OT: Question about podcasting

[Hurst2112]

I know there are several here that can answer a couple questions I have. I am a proclaimed idiot about podcasts.

Starting November 1st, my 31st birthday, I am embarking on an adventure in recording.

As I may have mentioned, I live with a couple of friends of mine who are in a band. We have a studio in the basement and have been doing pre-production for a full length to be released sometime in March.

Tracking is scheduled to begin on November 1st and will run through January. As producer/engineer, I thought it would be cool to document some things via podcast. This is the first major 'no restrictions' recording project I have been a part of and I am very anxious to document as much as I can.

What is the process of putting a podcast on itunes? Is there a time restriction? Is there a content restriction? Does it cost anything?

My thoughts were to do a test-cast. Our studio is about finished as far as gear goes. I wanted to maybe do a cast about my history with the band, the new studio we have, the availability of the studio to outside projects, shop talk, gear talk, etc.

After I get through that, I wanted to do a weekly cast about the progression of the session...maybe one a week or something. We obviously have the gear to do it; but I wanted to get a feel for the steps I have to take to post the cast.

Thanks for any help anybody can give.

[wade moore]

ping: cthomer5000

[Hurst2112]

that's what I thought about doing. He seems to be the 'resident brain' about this subject.

thanks

[cthomer5000]

What is the process of putting a podcast on itunes?

http://www.apple.com/itunes/store/podcaststechspecs.html

It's all spelled reasonably easy. Basically what you do is create the podcast, point to it to prove it exists, and supply basic info about what categories you want it under and a description.



Is there a time restriction?
It took them a few days to approve my podcast request, after that it's entirey automated. You can submit a new podcast every minute or every year. It's all based around the rss file you keep on your site. It probably takes up to 2 weeks for your podcast to be "fully" listed in itunes. While it may be there in just a few days, it takes longer to come up in all the categories when browswing, etc. Technically, once your podcast is in itunes, you don't ever need to interact with itunes/apple again. It will update automatically based on the RSS file, which it checks every so often for changes.

There is some lag time on their store reflecting a new episode, but this time has been vastly improved by the upgrade to 7.0 and you can ping them when you've updated your podcast (added an episode) and this greatly increases the speed. I've seen a new episode of my show be listed in itunes in as little as 10 minutes.


Is there a content restriction?

The only no-nos as far as i can tell are copyrighted material (obviously you cant just "podcast" the brand new Tool album) and extremely offensive sexually based stuff (like child predator radio, essentially).


Does it cost anything?

Nope, totally free.


You'll probably need a little help with the RSS file, but i assure you it's pretty damned easy, and I would be more than happy to help you out in figuring out what your looking at, providing helpful links, etc.

[cthomer5000]

And just for reference, this is all a podcast is


Itunes music store (or any other podcast listing service): All this does is read an RSS file of yours (stored on your webspace), and point people towards your sound files (also stored on your webspace). Your presence in the itunes store, descriptions etc are entirely based off a file you maintain on your own webspace.

RSS file (stored on your webspace) - contains all the info about your show, and the specifics of each episode. You simply add some text to this file every time you add an episode, containing basic show info and the location of the episode.

sound files (stored on your webspace) - what the poeple download. You can imbed an image in here, and imbed chapter listings if you are creating your podcast on mac (though this means your file has to be in M4A format, cant be mp3).

[Hurst2112]

i can't seem to subscribe to your cast. it says it's not available in the US store?

[wade moore]

sound files (stored on your webspace) - what the poeple download. You can imbed an image in here, and imbed chapter listings if you are creating your podcast on mac (though this means your file has to be in M4A format, cant be mp3).

Oops, I was wrong about that in another thread.

[cthomer5000]

i can't seem to subscribe to your cast. it says it's not available in the US store?

working fine over here... not sure what that would be about.

[sachmo71]

i wonder if this is a sin as well?

[cthomer5000]

Hurst, not sure if you've done anything on this, but was this clear or did you need any additional info on anything?