Podcast transcription seems to be on every podcaster’s mind recently. It’s especially apparent that it makes your podcast accessible to all even those who don’t listen or know what a podcast is.
Some people prefer reading to listening and learn better that way. It’s also helpful to transcribe your podcast if you’re making detailed show notes.
I wanted to create a master list of some of the best podcast transcription services out there. It’d also be interesting to hear what the bigger podcasters are doing in terms of transcription and show notes.
Free Podcast Transcription
You can actually use Google Docs to transcribe anything you say. It’s pretty accurate and free. I made a video about how you’d use Google Docs as a free podcast transcription service here.
Automatic Podcast Transcription
Sonix uses AI to make transcriptions of both audio and video. They are blindingly accurate! I’ve been using Sonix for a while and one of the things I really like is that they offer a native podcast player widget for your website too. The pricing is very competitive and the widget allows users to jump to a place or word in your podcast by a text search. Not to mention the SEO friendliness of using such a technology on your podcast website.
Paid Podcast Transcription
Rev seems to be the go to place, used by many, to transcribe podcasts. It seems to be reasonably priced and uses real life people to make your transcription.
Transcription of Well Known Podcasts
How about the podcasters we know and love. What are they doing to transcribe? My thoughts below and please feel free to reply with additions if you know any podcasters doing this well.
Tim Ferriss Podcast Transcription
When Tim Ferriss offers a transcribed version of his podcast it appears, very neatly, as a native blog post on his website. I’m sure this is very good for SEO. There’s no sign of what service he’s using. Perhaps as he’s a big advocate of virtual assistants he has one of his VAs transcribing for him?
Joe Rogan Podcast Transcription
Joe Rogan seems to keep things super simple. No transcript, no notes with only a web link, Twitter handle and mp3 download link. Although he does upload his episodes to YouTube which creates automatic closed captions (CC) similar to a transcription. This is likely indexed in some way by YouTube. Less is more?
