Podcasting -how to set it up

Interceptor

I'm posting this for my brother who wants to make some music files available as podcasts. Where should he start, or how does he go about hosting them? Are there bandwith/size issues? What formats can he use?

Thanks,

'cptr

projectmayhem

first, make sure he's not posting OTHER people's music. that's just illegal

normal podcasting has no real "standard". file sizes tend to differ vastly between shows. since if you're downloading a podcast, you probably have broadband and wont really be watching the file size too much.

standard format is mp3, just because it's compatable with nearly all software/mp3 players.

other then that, just post it to iTunes and podcastvalley etc. and you're good to go!

monkeyfudge

If you have your own website you should look at installing LoudBlog on it.

It's what I use for NEARfm and it's also the one we use for boards.ie

Interceptor

He's a sound engineer with a studio in Dublin - I am guessing he wants to be able to make band demos and promotional tracks available to studio customers but he doesn't give me details and I'm not very technical.

Its not for illegally posting commercially available music - and I don't know if he wants to make it universally available. If he wasn't so lazy/busy he could post his own questions and not pester me with this stuff...

Cheers monkeyfudge!!

'cptr

tomED

First thing you need is hosting.
There are free services, but you can get some good basic hosting packages from www.blacknight.ie

Your next task is to create the XML file for your podcast. Here's an example of one that I've used:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
    <rss version="2.0">
      <channel>
        <title>Conway</title>
        <link>http://www.conwaygroove.com/</link>
        <description>CONWAY is a collaboration of musicians, writers, programmers and producers fronted by Francie Conway.</description>
        <language>en-us</language>
        <copyright>2006</copyright>
        <lastBuildDate>Fri, 24 Feb 2006 14:00:00 GMT</lastBuildDate>
        <webMaster>satellite2day@yahoo.ie</webMaster>
        <ttl>1</ttl>
		<image>
			<url>http://www.conwaygroove.com/images/Welcome_to_America.jpg</url>
			<title>CONWAY</title>
			<link>http://www.conwaygroove.com/</link>
			<width>144</width>
			<height>144</height>
		</image>
		
        <item>
          <title>Welcome to America</title>
          <description>Welcome to America, the title track from the new CONWAY album.</description>
          <pubDate>Fri, 24 Feb 2006 13:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
          <enclosure url="http://www.conwaygroove.com/Conway_Welcome-to-America.mp3" length="3918442" type="audio/mpeg"/>
        </item>
	
    </rss>
</channel>

Here's more info: http://www.podcastdirectory.com/help/createxml.php

Once you've created your XML file, save it as a .rss file, upload it to your server.

The go find places to publish your podcast! iTunes is the obvious one, but it's a bit of a pain getting them published and it costs money too.

Free places to publish your podcasts include:
http://www.podcast.net/
http://podfeed.net/

Hope this helped!

Tom

topgold

If you're serious about getting reach with your podcast, you should consider hooking up with a Feedburner account like we've done with our podcasts. They take care of all the XML for you and drop you into iTunes instead of you having to mess with all the drop-downs and settings and passwords and things that take time.

Plus, if you have a Feedburner podcast feed, you're sorted when iTunes changes its directory structure because Feedburner and iTunes collaborate on those things.

smcelhinney

Im a bit of a mac whore.

I use GarageBand and have a .Mac account. You can video and audio podcast through these quite easily, Id be happy to run through this with you.

If however, you want to go nuts and bolts, and prefer to understand what you're doing etc, then read up on RSS and podcasting.

Also, put a quick iTunes link to the podcast by prepending the URL with "itpc://" for users who have iTunes 7.0 installed. That automatically adds it to their podcasts.

Handy..