How to open the podcast studio, invite guests with a single link and nothing to install, control what is seen and heard, and record the conversation to a file.
The podcast studio is a conversation room you run and record. Guests join from their own browser, you decide what reaches the screen and what is heard, and the result is saved as one file in Storage.
Choose Podcast in the sidebar. The Podcast Studio screen opens, with the stage in the middle and the participant strip beside it.
Inviting a participant creates a link to the room. You send the link and the guest joins from a browser — with no account here and nothing to install. The link also carries the language you are working in, so the guest's screen appears in the same language.
Before entering, the guest chooses how to join:
By default a guest who joins appears in your participant strip straight away, muted, and you decide when they reach the stage. If you prefer a waiting room where you admit people by hand, you can switch that on — it is a setting you enable, not the default.
Every guest has their own row of controls:
Screen sharing by a guest is off by default. If a guest needs to present something, you grant the permission from the studio and the button appears for them. That prevents someone sharing their screen mid-recording without being asked.
Each guest receives their own audio mix: you and all the other guests, without their own voice. That is what prevents echo and lets guests talk to one another rather than only to you. A mute you apply to a guest also enters that mix, so muting really mutes everywhere.
Before the first recording in a browser, a recording consent step appears — informed consent from participants is a legal requirement in many places, so it is a step rather than a footnote.
The system also checks that a live microphone is contributing before recording starts, so you do not discover at the end that you recorded an hour of silence.
Be clear about what is saved: the recording is a single file — exactly what the stage showed and exactly what the mix carried. There is no separate file per guest. In practice this means the layout and mute decisions you made while recording are part of the file and cannot be undone afterwards.
The recording is stored in short pieces and sent to the server as it goes, not only at the end. Even if the browser closes mid-session, whatever was already sent exists.
When you stop, the file is converted to MP4, given a running name in the style of Recording 3, and saved to Storage. You are asked whether to go there.
How many guests the room holds follows your plan. On the entry plans the length of a podcast and the number of recordings per month are limited as well; on the higher plans those limits do not apply, subject to fair use.
No. They open the link in a browser, choose how to join, enter a name and come in. There is no sign-up and nothing to install.
No. The recording is one file containing the stage and the audio mix as they were while recording. If you want an independent backup, ask the guest to record themselves locally in parallel.
Only after you grant the permission from the studio. By default the option is closed for them.
Whatever was already uploaded is kept, because the recording is sent in pieces as it goes. An interrupted recording is restored automatically in the background next time you come in, with nothing for you to confirm.
Riverside records each participant locally at full quality — a real advantage this product does not have. The honest comparison, and where a live-first studio wins.
A StreamYard alternative with an editor behind itStreamYard is the browser studio most people mean by the phrase. Here it is against a studio that keeps working after the broadcast ends — and what StreamYard does better.