Hosting and Distributing your Podcast
So you've recorded your first podcast, perhaps in your basement studio with pop-filters and expensive microphones, or maybe just at your desk with the in-build mic of your MacBook Pro. You've edited it, maybe using Audacity or Reaper, or the latest version of GarageBand. You've ended up with an MP3 file containing all the shininess of your new podcast. Now what?
To turn your audio content into a podcast, you need two things:
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A place where you can host your MP3 files, to make them available on the internet.
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An RSS feed so that people can subscribe to it.
There are other things you might want to set up, such as a listing on iTunes, or a website for your podcast. But these two things are the essentials. So let's look at them in turn.
Hosting
Hosting a file just means uploading it to a server so that other people can download it. Perhaps you already have a webspace somewhere, in which case congratulations! Your job is done. Just upload the MP3 to a directory and skip to the next section.
If you don't have a website or other hosting space already, you have a couple of options. The easiest is to go with a dedicated podcasting service that will host your MP3 files for you. My favourite is libsyn, because they will not charge you for the amount of space or bandwith you use, only for the total size of the files you upload each month.
Alternatively, you can go with any number of hosting providers, such as GoDaddy or BlueHost. Note however that podcasting requires more space and bandwidth (the amount of bytes that people use for downloading your podcasts) than a regular website, so look out for restrictions that the hosting provider may place on these.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication)
Hosting is great, but without an RSS feed, you won't have a podcast. All you'll have is a collection of MP3 files at a web address. The feed is what people will use to subscribe to your podcast, so they can automatically download each new episode.
So what exactly is an RSS feed? At the very basic level, it's just a text file (called an XML file) in a directory of your webspace. The text file contains a listing of all the podcasts you've released, as well as the URLs where they can be found. Technically you could write this file yourself and update it each time you release a new podcast. This is a lot of hassle, and thankfully there are alternatives.
If your hosting is with libsyn, then you're all set: libsyn automatically generates an RSS feed for you. If you chose to go with independent hosting, then you will have to install a content management system. For beginners I recommend Wordpress. Wordpress is a blogging software, but it is useful for podcasting as well. When you have installed it (which just involves uploading the files to your webspace and going through some setup steps), you can release each podcast by writing a new blog entry and including a link to the corresponding MP3 file. Wordpress will automatically generate an RSS feed for you.
And that's it. You have a podcast! Now go record the next episode, what are you waiting for?
Further Reading
