Unlike HP, U2 was shot and intended for the IMAX experience. I enjoy U2, but I wouldn’t call myself a diehard fan. What I was really looking forward to was the technological aspects of the show. I wanted to see why so many people were claiming it was on of the most immersive experiences they have ever had.

Going to IMAX is always fun: the huge screen, the cheesy intro where they show you the sound system, everyone sitting around with their silly glasses on.  That process kind of adds to the whole “show”. On top of that, the new 3d technique of using polarized light and lens to block each eye’s view is really amazing in its seeming simplicity. Its very much a nerdboy experience for me.

After seeing the show I can simply say that it lived up to the hype. The use of the 3D is done really well to create an extension to your current environment. Too many times I have been in a 3D show where they force items at you to create depth. The U2 show lets you experience the enormity of the stage, the lighting rigs, and the crowd in the stadium.  You are nearly engulfed in the experience. You don’t necessarily feel like you are there at the concert per say, but you get a taste for what it must be like on that stage. That alone is a breathtaking experience.

I enjoyed the concert but also keep geeking out on both the music gear and the lighting gear. I have a background in technical theatre, in fact I was focused on light and set design. I still have a passion for that tech and seeing it put to use with the kind of budget is always inspiring.

Follow that up with years of helping build and then run a music studio and I have became a bit of a gear whore. I kept checking all the mics, the light rigging and such. Its that kind of show though… it impressed me on so many levels. The experience, the music, the gear. The tech even flowed into our conversations later. On the way home Xina and I talked about what the editing process must have been like. How do they edit something like that? Is it always in 3D?

Overall, it is a very impressive and very worthwhile event. If you happen to be in a city with IMAX, try to catch it before it is too late. I fully enjoyed it on many, many different levels.

Joe called my land line using Skype so that he could record the conversation. It was interesting to be on the other end of a Skype call. Usually, we are the one hosting the Skype interview. Overall the call quality was decent, we had a few drop outs but on the phone it sounded fine. I am a little surpised on how the recorded version sounded, but then again I was hearing a much higher quality sound source from Joe because he was using headphones, and I was using a Vonage line so the audio was pretty processed by the time it reached the recording equipment.

We have had the same problem in the past with our Skype calls and we are looking at pro-level equipment that allows us to use XLR cables to route to our mixing board. This will give us much better audio separation and allow us to use real phone lines which will provide a more stable audio source. Anyway, check out the interview if you want to learn more about what is going on with Fake Science.

Please join us for the second CC Salon, taking place in San Francisco on Wednesday, April 12 from 6-9 PM at Shine. CC Salon is a casual get-together focused on conversation and community-building with 2-3 brief presentations from individuals and groups developing projects with relationship to Creative Commons. We look forward to seeing you there!

CC Salon – San Francisco http://www.creativecommons.org/salon Wednesday, April 12 6-9 PM Shine (http://shinesf.com/) 1337 Mission Street (between 9th and 10th), San Francisco

Featuring

James Polanco; “Podcasting and Fake Science Digital Music Store”, Fake Science (http://www.fakescience.com/)

Lucas Gonze; “How the Net is Changing Music”, Webjay (http://www.webjay.org) + http://www.gonze.com/weblog/

Bob Ostertag, http://www.bobostertag.com * He recently made all of his music available he has rights to under CC BY-NC

Plug, music by Minus Kelvin, http://www.minuskelvin.com

I met up with Christopher and Elise at Sauce (the location of the meeting) grabbed a cocktail and we headed back to the supper club to see what was going on. Walking into the back room I was impressed by the number of people there already. Christopher whipped out a business card, made a button hole in the card and then proceeded to create a name tag. This action instantly got Steve (from WildBeat) and Martin’s (from Network Security) attention and we started mingling with the crowd.

The crowd was made up of a fair mix of current podcasters, people looking into podcasting and people providing services to podcasters (from hosting to advertising). Michael Butler from Podshow headed up the meeting and started out the official gathering by asking all the new people to talk about what they are doing with podcasting.

After we went around the room Michael asked if anyone had any technical questions about podcasting. People asked questions like how to get cost-free hosting when your show grows or how to get more attention to you podcast.

Once all the questions and comments were done Dave from Libsyn and Jonathan from Kiptronic talked about the new integrated services provided by both companies. Kiptronic has a new technology that allows podcasters to charge for advertising space in their show and when an advertiser and podcaster agree to feature a spot the system will automatically insert the segment into the podcast audio file. Libsyn has integrated the Kiptronic module into their servers and they also have seamlessly integrated Kiptronic’s interface into their content management system.

There is a lot more to this but I will save that for another post. After Libsyn and Kiptronic talked, the CEO of Podomatic and the VP of Client Development talked about their hosting and online podcasting technologies. One of the most interesting technologies that Podomatic talked about was their ability to do real-time video capture from web cams using Flash and then convert this to MP4 which is the supported video format for the new video iPods.

Overall, I had a great time meeting fellow local podcasters and talking about different technologies and services that are being introduced everyday. Christopher and I agree that we definitely need to start going to these on a regular basis and I look forward to hearing more about what is going on.

Jack mentioned that we would also be talking with Doug Kaye from the highly regarded IT Conversations. Doug has been running IT Conversations for around 2 years now and it is considered one of the premier and ground-breaking podcasts out there. It was a great experience to talk audio tech with Doug and what was most impressive about the conversation was that we were doing all remotely. He was patched into the studio with an ISDN line that allowed him to sound like he was in the same room as us. I have read about ISDN remote recording for a long time but it was a lot of fun to actually experience it first hand.

Jack has broken the night’s conversations into multiple segments. The interview with me about Fake Science called “Jack Herrington Interviews Founder of Fake Science”, and you can find the Doug Kaye conversations under the “Pioneer Podcasters Share Insider Tips” titles. Currently Part 1 and 2 of four are up. Check it out…

Under the new and notable they had a whole section dedicated to Skateboarding, Skiing and Snowboarding vidcasts. Hmmm, now my interest is peaked. I am an avid snowboarder, as you can probably tell from my photo, and I can spend all day watching ski and snowboarding videos. I started checking out some of the casts and wound up downloading and watching episode two of Snowfix.

Snowfix is Negative Gravity’s show that is hosted by Charlie and Tim out Val d’Isere in the French Alps. It’s a well produced show that I thoroughly enjoyed watching. I was curious about their background and after looking at Negative Gravity’s website I saw that custom video is the focus behind NG.

Finding content like this brought back my initial excitement when I was first turned on to podcasts by my friend Jack Herrington. What made it so exciting then was that we were able to find new music and content that was totally inaccessible previously. I was able to listen to unsigned local acts out of the UK, music that would never had made it to San Francisco if it wasn’t for podcasting.

This idea of focused media has been labeled Narrowcasting because it is intended for a more limited audience. There is not a need to boil down content to the most common denominator because you need the largest listener base possible to please the advertisers or sponsors. Here is a medium were your intended audience may only be a handful of die hard fans (or paying subscribers like Satellite Radio).

It was very pleasant to stumble on to a Narrowcast subject that I am really interested in. I wasn’t expecting it and I feel the surprise of finding it was just as much fun as seeing the quality behind the show. Anyway, keep up the good work Chris and Tim and it looks like you guys are getting the snow dump that you were looking for…

What is exciting about this licensing agreement is that labels are realizing the potential podcasts have as a marketing channel. Here is a way for a label to reach many new listeners, both local and international, that many of these labels never had access to before. This also helps legitimize podcasting by making it a valid channel for labels to expose their artists.

One challenge that may face this service is that they are requiring the podcaster to pay for the music and provide statistical information. These are valid request by the service and labels, but this will more then likely stop a lot of the smaller podcasts from taking advantage of this service.

Currently the pricing is behind closed doors, so I cannot comment directly on the feasibility of the structure, but many of the podcast out there do this as a hobby and not as a profession. This means that many of the shows have very limited or no funds available to purchase a license and therefore this service may not be an option for a source of legal music.

For podcasts that make money off advertising and other services, they may be able to pay for this service. If AIM charges a percentage of the sites total income, like other licensing contracts, this may stop those podcasts from wanting to lose more of the small margin of income they already have.

Another issue that will be faced is statistical tracking of listeners that are required by AIM. In the podcasting community, we do not have a uniform system for tracking listeners. In fact almost every show tracks their listener base differently, and because of this we are seeing a huge discrepancy between shows supposed listener bases. This is a complex topic in itself, which I plan to dedicate more posts to, but lets just say that right now we have no way of guarantying the actual listener base of a show.

Overall, this is a really great step and I am excited that Independent Labels are taking a long hard look at podcasting as a valid channel for their music. Hopefully we will see more of these kinds of services and I look forward to seeing how they actually price this out.

It’s a beautiful concept and I whole heartily support it. Honestly, this is one of the reasons we started podcasting and keeps us podcasting but this is not what I want to talk about right now. What I want to get into is the amazing amount of business interest we are starting to see in the podcasting community. Not only are there a lot of podcasters trying to find ways to make this their full time job, we are seeing a lot of outside interest in how companies can tap into this new media format.

Josh and I both headed down to the first North American Podcast Expo in Ontario, California a few weeks ago. The idea was to check out the expo, meet new podcasters and finally get to meet some friends face to face that we had made through podcasting over the last 9 months. What both Josh and I found interesting was that the Expo had a feeling of old media trying to break into new media.

The show floor was full of iPod accessory companies, a smattering of tech companies, my good friends Libsyn and a lot of ad companies offering quick cash for podcasters, or at least that is what we felt they were saying to us. The session list seemed to focus mainly on the business end of podcasting, how to make money at it, etc.

I am not really surprised or shocked by any of this, and really this makes sense for the first Expo, but because the Expo had such a commercial feel a lot of really amazing podcasters decided to pass on the whole thing. The podcasters that skipped out were not just a few minor players. These are well established podcasters and are some of the people that helped guide our show from the very beginning.

I am sorry that Tracks Up The Tree or Caribbean Free Radio couldn’t/wouldn’t make it but I totally understand. It’s expensive to travel and a lot of what got us into podcasting was lost at the Expo. This is a grassroots movement to a lot of podcasters, and this movement allowed the unheard voices to be heard and for people to showcase unknown music, thoughts and ideas to a larger base of people then ever before.

What we ended up seeing at the Expo was a lot of podcast “celebrities” doing photo shoots, interviews and schmoozing. I met a few people that were genuinely there to learn about podcasting and how they can get into it but over all there was this sense of “you too can make money” or a bunch of ass kissing to help cross promote shows and build a bigger following. This all ties back into some the community issues that I have (I will delve into this some other time) and how the podcast community at the moment is pretty insular. We, as a community, tend to only talk to podcasters and promote to podcasters. I also have this feeling that we just pass around the same listeners and we aren’t breaking out as fast as I think the community feels it is.

Unfortunately I don’t have hard proof of this yet, but my experience talking to people outside of the community is that there a lot of unknowns about what podcasting is and what it isn’t. What this means is that we have a movement trying to convert a very new and insular media format and monetize it to a profitable endeavor. I feel there are some potential entry points that have possible revenue streams (hosting, advertising, etc.) but one of the challenges is proving and then establishing this format a profitable market that will continue to grow.

Another challenge that we will face as podcasting matures and becomes a money making business is the attention of the media and the legitimization of the medium. This may not seem like a challenge but with money comes legalities. Many shows currently fly under the radar and are not licensed or licensing their media/content as more mature formats have to (think radio or even webcasting). As boards like the RIAA get involved, and trust me they will sooner then later, this is going to drastically change the landscape.

I am excited about the maturing of Podcasting, I am thrilled to see some of the new ideas coming out of it and I hope that my friends and colleagues get to a point where they can make money doing something they love. But with this growth, there will be many challenges both known and unknown that we will all have to face as we begin to monetize this media.