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Yahoo Launches New Podcasting Service
sdirrim writes to tell us Reuters is reporting that Yahoo! has just released a test version of its new podcasting service From the (short) article: "Yahoo's new service will allow users to download shows from National Public Radio, the weekly presidential address, and independent shows with subjects ranging from sports to knitting." Additionally Yahoo! Podcast users have the ability to rate shows.
Now, I'm starting to see some reason to get one of those pods. I'm a really cheap guy and I don't like much of the new music these days so I never had a reason to get one. But, I have a hard time catching The Infinite Mind and other PBS/NPR shows I love and I can't always listen to it over the net when I'm at my computer - it does suck up a lot of badwidth.
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I wish there were some way to give a revenue split from advertisers to the best rated podcasts.
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it is "Diary" not blog it is an audio file not a podcast I got a revolution for ya, lets put an audio file for download on the internet (yeah nobody has ever done that before), but give it a hip new name: "Podcast" cause you need a $400 piece of electronics to duplicate 20 year old technology. Next you will see "Podcast Novels" at barnes and noble, cause "books on tape" is just not a shiney. Get off my lawn :))
Initial list of offerings appears to be Public Domain and/or those with easily obtainable permission to deliver copyrighted works. Apparently no contracts in hand to deliver "popular" copyrighted works that might have elicited more excitement in you. If Yahoo promises to deliver content not under contract it puts them at a disadvantage in negotiating the contracts. If the service becomes popular before Yahoo approaches major content providers then the major content providers might approach Yahoo with deals to get their content into this medium and consequently giving Yahoo the edge in negotiations. Purely supposition on my part of course.
Imagine if NPR shows could get rated and get karma like /.:
Postitive: Interesting, Insightful, Informative, Underrated, Funny, and just for radio: timely
Negative: Offtopic, Troll, Flamebait, Redundant, Overrated, and just for radio: yesterday's news
What I want to know is: Do high-karma contributors start out at +2?
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I've looked at the Yahoo! Music Engine (they emailed me about a job, but never got back to me) - and the one thing I don't understand is why they don't have special Yahoo! only Podcasts - YahooCasts or something -- something they aren't doing with this initiative. If you're sane you're asking "Why would they make Yahoo only podcasts?" - because their Music service is on a subscription model. People could make music show "podcast" (obviously in some sort of format specific to this service) with all the commercial music they want, and all the subscribers could listen to it without copyright concerns. It's something that might actually make their service appealing.
I'm an iTunes/iPod user and shuffle always gets annoying, and I don't have the time to keep making new playlists (which don't duplicate the "surprise factor" of radio anyway). If there was a subscription service where I could listen to podcasts with Music on my portable device I would be quite interested. Of course, Yahoo! would still have to deal with the iPod lock-in - their service currently requires WMA music players, which I'm not likely to buy in the first place.