AI, oh my! We're comparing 2 popular platforms for modern podcasters — Riverside.fm and Descript. At first glance, you may think these are totally different platforms. Most think of Riverside as a great remote recording platform and Descript as a fantastic text-based audio/video editor. However, a closer look will reveal that they are actually very similar in what they offer. Riverside has recently rolled out a suite of AI features, including text-based editing and AI-generated show notes. And Descript just acquired SquadCast, a rival remote recording platform to Riverside. But how do these 2 platforms match up? What are the pros and cons? Tune in to find out!
01:05 AI and its Impact on Podcasting 01:52 Exploring AI Platforms: Riverside and Descript 03:50 Riverside's AI Features 04:25 Riverside vs Descript: A Comparative Analysis 04:43 Pros and Cons of Riverside's Show Notes Writing 08:17 Riverside's Editing Function and Magic Clips 12:35 Descript: A Powerful Platform for Podcast Editing 16:22 Summing Up: The Best of Both Worlds
Disclosure: We only endorse products and services that we’ve personally used or come highly recommended by trusted sources. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. We may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Chapters
AI, oh my! We're comparing 2 popular platforms for modern podcasters — Riverside.fm and Descript. At first glance, you may think these are totally different platforms. Most think of Riverside as a great remote recording platform and Descript as a fantastic text-based audio/video editor. However, a closer look will reveal that they are actually very similar in what they offer. Riverside has recently rolled out a suite of AI features, including text-based editing and AI-generated show notes. And Descript just acquired SquadCast, a rival remote recording platform to Riverside. But how do these 2 platforms match up? What are the pros and cons? Tune in to find out!
01:05 AI and its Impact on Podcasting 01:52 Exploring AI Platforms: Riverside and Descript 03:50 Riverside's AI Features 04:25 Riverside vs Descript: A Comparative Analysis 04:43 Pros and Cons of Riverside's Show Notes Writing 08:17 Riverside's Editing Function and Magic Clips 12:35 Descript: A Powerful Platform for Podcast Editing 16:22 Summing Up: The Best of Both Worlds
Disclosure: We only endorse products and services that we’ve personally used or come highly recommended by trusted sources. As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. We may receive a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Creators & Guests
Host
Kyle Cummings
Kyle Cummings is the CEO and Founder of Podcircle, a podcast production agency who partners with New York Times bestselling authors, Fortune 500 companies, entrepreneurs, influencers and everyone in between to produce high-impact podcasts.
Host
Mickenzie Vought
Mickenzie Vought is an expert podcast content strategist. She is also the Producer and Co-Host of the Living Centered Podcast, a leading emotional wellness podcast.
Editor
Podcircle
Premium podcast services for busy people and organizations. Visit Podcircle.com to learn more.
What is Podcircle Podcast?
Finally there’s a podcast for podcasters. Each week, join hosts Kyle Cummings and Mickenzie Vought as they share the knowledge and expertise they've gained from years of launching, running, and promoting successful podcasts. Whether you're an aspiring podcaster or you've already got hundreds of episodes under your belt, these conversations dive into the topics that matter to every podcaster — from marketing and growing your podcast, to recording equipment and best practices, monetization, cutting-edge tools, hiring help, and much more.
Kyle Cummings:
Riverside just rolled out their editing function it's really similar to Descript and as far as Riverside's editing service I think that there are honestly more cons than pros. So what it does is it it transcribes your podcast and allows you to edit the transcript in a way that also edits the audio of your podcast. Very useful feature. I find the editor to be very clunky and Okay. Especially compared to Descript, which Descript can be clunky too at times, but they're working on it.
Kyle Cummings:
They're improving it all the time. I actually use Descript to edit a few audio video podcasts. I actually use it to edit this podcast that you're listening to or watching right now. I don't use Just Descript, not to get in the weeds, but I use Pro Tools to process the audio and make it sound better, and then I'll pull that over into Descript. It's a really powerful platform.
Kyle Cummings:
Like it a lot. It's just not an end all be all solution yet. Welcome to the Podcircle podcast where we provide practical tips and insights for every podcaster.
Mickenzie Vought:
Whether you're just getting started or you're already a seasoned podcast pro, these conversations dive into all the topics that matter most to you. Alright, Kyle. Today, we are digging into AI and how it's changing the podcast game. I feel like over the last several episodes, we have talked a lot about AI. It just keeps coming up.
Mickenzie Vought:
And so also just in our cultural moment, I think we would be remiss to not identify and talk about the ways that AI really is entering into the podcast space. So everywhere I look these days, I'm seeing articles, memes, and either a general fear or a love for the rise of AI. So over the next two episodes, we're really gonna highlight a few different ways that podcasters are utilizing AI to simplify their lives and the platforms that are using AI and winning, we think are doing that well. We're also gonna tell you why we think AI is the way of the future, but how at this point, it's not the end all be all for us podcasters. And today, we're going to talk specifically about the platforms that are offering AI assistance in recording and editing.
Mickenzie Vought:
You know that recording and editing matters a lot to us here. So I'm excited to to dive deep into 2 different platforms, Riverside and Descript, and we're gonna talk about where they excel and where maybe they're currently lacking. So, Kyle, you use both of these platforms quite a bit. So I'm going to lean hard on you to walk us through this and ask all the questions that I know our listeners have.
Kyle Cummings:
Yeah. I'll do the best that I can.
Mickenzie Vought:
Yes. Good. I'm excited that you are all here today. And I just wanna remind you of a couple of things before we jump into this conversation. First, we post all of our shows on YouTube so you can head over to Podcircle's page to subscribe, follow along with this episode, leave comments, engage with us.
Mickenzie Vought:
We'd love to hear from you. We'd love to hear how you're engaging and using AI.
Kyle Cummings:
If you're listening to us on Apple Podcasts, we would really, really love and appreciate a 5 star rating and review. Honestly, you have no idea how much it helps us. Or maybe if you're a podcaster, you do know how much
Mickenzie Vought:
it helps.
Kyle Cummings:
Yeah. You know it firsthand, but it's super simple and you can do it right now. If you're listening to us on Apple, just open up to the player page and then you'll see Podcircle podcast right there in purple. If you just click on that purple text that says pod circle podcast, it'll take you right to our main page. From there, just scroll down about halfway, and you can leave us a rating and review right there.
Kyle Cummings:
Super simple. We'd really, really appreciate it.
Mickenzie Vought:
Absolutely. And if you're listening on Spotify, it's even easier. From the podcast player page that you're on right now, you can scroll to the bottom where it says about the podcast, it's probably a gray box and click anywhere. That takes you to our main page and then you can scroll to the top, click the 3 dots next to the gear icon, and click rate show. Again, we would just really appreciate a 5 star rating.
Mickenzie Vought:
And even better, leave us a review. It will help us so much so that we can help more podcasters like you.
Kyle Cummings:
Alright. Let's get right into it by talking first about how riverside.fm is utilizing AI. So we all know Riverside as a really great solution to record high quality remote interviews. So they're awesome at that. They're really well known with that.
Kyle Cummings:
But recently, they've been rolling out a ton of new AI features kind of on the editing side of things so we can not only record your episode there, but then also edit it using their transcript editor very similar to Descript. If you guys are are used to that, we're gonna talk about that as well. So they're doing a lot in that space, and they're trying to be a complete solution for recording and editing. So Riverside is clearly competing with Descript. Descript, if you listen to our one of our recent episodes, we talked a little bit about how they just acquired SquadCast.
Kyle Cummings:
SquadCast
Mickenzie Vought:
Yeah.
Kyle Cummings:
Is and has been a main competitor of Riverside. And so here's how they're both using AI. First thing we're gonna talk about is for show notes writing, and we're gonna do it by breaking down the pros and the cons. So I'll talk a little bit of the pros. In terms of Riverside and how they do show notes, use AI to generate show notes, I think it has a ton of potential.
Kyle Cummings:
And I think it's an obvious and very smart thing for Riverside to offer and especially at the price point. So it's only offered currently in their pro plan, which starts at about $24 a month. So for that $24 a month, and this is where I think it shines the most, is Yeah. They'll write your episode summary for you. So, again, they transcribe the episode.
Kyle Cummings:
They use AI to transcribe it, produces a transcription, and then they have a very chat gbt like function where they will take it, and they'll write an episode summary for you. And they'll write a handful of key takeaways. I think it's really powerful. I think it's a a great consumer product and obviously a really great way to create some competition with Descript. And just to note, just like chat GPT, if you feed it a quality transcript and a quality prompt, you're gonna get better results, and I think they're gonna continue to improve on this prompt as they move forward.
Mickenzie Vought:
Yeah. I think there's a lot of pros here, and you get a lot of features for the $24 a month for their pro plan. Yeah, I've heard you say that it's a great solution for a budget conscious podcaster who's willing to do a little bit of those extra works and edit it to sound like them, especially because it's gonna spit something out. That'll be a good starting place. Right?
Mickenzie Vought:
I think Yeah. I talk a lot about that when from a content perspective, if you're using chat GPT, you have to go back in and make it feel like you or it's going to feel like it was written by chat GPT. So I think the cons here are that it lacks any sense of brand voice. I am very passionate about a brand voice. It also still needs editing by a human to sound like a human wrote it.
Mickenzie Vought:
There are some features there. I think it'll become better as it becomes more human learning. I get it. But then I think this is also a really, big one. The time stamps will be off as soon as you make any edits to the podcast.
Kyle Cummings:
Yes. So talk about those timestamps. What are those?
Mickenzie Vought:
Yes. So if you'll see in our show notes, we give you timestamps for different parts of our conversation, where you can say like, okay, these are the highlights of the conversation kind of to guide you through. But we can't create those timestamps until after you've done your first edit. Because behind the scenes, we literally just stopped and restarted a whole section because we didn't like how it flowed. Yep.
Mickenzie Vought:
Or maybe I'm saying like too much and we cut that out. Your timestamps will be off if you're going in and making those little edits. So unless you're going straight through with no changes, which some podcasts do, I don't know that I would suggest that those timestamps are gonna be a little bit off and you're not going to be able to use them and have to go back and adjust them, which again, if you've got the time and capacity to do that, it's a good starting point. Yeah. Also, it's not gonna provide in your show notes any additional links to anything you talk about in the episode.
Mickenzie Vought:
So if you talk about a book, the book will be in there, but you'll have to go back and link it. You'll have to link resources or social handles or pretty much anything else that you want to link from the episode. We have an episode all about how to make money with your podcasts. And I'm a big fan of affiliate links, you're not gonna have your affiliate link in there. So again, you're gonna have to go back and revisit it.
Mickenzie Vought:
Just like almost anything AI generated content, it's not an end all be all solution. But I do think it's a great starting point.
Kyle Cummings:
I agree. I think it's at a really great price point for folks that are just getting in, especially if they're kinda hobbyists. They're they don't have really maybe maybe a plan to monetize their podcast. If If they have a little bit of extra time and you can tweak it and learn it and get to know it, I do think it's a good solution. Okay.
Kyle Cummings:
So the second thing we're gonna talk about is Riverside's editing function. So Riverside just rolled out their editing function. It's really similar to Descript and another platform that's similar to Descript called otter.ai, both transcription platforms where you can edit really cool platforms. And as far as Riverside's editing service, I think that there are honestly more cons than pros at this point. They gotta work on it.
Kyle Cummings:
So what it does is it it transcribes your podcast and allows you to edit the transcript in a way that also edits the audio of your podcast. Very useful feature. I find the editor to be very clunky. And, especially compared to Descript, which Descript can be clunky too at times, but I it's much better. They're working on it.
Kyle Cummings:
They're improving it all the time. I actually use Descript to edit a few audio video podcasts. I actually use it to edit this podcast. Okay. You're listening to or watching right now.
Kyle Cummings:
I don't use just Descript, not to get in the weeds, but I use Pro Tools to process the audio and make it sound better. And then I'll pull that over into Descript.
Mickenzie Vought:
Okay.
Kyle Cummings:
It's a really powerful platform. Like it a lot. It's just not an end all be all solution yet. But jumping back over to Riverside, it's it's just not even close to being there for me yet as even like an intermediate to advanced level editing service for your podcast. But I understand why they're using it because they're trying to compete with the script and all that good stuff.
Kyle Cummings:
So admittedly, I haven't used it in a while. It's it's probably been a couple months. I'm a part of their, like, Riverside Facebook group where half the time people are saying, oh, we love the new AI generated show notes feature. It's so helpful. It saves me a lot of time.
Kyle Cummings:
Awesome. And then equal parts people are complaining because they hate the editor. It's laggy. It crashes. They need to reload.
Kyle Cummings:
So, you know, they're figuring it out in real time, and they've still got work to do. But I don't have any reason to think that they're not gonna continue improving on that stuff. Because, again, there's competition in the market, and they want to retain subscribers. Yeah. So the other thing, there is magic clips.
Kyle Cummings:
I think this is a really cool and kind of obvious thing for them to do as well. AI goes through and pulls out, you know, 45 to 60 second clips that their AI tools can then shorten, transcribe, and you can release those reels on your Instagram, TikTok, all the places. So really smart offering from them. Similarly to the editing function, I just find it clunky. I like it better than their episode editing function.
Kyle Cummings:
I think it's powerful, but it doesn't always pull great clips. Like, I'm really if I'm editing an episode and also pulling the clips for it, those clips are so important. Like, they they really need to establish the host as an authority, as an expert. You know, if they're in the entertainment space as an entertainer, those clips matter. You can't just pull things out of context and expect them, you know, in a long form podcast and expect them to make sense in a 45 second clip.
Kyle Cummings:
So still a big fan of having a human being who knows your brand, knows the goals of your podcast. What are you trying to market? What are you trying to sell? Just a big fan of a human being doing that. Now are there some other AI tools once you grab those clips that can do fancy captions and stuff like that?
Kyle Cummings:
Yes. We're gonna talk about that stuff probably in our part 2 of this episode. But for me
Mickenzie Vought:
Yeah.
Kyle Cummings:
Magic clips is better done either in Descript, which is what I use to clip out clips from this podcast. And then our our video editors are using Adobe Premiere and maybe a couple other plugins and tools to make those clips really, really great for our clients.
Mickenzie Vought:
Yeah. I think the AI section of this from my experience is just really random. It pulls the most random clips and the other podcasts that I produce. A lot of times we'll go in and use that as a base to find, like the clips that we want. And then we'll pull it out and process it in another platform or another tool.
Mickenzie Vought:
And so that's it's helpful to see the transcript and pick the make the clips you want, but then the clips that they're bringing up from magic clips are never the ones that I would pick. So there's lots of room for improvement there for sure.
Kyle Cummings:
And I think that they're don't quote me on this. I'm I'm not totally sure, but the last time I looked, they pull, like, 5 or so clips. You might have 1 or 2 of them there that are like, oh, this you know, they actually did a pretty good job. And then maybe you can peel back the beginning and end and kind of you know what I'm saying? But to me, it's not a it's not a solution.
Mickenzie Vought:
Yes. It's giving you a starting point that you can go back in and then find some clips. So that was a really great synopsis, Kyle. But I've also heard you talk about Descript a lot. So what do you like about that platform?
Kyle Cummings:
I like Descript because for 1, you can record directly into it. So if again, they just acquired squad cast, so you can use squad cast to record remote interviews like this one. So, So but what it does, like we said, it transcribes your episode, and then Mhmm. You can edit the transcription. So there's a really powerful feature where you can click remove filler words, and you can even select the the filler words that you want to use.
Kyle Cummings:
So if if you're me, I use a lot of ums. That is my verbal tick. It's bad. Okay? They come through some time in this podcast, but usually not because I'm using oftentimes to script to go and isolate those umms, and then you can click remove.
Kyle Cummings:
And it's not only gonna remove it from the transcript, but you can also have it remove the remove it from the audio. So I think that's really, really cool. But you always have to go back and check because what if someone says and or, you know, if it's kinda connected to another word, you can hear the edit, and it sounds weird. And I'm Mhmm. For me as an audio editor, that's never gonna fly.
Kyle Cummings:
I will rather leave the filler word than have it sound odd, and the listener's like, this just feels this doesn't feel like the way someone would talk. Okay? So, again, awesome tool, but the human has to go back in and mess with a little bit. So another thing I really like about Descript is that they have a stand alone app, which I don't think that Riverside has just yet. It's it's all kind of based in Chrome, which Riverside's only at this point compatible with Chrome, browser and Edge, Microsoft Edge.
Kyle Cummings:
I don't know. I haven't used a PC in 20 years. The Descript has a standalone app that's on my computer and most of the time works well. It's a little bit buggy, I will say, but I'm also kind of on an older Mac. I don't, you know, I just have to say it, talk about how it performs for me.
Kyle Cummings:
And then, like I mentioned, they acquired squad cast similar to Riverside and that you can record remote interviews in high quality, awesome feature. But I haven't really used SquadCast integration into Descript. So I don't know I don't know how well that's working. I know it's kind of a new rollout, a new acquisition, but I'll be curious to try that out. So those are the cons.
Kyle Cummings:
There's a lot again that I like about Descript. But like I said, the cons are the app can be buggy. I was editing an episode yesterday, froze up on me. Sometimes the editing tools can can lock up, but it's doing a lot of work, to be honest. It's processing audio and video edits in real time.
Kyle Cummings:
There There can be a lot going on. And if and if you're like me, I've got a 1,000 things, you know, apps running on my computer at the same time, and that probably Totally. Doesn't help matters. So the other thing as an audio editor who has been working in Pro Tools for, almost 2 decades now, it is severely lacking on the audio mixing side of things. So all the the the plug ins and and this is gonna get nerdy for a second, but EQ, compression, all the things that I would always use in an audio podcast and do always use in an audio podcast.
Kyle Cummings:
They're there, but they're not good. They're hard to find. I I wish I could take my 3rd party plug ins and then use them in Descript. And, man, I would I would be one step closer to even just eliminating having to use Pro Tools to process the audio. But for right now, if I am using Descript, I'm processing all the audio over in Pro Tools First, pulling it over into Descript.
Kyle Cummings:
So like we're gonna say with all AI tools, awesome tool. Love it. It's a not as end all be all solution yet, but I hope that it is, one day very soon. So the main point here is that Descript is an awesome consumer product. I think it's Okay.
Kyle Cummings:
It's it's semi pro. Again, I'm using it, but I'm not using it by itself. It's an awesome consumer product at a really good price point, and it's gonna do a lot of what average consumer podcasters want it to do. So that's why we're talking about it.
Mickenzie Vought:
Well, I think this is just like so much intel, and I wanna kinda sum it up for us. I think we are saying that Riverside and Descript, they're both really great tools. And they're really great to have in your toolbox. I think I come back to that consumer product idea, not a pro product. So what kind of podcasts are you putting out into the world?
Mickenzie Vought:
And how much are you going to have to do yourself? Because even though you're using AI, you're still having to do some of that work yourself. Yeah, they're both trying to become complete podcast recording and editing solutions. But neither of them are there yet. And that's okay.
Mickenzie Vought:
I think we'll just continue to keep a watch on that. Podcircle uses both of them for what they're good at. That's what I would take away from what you were sharing. But almost all of it involves mixing these platforms with pro audio systems like Pro Tools Yeah. Or providing software like Adobe Premiere for your video, just kind of mix and matching and using all the best of what everything does every single platform and every single tool does well on its own.
Mickenzie Vought:
Yep. So someday it'd be great if we have one complete tool that does everything. We don't right now.
Kyle Cummings:
And I think I think we will one day. Yeah. I think we will. I mean, it's moving in the right direction for sure. And in some ways, these transcription software like Descript have a leg up on Yeah.
Kyle Cummings:
Some, like, Adobe like, I know that Adobe Premiere, I think, I don't know if it's a plug in or if it's native to the platform, but can transcribe because I know our video editors do transcriptions, and subtitles within. Mhmm. So there's some overlap, but having from a content standpoint, when you're going to pull out clips and subtitles and the whole thing, and you can that's why I love Descript for our podcast.
Mickenzie Vought:
Just to see it all there. Yeah.
Kyle Cummings:
It's all there except for the audio piece. So I'm not gonna double back on what I've already talked about.
Mickenzie Vought:
But I I really do agree with that. And I think audio transcription is the way of the future. Apple's rolling out some things right now where every single episode they're going to create an AI transcription for you. And, Transistor, which is the host that we use, is strategically like doing that themselves so that you can have more control over what that transcription is. Because we're gonna trust Apple, is it gonna be an actual transcription?
Mickenzie Vought:
Or are there gonna be weird spaces in it and all of that? So transistor is working to create more comprehensive and I guess you would say like true transcriptions that actually are accurate is the word I want. So all that to say, if you are looking for consumer quality, not pro quality, if you've got the time to mix and match these, these will get you to a good starting place. That's what we think from a recording and editing standpoint right now with the a l AI tools that are out there.
Kyle Cummings:
Yeah. Totally, Mickenzie. But like I said, for now, I'm gonna keep using the tools that deliver the best product for our clients, whether that's full on Pro Tools for audio, Adobe Premiere for video, or if it's loaded a mix of both between some of these transcription services. Every client's podcast is a little bit different. Their needs are different.
Kyle Cummings:
I like using these new products, learning about them, learning what what they're good at. We're gonna keep doing that, and we'll see how it goes.
Mickenzie Vought:
I think partnering with you, you know that you're getting a pro quality, and you're getting someone who is going to take the best of all these different for sure.
Kyle Cummings:
Yeah. I hope so. That's the goal. Well, thank you guys for tuning in to this week's episode of the Podcircle podcast. And if you're looking to partner with some experts in this space, that's what we do.
Kyle Cummings:
We do a lot here at Podcircle from production, editing, marketing. If there's a podcast problem you have, there's we have we probably have a podcast solution. So we're here to help.
Mickenzie Vought:
Yeah.
Kyle Cummings:
And so you can schedule a call with me using the link in our show notes, or you can simply email me directly at kyle@podcircle.com.
Mickenzie Vought:
Yeah. And if you are just getting started and you wanna launch your show with ease, you can get our complete podcast starter kit at podcircle.com/start. And we wanna make sure that you subscribe to the show so you never miss an episode wherever you listen to your podcast, whether that's Spotify, Apple, or YouTube, where we do put our full episodes in video format. And as a reminder, if you are joining us on YouTube, we want to engage with you. So leave a comment and tell us how you are using AI or maybe you've used a couple of the products we reviewed today and you have a differing opinion and we want to hear about it.
Mickenzie Vought:
So make sure to engage with us, and we will meet you in the comments. Alright, y'all. We'll see you next time.
