Just for Fun: Just Earworms

Q: Tell us about your podcast @justearworms.

A: I had been into music for a long time so just like looking at that and once quarantine started you’re trying to find new things to do cause you’re bored at home, so I decided it’d be good to start a podcast. I wouldn’t call myself a music expert, but the idea came to me when someone on my spam commented oh you should start a podcast, like a music review channel. I had been thinking about doing something different because at MV a lot of my time went into basketball which was my extracurricular or school work and neuroscience club. So now that you get a chance to do something outside and broaden your spectrum. I was like okay this could be a good start, so I made up a plan and I thought about it and I could do a podcast by myself, but I’m not that interesting to keep talking for like 30 minutes at a time, so people would get bored and leave. [...] Madhav and Manish, the second and third members of Just Earworms, I decided to make a group chat with them and at first I was just going to pitch the idea to them, like this is what I’m planning to do what do you guys think about it. And they were like oh it’s a great idea and so I approached them after and asked if they’d want to join the podcast. [...] That night we talked to one of my friends who was a designer and the idea behind it was to design a logo. An earworm is any song that sticks in your head and you just repeat it over and over it again. That’s why our logo is a worm with headphones on.

Q: What inspired you to start one?

A: My fours of MV, I used to live pretty far away from school around 2.5ish miles so I’d always have to bike to school cause both my parents were working and I was really lazy with my driver’s license stuff. So whenever I biked, I’d always listen to podcasts, and because I’m really into basketball I’d listen to this podcast named No Dunks. They used to do NBA shows like as starters, but they got let go so they started their own podcast called No Dunks. The idea behind that is 5 friends talking about basketball with each other [...] and that idea of them doing something they love has always stuck with me. Not only with a podcast, I feel like there are certain instances where like oh this would be better with my friends.

Q: How do you choose the topics you discuss?

A: Now since we’ve all graduated and people are starting to go to college like Manish, he went to the University of Cincinnati, so he just moved. I’m going to SB in a month and Madhav is going to Santa Clara. As we go to different places, we’re trying to get more depth, like more people we could talk to and ask them what they like. Most of the time topic selection is what I do since I do most of the scheduling work. Whatever I’m listening to at that time, I kid you not, sometimes I go on my phone and look at the playlists and find a song, and right there this is what I want to talk about. Once we made our IG and FB, we got a lot of requests to do podcasts about stuff like someone requested one about rock. We looked into those and we started in May so from May 2nd to August, we did a lot of generic hip hop and basketball. But, now our next podcast is gonna be a Beatles podcast and Metallica later. I’ll be honest with you I’m not that big into Metallica but this podcast feels like both ways like people who listen to the podcast can learn new music and at the same time whatever we cover can be new as well. It doesn’t always have to be something we know. [...] We try to mix up different ideas, like one of them is a drafting podcast and we’ve also done a year in music, which is one year and pick an album from that year and talk about it. We’ve had a lot of guests come on and we’re planning on doing debate podcasts and it’s a little bit geeky but we’re calling it Judge Earworm.

Q: What has been your favorite episode?

A: We’ve brought in a lot of guests and sometimes it isn’t just to talk about music. As we’re going away from MV, since were seniors, it’s our last year and the way it ended with COVID, the podcast was another way for us to stay in contact with people from our school. A lot of those were really fun because we got to talk to new people. We did a Kendrick Lamar podcast on Good Kid, M.A.A.D City and that podcast stood out the most for me because there’s a rap story behind the entire album. On top of that, there was a story about Kendrick’s childhood and for someone who religiously looks behind the meaning of every song and why it’s there, just talking about the meaning behind each and every song was really gratifying cause I know so much about it and I was able to put it all out there. There’s another one we did on Drake’s View and we had another senior, Stuti came and talked about how she went to different concerts she went to. The best one was the 2014 Forest Hills Drive one where we had Shivani be one it. That one had everything, Shivani was a great guest and she talked about J Cole and how she went to his concerts. I’m a big J. Cole fan, like I stan J. Cole so it was basically the two of us geeking out about J. Cole while Manish and Madhav were giving their thoughts.

Q: How do you guys record the podcast?

A: What we do is we video call on skype and skype has a function where you can record the video. Once we record the video, we separate the video and the audio. We haven’t thought of doing a video podcast cause that’s a lot more work for Madhav who does all our editing. He does everything, it’s really amazing how he does it cause if I was the one doing it I’d probably not had a podcast up for a month. Youtube is a big problem because of music copyright so he has to edit it and do all the sound stuff. Manish is our graphic designer, he does all the graphics so once he does that we pair the two and post it on Youtube. Another good thing that came out of this, it showed other people that it wasn’t that hard to start a podcast and it was a way to talk about things they love. I know other people at MV mainly seniors who started podcasts after we started.

Q: What’s your end goal for the podcast?

A: Honestly $10 million sounds pretty good but I’ve talked about it before I don’t care about the money or subscribers. When you do a podcast, you should release it on Apple podcast and Spotify but those cost money like $8 a month and we’re not shelling that much money and a really good video gets 500-600 views and Youtube doesn’t give you money until 1000 views, so at that point, we just put it out on Youtube cause it’s free. [...] It’s more so about the connections you make from music. 20 years down the line, I’d love to still have something like Just Earworms. Another goal is just expanding it like once we grow older if we’re in our 30s or 40s, it could just be 3 friends talking about stuff. [...] Another end goal is to have merchandise and even if it’s not something everyone wears it’d be having the Just Earworms t-shirt is a pretty proud moment, but we’ll see what happens.