First the iPod took over campus. After that, the podcast was
inevitable.
“It’s the equivalent of TiVo for radio,” said
Greg Katz, a fourth-year philosophy student and general manager for
UCLA’s own campus station, UCLAradio.com. “It’s
taken radio out of people’s cars ““ now people are
listening to the content on their laptops or iPods.”
The new wave in music and the potential future of radio,
podcasting is leading the digital revolution at UCLA and beyond.
Podcasts ““ generally a free, downloadable audio or video file
offered via Internet syndication that can be anything from sports
talk to a song compilation ““ range from the professional to
do-it-yourself home recordings, with new shows popping up every
day.
While anyone can host a podcast, many are offered through
Apple’s iTunes, which has a variety of stations and file
downloads organized by chapter.
Subscription is free, and you can upload “episodes”
onto your iPod or other digital player with the ease of burning a
CD. Popular podcasts on iTunes range from IndieFeed, which gives
away one free song a day, to live news feeds and even learning
French for beginners.
More locally, UCLAradio.com is well on its way to having its own
podcast, which will feature sports coverage, news features and live
in-studio performances. It will be taking off within the first few
weeks of fall quarter, according to Katz.
“I think UCLA students would be interested in it,”
he said. “With the amount of convenience and control it lends
to the listener, it seems to be the way radio is going.”
In addition, many reputable national music publications produce
their own podcast. Paste, a music arts and culture magazine, has,
among others, a weekly podcast called the “Paste Culture
Club” which supplements the CD and DVD compilations the
magazine already releases.
“Podcasts are definitely the wave of the future. We had so
many artists wanting to play for us that we figured to give them a
place to publish,” said Allie Goolrick, producer for
Paste’s podcasts. “Now we have a really sound listener
base, 6,000 and more. (The) idea behind it was for everyone to get
to know our editors on a different basis: by voice and by their own
personal music tastes.”
Though a magazine like Paste is able to get legal clearance for
all its podcast materials, it may not be as easy for those
‘casting along at home to garner the same permissions. Even
for the already-digital UCLAradio.com, repackaging music programs
as podcasts may be an issue.
“The first problem is that the vast majority of the
content the station runs is pre-recorded music,” said Katz.
“If you’re going to podcast, (you need) individual
permission from copyright holders. The RIAA might try to double-dip
and demand money for songs played on podcasts.”
Under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, hosting a file under
copyright is illegal. However, while large acts such as The Beatles
still aren’t even on iTunes, many bands and record labels are
ready and willing to hand out permission to students like Jonathan
Kerwin, a fourth-year political science and Russian studies
student, but more importantly, an MP3 blogger.
Unlike Livejournal and personal Weblogs, MP3 blogs are where
fans and journalists alike digitally post their own under-the-radar
musical findings on sleek, professional and sometimes
advertisement-filled Web sites. Many offer semi-legal music
podcasts of their own, and labels such as Matador Records have been
supportive of the burgeoning medium.
Kerwin is a co-blogger on Rewriteablecontent.com. The site
features indie bands based in or passing through Los Angeles, as
well as other music-related content.
Though music is clearly his site’s focus, he sees the
diversity of podcasting as a way for his site to expand, as well as
avoid potential legal ramifications.
“One of the cool things about blogs is the visual and
listening aspect to it and the way a blogger is able to communicate
to the reader,” Kerwin said. “I think it would be
really interesting to do a video podcast. The possibilities of
dealing with podcasts go beyond just music.”