Podcasting
Podcast: Mitch Joel, Avinash Kaushik & Bryan Eisenberg
I had the pleasure of hanging out with my good friends Mitch Joel and Avinash Kaushik last week. Check out the results of Mitch pulling out his M-audio podcast recorder and all of us being stuck in a car together. As Mitch says:
This is a deep one with tons of philosophy and insights about consumers, their online experiences, voice of the customer, and where the Web will (hopefully) go.
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Written by:Bryan Eisenberg
“The Wild Ride from Podcast to Book Deal”
OpenCulture has an excellent feature called “The Digital Tipping Point: The Wild Ride from Podcast to Book Deal” about Lars Brownworth, a New York high school teacher whose podcast on the influence of the Byzantine empire is fine example of new media innovation.
The Byzantines were connectors, bridging cultural divides between East and West, reshaping our world in the process. I’m definitely excited to read Bronworth’s book once it comes out early next year. In the meantime, if you’re as fascinated with history as I am, you’ll want to hear the podcast for yourself (iTunes - Feed - Site).
Sometimes looking back is the best way to look forward, don’t you think?
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Written by:Jeffrey Eisenberg
American Web Radio Is Saved (For Now)
Amid intense debate and 11th-hour congressional hearings, American webcasters have been spared. As we discussed a few weeks ago, podcasters everywhere united in a day of silence to protest royalty rate hikes that would have crippled Web radio in the United States.
SoundExchange, the performance rights organization that pressured Congress for the rate hikes — and whose site is in desperate need of our services — testified late yesterday that they wouldn’t enforce the new rates, which were to go into effect this Sunday, July 15th, and be retroactive to 2006.
Wired has the scoop:
Going forward without the royalties being collected, SoundExchange and webcasters will negotiate a new royalty rate with Congress looking over their shoulder — “and last but not least, the public looking over Congress’s shoulder.” Alternatively, Congress now has time to consider the Internet Radio Equality Act, which would set webcaster royalties at 7.5 percent of revenue and allow them to continue operating pretty much as they have been.
Either way, this is a big win for webcasters and their listeners. Again, this is a reprieve, and internet radio can’t be considered saved until new rates are set that everyone can live with.
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Written by:Robert Gorell
‘Universal Search’ Means It’s Time to Start Blogging
So, it looks like Google’s “Universal Search” is gaining steam. This is a good thing for those producing fresh, relevant content, and an, eh… maybe not-so-good thing for those expecting traffic from paid search to get the job done.
In his ClickZ column, Search Engine Marketing expert Mike Grehan–already pounced-on for declaring that “SEO is Dead”–explains why universal search is another nail in the coffin for Search Engine Optimization.
[…] I’ve written many times over the years that the term [”Search Engine Optimization”] is more suited as a description of a search-engine engineering function than the intermediate page-tweaking this industry provides.
Instead of trying to “optimize universal search” as the title suggests, Grehan recommends blogging and podcasting as the best ways to rank universally high:
[…] Google will be able to detect (with the tons of analytics and metrics data) which blogs and podcasts (audio and video) have large subscription bases. It could then integrate those elements into the SERPs along with the regular results, just as it’s doing with elements from Google Base and YouTube.
I have a feeling the really rich content sites, such as the 800-CEO-Read bookstore, with its focus on becoming a resource site full of books, blogs, podcasts, and other great editorial content, will become very popular with Google’s Universal Search.
Consider these Google results for “Web Analytics Demystified” (click thumbnail for full image). The organic links show everything you might want to know about Eric T. Peterson’s book by the same name. The paid links, by contrast, are a hodgepodge of stuff about “Web analytics.” Why would I click one of the paid links when my search was so specific?
Anyone care to demystify this for me? 
Sure, it makes sense that SEO and Analytics firms might want to associate themselves with Peterson’s book. It just seems telling that nobody’s bidding on “Universal Search” (see thumbnail). And if “blog postings” aren’t important, as Jakob Nielsen insists, why would a single Search Engine Land post rank higher than everything Google’s ever written about Universal Search?
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Written by:Robert Gorell
Web Radio’s Day Off: Is it Over for Webcasters?
Today, Web radio stations everywhere–including WebMasterRadio.fm, home of our daily Blog Buzz podcast–are taking the day off to protest extreme royalty hikes for webcasters. The new rate hikes will be charged retroactively to 2006, making it impossible for a lot of Web radio pioneers to keep up. Regardless of your stance, the implications for webcasting and podcasting are huge.
eConsultancy.com has the proverbial CliffsNotes*, including this telling quote from AccuRadio’s Kurt Hanson:
“Under the judges’ decision, we owe $600,000 for 2006 — which is about 150% of our total revenues! That would absolutely bankrupt us and will force us to shut down. And that’s true for almost everyone who’s a stand-alone webcaster.”
Big players like MTV, Real/Rhapsody, Pandora, and Yahoo! Music are taking the day off in protest. Yet some refuse to be silenced.
TechCrunch reported that Last.fm won’t participate, suggesting that the move might create backlash from listeners–especially since Last.fm was just acquired by CBS [Disclosure: CBS is a client]. Perhaps the most popular social music platform, Last.fm defends their stance, insisting that, since they’re London-based, “this kind of legislation is not new” to them. They think you should make some noise.
Largely missing from the conversation (and please do correct me) is how this rate hike will affect traditional radio stations–particularly public radio stations, which have been huge supporters and early adopters of webcasting. So, not only does your favorite public and commercial radio stations have to pay the huge rates they pay for broadcasting on the airwaves, they’ve got to pony up for the Web to boot.
Anyone else find it, er, ironic that our same taxes that (barely) go to support public radio will now be drained even more by government regulation?
Former Minnesota Governor/pro wrestler Jesse “the Body Politique” Ventura famously said, “You can’t legislate stupidity.” Well, perhaps. But it sure doesn’t mean we can’t litigate our way into stupidity.
P.S. - For more information, visit SaveNetRadio.org.
P.P.S. - What do you think? Can Web radio survive? Should small-time webcasters pay the same fees as big radio stations? Should content be free?
[*CliffsNotes is a registered trademark of John Wiley & Sons, Inc. The views expressed in this post are solely those of its author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of John Wiley, his sons, or the corporation still operating in their name after 200 proud years of not only publishing the works of Edgar Allen Poe, Herman Mellville and the like, but being kind enough to abridge and decipher them into an easily digestible format for the slackers among us.]
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Written by:Robert Gorell
