90-Minute Podcast Blueprint: Nina's Full Workflow from Record to Live

Look, I don't have all day to fiddle with tech. When I'm dropping a new In Da Streets Radio episode, I need it tight, fast, and live on all platforms before I move on to the next thing. So here's my real 90-minute workflow — no fluff, just the tools I actually open and the order I do it in.

Step 1: Pre-Production (10 minutes). I outline my talking points in Notion — just bullet points, guest name if I got one, three main topics I wanna hit. I also check my Calendly to confirm the guest is locked in. If it's solo, I skip straight to recording. If it's remote with a guest, I send them a Riverside.fm link 15 minutes early with a quick text reminder.

Step 2: Recording (30-40 minutes). I use Riverside.fm for remote interviews because it records separate high-quality tracks for me and the guest, even if their internet is trash. For solo episodes, I just pop open Audacity (free) or Adobe Audition if I'm on my main rig. I wear my Audio-Technica ATR2100x-USB mic — $99, plug-and-play, sounds clean. I hit record, run through my intro, cover my points, wrap with my outro. Done.

Step 3: Quick Edit (20 minutes). I'm not trying to win a production award. I pull the Riverside tracks into Audacity, trim dead air at the top and bottom, cut out any long pauses or coughs, and boost the volume so it's not whispering. I add my intro music bed (I got a 10-second loop I made in GarageBand years ago) and my outro tag. Export as MP3, 128kbps is fine for talk radio.

Step 4: Upload and Metadata (15 minutes). I log into Buzzsprout — my podcast host, $12/month for the plan I'm on. I upload the MP3, paste in my episode title, write a quick 2-3 sentence description, add my guest's name and socials in the show notes. Buzzsprout auto-distributes to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, all of them. I also grab the episode link and the embeddable player code.

Step 5: Promote It (10 minutes). I drop the Buzzsprout link into a Canva template I made for episode announcements — takes 2 minutes to swap the text and guest photo. Export that as a square PNG. Then I post to Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter with the episode link and tag my guest. I paste the embed player into a new blog post on ninacapone.com so it lives there too. I also shoot my email list a quick note through Resend if it's a big episode.

Step 6: Go Live or Schedule (5 minutes). If I'm dropping it same-day, I hit 'Publish' in Buzzsprout and it goes live everywhere within an hour. If I recorded it early, I schedule it for my usual drop time — Thursdays at 6pm for me. Then I close my laptop and I'm done. Total time: 90 minutes, sometimes less if I'm in the zone.

The whole point is this: you don't need a studio or a sound engineer. You need a decent USB mic, a free or cheap editor, a podcast host that does the distribution work for you, and a system you can repeat every single week. That's it. Once you run this a few times, you'll shave it down even more.

What workflow you want me to break down next? Beat-making start to finish? Going from a rough vocal to a mixed, mastered, and distributed single? Drop a comment or DM me at @NinaCapone and let me know what you're stuck on.