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Internet Broadcasting Makes A Comeback
Mark Leaman writes "About six years ago I founded an internet broadcasting company called GT2K (Gametalk 2000) which featured Real Audio based radio shows on gaming in all its incarnations (table top, strategy, computer...). During the dot.com "plague years" we saw hordes of internet broadcasting companies belly up. But now internet broadcasting is making a comeback thanks to Podcasting. Although Podcasting isn't new news Yahoo has some nice coverage on the re-emergence of the medium."
NPR had a recent story on podcasting. They interviewed a guy that would record his commute to work every day and then put it on a web site so that people could then listen to his musings on their IPods. Scintillating.
I'm a big tall mofo.
It's "Narrowcasting," actually. Fine, Comm-school distinction, perhaps, but worth noting in this case. You don't want this to be broadcasting, as that would assume a lot of very low and common denominators and all that attendant government scrutiny.
Wierd, I listen to wolfFM.com and local talk radio over the internet everyday. Have done so for years.
Sam
http://podcast.wfmu.org/
They offer two shows of old 78s which are public domain as well as two other amazing shows (Advanced D & D with Donna Summer.... breakcore / random bedroom electronics and Downtown Soulville which is pure funk 45s from the 60s / early 70s and is extremely addictive. Especially of interest if you like stuff like Peanut Butter Wolf's Funky 16 corners comp from a few years back).
As for npr podcasting you can get on media as a podcast at http://onthemedia.org
I'm not sure PodCasting is creditworthy when it comes to bringing back web broadcasting.
If any technology or trend is responsible for the rebirth of web broadcasting, it is undoubtedly P2P Streaming (like PeerCast.org).
I can't figure out why p2p streaming isn't getting more hype than it is. I downloaded my first P2P streaming client about a month ago, and was pretty amazed at both the quality and the possibilities.
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Does anyone have time for commercials anymore? I don't. Tivo TV, burn radio streams to my iPod, and skip thru the commercials. Number of commercials I have to listen to nowadays: zero. Good friggin riddance.
Perhaps this is part of the declining TV viewership companies have begun to bemoan, blaming yet again the revenue-robbing Internet.
Currently bidding on sig
I listen to Digitally Imported Radio (DI) every day. In fact, since I have something always available I rarely download music anymore. It's simply more convienent to just tune in than it is to go searching for what I'm interested in.
WURD!!
He already does maintain show archives that are available to subscribers. With the right amount of hacking, one could automate the process of downloading the content daily, converting it from Real or Windows Media and into MP3 to pop onto their iPod, I suppose.
But that's the smart part about Podcasting that most people in this comments thread is missing -- it's more than just recording an MP3 and posting it on a website. The Podcasting program is a huge part of this -- a central program used to automate downloads and transfer of the files from the web to your local machine or iPod or iRiver or what have you.
It takes all the work out of checking a dozen web sites looking for things. It's an RSS Aggregator with attachments. I'm somewhat afraid that point is getting lost in this whole conversation.
There seem to be a lot of misinformed, or partially informed views of what Podcasting is or is not. Allow me to try and clear it up:
From a "broadcaster's" perspective: you record a show to MP3, you make that available via some URL-accessible protocol (typically http or bittorrent), then you add an item to an RSS feed which includes that URL as an enclosure.
From a consumer's perspective: you run an application (e.g. iPodder). You give the application a set of RSS feeds. The application polls these feeds, and when it finds a new item that points to an enclosure, it downloads the media. What happens then is application-dependent, but what iPodder does is use the iTunes API to import the new media into the iTunes library.
Podcasting receiver applications like iPodder are meant to be "set up and forget". Once it's going, then assuming you dock your MP3 player every day or so, you are automagically going to find new content on your player whenever it becomes available. (I'm hoping that future versions will also automatically delete stale media).
For the consumer, this is better than streaming because:
- you can listen to it when you're disconnected from a network - e.g. on the bus, in the car
- skipping, rewinding etc. is easy
- being on a slow network (e.g. dialup) is not a problem
- timeshifting is inherent. The user experience is very like having a radio TiVo, except there is no option to listen to live programming.
Sure, it doesn't lend itself to live phone-ins, up-to-the-minute news bulletins, etc. -- but that's not what it's for.
For the producer, the costs scale very nicely, and if you go for bittorrent, you could distribute a very popular show very cheaply indeed.
So that's what it is. Here's what it is not:
Podcasting is not just for iPods. It's a shame the name implies it. This is because it was invented by Mac-heads. Fortunately they're standards-centric Mac-heads.
Podcasting is not just for no-budget audio equivalents of the personal blog or personal homepage. The BBC's trial of podcasting the excellent In Our Time series was by all accounts a great success.
The absence of DRM means it may be difficult for some material to get cleared for podcasting, which may dissuade professional broadcasters from podcasting in some cases.
The cheapness of podcasting means there's an awful lot of shovelware out there: like the middling days of mp3.com, when there was probably good, free music on there, but who was going to wade through the chaff and sort out the wheat?