When it comes to media hosting it all depends on your needs, Some podcasters host their media on web hosting servers to cut the cost to a minimum, others use free hosting, and then you have the people who have money to pay for hosting.
The average podcast brings in between 300-500 downloads per episode the first year. At around 36MB for an hour show, a bandwidth bill could add up to be huge.
Adam Carolla, earlier this year (2009) launched a podcast that brought in over 1 million downloads the first week, making it the number the number one iTunes podcast in the US and Canada. But had racked up a bandwidth bill so high he was forced to start advertising to pay for the bandwidth bills.
Now I’m not saying your going to be the next Adam Carolla, but you just might some day.
When looking for hosting you want to compare and ask. Alot of people have gotten ripped from hosting company’s that clam they have the best hosting and then fall off the face of the earth a week later, leaving the publisher scrambling to find a new host.
The list below are media hosting company’s that have been in the podcast space for some time and has been proven to provide support for new media. I also exclude providers that don’t offer a monthly upload limit and make you delete your old shows after you hit your storage limit, this is a down side to podcasts who provide non time sensitive content that could be downloaded at any time.
Audio Archive from Archive.org – Free
Archive.org is known for its web crawler that archives your web page, and now have moved into the audio space.
Audio Archive contains over two hundred thousand free digital recordings ranging from alternative news programming, to Grateful Dead concerts, to Old Time Radio shows, to book and poetry readings, to original music uploaded by our users, as well as podcasts.
The downside to Audio Archive is if you have a 128Kbps mp3 file Audio Archive will compress it down to 64Kbps, but it is free.
Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) – Pay for what you use
Amazon S3 hasnt been around for that long as the other ones in the rest of this list, but Amazon has pushed into this space with a bang, Bring you very low priced hosting at speeds that other hosting providers cant provide. Features are slime, but include the fastest Internet connection available, upload anything, pay fractions of a penny for storage, data upload, and data downloaded, and just pay for what you use.
This would be really good for the beginner podcaster because you would pay a lot less then other hosting solutions, but as your show grows bigger the bill will get bigger, and going to another hosting would be a much better choice.
Blubrry – $12-$60
I have to say one thing about Blubrry, they arnt going anywhere. The company reports are allows in the black and always growing with its products and services.
Blubrry’s Hosting services offer; Feature Rich Blogging Platform, Podcast Release Scheduler (schedule episodes into the future), RSS 2.0 Feed (iTunes compatible), Web Based Media Uploader with Upload Progress Bar, Rich Text Blog/Podcast post editor, Full Blog API (Supports Wordpress 2.5+), Post to Twitter, Ping Weblogs (e.g. Google Blog Search, Technorati), Media Artwork Management, ID3 Tagging (writes information such as episode title to media files), Media File Naming (Portable Media Player Optimized), Blog Post Image Management, and Podcast Statistics Premium ($5/Month Value).
Blubrry also has its Powerpress plugin that makes publishing your podcast even easier.
CacheFly – $15-$299
CacheFly delivers more than 25 Terabytes per week for each of the most popular podcasts, Shows from Leo Laporte and Rev3 host their show with this company.
Features for CacheFly includes; 100% uptime guaranteed, Delivery on our Global CDN, Real-time reporting, Comprehensive access controls, 24/7 customer service, SCP, SFTP & rsync uploads, Protected links (md5 shared secret), and Access to raw logs (CLF).
Liberated Syndication (Libsyn) – $5-$60
Libsyn might just be the most populer media hostings services around, Lybsyn now owned by Wizzard Media, is hosting what might be over 10,000 podcasters.
Features for Libsyn includes; Storage space that grows with you, Unmetered bandwidth, No lock-ins, Your own RSS feed iTunes compatible, Customizable Webpage / Blog, Web and FTP Uploading, Stats Feature, Storage space calculator so you know what you need, Publisher’s Toolkit, Dynamic Ad Insertion, and Upgrade your active service level at any time with out service charges.
Mevio (Formerly known as Podshow) – Free
MEVIO is a large broadband entertainment company that focuses on personality driven programming. They have a solid audience base of 5-7 million uniques a month and are listed as a top 15 multimedia entertainment site, consistently ranking at or above the traffic levels of Hulu, Veoh, Heavy, Ripe Digital Entertainment, Spike.com, FunnyorDie, VBS.TV, Joost, and Revver.com according to comScore. Mevio is also listed as a top ten site for music and rank above Pandora, Rhapsody, Last.fm, Sony BMG, Live Nation, Warner Music, Napster, and Disney Music.
Mevio offers the opportunity to join MEVIO’s exclusive advertising and promotional campaigns to earn revenue, FREE hosting of your Video and Audio media files, non-exclusive and no commitment, Opportunity to be promoted on MEVIO’s 4 Networks: MEVIO Tech, MEVIO Women, MEVIO Men and MEVIO Music, FREE, unlimited blog hosting if you choose to host a WordPress blog on MEVIO, Access to exclusive publishing tools, and Access to publishing and promotional training.
If you use of one of these media services or know of a good one you would like to recommend , Please leave a comment below
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Thanks for the mention. Something many 1st timers do is host their podcast within the same account that their site is hosted. That works for a relatively unknown show, but when you get popular (as you described) and your bandwidth bill is suddenly to high, your site AND podcast files could disappear from the web because you weren’t thinking ahead.