McFilter

Music Industry Embracing Podcasting?

Last week, the BBC published an article about a new licensing deal available for podcasts (for my non-techie readers, here's the Wikipedia entry explaining podcasts). I'm surprised it hasn't been more widely reported and commented upon, as it seems to be one of the few times that the "music industry" tries to embrace the Internet and new technologies.

The Association of Independent Music is a trade organization of independent UK music labels, and whose members represent artists such as Bloc Party, Stereophonics, The White Stripes, The Strokes, Basement Jaxx, Paul Weller and Arctic Monkeys. The licence, details of which can be found in the press release (pdf), will have a tiered approach based on the nature of the podcaster and looks like it will involve a fixed fee for non-commercial podcasters, with commercial podcasters having to also pay a percentage of revenues. The podcaster will have to provide statistics on the number of downloads, and also ensure there is a certain amount of talking or station ID at the start or end of each track.

The success of this initiative will depend on how much of their catalogue the labels make availalble to podcasters, and the cost of the licences. The BBC's high profile use of podcasting (and the fact that the podcasts currently available don't include any music) should help encourage the opening up of the catalogue, so lets hope that the costs aren't prohibitive for the "proper" individual podcasters.