I’ve been listening to quite a few podcasts recently and I’ve noticed a disturbing trend.

Some podcasts have started to put musical jingles to introduce the
program before the interview begins and then afterwards when the
program ends. The Ruby on Rails podcasts in specific, do this quite frequently.

This jingle is usually recorded direct from the source and therefore
has excellent sound quality. This is not a bad thing. The podcast
interviews themselves are almost always somewhat hard to hear.

What ends up happening is that you’ll turn up the volume to hear the
interview and then the jingle (either from the next queued podcast or
the end jingle) is played AT EAR BLOWING LEVELS!

It reminds me of watching TV on one of those sets that doesn’t automatically lower the volume for the annoying loud commercials.

Guys and gals making podcasts, I know that podcasting is new and I know
that you may not have the best equipment, but please spare our ears.
Either re-master the entire thing with one sound level or drop the ear shattering jingle and just have a nice spoken introduction.

You’ll be guaranteed not to lose listeners this way.