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Free Podcasting Hosts? 87

Posted by Cliff from the a-home-for-your-internet-audio-offerings dept.
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?"
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Free Podcasting Hosts? More

Free Podcasting Hosts?

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  • Pay, and build your own? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Ford Prefect ( 8777 ) on Saturday October 14, 2006 @02:57PM (#16438039) Homepage
    Web hosting's pretty cheap these days - for instance, I get loads of disk space and about a terabyte of monthly bandwidth on the vaguely-reliable, cheap-and-cheerful Dreamhost. [NOTE COMPLETE ABSENCE OF AFFILIATE LINK!]

    I've no idea if there are any off-the-shelf, open source 'podcasting' packages available (any suggestions, anyone?), but RSS is very simple and it could be worth learning just enough PHP to write your own, incredibly basic system for generating it yourself.

    But wait, this is the difficult solution, isn't it?

    • Re:Pay, and build your own? (Score:4, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 14, 2006 @03:16PM (#16438191)
      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

    • Re:Pay, and build your own? (Score:5, Informative)

      by over_exposed ( 623791 ) on Saturday October 14, 2006 @03:22PM (#16438235) Homepage
      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.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by ben there... ( 946946 )

      I've no idea if there are any off-the-shelf, open source 'podcasting' packages available (any suggestions, anyone?)

      Install Drupal [drupal.org], audio.module [drupal.org], and playlist.module [drupal.org].

      playlist.module

      Podcast (RSS), XSPF, PLS, and M3U feed generation is taken care by this module.

      Features:
      1) iTunes podcast/xspf/m3u/pls feeds generated on the fly, with full metadata support
      2) album artwork can now be integrated (through URL)
      3) xspf flash players for each feed, including popup players for each
      4) audio browser, similar to iTunes,

      • Anyway, I should have also mentioned that audio.module also includes audio_import.module, which can import mp3s you have uploaded by FTP, which should meet your criteria for that.

        It should be pretty simple to setup. Buy hosting, untar the core package and modules, visit the /admin section and configure the modules, and upload your mp3s. You get to maintain control over the whole process, rather than relying on someone else's service.
    • "RSS is very simple" No it's not its really simple.
    • Regarding Dreamhost, I have never used them, but I know a LOT of people have had problems... Either do a search on WHT (webhostingtalk.com), check out http://www.dreamhost-sucks.com/ [dreamhost-sucks.com] or simply google "Dream Host" and see what comes back... I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
    • You can use Loudblog or Wordpress with the PodPress plugin.
    • That's nearly what I do. I use archive.org for free hosting of the MP3s (no hosting and bandwidth worries, pretty reliable service, open-ish source / creative commons licensed content preferred). The website itself is hosted cheaply elsewhere (and I don't need lots of space or bandwidth for that - one could even use a free service).

      And I've been meaning to get around to hacking up something that can automate the generation of the RSS "podcast" feed which describes what has been uploaded. "RSS is simple" is

    • I started a podcast back in April and went with a 50GB a month plan and quickly exceeded my bandwidth. The next month I passed the hat to all parties involved in the podcast and collected enough money to get an older box (P3/40GB disk) running over a 10Mbit connection w/ 4TB metered bandwidth (more than I could possibly use). I'm lucky to have a buddy that runs a small hosting company piggybacked in the same facility as 2 very large ISPs in Atlanta.

      When you're doing a podcast you need to really consider

  • Dreamhost (Score:3, Interesting)

    by westyvw ( 653833 ) on Saturday October 14, 2006 @03:05PM (#16438083)
    Maybe we would enjoy reading this: http://blog.dreamhost.com/2006/10/03/itunes-music- sore/ [dreamhost.com]

  • And I'm Looking for a Free Lunch! (Score:5, Funny)

    by RobotRunAmok ( 595286 ) on Saturday October 14, 2006 @03:10PM (#16438129)
    Wotta Coincidence!

    The lunch should be tasty, but nutritionally balanced. I'm thinking it should start with a small salad, tossed greens, crushed pepper, oil & vinegar, nothing too fancy. Some porto bello mushrooms would be nice. Then perhaps a small cup of soup, either a light tomato or some gazpacho. Some of that freshly-grated parmesan would go great with either, I'm thinking. For the main event, no big deal, howza bout some roast beef, thinly sliced, on a French baquette, lightly buttered, and some au jus to dip it in, A half-bottle of a good Aussie Shiraz to help it down. Coffee and cookies for dessert.

    You let me know how your search works out; I'll keep you posted on mine, 'kay?
    • Sarcasm flamebait modded up as Funny, ought to at least include a link to Wikipedia to back its opinion up. To not do so is substandard Slashdot material. The guy was looking for something like the audio equivalent of YouTube, not someone to redo his roof for free. Chill?

  • Comma (Score:2, Funny)

    by joel8x ( 324102 )
    I'm searching, for posts, with complete, overuse, and, misuse, of the comma.

  • Ourmedia? (Score:4, Informative)

    by bigbigbison ( 104532 ) on Saturday October 14, 2006 @03:18PM (#16438215) Homepage
    It looks like OurMedia.org [ourmedia.org], which uses archive.org for storage has RSS for its users.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by zotz ( 3951 )
      I like ourmedia and have my stuff there, but they have been having reliability issues / growing pains of late. Talk to some of the people there if you have concerns. I plan on keeping my stuff with them while it works itself out and am not trying to scare anyone off, just do some checking if your situation warrants it.

      all the best,

      drew
      Come on over to NaNoWriMo and write your novel in 30 days.
      Then join me in putting yours under a Creative Commons BY-SA license.
      http://www.nanowrimo.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic [nanowrimo.org]

  • libsyn (Score:3, Informative)

    by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Saturday October 14, 2006 @03:18PM (#16438221)
    Never used them, but have heard that they're good.

    http://www.libsyn.com/ [libsyn.com]
    • Derrr. Should've mentioned, it's not free, but it's pretty cheap if you're serious about producing a podcast.

    • Libsyn, Libsyn, Libsyn (Score:4, Informative)

      by Jack Action ( 761544 ) on Saturday October 14, 2006 @04:00PM (#16438525)

      I've been podcasting [libsyn.com] 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).

  • I've heard that FeedBurner should handle most of the work. I don't think they host, but you just upload the links to the files and it generates the feed.
  • Part of putting a new episode up is adding a new item to the rss feed and uploading that also. You should be doing this locally - no service provider will do it for you.

    When I started a podcast project last year, I used FeedForAll to manually generate the feed. I had no special access to the site, so I downloaded new episodes to get the mp3 tag info (time, length), added the episodes and uploaded the update.

    Since then, I've written a quick perl script that runs every hour and grabs all the information in

  • Make one? (Score:3)

    by Zadaz ( 950521 ) on Saturday October 14, 2006 @03:32PM (#16438309)
    Sure we all like free things, both beer and that other kinds that's s popular around here. But isn't this Slashdot? Don't we all have web servers lost in our couch cushions? I'm not even terribly skilled, but I could write an automated RSS feed in pretty short order in language I'd never seen before on some cheap, $5 a month hosting plan.

    Pay for it. If you don't value what you have to say enough to sacrifice a little for it, no one else wants to hear it either.
    • I've been hosting my own usenet, web sites, blogs, forums, mail, etc. for most of the past decade. (I'd probably add podcasts to the list, except for my inability to speak without pausing two or three times in mid sentence to debate phrasing and word selection in my head.) All it takes is broadband internet access, an spare PC, and some libre software. That's about as close to "free hosting" as you can get (since any self-respecting geek has that sort of stuff already), it's not that difficult, and I hav

      • You poor soul (Score:2, Insightful)

        by wondafucka ( 621502 )
        I was expecting comments like this, the minute that I saw the article.

        While I am extremely impressed by your ability to set up a home server, I think the category of nerd (not used in the derogatory fashion) that you are and the category of nerd of the question asker, are completely different.

        Yes, taking a spare computer and setting up host is leet. It's pretty badass. But it's pretty obvious by the question itself that the poster is not capable of doing that. They have probably never compiled a line of c

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by kfg ( 145172 ) *
          I think that there should be room in slashdot for people who like and use technology without going under the hood too deeply

          Slashdot Lite; Now with Turbo XL5000 technology and bluing for extra whiteness - Your problems that that we don't give a fuck about.

          KFG

        • Oh, give me a break. I'm not leet. I'm not badass. Although I'm fond of writing my own HTML (because in my day, we had to), I've never written any C++, the only Perl or PHP coding I've done has been modifications to other people's work, and I'm not particularly fluent in CSS or XML. The only RSS I've ever touched was installing some blog software... and to be honest, all I did there was follow written step-by-step directions. You're impressed that I set up a spare computer as a web server? Heh. You m

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Zadaz ( 950521 )
          Thank you for your kind consideration and care about my soul.

          You have shown me how wrong I am to think that someone should put an effort into something that they want. It was also wrong of me to assume that someone might want to learn something new and expand their skills. I am a flawed person for feeling that these things are a virtue. I will attempt to amend my ways.

          I'll also try to use less sarcasm in the future.
  • To offload the bandwidth you might consider using a P2P CDN like Red Swoosh (www.redswoosh.net). The nice thing about P2P is the more people you deliver to, the more efficient it becomes in pulling from peer, and the faster the downloads go.
  • That should walk you through the whole process and it's the basis of how I started http://askaninja.com./ [askaninja.com.]

    I believe Archive.org does allow FTP uploading. http://ourmedia.org/ [ourmedia.org] uses a proprietary uploader, or did when we used it earlier this year.

    You could also look at http://blip.tv/ [blip.tv] and http://revver.com./ [revver.com.] Both provide RSS and hosting for free and with Revver you can actually make money.

    We use http://libsyn.com/ [libsyn.com] for some of our media hosting as well. They are good, reliable and cheap. They have FT

  • Podshow [podshow.com] do it all for free - if you don't count the little advert at the end. The site is bright and I think it is nicely laid out.

  • Podshow is definitely thebest free option (Score:3, Informative)

    by samabuelsamid ( 1013651 ) on Saturday October 14, 2006 @04:08PM (#16438593)
    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.
    • You also get ads before and after your show. The good side is that IF your show gets popular you may be able to get a cut from those ads.

      Personally I would prefer to just pay for my own hosting and run wordpress.
  • I know...I know not everyone likes godaddy...HOWEVER here is what I do.

    I registered a .com and .net domains.
    With each domain you get the 5g storage, and 250gb of bandwidth for free with ads.
    I pay for the .com so there are no ads, and host my mp3 files on the .net account.
    If you don't mind the ads, you can do free all the way.

    There are ads on the .net site, but only for HTML/PHP etc files...mp3 files just download.
    • GoDaddy is a bit of a joke as far as hosting. I've used them about a year ago, and they have very small limits on domains, subdomains, email, etc., charging for any additional features you need. Their performance is poor compared to the alternatives. Their interfaces are slow and awkward, giving you ads every time you use them. Their support emails are HTML, and require you to reply in this little section between HTML tags to process your response.

      DreamHost, Site5, or BlueHost are much better alternatives.
  • I suggest this neat little open source tool [sourceforge.net]. It's a web-based frontend for managing podcasts -- just upload the files through a web interface and you're done (you may have to adjust the PHP max. filesize settings). What would be really lovely is a non-profit providing such a service on a reliable basis.

  • Funny Title (Score:1, Funny)

    by Plutonite ( 999141 )
    Software don't just celebrate 10 years of "existence"!

    10 years of innovation, 10 years of creativity, 10 years of asskickery..but "existence"? Do you have nothing better to say?
    That's like telling your wife..oh, never mind.

    You guys would fail in the jungle that is today's market.
  • I work at Calvary Chapel Chico, and recently the head Pastor here (Sam Allen) asked if I could start a Podcast for his daily radio show. I said "Sure", wow, that was premature. It took me a month of trying on my own, and then I found Pod-Serve.com. It works perfectly, and its still in alpha. It will automaticly list you on iTunes and Odeo (and itself). I'd recomend it to anyone.
  • For hosting your podcasts if you're a musician you might want to check out http://www.jamendo.com/ [jamendo.com]

    They do RSS, Podcasts, Bittorrent, reviews, etc... Pretty good, even if you just want to listen to some nice free music
  • Wowee, That's handy, there is an advert for it right underneath your post! Who would have thought!
  • Dude, sounds like you need to check out the totally awesome and totally free http://www.rsspect.com/ [rsspect.com]!! Plus Ryan North is one classy guy, so you know his stuff is gonna be good!
  • I am not sure if it is free but BluBrry [blubrry.com] was talking about providing a hosting option. I am pretty sure it isn't available yet. If you contact them, they might be able to give you more information. Oh... and they DON'T automatically insert ads.
  • It's not too bad except for the limited file space:

    http://www.ipodnetworks.com/ [ipodnetworks.com]
  • Hey Just my 2c worth but it sounds like something the likes of Google are good at picking up on and doing. Im sure not even the swollowing of youtube would stretch the googleplex let alone something like this.
  • Libsyn (https://www.libsyn.com). Not exactly free ($5/month) but an outstanding value and highly reliable. Have been using them for almost 2 years.
  • As the old adage goes. There are a few no-cost options (podshow, archive.org), but these take out of your hands to a certain degree your complete control over your podcast.

    A year ago I searched around for cheap hosting - I didn't want to pay a fortune for hosting my files.

    For $7-8 per month (US) you can get 20 gig storage, 300 gig per month transfer. Spend a little bit of money and keep "total" control over your podcast. Use FeedBurner to help take the pain out of RSS creation, or even go for the multitu

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