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February 27, 2005
Podcast Feeds
While my blog is not at all an MP3 blog in the purest sense of that term, I do occasionally post links to MP3s here. Some of those MP3s are just my own digital audio experiments and some of them are songs by other artists that I happen to be writing about for one reason or another.
I often find myself wishing that my favorite MP3 blogs had podcast feeds that allowed for automated downloading. Because right-clicking, Saving-Link-As, and navigating to a specific directory can get pretty old once you do it over and over again for the same MP3 blog. I really don't post enough MP3 links on this blog to warrant the automation that a podcast feed provides, but I decided to go ahead and set up a couple feeds anyway, partly just to prove the concept to myself and partly so that I could learn more about RSS and enclosures (which is all a podcast feed is anyhow).
Setting up a podcast feed was way easier than I thought it would be. I just installed this MT-Enclosures plugin for MovableType and defined a couple of new RSS 2.0 templates with different rules for matching potential enclosure URLs.
My basic podcast is just a feed of any and all MP3s that I link to in my posts:
Tuba City MP3 (http://www.tubafrenzy.org/weblog/mp3.xml)
And then I set up a more specialized feed for any MP3s that I personally create:
DJ Twombly MP3 (http://www.tubafrenzy.org/weblog/twombly.xml)
Note: this second feed is just a subset of the first one...so if you subscribe to the first feed, you don't need to subscribe to the second one. (Of course, neither one of them will be very active, at least for the time being.)
Podcasting's been getting a lot of hype as a means by which people can distribute their own radio-show-type content. In that sense of the term, my feeds might not really be considered true podcasts, as the enclosed MP3s are just songs or remixes and not longer standalone radio-show-type offerings with a host, voiceovers, etc.
That said, it seems to me that any site that regularly offers MP3s could use the same ideas behind podcasting to help automate the download process for anybody that wants to be a subscriber to a specific "audio channel". Or are MP3 bloggers slightly wary that enabling any sort of automated downloading might push them over the unclear boundary that seems to separate MP3 blogging from illegal filesharing?
If this is all new to you and you want to learn more about sending and receiving podcasts, download iPodder and then check out Brian Russell's very helpful podcasting tutorial. Brian's been podcasting for several months now and his audio offerings are true podcasts in the "self-broadcasted radio-show" sense of that term.
I might eventually get to a place where I feel like podcasting a lengthier DJ mix every now and then, but for now I'm just going to keep throwing up the occasional MP3. I'll even throw one up tomorrow to christen my new feeds. If you're interested in this sort of thing, please try out one or both feeds and let me know if they work!
Posted by Tim at February 27, 2005 05:41 PM
Comments
I'm going to totally subscribe to your feed man. I really need to freshen up the tunes i listen to. I so tired of what i've been 'shuffling' on my pod that I'm ready to erase it all and start over. What cool music feeds do you like? Thanks so much for the link to my blog!
Posted by: Brian R. at February 27, 2005 10:03 PM
Unfortunately, almost none of the MP3 blogs that I like have podcast feeds. There's a podcast feed for soul-sides.com but it's only for a very sporadic radio-show-style aggregation of a few MP3s and not for the very regular posting of the MP3s themselves. I also just stumbled upon vinylpodcast.com, which seems pretty cool. But I'd still like to see people set up automated feeds with MP3 enclosures without feeling like they absolutely have to get on the mic and announce the song!
Posted by: Tim at February 28, 2005 12:55 PM
Also not technically or even remotely MP3 blogs, but good nonetheless are the podcasts for On the Media and HearingVoices.com (especially their recent Soapbox series). I'm really hoping other public radio shows take OTM's lead and start a feed!
Posted by: Recommending Mike at March 9, 2005 01:07 AM
Check out this new article on how the largely ridiculed tuba has played a critical role in music history. It’s a fun article that concludes with a playlist of essential songs where the tuba “plays” a vital role.
http://www.fiql.com/board.php?tid=51
Posted by: kurt at March 16, 2005 10:29 AM
you might wanna try http://webjay.org
works very well
Posted by: chromegat at April 26, 2005 05:18 PM