Filed under: Boston, Music, New Music, Podcasts, Song of the Week, WBOS, media, radio
Okay, if you live in Boston, you are lucky enough to listen to John Laurenti’s show every afternoon on WBOS, and even better, catch Sound Check on the weekends and John’s chats with Steve Morse, the Boston Globe’s resident music expert, on Thursday afternoons.
I am indebted to John and Steve for the inspiration of many of my selections for Song of the Week on this blog, and more importantly for the vast knowledge of the new music scene which they impart. This is great new music, with background and information that you’ll actually appreciate from the DJ’s…check out their show.
If you don’t live in Boston, you can catch WBOS streaming at WBOS.com or better yet the (somewhat consistently) podcasted episodes of John and Steve’s new music coverage WBOS Podcast
Filed under: Alternative, Indie Music, Internet, Music, Podcast of the Week, Podcasts, podcasting
One of my favorite podcasts, and now really a fantastic franchise; Insomnia Radio has the best indie music delivered in a series of geographically focused episodes. Originally focused on major metropolitan areas in the US, Insomnia Radio has gone global with episodes from around the world.
This is a great introduction to the indie music scene in major (and minor) centers of creativity. Check out the latest episodes here: Insomnia Radio at Podcast.com
Filed under: Motorola, Podcasts, Symbian, Technology and Gadgets, cellular, media, mobile, podcasting
Big news this week at Podcast.com!
Yesterday Podcast.com and Motorola announced that they are partnering to bring podcasts to high end Motorola phones including the new Motorola MotoRizr Z8, Motorola’s first new Symbian phone with incredible video and audio capabilities.
The announcements are here: Motorola’s Press Release on the Z8 and Media partners including Podcast.com
and here: Podcast.com’s Press Release
Filed under: Alternative, Indie Music, Music, Pete Cogle, Podcast of the Week, Podcasts, media
A new feature starting this week: Podcast of the Week, with a focus on podcasts that present, recommend, review or promote artists, music, or particular musical genres.
This week the Podcast of the Week is Pete Cogle’s PC Podcast. PC Podcast is a veteran podcast that Pete has been producing twice a week since January 2006. The podcast is entirely podsafe music, almost entirely indie, and the range of music is extremely wide with artists from many styles and many countries. Not the sort of stuff for those who never venture outside of Top 40 formula bands, but if you are into world music and discovering indie artists, you should check out PC Podcast.
Now the world is YouTube crazy, and there is nothing that YouTube can’t do for you, but does it really make sense as a corporate marketing platform? They’ve got lots of eyeballs, but there’s lots of chaos too. A recent search for a viral marketing piece on YouTube turned up half a dozen renditions of the video…great for increasing exposure on the site, but half the copies were of poor quality, and the ratings and stats for each instance were all over the map…. These are problems that can be solved with good search and management software, which YouTube will no doubt launch someday soon… Big Brother will help see to that. However, the problem that can’t be solved is the lack of control; control of the setting, control of the neighborhood you’re in, control of the look and feel of your piece as determined by the player or players utilized, control of the inevitable hostile entity. Social media doesn’t have to mean a surrender of how organizations interact with their constituents, it means the constituents are part of the conversation.
So Evan Williams bought Odeo back from the investors, reputedly for 50 cents on the dollar. He suggests on his blog that this was because ” I just wanted to create a company that would be as much fun and as fulfilling as possible. Fun in work to me means a lot of freedom, and ton of creativity, working with people I respect and like, and pursuing ideas that are just crazy enough to work.” He goes on to say, “I don’t want to have to worry about getting buy-in from executives or a board, raising money, worrying about investor’s perceptions, or cashing out.”
Nice spin. If this is really about taking the long view, why is Ev worried about the mistakes “which hindered that quick success”?
If you have an good idea, and a good business model, success is a function of execution. If your idea isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, or, as in the case of Odeo , your company “hasn’t yet settled on a business model” (gigaom.com), it doesn’t matter who your investors are. If you’ve got a good idea, and a good business model, being held accountable for execution is the best thing that can happen to you.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Ev is right in his hypothesis that every social media service has a life cycle and the continued success of a company will depend on an evolution of the services offered, but you have to finish what you start in order for any of the services to be successful.
Walking away from an idea because you don’t instantly dominate a market and get acquired by Google, doesn’t sound like freedom to me. It sounds like corporate ADD.
Had the opportunity to join a panel moderated by Dana Gardner of Interarbor Solutions on the topic of RSS, and new media for an audience comprised primarily of PR and IR professionals. It is still surprising how much disparity there is between the PR professionals who have embraced new media and the laggards. Sure, I get the cultural issues of a profession that is built around language and people skills colliding with technology. And, yes, I understand that there is resistance in some circles to adopt technologies that seem to hand control of information flow over to the consumer,….but your not going to stop the transition. The traditional media outlets are losing viewers or subscribers at alarming rates, and consumers are becoming more technically savvy by the day. The technology is also becoming more approachable by the day, so blogs, RSS feeds and news readers are becoming more mainstream tools instead of serious information consumers….
Do communications professionals still need to use other vehicles to reach less tech savvy audiences? Of course, absolutely, but when 31% of the internet connected audience is using RSS, there’s an enormous opportunity missed if you can’t master the technology to get your message out through this new information channel. When every iPod toting business woman, can listen to their news and entertainment in a podcast or portable movie, you have just lost a meaningful vehicle if you can’t get on board.
One audience member commented “…but my audience wants to read a couple of paragraphs in a press release…” (rather than get their information through a podcast). If you’re sure that’s the only way that your audience wants to get its information, stay the course….
Many, many communications professionals have continued to evolve and have become new media mavens, but the disparity from earliest adopted to stubbornest luddite is remarkable.
From his presentation to the PPME Saturday September 30th:
Audience analysis
Agenda call/meeeting
Pre-interviews
Scripting
Recording
Editing
Posting/indexing/syndicating
Audience Analysis
Question from a self-proclaimed representative of the federal government at a PPME session on corporate podcasting and videocasting; (paraphrasing) how do you know who your podcasts are reaching and who they aren’t? The context was Q&A with a panel that included innovators from Intel and SAP that have lead the charge for podcasting by their respective corporations, and Robert Scoble, John Furrier and Jennifer Jones of Podtech.net. So the question is, ‘Is the federal government worrying about how effectively Intel, SAP and other public companies are getting their podcasts out in a fair disclosure sense. Would they actually take steps to monitor who’s consuming podcasts from corporate sources? Obviously the companies have an obligation under Reg FD to insure that information material to investors is distributed effective to all investors…which would not be accomplished today by podcasts or blogs alone. Companies need to police it, but the question itself is troubling wrt podcast consumers and privacy if the SEC felt the need to step in and monitor…hopefully just a stray thought…..
Top ten things to avoid when podcasting….
1) Trademarking anything with P, O, and D in the name
2) Reading from copyrighted writings without permission of the creator
3) Using music without mechanical license from Harry Fox
4) Using music without master use license from Soundexchangea
5) Using music without a web or podcast use license from eith BMI, ASCAP or SESAC
6) Using Indie music without the permission of the artists & composers
7) Using clips from other podcasts without the permission of the podcaster
Using clips from other podcasts without crediting the original podcaster clearly
9) Failure to clear rights for the use of any video images that you have recorded that may belong to someone else….this may include famous buildings or even people who have not volunteered to appear or have their property appear in your videocast
10) Atempting to trademark anything with P, O, and D in the name
Ran into JeffreyT of The Good Beer Show, www.goodbeershow.com the original beer related podcast. GBS is sharing a directory of beer related shows with everyone at PPME, and its online equivalent is their links page at http://goodbeershow.com/?page_id=136
Cool show, good podcast community citizen.
Interesting how win-win the podcasting community can be….
Filed under: Podcasts, Portable media, Videocasts, media, podcasting, trade shows
The first thing that strikes you about PPME is the diversity of the communities that podcasting and portable media attracts. These communities may get blurred more and more as podcasting matures, but at this stage in the life of the media there are audio geeks, lifestyle content producers, alt-lifestyle proponents, traditional media industry converts, web technologists, social media observers, marketing/advertising types, trade show pros, etc., etc.
It’s interesting to watch the evolution of podcasting. As a relative newby, I missed the earliest days of podcasting, though the pioneers have done a pretty good job of taking credit and documenting the first years in blogs and books. Today it seems that the richness of content is really hitting stride beyond music and sex…. Long way to go, but the sense that people who have isolated themselves with technology and media (surfing the web and surfing cable TV) can actually reach out and create a sense of community with people who share their hobbies and interests using technology and media is real in some corners…..
While some people I know are responding to technology isolation by reaching out in geographic communities by way of neighborhood activities and organizations, it’s fascinating to see a parallel movement to reach out to the community of those who are like-minded but geographical dispersed. Nothing wrong with either way, and in some cases we may see the two webs of communication and community overlap and interact. More on this as time permits….
The age of directories is upon us, but directories aren’t enough.
It’s almost a waste of time to try and discover anything new with Google or any other search engine, the web has gotten too large. Search engines are great tools if you know what you are looking for, but to go out and discover new things…forget it.
Alternatively, there are many efforts underway to create directories with a taxonomy of items from commerical directories to blogs to podcasts. These generally fall into two categories: 1) webcrawling, automatic discovery, or 2) human selected sites based on preference or recommendation. The former are exhaustive but non-discriminating and depending on the topic being covered they can be just as hard to use for discovery as Google. The latter are naturally more limited in scope, but may miss out on some of the best content in the category because of the creators reach and exposure.
It will be very interesting to see what impact this has on the evolution of community directories. If the technology currently available via RSS and OPML is leveraged to allow a broad spectrum of individuals to collectively assemble directories, complete with rating/ranking and commentary we may approach a happy medium… broad reach, deep experience in the category and human value added first and second order information about content. There are still a lot of pitfalls to the approach, but there is still more promise than in automated search and indexing.
At Podcast.com we are building the infrastructure necessary to facilitate community directories for podcasts both audio and video. Beyond community directories, we’re building tools to allow both active participation and passive consumption. It’s more than just a recommendation engine. We’re looking forward to seeing communities connect with the content that matters to them, and to seeing people connect with communities that feel right.
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