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Free Podcasting Hosts?
TheZorch asks: "I'm looking for a free online Podcast hosting site which offers RSS feeds. The feeds are important for submitting to iTunes. I've found Odeo, however uploading to the site is difficult and hangs about half-way through, most of the time. Currently, my Podcasts are being stored at Archive.org, the Creative Commons Internet Archive, but the site doesn't generate RSS feeds which allow you to post your podcasts on iTunes. Uploading large files via HTTP is a pain even on a cable modem. I'd prefer to be able to do it via FTP. Does anyone know of a good free Podcasting host with RSS feeds and reliable uploads for large files?"
On the topic of cheap, reliable, lots-of-bandwidth web hosting I'd have to say 1and1 is really solid. 2 domains, 100gb of web space, 1,000 email accounts AND a terabyte of monthly traffic for $3.74/month. I've been using them for over 2 years and they have been fantastic from hosting to support. I moved all my domains and hosting from GoDaddy (complete morons). Now using a dedicated server from them which I couldn't be more happy about and can't beat the price.
So off my soapbox, here's the link.
www.1and1.com
try podomatic, I've been using them. it's free, though you can pay to upgrade if you want more than 2gb/month transfer or more than 500mb storage.
www.podomatic.com
It looks like OurMedia.org, which uses archive.org for storage has RSS for its users.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Never used them, but have heard that they're good.
http://www.libsyn.com/
This guy's the limit!
I'll second Dreamhost. I've been using them since 1999. I have so much extra bandwidth that I started a free podcast hosting service called nanercast (http://www.nanercast.com) for people like yourself. If I like your podcast, it gets hosted for free and I help you get it on the iTMS. No strings. I'm sure there are tons of other similar services out there, just my two cents.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
yeah, nice ref ID attached to that one. here, for the lazy: http://www.1and1.com/ sans any ref IDs.
Install Drupal, audio.module, and playlist.module.
Every playlist node has links for podcast, xspf, and m3u/pls views of the playlist, in addition to being able to view the playlist on your site and listen with an embedded OSS Flash player (xspf player). Because it's Drupal, every playlist can be tagged with categories (taxonomy) in addition to support for artist/album/etc. metadata. Audio.module also automatically provides links to pages to view by artist, album, genre, etc.
I've been podcasting with Libsyn for almost a year and a half, and I would recommend them heartily over any free services out there.
The basic Libsyn accounts costs $5/month for 100MB upload a month, then $10/month for 250MB upload, scaling upwards. If you are using the basic account, and say one month you need to bump upwards for more space, there is a $5.00 dollar charge to change service levels, and no charge to scale back down. This is an excellent option, if you have one particularly busy month out of the year, and don't necessarily need the more expensive account all the time. There is also no bandwidth limit.
There is an ftp upload, as well as other features like future publishing (uploading a podcast, and having it published, i.e made available at a future date). Libsyn is probably in the 99.5% uptime bracket. Maybe once a month there are a few hours of downtime for upgrades, or the occasional hardware problem. Users are always notified of these events, and these aren't an issue for me, given the overall excellent quality of the service.
Libsyn RSS feeds are automatic, and are actually integrated with the Feedburner feed service, which provides scads more functionality than the basic vanilla RSS. There are also a host of Podcast content listing sites out there, that automatically index all Libsyn feeds, so without any effort on your part, your podcast will be indexed on probably 20 or more Podcast aggregators.
As for iTunes. When iTunes first starting listing Podcasts, all Libsyn feeds were automatically included in their Podcast store, but this has been tightened up recently. Podcasts now have to jump through more hoops to get listed, and generally seem to have to have an established track record. Try to get on iTunes anyway you can though, as over 80% of my initial listeners come through iTunes (though this trends down towards 2/3's over time for each individual Podcast).
If you need free podshow is definitely your best option. You get feeds, a commenting system, blog, and stats. Plus it's got the built-in social networking mechanism that may help you build an audience. Just go to podshow.com and create an account and show page and you're off and running. If you don't like the somewhat cluttered myspace-like appearance, then just get a cheap hosting plan with bluehost or some other place, set up a wordpress blog and use the podpress plug-in. Wordpress already supports feeds and Podpress will handle all the enclosure stuff for the feed. Wordpress and podpress are both free, and bluehost offers plans from $6.95 a month.
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