It is done

If you are looking for the Podcasting community WildVoice.com, you’ve come to the right place, but you are just a few years too late.

The site WildVoice.com was shut down today and this blog will be our presence.

Read some of the posts here and perhaps we will be able to answer any questions you may have.

Free File Hosting

One of the key components of podcasting is placing your audio files on the Internet where they can be easily downloaded by your listeners. Podcast hosting sites offer this service, but if you are trying to podcast from a blogging site like Blogger.com, you'll need a place to upload and store your audio files. Blogger will host video files and image files, but apparently they do not host MP3 or audio files.

This site maintains a list of free file hosting sites http://www.freehosting-review.com/free-file-hosting.php. What you'll need to host your podcats is a site that will host your MP3 files, but that will aslo allow "Direct Linking" so that your listeners can directly access your MP3 files using an http: web URL.

Looking for an all-in-one podcast host?

Well, there seem to be a few all-in-one podcast hosts still standing. I haven't used these sites, I was always more interested in building a podcasting site than actually doing podcasting myself (perhaps that was one of the challenges we faced?).

This is by no means an exhaustive list, but these are the names of sites that have been around for a few years offering free (or low cost) podcast hosting.

• http://www.blubrry.com/
• http://www.libsyn.com
• http://www.odeo.com/
• http://www.podbean.com/
• http://www.podomatic.com/

And if you want to track the industry, one source you can still turn to is http://www.podcastingnews.com/

I still want to put up a great tutorial on how to podcast with blogger, but I didn't want you to be without links to hosts to evaluate.

Mashable's Podcasting Resources

This link is about two years old, but at the time it was a pretty exhaustive list of podcasting resources. If you're looking for tools or hosting, this toolbox list may be out of date, but it is likely one of the best places to start your search.

Will there be a version of WildVoice Studio for Windows Vista?

We’re often asked “why doesn’t WildVoice Studio run on Windows Vista”?

The truth is that Microsoft made extensive changes between XP and Vista for how some sound processing is handled by Windows. Unfortunately, some of the coolest features of WildVoice Studio (recording your voice while playing a background track, playing multiple sound effects into a single recording, etc.) do not work on Vista. We designed WildVoice Studio specifically for these features, so WildVoice Studio requires much more work than a simple patch to be Vista compatible.

We started building this site and the software in the summer of 2005 and got it working pretty well by the end of 2006. We were never a big company. We never had venture capital or "other peoples' money" to spend. We were three guys who quit our day jobs with a dream of building an easy to use podcast creation and publishing system that would run as an online community. Needless to say, we're still not a big company. We've spent more of our own money building the software, building the site, and keeping this site running than I'd like to admit. So far, we still provide the software and site for free, and honestly, our advertising revenue has been insignificant.

It has been a thrill for me to see people post shows to the site, especially shows created with WildVoice Studio. But the truth is that the site never developed a large enough audience to sustain a business or even to sustain a vibrant on-line community. (There’s been lots of lessons learned which I’ll someday write up and post someday.)

After a glorious year and a half of building a dream, real life caught up with us. This was real life in the form of mortgage payments and orthodontist’s bills. So, about two years ago we had to all find real jobs again (real meaning a job with a salary). We had every intention of spending our nights and weekends updating the site and software and keeping WildVoice growing, but the realities of new careers, and personal and family challenges over the past two years, has made it almost impossible to do the type of engineering improvements and support work that WildVoice Studio and the site require.

So, here we are. It is 2009 and we aren’t ready for Vista, and we aren’t ready for IE 8, and I suspect we won’t be ready for the next version of Firefox. Should we roll up our sleeves and do an update for Vista and a site update? Realistically, a large market never developed for the type of casual podcaster that we envisioned would use our tools and site. I think the youtube video phenomenon captured the imaginations of our would-be podcasters and left us and our audio-centric peers with a small niche audience. So, by any logical decision process, there would be no return on our investment of doing the Vista updates. It would just be long nights and weekends away from our families after long days and weeks of working and commuting to our day jobs.

Do we still want to do the updates? Yes, we talk about it, and think about it and feel that we have unfinished business to complete. Have we committed ourselves to do the work? No, we haven’t committed ourselves to do the work.

So, I’d like to thank you our loyal users who continued to post shows on WildVoice.com and use our tools. Thank you for your persistence working around our bugs and site quirks. And, thank you for keeping that old XP machine running so you could still run WildVoice Studio.

How can I get WildVoice Studio?

WildVoice Studio is still available. You can check out the original WildVoice.com site or download it from the links below.

WildVoice Studio makes it easy and fun
to record podcasts and other audio.

1. Record your show in clips, mixing in music and sound effects as you talk.
2. Edit your clips, cutting out the parts you don’t like.
3. WildVoice Studio merges your clips. Publish the finished show on WildVoice.com (right from WildVoice Studio!) or any other site that supports audio files.

System Requirements:

Windows XP
1 microphone (even a cheap one will do)
WildVoice Studio Setup will install Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0, if it's not already installed.

WildVoice Podcast Studio at a Glance (410 KB, PDF)


WildVoice Podcast Studio User's Guide (2 MB, PDF)


WildVoice Podcast Studio Installer (25 MB, Windows EXE)

How the world changed

While we were building WildVoice, the world changed, and podcasting became a less viable opportunity.

Do-it-yourself multimedia publishing sites became common, and a few, like YouTube, came to dominate the market. Ubiquitous webcams, video capable cell phone cameras, and even new devices like The Flip camcorder made do-it-yourself video production practical. Video sharing sites took off in popularity, fueled by viral videos and often illegally posted copyrighted material. Video publishing sites quickly leapfrogged audio sites like WildVoice.com.

Even while the Internet was being conquered by YouTube, dedicated audio podcasting sites were dealt another blow. Podcasting simply became an attribute of blogging platforms. For example, the WordPress blogging platform, with the correct plug-ins, could easily be used to create and host a podcast enabled blog.

Finally, Apple’s iTunes store became the de facto podcast directory on the Internet. Most listeners looking for podcasts went to iTunes to find them. iTunes gave users access to thousands of podcasts, but it also presented a curtain that hid the underlying podcast hosting sites from listeners. This meant that any podcasting site looking to generate revenue through visual web advertising would have fewer eyeballs coming to their site. Users would find and download their podcasts through iTunes and they would rarely click through to find the underlying hosting site and see its advertising.