Cutting-Edge Podcasting: How AI is Changing the Game with w/Josh Nielsen

I recently sat down with Josh Nielsen, founder of Zencastr, to talk about how AI is revolutionizing podcast production. What started as a technical discussion about podcast tools quickly evolved into a fascinating conversation about the future of content marketing.

If you’ve been following me for a while, you know I’m passionate about finding tools that save time while improving quality. Zencastr has become my go-to for podcast production, and after speaking with Josh, I understand why it’s changing the game.

The Genesis of a Podcasting Revolution

Josh didn’t start out to build a podcasting platform. Back in 2013, he was actually building a tool for electronic musicians to collaborate online. That project didn’t work out, but it laid the groundwork for what would become Zencastr.

“As we were working on that and as that project kind of petered out, the browsers kept launching more and more features,” Josh explained. “When I started, you couldn’t access the microphone from a website. Then they launched this getUserMedia API.”

The turning point came when someone suggested focusing on podcasters instead of musicians. Josh initially shelved the idea, but a few years later – with a baby on the way – he revisited it.

When he interviewed podcasters, he found they were struggling with recording quality. They were either using Skype call recorders (which only recorded one side with decent quality) or asking guests to record themselves with Audacity (which was too complicated for most guests).

Many podcasters had simply stopped having guests because the technical hurdles were too high. Josh saw an opportunity to solve this problem with browser-based recording.

The Multi-Tool Problem in Podcasting

What struck me most about our conversation was how fragmented podcast production used to be – and still is for many creators:

“When we started Zencastr, people were using an average of like 6 or 7 different tools, spending 10 hours per episode sometimes jumping between all these services.”

I experienced this firsthand at Sweet Fish Media, where I was the Director of Audience Growth. Turning around a single podcast episode took our team two weeks! The workflow was ridiculous:

1. Producers had to download recordings from platforms like Riverside
2. Set up the project timeline for editing
3. Writers had to listen to the entire episode to write headlines and show notes
4. Find timestamps for important segments
5. Send clip instructions to video editors
6. Audio engineers had to clean up the audio
7. All assets had to be assembled in a Google folder and sent to clients
8. Clients still had to manually post everything

No wonder so many companies abandon their podcasting efforts – it was simply too much work!

How AI Changed Everything

What fascinated me was how early Zencastr was in embracing AI. Josh revealed they’ve had their own machine learning team for 3-4 years, primarily focused on cost-effective transcription.

“If we were doing all of our transcriptions through Google’s API, it would cost us like $200,000 a month. But with our own technology, we’re spending maybe $15-20 a month on transcriptions. And we’re only about 1% word error rate off of Google.”

This investment in AI transcription was just the beginning. The team quickly realized that once you have accurate transcripts, you can start understanding what people are talking about in the podcast – identifying topic transitions, interesting segments, and funny moments.

This led to features like automatic clip detection and social media publishing – capabilities that once required an entire production team.

The Content Marketing Revolution

What I find most exciting is how tools like Zencastr are enabling a revolution in content marketing. The traditional approach to B2B marketing often relies heavily on webinars, which are notoriously inefficient:

• You have to schedule them in advance
• Promote them before the content is even finalized
• Hope people show up at the scheduled time
• And then figure out how to repurpose the content afterward

Podcasting flips this model on its head. You create the content first through natural conversation, then distribute it across channels. The promotion happens after you already have the valuable content in hand.

What’s even more powerful is that with the right tools, you can transform a single podcast recording into dozens of content pieces:

• The full episode for podcast platforms
• A YouTube version for video consumers
• Short clips for social media
• Blog posts from the transcript
• Newsletter content summarizing key points
• Quotes and insights for social posts

As Josh pointed out, this is the same approach that major content creators like Jason Calacanis were using years ago – but they needed teams of 10+ people to execute it. Now, a single person can do the same with the right tools.

Beyond Podcasting: Content Creation for Everyone

What struck me in our conversation was how Josh views the future of the platform. He doesn’t see Zencastr as just a podcasting tool, but as a content marketing platform.

“We’re thinking in terms of more just content marketers,” he explained. “The less time you can make it take for them to do [content creation], the more people will be able to create.”

This mindset explains why features like AI clip detection and social media scheduling are so important. They’re addressing what Gary Vaynerchuk and others have been preaching for years: content at scale across multiple platforms is the key to growth.

Josh summarized the challenge perfectly: “Gary will say it’s really simple. You just need to post multiple times a day across 8 to 10 different platforms. And I was like, man, that sounds so simple but hard.”

That’s exactly what tools like Zencastr are solving – making the “simple but hard” into “simple and doable.”

Creative Use Cases That Surprised Me

One thing I love about talking to founders is discovering unexpected use cases for their products. Josh shared a few that I found fascinating:

Podcasting as a Sales Channel

More companies are using podcasts to connect with potential clients. It’s much easier to get someone to join your podcast as a “thought leader” than to take a sales call. You get to have a genuine conversation, build a relationship, and create valuable content – all while opening the door to future business conversations.

At Sweet Fish, we called this “content-based networking,” and it was incredibly effective.

Audiobook Creation

Authors are using podcasting platforms to release their books chapter by chapter as audio content. This not only serves as a promotion for the book but also reaches audiences who prefer audio content over reading.

Niche Content

From sleep podcasts that deliberately read old public domain content in a soothing voice to fitness podcasts with specialized beats for running – the format is incredibly versatile for serving specific audience needs.

The Future of Content Creation

What excites me most is how much easier content creation is becoming. What used to take a team of people 2 weeks can now be done by one person in 90 minutes. Between Zencastr for recording, editing and distribution, and Cast Magic for content generation, the barriers to entry have never been lower.

Josh sees this as just the beginning: “If we can really just make it super duper quick and easy – functionally as easy as posting on Instagram and adding some filters – that’s when I think we’re really gonna see a huge explosion in the number of active podcasts out there.”

I couldn’t agree more. We’re entering an era where content creation is being democratized in the same way social media democratized publishing. The difference is that longer-form content like podcasts allows for deeper connections and more meaningful conversations than social posts ever could.

For marketers who embrace these tools, the opportunity is enormous. While everyone else is still struggling with traditional content creation processes, you can be creating more content, with better quality, in less time – and building authentic connections with your audience along the way.

If you’re interested in learning more about implementing AI marketing tools like Zencastr in your content strategy, I’d love to hear about your experiences and challenges.