How to Store and Backup Your Podcast Audio Files

In this episode of Podcasting Q&A, Jordan shares how a close call with losing her podcast files changed her workflow and how you can protect your content too.

Learn what podcast files to back up, where to store them, and how often to save your work so you never risk losing your episodes. 

If you have questions for the Podcaster Success Team, reach out to us by emailing support@buzzsprout.com. 

Keep podcasting!

Transcript

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Welcome to Podcasting Q&A

Cara Pacetti 0:00

Welcome to Podcasting Q&A, brought to you by the people at Buzzprout. I'm your host, Cara Pacetti, and I'm bringing you the best tips and strategies to keep you podcasting with confidence. Let's go ahead and kick off this episode by jumping right into today's question. The question is: my podcast is hosted on a podcast hosting platform. So do I really need to back up my episodes myself, or is that already taken care of? To help me answer this question today, I have brought on Jordan to join me. Jordan is our podcast producer and actually hosts her own podcast called Dreamful. And so, Jordan, what is your initial response when getting this question?

Jordan Blair 0:41

I mean, you

Jordan's Personal Story Of Almost Losing Her Content

Jordan Blair 0:42

know, initial response is obviously yes, back up your work. Um, but I actually have a more guttural response to this just based on my own podcasting trauma. Oh I feel I knew you were gonna have a good answer. We have to hear the story. I have some life experience with this. So I'm I was really excited that you asked me to be on this episode because boy, do I have a story for you. So back in 2020, I had been podcasting for about six or seven months, and my podcast was really taking off, and I was just working, working, working as hard as I could. And I had this laptop that I had bought a year prior, and I had spent extra money on it because I was like, you know what? I'm gonna get like a thousand dollar laptop and it's gonna be such a nice laptop, and I'm gonna do my work and it's gonna handle my audio editing. And I crashed it with my audio software. It completely crashed and it never turned back on again. No, yes. So before I panicked, I have some connections with law enforcement. And I happen to know a forensic IT specialist who is he works with the detective agency here and like um is able to retrieve stuff off of hard drives that criminals actively try to destroy, right? So this is his specialty. So I send him my hard drive, and I kid you not, he gets back to me and says, I've never seen anything like it. It is as if this hard drive never had any data on it ever. Oh, man. And so everything was gone. And I was devastated because my theme song, my husband wrote my theme song on our porch, and I doubt he would ever be able to play it again because it was like capturing lightning in a bottle, and I lost my artwork file, and I lost everything, and I was just so distraught because everything was finally taking off, and I was like, I can't believe I didn't back it up, but I just thought to myself, I have a brand new computer, nothing could ever happen. And so that is my story on that. I will say that luckily I did happen to have a file folder for whatever reason on my Google Drive. And I don't know why it was on there. It must have been an accidental drag and drop, but I was able to get the source files for my theme music and my artwork. Thank goodness from that. It was the Little Mermaid, so Little Mermaid saved my podcast. The Little Mermaid. The Little Mermaid Saved My Podcast. Oh my goodness. But yeah, so I am a huge proponent of back everything up. Do not have happened to you what happened to me. I was doing everything right. I was investing in things, and it still kind of blew up for me. So lesson learned.

Cara Pacetti 3:31

Oh my goodness. I'm glad there was a silver lining in your story. Yeah. We get these messages in support, and sometimes they don't have that silver lining. It is the hardest email to get when we hear that podcasters have lost all of their content. And the worst part is it is preventable. You gotta be strategic and you have to plan ahead. And it's a little tedious, but it's preventable. And sometimes we learn the hard way. Like I bet you have multiple sources now of your audience. I do. Yes.

Jordan Blair 4:01

Never again.

Cara Pacetti 4:03

So you beautifully described why I wanted to record this episode. So I don't want to see this happen to our podcasters. I it's it's very sad. So I want to walk through some of the suggestions that we have for backing up your content so that you do not find yourself in this situation. To get started,

What Content Should Be Backed Up

Cara Pacetti 4:21

I want to first go through what we should be backing up. So there's a lot of parts to a podcast. What are the most important elements of your podcast that you really need to make sure you're saving in multiple places?

Jordan Blair 4:34

Just based on my experience, I definitely think uh source files, which source files are going to be the assets that are like, you know, the pillars of your podcast. So we're talking cover art, we're talking any branding assets, uh, social media templates that you like to use, templates for outlines, things like that. Your theme music definitely needs to be backed up. So I think I think those to me are very important and definitely stand out just in case something drastic happens. Kara, do you have anything that you have not backed up that you were wished you had?

Cara Pacetti 5:11

Sadly. Yes. Actually, uh, I was recording a Podcasting Q&A episode and I saved the raw audio to my computer, made my edits, did not make a copy, saved my edits, and clicked that little button that asked, Do you want to override the file on your computer? And then come to find out I actually needed to undo some things and there was no going back because the raw original audio had already been manipulated. And so I had no backup. But let me tell you, I learned my lesson. I am constantly backing up my audio now. So it really takes one time. And thankfully mine was was uh recoverable. The episode still went live and we were able to make it work. But uh yes, it was not a good feeling to know that my one source of audio had been changed.

Jordan Blair 5:58

I've actually done that very similar sort of thing, and it was the audio file will be titled similarly to the first one, or it will be titled the exact same, where it'll be like track one dash mic one, and you'll just drag and drop it. And then if you accidentally replace the file, then the other file from your other podcast recording is corrupted, like it's it's replaced and gone. Yeah. I've done that before. Yeah, it's important. I think that's a great example.

Cara Pacetti 6:22

Yeah,

The Importance Of Organizing Your Content

Cara Pacetti 6:23

and that goes back to that being tedious and intentional. I've found that I can kind of get in a rush and I maybe don't want to label things right, or like you said, you're dragging and dropping, you're just moving on to the next thing, but it's in those quick moving moments that you could create an issue that's long lasting. So absolutely. So, so backing up your raw audio, your final published episodes, although they are on your hosting site and on your directories, I still recommend backing those up locally. So no one is immune to this. This can happen to anybody where you can lose your content for whatever reason, whether it be a mistake or just life happening, you can lose it. So it's important to be really intentional about saving your hard work. That leads us to our next point. Where should you store the content to

Where To Save Your Content

Cara Pacetti 7:10

keep it safe? One rule of thumb is to have one local copy and one cloud copy, which saved you in that situation. So, Jordan, what are some places or how do we do that? Have that one local and one cloud copy?

Jordan Blair 7:22

Based on my experience, my personal recommendation and really what I myself do is I have my files backed up in like three different places. So I have a Dropbox subscription. You can use Google Drive, you can use anywhere like that, and just make sure that you have at the very minimum have your, you know, source files, like your artwork, theme song, things like that saved on there. And then also I recommend storing your episodes on there if you do have the storage size for that. Also, buying an external hard drive. They're really not that expensive anymore. It used to be expensive like 10 years ago to get one of them, but now it's not. So I actually have multiple external hard drives hanging around my house and I've got file cabinet and they were locked in there and I have everything stored on there. I know some people will use just like a USB thumb drive and they'll make sure that they store the important podcast stuff on there and keep it in. It's it just kind of like safeguards you in many different ways because, you know, when you're storing things on a cloud account, especially with like Dropbox, for example, if you lose your credit card or something happens and then, you know, you lose access to that, well, then those are gone because it's a third party. But if you have an external on hand, then you never lose those unless some sort of like natural disaster happens, in which then the cloud would become the backup.

Cara Pacetti 8:49

Thankfully, the cloud failing is much more common than the natural disaster. So yes, hopefully, yes. So, yes, absolutely. Having that hard drive, that external location. Great advice. And uh speaking from from someone who lived it.

How To Backup Your Content Through Buzzsprout

Cara Pacetti 9:03

So the last point that I want to touch on is if you're hosted here with BuzzSprout, we actually make it really easy to back up your content from your Buzzsprout account. The easy way to do that is just to head to settings, podcast settings in your Buzzsprout account. And you'll see on the top line uh the option to back up. And from there, right from your BuzzSprout account, you can download your episode files, your artwork, your RSS feed, and even your episode transcript. Wow. We make it really easy. And a lot of people are asking for their transcripts just for their own use. Maybe it's not because they're trying to back up their content, but they just want to be able to have that information on hand.

Jordan Blair 9:39

Oh, yeah. If you're like writing a book or something like that, I love that.

Cara Pacetti 9:42

Yeah, so very uh easy to use, easy to get to. So now that we have gone through the importance of backing up your content logistically, how to do it if you're hosted here on Buzz Sprout and where to save all of your content. The last point is

How Often Should You Backup Your Podcast

Cara Pacetti 9:55

how often should we be backing up our content?

Jordan Blair 9:58

Well, I think that you should be backing up probably after each episode, or even, you know, if you're like me, several times during the episode creation process, you'll just be continually backing everything up. But after each episode or weekly is totally good. Even monthly is a step up from never. Absolutely. Yeah. If you're someone who it feels so strenuous or tedious to just continually back up and you're like, I don't want to do this. At least do it once a month, at the very least. That will save you someday for sure.

Cara Pacetti 10:31

I feel like it's kind of along the lines of you do things and your future self will thank you that you did them. That's a great example here. Your future self will love that you organize those files and you back them up and you put them where they needed to be. And like I said, it's tedious in the moment, but your future self will love that you did that. And you can easily recall information if you need it or yeah, super helpful.

Jordan Blair 10:56

Just take an hour. I mean, if we're going even less, like even more bare bones backing up your podcast, just take an hour after and make sure that you do cover art, theme music, anything like that, and just make sure you organize it and it's labeled podcast, break in case of emergency if you want in the folder, whatever you want to call it. And just make sure that's backed up on several different platforms. Yes. Great advice.

Cara Pacetti 11:22

If you'd like some more information on backing up your content so you never find yourself in a situation like this, please reach out to us on the podcaster success team by emailing support at buzzsprout.com. Jordan, thank you so much for being here and sharing your stories and your lessons learned so that we don't have to do them ourselves. My pleasure. If you have any of your own proven methods for backing up your podcast, we'd love to hear about it. Just send us a text using the send us a text link in the show notes. You can also use that text to send in any questions that you'd like to see answered on a future podcasting QA episode. Be sure to join us every Monday to kickstart your week. Thank you so much for listening. And as always, keep podcasting.