Audio recordings of meetings on website how to implement?

Question

Hi,

I have recently become a Councillor. Our council has resolved to publish audio recordings of meetings to be made available on the Council website.

Our IT provider has said that they cannot host the files as it will take up space and bandwidth which has cost implications. They suggest using a free audio platform to host the files.

Is there anyone here whose council publishes audio recordings of meetings and if so where are the files hosted?

Thanks

Answer 1

My own council doesn't do this but I do know of several that upload their meeting recordings to you tube or facebook.  I do understand the website limitations, however, as we struggle to load documents over a certain size.

Answer 2

There is nothing stopping the council purchasing their own web space on a server and £330-£400 ( or less) can buy you unlimited server space to host what you want

Answer 3

There's no reason you couldn't set up a YouTube channel and store all the recordings there. Our local Borough Council does this with both video meetings and audio podcasts. It's set up well with different playlists for the different types of recordings. (https://www.youtube.com/@BasildonCouncil)

Comments

I've taken a look at this but it is all video which is what youtube is designed for.

Answer 4

Audio recordings could be converted to 120 MBs mono mp3 files which might take under 100 Mb of storage per meeting or about 1Gb per year if you meet approx monthly.  You could probably buy 1Tb cloud storage for £100 a year to store them on if you council doesn't have it's own data server.

Answer 5

https://soundcloud.com/signin?redirect_url=/feed

Comments

I have uploaded a test file to soundcloud.

Can you share a link to a parish council website that uses souncloud?

Thanks

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https://help.soundcloud.com/hc/en-us/articles/115003568008-Embedding-a-track-or-playlist

This explains how to do it