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April 01, 2005
Podcast Review: Acowo Podcast
This entry posted in:
3 and a half stars
, I do not subscribe
, Podcast Review
ACOWO: Introduction of High Quality Netlabels
Format: individual music tracks
Content: independent music
Rating: 
What I'm going to do: not subscribe
Typical Length: 3 - 12 minutes
The Acowo podcast is essentially a companion to the Acowo blog, a resource for "Introduction of High Quality Netlabels." In other words, Acowo is essentially a site for tracking new releases from a few hand-picked netlabels.
Your host at the weblog is Kengo Miyazaki, and for this site he's picked a few "labels that are dealing with minimal, techno, abstract, experimental, ambient, noise and stuff like that." (from the FAQ). Kengo blogs information about new releases from his chosen labels, including label, artist, album, track information, availability of a donation page or shop, license for the MP3s, and host for the MP3s. There is often additional descriptive information about the artist culled from the source site for the netlabel. To that extent, the Acowo site seems to be a very useful place to find new music of this sort.
The podcast aspect of the production consists of the individual tracks that Kengo links to from the blog posts; all of the tracks he posts links to on the site are also 'cast over the feed. In this sense the Acowo podcast is very similar to the Starfrosch Podcast. I have detailed my opinions of single-track podcasts previously, in the reviews for both the Starfrosch Podcast and The Big Chap Podcast, so I won't go into detail here. Suffice it to say I can't comment meaningfully on delivery or production values for this podcast. The music Kengo podcasts is not altogether to my taste, but it is well executed and of high quality. The encoding rate is high (typically 192 kbps or above) frequently resulting in fairly large downloads. Given that the podcast comes out several times a week, you'll be downloading a fair amount of data. Track naming is satisfactory, and the file naming is OK as well, although it's sometimes difficult to decipher.
Subscribe to mp3s.
Tagged: podcast podcasting review music minimal techno abstract experimental ambient noise netlabel
Posted by cori at April 1, 2005 03:58 PM