# The Podcasting Years
> RJJ Software edited podcasts from 2020 until the arm closed in 2025. What the work was, and what it taught the consultancy.

*12 August 2026* · Jamie Taylor


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This blog post was written by [Jamie](https://linkedin.com/in/jamie-taylor-rjj-software).


The cover image for this post is by [Soundtrap](https://unsplash.com/photos/n30_i7mx62o)


This page was an advert. It offered bespoke podcasts, broadcast quality audio and a bridge from your vision to reality, and it managed all of that without naming a single show we had ever worked on.

RJJ Software closed its podcast production arm in the middle of 2025. So here is the record the page should have been in the first place: the shows we edited, the part of the business that never sold, and what five years of audio work taught a software consultancy that thought it already understood the lesson.

## What the Work Actually Was


It began in March 2020 with [Tabs & Spaces](/news/new-podcast-tabs-and-spaces/), a monthly show I co-hosted with Zac Braddy and James Studdart, and which RJJ edited exclusively. Our first client was, in part, ourselves.

[Lost in Cult followed](/news/rjj-software-to-edit-new-podcast-from-publishing-house-lost-in-cult/) in July 2021, a games journal publisher starting a podcast called CultCast. Then [Steve Worthy's two shows](/news/rjj-software-to-help-steve-worthy-teach-others-podcasting-skills/) in April 2022, Podcasters Live and the Retail Leadership Podcast, both founded to widen who gets to be in podcasting at all. In October 2022 we [cut The Dreamcast Years finale to MiniDisc](/case-studies/dreamcast-years-finale-physical-release/), which was exactly as daft and as satisfying as it sounds. In July 2024 we [went after the crackle](/case-studies/rjj-software-fixes-crackling-audio-issues-for-youtube-channels-umbraco-series/) on a YouTube channel's Umbraco series.

Very little of that was me. Mark Taylor, my brother and RJJ's co-founder, was Chief Audio Editor and Engineer, and he did the work: the editing, the mastering, and the unglamorous business of making people sound like themselves through a bad microphone. [Steve's case study](/case-studies/communication-collaboration-and-great-podcasting-steve-worthy-and-rjj-software/) is really a study of how Mark worked rather than of anything RJJ sold.

This page used to carry a testimonial from Zac under a heading about trust, where it did the job testimonials do on brochures. It is worth keeping, because he meant it and he put his name to it. It belongs in the past tense now: this is what Zac said at the time, about work that was done, rather than an invitation to commission any more of it.

> **Without RJJ my podcast wouldn't be running at all**, that's the simple truth of the matter. The amount of work they take on for the production of my podcast makes them a no brainer choice and **I'm positive the success of my podcast is in no small part due to fantastic quality of their work.** Not only that the staff are friendly and helpful always taking the time to explain to me the choices available in any given situation allowing me to make timely and informed decisions that have improved the quality of the outcomes of my work. **Don't sleep on the opportunity to work with RJJ!**
>
> — Zac Braddy - host of [tabs and spaces](https://open.spotify.com/show/05xweMLT3cConDizrKFIgR)


## The Part That Never Sold


Alongside the editing we tried to sell training. Coaching for podcasters: how to plan and record a show, and how to keep going once the novelty had worn off.

It did not work. Around 2023 we had perhaps three clients, and after that nothing at all. The market was crowded with people offering the same thing, most of them podcasters first and far better placed to sell it than we were. The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional award I held at the time moved none of it, which should not have surprised me; it carries weight with developers and none whatsoever with someone deciding who ought to teach them about podcasting.

So we stopped charging for it. The syllabus went out as blog posts instead, and all of it is still there, mapped in [Getting Started in Podcasting](/blog/getting-started-in-podcasting/). Seventeen posts, free, which is roughly what the market had already told us they were worth.

## What Five Years of Audio Taught Us


The lesson was one we already knew, which is the uncomfortable part.

Speak in the language of the person listening. Where an acronym is unavoidable, put a metaphor in front of it and let the metaphor do the teaching. The starting point is always why the person in front of you cares, rather than whatever you happen to find interesting. Any consultancy worth hiring will tell you this, and we had been saying it to clients for years.

Then we sat in rooms with authors, retail executives and games journalists who had no reason to know what a codec was, no interest whatever in gain staging, and an episode to get out on Thursday. Nothing about that audience rewarded precision for its own sake. If we could not explain why a noise gate mattered in terms of what their listeners would actually hear, the explanation was worthless, however correct it happened to be.

Knowing a principle and having it tested are different things. We had learned ours inside software, where the jargon is at least ours and the audience shares the industry. Learning it again with none of that shared ground is what made it stick.

The CultCast work is the clearest example, and the piece of it I am proudest of. We spent six months with Lost in Cult consulting on kit and technique, producing source audio clean enough to make the editing easier, and mastering their episodes while they built the capability in house. Then [we stopped, deliberately](/news/mission-accomplished-finishing-our-work-with-cultcast/), because they no longer needed us. What we published at the time called podcasting a democratic medium, one "at its best when people are empowered to shape their own content in their own style".

A service line whose definition of success is the client no longer needing you will never be much of a business. It was a good way to work, though. Those two facts sat side by side for five years without ever quite reconciling, and I have written elsewhere about [what failure is actually for](/blog/continual-professional-development/embracing-failure-a-key-to-success-in-the-modern-workplace/).

## Where It Ends


Mark moved on in the middle of 2025, and the arm closed. We have not rebuilt it and we are not going to. RJJ Software does not offer podcast production, audio editing, mastering or podcasting training, and there is nothing here to enquire about.

The Modern .NET Show carries on, because that is our own show rather than a service anyone was ever buying. The advice is all still up at [Getting Started in Podcasting](/blog/getting-started-in-podcasting/), and the case studies stay where they are. The work happened, and it deserves a page that says so plainly rather than one promising a vision it never got round to describing.