for reference of how costly transcripts are, the first “speech-to-audio” conversion is about $1.25 per minute, and it could take 1x the time of the audio to fix the mistakes when both have native accents, and up to 2x the audio time for non-native speakers. For a 1h podcast, this would amount to $75 + hourly rate, so roughly $100/podcast. Additionally, there’s a YT-generated-subtitles free alternative. I’m currently trying this out, I’ll edit this to let you know how long it takes to fix them per audio hour.
IMO, that’s shockingly cheap, and there’s little reason to not do transcripts for any podcast which has a listening audience larger than “your gf and your dog” and pretensions to being more than tissue-level entertainment to be discarded after use. If a podcast is worth taking hours to do and expecting hundreds/thousands of listeners to sit through spending man-hours apiece and trying to advertise or spread it in any way, then it’s almost certainly also then worth $100 to transcribe it. A transcript buys you search-engine visibility (as well as easy search/quotation in general), foreign audiences (reading is a lot easier than listening), the ability to annotate with links/references, and a lot of native listeners who don’t want to sit through it in realtime (reading is also vastly faster than listening). Notice how much more often you see Econlog, 80k Hours, or Tyler Cowen’s Conversations linked than many other podcasts, which decline to provide transcripts, and whose episodes instantly disappear*.
* I’m looking at you, A16Z. Not transcribing your podcasts is ludicrous when you are one of the largest VC firms in the world and attempting to remake yourself into an all-services VC empire based in considerable part on contemt marketing.
There’s Otter.ai which costs $8-30/month depending on which plan you get. You can try their free plan too to get a feel of how good their transcription is.
I haven’t used rev.com compared to Otter, but I think it also takes ~1x the time of the audio to fix the mistakes of Otter.ai, which would make it similar in time-cost to fixing Rev.com transcripts. So Otter.ai might be a way cheaper option than Rev.com. And the transcripts should be ready within 30-60 minutes of you upload it, given that it’s AI-based, versus Rev, which I think is actual people typing your transcript.
I tested Otter.ai for free on the first forty minutes of one podcast (Education and Charity with Uri Bram), and listening at 2x speed allowed me to make a decent transcript at 1x speed overall with a few pauses for correction. The main time sinks were separating the speakers and correcting proper nouns, both of which seem to be features of the paid $8.33/month version of the program (which if used fully would cost $0.001/minute to use). If those two time sinks are in fact totally fixed by the paid version, I could easily imagine creating a decent accurate transcript in half the run time of the podcast. Someone who can type faster than me could possibly cut the time down even more.
If there is sufficient real demand for particular/all transcripts, I would be willing to do this transcription myself at no cost (though I would be best convinced of the need for these transcripts via some kind of payment for my work if I’m going to do a lot of them. I don’t want to waste my effort on something people merely say they would like.)
Unfortunately, we don’t have transcripts for these! Sorry about that. I recommend listening at 1.5x-2.5x speed.
for reference of how costly transcripts are, the first “speech-to-audio” conversion is about $1.25 per minute, and it could take 1x the time of the audio to fix the mistakes when both have native accents, and up to 2x the audio time for non-native speakers. For a 1h podcast, this would amount to $75 + hourly rate, so roughly $100/podcast. Additionally, there’s a YT-generated-subtitles free alternative. I’m currently trying this out, I’ll edit this to let you know how long it takes to fix them per audio hour.
IMO, that’s shockingly cheap, and there’s little reason to not do transcripts for any podcast which has a listening audience larger than “your gf and your dog” and pretensions to being more than tissue-level entertainment to be discarded after use. If a podcast is worth taking hours to do and expecting hundreds/thousands of listeners to sit through spending man-hours apiece and trying to advertise or spread it in any way, then it’s almost certainly also then worth $100 to transcribe it. A transcript buys you search-engine visibility (as well as easy search/quotation in general), foreign audiences (reading is a lot easier than listening), the ability to annotate with links/references, and a lot of native listeners who don’t want to sit through it in realtime (reading is also vastly faster than listening). Notice how much more often you see Econlog, 80k Hours, or Tyler Cowen’s Conversations linked than many other podcasts, which decline to provide transcripts, and whose episodes instantly disappear*.
* I’m looking at you, A16Z. Not transcribing your podcasts is ludicrous when you are one of the largest VC firms in the world and attempting to remake yourself into an all-services VC empire based in considerable part on contemt marketing.
Thanks for the cost estimates on producing transcripts, that’s helpful!
FWIW I find it taking more than 1x for native speakers, but I think never longer than 2.5x for anybody.
I don’t feel like listening faster solves the same problem as having a transcript...
Also yeah, like the podcasters below mentioned, it’s totally worth it to make transcripts. Just use Rev.com.
There’s Otter.ai which costs $8-30/month depending on which plan you get. You can try their free plan too to get a feel of how good their transcription is.
I haven’t used rev.com compared to Otter, but I think it also takes ~1x the time of the audio to fix the mistakes of Otter.ai, which would make it similar in time-cost to fixing Rev.com transcripts. So Otter.ai might be a way cheaper option than Rev.com. And the transcripts should be ready within 30-60 minutes of you upload it, given that it’s AI-based, versus Rev, which I think is actual people typing your transcript.
I tested Otter.ai for free on the first forty minutes of one podcast (Education and Charity with Uri Bram), and listening at 2x speed allowed me to make a decent transcript at 1x speed overall with a few pauses for correction. The main time sinks were separating the speakers and correcting proper nouns, both of which seem to be features of the paid $8.33/month version of the program (which if used fully would cost $0.001/minute to use). If those two time sinks are in fact totally fixed by the paid version, I could easily imagine creating a decent accurate transcript in half the run time of the podcast. Someone who can type faster than me could possibly cut the time down even more.
If there is sufficient real demand for particular/all transcripts, I would be willing to do this transcription myself at no cost (though I would be best convinced of the need for these transcripts via some kind of payment for my work if I’m going to do a lot of them. I don’t want to waste my effort on something people merely say they would like.)