Podcast jingles

Some say that it doesn’t matter if you have a sound setting for your podcast. But it doesn’t need  much to understand that podcast jingles are a factor that has tremendous impact on the audience’s perception. “Włącz się!” (/ˈvwɔ̃n͇ʧ̑ ɕɛ/) is a Polish pun that means both “Join in” and “Turn yourself on”. It was a live and interactive podcast for local enterpreneurs from Western Poland.

A programme created during the first COVID-19 lockdown was broadcasted online once a week both using audio and video.

Preparations

There were three key elements that we needed to take under consideration while preparing the sound setting: the airing duration, the fact that it was interactive and the fact that it was streamed live. According to these we decided to build the setting on six elements.

The first one was an amusing five minutes long ambient piece used with a countdown timer. This one was played at the very beginning of the stream, to give the audience some time to gather. Beside that the hosts and guests shared the links to a stream via social media. After five minutes the ambient seamlessly turned into an intro. Main theme included a voiceover record with information on the title and the hosts’ names.

The jingles are based on two tracks: Jon Gegelman’s “The Woods” and Christopher Young’s “Kids (Instrumental version)”.

The elements

For a welcome speech and introduction of guests we used a secondary opening music. In this case it was a less intensive part of the main theme. The purpose was to make the whole part coherent. After couple of minutes the music went down and this was the time for a call-to-action sweeper. It cointained a telephone number and an invitation for the audience to join the discussion. For an incoming phone call we designed a dedicated notification jingle.

While the broadcast was coming to an end, we used the same secondary opening music again. The last element of the settings was an outro, also with a voiceover record. What does it sound like? Find out on our Soundcloud site:

The purposes

Above all, podcast jingles for “Włącz się!” were designed to be versatile both for visual as well as the audio-only version of the show. While the premiere was streamed live with cameras and visuals, after the show it was also available on popular podcast platforms. Secondary goal was to create sound design for animated visuals created for the show.