Hi, I recently built a server to host The Meditation Podcast, but we are getting blasted with bandwidth/transfer fees.
The Problem: I am on a remote server, paying for a droplet that allows 4TB/month, with overages billed at $0.01 per GB. I’m consistently paying overage fees of $10-20 per month. Our audio is mp3, 256k, and between 20-35 minutes per episode (holding the 5 most recent episodes). I do realize that reducing file size could be a temporary (or permanent) solution, but would rather maintain the audio quality if possible because it is integral to what we do.
The Question: Can anyone recommend and/or walk me through the process of setting up CDN hosting? I looked at Amazon cdn, but it was so complicated — and with so many nearly-identical services — I couldn’t make any sense of which service to use or what the pricing would be.
Have you looked at podcast hosting for the audio? I used Libsyn for years, they have all the CDNs set up and have almost zero downtime as all they do is distribute podcasts.
I’m not an audio engineer but I think moving to 128k is going to save your listeners a lot of data over the long term. From what I understand 128k is the sweet spot for sound quality and file size even with music, as far as podcasts go at least.
I concur on this. Libsyn specializes in podcast hosting, and even 128kbps is probably too high a data rate. I post my podcast episodes at either 64 or 96kbps.