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In today’s Why I Launched A Podcast interview we hear from Chicago native Sydney Oberholtzer who’s always had a passion for music, connections and experiences. Before launching her podcast The Set Up Sydney worked for Rolling Stone Magazine as the Brand Partnerships Manager.
In that role Sydney was leading the integrated marketing programs between the magazine and Fortune 500 advertisers. “I had the privilege of working across talent relations, experiential, video production, and editorial to produce curated events and content in an effort to promote product launches and significant brand awareness.”
She now works independently creating experiences for artists, local productions and music festivals like Firefly Music Festival and Lollapalooza. “My approach for the companies I work for involves the Return on Emotion.For any brand, the biggest achievement and measure of success should be to build trust and loyalty amongst their consumers. In time, their fans and consumers will feel connected and invest their time back into the brands that have supported them.”
With Chicago being far from the major cities where music is most prevalent, Sydney wanted to give her home and her people the chance to flourish because she know how hard it is to make it or get started in the industry. “I was having many conversations with all of these awesome people that I thought “hmmm maybe I should add a microphone…” and The Set Up was born. Boy, was I wrong…podcasting involved A LOT more than a microphone.” Her mission is to build a community for music industry professionals and educate others of the work that happens behind the scenes.
SYDNEY’S PODCAST STORY
“I started with a basic plan that I have learned a lot from. I mainly focused on the marketing strategy over everything. If I had to do it again, I would have planned a better launch with more promotion and have all of my episodes recorded prior to my next season. I started with Anchor as the host because it was highly publicized and provided all of the necessary elements I needed like the RSS feed, basic analytics, editing (before I pivoted to Audacity) and remote recording (before I pivoted to Zoom). I did not start with any equipment and Anchor’s sound quality was amazing, however, there are pitfalls with the recording aspect such as it overlaps audio from guests towards the end. Anchor’s editing was super bad as well, took way too much time and too basic. I used Anchor with the idea to create a separate website in mind which I finally launched two weeks ago. The website has the podcast embedded along with all social channels, subscription options, videos, and guest profiles. The website is now tracking all visitor and listener attributes in depth with Google, Facebook, Wix and Hotjar analytics.
“I now use Blue Snowball microphone, Solid lapel microphone, and Rode video microphone on my iphone. I use a ring light to capture video content. Originally this podcast was going to be a video series before COVID so I adjusted to podcast with remote video interviews. I have a home studio with a small brown couch in front of a bookshelf and lava lamps with lighting on the side.”
“I lined up my first 5 guests who are friends of mine and once I released the first episode, the rest of my guests are people who reached out to me on Linkedin and are big voices in the industry that relate to topics trending now.”
“Launch day was a week after my first guest recording. Ever since my launch in March, I’ve developed a core team to help promote, two private social groups, and a subscriber email list. I have yet to edit and schedule episodes ahead of the season. That is the plan for season 2. Currently I edit and publish the week of the episode release, which is on Wednesdays.”
Give Sydney’s show a listen HERE
If you have a great story to tell, just like Sydney, about why you launched your podcast, reach out to edryantheeditor@gmail.com