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The story was referring to compilation CDs which are by different artists.

It would be easy to pull together such a CD, they don't want to because for each good song they sell, they want to promote a couple of their crappy artists of the week.

Ever notice the top 100 for everything since the early 1990s has been full of shit some record company pushed down our collective throat?

Lately I just listen to Coverville (http://coverville.com/) . Give it a month, if you're not hooked, I'll personally give you your money back.

Juice (formerly iPodder) is pretty much the go-to standard... or at least it was until iTunes added podcasting support. Personally I use iTunes and only because it integrates much better than iPodder ever did, but that's entirely a personal choice.

As far as Podcasts go here are some of my favorites:

Coverville : An excellent podcast devoted to covers. Always excellent.

Reel Reviews Radio : Short (and the occasional Cinephile long-form) discussions of various films. The subtitle of "Films Worth Watching" probably describes it best. Sometimes I've found stuff that I've overlooked other times it proved to be the kick in the pants that I needed to finally get around to watching something I've been interested in.

The Dawn and Drew Show : I like it personally. Then again, I also loathe Howard Stern so there's no easy decisions to be made. Free-form discussion by a husband and wife team where he's the straight man and she tends to be effusive and offensive (well... to some I guess).

The Tim and Tony Show : Two guys talk about various sexual topics. About the same intellectual level as Dawn and Drew.

The Apparat Programme (Podcast at http://feeds.feedburner.com/Apparat , info best found at http://www.warrenellis.com/ : Influential British comic writer Warren Ellis' occasionally posts new entries in his podcast which is basically just music that interests him.

They Might Be Giants Podcast : Well... if you're a fan it's an excellent podcast for Their music. Then again they've always managed to heavily experiment with new forms of music delivery.

I also use iTunes. It does the job just fine, but requires Windows-XP or a Mac. I occasionally use my Tivo for one-shot podcast listening as well.

Finding good podcasts is a challenge. Everyone has different tastes, and there's a lot of just plain crap out there. But here are a some that I like:

National Public Radio has lots of good news-related podcasts. The NPR Story of the Day cast is worth a listen, and Wait... Wait Don't Tell Me is hilarious.

Coverville is a popular music podcast. The show's host is very entertaining and well informed.

If you're into a cappella music, AcappellaU and the Acapodcast are two of my favorites.

• Cinecast is an excellent movie review podcasts the IMO beats the snot out of Ebert & Whoever (of course you can catch their podcast as well.) RSS Feed
• Keith and the Girl still stands as one of my regulars, although not for everyone, but very funny. RSS Feed
• Coverville is a wonderful high production values music podcast that features only covers of songs. I love it. RSS Feed

As for RSS feed readers/podcatchers (another hated word mashup), I still use the original Juice receiver (previously called iPodder). It has plenty of flaws, but every time I give other feed readers a try I always come back to it. I still haven't found one that will synch with my iRiver correctly. I use the new version of WinAmp for that.

I don't know why everyone always recommends using iTunes. I abhor their podcast interface and always get confused as it dumps me in and out of my library, search, back to their store, etc. Hate hate hate!

CDs would be copy protected and require a CD key to play (a la Windows or PC game keys)

Unfortunately, they don't seem to be aware that the methods you mention are are largely ineffective. It's typically a matter of days from the release of a game before the thing is cracked and downloadable.

would require an internet or modem connection to phone home on each play (like Steam)

Might be a bit hard to play in the car.

What the RIAA wants is for things to go back to the way they used to be. No Internet, no Satellite radio, no iPods, no iTunes. They see their revenue model slowly but surely slipping away and they can't do anything about it, so they flail around and make a lot of noise. This whole article is just posturing. What are they going to do? Start suing people that rip CDs they've purchased? Suing downloaders was bad, going after your customers that actually PAID for the CD - doesn't seem smart to me.

The real answer for all of us here is to not buy or listen to RIAA music. There are thousands, maybe millions of independant artists out there on the web. Go out and support these people. Buy their songs of iTunes, or better yet, buy the CDs directly from their website. Don't know any indie music? Try listening to some podcasts for some ideas. The Association of Music Podcasting has a large list of music podcasts. Personally I think the Eclectic Mix has a good selection of different music and Coverville is a great podcast featuring many indpendent artists.

Is this true? I listen (probably like everyone else here) to several podcasts. Most of my preferences are podcasts that play music. I know several of them have ASCAP licenses, CovervilleK for example, and I didn't think the license was that much. If a one man podcast can avoid all the licensing entanglements, why can't an actual radio station that has converted to the net?

Some of it is news. Some of it's music. Some of it's audiobooks. And yeah, some of it's just personal life and ranting. But don't limit your perspective to just those. It's basically whatever you want.

My own podcast narrates science fiction short stories. We also do some reviews and commentary, but I've made a solemn promise on it never, ever to simply tell you about my day.

1. I recently had a slightly difficult time getting the webmaster of a popular Country artist site to understand that linking a MP3 to a website doesn't make that MP3 a podcast. He was initially insulted by my suggestion he include an RSS feed to make the file a true podcast. Fortunately, there were plenty of links at http://www.ipodder.org/ to share with him that showed him how RSS is the magic ingredient. It wasn't that he couldn't roll RSS code; he was a competent coder. He, like most of the public out there, was simply misinformed. Let's face it, RSS is wicked geeky and trying to explain it to somebody is often an exercize in futility (See the end of Josh's vlog on the subject - lesson #4). After all, isn't Really Simple Syndication such an obvious sort of technology that you wonder why somebody had to invent it in the first place? ;)

   But if you want to see how completely the public misunderstands just what the heck a podcast is check out Bill Gate's first podcast as an example. The MEDC site refers to it as a "Video Podcast", but on film they just call it a podcast, so if you are new to podcasting then this is what you are going to think a podcast is: a video broadcast via WMV. Obviously there's a slight problem here in that podcasts are audio enclosures via RSS and vlogs are video enclosures via RSS. One could argue that this is a simply an exercize in semantics, or one could argure that Bill & Co. are once again trying to embrace and extend a technology/term for their own purposes. But the main result is that the common guy isn't going to have a clue about any of this. He only knows what he is told.

   So, IMO, iTunes adding podcast support is a really good thing. This will help solidify the meaning of the word "podcast" before more confusion sets in. (Of course, if Steve & Co. are also embracing and extending...)

2. As for podcasts being "Wayne's World for radio", sometimes that is the case. If I have to download another walk to the (backyard shed, park, bigwig meeting, etc) soundseeing tour on Daily Source Code I will scream, or just not subscribe anymore. Vlogs can be just as bad. I've seen some kid animate her Barbies in a sordid romance, a guy video tape his trip home from work, and somebody wash their dirty sink to music. Not winning content by any means. However, like anything out there, there is crap and there is gold. And then there's the whole realm inbetween. YMMV, but podcasts are turning out to be an alternative form of entertainment. Don't write them off before trying out some of the more interesting ones. I wouldn't recommend sampling them at random if you don't have the time or patience to filter out the dross.
   
   I know that tech podcasts get covered here a lot. Maybe some of you might enjoy these music podcasts:
   • http://carmenrasmusen.com/audio/idolupdate.xml - Carmen Rasmusen of American Idol fame gives the inside dope on what happens after the cameras shut off.
   • http://feeds.feedburner.com/BitzOfBrin - a thirteen year old girl talks about getting into the music biz and tracks her progress. She's not bad at all.
   • http://composerplanet.com/speechless/index.xml - Speechless covers instrumental music from rock to electronica. Very fascinating stuff.
   • http://www.coverville.com/index.xml - Coverville is a popular podcast featuring covers of well known music done by obscure and well

• CronCast - http://www.croncast.com/wp-rss2_2.php
• Lascivious Biddies - http://feeds.feedburner.com/Biddycast (Wonderful independent music group.)
• Keith and the Girl - http://shitecom.libsyn.com/rss
• Coverville - http://www.coverville.com/index.xml (Great little show featuring all cover songs)
• Distorted View - http://www.distortedview.com/show/index.xml (Compare to a News of the Weird report done by Conan O'Brian on steriods.

If you don't like blogs, and could care less about talk radio or public radio, podcasting is a waste of time for you.

Coverville: Nothing but covers of songs. Good commentary; takes listener requests.

Firesign Theatre: Snippets of FT albums and commercials they've done. I don't know if the commercials are serious or not, but they're for real companies, and are typical FT.

On the Media: A weekly NPR program. Since I'm rarely in the house Saturday when it's broadcast, I love the ability to listen to it during the week as I have time.

The Radio Adventures of Dr. Floyd: The serialized (and funny) adventures of Dr. Floyd as he travels through time battling his nemesis Dr. Steve.

Safe Digressions: Your daily dose of poetry, and a refreshing break during a day of techie nonsense.

Science @ NASA: Brief reports on various NASA activities. The stories about the Huygens probe have been particularly interesting, especially the description of methane rainbows on Titan.