“At the Wall Street Journal’s D Conference, Steve Jobs tonight showed ipodder-like features in the next release of iTunes, supposedly available within about 60 days. I was glad to see this, since the ‘architecture of participation’ has been the only one of the big Web 2.0 themes that Apple had seemed to be missing. He was slightly dismissive of populist podcasting, describing it as ‘Wayne’s World for radio,’ and celebrating the arrival of professional radio stations into the market, but nonetheless, he was very high on the podcasting phenomenon, and the excitement that millions of users have displayed about it. In the Q&A, Jason Calcanis of Weblogs, Inc. asked if there was any possibility of using the iTunes music store for paid podcasting. Jobs replied that for the moment they were only considering it as free content, but that he was open to looking into it,” O’Reilly Radar reports.
Full article here.
“During his chat, Jobs demonstrated iTunes 4.9, a forthcoming version of Apple’s digital music jukebox software. Calling it the ‘Tivo for Radio for iPod,’ he said the new version would incorporate Podcast support — allowing users to download and subscribe to pre-recorded audio content,” Kasper Jade reports for AppleInsider. “Jobs said the software is slated for released within the next 60 days and that all Podcast feeds and subscriptions will be free. Apple is currently adding functionality to display relevant album art during the Podcats, he said, which will provide listeners with purchase links to the iTunes Music Store. Apple will also release a tool that will allow any Podcast creator to easily upload their content to the company’s music store.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Imagine iTunes’ current “Radio” feature, but for podcasts (categorized and searchable) and allowing for downloads/easy transfer to your iPod and you get the idea.
Another way to get tons more visits to iTunes, which means more song downloads, which means more iPod sales, which means Napster is slowly spinning down the circle while looking up seeing the iPod flushing the toilet. Later a subtle non-emphasized cheap subcription service added somewhere under the music video section, and then why else would anyone go anywhere else?? Total package…total solution…best user experience…best hardware device. This is how it’s done, folks!
Speaking of the Radio feature, I hate it. It has all the trappings of a bolt-on afterthought. They need to bring it “in house”, as in full size album art for the current song w/ artist information (and lyrics) displayed similar to the RSS screensaver format, and a link to the store to buy the song/album. And fold in a feature from Amarok on Linux that (attempts to) get the lyrics to each currently playing song.
I’m continually underwhelmed when browsing the ugly text listing of radio stations, some offline, others at a lower bitrate than advertised on the link. This is actually the only area where MSN music does it right, as in it’s their own stations; not farmed out shortcuts to the web.
Sorry for the rant, but Apple has a loong way to go with their radio. Yes, I’ve sent feedback.
Well, the BBC are currently running trailers telling people how to get BBC content into “podcast” format for some of their stations, so its obviously becoming a mainstream thing.
devnull: iTunes Radio is merely a Directory. Apple’s shortcoming in this regard is that they don’t make it clear up front that it’s only a Directory.
That said, I suspect that if Apple was really interested in the broadcasting quality aspect of internet-radio and/or podcasting (I obviously don’t think they are interested), they would include a line-in as well as a recording capacity in the iTunes. To date, that doesn’t seem to be a direction that Apple appears headed for, unless of course, those features were also included in the next iTunes media player upgrade, but it doesn’t sound like it.
Devnull, you hit the nail on the head on the shortcomings of the radio feature of iTunes.
Podcasts could be very useful and cool IF done right. I wouldn’t mind subscribing to services in “bundles”: e.g. the Mac head bundle with a bunch of podcasts for, you guested it, Mac fan(atics), or the Sports bundle, yada yada. All in an effort to eliminate the irritating commercials. The commercials are the reason why I don’t listen to many popular podcasts (or watch t.v.)
A slam dunk would be both subscription and purchase models for iTunes that complement each other: For example, subscribe and listen to a bunch of random tunes from a genre. If you hear something you want to keep, click purchase and you own it!
Cheers!
And it’ll mean far fewer radio broadcating stations too…
When asked about a (video) iPod his (Steve Jobs) reply was: “I’m going to have to leave that to our actions in the future.” Translation: Watch this space.
That folks is the closest Steve Jobs will come to making a specific prediction about a yet to be announced product.
I would love for iTunes to do the work which iPodderX currently does. A built in browser/search function would be extremely useful.
My worry is that this will lead to either: 1) pay/subscription podcasts which are currently free (BBC’s In our Time for example), 2) the inclusion of adverts in currently ad-free podcasts (it will be harder to say no to ad $ when iTunes hops on board).
That being said, an iTunes Podcast ‘Store’ modelled on iTMS would be great. I wouldn’t even really mind subscribing to high quality ad-free pro podcasts.
What people aren’t seeing in this is something really really big.
It is implied here:
>Apple is currently adding functionality to display
>relevant album art during the Podcats, he said, which
>will provide listeners with purchase links to the iTunes
>Music Store.
That Apple is recognizing that people would have RIAA music in their podcasts…. But Apple is not one to promote illegal or grey area activity (podcasters do not have legal rights to distribute RIAA songs)… so what I see here is that Apple is setting up the legal mechanisms for people to include RIAA songs in their podcasts so long as it is distributed through ITMS (and probably DRMed) IE Apple could be taking on a radio broadcasting license like arrangement with the music industry.
This would be huge leg up for podcasters because they don’t have to worry about playing music and getting their asses sued off.
Think ITMS playlists taking up a level.
Also Apple probably has put some thought into podcast production and I would not be surprised to see ITunesProducer coming out soon.
devnull says: This is actually the only area where MSN music does it right, as in it’s their own stations; not farmed out shortcuts to the web.
This is actually what signals the beginning of the end. As soon as you have people (read: corporations) with loads of cash telling you what you want to hear, that’s when you’ll be hearing yourself saying something like, “…holy sh*t, this is a pile of homogenous crap that no one wants to hear…”
Couldn’t you just use GarageBand to create and edit your own PodCast?
Especially now that it has live recording and you could even loop your soundtrack in the background and add audio effects and transitions…
I imagine that by this time next year, we will all be talking about Pod-iVision where people are making home videos to be viewed on their vPods!! It will be, after all, the year after “the Year of HD”!!! All mac users will have access to HD editing software and the H.264 codec and a new eager audience searching for free video content to put with their iPod Video…
Mayhaps I’ve said too much..
I wonder if Google is working on speech recognition software to transcribe podcasts and add them to a search database…. now that would be interesting!
I’m curious to know what iTunes 5.0 will look like. Has anyone else noticed that Apple have stuck to the 4.X moniker for a long time.
My guess is that that is when something about video comes out – either a portable video player, media center or downloadable / streaming movies.
When will 5.0 be released? January 2006? Maybe. Timing would be right.
I’m hoping iTunes 5.0 and the new video member of the iPod family debuts in October; in time for the Christmas season.
But if Apple forecasts that the current iPod family with a few price cuts has enough legs to get through the Christmas season, then I guess they could hold off until January in order to boost after-Christmas quarter sales, like they did with the mini and shuffle.
Podcasting for iTunes is something I sent in a feature request to Apple about a month a go. Now my request will be fulfilled. Awesome!