40 seconds of advertising on a 90 second podcast isn’t going to engage MTV’s switched on audience.
Podcasting News - MTV Video Podcast Almost 50% Advertising

Audemos recently signed a 12 month contract with Jack Brand Marketing to support them with music and sound production for the international beer brand Heineken.

Jack Brand creates and distributes content for different brands ranging from Haymarket Publishing through to Heineken and V2 records.

“It’s great to have Audemos working closely with Jack Brand as our business develops. With new clients coming on board it’s essential that we have the kind of professional skills they offer at hand so that we can respond to our clients requirements”

John Hazell, Jack Brands Commercial Director.

When will listening to and accessing podcasts be transparent

Hopefully very soon.  Songbird promises to be a new kind of media player.  Bloggers have called it “The Firefox of media players”.  Songbird themselves say this,

Songbird™ is a desktop Web player, a digital jukebox and Web browser mash-up. Like Winamp, it supports extensions and skins (feathers). Like Firefox®, it is built from Mozilla®, cross-platform and open source.

It is currently in public beta, and has been for around 12 months.  It’s meant to be out of beta sometime in 2007, and it won’t be a moment too soon.

At Audemos, we want to offer our clients the easiest way for their users to listen to their podcasts.  And when we say easy, we mean pretty and easy.  Right now, there is no easy way for everyone to access podcasts on every platform, it just doesn’t exist.  Songbird goes a long way to sort this problem.

Songbird works on Windows, Mac and Linux.  It works with iPods and most other MP3 players.  It can sync with iTunes and can also play music you have bought from the iTunes music store.  But, the best bit for me is the browser that allows you to search for podcasts using google/yahoo/search engine.  You can browse to pages that have podcast feeds, and Songbird searches out all media on that page and allows you to download them to add to your iPod or stream them.

Listening to podcasts needs to become as easy as switching a radio on or playing a CD, and Songbird is a small wingflap in the right direction.

Croncasts review says it best

I haven’t been this excited about a technology or piece of software since I first found out about podcasting.

So go check it out.

Mr Bear plans to release 156 new songs this year.  Podington is releasing them via a podcasting channel, you can subscribe here.

Took a listen to Elephants on Parade, and I could imagine elephants parading to it.  It didn’t really excite me that much, but I love the concept of releasing a new song every Monday, Wednesday and Friday using simple podcasting technology.

If your a musician and need some advice on setting up your own podcasting label, get in touch with Audemos.

Found this on Wired, and they have an interview with Podington on their blog.

This is a nifty one for ripping radio.

“The MusicDock is a portable MP3 player and a stand alone FM-radio with MP3 capture technology”

“Simply tune in any radio station and dock the MP3 player. The MusicDock recognizes any music category and captures the separate songs automatically”

“No computers or internet connections are needed to collect your MP3 tracks! It’s very easy to use.”

Well it sounds good in principle, but somehow I am thinking that a DAB tuner might have helped…and if collecting mp3s is what it’s all about…I think I’ll collect mine without the guidance of my local radio schedulers.

Thanks to Donald Melanson at Engadget for pointing this one out.

There is an interesting story on Wired about a company called Rock River Communications, which claims it has done deals with major labels so it’s podcasts can contain major label music. Wired asks:

What do you think? Could this patronage model ultimately be a good thing for artists, “podcasters,” and fans, or is it a sellout that will mostly be ignore?

My first thought when I read this was, cool, this is just what podcasting needs, a way for people to use “real” music. No more awful free music on podcasts. Then I realised that Rock River are only going to deal with major ad agencies, so small podcasters won’t get a look in. This isn’t so good.

This is a bit of a non story, as agencies like Rock River have been able to do deals like this before, in fact anyone can approach a label and license music. I guess they are just jumping on the Podcasting bandwagon and creating a bit of PR for themselves.

By the way, at Audemos we deal with podcasters big and small.