Welcome to 'Transmitting to Earth'. I'm Charssun and I'll be your host. This blog and podcast is a byproduct of VoyagerRadio.com and is intended to provide the most timely information about this Internet radio station. It is also intended to be a fun and accessible electronic journal with commentary focusing on Internet radio, podcasting and webcasting issues and technologies, music, and some of my other interests. I also offer personal perspective about being an Internet radio broadcaster (and podcaster).
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Internet Radio Includes Podcasting: Agree or Disagree?Someone recently attempted to spam the Internet Radio Lovers, a forum on Yahoo!Groups that I moderate, with an advertisement announcing the addition of a new audio stream to their streaming audio website. As I was rejecting the ad, which was adding no apparent value to the ongoing dialogue about Internet radio on our forum, I noticed that the webcaster had added a postscript to his message, in which he had placed the following statement: "BTW, podcasting is not Internet Radio." To which I feel compelled to respond: I beg to differ with you, sir. I've considered this matter before, months ago, when I was initially deciding whether to include discussions about podcasting in our Internet radio forum. I quickly reached the conclusion that podcasting could (and should) most definitely be considered a form of Internet radio; this is the first protest I have heard on the matter thus far. Perhaps it should be known that the webcaster who'd made the statement against this notion is working with a successful and popular streaming audio venture, also referred to as an Internet radio station. Perhaps this fellow has come to think of Internet radio, which has been tethered to the web for so long, as belonging exclusively to the streaming class of media. I've always thought of Internet radio as exactly that, Internet radio. It's an online form of that broadcasting media we call radio. Any venture that utilizes the Internet to deliver more than a passing resemblance to terrestrial radio can be referred to as Internet radio, whether it be streamed or downloaded audio programming. Not convinced yet? Think of it this way: TiVo. Do you stop referring to television programs as such once they're recorded to a personal video recording device such as a TiVo? I'd guess not, since most people still consider digitally recorded programs to be television. Someday that may change, when viewers are able to directly download programming from the Internet (legally) without even bothering with a TiVo or a t.v. So the term Internet radio can include both audio that is streamed and audio that is transferred to your desktop computer or portable MP3 device through a method we've come to refer to as podcasting. That's my take on this - what's yours? Voyager Explorer Is Getting Really Far Out There; So Is VoyagerRadioWell, how do you like that? The Voyager 1 explorer is about to enter interstellar space. Voyager is already farther out in space than any other human-made object, but now it's going to be officially entering absolutely unknown territory. Who knows what our little buddy will find out there? Speaking of being "out there", I've introduced Session 03.5 of Tempo of the Down, an extended version of my downtempo podcast. This session features about 75 minutes of the best downtempo in the universe. Enjoy! What's In a Name? When It Comes to Podcasting, Perhaps EverythingI can provide an explanation to Dave Winer's rumination on why Chris Lydon's interviews were not podcasts in August 2003 (though they are now). It's simple: podcasts didn't exist then, since nobody had applied the term "podcast" to them yet. You think I'm being facetious? Sometimes it takes nothing more than a cute and catchy name to jumpstart a technology or innovation that hasn't yet captured the public's attention. Though the method of delivery is a key ingredient to making a podcast - and I mean key ingredient - it wasn't until somebody coined the phrase "podcast" that these digital audio recordings began to really proliferate. Most current arguments over its origins focus on the technologies that enable podcasting, yet the power of its catchy name is often overlooked or forgotten. Dave is certainly aware of the power of cute names and cartoony logos, seeming to have a fondness for a cute alien one named Blugg. Yet it must seem frustrating for him to have developed and pushed a technology for years, only to find it not taking off until something ridiculously simple as a proper name is applied to it. That's not all it took, of course, but it certainly helped make the technology accessible to the imaginations of those outside of the realm of RSS awareness. Yahoo! Introduces Its Own Digital Music Download ServiceYahoo! Music has now launched its own music download service, dubbed Yahoo! Music Unlimited. [Thanks to the Mobile Phone Fan for posting this news.] According to the New York Times: The service, available May 11, lets users play tunes from a catalog of more than one million songs, transfer tracks to portable devices and share music with friends through Yahoo Messenger.The use of Yahoo!'s Instant Messaging app is interesting, as it has the potential to make it extremely easy to share digital music online: By linking the service to its instant messaging application, analysts said Yahoo was aiming to make legal music-sharing a focus of its offerings.Due to Yahoo!'s high visibility and brand, the company's entry into this market is certain to bring digital music downloading to many more Internet users, a number of which have been thus far reluctant to engage in downloading activities due to the media's attention to illegal file sharing on Kazaa and other peer-to-peer networks. Mashboxx Service Uses Creative Technique to Sell Digital Music DownloadsNow that the latest Tempo podcast is in the can, I can turn to other things. Here's something fun: today's L.A. Times includes a story about former Grokster president Wayne Rosso and his new service Mashboxx. [Subscription may be required to read article online.] Mashboxx, which just began offering beta testing of its service, is a peer-to-peer file sharing network much like Kazaa and Grokster but which differentiates itself by utilizing a creative method of providing legal music downloads: A key piece of technology is coming from Snocap Inc., a San Francisco-based company led by Shawn Fanning and Ali Aydar, two veterans of the pioneering Napster file-sharing service. When a Mashboxx user tries to download a hit song from someone on one of the major filesharing networks, Snocap's song-recognition software will intervene and deliver an authorized, copy-protected version.So far EMI Group Plc, Universal Music Group, and Sony BMG Bertelsmann have signed deals with Snocap to keep track of their music. It'll be interesting to see how this service fares, so keep an eye on it. If you test it out, let me know what you think of it! Session 03 of Tempo of the Down Podcast Now AvailableSession 03 of my downtempo podcast is finally available! The podcast, Tempo of the Down, is a showcase of downtempo music of the electronic variety. The sessions are always around 30 minutes long; I've been seriously considering releasing an extended version of each session that's at least twice as long - perhaps 70 or 90 minutes. So keep an eye on VoyagerRadio for the extra podcast feed I'll be placing on the site if I make the extended version of Tempo available. Planning a Podcaster's ConferenceI am on the Planning Group for a podcaster's event, PodcasterCon, which is tentatively scheduled to take place sometime at the beginning of next year. So far we've had two planning meetings, and it looks like we've decided on following the Open Space Technology  model for the conference/learning event.Brian Russell originally conceived the idea of a podcaster's convention and opened up the planning and development to all interested parties, who may join the Planning Group at the event's wiki website or by emailing: info (at) podcastercon (dot) orgI consider Brian the ship's captain, so to speak, but this boat relies on its entire crew to make the journey to its destination. Brian has aimed to make the event a learning environment which is accessible to all podcasters by making it a low-cost event even the poorest of 'net broadcasters (like me) can attend. In the process, he also wants PodcasterCon to be noncommercial - free of the distractions of commercial sponsorships - so, as you can guess, PodcasterCon needs as much help as you have to offer. We want to make this a nurturing and experiental event, rather than one in which you'll simply take home a shitload of swag and memories of flashy corporate banners. By choosing this path, however, we will need to find funding elsewhere - and that's where we need your help, whether that be your ideas, your money, or otherwise. Here's the current budget for PodcasterCon. We're kicking around different ideas on how we can raise these funds, and we're certainly open to any ideas you can offer. Please comment here, email me, or head over to PodcasterCon.org to find out more about this event and to let us know you're interested. Hello, Dave. Would You Like to Hear a Song?A message from the HAL 9000: "Hello, Dave. Would you like to hear a song? Happy birthday to you..." Podcasting is Neither Radio Nor Blogging, It's PodcastingPodcasting, in its purest sense, is neither radio nor is it blogging. Podcasting is podcasting. Nothing like this has presented itself in this particular way before. It's a two-way media in a variety of ways, interactive to some extent and surely more so in the near future as tools develop to facilitate the process of producing podcasts. We tend to compare it to what we know, such as radio and blogging. Yet it's really both of these and then neither. It's what it is, and we're still figuring that out. Some will try to take it to traditional media formats, such as radio, and that's fine. Meanwhile podcasting will change, and mutate and branch out in various ways, and perhaps some of these branches won't make sense for broadcast or satellite radio. It's fun to hear ourselves on terrestrial (traditional) radio, especially if we grew up in an analog era, and I wouldn't mind my mousy voice being transmitted via radiowaves. Yet I'm more excited about the possibilities that are yet to come; I can't wait for the iPod of Internet radio to arrive, whenever that may be - a portable device that can recieve podcasts or other digital audio from anywhere, and without hassle. Who will create this device? Will Apple's lightning strike again, or will it be a smaller, Palm-like company? Will it be a group of podcasting engineers, pooling their resources together to "change the world"? Stay tuned. Besides this blog, a narrative blog called something that happened, and various other projects, I also moderate a discussion forum: Please consider subscribing to engage in a dialogue about all things having to do with Internet radio! |
Send Us Your Music
Artists! Want to be heard on this station? Email your MP3 audio, one file at a time, to our Program Director or mail your CD promo(s) to the following address:
Harold J. JohnsonVoyagerRadio
547 Gayley Avenue #1
Los Angeles, CA 90024 Make certain to let use know whether we may use the audio in our podcast, too!
Download the Podcast
We are officially podcasters now that we have revitalized and reintroduced our downtempo show Tempo of the Down, this time around as a podcast. Now showcasing independent downtempo we've been granted permission to offer for download, Tempo of the Down is our entry into the future of Internet radio.
Head over to our new Podcast area to download the latest session!
