Introducing NPR Cast · Mar 6, 8:16pm
So, podcasting is all the rage these days. You almost can’t fire up your news reader these days without seeing people rant (or rave) about podcasting. As I have mentioned in a previous article about podcasting, I haven’t really found all that many compelling podcasts out there that are worth listening to. For the most part, podcasts are recorded by untrained amateurs and have a very low production quality. This may change, but that is the state of things right now.
Currently, my daily commute is made more palatable through a strange combination of National Public Radio, Audio Books, and Sports Talk Radio. I like the production quality and the professionalism of all these options, but I really don’t like the fact that I am at the command of the NPR producers when it comes to the times I get to listen to their shows. I almost never have an opportunity to listen to Fresh Air, and I generally miss large chunks of both Morning Edition and All Things Considered that I am interested in, and instead have to listen to portions of the show that I am generally less interested in.
Where am I going with all this? Well, I decided that it was about time that someone brought podcasting to National Public Radio. I have written a piece of software that I am currently calling NPR Cast. Its written in Python for Mac OS X and is a native Cococa application. It allows you to see a list of “segments” or “stories” on NPR for a variety of shows on any day you choose, and it lets you pick and choose which ones you are interested in listening to. It will then download the radio streams from NPR’s website, convert them to very nicely compressed MP3’s with full ID3 tags, and then add them to iTunes (and thus, your iPod).
Below is a little screenshot of the current work-in-progress UI. It needs a lot of work, and I am still learning Cocoa, so please be kind :)
This brings me to my purpose for posting this article: I have some questions I need answered before I finish this thing up and release it into the wild:
- Is something like this compelling to people other than me?
- Would you pay a small shareware fee for an application like this? How much is it worth to you?
- Currently, this application depends on MPlayer and LAME. Does anyone know if I am even allowed to redistribute these commercially?
- How do you think that NPR would react to a piece of commercial software that could bog down their servers?
- Give me a better name, I am not really happy with the temporary one.
So, there you have it. NPR Cast has been introduced to the world. What do you all think? Please please fill up my comments with lots of feedback, and I might even release it as open source donationware!
Comment
- hey Jonathan.. so this is what you’ve been doing ;)
i don’t have an ipod, but i’m passing this along to those who do…
— alicson 1356 days ago # - 1. i’m compelled, it actually made me more interested in looking into podcasting than wired’s article did.
2. i’m a broke college student but, yes, if i had the money. i’m thinking $5-10, but i’ll address my concerns in #4.
3. no idea, but i’d imagine you can.
4. i think you’d hear from them about this. either they’ll love you and want to do something similar or hate you and shut you down. currently it’s possible for almost anyone to do this (although it takes multiple programs that you’ve consolidated into one). you make it easier for the average person, and making things easier for people is a problem to others. plus, i think npr sells tapes/transcripts so this might cut into that. but if they were to initiate a subscription based podcasting style service, i think this would be a great start.
5. i think the current name is good but i’ll try to think of some ideas.
best of luck with this!
— daniel 1356 days ago # - I don’t really know the answer to the above questions, other than to say if that if I got to try it, and I liked it, I’d definitely shoot a few dollars your way. I pretty much pay for any software I really use.
— Matt 1356 days ago # - I forgot to add—the one way to really know is to make it available! I’d love to try it, but it’s hard to say how useful it might be sight unseen.
— Matt 1356 days ago # - Matt,
I would love to make it available, but I am afraid that the NPR folks or the MPlayer or LAME folks would get upset.
I need to figure out these details first, and give the app some polish, before I release it. At the very least, it will end up being open source and free.
— Jonathan LaCour 1356 days ago # - I’m not a lawyer, but…
Any application that gets distributed with an mp3 encoder/decoder is, I believe supposed to pay royalties to Fraunhofer (holders of the mp3 patent). Lots of folks distribute mp3 software anyway, but it’s led to some Linux distributions dropping out-of-the-box mp3 support in order to avoid the possibility of a legal problem.
— James 1355 days ago # - I understand the considerations Jonathan (and James makes a good point). I just wanted to get my hands on it! :) Not having a 45-minute commute anymore, I never get to catch Morning Edition or All Things Considered anymore. Good luck with it.
— Matt 1355 days ago # - 1. Brilliant. I love it!
2. Sure, probably not more than $10, though.
3. No idea.
4. There are a few potential issues. One, the name of the app ‘NPR cast’ is likely to come up against a trademark violation. Two, some shows, like This American Life don’t let you download their stuff (as opposed to stream) because they would have to pay their contributers per use. Three, NPR has a revnue stream—audible.com downloads, shows on CD—that you’re likely disrupting here.
Having said that, some programs have jumped on the bandwagon – case in point, On the Media’s podcast. Also, it is public radio, so…
You might consider linking to the donation page for the station that produces each show (for example WHYY, where Fresh Air is produced). Then, recommend that each user donate a specific, identifiable amount—for example, every NPRCast user donate some amount that ends in $.07. If there are a significant number of donations that show up as $XX.07, you could make the case that you’re actually helping to contribute to their programming.
5. I’m terrible at names…
— Jim Ray 1355 days ago # - Great feedback Jim! I think that you are correct on the name being dangerous. I will most definitely be changing the name. So, keep up with the suggestions people. I need something safer :)
As for the prospect of making this a commercial app, I think its doomed to failure due to legal issues. However…
You bring up an excellent point about disrupting the public radio revenue stream. I think that this app has a chance to potentially impact that revenue stream in a postive way. There are a lot of people out there who are simply unwilling to pay a ton to get the downloads through audible.com, especially considering that it downloads the entire show (which you might not want). In addition, there are people who listen to the streams anyway because of the freedom that they get regarding when they listen, and which parts of the show they listen to. These people likely don’t donate much, but are frustrated because they can’t put the shows on their iPods and listen in the car.
This is where I come in. If I make NPRCast donationware, and divert the vast majority of the revenue I make to the stations that produce each show that NPRCast supports, I can actually help support these shows in a creative way. The app will almost certainly be Open Source (not sure which license yet), so as the application gets improved, more people will use it, more people will donate, and public radio benefits from it.
Ideally, NPR will begin podcasting all of their shows for free in the future, but until that day, I think that my application can help scratch that itch for Mac users, and maybe support NPR in the process.
Keep up those suggestions!
— Jonathan LaCour 1355 days ago # - I think this is a GREAT idea, but one that will probably require the cooperation of the parties whose content you are podcasting. I think that if NPR is progressive they will see the benefits of such a system for them.
It would really be nice if this idea could be made to work more generally with audiocasts, rather than specifically NPRs. Then one could simply subscribe to a particular audio program (the way one subscribes to an RSS feed now) and the application would let you listen to any item in the list.
That would also help the software maker avoid liability, because he would simply be creating a program that takes a given input (subscribed stream) that is defined by the USER and cataloging it for the user to play back (rather than the software defining that input with hardwired code).
The other advantage to this system would be that if the source changed the URL to their stream the user can just subscribe to the new on. With hardwired code you would need to come out with a new version.
I think this is a great idea and one I would definitely be interested in. Essentially you are creating a web application version of the RadioShark ( http://arstechnica.com/reviews/hardware/radioshark.ars ). Or am I misunderstanding the whole concept?
— CheekyGeek 1354 days ago # - Interesting to see that the moment I post something, it is “4 hours ago”.
: )
— CheekyGeek 1354 days ago # - While I find the idea interesting and potentilly useful, I have some thoughts sort of against it:
1) I already have a license for Audio Hijack Pro, which can basically do what this does and much more. It looks like your app records from the archive, while I use AHP to record a live stream using timers. This allows me to record from several different NPR stations (and college radio, and internet only streams) rather than going after one archival source.
2) When I do use AHP, I record to a bookmarkable AAC format rather than MP3. This gives me a smaller file at the same bit rate and allows me to pause a playback, go to something else, and return to the original without starting over.
3) WNYC’s On The Media has already been mentioned as an NPR show being podcast, but I’ll point out that KCRW is making many of their programs avaliable for podcast too. There are some others. I’m hoping that eventually NPR will decide to podcast their big shows like Morning Edition and All Things Considered.
I fear that a dedicated app for recording NPR content (as opposed to AHP which has many uses other than just recording NPR, for example, it’s being used by many people ike Adam Curry to create podcasts) will make NPR think negatively about giving listeneres time-shifted audio in general.
— Jaeger 1354 days ago # - Must…...listen….....to…....Fresh Air…...
— Brad Murphy 1354 days ago # - This is cool. If I am not mistaken, you are legally allowed to make time-shifted recording as much as you’d like. See: RadioShark. I do think you’ll need to change the app’s name to something more generic, but I believe you are on very safe legal grounds. After all, you are providing an application that records and converts just like Griffin technology does with the Radio Shark. There is no need to divert money to stations, though that would be a nice thing to do.
— Dickie 1333 days ago # - This is what I’ve wanted for months now. Trouble is I use a PC, not a MAC. WOuld certainly be willing to pay a shareware fee of $20 or more for a PC version. Excellent idea! Hope you get to develop it fully.
— Carl Lewis 1301 days ago # - Answers:
1. gimmegimmegimee!!!
2. I would pay any price, climb any mountain, swim every river, etc. about $10.
3. dunna.
4. Donno.
5. Errr… no idea…
— benzilla 1243 days ago #
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