Reaching a large podcast audience can present some significant infrastructure scaling challenges. In this session, startup company Whooshkaa walks you through the podcasting landscape. During this session, you will learn about the new audiences you can reach through podcasts. We will explore technical solutions such as Amazon Lightsail, S3 and CloudFront which can facilitate experimentation and help you reach a global audience at low cost. We will dive into Whooshkaa’s podcasting platform and explore advanced architectures, leveraging AWS services, allowing you to curate and customize content for each listener. We will also explore tools and solutions for measuring engagement and connecting with your audience through podcasting.

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Podcasting on AWS
A D i s c u s s i o n o n E v e r y t h i n g f r o m P r o d u c t i o n t o D i s t r i b u t i o n
C T D 4 0 2
D e c e m b e r 1 , 2 0 1 7
A l a s t a i r C o u s i n s – S e n i o r S o l u t i o n s A r c h i t e c t , A W S
R o b e r t L o e w e n t h a l – F o u n d e r & C E O , W h o o s h k a a

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The rise of podcasting

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Podcast evolution
2017
Open Podcast app
Select and play
2004
Open iTunes
Browse store
Select podcast
Download
audio
Sync iPod
Press Play

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“I want it now” generation

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2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
11%
12% 12%
14%
12%
15%
17%
21%
24%
US monthly podcast listening
Source: Edison&TritonDigital,InfiniteDial,March2017
10
Billion
S Town

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Podcasts have entered a golden age
Continued technology advancement Plethora of content

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Podcasting on AWS

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Production
life cycle
Plan

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What makes a great podcast
Homework Communication Cover art
Theme Consistency

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Production
life cycle
Plan
Produce

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Workspaces for media production

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Production
life cycle
Plan
Produce
Publish

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What makes up a podcast?
• Audio file – MP3/MP4
• RSS feed
• Artwork
• Show notes

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Getting started: Lightsail
• Choose from five plans that include bundled
compute, storage, and networking
• Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla! – all support
podcasting extensions
• Low, predictable pricing
• Manage and operate from the Lightsail console

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Hosting challenges
• Load on RSS feed
• Traffic spikes
• Measuring and reporting

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Amazon S3 and Amazon CloudFront
• Low cost, scalable asset storage
• Global distribution via 101 Points of Presence
• ACM integration: easy SSL/TLS certificate management
• Byte-range requests
• Signed URLs
• Detailed logging and usage reports

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Optimizing content delivery
Optimize
caching
Whitelist
query strings
and cookies
Reserved
capacity pricing
Origin response headers
CloudFront customization

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Podcast structure
• Audio file – MP3/MP4
• RSS feed
• Artwork
• Show notes

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The RSS feed: A deep dive
• RSS 2.0 standardized in 2003!
• XML based format
• iTunes extensions

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RSS feed: Channel

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RSS feed: Episode

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A serverless content scheduler
Amazon
DynamoDB
Render
RSS feed
Push
RSS feed RSS feeds
Bucket
Amazon
CloudFront
Mobile client
event
(hourly)
New Episode Metadata

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Custom audio: Stitching
Podcast media
Advertisements

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Custom audio: Stitching
Podcast media
Advertisements
Insert ID3v2 chapter
markers to identify
break points

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Custom audio: Stitching
Podcast media
Advertisements

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Custom audio: Stitching
Podcast media
Repeat this process
for each variation

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Custom audio: Serverless architecture
Amazon Elastic
Transcoder
Advertising
metadata
Raw media Output Bucket
Prepare and
submit stitching
Job(s)
Amazon API
Gateway

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Finding chapter markers
https://biril.github.io/mp3-parser/index.html

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Amazon Elastic Transcoder clip stitching
Re-use the same
media with different
StartTime values

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Custom audio: Delivery architecture
Amazon
CloudFront
Lambda@Edge
Origin-Fetch
Media
Bucket
Lookup
Table
Customer
Specific MP3
Embed query string
in RSS feed

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Lambda@Edge: Rewriting requests
• Origin-request function
• Watch out for inter-region calls
• Consider replicating
DynamoDB and other
resources to reduce latency
• Strip query string before
forwarding to Amazon S3

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Production
life cycle
Plan
Produce
Publish
Measure

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Key metrics
CloudFront reports
• Audience reach
• Popular objects
• Top referrers
• Cache performance
Custom reports
• Audience reach per podcast
• Unique listeners over time
• Top referrers over time

34. Podcast analytics pipeline
Query raw data using Athena Athena can query
aggregated datasets as well

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Whooshkaa analytics

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Whooshkaa – End-to-end audio

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Whooshkaa – End-to-end audio
Platform Amplification Dynamic ads
Capture/editing Live
SUPERCOACH LIVE
Hear all the weeks action and how it effects your league, as the final match of the weekend wraps up.
Text to voice personalised audio

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Whooshkaa Wavess

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Live streaming
CloudFront
DISTRIBUTION
AWS Elemental
MediaStore
MEDIA-OPTIMIZED STORAGE AND
SIMPLE ORIGINATION
HLS devices
NEW MEDIA
DEVICES
AWS
Elemental
Live
LIVE AUDIO
PROCESSING

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Revolutionizing text with voice

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Polly powering sports scores
© 2017, Amazon Web Services, Inc. or its Affiliates. All rights reserved.
Whooshkaa
API
AFL API
Lambda
function Amazon
Polly
Amazon
S3

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Polly powering sports scores

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Customized audio architecture
Amazon
CloudFront
Listener
preferences
and podcast
metadata
AWS Elastic
Beanstalk
(PHP)
Query-string
whitelisted to
identify listener

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Customized audio architecture
Amazon
CloudFront
Listener
preferences
and podcast
metadata
AWS Elastic
Beanstalk
(PHP)
Cache-Control
header used to
manage CloudFront
cache

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Rendering custom RSS feeds: Feed

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Rendering custom RSS feeds: Items

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Jira tickets
Personalized audio
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Quote Podcast
Song
Weather
Traffic

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Thank you!