The Current Changes in Vodka O’Clock Podcast
Since 2012, I’ve made roughly 227 audio podcasts of Vodka O’Clock. There have been a quite few more interviews that were videos and a few in written form. I’ve had features on Comic Geek Speak, Comic Book Club Live, and Comic Book Page podcasts.
I went from a couple shows a month to weekly to whenever I feel like because there is a lot of pressure to keep up as new “celebrity” podcasts came to be with their actual paying sponsorships. To give you an idea, I began reviewing comics before Chris Hardwick had invented Nerdist. Then he got a book deal and got published; he launched the Nerdist website which had actual employees—sold it for I don’t know how much; and married an heiress to the Hearst fortune. (#IbelieveChloe)
Of the 227 episodes that have existed over time, 201 of them were migrated to Zencastr this year when HipCast shutdown. It took me a week to resolve all the RSS issues. The new episodes were created easily right on Zencastr.
Zencastr was looking for venture capital. They had a big fund drive to get investors of all sizes and I threw them $100 because I liked their platform. Naturally, good things don’t last. This week, they said there will not be a “hobbyist” tier (free) after October 31. They made anyone who invested an offer to continuing on a paid tier for 30% off. That’s about $14/month which is average for paid hosting.
Acast is a company that supposedly had a relationship with Patreon, but I could not get that to work at the time it was announced. Today (Oct 19), I’m importing 209 episodes to Acast.
Acast says Vodka O’Clock has been submitted to Spotify, YouTube (replacing Google Podcasts in 2024), Amazon Music, Samsung Podcasts, Apple, and IHeartRadio. At the moment, it’s still showing up on Pandora which recently replaced Stitcher. I don’t know if it’ll show up there once the Zencastr feed disappears.
It is annoying to have to keep up with all this. The thing is, I used Zencastr to record and it had a learning curve, but I still got my audio in 2 tracks which was perfect. Now I have figure out how to do all this again with Acast.
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.