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Podcast Hosting
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Podcast Hosting

jcalebjcaleb Member

Hello. I want to start my own little podcast with a small target audience in my country.

Should I use ready made service like SoundCloud, Fireside, libsyn, etc? Or is this something easy to setup on a VPS? Apologize, most searches give me hits on seo optimized blogs that links to ready made service. Thanks!

Comments

  • The real LET way would be a Youtube/Twitch LiveStream with just a background image and you talking.

  • donlidonli Member
    edited April 2018

    @jcaleb said:
    Hello. I want to start my own little podcast with a small target audience in my country.

    Should I use ready made service like SoundCloud, Fireside, libsyn, etc? Or is this something easy to setup on a VPS? Apologize, most searches give me hits on seo optimized blogs that links to ready made service. Thanks!

    Three questions:

    How frequent will your podcasts be?

    What's will the approximate file size of each podcast?

    How many listeners do you wish to plan for?

  • jcalebjcaleb Member
    edited April 2018

    donli said: Three questions:

    • How frequent will your podcasts be? I plan once a week
    • What's will the approximate file size of each podcast? My estimate is around 20mb per episode
    • How many listeners do you wish to plan for? My estimate would be between 500 and 5,000
  • vovler said: The real LET way would be a Youtube/Twitch LiveStream with just a background image and you talking.

    I want to publish on itunes and also have a player on my website

  • donlidonli Member
    edited April 2018

    Ok so: 5,000 users x 20Mb x 4 per month = 400 Gb/month. Not outrageous monthly bandwidth.

    The problem will be if you have 5,000 regular listeners and you announce a new poscast on say your twitter account and say 500 of those listeners simultaneously try to download the latest podcast.

    There seem to be a lot of companies specializing in this area:

    https://www.weeditpodcasts.com/8-top-podcast-hosting-companies/

    and your cost would be $10-$20/month (less when you startup and have fewer listeners). Looks like something you should consider outsourcing to one of them and concentrate on your content. A VPS with sufficient (simultaneous) bandwidth would probably cost as much.

  • mikhomikho Member, Host Rep

    http://www.libsyn.com/podcast-hosting-services/

    It isn’t free but it will save you tons of work, cost as a VPS /month and some more.

  • mikho said: http://www.libsyn.com/podcast-hosting-services/

    It isn’t free but it will save you tons of work, cost as a VPS /month and some more.

    It's hard to choose, hard to trust blogs that have affiliate links.

  • AnthonySmithAnthonySmith Member, Patron Provider

    I listen to a ton of podcasts, I have them on all day while working, I have been listening to them since around 2003 I started with the kenradio podcast :)

    I personally think that the best way to build an audience is not to restrict yourself to 1 avenue, upload it to sound cloud, iTunes, YouTube, get listed on pocastaddict, and also have a vps that lists the weekly shows with a simple website that has links to the shows on the various outlets.

    Then on the vps you host a simple archive of all the shows for everything 1+ month old.

    That's how I would do it.

    Thanked by 2jcaleb kkrajk
  • Even if your (gbit) vps is being hit by 1000 listeners at once, they all still get 1mbit/s. If you record it at 128kbit/s, then they all should download it in about 1/8th of the time it takes for the podcast to play.

    Given 20mb podcasts at 128kbit/s, that would be around 20min runtime, or 2-3 min download time. I'd be very surprised if you get 1k visitors hitting your website in 2-3 mins exactly.

    Thanked by 1jcaleb
  • AnthonySmith said: I personally think that the best way to build an audience is not to restrict yourself to 1 avenue, upload it to sound cloud, iTunes, YouTube, get listed on pocastaddict, and also have a vps that lists the weekly shows with a simple website that has links to the shows on the various outlets.

    I am very new to this. I thought it is only hosted in 1 place (E.g. Sound Cloud) and then submit to itunes the links. And also on the website, have a player that plays the sound cloud hosted file. Yes understood youtube needs to upload separately.

  • teamacc said: Given 20mb podcasts at 128kbit/s, that would be around 20min runtime, or 2-3 min download time. I'd be very surprised if you get 1k visitors hitting your website in 2-3 mins exactly.

    I agree

  • risharderisharde Patron Provider, Veteran

    If you have a gbit server, you might be able to get away with 500 at once... doesn't sound unpractical to me but I could be wrong.

    @donli said:
    Ok so: 5,000 users x 20Mb x 4 per month = 400 Gb/month. Not outrageous monthly bandwidth.

    The problem will be if you have 5,000 regular listeners and you announce a new poscast on say your twitter account and say 500 of those listeners simultaneously try to download the latest podcast.

    There seem to be a lot of companies specializing in this area:

    https://www.weeditpodcasts.com/8-top-podcast-hosting-companies/

    and your cost would be $10-$20/month (less when you startup and have fewer listeners). Looks like something you should consider outsourcing to one of them and concentrate on your content. A VPS with sufficient (simultaneous) bandwidth would probably cost as much.

  • pikepike Veteran
    edited April 2018

    I hosted a podcast for some years. 10k listeners, 1 episode/week and 100-250mb/episode. Had it running on a Hetzner CX20, later on a 2 core cloud server without any problems except the 2TB traffic included in a CX20 not being enough. Shouldn't be a problem with the 20TB that they include now.

    Users made me aware of the fact I could easily compress non-music mp3s to opus files resulting in 75% size loss. I didn't want to switch the codec because most users were DAUs that are simply used to mp3s.

    For website I would stay away from wordpress and host a static html site serving the mp3's along with an RSS Feed for people to put into iTunes, VLC and other podcaster apps.

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