Homogenized content and script-reading presenters wherever you listen are among the anecdotal statistics thrown about.

It’s never really been like that here in the UK. I think we still have a rich choice of good radio in this country, which may be one reason why podcasting hasn’t seen the proportionate scale of take-up as there has been in the US.

So I found it quite interesting to read a report from BrandRepublic quoting recent research by Ipsos Mori that radio and podcasting listening has increased in the UK over the past six months.

The really interesting part, though, concerns the influence podcast listening has on radio listening habits among those surveyed:

[...] Radio listening has also been improved by podcasts, with 15% admitting to listening to more radio since downloading podcasts. Another notable factor shows that 39% now listening to radio programmes that weren’t listened to previously.

[...] iTunes is the most popular choice for downloading podcasts, with almost three-quarters of podcast users downloading them from the Apple software.

Christel Lacaze, research manager at Rajar, said: “This survey gives a unique insight into the behaviour of the online/offline audio community and the impact of new audio delivery formats on traditional live radio listening.”

Good signs.

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Clients’ offices, in hotels, airports, at conferences, you name the place, opportunities often arise for recording a conversation that may end up as a podcast.

My preferred portable audio recorder remains the Microtrack 24/96, about which I wrote an enthusiastic review in 2006 just after I bought it. My enthusiasm for it hasn’t dimmed in spite of the product support issue (resolved) I had with the supplier I bought it from.

Manufacturer M-Audio launched the Microtrack II late last year which looks pretty good (but for me, not a compelling enough upgrade).

I sometimes get asked about microphones with a portable device. The Microtrack comes with its own mic but is it good enough?

That’s actually one of the questions asked in an email I received the other day from Craig Martin in New Zealand. Craig co-presents The Indie Travel Podcast, a weekly show with travel ideas and advice for independent travellers, backpackers and anyone with itchy feet.

He’s looking for some specific advice:

[…] I’ve been looking for a light recorder that will put up with a life lived constantly on the road. My wife and I travel incessantly and we podcast weekly which makes for interesting sound quality at times!

Rather than simply reply only to Craig, I thought I’d offer some thoughts to Craig’s questions here in case anyone else might find the answers helpful. And any podcasters who read this, maybe you might add some thoughts for Craig’s benefit.

Q: Do you use an external mic along with the Microtrack? If so, which one and would you recommend it?

In almost every experience I’ve had with the Microtrack, the supplied electret condenser microphone is all you really need.

It’s great for recording interviews with one or a couple of people. Not so good for recording, eg, meetings, where you have different distances between people.

For situations like that, though, any single microphone will present challenges. If you want to capture everyone’s voice clearly, the best bet would be individual microphones or, at least, a couple strategically placed in order to capture voices at reasonably consistent levels.

Then you’re talking about a different situation altogether than just simply using a portable device like the Microtrack. You’d probably need to consider using a computer with a mixer so it can take multiple audio inputs.

I have used an external mic with the Microtrack – a Shure C606 cardioid microphone – that plugs in to the 1/4-inch input. But I did not hear any noticeable difference in recorded sound quality from using the supplied mic.

My short answer, then – the supplied microphone is all you need for voice recording such as interviews or, in Craig’s case, travelogues.

Q: Have you heard much about the Microtrack 2? Good or bad in comparison?

This is the new model I mentioned above, the successor to the Microtrack 24/96.

I don’t know anyone who has one yet. From the description from M-Audio, it looks the same as the model it replaces, albeit a dark grey rather than the silver colour of the 24/96.

It does have a number of enhancements, however, including:

• Wider dynamic range at the input stage.
• A peak limiter which helps to stop fast transients causing the unit to clip.
• A USB 2.0 interface, allowing for higher data-transfer rates to a computer.
• You can record files that are larger than 2GB.
• You can place markers in Broadcast WAV Files (BWFs) during recording, allowing for track start points in a live recording, for example, to be noted.

The 24/96 model is no longer sold (although you can find examples on places like eBay).

If I didn’t already have the older model (which works just fine), or if I were doing more on-the-road recordings than I currently do, I would definitely buy the Microtrack II.

Q: Do you think it’s sturdy enough to live in a backpack?

Hmm, that’s a good question.

My Microtrack lives in my laptop travel bag which is usually lumped in there with the laptop PC, cables, power supplies, other gadgets, etc.

That’s not the same kind of bag as a backpack, nor is it likely to experience the same kind of treatment a backpack typically would.

If it were me, I’d take extra care with it in a travel environment such as Craig’s. Priority accessory purchase: a sturdy travel case for it.

So a hesitant yes, I do think it’s sturdy enough to live in a backpack but you do need to treat it with care and some respect!

Q: Your sound quality using it sounds better than a "record to laptop with built in mic". Would you agree or do you significantly play with sound levels?

I definitely agree with that.

I still have the first portable digital recorder I bought in early 2005, an iRiver iFP-790, which also lives in the laptop bag (or in my trouser pocket). The built-in mic on that is tiny, smaller than most laptop mics, yet recorded sound quality is amazing, almost as good as the Microtrack’s.

My point is that a typical laptop built-in microphone is nowhere near as good as almost any portable recording device’s microphone.

As for sound levels, it’s a rare recording on a portable recorder that doesn’t need some editing and tweaking in an audio editing application.

At the very least, if you record in uncompressed WAV format (as you can on the Microtrack), you’ll need something to convert the file to compressed MP3, the podcasting standard.

I use Adobe Audition, currently the latest version 3 that supports Windows Vista. There’s also Audacity – a favourite of many podcasters – which is open source and free, and comes in versions for Windows, Mac and Linux.

An essential tool to complement your editing software is Levelator. This free application automagically adjusts audio levels so that your WAV audio file ends up as, well, as perfect as can be.

Couldn’t live without the Levelator!

Ok, so these are my thoughts on Craig’s questions. If you have anything to add (or subtract) please feel free to do so in the comments.

Finally, I’d add that questions like these are addressed in some detail in How to Do Everything with Podcasting, the book my podcasting partner Shel Holtz and I produced last summer.

Just a small plug

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And if assuming men like sports and tech more than women isn’t too sexist to assume these days, which it might be, despite the history. Or it could be, if you want to get really picky, that this is just information about what is downloaded from one particular podcast portal.

Podcast.com based its list on the total number of times a program has been accessed by consumers. The top 10 podcast are:

1. World Soccer Daily Podcast
2. CNN News Update
3. ESPN Radio Daily Podcast
4. Geek News Central Podcast
5. BBC’s Best of Today
6. NOVA – PBS
7. Slate Magazine Daily Podcast
8. 60 Minutes Podcast
9. Face the Nation Podcast
10. CNET News.com Daily Tech News Podcast

In 2007, consumers accessed nearly 40 million podcasts in the US and the UK (37 million and 2.7 million respectively), according to Edison Media Research.

"As Internet-connected mobile phones become more pervasive, podcast content represents one of the major formats that consumers are adopting as part of their daily media experience," said Duncan Perry, chief operating officer of Treedia Labs. "Podcast.com’s growing audience clearly values the content diversity being offered by both independent and mainstream media producers."

The site never came out of Beta before this sudden plan to end the service. The reason for ending this service is not yet very clear. There is simply a message on the site that reads “Yahoo! apologizes deeply, but we will be closing down the Podcasts site on Oct. 31, 2007.”

However, some rumours are there in the industry that Yahoo! is planning to make some big changes in their entertainment division, including potentially shutting down Yahoo Music’s subscription service and Yahoo TV.

Yahoo! Podcasts was launched some two years back to allow users to search and listen to Podcasts in different categories, subscribe to them, and rate their favorites. But it was not able to gain popularity as there were no RSS feeds and one has to login with a Yahoo! ID in order to download audio files instead of listening to them through a pop-up Yahoo! audio player.

There are some alternative podcasts services which might be benefited by this new.

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Yahoo ‘Peanut Butters’ Their Podcasts Site

Brad Garlinghouse’s Peanut Butter Manifesto may have claimed another victim. The Yahoo Podcasts beta that launched in October 2005 won’t go beyond its second birthday.

Visit the site today, and this message appears at the top of the page: "Yahoo! apologizes deeply, but we will be closing down the Podcasts site on Oct. 31, 2007."

Both Read/WriteWeb and Mashable noted the writing on the wall for Yahoo Podcasts. Marshall Kirkpatrick and Adam Ostrow wrote on the respective blogs about alternatives to Yahoo, but only Kirkpatrick made a passing reference to the elephant sitting in the middle of the podcasting industry.

That would be Apple’s iTunes, which has the brand recognition and millions of iPod owners connected to its services. If this were a game of Clue, we would guess Yahoo Podcasts was done in by Steve Jobs, in the server room, with the Cat-5 cable. J’accuse!

Any thanks should go, in part, to SplashCast – it’s this company’s technology that made the move possible.  “Facebook users can add the application to their profiles (via the URL http://npr.org/facebook ) to automatically receive new NPR Podcasts episodes to listen to and to share this great content with their friends,” wrote Marshall Kirkpatrick on the corporate blog.

Nonetheless, it wouldn’t be accurate to think of NPR as some stodgy member of “old media” – a press release rightly describes the organization as “a leader in digital media, incorporating new technology to offer a wide-ranging slate of its news, information, talk, entertainment, music and arts content on all platforms.”

Now, as for that content – I’m most excited about the availability of “Car Talk.”  But “Fresh Air,” “Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me!,” and “Story of the Day” are also presented as options.

Hat tip to Mashable’s Kristen Nicole, who wrote, “Splashcast’s customized Facebook application option will be appealing to many in the media industry . . .”

Developing At Google: Podcasts And Code Sessions

Google’s Developer Days have taken place at company locations around the world. For its next Developer Day taking place at the end of May, a change of venue has been announced.

"Thanks to the incredible interest in Google Developer Day, we’ve moved the session portion of the day to the San Jose Convention Center. From 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., we’ll be bringing ourselves and a little of the Google campus a few miles south," Andrew Bowers said on the Google Code blog.

No one will miss out on visiting the Google campus, as the after-session party will take place there when the sessions have been completed. During the sessions, attendees will take part in the following agenda:

1. Developing with Geo: Google Maps, Google Earth, and SketchUp
2. Mashups and More: AJAX, Google Gadgets, and the GData APIs
3. Tools for Better Web Development: The Google Web Toolkit, open source, and other developer initiatives

For the listening pleasure of developers, there are a couple of podcasts that just debuted. The Google Developer Podcast arrived with a discussion of Google Guice, through a talk with developer Bob Lee.

At the Summer of Code blog, Google has its first podcast episode available. Angie Byron with the Drupal project talks about ideas for this year’s SoC developers.

"After all, who knows the trials and tribulations of SoCer student life better than a former participant?" Google’s Leslie Hawthorn of Byron’s participation in the podcast.

ON Networks hopes to bring a little TV magic to your computer screen with 8 well produced shows each with great content and entertaining hosts.

ONN boast a lineup of 8 shows ranging from “Zen Living,” in which an attractive host guides viewers toward a healthier life, to “Raw Golf,” which takes an indy band and films them at a golf lesson, to “Budget Health Nut,” a cooking show that would feel at home on the Food Network.

If you think you’ve got what it takes to join the On line up, visit their site and suggest your show.

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Tag:

Market

1. The Podcast marketplace is expanding rapidly
2. Feedburner is managing over 100,000 Podcast feeds
3. Feedburner is tracking more than 5M subscribers
4. For every download at Feedburner, there is approximately one download directly from the hosting site
5. 2/3 of the subscribers use iTunes
6. Most of the rest use a web based service

Optimization Tips

1. Metadata is critical:

   1. Title
   2. Album
   3. Artist (host)
   4. Year
   5. Track – Episode #
   6. Genre – Podcast
2. Use the Comments section of the metadata to enter in basic info, Examples of things you could do here include:

   1. Summary of the Podcast
   2. The list of questions asked
   3. A transcript of the Podcast
   4. When the audience can expect the next episode
3. Find a good ID3v2 tag editor (this is where the metadata lives. Audacity is pretty good at this

Marketing

1. Do SEO optimized press releases about your Podcasts
2. Submit your Podcasts to the Podcast directories. There are a lot of these, but sometimes the small ones provide awesome volume, so submit to as many as you can find.
3. And, of course, ping, ping, ping every time you update your feed.

Personally, I think Podcasts represent a great opportunity. It’s still a very young market, but people are listening. Even with the sub par promotional job that we have done with our Podcasts here at STC, I keep having people come up to me and tell me that they have listened to one or other of the Podcasts we have done.

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