Podcasting (continued)

I started hearing about podcasting in the fall of 2004 and started listening in early 2005.

It’s been almost 18 months into my personal experience with podcasting and I thought I’d return to the subject with some recent experiences and thoughts.

I went on a long bike ride this morning and decided to listen to podcasts. To be honest, I haven’t been listening to many podcasts recently. I have been really into a bunch of new music, most of which is on my "heavy rotation" list, and that has been taking up all my listening time.

I started with Mass Hysteria’s June 11th show. It’s been at least a month and a half since I caught up with my friends Paul and Janine, whom I’ve never met. But I feel like I know them and their kids well because I’ve listened to every show they’ve done since discovering Mass Hysteria in the spring of 2005. It was great to catch up with them and I was really touched by Charlotte’s wish for "freedom for everyone". I share her wish.

Paul and Janine always play great music and they ended with a song from a band I’ve not heard called Mogwai. I really dug it.

Then I put on Raj Bala’s Loudspeakers #24 from mid May.  Raj has been in India working on his startup and I believe he just got back in the US yesterday.  Welcome back Raj. I’ve also never met Raj but he is another really good friend I’ve met via podcasting and blogging. It was fun listening to a show he did in India while riding up the west side of Manhattan. That’s one of the many things that is so great about podcasting. It’s a flat world when it comes to podcasting. It doesn’t matter where the show is created, and where you listen to it.

In a complete coincidence, Raj started his show with a song from, you guessed it, Mogwai. This one is called Acid Food. I dug it too. So Mogwai’s Mr Beast is in our Amazon shopping cart as I post this.

These two podcasts made me realize that the Gotham Gal and I need to get back to podcasting on a regular basis. We’ve only done seven shows this year and haven’t done a music show since April. With the summer here and our kids at camp, I think we can get back on the program.

Last night, I read Bob Lefsetz’ XM Playlist post. What a great show he put on for XM. So I shot Bob an email asking him to make it available as a podcast. He shot back a reply within minutes saying:

I would, but can’t do it, rights issues!

That’s the funny thing about podcasts. Raj, Paul and Janine, and the Gotham Gal and I can and do podcast music for our friends and listeners. I don’t know about their podcasts, but ours has about 200-300 listeners on average. The RIAA isn’t coming after us, at least yet. But Bob can’t podcast because he’s a big name and they’d come after him. That sucks.

Because it doesnt’ matter if its Paul, Janine, and Raj turning me onto Mogwai or Bob turning me onto a Todd Rundgren record I’ve never heard, podcasting is like radio. It promotes music. And if you aren’t monetizing it with ads, then its not commercial and the music industry should let anyone do it without subjecting them to rights issues.

But we all know that the music industry and the rights holders and lawyers aren’t going to see these things right. They never have.