Podcasting

I finally got around to downloading iPodderX onto my powerbook this weekend and started listening to some podcasts.

My next challenge is figuring out how to create some podcasts.  The Gotham Gal is interested in podcasting too.

But I was underwhelmed by what I found.  It's most technology talk shows as far as I can tell.

My friend Tom Watson and I emailed about this today and we both are looking for great NPR shows, college radio shows, WFUV and WEHM radio shows, etc.  But they don't seem to exist in podcast form.  At least I haven't found them.

What's worse, it seems that nobody is creating the podcast equivalents of these shows.

Later today, I had the opportunity to talk to Dave Winer about podcasting.

I asked him why there wasn't any good music in podcast form.

He told me that he'd love to see it, but everyone is scared of getitng sued by the RIAA and that the royalties they've proposed are too high to make it work.

Well that really sucks.

I am going to spend some more time on this podcasting stuff, but without music the idea of audio content is really not that compelling to me.

Someone has to figure out the music piece.

Comments

[gb]

speaking of NPR shows, you may want to note that www.onthemedia.org has a Podcast.

[hb]

Record labels and right holders need to see podcasting as a promotional vehicle. I would gladly waive rights for an appropriate podcasting opportunity.

[Chris Robison]

I've recently started investing some time in podcasting. Here are a few music-related podcasts that I've come across on Podcast Alley. I have mixed feelings on them but find the medium as a whole extemely promising.

Insomnia Radio

The Sounds in My Head

Also, here's a thread on RIAA and the legality of broadcasting licensed music products. Nothing definitive but an interesting conversation.

Licensed-Music Podcasts

--cr

[Justin]

I have a podroll over on my blog at http://blogs.openaether.org/ . I listen to most of these shows on a semi-regular basis. I would say that about half have nothing to do with tech.

Here is a list of the good ones in no particular order:

http://tworights.com/
http://www.upthetree.com/
http://www.dawnanddrew.com/
http://www.bfbs2.com/rnb.html
http://podcast1024.blogspot.com/
http://radioinsidescoop.com/
http://radio.weblogs.com/0141318/categories/blues/
http://radio.weblogs.com/0141318/categories/altModernRock/
http://www.geekfuactiongrip.com/
http://www.democracynow.org/
http://www.toeradio.org/
http://www.audioactivism.org/

One of my favorite things to do is listen to TwoRights and Democracy Now back to back. Getting conservative and liberal news is most entertaining :)

[Eric Etheridge]

Music via podcasts or time-shifted radio shows don't interest me much more than tech commentary, but I can understand the appeal of all that to many.

What I would like to hear are site-specific podcasts: commentary from someone who has something smart or funny or meaningful in some way to say about the individual pieces in an art show, or an important building (the new MOMA, say), or an historical location (such as a battlefied).

Not sure this would be hugely commercial, but since when has that stopped a blogger with something good to say?

Site-specific podcasts also exploit the mobility of the iPod in a way that opens a new category of mobile content -- ok, well, museums & other such places do audio guides, but they are mostly extremely boring.

I go into more detail in my post here.

[Shannon Clark]

A few feeds I recommend:

- Coverville - great covers and he pays licensing to make it mostly (as best as it can be) legal (http://www.coverville.com/index.xml)

- Kirin's themed podcasts - from the Netherlands, truly amazing mix of music, obscure tracks each arranged around a very specific theme - flowers, charity, cities, etc. (http://www.karin.hooijkaas.net/podcasts/dircaster.php)

- The $250 Million Dollar radio show. All "podsafe" music - independent music. Very good and worth catching when you can. http://www.acmerock.com/temp/250millionradio.xml

- Indiefeed. Has a series of feeds on many types of music, all also independent and "podsafe" and very good. Check them all out and pick the styles you like. (http://radio.weblogs.com/0141318/categories/folk/rss.xml for the folk one) Check outhttp://blindingflashes.blogs.com/indie_feed/ for more info and all the feeds.

I would suggest you check out other feeds as well - there are something like 3000 feeds out there, with more every day. As well, there is a growing movement of creating "soundscapes" which are narratives about a particular space. Adam Curry has started a directory of them - he calls them "SoundSeeingTours" - the blog is http://feeds.feedburner.com/SoundseeingToursPodcast

Shannon

[rick gregory]

Fred,

This is one reason I've been cool on podcasting - the lack of content that I know will be good consistently and that will reward the time I spend in listening to them.

Anyway... KCRW (LA NPR station)is starting to podcast in March with several shows on the docket... here's the link.

[Stephen Bronstein]

One version of a music 'podcast' would be Napster To Go (or the soon to come equivalent from Rhapsody) coupled with a Janus-enabled portable device. You could potentially 'subscribe' to people whose musical taste you like, and when they created new playlists they could automatically sync to your player. This playlist 'subscription' could even be through a third-party site (yet to exist, but seems inevitable to me) that converted between playlist formats, so it could convert to a Rhapsody playlist for you if you used Rhapsody, or Napster, etc.

The main obstacle to this right now is the same reason that Zeppelin isn't online - many artists and/or rightsholders (ie labels), even if they allow download via iTunes, will not allow their works to be streamed via subscription services (fwiw, my company IODA, which does digital music distribution for independent labels, encourages all of our labels to enable streaming and virtually all do so). And then to top it off, the portable download services like Napster To Go require the publishing right to be explicitly cleared because there is a 'mechanical' copy made when the track is downloaded to the device and there is no appropriate statutory rate for this situation.

I'm not sure what the answer is to clear through this licensing jungle to produce the solution that consumers want - the portable celestial jukebox - but I certainly hope that we'll get there sooner rather than later.

[Christopher Carfi]

The music is starting to come around. In January, 2005, a group of about a half-dozen podcasters formed the Association of Music Podcasting (AMP).

Per Shannon's note above, Coverville is also a good listen.

To your point, however, some more thoughts on the imminent over-hyping of podcasting.

[Mike D.]

The closest thing I can think of to a legitimate podcasted music program is KEXP.ORG. It's the best radio station around, it's streamed live on the net 24/7, there are no commercials, and you can timeshift the programming for up to two weeks.

In other words, if you're listening to a show at 8pm on Sunday and you really like it, you can stream it again for up to 14 days whenever you want. Free of course, but also requiring an internet connection. You can't take it with you. Just one more reason why a disconnected iPod will not be good enough in a few years.

[Keith Teare]

Interested in listening to a selection of earnings calls?

EarningsCast is here

[deeje]

music podcasts don't interest me. Give me a feed of Morning Edition anytime. I've also been talking about podcast transcription web services, so that podcast could be indexed and found based on their content via search engines like Google, Feedster, and PubSub...