Just in case you don’t read Godin every morning, here are the best 48 minutes of video on marketing you’ll see online:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6909078385965257294

Enough said.

In another recent acquisition, Google, Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) has added the radio advertising services company, dMarc Broadcasting, to its portfolio for USD102 million in cash.

According to the media release, dMarc connects advertisers directly to radio stations through its automated advertising platform. The platform simplifies the sales process, scheduling, delivery and reporting of radio advertising, enabling advertisers to more efficiently purchase and track their campaigns. For broadcasters, dMarc’s technology automatically schedules and places advertising, helping to increase revenue and decrease the costs associated with processing advertisements. The company serves thousands of stations across all US markets and formats.

The dMarc platform will be integrated into AdWords, which Google’s Tim Armstrong, vice president of Advertising Sales claims “will bring new ad dollars and accountability to radio”.

Is Arbitron (NYSE: ARB) next? With annual revenues of USD310.0 million for the year ended December 31, 2005, this would be a not insubstantial play.

The next question for the future of personal media is, with real traction in terrestrial radio, how long before we can expect a Google AdWords podcast advertising play, where measurement is inherently simplified compared to terrestrial?

OK, I’m not sure where this post is going to go, so help me out with a comment or two and we’ll see where the conversation takes us.

I’ve noticed that the free time I think I have, and the free time I actually have are quite different. The delta is significant enough to be called my “imaginary free time”.

Why is this important? Because the things I buy are still centred around consumption within imaginary time - I frame my purchasing decisions based on what I’d really like to be able to spend my time on. Do you have any of these symptoms?

How is this relevant to personal media? First of all, things that enable the conversion of imaginary time into (real) free time are going to win out against things that eat away at your free time. PVR functionality will be a commodity offering from all major Internet brands.

Yahoo!’s Go TV (image courtesy http://go.connect.yahoo.com/go/tv)

Google doesn’t need to acquire TiVo to build Google TV, but it would give it a nice installed base. For advertisers relying on untargeted mass media, the irresistible forces of broadband, home networking, cheap storage and free PVR software all mean one thing: don’t bother with interrupting us, we’ve got better things to do with our precious free time. Instead, think about life after the 30-second spot, and about how you can really contribute toward helping us cash in some of our imaginary time for real free time (in other words, having more time to do some of the things you really want to do). And that may be spending time on creating our own content - from photos and videos of the baby, to blogs and podcasts, personal media consumers are likely to become more selfish with each successive generation of content creation tools.

Despite over a year of hype (triggered by the WIRED article), podcasting remains nascent, and to many potential listeners, an unknown phenomenon.

Google Zeitgeist 2005

(via Andrew Pascoe)

With dozens of directories, thousands of podcasters, and millions of listeners across the globe, podcasting is set to continue its growth in 2006. However the industry needs to do much more to promote its wares to the public, and radio listeners in particular.

With mobile handsets being the next frontier, podcasting is on a clear collision course with the cellular carriers. In the carrier world-view, content is paid for, and then charged again for the carriage required for its delivery. Listening to podcasts, and lots of them, needs lots of memory. And who subsidises handset prices? WiMax could ultimately unleash podcasting’s real charge into the mainstream.

Next-Generation podcast receivers are likely to stimulate further interest by lowering the cost of trying something new. Just go through the setup wizard, choose your interests, and get a roughly personalised set of feeds to try out. Don’t like a feed? Reject it and get another recommendation.

Podcasting however also faces a threat from within. Whilst some quick dollars have been made with advertising deals, podcast advertising has the potential to quickly negate the positive listening experience.

Life on the long tail should be context-sensitive. Isn’t that the whole point? Inane ads such as Motorola’s “dude” who (dis)graces the head and tail of TPN shows are really becoming annoying. Worst still, TPN has introduced interstitials, creating interruptions during the content. The time that a “regular” listener can devote to podcasts is always going to be limited. Even more precious is their attention. If podcasts are to become just another ad-ridden medium full of untargeted, irrelevant interruptions, what value is there to the potential listener? (and there are far more non-listeners than current podcast listeners out there).

Just what does Google have up its sleave to save the podcasting industry from itself? (hint: that’s why podcast transcription through speech recognition is going to be important: AdWords)

To end on a positive note (for a change):

Google results for “podcast” search
4 October 2004: 5,950
10 January 2006: 77,600,000

Bob Ellis, author, political speechwriter and social commentator, presented at the Adelaide Festival of Ideas in 2005, “On Interruption: How Human Beings Changed in the 19th and 20th Century” (Friday 8th July, 2005).

I caught a replay of his speech on ABC Radio National this week, and dug up the original recording, by community radio station, Radio Adelaide.

Before you play the mp3, turn off the phone, shut down your e-mail, RSS reader, Skype and IM, and get ready for some quality listening time.

http://radio.adelaide.edu.au/festivalofideas/audio05/on_interuption.mp3

Motorola, Inc. (NYSE: MOT) today announced the rollout of its converged subscription radio service for cellular handsets, iRadio, at the 2006 International CES in Las Vegas.

The service is currently being trialled in Los Angeles, Washington DC and San Diego. Subscription fees are expected to be around USD7 per month – substantially cheaper than SIRIUS and XM. Consumers can subscribe to the service by simply tapping an icon on an iRadio-enabled mobile phone, available through wireless service providers in the US later this year. Once licensing agreements are in place, overseas markets are expected to follow.

Instead of expensive birds, limited by bandwidth and service life, iRadio uses PC-based Internet caching of radio content, which is synced to the handset over USB. The service is been targeted primarily at the drive-time radio market, where the bulk of radio listening occurs. To cater for this market, in-car audio is supported through a Bluetooth adapter for car stereos, compatible with units from vendors such as Pioneer, Alpine, Sony and Kenwood. The interface is expected to retail for USD150, including installation.

To deliver content, the handset is docked to a USB port, where it syncs with an iRadio client for the PC. A broadband connection on the PC downloads the desired channels, which are then transferred to a memory card in the handset. Devices such as the Motorola ROKR E2 run a handset client application, which delivers audio from the card to the car stereo over Bluetooth. The buttons on the car stereo can be used to select channels and to provide transport control. Incoming calls cause the music to pause, and when the call finishes, the music is resumed.

The iRadio handset UI (image courtesy of Motorola).

iRadio currently offers 435 commercial-free radio channels, in many cases produced exclusively by or for Motorola. For music channels, iRadio offers a bookmaking feature, where any of the station buttons can be held down to create a bookmark on the handset. When the next sync occurs, the artist and track information is available on the wish list on the iRadio PC client.

To comply with US webcasting legislation, music channels are deleted as soon as they have been listened to, whilst talk shows can be rewound. As well as radio channels, iRadio also supports MP3 playback. In an interview with The Vat, Motorola’s David Ulmer, Director, Marketing, Media Solutions, explained that MP3 files can be played back on the car stereo track by track, forward and back, just as you would on a CD. Multiple playlists can also be created on separate channels. The song’s title and track info are scrolled on the stereo display, however browsing by artist and album is not supported, as this is a limitation of the navigation features on most car stereo units.

Ulmer also explained that podcasting support for the iRadio PC client is “in the pipeline for first quarter”, with details available at http://www.iradionetwork.com/ upon release. The bookmark function can also be used for in-show hyperlinks, which lets a listener interact while listening by pressing their radio’s button for more info or to enter a contest or to vote or purchase something. That action will appear in their PC’s wish list automatically. In another first, iRadio will show exactly how many times a podcast was actually listened to, not just downloaded.

For independent content producers, Motorola’s iRadio Network offers a platform to reach listeners across all major radio markets in the US. Future video services are also a possibility.

Sony Media Software, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, recently announced the PSP™ (Playstation® Portable) Media Manager Application, which includes support for podcasts and video blogs.

The software features a built-in directory of “popular RSS feeds including ACIDplanet.com podcasts”, and retails for USD29.95 (boxed version with free downloads and USB 2.0 cable), or USD19.95 for the download version.

The Vat has recently contacted Sony for advice on submissions to the PSP Media Manager podcast directory.

Enormous feature set, free to use, add a small javascript (6 lines) to your pages that you want tracked.

http://www.google.com/analytics/

(via Seth’s Blog)

A quick update on playing Xbox games on an Xbox 360. Microsoft have provided a backward compatibility list for Xbox titles. This is only possible, however, for the hard drive 360 model, as an Intel emulator is required.

(from The Register)

From the propaganda:

Nov 9-11 at the Fairmont San Jose. Parks Associates’ Fall Focus: Making Media Meaningful is a must-attend for marketing and strategy executives focused on media personalization and meaningful content delivery.

Keynotes from TiVo and Yahoo!.

Will porn fly as a business model for portable devices? The new video-capable iPod, available in 30GB and 60GB versions in black or white, is set to enhance (uh hum) the potential (oh dear) audience for video podcasters. Single-handed operation is a definite plus. On a more serious front, let us not forget that the adult industry has been one of the cornerstone pioneers in Internet content delivery, e-commerce, and video compression - all of the pre-requisites that the squeaky clean iTunes Music Store is built on.

With iTunes 6.0, customers in the US now have access to over 2,000 music videos, as well as short films and television shows for USD1.99 each. Television shows will be made available commercial-free, the day after broadcast.

The new iPod features a 2.5″ colour display, and for video output, the same connectivity options as the previous colour iPod and iPod Photo models are supported (composite video can be sent using the Apple iPod AV Cable, or S-Video is available through the S-Video connector on the Universal Dock). Video formats supported include H.264 (up to 768 Kbps, 320 x 240, 30 frames per sec) and MPEG-4 (up to 2.5 Mbps, 480 x 480, 30 frames per sec).

Commercial porncasters will be quick to develop and test business models for portable devices. The next step in iPod evolution, wireless support, will see Apple go head to head with 3G handset vendors.

Nov. 11-12 in Southern California at the Ontario Convention Center. A showcase of the present and future of portable content with exhibits and sessions devoted to creating, editing, delivering, consuming and profiting from unique audio and video media.
http://www.portablemediaexpo.com

Quick stat of the day - according to podcast hosting champs, Liberated Syndication (a subsidiary of Webmayhem, Inc.), they are currently serving over 2 million media files a week, or approximately 7 terrabytes of data on the libsyn media delivery network.

In August, LibSyn’s Dave Mansueto explained that the company “…is four guys with day jobs. We started the company with 100 bucks”. LibSyn has delivered a robust and affordable podcast hosting solution that has attracted over 1,100 podcasters within the non-compulsory LibSyn Directory alone. Provided the company can continue to grow its customer base (and scale the necessary bandwidth and server requirements), LibSyn is set to become an attractive acquisition target in the infrastructure space.

In the not-too-distant future, support for personal media by big ticket items such as automobiles is likely to become a key purchasing consideration. “Lifestyle Intelligence” - a generic pool of technologies centred around content, connectivity and presence, will begin to be adopted by consumers across many segments, according to their individual needs. Lifestyle Intelligence reinforces consumer lifestyle choices, including brand universes, and will evolve in the ever more refined synergy of demand side engineering and demand side content creation.

Consider your young male worker in the construction industry - certainly an honourable trade. Instead of relying on advertising-ridden terrestrial FM radio during the drive to the construction site (with rock stations broadly targeted at the young male demographic), the next ute (that’s Australian for “utility”) he buys could be bought because it sports an embedded next-generation wireless podcast receiver that plays his favourite shows covering music, construction techniques and industry news, and recruitment. Thus the key purchasing decision could become “does it get ‘Bob’s Tool Test’ every Monday?” - all things being relatively equal in terms of the usual motor vehicle engineering deliverables.

Coupling content consumption - both preferences thereof and actual listening events (i.e. per show) with presence broadcast and matching services will support Lifestyle Intelligence by strengthening social tribes (professional, entertainment choice, locale etc.). That glowing colour screen will come in real handy when you’re walking down the street and you see your particular glow throbbing on their screen.

What will happen to brands? To avoid the quagmire, the best brands will simply get out of the way and abandon interrupt-driven advertising. Instead, they’ll participate in ongoing conversations, and provide everything consumers need to champion the brand. This will mean a deep commitment to personal media - content about the brand and branded content - and the opportunities presented by participating in Lifestyle Intelligence. To live and breathe in the world of the consumer, brands can support infrastructure, branded devices, sponsorship of consumer content and investment in advanced services (such as the marriage between OPML, read/listened to status, presence, and personal profiles).

Welcome to the world where being you just got friendlier.

http://peterchen.members.grokthis.net/research

Dr. Peter Chen, Communications Program of Monash University (Melbourne, Australia), is undertaking research into podcasting and video blogging. The objectives of the research are to:

Responses required by 21st October, 2005.

Apple’s new solid state iPod nano.
2/4GB, pencil thin, colour screen, photo display, car integration and also available in black. Launched with plenty of time for Christmas, expect to hear “only available on back order” real soon.

BRISBANE, Australia - August 30, 2005 - In a call out to dark alternative music fans and artists, independent record label, Extrinia, today launched the “Afterglow” podcast at http://extrinia.com/afterglow

Afterglow will bring the best in music inspired by darker themes - romantic and otherwise - from new and emerging artists from around the world, as well as newly independent but established stalwarts of the genre. For fans who grew up listening to bands such as Joy Division, The Cure, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Depeche Mode (and for those who’ve discovered they’ve held a long fascination with black eyeliner), Afterglow is set to re-awaken your faith in music.

Afterglow will explore new dominions that are being created in the heart of the underground, covering electronica/EBM, industrial, dark pop/rock, dark ambient, power noise, and more.

The show features “podsafe” music, where independent artists who own their copyrights give their permission to use their original songs in the show. “We’ve had a tremendous reaction from the artist community, and we’d love to hear from more artists in the genre”, explained presenter and Extrinia founder, John P Shea. “Fans can also request tracks using the request form on the site, and playlists include artist contact details so they can purchase material directly”.

The show is delivered as a free podcast in high quality MP3 format, and can be listened to using a podcast receiver such as iTunes® (Mac®/Windows®). Fans can also bid for a show dedication to be written especially for them, with all proceeds being donated to human rights organisation Amnesty International.

About Extrinia

Established in 2001, the Brisbane, Australia-based label was formed to serve the independent music community by identifying new and emerging artists and promoting their music.

Extrinia is a strong advocate for artists’ rights, and maintains a collection of links specially devoted to educating musicians and artists about the commercial realities of the mainstream music industry. Operating in a post-Napster environment, Extrinia believes that artists should be fairly compensated for their work. At the same time, the label also offers online excerpts of selected tracks, allowing potential fans to decide for themselves before making a purchase.

More information about Extrinia, its philosophy and signed artists can be found at the label’s website @ http://www.extrinia.com The label can be contacted on info@extrinia.com

# # #

For further media information contact:
John P Shea
Founder
Extrinia
info@extrinia.com
IM: extrinia_chat@hotmail.com
Skype: extrinia

PDF version: Afterglow_Launch_Media_Release.pdf (48K)

All trademarks, registered trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

As of August 2005, there are around 150,000 podcasts, according to directory provider, Odeo. By mid-2006, there is a high probability that the number of podcasts available will exceed the 1 million mark. The explosion in authoring tools, and maturing of hosting providers will be significant drivers, lowering the cost of entry to demand-side content creation. Even with a drop off in numbers caused by podcasters experimenting with the medium and then losing interest, the number of regularly updated podcasts, across a vast range of topics, is only likely to increase - fast.

For consumers, this means that podcast directories will play an important role in discovery of new feeds, on top of whatever marketing efforts publishers can muster. Whilst Apple’s iTunes Podcast Directory is the current darling, significant issues with submission responsiveness (delays of over one month are to be expected) and XML support have plagued the service.

To handle an enormous number of available feeds, the next generation of podcast receivers are going to need to help consumers organise that content, and make it available in regular, programmable (in the TV sense of programming) chunks that make best use of that most precious of resources, our time.

This means that a new feature set needs to evolve to allow consumers to, say, take their top 5 podcasts, and then roll them into a regular listening slot (in the right order). Active notification that the set is ready is required, together with a compilation of any RSS summaries.

The next generation of receivers also need to embrace recommendation services, so that discovery of new feeds is encouraged. Standby for celebrity podlists, and more meta than you can poke a stick at.

[Clarification: these figures and estimate reflect individual podcast shows (i.e. mp3 files), not the number of podcast publishers, which would of course be substantially lower]

NASA today released the first podcast from space, recorded by Mission Specialist Number 2, Steve Robinson, onboard the Space Shuttle Discovery as it prepares to re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere in less than one hour from now.

The podcast provides a unique, personal insight into Robinson’s experiences onboard with the rest of the Discovery crew.

Apple® (AAPL) recently announced a major upgrade to its Mac/Windows music player/CD ripper/burner/music store and iPod synchroniser, iTunes®. This review looks at iTunes 4.9.0.17 for Windows, and iTunes’ new podcasting feature set.

Why this upgrade is important to the podcasting landscape is that, unlike other podcast clients and directories, iTunes has the right combination of installed base, ease of use, and marketing budget to drive the adoption of podcasting to a new level of mainstream users. The iTunes Podcast Directory is an Apple-maintained listing of some 3,000 podcasts, with the ability to submit podcasts (best done from within iTunes), provided you use Apple’s tag set. Submissions (Podcast Directory, Publish a Podcast) are reviewed by Apple.

Podcasting support for the iPod, enabled through iTunes, finally opens a highly insular product to an enormous range of new content, including chat/interview shows, music podcasts, news and current affairs, and more. Clearly a huge demand is being satisfied, as Apple reported that in just two days of the release, iTunes customers subscribed to more than one million podcasts from the iTunes Podcast Directory. Whether this is existing users migrating from other clients (and thus re-subscribing), or genuine newbies (a new subscription) is a matter for podcasters to comment on, however most reports indicate that the iTunes Podcast Directory is indeed a very good thing for podcasters in terms of subscriber growth.

If you don’t have any podcasts subscribed to in iTunes (as is the case with a clean install), then you need to click on the “Podcast Directory” button at the bottom of the podcast window. This takes several seconds to load up the iTunes Podcast Directory, so it’s not immediately obvious what is going on. A better option would be to have this automatically displayed for first time users. From here, you can subscribe to popular podcasts, browse and search the directory, or add feeds (Advanced\Subscribe to Podcast). Dragging an XML link into the podcast window is also supported, so all those orange XML buttons can stay for the time being. There is no OPML support in iTunes, so you need to manually re-subscribe if you’re migrating from another client. Unfortunately, you can’t right-click in the podcast window and add a feed, which would seem to be the place to do it from.

iTunes will check for new episodes every hour, so true podcast junkies might want to stick with iPodder’s 30 minute interval. Once you have added a few feeds, you’ll need to add a “Last Played” column in Podcast window (right-click and check “Last Played”), which is very handy if you have a large backlog of shows to catch up on. To burn podcasts to CD, you need to create a new playlist, and then drag the mp3 into the playlist, then File\Burn Playlist.

Of more serious concern to the podcast producer community are reports that iTunes actually caches your show mp3 files, and thus robs podcasters of valid usage statistics (and advertising revenue). Feed hijacking is clearly unacceptable to podcasters. Problems with tags have also been reported.

When using iTunes as a music player, the LCD-style window is too small for my liking, and scrolling artist/album/track info is just plain annoying. The shuffle mode - perhaps iTunes’ greatest feature - seems to be a combination of a ratings engine and random play, as this mode pulls out hit tracks far too regularly to be truly random.

To get covers to show up, I tried Album Cover Art Downloader, which managed to retrieve about 80% of covers, with around a 2% mismatch rate. Just set up the filter (folder & artist/album/track file naming) first and then point it to your mp3 folder. Editing mp3 ID3v2 tags in iTunes causes Album Cover Art Downloader to fail, as this utility requires ID3v2 v2.3 or higher (iTunes seems to default to v2.2). Upon further investigation, iTunes can set the version to 2.3 using Advanced\Convert ID3 Tags or right-click and Convert ID3 Tags.

In summary, Apple has brought elegant podcast reception to the primary users of iTunes, the iPod masses. Expect future updates to address feed hijacking, and improving the end user experience. As much as this release changes the podcast landscape, terraforming is likely when Microsoft announces Windows Media Player podcast support. The time has come for both Apple and Microsoft to look at a professional podcast hosting service, with full usage statistics and edge-based content delivery (even though podcasts download in the background, you still want to get your favourite shows as soon as possible).