How to Start Podcasting

A podcast is an audio file that's made available on the Internet for anyone to listen to. Podcasts exist for everything from sermons to short stories, music to mad rantings. Anyone with a Web page can create a podcast, becoming one of a community of podcasters on the Internet and in the real world.

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Software for recording audio content
• Software or service for creating RSS news \feeds
• Webserver
• Recording equipment

1. Create audio content. You can do this in a number of ways, but one of the easiest is Audacity, software that's offered free of charge online. Record your content in the highest quality possible in whatever format your software uses.

2. Convert your audio file to MP3 format. For best results, use a 56k bit rate for spoken words and 128k for music.

3. Upload your MP3 file to your Web server. Play it on an MP3 player to make sure there are no errors in playback. If there are, try uploading it again.

4. Create an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) newsfeed. This is a file that describes your podcast. Upload your newsfeed to your web server. Most blogging programs and services let you create RSS newsfeeds easily. Once you've created your RSS file, post it to your webserver so visitors can click on it and hear your podcast.

5. Add your newsfeed to podcast directories such as the directory on Podcasting News or Yahoo.

Tips & Warnings

• Remember that if you intent to record anything you didn't originally create, you need to get permission from the copyright holder. It's not free for use by anyone just because it's on the Internet.

Resources

• To learn how to create RSS newsfeeds, read the article at Harvard Law