Unpodcasting of Video Podcasts

I have been seeing an interesting trend with video podcasting networks considering making their video episodes available to regular video download-to-own distribution sites that don't use RSS as the basis for the distribution to these sites. I am not going to be specific, but it is an interesting trend away from RSS distribution of these shows. This makes me wonder if RSS is just not going to cut it in the long-run for digital media distribution. I am seeing so much confusion and lack industry wide consistancy of RSS implementation, thus causing all sorts of ingestion issues. Everyone has its own RSS tags that create duplicate entries and proprietary tag needs in feeds.

Is this the first sign that podcasting is starting to dissappear into just "Video" and "Audio" again?

Mobile Podcasting Survey Results

You may have read here that I have been conducting a mobile podcasting user survey over the past few weeks. Well, I have some results to share that show some interesting aspects of mobile phone consumption of podcasts. I have had about 100 people fillout the online survey.

If you have used mobilcast and would like to contribute to this study, you can still do it via this link.

Do you listen to podcasts on other portable devices besides Mobilcast?
Yes, on iPod -------------- 38.1%
Yes, on other mp3 player - 22.6%
No ----------------------- 39.3%

The above is telling me that 39% percent users of mobile podcast listening is being done by people who are not listening to podcasts on an iPod or mp3 player or these listeners have stopped listening to podcasts on an iPod or mp3 player to only listen via Mobilcast.

I also asked when and where do Mobile Podcast (Mobilcast) users listen to podcasts?
In the car --------------------------------------- 29.3%
On the bus or train ---------------------------- 28.1%
At work ------------------------------------------ 25.6%
In the office -------------------------------------- 19.5%
At home ---------------------------------------- 34.2%
When I have a few minutes at various locations - 43.9%

The leading "various locations" answer (43.9%) is what we here call "Tweentime", that is times the user listens while waiting in line, at the doctors office or waiting to get on a bus. The other significate use is while excercising. The other major use area is "at home" (34.2%), "in the car" (29.3%), "bus or train" (28.1%) while communting to work.

The survey is also showing the majority age of mobile podcast listeners are between the ages of 30-50 years old. The largest percentage is between 30-40 years old (43.4%), 40-50 years old (24.1%). The 20-30 year olds use is at (14.5%).

I am not sure how this use pattern mirror the iPod or mp3 players, but this is the use pattern that we are seeing with this study. Thanks to all those who spent the time to contribute to this study.

UK's Mobilcast Top 50 Most Popular Mobile Podcast Streams for April 2007

Here is the ranked Top 50 list of the Most Popular Mobile Podcast Streams in the UK for April 2007. You will notice that many of the top podcasts are music, comedy and BBC podcasts.

1 Bubba Bohacks Joke of the day
2 BBC: Best Of Moyles
3 BBC: Scott Mills Daily
4 a2z Radio: Hip Hop
5 BBC: Today
6 a2z Radio: Top Hits
7 CNN News Update
8 The President's Weekly Radio Address (Parody)
9 BBC Radio NewsPod
10 "Back Page News" with Bubba Bohacks
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11 The Adam & Joe Xfm Podcast
12 Times Online UK Podcasts
13 Daily UK Weather Forecast Meteogroup UK
14 Hip Hop and Kool Aid
15 The Ricky Gervais Show
16 The Onion Radio News
17 KEXP Song of the Day
18 The Premiership Podcast
19 a2z Radio: Rock of Ages
20 IndieFeed: Hip Hop / Rap
21 Formula Pod Show
22 Tim Lovejoy: Virgin Radio
23 Asia Cast World News
24 New York Times Front Page
25 KEXP Live Performances Podcast
26 * InfoWorld Daily Podcast *
27 Mark Kermode's film reviews
28 Eighties - AccuRadio
29 Football Weekly on Guardian Unlimited
30 MTV News: Daily Headlines (Audio)
31 Radio 4 Choice
32 BBC: Chris Evans - The Best Bits
33 Irish and Celtic Music Podcast
34 Indiefeed: Hardcore/Punk
35 Wake Up To Money
36 The FADER Music
37 The World: Technology from BBC/PRI/WGBH
38 Sixties - AccuRadio
39 CNET News.com daily tech news podcast
40 World Soccer Daily Podcast
41 European Breaking News Reuters Audio
42 World News Reuters
43 Lonely Planet Travelcasts
44 Top Hits - AccuRadio
45 KEXP Presents Music That Matters
46 Pod-porn.com
47 Science on Guardian Unlimited
48 Day and Webster's Football Rules
49 Film Cafe
50 Newsdesk on Guardian Unlimited

HiFi Audio Quality Comes To New Mobilcast v.5 beta

I just got back from 3GSM in Barcelona, Spain the massive global wireless phone expo. Gone working the show from dawn to dusk. Blog posts from 3GSM where just not possible. I did take some photos and I will show some here.

I spent 4 days exhibiting from the Forum Nokia booth giving demo's about Mobilcast to people from all over the world. We had many mobile operators/carriers from around the world meet with us and discuss Mobilcast deployment. It is safe to say that these operators are excited about Mobilcast and its ability to give mobile users access to a huge pool of audio and video content. The Mobilcast solution in combination with 3G networks is compelling. The speed to get to content on the phone is amazing with our new streaming/chunking platform.

While I was gone, we launched our new v.5 Mobilcast application that included a big audio quality upgrade. We are going from 12K AMR audio codec to a much better 24K AAC+ codec.

To get the new v.5 Mobilcast java client enter this URL into your phone browser:
http://zeus.melodeo.net/mc/

Mobilcasting 2007 New York Fashion Week

You can hear New York Fashion Week Mobilcast audio interviews with high style celebrities using Cingular's Mobilcast all this week. These 2-4 minute long Mobilcasts are exclusively available through our partnership with Cingular.

Here is the List of Top Fashion Designers and Celebrities interviewed for Mobilcast:

Actress Lorraine Bracco, Sopranos

Carson Kressley, Queer Eye for a Straight Guy
Ken Downing - Senior VP, Fashion Director, Nieman Marcus

Designer, Dennis Basso

Aerin Lauder

Piper Pirebo
Oscar DeLarenta
Tinsley Mortimer
Todd Oldham
NigelBarker
Alexis Bryan
Coco Rocha
Gina Kelly

Ann Shoket
Irina Lazeraneau
Mickey Boardman
Rachel Zoe
Kim Catrall
Andre Leon Tally
Marc Bouwer

Alexis Bryon (vanity Fair)
Naeem Khan
Kelly Rowland
Hillary ALexander (fashion critic)

You can hear a sample of the audio available in Cingular's Mobilcast.

Rob Greenlee

Singapore Mobilcast Listening

I have spent a few days this week working to improve our mobilcast mobile phone podcasting experience with M1 wireless carrier in Singapore. I have been working with a great source of interesting podcasts called Podcast.sg. This site is built around a group of broadcast radio stations in Singapore. They have podcasts in english and in many other local languages.

Check them out for a little international podcast listening experience.

Rob Greenlee

Technorati Profile

Audio Horoscopes Available in Mobilcast?

Is adding daily updated audio Horoscopes to Mobilcast a good idea? Many here at Melodeo think that adding Horoscopes will boost daily usage of Mobilcast.

What do you think? Should we add it to our default content catalog?

The podcasting source is at http://www.theastrologer.com

Rob Greenlee