Podcasting: Hear What the Buzz Is About

seraph

What’s a Podcast?

Podcasts are audio files created to be distributed over the Internet. They’re available for free and usually encoded in MP3 format. But the cool part is the way they get to you. With the right software, you can subscribe to podcasts and have new shows downloaded automatically (and even transferred to your iPod) while you sleep.

The key technology behind delivering podcasts is RSS (originally RDF Site Summary, but now commonly known as Really Simple Syndication). This is a format most commonly used for delivering summaries (or feeds) of news stories, but thanks to an enclosure element in RSS, you can attach audio files to these feeds as well. An RSS aggregator downloads feeds that you subscribe to. Once you tell the aggregator where you want content from, it searches on a regular basis for updates and downloads what it finds for you. You can then browse the content at your leisure.

The second piece of the podcast puzzle is getting the files to your portable player. Former MTV VJ Adam Curry gets credit for pioneering podcasting. According to ipodder.org, Curry wrote the first AppleScript that uses RSS feeds to download and automatically transfer audio files to an iPod. He then put the code out into the community so others could make improvements where they saw fit.

http://playlistmag.com/features/2005/01/podcastinglisten/

Mohoyoho · Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 4:48 pm Post subject:

I'm very intrigued by this technology. I recently downloaded some podcasts. One was a inane recording of some people just carrying conversations in their house. You could barely hear what they were saying, but what you could was worthless. Then I heard a re-broadast of a radio station from my hometown of Boston. That was nice. I also heard some Firesign Theatre clips. And finally I heard a married couple from Wisconsin who had a very well-known podcast. They were basically a toned-down Howard Stern kind of show with more profanity.

It's basically giving the masses the ability to produce and "broadcast" their own material; from talk, music or whatever. It's got me thinking.

mosc · Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 6:21 pm Post subject:

Yes, this is pretty interesting. Bill Fox is putting up podcasts on his emusic page for WDIY radio. Not sure how much different this is from just posting mp3 files for download though. I'm a bit concerned that if musicians though sites like this or independently put up their music for podcasts, then people will just play thier music and not even know who wrote it. I mean, you wake up in the morning and there's all this music on you hard drive on on your portable mp3 player (I prefer not to identify the band name iPod for this).

Mohoyoho · Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 7:21 pm Post subject:

I've listened to some musicians who announce themselves between songs and tell you where their website is and where to buy the CD. I don't know how effective that is. If you treat it like a radio show with your own commercials it might work in some cases, or at least get your name out.

mosc · Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 8:38 pm Post subject:

Yes, then it's good. Maybe we should start a forum to post podcasts or links to them.

zynthetix · Posted: Wed Feb 02, 2005 9:02 pm Post subject:

anonymous, random songs ending up on your disk isn't very attractive...but then again, mp3 distribution is pretty good at that anyway. I've got a decent amount of eletro-music mp3's from the Online Music forum that I shuffle in iTunes. sometimes something really good comes on but I don't know who it is since they didn't label the tag. I'd think an enforced tag protocol would solve it, but people would probably just insert spaces or " .....*-@#!%^....." anyway.

seraph · Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 2:04 am Post subject:

One million podcast subscriptions in two days
Thursday, June 30, 2005 @ 4:25pm

Apple today announced that in just two days iTunes customers have subscribed to more than one million Podcasts from the new iTunes Podcast Directory. iTunes 4.9 lets users find, subscribe, manage and listen to Podcasts. Users can "now have each new episode of their favorite Podcasts automatically delivered over the Internet to their computer and iPod." iPods now offer an easy to use Podcast menu, including bookmarking within a Podcast and the ability to display color Podcast artwork. “With the release of iTunes 4.9, listeners are voting with their ears,” said Adam Curry, co-founder of the PodShow Podcast Network.

http://www.ipodnn.com/news/05/06/30/1m.podcast.subscriptions/

elektro80 · Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 3:07 am Post subject:

The fact that iTunes is both for the mac OS X and the wintel platforms, this application has now suddenly become THE podcast client. It works well, and it is possible to enter urls to podcasts not listed at the ITMS. I have used 4.9 extensively with my iPod and this is great fun. The only annoyance is that some podcast providers are messing things up a bit.

mosc · Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 12:18 pm Post subject:

How can a podcast provider mess things up?

elektro80 · Posted: Sat Jul 02, 2005 12:21 pm Post subject:

Well, you name it.. wrong files or no files.. duplicates..