Podcast studios

Hourly rooms with a minimum and a buffer, which is exactly how a podcast studio sells: a two-hour block, a reset between guests, and a rate that changes at peak.

Deposits. Podcast bookings are made further ahead and are cancelled more often than rehearsal ones, which makes a deposit and a clear cancellation ladder more valuable rather than less.

Add-ons for the things a session needs beyond the room: an extra mic position, a camera, a second headphone mix. Those are priced per booking rather than being separate rooms.

Most podcast bookings need somebody in the building to run them. Bookable staff make that explicit: a person with their own weekly hours, attached to a room, who cannot be double-booked any more than the room can. The times offered are the overlap of the room being free and the person being on shift.

An engineer does not need a login. A freelance operator who works two days a week is bookable without ever having an account.

Podcasts are recurring by nature — a weekly show is a weekly booking — and both of the tools for that already exist. A recurring series holds the slot for the run of the season. A block of hours bought up front suits a producer recording four episodes in a fortnight and then nothing for a month.

There is no per-engineer rate. If you charge more for a session with your senior operator, you will have to model that as a different room or a different activity, and that is a workaround rather than a feature.

There is no post-production workflow: no file delivery, no editing tracker, no revision rounds. If half your revenue is edited episodes delivered on a schedule, this books the room and does nothing for the rest of it.

There is no video conferencing or remote-guest tooling. The room is a physical place people come to.