Podcasting News is reporting that:

Podcasters Paul Colligan and Alex Mendossian have announced PremiumCast, a new service that lets you manage, deliver and sell podcasts and video podcasts.

The service lets you create custom messages, track subscriber usage, monetize podcasts and publish both public and private podcasts. Three levels of service are available: Free, Professional ($37/month) & Viral ($67/month). The paid options add additional features, including subscriber management and ecommerce capabilities.

Here’s the video demo of the service. The whole concept is modeled off the newsletter format that most publishers are familiar with. The service doesn’t host the files which may cause some people a problem, but time will certainly make the economics work better for PremiumCast. Maybe they will partner with someone to refer hosting too.

One issue that I hope they address is to improve security on the signup process. The current process sent me an email to confirm the registration which included my username and my password right in the email and the url to confirm my sign up. This is a pretty unsecure way to do this and I hope they fix it before they have some security problem.
(UPDATE 09-25-2007 – They fixed this problem per the comments below)

Overall, PremiumCast seems like a great idea to me and a good way for people to make a few dollars along the way. Thumbs up to Paul and Alex for continuing to push podcasting forward.

BTW: I signed up for a free account to check it out and get an affiliate link. If you click on this link to PremiumCast and buy we make a few dollars somewhere here.

You can read more about PremuimCast at their blog.

[tags]premiumcast, podcast monetization, subscription[/tags]