Once encoded into an MP3 (or OGG, or ACC or whatever), your show is just a file. And like any other file, it has to be transferred across the Internet in order for your listeners to listen to it. The larger the file, the longer this will take.
The size of your file is dependent on three things:
- The length of your show
- The bitrate you've encoded it at, and
- The sample rate you've encoded it at
Joseph Jaffe hosts the very successful Across the Sound podcasts. I have a great deal of respect for Joseph and have even profiled him on Biz podcasting before.
I haven't listened to Across the Sound recently, but I stopped by there today to grab a recent show. The first one I tried to grab was 64MB and the second, which I'm currently downloading, is 50MB. I don't know where your limit is, but 50MB for a 50-minute speech podcast is too much for me. Once this show finishes downloading, I expect I'll see that Joseph is encoding at 128Kbps which is far too high for a speech podcast.
So, 50MB appears to be my limit. What's yours?
Edit: the show turned out to be 112kbps and 44kHz. The 44kHz is OK, but the 112kbps is too high for a speech show. Joseph could have recorded this show at 64kbps (or maybe even 44kbps) and the file would have been about 25-ishMB. Much easier to deal with.
