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So I have been researching my moderately evil plan for launching a podcasting network only to discover two things.
- There are tons of places with information on launching a single podcast via web/itunes/etc.
- There is dickall information on the internet for doing anything close to launching a “network” of podcasts.
I could see this as a very bad omen, since if there is no information out there, I am flying blind into this project with nothing more than a crazy idea and unholy zeal, or I could see it as I am a pioneer, blazing a trail that few adventurers have tried, only to find riches at the end. I’m choosing to go with the latter.
The main challenges that i am running into oddly enough is in the web CMS space. Producing several shows, and getting them up on the internet isn’t really all that hard, it’s time consuming, but not really difficult. The trick is finding a software CMS that has the concept of “you want to host different productions, each with many episodes”.
The tools out there now, really only understand the idea that you want a web site to host your podcast, and it will be audio or video. The second you say “Hey! I have like 8 productions that each need their own page, own category, own feedback, blah blah blah” the CMS software out there takes one look at that, and falls over. So my challenge has been to take software which was meant to host a single show, and craft it into something that can host many.
You could argue that you don’t even need a web site, that you can just stuff all of the shows up on a server, point iTunes at it, and boom, your in business. However, the thing that most podcasters are finding is that it’s critical that you build a community around your productions, and you can’t do that without a web site, etc. Also one of the benefits of doing a network is having a successful show drive people to your site and be exposed to your other productions.
So here is my Battle Plan (1.0) Click for bigger version…
It breaks down like this, once I am done editing the show, it’s setup as a H.264 video file that will be placed on the servers, pushed out etc. It’s this single file that will serve as the “Master”.
In the diagram I have three distinct action paths, each one reaches a different set of folks/communities/etc. Here is a synopsis of how each one functions:
Libsyn
Libsyn is a great service for podcasters in that they charge for total storage each month, not for bandwidth, and each month your storage allocation goes up. So here is where I will push the H.264 episodes that iTunes will pickup. For those of you who don’t know iTunes doesn’t host any of the podcast that they list, they just have RSS feed pointers to where they live, so you can think of them as more of a catalog with listings. So once you subscribe to a podcast on your home machine, it looks to see where the file lives and you download it from my Libsyn account.
TubeMogul
These guys are great, they will let you push up a video file to them, and then they will upload it to all of the video sites that you configure it for. This is a HUGE savings in time and effort since you can push to say 10 different video sites all at once. They will also transcode your video to something smaller if some site has a size limit that you go over.
Progressive6.com
This is my podcasting network site, each time a new episode is launched we will create a new article in the CMS (I use wordpress) and point it to the Libsyn servers again. That way my broadband bill doesn’t go through the roof, and people get to see a high quality version. One of the tricks here is to use the Wizardmedia.tv player. It’s a flash player that can wrap H.264 and deliver to your client the best version of the video that your internet connection can handle.
So there you have it, I’m sure there are some land mines out there that I will find, but this is Battle Plan 1.0. I’ll revise it as I go.
