Tuesday, December 11, 2007

How to Podcast

As far as starting a podcast, I guess I would start by asking what you already know about podcasts so I would know where to start in my explanation. Having the studio would put you well ahead of the pack for the most part. Once you have a recording, publishing it as a podcast is easy. You have to decide where on the internet to host it (more later), handle licensing questions if you're playing music (more later on this too), and do something so people know it exists (item three below).

First, where to host it. You already have a web site, so you have some idea what this is like, but be careful. Podcasts tend to be large files (40 megabytes per episode is not even beginning to stretch it), and so the more popular your show, the higher the bandwidth costs will be for you. On the other hand, you can host it with someone like Podshow (where mine is) or Podango (which has a revenue sharing scheme, nice). These sites provide free hosting and pay all the bandwidth costs. In exchange, you're driving traffic to the site, and they make money from advertising on the site. When you finish an episode, you post it to their site and add some show notes, they do the rest automatically.

Second, music licensing. If you want to play most commercial music, you're talking to ASCAP/BMI and the bill is not small. On the other hand, there are may sites (check wikipedia's "podsafe" entry for links) that provide podsafe music. This is music that is licensed under different terms from ASCAP/BMI. It may be a Creative Commons license, or something like Podshow's license, but it usually comes down to "you can play the music without paying a fee, we consider it a fair trade for the exposure, but you're obligated to tell your listeners where to buy our music." There are other licenses in between which charge fees that scale down much further than the ASCAP/BMI setup. None of it is hard, but it's something important to pay attention to.

Third, letting people know you exist. The first thing I would recommend is adding your podcast to some of the common places people look for podcasts: iTunes, Podcast Alley, Podcast Pickle are the three biggies. It's easy to do, and gets you at least to where people can find you if they know to look. The second step is to create a short promo and make it available, then contact some people with podcasts who might have an audience overlap with you. So far, the general attitude favors helping each other over rivalry.

That's a quick start. If you want more let me know, but for now I don't know what areas to cover in more detail or where I might be boring you.

Podsafe Music

What is podsafe music and why should I, as an artist, care?

According to Wikipedia:

Podsafe is a term created in the podcasting community to refer to any work which, through its licensing, specifically allows the use of the work in podcasting, regardless of restrictions the same work might have in other realms. For example, a song may be legal to use in podcasts, but may need to be purchased or have royalties paid for over-the-air radio use, television use, and possibly even personal use.

According to the Podsafe Music Network:

Podsafe music is described as a work that meets all of the following conditions: Works submitted to the Podsafe Music Network are the property of the artist, and all rights to these works, including lyrics and music, are the property of the artist. AND All works contain no recordings, lyrics, copyrights, or other elements that are the copyright of any other artist, except under the limited provisions of the Creative Commons License Agreement (http://www.creativecommons.org). AND Despite any recording contracts with RIAA, ASCAP, or BMI, or other recording industry entity, the artist retains ownership of the works, and is free to distribute, broadcast, license or sell these works at the artist's discretion.

The basic idea is that the owner of the music allows the podcaster to use it in exchange for the exposure the artist will gain from this use. This has proven to be a mutually beneficial arrangement for thousands of podcasters and thousands of artists.

A simple way for artists to make music podsafe and available to podcasters is for them to post it to the Podsafe Music Network (PMN). This service provides a pre-packaged license for the artist and the podcasters setting forth what is allowed and what is not. It also provides an opportunity for the music to be sold online at 99 cents a song with no DRM, although this aspect of the PMN is optional.

While the PMN is by no means the only avenue for the distribution of podsafe music, it is often the simplest with the least overhead for the artist.

Friday, August 24, 2007

The Princes Bride and Stardust

There have been many reviews of Stardust comparing it to The Princess Bride. While I think the comparison is valid, it is less because the movies are terribly alike, and more because they are of the same genre. Off the top of my head, they are the only two movies I can think of in that genre. For the sake of continuing to talk about this genre, I'm going to start refering to it as Fairy Tale, but there is a distinct possibility that that name will turn out to be a misnomer as more movies are made in the genre.

Before defining what this genre is, I'm going to explore what other genres have in common that differentiates this one from them, because I've begged the question by naming the new genre Fairy Tale. Surely, I hear you cry, there are tons of movies in the Fairy Tale genre. I say that there are tons of movies based on fairy tales that have been made in other genres. Whenever Hollywood makes a movie from an existing story, they do so in one of the genres they are comfortable with. It is a pretty solid rule that when a story is made into a movie, some elements will have to be dropped to make it fit into a two hour movie. Which elements are cut will depend on the genre in which the movie is being made. If we're making a romance, we'll tend to drop action sequences. If we're making a thriller, we tend to drop comic interludes. And so forth.

What distinguishes Stardust and The Princess Bride is that they are made in the genre of Fairy Tale, with all of their elements intact. Cuts have certainly been made, but they are not categorical cuts, but primarily ones of duration and detail. They contain all of the elements of their respective base stories, not sacrificing them for a genre. It is entirely possible that other movies will be made with all of their elements included, if truncated. If some of them fall out side the fairy tale classification, I'll have to change the name of the genre, until then, I'm sticking with Fairy Tale.

I think that being part of this genre is a large part of what will help these movies endure as classics. Being fairy tales makes them timeless, but being complete will make them stable.

Thursday, August 23, 2007

The Puppini Sisters

They've got the old sound down pat, and do some unexpected covers that remind me of Nouvelle Vague. You can grab them at iTunes:

Friday, August 03, 2007

Bridges and Safety

I heard this morning that the Governor of Minnesota has called for an emergency inspection of all bridges in the state with the same structure as the one that collapsed.

I may well be missing something here, but my understanding is that there is already a national bridge inspection database, which rated the collapsed bridge as unsafe in 1990. We don't need an emergency inspection sweep, we need to do something about the bridges which have already been inspected and rated unsafe.

It was said that the unsafe rating was not significant because there were 77,000 other bridges with the same rating in the country. To me, this seems like saying that DUI related deaths are not significant because there are hundreds of them every year. The fact that there are lots of a bad thing does not make the thing better. Maybe I'm just missing the logic here.

Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Name That Tune

Michael Stackpole has refered to the relationship between authors and readers as an ongoing game of Name That Tune. That the reader is constantly thinking, "Oh, I know how this ends," and it is the author's responsibility to say "No, you don't." If the author is right, and the reader gets to the end thinking, "I see how we got here, and it makes perfect sense, but I never saw it coming," the author has succeeded. If the reader was right, they're unlikely to ever read that author again.

I'm inclined to think that Michael is right, at least most of the time. I know it's been true for the books I have enjoyed the most. There have been a couple of cases of books that were very predictable that I enjoyed immensely, but they have tended toward cliché books which are a literary equivalent of B-movies. Immensely fun, but not high art.

Wednesday, February 21, 2007

Music Rotation in the Podcast

Hm. I'm trying to make a decision about how I do music in the podcast. Currently, I don't get podcasts produced very often, in part because of the time involved in finding new music. I've also noticed that it often takes me a couple of hearings to get really hooked on a new song. So I'm trying to decide whether to only play new finds (without repeats), as I've been doing so far, or to start allowing songs to repeat, albeit in varying mixes, to increase exposure and get more people hooked. What do you think?

Tuesday, February 06, 2007

The Immigrant Issue

OK, I think it may be time to finally address this issue.

What do I think about illegal immigrants? I think they're here illegally and should be deported. Categorically. I think that they are not entitled to any benefits of our society such as public education and welfare. Instead, they need to be on the next bus, train, boat, plane, whatever, to send them back home.

I'm not against immigrants in the least. I'm just against illegal immigrants.

I've heard the argument that we need them to sustain our economy, as they will take the jobs that "American's" won't. I say we up the immigration quotas if that's true. I've no objection to them being here and working and living and playing etc. What I object to is the fact that they have effectively line-jumped those who are trying to come in legally. I object to the fact that they want the benefits of our society (i.e. medical care or education) without supporting it (e.g. paying taxes).

I've heard another argument that there are too many of them to deport. "Heck," they say, "look at the fact that we couldn't even effectively evacuate New Orleans. How are we going to transport all the illegal aliens?" To which I say, we're never going to do it if we don't start. It's not like I think we can round them all up simultaneously. If we transport them as we catch them, I have to believe that it's an achievable goal.

Personally, I'm more interested in addressing this aspect than in "tightening borders." I don't think we can practically close the borders. But in the current climate, the view for an alien is that once they're in, they're golden. If we change that to once you're in, you're a criminal fugitive, there's less incentive to enter illegally. Make it better to follow the rules than break them, and shockingly more people will follow those rules.

Monday, January 29, 2007

iPod Update

It occurs to me, I never posted about the iPod resolution. At WWDC last August, I caved and got an iPod Video. I bought the harddrive out of Jim's dead 1st Gen to fix my old one. Then, for Christmas, we passed on the 1st Gen and the Nano to Carrie and Aly, respectively. All seems to be well, and everyone happy.