North Carolina based SolidSpace Llc. will launch a new podcast hosting service called SolidCasts tomorrow at the CommunicAsia conference in Singapore. Hardcore Web2.0 heads here may not find the SolidCast interface exciting, but this is a tool that could go a long way towards making podcasting for organizations easier. I have people ask me what the simplest way to start podcasting is all the time and this looks good.
SolidSpace offers a variety of enterprise web applications. The company CEO is an IT manager named James H. Capps III, VP Andrea Rice has an international marketing and business background. The local VC firm Silk Road Equities is their primary investor.
Without bells and whistles, SolidSpace’s offering combines easy upload with download tracking, RSS and iTunes feeds and simple instructions on use. The interface is available in English or Spanish.
The company’s flagship alpha test customer is HOOAH!!!Radio, an online radio station for US soldiers, their families and supporters. If you’re looking for middle America, enterprise customers that’s a great demographic to target. Broadcast radio stations are another key market SolidSpace is pursuing with their podcasting service, see for example local Virginia radio station Z104.
A SolidCast account enables up to 100mb of storage for free, a standard plan is 1 GB of podcast storage (5 GB monthly transfer) for $12.95 and a premium plan is 2 GB of storage (10 GB monthly transfer) for $19.95. That’s competitive pricing.
The company told me today that co-branded feed URLs (not SolidCast URLs for your feeds) and other features are in the works – but most of the development process has been all about simplifying the service. I think that’s a good move, and I wouldn’t be surprised to start seeing the words “powered by SolidCast” around the web.
Thank you for the tip – signup only tool “ONE MINUTE” – ready to start creating –
http://google.solidcasts.com
How do you find all of these good sites ??????????
Thanks for finding such a site. I have been looking for an easy way to make podcasts. I need to record them both at work and at home. I will take a good look through this site.
How fast does the free 100 mb go for the average podcast?
Do they cut off your feed if you hit the mark or just start charging away?
Most podcasts are about 2 mins per MB, so that free level will hold about 200 minutes or 3+ hours of shows. Not much, but there isn’t any advertising to deal with either. You could either take old episodes out of your feed or you could drop 13 bucks to store another 10X that amount. If you’re doing one hour a week episodes (a pretty substantial commitement) then 1 GB = aprox 2000 minutes = 33 hours = more than 8 months worth of hour long weekly podcasts stored for $13. Sounds like a deal to me. The transfer limits at that service level work out like this: 5 GB/month of (to go with previous podcast creation level) 4 podcast per month at 30 mb per episode = 5 GB/ 30mb episodes = 160 downloads per month or 40 per episode. Did I do that math right? If so, this isn’t pricing for mass audiences, is it? That’s assuming that you’re going to do 4 hour long episodes per month. If you’re doing 20 minute podcasts then you’ve got 120 downloads per episode of the basic level. Subscribe to the premium level and you’ve got 240 downloads each of 4 episodes 20 minutes long for $20.
The company needs to spell out its transfer limits and pricing more clearly.
Is the guy on their homepage checking his iPod in the loo next to another man urinating? What’s that about?
Ftth, that’s time and space shifting, on-demand media.
I wouldn’t call their prices competitive, at least as far as hosting is concerned. As you mentioned the interface isn’t very pretty… It’s simple, but almost to a fault. It doesn’t quite communicate “powerful, user friendly Podcast Management System.”
Why did they call it Podcast Management System anyways? PMS? What a great acronym.
I can see people using their service in the future. Their current website just seems to be geared at the wrong audience.
Doesn’t Odeo already do this pretty well?
Looks like it has decent potential. Worth a look.
A bust. This outfit will go nowhere.
Why? Their service is neither groundbreaking nor comparably priced to the recognized industry leader LibSyn, which is short for Liberated Syndication.
LibSyn is a one stop shop if you want it. Sign up and they host your files and provide a blog style website with comments to act as the face of your site along with an RSS feed. Or you could just use the resulting RSS feed from the files you upload. The third choice, which I utilize is just to use LibSyn for hosting and manage my own RSS feed and web page.
Oh and the pricing. With Libsyn you can choose a $5.00 per month plan and get 100MB of storage PER MONTH. So you could upload four 25MB shows per month, every month and not pay more than $5 per month. At the end of a year you would be paying more than double that per month with SolidCasts.
The bandwidth limits are ridiculous. If your podcast becomes popular you will never know how much you’ll be shelling out. Or maybe your account will be blocked. No limits with LibSyn.
LibSyn’s model is built for podcasting because you don’t get penalized by hard limits on the amount of space in your account and you don’t get penalized for bandwidth. With SolidSpace, your monthly fees will go higher and higher as you add more shows to the service. And you could never use this for video with the measley 2GB ceiling.
And what about Stats? LibSyn has some fantastic stats.
I don’t work for LibSyn but I’ve used them for over a year and I can honestly say that they’re the folks deserving of the hype being shoveled forth here.
Rob, I looked at Libsyn one more time before writing the above post. I’ve listened to Libsyn podcasts all the time of course and have tested it out as a publisher a little bit. For a mass audience podcast with a tech team unintimidated by a little UI – they seem like the way to go. I wrote about SolidCasts here because a. they are a start up launching this week and b. I think that simplicity has serious benefits. They may be best suited to podcasts with a smaller intended audience, like a neighborhood or internally in an organization. No harm in talking here about your fav competitor of course!
Understood Marshall. I’ll be keeping an eye on them myself as I’m always looking to see what’s happening with podcasting.
Perhaps I was a bit harsh at first
I will keep an eye on them and give them a fair shake I promise. I am a big LibSyn fan though and recommend that people check out both hosts prior to deciding on a service.
I’m never going to use a service that has fake model pictures on the front of their page.
If you need to have models on your frontpage instead of demoing your software, it’s (obviously) not worth my time.
Don, have you ever looked at the pictures on the front page of Newsgator.com? They are like the stupidist stock photos ever – and Newsgator is a great service. Your comment made me laugh, but not as much as the previous comment about the models by Ftth.
I would recommend using one of the MANY free hosting services. For example, our own service offers unlimited hosting of audio and video podcasts for free. Hm… Wonder why you would pay…
You may be tight that the service is simple for non-technical users. However, your statement that the pricing is competitive is absolutely wrong. There are any number of hosting providers that provide 100GB+ per month of transfers for under $8 per month. 10GB for $20 is not even in the ballpark. Podshow will apparently be opening up their podcast delivery network soon and will evidently offer free hosting and bandwidth. I don’t know what string are attached on that one but there are definitely a lot of cheaper alternatives.
quote ftth
“Is the guy on their homepage checking his iPod in the loo next to another man urinating? What’s that about? ”
LOL it seriously does look like that.
very funny.
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