Podcast.com News

All of us here have been Last.FM users for a while because it’s a great community service for recommending music. Recently we started noticing podcasts showing up in peoples’ charts on Last.FM, and it intrigued us enough to create a new Podcast.com profile. If you are a podcaster or if you have been listening to podcasts on Last.FM, give us a buzz through our profile and we can start listening to those/your podcasts.  Or if you’re neither of those and would just like to be our friend, drop us a message. Podcastic!

Fringe festivals? The secret lives of monkeys? Hip hop controversies? Yeah, you get all that PLUS great stories and conversations about the arts when you subscribe to Studio 360, a public radio production out of WNYC that also happens to make podcast listeners swoon. They say they produce weekly but often update their feed every few days, and that’s our good luck. Now I must get back to that swooning …

In an announcement that will allow Internet radio to thrive in the USA for the foreseeable future, Internet music broadcasters have won a huge battle in the ongoing war with Sound Exchange, an independent, nonprofit organization designated by the U.S. Copyright Office to collect royalty fees for music played digital cable and satellite television music, internet and satellite radio.

This summer the Copyright Board pushed for rate hikes that would have put many large webcasters out of business due to royalty fees that far exceeded webcasting revenue, but the newly agreed upon rates have both a floor and a ceiling of $500 and $50,000, respectively — numbers far more manageable for most webcasters. To give you an example, popular online music services such as Yahoo! Music, Live 365 and Last.FM could have owed hundreds of thousands of dollars a year if the rate hikes went into effect. While this announcement doesn’t directly affect the podcast industry, this compromise is a positive step toward the U.S. government recognizing the benefits of audio (and video) delivered to people over the Internet, and that is certainly a good thing.

Here’s the press release [PDF] about this announcement.

It’s time for some of us to go back to school — WAIT! Before a collective groan comes from the students, check out how some are using podcasting to get students in the mood (we ALL can appreciate the ingenuity here, right?):

• A lesson in healthy eating at school and on campus (Back to College, Back to School / Parent Focus)
• Teachers using podcasts to give students a jump on what’s to come (FAMS Welcome Back)
• OK, OK, maybe that’s not exciting enough to keep SOME of you interested, so for you gamers, check out Episode 40 of the World of Warcraft podcast, and for those of you in the working world (read: wayyyyy beyond school), you can still learn something interesting with the Google SketchUp podcast.

School shouldn’t be a bad word, should it?

I guess you know you’ve hit the big time when people organize a conference around you. In our last post we mentioned the Podcast Awards to be announced at the 3rd Annual Podcast and New Media Expo, a ‘”prosumer” and corporate event’ for people who make audio and video for the Web. Turnout to this Ontario CA event has been strong the past two years — evidently so strong that podcast types decided to organize another conference just over a month later called the Blog World and New Media Expo, and take it straight (or at least close) to the Vegas strip. Looks like the name “New Media Expo” is the flavor of the month.

The conference title mentions blogs but it features many of the same tracks as the P+NME: how to make media for the Web, how to get an audience, and how to make money.

Registration is open for both P+NME and BW+NME (don’t get the acronyms confused!), and it’s time for you to pick your poison …

The people (you?) have voted for their favorite podcasts of the year via the People’s Choice Podcast Awards. That’s 20 categories, 200 nominees and 20 winners so far, with the best-out-of-ten in each of the top two categories (People’s Choice and Best Produced) to be announced at the Podcast and New Media Expo on September 28th. Here are the 20 winners to date:

• Best Video Podcast: Ask a Ninja
• Best Mobile Phone Formatted Podcast: Praystation Portable
• Business: Manager Tools
• Comedy: Nobody Likes Onions
• Cultural / Arts: This American Life
• Education: Grammar Girl
• Entertainment: The Lost Podcast
• Food and Drink: Coffee Geek
• Gaming: CAGcast
• General: ShowGirls
• GLBT: Feast of Fools
• Health / Fitness: Sex is Fun
• Mature: Keith and the Girl
• Movies / Films: Firefly Talk
• PodSafe Music: Catholic Rockers
• Political: Free Talk Live
• Religion Inspiration: Daily Breakfast
• Sports: Phedippidations
• Technology / Science: Security Now
• Travel: WDW Radio

Congrats to all nominees (see the 10 nominees in each category at the Podcast Awards site).

We’re not playing the numbers game on our site, but it sure is awesome to see the number of high-quality, up-to-date podcast feeds in the Podcast.com system. We’re always accepting new submissions, and all new feeds go into our index, so make sure to add your RSS feed (it should start with http://) on the handy form on the home page (or ping us if you have the capability).

Some of your feeds end up in our directory on the main page — that directory is curated (i.e. they are some of our favorites) — but even if your podcast is not in our directory you can still point others to it.  After you submit your feed, hit the “click here to view this feed now” to go to your feed’s page on Podcast.com.  From there click on the button to get your Podcast.com URL, just like this one.  Bookmark that URL and share your Podcast.com page with your listeners/viewers/customers.  That’s how you can use Podcast.com to accentuate your brand!

RAJAR (acronym for Radio Joint Audience Research, a group dedicated to measuring radio audiences in the UK) reports that 2.7 million adults in the UK, or 18.3 percent of owners of mp3 players in the UK, listen to podcasts on their portable devices. That’s up 40% from 1.9 million (or 14.8 per cent of mp3 player owners) last year, and both numbers don’t account for adults who listen to podcasts on their computers only.

The release also purports that “a number of traditional print journalism brands have moved into podcasting to increase their reach”, which is something we and many others have seen for a while. And everyone is happy.

Last week we pointed to the recent updates to Apple’s Garageband and how it helps podcasters who are Mac users.  For the PC users out there we can now present RecordForAll, which was given the Best Sound Program award at the 2007 Shareware Industry Awards ceremony.  Unlike Garageband the software is not free ($39.95, or $69.95 when bundled with companion software FeedForAll), but you can download the software for free and give it a try.  Our experience with software is it’s worth a few dollars if it saves us time and/or headaches, so we’ll be anxious to try it ourselves to see if it’s worth the price.  If anyone has any experience with it, leave us a comment here to let us and everyone else know.

Podcasts, like any compelling audio and video, is powerful enough to transport your brain to another world, to expand your horizons. Podcasters, being adventurous types, quickly realized this and began to document their journeys to new lands or even profile the neighborhoods they live in. So it was only a matter of time before those in control of popular tourist destinations would realize that using podcasts to get people to come visit them is a great idea, and we’ll agree with that one — if it can transport us to places like this (or beaches, resorts, water parks, etc.):

[UPDATE: here’s another great story about how the Louisville Convention & Visitors Bureau is using podcasts in the same way.]