Castmagic Review: Best AI Content Automation Tool?
Castmagic is a powerful AI tool designed specifically for podcasters, YouTubers, and content creators.
Imagine uploading your latest YouTube video or podcast recording and automatically having a blog post ready, and Instagram Reel designed, and LinkedIn post written.
Castmagic makes that a reality.
The creators of Castmagic have combined various artificial intelligence technologies allowing creators to maximize the value from every piece of content produced.
In this Castmagic review, I’ll show you exactly what Castmagic can do, how it does it, and how you can use it to 10x your content creation throughput. 📈
What Does Castmagic Do?
Castmagic enables YouTubers, podcasters, and content creators to maximize the value of their content by using AI to transform audio files into blogs, social media posts, and other media.
Castmagic Key Features
Contrary to popular belief, using Castmagic isn’t just for podcasters.
It also caters to YouTubers, course and webinar creators, sales calls, coaching, and can even generate content from meetings.
Let’s take a closer look at the 4 key Castmagic features:
Transcript
The transcript feature in Castmagic will be you first port of call after uploading your media.
You can upload audio and video to Castmagic from a number of sources including:
- Audio and video files directly from your PC
- Importing URLs from YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram Reels, or TikTok
- By Configuring an RSS Feed
- Zapier integration
- iOS recordings directly from the new Castmagic iOS app
Once you’ve imported your media Castmagic’s AI will automatically transcribe, timestamp, and differentiate speakers.
The whole process is impressively fast, accurate, and intuitive – you’ll only have to make minor adjustments after your audio is transcribed.
Pro Tip: Highlighting specific parts of the transcript allows you to automatically clip the media and download the audio.
AI Content
The AI Content section is where we start seeing the innovative features of Castmagic.
Moving over to the AI Content tab you’re met with a huge range of AI generated content derived directly from your transcript.
You can either create custom content based on your own text prompt, or scroll down to the Recurring Content section where you can choose from podcast titles, YouTube keywords, YouTube descriptions, auto Clip Finder, Newsletter generator, Instagram Threads, and much more.
In the event you can’t find what you’re after in the Recurring Content menu, you can create you own one off content sample by using the prompt field at the top of the page.
Castmagic has provided a bunch of popular prompts you can use by clicking the “Start with examples” dropdown.
If you envision yourself needing to reuse your prompt in your content creation process, scroll to the bottom of the AI Content page and click “New custom prompt” to create and save custom prompts.
You’ll be shown a popup where you can enter your custom prompt name, the custom prompt, and a content sample to help guide the AI to match your tone and style.
When you’re done simply click “Save custom prompt” and it will be automatically added to the Recurring Content menu for use later.
Super efficient.
Magic Chat
Magic Chat allows you to extract information from your long form audio in various formats.
It can be a simpler way to find what you need without creating custom prompts in the AI Content section.
Like everything so far with Castmagic, there’s a selection of examples to get you started alongside community prompts.
The Magic Chat feature in Castmagic really enables creators to generate unique content from podcasts or other media.
Studio
Castmagic Studio is used for generating visual assets from your podcast episodes and YouTube content.
The current features within Castmagic Studio are limited, but I really like the direction it’s heading.
Clicking “Get started” you’ll be met with the Clip Studio menu, where at the time of writing there exists only one option – Quote Card.
You can customize your quote card by modifying the text caption, generating a custom background image with AI, choosing an aspect ratio, and a few other basic features.
For now, the Studio section in Castmagic is quite underwhelming BUT, there is massive potential here for creating visual social media assets from your podcast episodes and audio content.
Castmagic Benefits for Content Creators
The benefits of Castmagic for content creators are many.
Here are Castmagic’s key benefits to YouTubers, podcasters, content creators in general:
Streamlined Podcast Management: Castmagic transcribes, timestamps, and differentiates speakers in audio and video files.
Content Creation with Magic Chat: Magic Chat enables creators to extract information from long-form audio effortlessly, creating engaging content without the need for custom prompts or high-level prompt engineering skills.
Integrates with Your Existing Workflow: Castmagic integrates smoothly with various media sources and platforms, such as YouTube, Vimeo, Instagram Reels, and TikTok, ensuring compatibility with your existing workflow.
Show Notes Generation: The AI Content feature offers tools to generate show notes quickly and accurately, saving time and ensuring consistency across episodes.
Fast-Tracking Content with AI: AI-generated content from transcripts includes podcast titles, YouTube descriptions, newsletters, and more.
User-Friendly Interface: The intuitive and user-friendly interface makes it easy for creators to navigate through features and manage their content workflow efficiently.
Dramatically Increasing Content Throughput: Using AI to analyze your transcripts allows for a wide range of content to be automated whenever you release a new episode or piece of content.
Customization and Reusability: Creators can generate and save custom prompts for recurring use.
Visual Content Creation in Studio: The Studio feature, though currently limited, allows for the generation of visual assets like quote cards from podcast episodes, with potential for more visual content tools in the future.
If you’re looking to get the absolute most from your content, reach a wider audience, or automate tasks you’re currently doing manually – Castmagic can potentially level up your workflow.
What Can’t Castmagic Do?
While Castmagic has a bunch of powerful features for content automation, there are still quite a few things you might not be able to do.
It Lacks Visual Asset Tools: The Studio feature currently only supports the creation of quote cards, lacking more advanced visual content generation tools for social media and other platforms (I assume more features are coming soon).
No Real-Time Transcription: Castmagic does not offer real-time transcription capabilities, meaning you’ll have to wait until you’re podcast episode is completely finished before uploading the audio to Castmagic and creating additional content.
No Video Editing Tools: The platform does not provide comprehensive audio or video editing tools.
Limited Mobile Editing: The introduction of the Castmagic iOS app has somewhat addressed this concern, but there is no option for Android users – and the iOS functionality is limited.
- Text Media: You can’t upload text media to Castmagic which isn’t great for bloggers or article writers looking to generate content from their written words.
With all this being said, the good thing to know about Castmagic is that there are frequent updates made to the platform.
Hopefully in due time these issues will be addressed!
Castmagic User Interface
Castmagic have done an excellent job of packaging this app.
Considering the underlying complexity alongside the capability of the tool – it really is a user-friendly app to get started with.
Alongside this, the graphical interface is aesthetic and easy to look at. Everything is where you expect it to be, and there’s also the option for easily switching between light and dark mode which is a must for me.
As I wrote this Castmagic review I didn’t have to read any how-to pages or watch any guides on how to use it – it’s all very intuitive.
Overall, Castmagic have done a fantastic job at packaging everything into a user-friendly web app – I’m very impressed.
Castmagic Pricing
Castmagic have kept pricing simple, offering 3 options and a generous free plan.
Note: You’ll need a credit card to sign up for the free plan.
Free: Use Castmagic for 1 week for free. After this billing will resume with your selected plan chosen during the sign up process.
Hobby ($39/month): The Hobby plan includes 300 minutes per month, unlimited file uploads, multiple workspaces, all content outputs, custom prompts, and access to the iOS app.
Starter ($99/month): The Starter plan includes 800 minutes per month, unlimited file uploads, multiple workspaces, all content outputs, custom prompts, access to the iOS app, and agency support.
Rising Star ($299/month): The Rising Star plan includes 2500 minutes per month, unlimited file uploads, multiple workspaces, API access, custom prompts, access to the iOS app, agency support, and unlimited prompts.
Castmagic Key Metrics/10
So, would I use Castmagic?
The answer is Yes, absolutely. And I will actually be using it for content automation into the future.
Overall, I scored Castmagic an 8.4/10 based on the average of these 5 key metrics:
Ease of Use (8/10)
Castmagic has done a great job at an intuitive and user-friendly design.
You can use the tool and become proficient with basically no training.
There are a number of helpful Zoom videos provided by Blaine (the creator of Castmagic) and automated emails that you’ll come across as you progress with the Castmagic workflow.
Features and Functionality (7/10)
Castmagic does everything it says it does, and it does it well.
It allows you to upload media from various sources as well as CSS feeds and Zapier integration.
I knocked off a few points here as Castmagic’s visual content creation features are currently quite limited.
Performance and Reliability (10/10)
The app worked fast and reliably for me, only freezing one time which was fixed with a page refresh.
The transcription function was high quality with only minor fixes needing to be made to the captions and automated speakers.
The content generation was of a high standard and the built-in and community prompts made it super easy.
Pricing and Value for Money (8/10)
Castmagic is priced in the mid range relative to most AI tools.
Considering the capabilities and the potential time savings I do think it’s good value – only slightly more than a ChatGPT Plus subscription which much more functionality.
Community (9/10)
The community prompts are an excellent feature.
There exists a Castmagic slack group where you can collaborate with other users and creators.
There is also the option to schedule an onboarding call which is handy for anyone that finds themselves intimidated by the app.
Castmagic Alternatives
There are a good number of Castmagic alternatives, some of which meet and exceed the functionality, but many of which fall short of the mark.
Here’s a few top contenders for Castmagic alternatives:
- Exemplary AI
- Podsqueeze
- Podcast Marketing AI
- PodcastAI
- ChatGPT
Final Thoughts
Overall, The guys at Castmagic have done an excellent job at creating an AI-powered content automation app with serious benefits for podcasters, YouTubers, and anyone who creates media with the spoken word.
The platform delivers with reliability, quality, and useability making it a pleasant experience to use.
Castmagic is somewhat lacking in the visual media side of content creation, but I expect this to improve as the tech becomes more accessible.
It’s a fun and powerful app to 10x your content throughput with AI!