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November 10, 2004
Podcast Review: The Radio Brothers Podcast
This entry posted in:
4 stars
, I subscribe
, Podcast Review
Format: Radio Show
Content: talk, with some music
Rating: 
What I'm going to do: subscribe
Typical Length: 15 - 20 minutes
The Radio Brothers, Ray and Kris Edwards, are a valuable addition to the podcasting mix. These are folks whose lives are wrapped up in the radio medium, who are radio professionals, and who love podcasting. They are huge evangelists of the potential of podcasting as a medium, and along with folks like public radio's Tony Kahn (of WGBH's Morning Stories), are voices in the wilderness.
Production values are high at The Radio Brothers Podcast, as you might expect. Their intro is well-produced, and they are both comfortable speaking and have a fairly polished delivery. Transitions between segments are smooth and well-handled. They sometimes take us for a bit of a ramble, but not enough to leave us behind, as it were.
The brothers Edwards discuss a wide variety of topics, from traditional radio and its limitaions to open source software. They play some pretty decent "podmusic"* and some clips from radio or elsewhere that are pretty interesting. They also plug other podcasts, which is always welcome, and some podcast-related sites (including this one - also appreciated, although I'm not a podcast as Ray mentioned). The blog has links to many of the relevant items they discuss. It's been Ray by himself for the bulk of the podcasts thus far, and I'm looking forward to them being able to do another one together (they did their first one together, but I think that was the only one).
They encode at 128Kbps, which seems a little high to me, but they did have some problems with audio quality with encoding at 64Kbps (a quality difference that I noticed, at least), so it's understandable that they chose the higher rate. Since the 'casts aren't terribly long the files aren't huge and can easily be handled - about a 1 minute download at 56kbps.
Occasionally not work- or child-safe.
Subscribe to mp3s.
* - after the jump; read on.
I had two further things to discuss about "podmusic" (don't know who coined the term; I've heard it was Adam's, but didn't hear it myself, so I can't verify). I didn't want them to clutter the review, so I stuck them here:
1) This is not nearly as sexy a term as "podcasting" and I pray to the gods that we as a group can come up with a better term. Not only is it not so sexy, but it's also far more dismissive and limiting than the podcasting term. At its worst, the term podcasting dismissed folks who didn't own iPods as unimportant to the new technology. However, podmusic relegates a whole group of artists to what's currently the basement of the music store. It doesn't matter that podcasting may overtake radio in the actual distribution of there artist's content; right now it's fringe and if I were an artist who heard their work categorized this way I think I'd be a little put out. I think we as a movement can come up with something both sexier and less limiting than "podmusic" and I hope we do before it becomes entrenched.
2) Thinking about this issue brought another one to mind; what's going to happen to these non-RIAA artists when they sign with an RIAA-connected label, as I expect many of them would like to do? Are podcasters going to leave them behind and move on to other music? Is that a good thing or not? Is there any loyalty earned or deserved from the podcasting community for these artists even after they sign? I certianly don't have the answers to these questions, but am curious to the outcome.
Tagged: podcast podcasting review
Posted by cori at November 10, 2004 10:42 PM