A Podcast Intro

An intro is not a song but a door opened once per episode

An intro is heard dozens of times, so the question is not "is it good" but "is it tolerable on the fiftieth listen".

What you are delivering

A 15- or 30-second theme that plays before the host speaks, with a clean entry point for the voice at the end. It is not a song; it is a fixed action repeated every episode.

Three steps

1. Fix two versions (15 s and 30 s) and the final landing: which beat the music stops on so the first sentence does not fight it. 2. Keep one hook — a three-to-five-note motif, repeated or varied. Do not cram three ideas into 30 seconds. 3. Match levels: keep the gap between intro and speech under 2 LU so listeners never reach for the volume knob.

Pages and tools to use

• Intro, transition and outro — an intro introduces one element; that is the rule 30-second themes break most.
• Hook design — short, repeatable, transformable, and it needs three appearances to stick.
• Platform loudness targets — podcast platforms normalise; targeting the wrong level wastes the work.
• Music for short form — short, front-loaded and loopable, almost the same structural brief as an intro.
• Loudness normalisation — why platforms change your level, and how to plan for it.

Acceptance checks

• Exactly 15.0 or 30.0 seconds, with no reverb tail covering the first sentence.
• Intro and speech within 2 LU of each other, overall around −16 LUFS, a common podcast target.
• Deliver 48 kHz / 24-bit WAV plus an MP3 audition, filename carrying episode number and version.

Sources

• 本页为场景导航，链接目标为已发布条目（2026-10-31 核对）

Used for fact-checking only; all prose is original.