How I Created a Podcast from WhatsApp Voice Notes
Earlier this year, I and Solomon Ogunbowale, a very good developer friend of mine (mobile app developer to be precise) had a conversation about relationships using WhatsApp voice notes (you can download or listen to the conversation here).
The conversation was so insightful and out of the ordinary that I thought to myself, “We shouldn’t keep this. Other people need to hear this.” But I had a constraint.
There were a lot of voice notes shared and the best way to share the entire content to others was to combine it as a whole (in podcast form). I started asking questions about the possibility of this and I made some research which enabled me to create a podcast from the voice notes.
I will be sharing the step-by-step process and the resources I used to make this possible.
You can also use these steps to make your own podcasts from your WhatsApp audio files.
Step 1:
Because WhatsApp audio files are saved in a .opus audio format, you would need to convert to a .mp3 audio format. I found a very useful website that can help you with that. It’s online-convert.
Upload your voice notes there and download them as .mp3 files.
Step 2:
Next, you need an application to help you combine these audio files you just downloaded.
In my research, I stumbled on thepodcasthost.com. They have an article containing a list of apps you can use to make your podcast. One interesting one I liked was alitu. You can check it out.
I didn’t use alitu at the end of the day. Instead, I opted for audacity. Audacity is free and it’s open-source, so you can easily download audacity.
After downloading, feel free to install it.
Step 3:
Now that you have installed Audacity, open the application.
From the File menu, select Import, choose Audio and select the audio files you want to combine.
You can also choose to import the files one after the other especially if you have a long list of files and you want to keep track of the joining process.
Audacity is easy to use. By cutting and pasting, you can combine several audio files together into one audio file.
You can check out this article from wikiHow on how to combine audio using Audacity.
Also, check out this video on how to merge MP3 Audio files in Audacity.
Step 4:
Now that you have combined the audio files, go the File menu, export your combined audio on Audacity to any audio format of your choice.
Audacity also gives you the option of adding a title and other additional information to your audio file while exporting it (similar to that of a music track/album).
And there you are! You now have a podcast!
It is really that simple. Try this on your own and share your experience too.
If you will like to listen to the podcast I created using Audacity, you can listen to it or download it now on Vocaroo.
If you found this article useful or helpful, please share and clap. Don’t forget to share your podcast-creating experience in the comment section as well.
