Two karaoke nerds talk about music, and interview singers, comedians, actors, musicians, and authors with a karaoke connection

We've been close friends for well over a decade, bonded by our love of karaoke. With a massive pandemic and a few hundred miles separating us from karaoke and each other, we figured the best way to get through the rough, karaoke-free months was to start a karaoke-themed podcast, and we just kept rolling with it as things continued to open up. Obviously, our listeners are people who love karaoke, but our goal is to make the podcast accessible to anyone.
 

Both of us listen to podcasts--Adam leans towards shows with a pop culture/comedy vibe, and Ed listens to a lot of music history, current events, and shows put out by NPR and WNYC. Our goals and motivations were to make a space for karaoke fans in the podcasting realm and on the internet, to help us feel more connected to a hobby that, at our peak, we were engaging with five to seven nights a week. We started in March of 2021, and have been releasing episodes biweekly ever since.
 

The time can be tough--we have very different schedules, and some segments have a guest, which can add some other scheduling difficulties. We find ways to make it work--an hour here, a half hour there. If you want to make the time to do something like this, you'll make the time. I can't say if we've spent a lot or a little on this, as that's all relative. The big costs were equipment, web conferencing software, a domain, and a web page designer. We're self-funded, and have no intention of monetizing things--right now, it's a joy to do, and within our hobby budgets. Trying to make money off it would make it seem like work, and we do enough work already.
 

We don't take sponsorships at all--this is strictly a labor of love. The offers have been there, but it doesn't seem worthwhile to make it a priority. It benefits us in other ways--we get to talk to some really cool people about this thing we love, and the times we record are usually one of the highlights of the week.
 

Currently, we record with each other and our guests via Zoom, as that seems to be an easy tool for the average guest, and then edit using Audacity. Episodes are planned in advance and scheduled using a bunch of google resources (Drive for show files, Calendar for scheduling). We approach guests based off of knowing that they're into karaoke, and will approach anyone if we think they would make for a good conversation on the topic. Segments and interviews aren't scripted, exactly, but we have a talk track generated of things we want to cover and touch on in the moment.
 

Well, we do post each episode on our show twitter, and then retweet those to our personal accounts. We haven't done anything like a mailing list yet, and we're not sure we will. We do have a web page up, though, with show notes, a blog section, and resources. Word of mouth is big for us, as it is with any podcast. We average about 40% of our listeners from Spotify, 30% from Apple, and 30% from other sources.
 

Talk to other podcasters about the process--even if your shows are completely different from others in the podcasting group you join, getting advice on the base production stuff is exceptionally useful when starting out. Either invest in better equipment and resources as you go, or right out of the gate--we can hear all the tweaks we've made and how far we've come from listening to the first episodes to the more current ones. If you can, wait until you have a few episodes built up and ready to go, and release a chunk of them on your launch day--we found our audience got a little "stickier" once we were at a binge-able amount of episodes.

And, most importantly--be bold. Just do it, whether it's starting up, or seeking guests. Any "no" you get places you in the exact same position you were in before you asked, and every "yes" moves you further along, so you're never really moving backward.
 

Our web site is https://www.sungpoorly.com, which has links to all our episodes and social media.