). It’s user-friendly and super adaptive to help with things like reducing ambient reverb, cleaning up background noise, and helping with plosives and mouth clicks. It’s pricey – BUT it goes on sale for chump change a few times a year. Keep an eye out for a sale, and then be ready for your life to change for the better.

✂️The editing

One of my biggest pet peeves – second only to “I don’t listen to podcasts, I just make one” – is people who think not editing is some kind of accomplishment or bragging right. That put-on aloofness gives me more secondhand embarrassment than watching something like the works of Nathan Fielder, which consistently make me feel like I was going to anxiety puke to death.

Not editing your podcast does not make you cool. It’s not cool to loudly not give a shit. Doesn’t your audience, who I would hope give a shit about your podcast, deserve better? And don’t your peers who do make an effort deserve more respect? If you’re not making an effort, you actually are not entitled to the same benefits and acclaim as people who do.

There’s the very slimmest chance that your podcast doesn’t need a content edit. Maybe you read off a script, and you nail it in the first go every time. Maybe you and your cohost genuinely have a rapport and rhythm perfect enough that editing for content would actually impede your flow (this is only true if you are Nicole Byer and Sasheer Zamata, and even then, Best Friends has regretfully ended).

I urge you, even in these cases, to just try to edit. Give it a shot. Give both cuts someone who doesn’t already listen to your podcast and see which they prefer. I’m gonna bet they enjoy the version without long pauses or coughs or drinks being opened or 15-minute-long tangents more.

📖The content

What is your show about? Like, really about? There’s two tiers I think about when I ask myself this question:

1. First, the elevator pitch for the show: the basic subject of discussion.

2. But then, what the show is saying about that subject. What lies between the lines?

My podcast Nevermorphed is about reading the Animorphs books for the first time in my 30s (Tier 1). It’s also about nostalgia, healing my ✨inner child✨, the power of books to bring us together, reconnecting with friends through profound conversations, and the ways history repeats itself in times of conflict and war (like for real, turns out these books go hard as hell) (Tier 2).

Yes, these books, for real

Now that you have your Tier 1 and Tier 2, look at your podcast and make sure every single aspect of it is serving those tiers. Would having segments instead of just open conversation contribute to those tiers? Would giving your audience actionable tips each episode contribute? Does your music, your intro, your outro, contribute? Does the topic of each episode individually contribute, or do the topics sort of just happen?

And I do have to say: If it’s a show in which a few friends talk about whatever is on their mind, you might find an audience, sure – but that market is pretty cornered by celebrities right now. Why would folks check out your show and not a show by someone they already know things about?

Try niching down. Try finding a consistent topic of discussion you can return to. Find your two tiers, and make sure they’re important to you. Be intentional, and be real about what’s serving your and what’s not.

---

✨ More Magic

• Reminder!: Entries for the BBC’s International Audio Drama Competition 2026 are now open. Those interested can submit here.

• On a personal note, I just wrapped up being a mentor at AIR’s Amplify New Voices program, and I am proud beyond words of every single member of the cohort. This 8-week intensive marketing course had some amazing presentations from industry professionals, all of which you can view here. You can also view the final presentations from the cohort, and please do. They’re beautiful. Mentees, it’s been an honor to share my knowledge with you and learn from you in kind.

• Heading off to The Podcast Show in London? A bunch of Tinksters will be there — and I’m LOVING this edition of Andreea’s Eurowaves all about the event:

  Special Spotlight on...The Podcast Show 🎙️🇬🇧

🎧 From the Desk of Tink

It’s been an extremely, extraordinarily rough time for queer and trans people lately (reminder: hi hello, I’m one of those, a bona fide they/them). I have been finding so much comfort and joy in the queer as hell podcast One of Us with Fin and Chris by Good Get. In new imagined universes, the hosts meet new guests to add to their Best Friend Squad. It’s silly, it’s sweet, and it always catches me by surprise in the best ways possible.

---

And so concludes Spring Cleaning month! Coming next . . . it’s time for a vibe check. 😎🔮 Shreya returns next week with more magic!

– Wil 🦇