ongoing ? Podcasting and Patricia
So, here’s a gifted artist out there in the Long Tail with a moderate but devoted fan base, here’s this hot new podcasting thing running up headlines everywhere... am I the only one wanting to connect the dots?
I love music. In fact, so do a lot of people. Actually, there are very few people on this planet who I think could state that they don't love music of one form or another, if anyone. So whats this have to do with the above quote?
About a month and half ago Russ and I were working on a few things related to LLUP. I was thinking about a few things relating to ChannelXML and blogXast and that got me thinking about podcasting. One of the things that has surprised me about the podcasting trend is that I know very few people on this planet who would feel comfortable even recording a podcast much less publishing one on the web. Its not like posting text to a blog where you can:
1) Easily and without knowledge of how to use audio editing equipment edit an reedit something until you feel good about it
2) Express your emotions about something without having to make a sound.
3) Write a quick little snippet and post it (I guess you could post a quick little podcast but I'm not so sure people will be driven to subscribe to your snippet-casts all that much... but who knows, maybe they will. Don't let my non-belief get in the way of your passion... go get 'em tiger... rrrrrrroar!)
4) And so on...
Even blogging text takes a certain bit of confidence, or as Eve Maler stated in one of her first blog post's, "I did intend for there to be a faint whiff of “pushing” since blogging requires a certain confidence (arrogance?)". Everybody on this planet has emotions, but not everyone would be willing to express them to ANYBODY much less leave them open for the entire WorldWideWeb to read. So even blogging (in its current form, more on what I mean by that in a later post) is slightly limited to those of us who don't mind publishing to the web our thoughts on a certain subject. But without a doubt that number is going to be A TON bigger than those willing to speak their thoughts.
So, again, what does this have to do with Tim's post? Quite a bit actually, although at the present time nothing is ready to be announced. But it will be soon as you can rest assured that between myself, Russ, Uche, Sylvain, Don, Kurt, and Micah(although Micah is currently focused on getting moved and starting his new research position at Yahoo!) there is enough drive and talent to push this product out the door in a hurry.
Q: So what is it?
A: I don't want to spoil the surprise so I will hold off on answering that question just yet. But you can probably figure out most of it from the content of this post. But I can promise you one thing for sure... It's going to kick some serious a$$. :)
Q: Will it be open source?
A: Yes. And Open Community, but that may not make that much sense at the moment, but it will.
Q: Will it cost anything?
A: No. And thanks for helping to push the idea that Open Source and free do not have to be the same thing. But this OSS project will most definitely not cost you a dime to use or participate with. You could try and get technical and suggest that buying or having access to a computer and buying or having access to an internet connection is required and that DOES cost money so therefore its technically not free, but then your just being a prick, and you don't want to be a prick do you? Good.
Keep in mind however that, as Tim points out, podcasting does present opportunity for musician's and artist's to extend their marketing arm by opening up a new medium in which people can subscribe to gain access to new items that have been produced. We want to help develop the software to make that happen. Why? Because we are all passionate about music and want to help develop new technologies that break down the barriers of entry such that anyone, anywhere can be easily "discovered" and promoted to the rest of us via an Open Community channel in which we can both subscribe to and take part in (maybe now the Open Community concept makes a bit more sense?) Thats it. Thats our reason.
Q: So in the spirit of Open Source and Open Community will it then be required that everybody who participates provide their music free of charge?
A: NO! That would be ludicrous! While we all believe that the barriers of entry into the music scene need to be broken down, we are all business men and understand that we can't all just give away everything we create with no expectation of payment. That's why we develop these projects in our spare time. We all have jobs in one form or another as we all need to make money to survive.
But we are also all driven to make the computing world a better place and we are all in a position where we can do that in our spare time and in various forms without requiring a payment in return for access to what we produce. So we do.
Any other questions? Actually, comments are still broken at the moment from yesterdays slashdot attack[1] so if you have any questions or comments I guess you could email them to me. I have finally found a new blogging engine (dasBlog) that I like and plan to move everything over to it as soon as possible. But for the moment comments and trackbacks are dead. If I have time to get moved over this weekend I will, but until my current book project is complete I can't promise anything.
With that, enjoy your day!
[1] I think its fair to use such a term... if you saw the log file flying by at the speed it was flying by at without realizing where all these people were coming from and why they were all hitting the same page, you would have assumed it was a DOS Attack as well... Oh, an important point to recognize... I don't keep track of the referer in my log files. Why? I don't know, I guess I'm not that worried about where people are coming from... I can't think of one reason why knowing how people got here helps me write a better blog. But maybe it does and if so maybe some time I will add the referer to what the log file tracks... but at present time it doesnt. Actually, maybe recognizing when something is a DOS attack and when something is a link in a slashdot post or another popular site is reason enough... hmmm... good point. Maybe I better add that to the info being logged. Anyway, not important in regards to this post.