A friend of mine called me today asking about media hosting on the web–a subject with which I have had absolutely no experience. Essentially, he has a high-quality audio recording of a sermon that he’d like to distribute on the web on a weekly basis. Obviously, this is something you see a lot of on the web, but I’ve never really looked into the mechanics.

We talked for a bit to discuss what we did know, like what sorts of applications he was using to edit the audio and what bitrates would be most appropriate for encoding. Once we got into the logistics of distribution, though, the details get hazy.

Delivery methods was a topic of discussion as we debated the merits of streaming media versus MP3 download. As far as we knew, streaming the media versus downloading the media should be about equal in bandwidth cost. In the one case, you’re pushing bits across the wire at a moderate pace to accomodate the listener, in the other, you’re pushing bits across the wire as quickly as possible–in both cases, though, you’re pushing the same bits across the wire, right? However, if a listener wants to listen to the same content again, streaming requires they use the same bandwidth over again (which probably means we should charge them again), whereas a download lets the listener listen locally and save us the bandwidth.

Control over content, though, seemed to be the biggest issue when it comes to the streaming vs. download debate. With streaming, redistribution is not an option, unless the user goes to a lot of trouble to capture an analog version. With download, though, the media is freely redistributable. I think with these sermons we’ll want people to share them with others, in which case downloads seem to be the better choice because people can use their own bandwidth to do that (posting on web sites, P2P, email, etc.).

Payment models are another tricky issue. We talked about the “walled garden” approach to hosting where the user can see what is available for download, but can’t get to the content until he or she was authenticated with an ID and password or a credit card. Essentially, since this is a non-profit, we just want to cover the costs for bandwidth used–something along the lines of 99¢ per download, maybe less. We also talked about the option of a subscription-based model where the user pays a one-time fee of $10 with free access to everything.

We also struggled over the question of a home-brew solution vs. a professional service. Home-brew solutions (buying our own server, configuring it, administering it, etc.) tend to be cheaper, but cost a lot of time, where as professional services tend to be more expensive, but come with specialized support. My inclination is to go with a service, because the headaches of administering a server can be many, especially when one considers securing the site. Incidentally, this is why I’m using a professional web hosting company for hosting my blog–I can just tell them when something breaks, and they fix it.

I would really appreciate feedback from anyone who has an opinion about any of this stuff–real world narratives of your own experiences are welcome. Discussion on media formats (such as RealMedia or Windows Media) are also encouraged. Thanks!

h4. Update

The feedback on this has been very helpful, thank you. I’ve done some surfing to determine what’s already being done out there in terms of media hosting by other similar organizations. The results can be found in this table. RealMedia Streams are the most popular on my informal survey, but MP3 Downloads are a close second. Also noteworthy is the fact that big media formats are really driven by third-party hosting (such as OneSource) where as the organizations that seem to manage their own content (InterVarsity, Truth for Life, Ligonier) are more partial to MP3.