Podcast Hosting Thread

wnolan1992

So I know there a few people on this forum with experience making podcasts, so I was just wondering what ye'd recommend for hosting?

I've been looking at libsyn and their plans seem pretty decent, but I'm wondering would it better just to get storage with a company like BlackKnight and host it myself?

Thoughts?

RayserSharp

I use mixcloud. I think it is brilliant.

wnolan1992

And can you link mixcloud to iTunes?

jaykhunter

If u can host it yourself and burn a feed to iTunes that'd be ideal - keep hearing horror stories with free all-in-ones, Podbean especially. Its alright when starting out but frustrating when you get more popular. Blip do video hosting with iTunes distribution.

bnt

When the immensely popular podcast The Bugle had to change platform last year, they asked listeners for advice and then went to SoundCloud. They seem happy so far.

swordsinfo

Does anyone know of good podcasting/video host. I'm looking to build member only access application that lists podcasts for their society?

ven0m

Jellycast.com is a really good host to use for free - really easy to use tools ... I use this for a number of my own podcasts

swordsinfo

Cheers I will have a look at that now - is there any advert with it?? Must come with some conditions if its free??

jaykhunter

Just tried out mixcloud - lets u upload without restrictions. No iTunes support though, and converts your mp3 to .m4a so if you're a stickler for control it might annoy u. It's aimed towards well, music mixes, but i see lots of podcasts hosting their stuff there. Have a look-see anyway.

I also applied for soundcloud's podcast beta, they're looking to expand to podcasts, i'll let u know how that pans out.

jaykhunter

Jellycast gives you 25GB/month bandwidth for £10, but to break it down, if you have a 50MB mp3 podcast, 500 people can listen to it per month. So when you become more popular, you're boned. Their highest tariff (£180) allows that 50MB mp3 to be downloaded 5,000 times. I know that sounds like a lot but that's their ceiling!!

Archive.org has free hosting. The site looks like something out of Geocities from the year 2000 but hey, free hosting. I haven't figured out how to RSS feed this to itunes but if you were to just upload your mp3s you could post that as a link.

swordsinfo

great info cheers - had a look at jelly cast and looks good if you just want to get your own podcasts up there but I need to be able to lay it out and control the info - really what I need is to develop the application on my own host but call the podcasts/ videos which would be hosted on proper podcasting/video host via some api or method. I don't want the user to know that the podcasts are located somewhere else and I don't want to give the exact location away of the files either.

swordsinfo

Do you think its essential to get the podcast/video up on itunes?? I was having a look at feedburner which seems to do the job however if I want to make the files only available to paid users then becomes and issue

swordsinfo

jaykhunter wrote: »

Jellycast gives you 25GB/month bandwidth for £10, but to break it down, if you have a 50MB mp3 podcast, 500 people can listen to it per month. So when you become more popular, you're boned. Their highest tariff (£180) allows that 50MB mp3 to be downloaded 5,000 times. I know that sounds like a lot but that's their ceiling!!

Archive.org has free hosting. The site looks like something out of Geocities from the year 2000 but hey, free hosting. I haven't figured out how to RSS feed this to itunes but if you were to just upload your mp3s you could post that as a link.

I think feedburner can create the rss feed for it!! Can you make a call to load a particular podcast from a different host?

jaykhunter

swordsinfo wrote: »

Do you think its essential to get the podcast/video up on itunes??

It's not essential but it does give your podcast an air of credibility, like if you said your CD was on sale in HMV. (Ok bad example!). A ton of people have iPods/iPhones and giving an iTunes link makes you look quite official.

I know Podbean host the mp3 but don't give out permanent links - but rather a temporary link for your IP. However I only hear people complaining and recommending against the site, despite it's immense popularity.

RE:Paid downloads, maybe hosting mp3s yourself and having a user/pass system would be the way to go.

swordsinfo

I was thinking that but was thinking that the podcast/video host would have better bandwidth than the application server (which would be on some shared server no doubt initially)

Hence why I was trying to split the tasks between the two hosts - has any one used vazzr (or something like that) they seem to provide an api but unsure if thats just for uploading files - thanks for all the info all very helpful

wnolan1992

I'm looking to do a weekly show, so Jollycast doesn't seem like an attractive option...

Mixcloud would be perfect if you could link it to iTunes.

Must price BlackKnight hosting packages tonight, have my domains with them so would be handy to combine everything.

wnolan1992

Alright, so I've looked at hosting packages, and I definitely think self hosting is the way I'm going to go.

The package has 10GB of disk space, with 200GB monthly transfer for €50/year, which seems pretty much what I need for now.

But maybe someone here can tell me, we'll say I upload my podcast file to the hosting server, do I have to start a separate blog for the podcast, or could I use the podcast label in my current blog and just rip an RSS feed from that?

swordsinfo

wnolan1992 wrote: »

Alright, so I've looked at hosting packages, and I definitely think self hosting is the way I'm going to go.

The package has 10GB of disk space, with 200GB monthly transfer for €50/year, which seems pretty much what I need for now.

But maybe someone here can tell me, we'll say I upload my podcast file to the hosting server, do I have to start a separate blog for the podcast, or could I use the podcast label in my current blog and just rip an RSS feed from that?

50 euro??? thats pretty good is there any analytal report with that - could you om me your host option - whats the cost on the overrun of bandwidth?

wnolan1992

swordsinfo wrote: »

50 euro??? thats pretty good is there any analytal report with that - could you om me your host option - whats the cost on the overrun of bandwidth?

It's the Blacknight Minimus Package. Not sure how to find out how much they charge for overrun unfortunately.

jaykhunter

Just doing the maths : 200GB/month... Say you've a 50MB podcast.
50MB, 1,000 downloads = 50GB. So you could do 1,000 listeners per week, not counting older shows. It actually isn't that much when you break it down. But on the self-hosting front I think there's something in it.

swordsinfo

true would have to see the file size to match it off there is the option for video hosting too. I might get away with using vimeo service - i think you can set it on their pro account to disable a number of functions??

wnolan1992

jaykhunter wrote: »

Just doing the maths : 200GB/month... Say you've a 50MB podcast.
50MB, 1,000 downloads = 50GB. So you could do 1,000 listeners per week, not counting older shows. It actually isn't that much when you break it down. But on the self-hosting front I think there's something in it.

Yeah, I've been thinking about it and if I do decide to go with BK, it'll probably be the Medius instead of the Minimus I'd go for. It gives you 10GB extra space, and double the monthly transfer for €49 more.

So you'd be talking about 2000 listeners a week, not including past episodes, which (to be brutally honest) I doubt I'll ever have to worry about getting. :pac:


EDIT: €39 more. I can't maths. :P

swordsinfo

true that its a very high number - do you know what kind of bandwidth the provide per connection? all good giving you that space if the hosting speeds on these packages and then not having the in-time bandwidth to provide to the user?

jaykhunter

Godaddy.com have excellent web space deals but their podcast-specific deal (quickblog) is horrendously bad. If there was a way to burn a feed pointing to a folder on the net (and so having the feed to iTunes) we'd be laughing.

wnolan1992

Bah! It's been so long since I've looked at SoundCloud that I got very excited when I saw they seem to have very easy iTunes integration. Then I saw that they limit you to 2hrs of audio.

Their Pro Plus option would be ideal if it weren't so expensive. If it came down to 150-200e I'd be seriously tempted.