Less Than 90 Days To Podcasting Expo – PodcastTricks.com

It’s less than 90 days until the Second Annual Podcast & Portable Media Expo. I will be conducting the first session on the first day of the Expo. If you want to learn how to sell podcast sponsorships and write promos and ads that will keep your sponsors ready to renew, come to the seminar and be sure to grab me in the halls and introduce yourself.

And if you want a little better idea of what I’m going to talk about, Tim Bourquin, PME Expo founder, recently interviewed me about my session. You can download a very short mp3 file containing that interview if you’d like to listen, or just visit the conference page at the PME web site and click on the link that says, “Hear Scott describe his session.”

Free GarageBand Loops – PodcastingTricks.com

NOTE: Cross posted at O’Reilly Digital Media

iZotope and Goldbaby are offering XRB Free, a set of 16 iDrum Kits and 74 Apple Loops that work in GarageBand. The free loops are part of a larger commercial product called XRB. If you like the free loops, they are available for purchase at iZotope’s web site for a promotional price of $29 USD until July 23rd, 2006, when the price will return to $49 USD.

I downloaded and installed the free kits and loops and they worked like a charm. I found them to be sonically superior to many of the Apple drum loops and their organization and naming conventions made it easy to build solid drum grooves from the ground up.

As a podcaster, I am always on the lookout for new ways to introduce new sounds into my podcasts. This is a great way to change your sound without spending a dime.

New Podcast Research – PodcastingTricks.com

A company called eMarketer has just issued a new report on the podcast audience. It’s called Podcasting: Who’s Tuning In?

I have not read the full report – it costs $695. But the folks at eMarketer have released some preliminary data to the public.

This is the quote that I find most interesting:

“The audience for podcasts has shown meteoric growth, particularly in the US. It is variously projected to reach between 20 million and 80 million by 2010.”

While advertising on podcasts is in its infancy, the nature of the audience and strong growth already have major brands investing in podcast-based promotion. More advertising and sponsorship will inevitably follow.”

Draw your own conclusions. In my opinion, these numbers are low. But even at that, they provide important fuel for people who need an excuse to invest in podcasts.

RSS Research, Podcast Listener Habits – PodcastingTricks.com

What's the best day of the week to publish your podcast? What's the worst? What time of day do podcasters listen most actively? These and more questions were answered in a new survey compiled by a company called Pheedo.

Their results may not exactly be scientific given the small survey sample size, but the information is at least entertaining and possibly valuable since in these early days of podcasting, little research has been done into the habits of podcast listeners.

According to the Pheedo survey, Tuesday is the most active day for podcast RSS activity and Saturday the worst. I guess people still like to get out and do something on Saturday so the world isn't quite a giant couch potato yet.

Click through rates presented in the study suggest that late night podcastees are more likely to actively participate (click) while in the morning, participation is more likely to be "scanning."

If you want to reach 18-24 year olds that are tech savvy, publish your podcast late at night. They are most active then.

Bloglines, Firefox and Thunderbird are the top RSS aggregators – note this doesn't take into account pure podcasting, rather, it tracks RSS feeds. Since RSS is a big component of podcasting, podcasters can use this data to tweak their podcast publishing habbits and probably see similar results.

World Cup Generating Lots of Podcast Coverage – PodcastingTricks.com

As another sign of the popularity of podcasting, the world's most popular sporting event, The World Cup, is generating lots of podcasting coverage.

According to Podcastingnews.com, World Cup podcasts are being produced by news organizations, football (soccer) fans and even the Chancellor of Germany.The World Cup, the most important event in international football (soccer), brings together teams from member nations of Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), the sport's global governing body.

Here's a selection of just a few of the World Cup podcasts:
Mirror.co.uk World Cup 2006 Podcast
2GB World Cup Podcast
Baddiel & Skinner's World Cup Podcasts
ESPN Soccernet – World Cup '06
The Beautiful Game
The World Cup Cast

Is Internet Marketing Real? You Bet! – PodcastingTricks.com

The Internet Is Winning The Media War

Ball State University's Center for Media Design has just completed a survey showing that the Internet is the dominant at-work media and No. 2 in the home.

A conservative estimate from the study says 17 percent of overall media is consumed via the Internet.

The OPA-commissioned study also used census data to determine the spending habits of its 350 monitored subjects. Web dominant consumers' retail spending averaged $26,450, while the TV-dominant group's spending averaged $21,401.

Podcasting Legal Guide

The Center for Internet & Society at Stanford Law School has produced a podcasting legal guide. It is very basic but certainly worth a read if you're just getting started in the podcast arena.

You can find the guide at:

http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Podcasting_Legal_Guide#Trademark_Issues.