This came as a little bit of a surprise to me actually. During my travels around the internet investigating everything about how to create a podcast I came across audio/podcasting hosting sites.
It turns out that you can’t just upload audio straight to Itunes. I know! It was news to me too. In today’s modern world nothing can ever be simple. There’s as many audio hosting sites as there is audio editing software.
What I understood was that audio hosting was literally just like a glorified Dropbox or Google Drive specifically for audio files. It provides an RSS feed which you can then upload to Itunes, or put on your own website, or both.
It turns out that understanding what they do is the easiest part of the whole thing. Obviously depending on what site you use for research they all have different opinions, different pros and cons, but never a definitive answer. That’s probably because there is no “best” one because you can’t please everyone.
Up near the top of the recommendations, or at least the one that is most commonly mentioned in the top 5 rankings, is PodBean. Some say it was the best price wise, others that it was intuitive to use. But here’s the crux. Today’s world is so saturated with choice that it’s always difficult to make a decision, to chose the one that best suits your needs.
This was such a difficult decision that I changed my mind 3 times, and that’s rare. My first choice was PodBean, as stated above. I was all set to choose that one, even putting the link in my to do excel sheet (of course I had one of them). Then I dug further, ensuring my choice was the best.
Somehow I convinced myself that it wasn’t, and I can’t even remember why at this point. My second choice was Blubrry, and this was based solely on the fact that it had a good WordPress plugin. I’d already chosen WordPress as the host for this website, and I’ll admit that choice actually made choosing a podcast host site easier. I shudder to imagine how many times I would’ve changed my mind if I hadn’t had that.
Then I made the mistake of looking again and found Buzzsprout. The pricing was the same, both had a PowerPress plugin, but Buzzsprout had the lack of jargon. Their plans told you how many minutes/hours of audio you could upload per month, not the MB. And so the decision sat.
until I looked at it again, and went back to Blubrry. Why? Honestly, by this point, I don’t have a clue.
But here’s the important thing, especially with this. I didn’t sign a contract with blood. If I didn’t like Blubrry very much there were plenty of others I could move to, with possibly minimal trouble to myself. Here’s what I think the problem was. Procrastination. I had just started to deep dive into the scripts for the podcast and was, as every creator does, doubting whether the story was worth telling, whether it was worth the money, time, and effort. Falling into this gave me an excuse not to think of how (in)adequate my writing was. obviously, it didn’t work. You can have the best, all singing all dancing podcast host, but if the audio or content isn’t great, none of it matters.
So, back to the scripts for me!