Podcasters: what are your thoughts on hosting your media yourself versus using a hosting provider?
I'm thinking about using Castopod. It's FOSS. I can easily add the Podcasting 2.0 tags. I already have a server. I already have it running and all configured 🤓
Has anyone used this platform for their podcast?
nostr:nprofile1qqsr5qnsn6medetj3vexljqqvy99gfdrgsp7hs9f52kdvrryz6gwkrsxg6l7w you seem like you might be knowledgeable here 🤓
If you have a website, upload your assets, then link to everything using https://sovereignfeeds.com/. Once you finish filling everything out, save it, upload the new feed to your website, and add the feed.xml url to the podcast index via: https://podcastindex.org/add
When you go to publish a new episode, you'd follow the same steps as you would your previous host. Upload the assets, build a new episode, save the new feed over the existing feed on your website, then do a podping which automagically updates your feed in all the new apps.
Love it. Thank you.
If you have more questions, swing by the zeronode IRC http://behindthesch3m3s.chat/
Podhome is a terrific host - they do a lot of the little things I have no interest in doing - especially with 5 podcasts.
It’s a lot of work .
That's my concern is the amount of additional work, but it doesn't seem too bad. I saw that RSS Blue would charge $5 a month but also take 2%. Podhome seems incredibly expensive.
It’s expensive but for me on a per-podcast basis is how I justify it.
Also they are very very responsive and good partners
Thing is - they could be gone tomorrow
I have not. Will have to look at this
Just put them on haven
I could do that, but I'd also need to build out the RSS manually then.
Rss so ghetto
We need a podcast kind note like nip20
the best thing would be to manage this repo in such a way that a blossom server gives you the result and you can send it to the relays and rssfeed of the event is sent to the aggregators https://github.com/gustavonmartins/nostr-to-rss ("create a kind for podcast result of a blossom mp3") https://nostr-to-rss.deno.dev/feed?users=derekross@nostrplebs.com&kinds=1163
If you have the means, then why not?
Curious about the tradeoffs.
Upkeep and maintenance I would assume, but that should be minimal. Upgrading the application when it needs it.
What platform do you use for PCR? I have several years experience using Anchor and thats it.
I work with nostr:nprofile1qqsraq473e8q6gmd932yjpf99hhvwzh97m3kmnlsvwhe08a2vwryktgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduq3wamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fwvehh2mn5v95kutnxd5lgn9h3 and RSS Blue.
It’s like 5 bucks a month. He’s an RSS wizard.
Our show was very informative with him.
As for the podcasting index we need to get that on Nostr as well.
Yeah I'd love to see someone fork podping to store on a relay instead of Hive.
I think it makes sense to have it on a distributed ledger like Hive. Anyone can host a copy of it and all of the copies are kept in sync with each other.
Having it on Nostr means you need to figure out which relays are hosting it and hoping they're up-to-date. You could do something like WebSub (which was used before Podping) and have the RSS feed indicate which relays it uses for events.
If it's on Hive there's only one copy, whatever the Hive witness say is the copy. As Hive continues to centralize around the few people interested in continuing to buy it (it's dPos after all) eventually you're down to nothing different than a single VPS hosting because it's already to a point where Blocktrades controls the chain for all intents and purposes. (tl:dr Hive isn't distributed now and is only getting worse)
If it was on a nostr relay that was hosted by Podcast Index then everyone would likely just sub to PI for their updates. If you did want to keep your own copy for some reason (maybe you want to backup PI and keep them sound) you could just sync those events to your own relay for safe keeping.
The ultimate goal of the Podcast Index is to decentralize and to not host anything. They don't want to be the single point of failure that they are right now. The index should instead be hosted by anyone that wants to host it.
They're looking at the Iroh library right now to do this, but maybe there's a Nostr way of doing this as well.
Hive was used because the guy who built is a huge Hive enthusiast, built it out, and proved its usefulness. And it has been proven to be quite useful. If someone built a better solution on nostr that proved to be as reliable, I don’t see any reason for it not to work on both nostr and Hive. The podping api could simply notify both networks of the updated podcasts. One thing about the PC2.0 community is they’re very pragmatic but busy, so the builders decide the direction of things much more than the idea makers.
Yeah in no way a knock on the work that Brian has done. I really hope it didn't come off that way especially after this week's boardroom. All the respect in the world for Brian.
Nah, no disrespect came across. More just noting that nostr may be a great alternative, and trying to encourage those that want to build a nostr based podping to do so. The more the merrier.
Rug pulling and control and curiosity. If you host with a host, you’re only able to put in your feed what they allow you too. With self hosting, you can put any tag in your feed you want as long as you’re curious enough to figure it out. If your host goes tits up or decides to censor your feed or add dynamic ads to offset host costs, you’re at their mercy. And some people just like the idea of being in control of the means of distribution of their content. But that extra freedom and control comes with the extra responsibility of maintaining your own feeds.
I get the sovereign side. But what’s the negative side?
As in how much development work is necessary. How do you evolve with the technology and etc.
If podcasting 3.0 come out what is required to adjust or conform.
I ask as a gentle pleb whose time is scarce and it’s something I am honestly interest in.
Down side is not as much help. If you break your feed or your server goes down, you have to troubleshoot.
No development work is necessary. Your feed is literally a text file you can edit in Notepad. You just have to be able to read the docs and format the text correctly in your feed so an app is able to read it and display your images, media, description, etc.
We call it 2.0, but that’s just marketing. Under the hood, it’s the same podcasting it’s been for 20 years, we’re just adding new features to the docs and building apps that can read those new features and display them properly.
Got it. Thanks
What a host provides is an easy interface for you to pick and choose the features you want, an automated feed builder (which you could do by hand in a text editor), a server, some promotion, and tech support. I think for most people, a host is a great way to go.
And I say that as the creator of Sovereign Feeds. SF gives you the easy interface, but you have to do everything else your self.
nostr:nprofile1qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq3wamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wvf5hgur4de4juend9uqzqn22kum797a44u8aty95kl5vdlnk6wsz49u3aala4nmqr709p7kchzvuqe is the only person I know using Castopod.
A few of us tried it years ago when it was still being built but it was too buggy at the time so we choice other selfhosted options.
What other self hosted options?
I also thought about just manually editing an RSS XML 🤓 but that sounds tedious.
https://sovereignfeeds.com/ by nostr:nprofile1qyxhwumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmvqy28wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hsqgprzqccjdtv7lytczdm3dp3lsl8r6z4sty0w4deactqyq7fcx0yqvla2jmq can be used to create a RSS feed that you then host on your own webstie.
nostr:nprofile1qythwumn8ghj7ct5d3shxtnwdaehgu3wd3skuep0qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uqzqgepsv2c8kr3ka3kg68k0lmcq6rx3eht8jwdhv3s5m2836vxduhd6zrk2h nostr:nprofile1qyt8wumn8ghj7ct5d3shxtnwdaehgu3wd3skueqpz4mhxue69uhk2er9dchxummnw3ezumrpdejqqgpdl0juh927gqvtwmn9g23ms7ppgnw474e4j9xmnysl6fxrk0gsd5z352ru nostr:nprofile1qqsr5qnsn6medetj3vexljqqvy99gfdrgsp7hs9f52kdvrryz6gwkrsxg6l7w
Here's a tutorial we made for sovereign feeds: https://podverse.fm/episode/7jrVtySIA
Manually editing your RSS feed is the coolest way to go about doing it. 😎 Since XML is stupid simple, it's nice to maintain that control and know exactly what went wrong when mistakes happen.
I just tweak it myself in VS Code, gets surprisingly quick after a few weeks of doing it
Wow! I never knew! I would definitely try this for mine.
https://open.spotify.com/episode/7onbUjE9rslbeOodo9i5es?si=qMzy7ciSS62jzObKF287Hw
It’s really about tradeoffs. :) I’m not sure what there is to gain from self-hosting. Censorship is virtually a non-issue. But if it’s more to learn and FAFO, then maybe.
Just things to think about:
1) Could affect distribution because even though RSS feeds are web1, not every feed is compatible with every player, so you’ll need to be constantly tweaking that.
2) Even with a strong server + bandwidth, you’re still vulnerable to demand spikes
3) Podcast analytics are estimates (not actually listenership), so self-hosting means much less of a data set to work with and having to be liberal with extrapolation/estimates.
Overall for most it isn’t worth it, but I’d say if it’s more of a FAFO/curiosity thing, sure.
You can use OP3 for analytics for self-hosted podcasts: https://op3.dev/
Nice! I don't think you even necessarily need OP3 to get some sort of analytics. You can self host and get some analytics based on requests or if you're using a provider like Spotify Creators (formerly Anchor), and it gets a little more precise with some data like # of subscribers and demographics since Spotify has sufficiently high market share, and there's some services out there where they solely focus on estimating podcast analytics.
Where just about everyone lands on it is hosting is better off and more cost-effective outsourced to the specialists so that burden can be taken off the podcaster. But of course, there's something to be said about fulfilling curiosity. 😉
The main potential issue is if the show gets popular and tons of people all try to download the just-posted episode at almost the same time and crash the server. That's the same reason it's not advised to use your website host to host podcast episode files. When you pay for a real podcast hosting sevice they make sure they're able to serve episodes bo matter how big your show gets. Buy I guess if your show stays small then self-hosting could be great.
Yep. No sense paying for that kind of hosting bandwidth until we reach those numbers 🤓
Nope. Write tags? Why? I don’t have time. I use RSS blue. nostr:npub186ptarjwp53k6tz5fyzj2t0wcu9wtahrdh8lqca0j7065cuxfvksparxqq is always helpful.
I dont. But would love too. One day I'll look into it though.
Thank you, Sir. I just set up mine:
Nice!
