3 Hour Music Podcast Playing Newer & Emerging Artists

I am Michael Mitchell Aka...Mitch. I can’t believe it, but I’m 56 years old. After the first 25 they have absolutely jetted by at a furious pace. I am the co-host of Cowboy’s Juke Joint. Basically a life long Michigan resident except for about a year; or so, stint in Clearwater, FL when I was a kid. I am married since 1987 to a wonderful person named Gwen Ann and we have 4 grown children. My wife and I live in a small community on the shore of Lake Michigan since 2016, and with our dog’s.

I worked for an environmental company; which basically recycled manufacturing and automotive wastes, for over a quarter century and am currently retired.

Our podcast is a 3 hr music podcast playing newer and emerging artists from around the world playing the harder side of blues & some southern style jam rock (basically rock & roll from artists who are actually alive and trying to make a living making killer good music).

Cowboy’s Juke Joint is dedicated to the thousands of artists around the world creating incredible music you never hear because FM radio is a complete joke.

Why we started the podcast, because Mike and I were doing a live radio show which supported and promoted the artists around the world nobody knows about, but are definitely talented enough to be heard, so we started posting the recorded shows as a podcast to reach more listeners, especially since it's very difficult to get people’s attention on a certain day and time these days. Plus many of our listeners are from overseas and the time zone differences makes it sleep prohibitive to listen live at 8:00 PM EST. I do listen to other podcasts for sure. They're all music podcasts though. I’ve never been a fan of talk shows. I think we actually started podcasting the shows in May of 2017. Mike started the show early in 2016, so it was a year of live shows before we posted our first podcast episode. Our original motivation was we were disgusted at how ridiculously insulting FM radio is by playing the same old garbage songs every day over and over again. We knew there were more than 10 bands with two songs each in the world and set out to show music lovers how duped they were by FM frequencies.

Well our show is live on two online radio stations every week on Sunday night. We record the show and post as a podcast Monday morning, so doing the math we post 1 episode a week. On the podomatic site it literally only takes a few minutes to post our recorded episode. I find the time easily because I am retired. Mike on the other hand is not retired but he is a freak of nature and is constantly doing a thousand things at once. I think he finds the time because he doesn’t sleep. Well since there are two of us we share the costs for everything. We spend the most money buying the music from the artists we play; however we’re starting to get more and more artists sending us their tunes for the show, but we still spend quite a bit. The podcast hosting sites; where you initially post your content, and it feeds to digital platforms from there; are anywhere from $200-$800 a year. Editing and marketing/social media is where an enormous amount of time is spent.

Well right now we earn nothing but the satisfaction of supporting worldwide artists that make incredible music which the masses never hear because people are creatures of habit and have such busy minds they still turn on FM radio and listen to the same 10 songs from 40 years ago. We’re hoping to change that, because incredibly good music is there to be heard easily online and it’s as easy as turning your radio on with today’s technology. We have yet to receive any sponsorships, but would be happy to do so. The friendships from the artists and their fans is the current gain for us and we appreciate it greatly.

Mike and I both have recording equipment we use ie... mixers, mics, laptops, a program called Discord so we can connect with each other from different parts of the country, but that’s because the content is much better with this equipment and because we broadcast our show live from two online radio stations vwradio.co & rotrradio.rocks
For someone to do just a podcast all you need is a device really. Our podcast host site is Podomatic.com Interviewing we message the bands we play and ask them to be on the show or they message us and ask if they can be on the show. We use Discord app or the skype app to connect with them. We do some interviews live on the show on Sunday and we do some pre-recorded. Live or recorded is dictated by the time zone differences. We prepare each show by Mike and I each choosing half of the playlist for each show. Recorded interviews are edited by Mike as he is an editing genius. We like to introduce new artists to our audience each week by playing their tunes for the first time and telling a bit about them. We find them through social media or by searching BandCamp or other music platforms like Spotify etc.

We market our show by word of mouth and social media. Listeners find our show on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The two online radio stations we broadcast live from weekly promo our show too. Also our podcast host site Podomatic feeds our show’s rss feed out to all of the digital music platforms we sign up with. iTunes, Googlemusic, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn Radio and Podomatic has an app too or people can listen right from Podomatic site. And of course you can find us on Listen Notes. We do not have a breakdown of where people are listening. Mostly from Spotify, iTunes and directly from Podomatic is best guess. Instagram and Facebook are the most engaging social sites.

My advice is it’s not as complicated as it seems. It just takes time so if you’re passionate about sharing something don’t give up on it; and it takes a lot of work and persistence. You have to work ahead and make sure you have enough viable content to keep it going. People tend to follow podcasters with multiple episodes at consistent intervals If they like it they will look forward to it at the same consistent posting intervals and if you drop the ball you lose their trust and they will move on. On our journey I’ve learned it takes much time these days to grab peoples attention and consistent work to keep it. YouTube is a great place to learn about podcasting. Many will share their info gladly just make sure you find the ones who were or are successful at it. You shouldn’t have to pay for it either. Cowboy’s Juke Joint Facebook page is the best place to check us out. Mike is working on our own website cowboysjukejoint.com it is currently under construction. You can message us on FB or email us cowboysjukejoint@gmail.com

Search for us on any digital music streaming site or podcasting site. You can go to our podcast host site
cowboysjukejoint.podomatic.com or to facebook.com/CowboysJukeJoint/ Where you can find all of our info and links.