your data back and forth. It also costs money. You’ll get a reasonable amount included
within your hosting package. But, if you go over the allotted amount, your site will, in
most cases, automatically shut down and display the notorious, “Bandwidth Exceeded,”
screen. That would be bad. Avoid it altogether by hosting your videos on YouTube and
then either linking to it or, better use the YouTube “embed,” code that’s found by clicking
“Share,” under the video on YouTube.
When it comes to actually shooting videos, a smartphone is great ... for your fans.
You should try to do better. Have a pro, or at least a friend with a decent camcorder,
record your performances. The quality will be much better and so will the sound. Don’t
play around with this. Quality counts. How many concert videos have you seen that ut-
terly sucked? Don’t be one of them.
Podcasts
A podcast is really nothing more than an Internet radio show. It might be talk, discussion,
training or, which is good for you, music. Podcasts can be attached to your site, blog, rss
feed or, for our purposes, iTunes. Why? It’s a fairly easy inroad into the iTunes world, a
place you want to be seen, or in this case, heard.
Podcasts can be a do-it-yourself task or handled by a third party. Since you’re likely
on a budget, the D-I-Y route is probably best. The first thing you’ll need is a recording
application. You may already have one if you’re one of the lucky acts with the dough to
buy one. If you’re not, no worries. There’s an open-source application (there’s always
one, isn’t there?) called Audacity. It can be found at http://audacity.sourceforge.net/down-