podcasting
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Federal court steps in to protect podcasts from patent troll
The venerable podcast is the bastion of broadcasters big and small, from major news outlets to DIY publishers. But, for the last few years, this hallowed ground has come under threat from patent troll Personal Audio -- which has tried to sue podcasters of all sizes. It claims it created the concept of the podcast. Thankfully, the U.S. Court of Appeals disagrees. A three-judge panel of the court just affirmed a previous decision rendering Personal Audio's patent invalid. The ruling declares the company was trying to protect an invention that already existed. Meaning podcasters and listeners can rest easy, for now.
Anchor lets you record and publish podcasts from your phone
If you haven't heard of Anchor yet, it's an app that lets you record little bits of audio and broadcast them to your followers with minimal fuss. In a lot of ways, it's like Instagram or Snapchat stories, but focused purely on audio recordings -- you can find friends, publications, internet stars and so forth when you sign up on the app and then listen in to whatever they decide to broadcast. These segments can be as brief or as complex as the person recording them wants, but they'll disappear after one day. Given the recent podcasting boom, it's not surprising that Anchor itself has been getting more attention over the last six months or so. In February, the company released a big update that added a "call-in" feature where your listeners could chat with you live, the ability to publish full-length Spotify or Apple Music tracks and the ability to record an interview over the phone and publish it straight to Anchor. But today's update marks perhaps the most significant change yet: Anchor users now will have the option to push their recordings out to the world as podcasts and have them live forever.
Medium is making audio versions of its best blog posts
Minimalist blogging platform Medium is expanding into audio. Readers who have a $5 per month subscription can now listen to stories published by fellow members, as well as those hand-picked by Medium staff. As TechCrunch notes, more than 50 stories have an audio version at launch, and more will be added over time. It's a small number, however each one has been recorded by a professional voice artist, rather than a robotic text-to-speech service. You'll find them at the top of articles, both on the web and in Medium's mobile apps, with some basic playback controls.
Legendary radio duo Stretch & Bobbito return as NPR podcasters
Throughout the 90s, a late night stop in the WKRC studios with Stretch and Bobbito was a requirement for many up-and-coming rappers. Now, in 2017 the pair are returning, but because it's 2017 they're doing it with a podcast on NPR. The rise and fade of their show, which featured names like Notorious B.I.G., Eminem, Busta Rhymes, Nas and many others, is documented in the 2015 film Radio That Changed Lives (now streaming on Netflix).
Google's first original podcast is 'City Soundtracks'
Spotify isn't the only one experimenting with original podcasts. Today, Google is announcing its first exclusive series for Play Music users called City Soundtracks. The concept is similar to the BBC's Desert Island Discs, focusing on individual artists and the people, places and moments that have influenced their lives. The chatter will be punctuated with tracks, picked by the guest, which reflect their hometown and the stories they've chosen to tell. It'll be hosted by Hrishikesh Hirway, the voice behind music podcast Song Exploder and the self-explanatory West Wing Weekly.
'Serial' team returns with a new true crime podcast
When it debuted in 2014, Serial was a breakout hit for podcasting and an interesting case of the media effecting social justice. The show's team of This American Life alumni even won a Peabody award for their reporting on the murder of Maryland teen Hae Min Lee in 1999, and a second season tackled the national scandal over alleged US Army deserter Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl. While we're still anxiously awaiting news about a possible Season 3, Serial co-creator Julie Snyder and This American Life host Brian Reed will return with a binge-friendly new true crime spinoff called S-Town.
NPR won't push its podcasts or app on the radio
NPR is far from oblivious to the growth in podcasting. The organisation puts out a bevy of shows that people can subscribe to, download and stream, like From the Top and Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! So it's all the stranger that upper management has advised local stations against promoting them. In a note titled Guidance on Podcast 'Back Announces', Chris Turpin, VP for news programming and operations, says DJs can mention a podcast "but not in a way that explicitly endorses it."
Gibson takes a whimsical approach to the podcast microphone
When it comes to USB microphones, you're pretty much limited to a collection of black, silver and gold devices. There really isn't a ton or personality in the color schemes or look of those accessories, save for a few exceptions. Gibson's Neat Microphones line is a welcome exception, though, and its latest delivers a combination of whimsical hues and futuristic aesthetics George Jetson would fancy. The trio pictured above are Widgets, and more specifically go by A, B, and C. All three pack custom capsules, built-in pop filters, shock mounts and adjustable stands. Like a lot of USB mics, the Widgets are very much a plug-and-play add-on, as they won't require you to install drivers or software to get started. When you're ready to record, the company says you can use the gear for anything from podcasting to Skype calls and tracking instruments and vocals in 96kHz/24 bit audio. At $99, the Widgets are pricier than the popular Blue Microphones Snowball and cost the same as its newer Nessie USB mic. If the looks are too much for you to pass up with Gibson's latest, you'll be able to nab them starting November 15th.
Podcasts are safer after the EFF helps gut a patent troll
Personal Audio has been threatening the podcast world for a while -- the longtime patent troll claims that it invented the concept of podcasting, and has insisted that some bigger productions (such as Adam Carolla's) either cough up licensing money or face lawsuits. You may not have to worry about your favorite series going off the air in the future, though. US patent officials have nixed some of the core claims of Personal Audio's "podcasting patent" after the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out podcast-like shows that were running before the patent even existed. Some aspects of episodic online audio are just too obvious to be patentable, according to the finding.
Bossjock Studio: A podcasting powerhouse (Updated)
Last month I went on a short vacation, and decided I'd try to record the Daily Update podcast during my time off. My tool of choice at that time was GarageBand on the iPad, since it provides some great editing tools that work pretty well via the touch interface. Well, unfortunately one day into the trip I received an email from a reader who said that the recording was cutting off about two-thirds of the way through. Sure enough, I recorded another podcast and it did the same thing, so I knew I needed to fix the problem. A quick search through the App Store brought up Bossjock Studio (US$9.99, universal app) and within minutes I was downloading the app to give it a try. While traditional recording apps like GarageBand are designed to let you record snippets of sounds, layering them, making cuts (to get rid of coughs or mistakes) and doing transitions, that's not the idea behind Bossjock Studio. It's designed to record your podcast as if you're doing a live radio show, meaning that you can have a bunch of "carts" (cartridges) loaded with intro and outro music, advertisements, interviews, you name it, and then meld all of the carts together with your live recording. You can have either eight or 15 carts on the iPhone or iPod touch, or 20 or 35 carts on the iPad. Extensive settings let you change the amount of time for fade-ins and fade-outs for carts, and the app even provides automatic ducking -- something that was removed from GarageBand in the last update. The app also has automatic gain control to make sure you're not clipping the sound by overpowering the sound input from your mic; I found that it worked well to record about 10 seconds of sound ("testing, testing, one two three four...") to have the app set the mic level properly -- I then cut that extra noise later on. Recording is simple. You tap a large, red record button and Bossjock Studio begins capturing input. To enable the microphone, you tap on a large bar at the bottom of the screen. At any time, you can insert one of your carts by just tapping the cart button. The sound bite is played and recorded, and a timer on the cart shows just how long is remaining in the cart playback. While all of this is going on, there are easily viewed sound level meters showing exactly what's happening in your mix on both channels. There's also a big slider for adjusting volume going into the recorder from your mic, your carts or your overall mix. Once your recording is complete, it is saved on your device and you have a choice of what you can do with it. Exports can be done in MP3, M4A, WAV or AIFF formats; mono or stereo; and overall level can be adjusted as well. The exports can be shared to email, FTP, AudioCopy, SoundCloud, Dropbox or iTunes Share, or the file can be opened in another app. I found the FTP option quite simple to set up, and within minutes I was blasting files to Libsyn for publication. When you're doing the exporting of your file, you can also add a picture and description for the sound file. My only complaint about Bossjock Studio is that it has no built-in editing tools. If you wish to get rid of your pre-show level checks, remove sneezes or giggle fits, or cut curse words to help you maintain your "Clean" rating in iTunes, you're going to have to edit the sound file elsewhere. At this time, that means sending it to a Mac and using some other app like... GarageBand... or Audacity to do your cleanup. Unfortunately there's no way to "Open in GarageBand" on the iPad or iPhone, or you could do your cleanup work there. Update: Dave Mansueto of Bossjock let me know that there is a way to move recordings to GarageBand for editing using Audio Copy in Bossjock, then pasting the sound into GarageBand. There's a video here that shows how to do it, and also how to open GarageBand-created content in Bossjock. Awesome! If a future version of Bossjock Studio adds an editor, it will be the perfect podcasting tool. Right now, it's pretty amazing for doing off-the-cuff podcast recordings; an editor would make it the go-to tool for all podcast recording. Simply stated, if you're a podcaster who loves to do on-the-fly recording sessions with little or no editing, then spend your $10 today and buy Bossjock Studio. You'll be very happy that you did.
Samson's Go Mic: A capable and compact microphone for podcasting
As many of my TUAW TV Live pals and my co-workers at TUAW know very well, my wife and I love to travel. Since I need to stay productive while we're on the road, I've gotten into the habit of trying to do a lot of blogging from an iPad, and it works very well. When it comes to the podcasting chores for the Daily Update, I've usually left those for one of my teammates while I'm traveling. Due to changes in both our podcast feed and host recently, that wasn't going to be a viable option for a trip I'm on, so I had to find a way to record the podcast on the iPad with the best possible quality. Fortunately, just before I left on my trip a book editor I'm working with sent me a Samson Go Mic (US$89.99 MSRP, available for $39.99 from a number of online sources) to use while recording sound snippets for an enhanced ebook. It has worked so well that I felt a review was in order. The Go Mic is designed to clip onto the top of a laptop screen, and it works just as well clipped onto the top of an iPad propped up by a Logitech Ultrathin Keyboard Cover The mic swivels on a small ball mount, so you can orient it into a number of positions while it's clipped to a screen or your iPad. The Go Mic uses a USB to mini-USB cable for connectivity, and for connecting it to the iPad Air I found a combination of the Camera Connection Kit USB adapter and Lightning to 30-pin Dock Connector adapter worked perfectly. [No word yet if it works with the iPad Lightning USB Camera Adapter, which in theory would provide the same signal path as the combo Steve tried. -Ed.] The Go Mic has a switch that moves between omnidirectional and cardioid pickup patterns. For recording something like a podcast, the cardioid setting works well as it is very directional. If you're recording a group of people, the omni setting is perfect. There's also a center position on the switch that basically mutes the mic quite a bit – I discovered that by accident when a recording came out very quiet and I found that the switch was in the mute position. I found the sound quality to be pretty decent for a small, pocket-sized microphone that fits into its own little carrying case. While I won't say it was as crisp and clean as the audio from my usual podcasting mic (a Blue Microphones Spark Digital), it's a lot more portable and doesn't raise eyebrows in airline security lines. Samson also makes the Meteor Mic ($149.99, available for $69.99 from many sources) that comes with a built-in folding tripod. I have to say that I really prefer the Go Mic, as the microphone ends up being closer my big mouth while recording. While I started recording the podcast on the road in GarageBand for iPad, I found out from a listener that for some reason the audio playback was dropping out completely about three-quarters of the way through the recording. I decided that it would be a good idea to look at some alternative podcast recording apps. Fortunately, the good folks who make the BossJock app ($9.99) were kind enough to come to my rescue with their great software, and I was up and running the next day with a podcast that played back perfectly. I'll be writing up a review of BossJock in the near future. Hats off to Samson for making an extremely portable microphone that still offers a lot of capability at a bargain price.
Massively Speaking 278: Bloopers, outtakes, and tomfoolery
It's the final Massively Speaking podcast of the year! We've been diligently collecting bloopers, outtakes, and general tomfoolery from our past shows, and now we've assembled them all for a hilarious stream of weirdness and non sequiturs. Laugh with us and at us (mostly the latter), and we'll see you all in 2014! Have a comment for the podcasters? Shoot an email to podcast@massively.com. We may just read your email on the air! Get the podcast: [RSS] Add Massively Speaking to your RSS aggregator. [MP3] Download the MP3 directly. [iTunes] Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. [Stitcher] Follow the podcast on Stitcher Radio. Listen here on the page: Read below the cut for the full show notes.
Skype changes its mind: accessories and call recording will keep working
Changes to Skype's platform meant several features -- support for third party apps, call recording and compatibility with some hardware accessories -- were slated to disappear next month. Now, the team has revealed that he last two have received something of a reprieve, at least until Redmond determines "alternative options or retire(s) the current solution." Third party apps, unfortunately, are still on the chopping block -- if you want to use Trillian or other chat clients for instant messaging, you're out of luck. [Image credit: Rusty Sheriff/Flickr]
One Shots: Why you sit
Why you sit? Why you sit when there is so much to be done? Every minute you spend sitting, a thousand NPCs die a gruesome death that could have been prevented by your immortal battle prowess! But you sit. You sit and you admire daffodils as you ignore the noise of innocents in peril. Hope that's one mighty fine sit! So who is this sitter? I'll let reader John introduce you: "Here is Pearl, my level 20 Archer in Final Fantasy XIV. She's obviously relaxing and enjoying the All Saint's Wake celebration. Holidays are the best time to explore the Final Fantasy world." Why you holiday? Why you holiday when people need rescuing? With great power comes great loafing off, apparently. For more public shaming in this week's One Shots, hit the jump!
Peripheral Vision 009: Jesse Thorn on using the internet to create something meaningful
"The fact that I'm an independent media businessman is because no one was interested in co-opting me," Jesse Thorn laughs. It's plenty easy to make light of with a decade's distance and a sunny office overlooking MacArthur Park and the skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles. Maximum Fun's Westlake headquarters is reasonably quiet when we arrive, a half-dozen or so employees plugging away on the podcasting network's day-to-day operations, and prepping for its first-ever Atlantic Comedy and Music Cruise. In the past ten years, the Bullseye host has turned a humble college radio program into a bustling podcasting empire. "We started podcasting [Bullseye's predecessor] The Sound of Young America at the end of 2004," says the NPR host. "I thought if I could get 100 or 200 people to listen to this, it would be worth the extra 90 minutes for me to make it into a podcast." Thorn's secret to success is simple enough: do what you love. And doesn't hurt if you can't possibly do anything else. "It's about is creating something that means enough to you that you're willing to undergo some hardship to sustain it and to create something that means enough to your audience that they're willing to support it - even if it's in surprising ways," explains Thorn. "Even if it's backing a Kickstarter or buying a ticket to a cruise, rather than buying a newspaper. If you can bring those things together, this is a new world. When I got out of college, I didn't get an interview. It was horrible. I ended up working as my dad's secretary, and I'm a terrible secretary - and my dad is a terrible boss. Even if he wasn't my dad, he'd be a terrible boss." Subscribe to Peripheral Vision on iTunes
Massively Speaking 267: The night MJ went crazy
Astute listeners might notice that there's a 43-minute gap in the middle of today's episode. That's because MJ, having stayed up a record 98 hours, decided that we were all pod people and the only solution was to gas the studio. Fortunately, she used Lysol, so we merely had to evacuate while everything got much better smelling. And then we went back to talking about the news, because that's what kind of pros we are. Have a comment for the podcasters? Shoot an email to podcast@massively.com. We may just read your email on the air! Get the podcast: [RSS] Add Massively Speaking to your RSS aggregator. [MP3] Download the MP3 directly. [iTunes] Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. [Stitcher] Follow the podcast on Stitcher Radio. Listen here on the page: Read below the cut for the full show notes.
Peripheral Vision 002: Marc Maron
In 2009, Air America relieved Marc Maron of his duties for a third and final time. He'd co-hosted the station's drive time show Morning Sedition before being given the reigns on his own titular evening program. By show three, he was relegated to the station's kitchen, joining fellow Boston comedian Sam Seder for the short-lived web video show Breakroom Live. Naturally, Maron did what any down-on-his-luck radio host would in his place: he started a podcast. "I think in the beginning, I just needed to talk to someone," he explains. "I was going through a very difficult time. I'd certainly been humbled by love and by show business." WTF wasn't the first podcast by any means, but over the last few years, it's become one of the most popular, thanks to Maron's frank and engaging conversations with comedians and other show biz types. More recently, the program has served as the basis for Maron, an IFC show starring the host as himself, which will enter its second season next year. On this second episode of Peripheral Vision, we sit down with the host to discuss the power of the medium, the trouble with Twitter and making a name for yourself from the comfort of your own garage.
Massively Speaking 257: Bubble hearth
Meet Justin, the original MMO hipster. He was playing massively multiplayer online games back when the rest of the world was gaming on the Atari 2600. Meet Bree, the original MMO poser. She claims that she grew up playing Star Wars Galaxies and Ultima Online, but she was really just into Second Life and Habbo Hotel. Together they form VOLFORCE, defender of the inner solar system! It's truth, justice, and the Massively way! Have a comment for the podcasters? Shoot an email to podcast@massively.com. We may just read your email on the air! Get the podcast: [RSS] Add Massively Speaking to your RSS aggregator. [MP3] Download the MP3 directly. [iTunes] Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. [Stitcher] Follow the podcast on Stitcher Radio. Listen here on the page: Read below the cut for the full show notes.
Massively Speaking 256: Still flying
Take our love, take our land, take us where we cannot stand... but you can't take the sky from Bree. Between discussing the official Firefly MMO and a Make-a-Wish tale, it's a week of emotional twists and turns for the hosts of Massively Speaking. Bree's being replaced by her stunt double, Shawn, who will do his darndest to talk in a California valley girl accent. Have a comment for the podcasters? Shoot an email to podcast@massively.com. We may just read your email on the air! Get the podcast: [RSS] Add Massively Speaking to your RSS aggregator. [MP3] Download the MP3 directly. [iTunes] Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. [Stitcher] Follow the podcast on Stitcher Radio. Listen here on the page: Read below the cut for the full show notes.
Massively Speaking 255: A sonnet for spreadsheets
Spreadsheets, seesaws, and songs -- it's going to be a weird, weird show today, folks. Just giving you a heads up about it. Perhaps you should go do something exceedingly normal and boring before giving this a listen so as to counterbalance it. And as always, make sure to take a drink and shout, "MAY THE FORCE BE WITH YOU!" any time that Bree mentions a certain deceased sandbox. Have a comment for the podcasters? Shoot an email to podcast@massively.com. We may just read your email on the air! Get the podcast: [RSS] Add Massively Speaking to your RSS aggregator. [MP3] Download the MP3 directly. [iTunes] Subscribe to the podcast in iTunes. [Stitcher] Follow the podcast on Stitcher Radio. Listen here on the page: Read below the cut for the full show notes.
