As or after you have created your first podcast episodes, it is time to signup for your Libsyn hosting account. Below, we answer some of the most common questions in relation to the signup process.
You can sign up for a hosting account here:
Signup FAQ
What hosting plan level should I choose?
The average properly encoded audio file runs around .5MB per minute of recorded audio. So as an example, if you are recording an hour-long episode, that file will be approximately 30-40MB in file size.
How often you then plan to publish will also come into play. If, using the above example, you plan to publish once a week (averaging 4 episodes a month, give or take), you would need approximately 160-200MB worth of uploading room per month.
Additional details on how our monthly storage works can be found here.
There are 2 other primary differentiators between Libsyn hosting account levels.
- Stats levels (check out our basic and advanced stats tutorials for additional details)
- Mobile Apps (additional details can be found here)
What is the show slug?
As you walk through the signup form, one of the items you are asked to enter is a show slug.
The show slug is a unique identifier for your show in the Libsyn system. If you contact support and they can't find your account by your e-mail address, they will ask you for your show slug.
It also is what is used to generate the URLs, such as your RSS feed, for your show. For example, if you title your show "My Awesome Show", your show slug might be "myawesomeshow" which means your feed URL would be:
https://myawesomeshow.libsyn.com/rss
Note that most subscribers will never see your feed URL. Also note, your slug does not need to follow your show title.
Most importantly, as your slug is what generates the URLs for your show, your show slug should not be changed. Changing the slug changes the URLs for your show which, if you have submitted to podcast directories and gained subscribers, will cause you to lose most subscribers and you will have to update those submissions.
Your show slug needs to be:
- Alphanumeric (letters and numbers, starting with a letter)
- Be one word (no spaces)
- Can include hyphens
Once you have signed up, you can log into Libsyn to begin configuring your show.