the podcast studio glasgow - why we started the business
We often get asked, “When did you open?” The answer’s simple: November 2021.
The background isn’t quite so simple, so here’s a wee bit of story time. But one key thought to keep in mind is that the Podcast Studio Glasgow was created by podcasters, for podcasters. Here’s the proof.
I started podcasting in March 2005. In the very early days, the technology had only been created about 5 months earlier. Cheap PC World mic plugged into a Windows tower PC in my living room. Big plans, no clue, no tech, just a bunch of blogs and online discussion forums.
And certainly no video. Video podcasts weren’t even a thing back then. The bandwidth just wasn’t there. And YouTube was a mere newborn technology baby in 2005.
Fast forward 14 years or so, and with hundreds and hundreds of podcast episodes - either presented by me or produced by me (sometimes both) - under my belt, I was firmly in the world of digital marketing. I had a decent reputation, good clients, and I’d get invited to speak, train and consult across loads of different industries.
Podcasting was in the past. Until one day in 2019, it wasn’t.
A downturn in my consultancy business led me to LinkedIn and a new connection. He and I met to discuss our business woes, and I said, “This would have made a great podcast episode”. So, the Social Experiment Podcast was born. This spurred me to add a podcast production page to my company website, which quickly led to an enquiry from a media company that produces fan-led football podcasts. They commissioned me to facilitate the recording of the Bhoys v Bluenoses podcast, which was a lot of fun. Audio and video. And this podcast production page also led me into contact with Ferg Reid, and he and I started a new company, Talking Shop Media. We’d already started producing a new podcast series, the Craft Gin Podcast, when the COVID lockdowns were announced, which put a premature halt to our podcast production dreams.
By 2020, I was also working in e-commerce and becoming increasingly cynical about the role of social media in our lives. My mate Neil shared the same opinion, and we decided to start our own podcast called “Social Media Ruins Everything”. He was in his house; I was in mine. We’d record on Ecamm Live and stream the recording to YouTube. Within no tim,e we’d attracted a passionate audience of like-minded people, drawn to our extremely irreverent take on the world as it was back in 2020 and 2021.
The Journey to Becoming Glasgow’s Podcast Studio
My oldest son, Cam, who’d been exposed to podcasting since he was 5 and went on to host his own podcast, was working with me in the e-commerce business and agreed to join the podcast as our off-camera but on-mic producer. Then, in late summer 2021, I suggested we look for a space to turn into a studio for SMRE. It was a deliberately daft and provocative idea, more for the ‘gram than anything else. But we found a space above the WEST Brewery on Glasgow Green. I fell in love with it immediately. Here are some photos of the space.
The original Podcast Studio Glasgow. Before the trains almost killed me.
Fast forward to the end of October 2021 and we were ready to move into our new podcast studio home. And move in we did, only to realise that day that the train line butted up against the building and our podcast studio sounded like a jet was landing in it. Every 10 minutes. We couldn’t really market the space as we didn’t have confidence in it due to the train noise. But the website was already up and running and we’d called it Podcast Studio Glasgow (for the SEO, and all that). We did get a few bookings. Biffy Clyro did a livestream from it and comedian Tim Dillon called me the night after his show in Glasgow to ask if he could come in and record. He liked it.
We tried to wrangle out of the 12-month lease, but we didn’t have any luck. We spent a lot of money and countless hours trying to mitigate the train noise so that the studio would be usable.
5 months and one heart attack later, we decided we needed to find an alternative location. SMRE had ended a few months before, and Cam and I really wanted to take the idea of a podcast studio for hire business forward. We enquired at the Ambercromby Business Centre, across from Glasgow Green in the heart of the Calton, and found an ideal room: room 111.
So at the start of May 2022, we hired a van, moved all our gear to the Calton, and set up our new podcast recording studio. From the start, we had 2 sets: the table and a more relaxed space. We also worked out of the studio, each of us having a production set up. The studio proved popular quickly, and by the end of 2022, we realised we needed a separate office as it was impossible to work while clients were recording.
The Evolution of the Podcast Studio Glasgow
Room 110 had only recently become available, so we enquired about it, and within a couple of weeks, we’d set up our production office and green room there.
We’d gone from looking for a space to record SMRE in, for shits and giggles, and we now had a fully functioning and popular business renting out the space to podcasters. And an office.
In early 2023, we were approached by a friend of a friend looking to use the space to create a video-on-demand training program. So we hooked him up.
And on we marched. I had to have a pretty major operation in the summer of 2023, so I was off work for ages, but Cam was an absolute trooper, keeping the business running and looking after our clients. When I returned to work, we took on the third room after a friend of a friend (now a good friend in his own right) suggested we partner to create more video-on-demand training courses. This led to a discussion later that year about turning the office into a second studio - psg2 - and renting the now available room 109 as our office. We just went for it, and within 2 weeks, we had two studios and 3 recording sets.
And here we are, early 2026. The easy chair set in psg1 is now the Fireside Set. The office is still the office. And psg2 is regularly booked for podcast, talking-head video shoots, and remote podcast recordings.
So, when did we open? 2021. But the journey began over 15 years before that.
Through it all, everything we’ve done, every decision we’ve made, every piece of kit we’ve purchased has been determined by our ethos:
By podcasters, for podcasters.
Because, first and foremost, what led me and then Cam on this journey was the love of podcasts and podcasting itself. And that hasn’t changed.
