Podcasting, streaming and that kind of stuff

[mosc]

There has been some discussion about podcasting here before. See: http://electro-music.com/forum/topic-5217.html

I've got some thoughts on this. Podcasting is cool. Basically, you do a radio show type of thing. You build a single mp3 file and make it available as a podcast. You can have a web page that describes what is on the podcast. People can download the podcast, ofter automatically when they are doing something else and listen to it at a convenient time, even on a portable mp3 player.

One thing I don't like about podcasts is that they are one large flat file, so there is no indexes. It's hard to skip around in the file - go to the next song, etc. Also, unless there is a verbal announcement, you can't tell what is playing. In many podcasts, the artist gets very little publicity. It's very hard for potential customers to know what it is and where to get the music.

Streaming Internet Radio with such programs as Shoutcast are a bit different. The stream can be made of segments can have ID blocks attached. When done this way, the media player can show on the screen the name of the artist, the name of the piece, and even then name of the album. I know of now way to get more information using Shoutcast, but it is possible to develop some PHP code to refresh the web page when the song changes. This way one could have a lot more information - pictures - links to home pages - links to a store to buy the CD - etc. This would to me be a much better value for the musicians. The downside is that the listener must be connected.

I have never seen this, but I think it would be possible to have something that is a hybrid of the podcast and the shoutcast. This would involve making playlists (m3u) available for download along with the mp3 files and some html files. This way, you'd essentially download an album. This could contain talking, commercials, announcement and whatever - or nothing if that's what you want. They would just be items in the playlist. Of course, you can't click through on a portable mp3 player, but you could from the website.

Playlists have an advantage that the music doesn't have to be hosted on the site that is hosting the lists.

I recently bought a portable mp3 player, the iRiver. I can see now that people with devices like this will not be too interested in buying CDs. They would probably get them, rip them, and then they would have no use for them. This may explain why CD sales are so slow.

Comments, thoughts, ideas?

[Mohoyoho]

I agree that podcasts need some kind of indexing, but then again radio and TV don't either. But perhaps that might be an advantage in some ways; you could force the audience to listen to a paying sponsor's commercial.

My main complaint with mp3s is that they are inferior than wav files or what you hear on CDs. It seems that the listeners are taking a step back to have convenience of quality. Granted, the mp3 can sound a whole lot better than the dreadful cassette.

[Kassen]

How about simple playlists (.M3U or whatever they are called) of OGG files? This would take care of problems mentioned so far in that the OGG files could simply be taged with ID2 and ID3 tags, labebling them clearly, the playlist would make skipping convenient. OGG would take care of most of the audio problems of MP3 in addition to being a open and free standard.

RSS feeds could still be made available for anouncing these to people that like RSS.

Aside from the hipness factor I fail to see any advantage to podcasting over simple generated playlists. I also completely fail to see how this is "like radio" beyond also consisting of audio; to me that's a lot like saying a computer is a bit like a typewriter. I feel we should take a lead in electronic advances which means not using antiquated analogies that mask the true nature of the medium. Radio means one way traffic, I'd rather see a more open, democratic and colaborative implementation.

[mosc]

Do iPods and other portable mp3 players support OGG?

All of this has to do with the second goal of electro-music.com. The first was to develop the community of musicians. We are well into that. The second is to nurture the audience. For that we need to present music to expose people to this new kind of music in a helpful and friendly way. It is critical to me that we support the artists to. At a minimum, this support would include clear identification of the artist and links to their website and places to buy the music. Better yet, sell subscriptions to the media and give the artists some compensation.

[Kassen]

[mosc]

Well, fortunately a good thing about the forum is that everything is already in a database. And yes, that is exactly what I was thinking about. So, each member could sort of become what we used to call a DJ. I know those kinds of DJs don't exist any more, but maybe a music program producer or editor is a better term. At any rate, some member might really do a great job at this sort of thing, even if they only identified a few tracks that particualrly thought were worth attention. People who make lists of their own music only, might not be appreciated, but the could certainly do that.

I'm thinking that if a song were to be included it would have to have some minimum prerequisets, so the software would support it properly. Your ideas about the mood, feeling, style etc are good. At a minimum, maybe

composted by
performer
link to web page
link to a forum topic for discussion
link to a place to buy this music
descrition
photo
duration

maybe a few more...

So, when the music is being played, a web page or sorts appears. Of course, one of the things on the web page would be buttons to push to add this to your own list(s), see other lists that have this track, and stuff like that.

I don't like ratings, per se, but a song that is linked to on 50 links might be more notable than one that is on no list. I'd be reluctant to have a feature to show most linked songs, but that would be hard to avoid if one did something like this.

[jkn]

I just read the lotuspike newsletter and their new podcasts are indexed. How? I don't know yet.

Whoops - ok - it appears to be an iTunes feature. Check Jeff's recent post to the Hypnos forum:

http://207.234.140.108/ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=7;t=001322


Here's their podcast page:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Lotusblog

[Kassen]

I'm completely and loudly with you on the ratings. I base that opinon on something very ego-centric; much of the music that I love sells only a few hundred copies.

Still, what I enjoy is recomending things to people. If you like that one, you should perhaps also look for these names. Some modern DJ's (as in clubs, records and headphones on one ear) still cary that flag high, I'd like to stress.

update on ogg and the ipod

perhaps it's no that simple

At least we can conclude that won't work right now regardless of wether it could. Still; OGG sounds good and doesn't require lisencing So I'd like to encourage it. Because of the way democracy, the media and so on interact these days I like to encourage open formats for the distribution of content.

[mosc]

[Kassen]

Fortunately I ran into OGG and Mac's just a few days ago.

My demudi install realy likes to encode stuff in OGG and doesn't realy like encoding things in mp3. So, one encodes in OGG and sends it off with some notes. The other end of the conversation (which just happens to be on a mac) naively doubleclicked on it which opened some Mac program the name of which temporarily escapes me. So; they can be opened on Mac's but not in Itunes, at least not easily.

Anyway, I don't think it's right to shove OGG down the throat of unsuspecting listeners; after all we are not like that set of companies that would love to have a monopoly on formats. All else being equal I just prefer open formats. Flash is admirerably cross-platform (even if I can't get it to generate sound yet....) but it's far from open; you need a expensive compiler to get it to "broadcast".

This is not all so easy; we are not a company, we aren't in it for the profit. I think we are in it for the comunication and everything we do comunicates. Saying "just OGG" comunicates (and sadly excludes) and making non-skipable, non-taged streams comunicates too. I'd like to highlight that there is no actually need to do anything if we are unable to find a option that properly comunicates.

One thing we could do is make lists with links where applicable.

*I like "my track" by DJ roxor (on 12" on Thislabel)
* I like "been here" by Kassen (download here)
*I also like "some artist's album" (stream there)

and so on.

No technological bariers (at least not erected by us), lots of comunication. To me any alternative would have to be superior to that. (well, or at least not inferior).

[mosc]

Yes, you can already do that. It's just that these iteems won't be in a database. Whenever you require a UI, then you impose limitations. But limitation with vision can be a breakthrough.

[softfreak]

not sure if I found the right thread....

does anybody have any experiences in including
the possibility of podcasting on their own website ?

Is there the possibility of using freeware ?

yours
robi

[elektro80]

You don´t need much apart from a text editor, a website and some audiofiles.

If you are on a mac you could perhaps use something like this one in order to manange the pages and files:
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/27980


Also see the faq:
http://www.podcastingnews.com/topics/Podcasting_FAQ.html

If you are on a PC and need tools, make a search in the PC section at http://www.versiontracker.com

[softfreak]

thank you very much for the infos.

rob