Archive of Our Own

There are many hosting options out there! I'll go over some of the pros and cons of the ones I've seen commonely used. But there are certainly other options out there. The ones I'm covering are all free. Most of them have paid options which generally will increase the storage limit. Some sites like wordpress allow you to do upload audio and do streaming (outside ao3) but ONLY if you have paid account and so I'm not covering those here.

As with many hosts, if you are hosting with a comercial service such as googledrive, dropbox, or similar, your account can be deleted after enough inactivity. If that's where you're comfortable hosting, then that's fine, but I do encourage a backup host if that's the case. [An example of dropbox's policy here: (here)]

There are also concerns for redundancy - archive.org had a major outage that lasted a couple weeks in late 2024 - hosting with multiple services helps ensure you're podfic will be accessible in the long term.

And hey! If you have a host I didn't mention, feel free to let me know in the comments! I'm always very interested in the different options out there and like finding new ones.

embedded streaming with the ao3 audio tag

Code at it's simplest: <audio src="MP3_LINK" preload="metadata" > </audio> where the MP3_LINK is a direct link to your mp3. In general, you can assume this will not work if your link does not end in .mp3.

Like so: <audio src="https://archive.org/download/calm_20200507/Calm.mp3" preload="metadata"> </audio>

creating a clickable link

Code at it's simplest: <a href="MP3_LINK"> any text that you want displayed </a> 

What I typically do: <a href="https://archive.org/download/calm_20200507/Calm.mp3"> [link to mp3] </a>

Otherwise ao3 does have an rich text editor you can to create your text link. The rich text editor does not, as far as I'm aware, have the ability to use the audio tag.

hosts that allow embedded streaming via audio tag:

* archive.org

1. No upload or storage limits
2. No way to upload a file that in a way that's "private"
3. Can be a little slow to upload
4. It is my host of choice. Here's a great guide: justaphage's tutorial for using archive.org
5. Make sure you are using the link that starts with https://archive.org/download/YOUR_MP3.mp3.
   You should never use: https://ia801504.us.archive.org/30/items/YOUR_MP3.mp3. The latter one will break over time, though it will work at first.
6. Can read more about the above and about other options on the embedded player (like showing the full playlist of all mp3s in a single item) over here: https://archive.org/help/audio.php?identifier=on-the-ship_202105

    

* audiofic archive (added 2022)

1. It's back!! This is an old archive for podfic (aka audiofic) that has changed ownership to squige!
2. No upload limits (and as far as I am aware, no download limits)
3. Instructions for how to get them to host your podfic are here: https://audiofic.jinjurly.com/submitting-podfic-recordings
4. Instructions for how to embed can be found here (but the tl;dr is the links will with the audio tag I describe above): https://audiofic.jinjurly.com/streaming-and-embedding
5. Cons: it might take a bit for them to upload your podfic, and if you needed to change/replace/remove the audio file you would have to work with their team since you will not have direct access.
6. Also (as far as I'm aware) they are still trying to recover some lost files from back in 2016 and if you would like to help out check out their page here: https://squidgestatus.dreamwidth.org/89520.html

* dropbox.com

1. Storage limit of 2 GB
2. To generate your mp3 link, just need to share once it's been uploaded:
   1. More detailed instructions on getting dropbox links to work with the ao3 audio tag can be found at the bottom of this post: ao3 audio tag
   2. The tl;dr version is try replacing www www.dropbox.com with dl.dropboxusercontent.com
   3. Such that: https://www.dropbox.com/s/5bhxbem071gtx2h/worth%20a%20go%21.mp3 becomes https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/5bhxbem071gtx2h/worth%20a%20go%21.mp3

How To Share: 

Click share link
Copy the link at the bottom of the popup

* backblaze cloud storage

1. Storage limit of 10 GB (but additional is actually pretty cheep currently)
2. Bandwidth limit of 1GB per day. Will reset every day.
3. Backblaze has several products it offers, for audio hosting needs you would want to look at their cloud storage option. No creditcard is needed to sign up. It is a little more complicated to configure however.
4. A simplified guide with just the basics by me can be found here: Podfic Host: Backblaze Guide
5. I'm including a simplified guide above, but if you're interested in a more technical guide that goes into additional detail, I suggest you check out absolutedestiny's guide which is available here: https://absolutedestiny.dreamwidth.org/190827.html

😹

* self hosted files

1. If you're hosting through paraka (or doing the hosting yourself through dreamhost/s3/etc) you're typically able to use the ao3 audio tag. Though, it requires a bit more technical know how to set up the certificates etc to get it to work. But this guide isn't really aimed at y'all ;)
2. Generally, unless someone else is setting up the site for you, this will require significantly more work than using one of the other storage options you can sign up for
3. However, it does probably lend itself to the most control over your files.
4. Whoever is setting up the hosting is probably paying some amount for it.

hosts with their own embeddable stream within ao3

* archive.org

1. Technically archive.org also has it's own embeddable stream. The "share" button doesn't actually show up for me on google chrome, but does for others so might be a plugin issue on my end. You can copy the code out of the share button (or just modify the link below): For example: this if this is your archive.org url: https://archive.org/details/tell-him-this-and-more

   To make use the archive.org stream it will look like this:

   <iframe src="https://archive.org/embed/tell-him-this-and-more" width="500" height="140" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="true" mozallowfullscreen="true" allowfullscreen></iframe>

   Note that the URL in the src is exactly the same as our archive.org url, except instead of /details it's /embed. So "https://archive.org/details/tell-him-this-and-more" became " https://archive.org/embed/tell-him-this-and-more". So if you are missing the share button you can always modify that way.

* soundcloud.com

1. Storage limit of 3 hours
2. To embed: find the "Share" button and copy the code under the "Embed" tab.
3. In order to allow people to download you MUST enable direct downloads or people will not be able to download your file. By default this is OFF. You can enable this by
   1. going clicking the "Edit" button of your track
   2. Selecting the "Permissions" tab
   3. Checking the "Direct Downloads"
   4. Clicking "Save Changes"
4. Please enable downloads for those who don't stream :sob:

hosts with their own streams (but you have to leave ao3)

Several of these hosts have bandwidth limits. What this means is they only allow so many people to stream/download your podfic per period of time. I'll try to call out the ones I know have this and what their reset periods typically look like. Most of the time (especially starting out) these bandwidth limits will not effect you significantly.

* google drive

1. Storage limit of 15 GB
2. This does have bandwidth limits. Will reset every day. This is controlled by a lot of things you can't see and I've found no estimate of ~how many download attempts will cause the "Too many users have viewed or downloaded this file recently" error.

* box.com

1. Storage limit of 10 GB
2. Bandwidth limit: 10 GB per month

* mega.nz

1. Storage limit of 15 GB
2. Technically they start you a higher storage limit but that goes away after a month
3. This does have bandwidth limits. Will reset every six hours. Estimates I've seen thrown about are ~1 GB per six hours. So, for example, if you have a single podfic that's 500MB (i.e half a GB) only two people will be allowed to stream/download it ever six hours. However, like google drive, this can vary based on their site's overall traffic.

other options:

* Mediafire:

1. This will not provide embedded streaming of any kind. Also lots of sketchy links on the site. Would not generally recommend but you do see it used.
2. Storage limit of 10 GB

* anchor.fm Spotify for Podcasters

This is fully just Spotify at this point. If you're not comfortable with your stuff on Spotify and being found by random Spotify users, then do not use this. If you actively want this then do use it, lol.

1. No storage limits
2. No bandwidth limits
3. Please make sure not to select the monetization options if you're using and going to be embedding with ao3. That would be against AO3 TOS
4. It does give you an rss feed, regardless of other distribution stuff you choose.
5. You can embed spotify's streaming link.
6. I'm no longer aware of how the downloading works since I did not want my stuff on spotify. So I kept off of it.
7. It WILL SCAN YOUR AUDIO. So if you are planning on using copywritten music, do NOT use this host.

* youtube.com

1. Youtube can technically be embedded directly in the ao3 post, however other than... sketchy sites... I don't know of any way to allow people to download your podfic when it's only been uploaded to youtube.
2. By default can only upload 15 minute videos (but not difficult to verify your account via phone # if you're alright with youtube linking that to you)
3. Must be a video (even if it's just a static image). As I understand it, there are tools within youtube that might help you upload this way but I haven't ever done this so you'll have to find another tutorial for that.
4. There are limits on uploads per day but no storage limits by default

deprecated options:

* airtable.com

as of November 8th, 2022, per Airtable's Changes to Airtable attachments, this will almost certainly no longer work for understandable security reasons.

1. Storage limit of 2 GB
2. A brief guide to see how it works is over here: audio tag with airtable by notfic (bluedreaming)
3. Airtable is more of a online database system so I'm not sure, if file sharing becomes popular through their platform, what restrictions they might add.
4. However, it is one of the few that does work with the ao3 streaming tag so figured good to include anyway.

* clyp.it

As of 05 Dec 2020 clyp.it is moving to a fully paid platform: [link to news update]

1. 6 hour storage limit
2. No bandwidth limit that I'm aware of
3. Similar to soundcloud by default downloads are not available. You should enable them by going to "Edit Details" and select the "Downloads" checkbox. 
4. Please enable downloads :sob: