Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Legal Commentary Blogs -> Althouse

Legal Commentary

: Althouse

Goodbye to podcasting.

I've gone a year without putting a podcast up over here, where I've been paying $10 a month. Every month when I see the email telling me they've billed my credit card, I've felt a little pang. Why don't I podcast? And if I don't podcast, why don't I cancel my account? For one thing, if I cancel, my 87 old podcasts will disappear. That was something of a deterrent. But I've just canceled, and the disappearance is coming, so download them while you can. I'll still have my old digital files, but they will become unavailable in a month or two ? along with all the many spam comments ? buy wow gold cheap wow gold buy cheap wow gold ? that I haven't been bothering to delete.

I started podcasting in September 2005, and for a while, I felt that it was the coolest thing. I'd eagerly podcast twice a week, but those days are over. What happened?

1. Podcasts are not searchable. Unless you make a transcript, they seem to fall into oblivion. You can't see them.

2. YouTube! It undercut my interest in podcasting. It's free, it makes you part of a lively website, and I can embed the clips in blog posts ? so it has more to do with the blog (which is the main thing for me).

3. Bloggingheads. Involvement in this project extracts a lot of my talky material. It's the same idea of taking subjects I've blogged about and expanding and digressing. And, like YouTube, it gives me the feeling of being in a lively place ? and by contrast, my podcast page looked lonely and desolate.

4. I really did love the idea of developing an audio style that was eccentric and funny, but after 87 episodes, it just feels too obscure to energize me.

If you liked the podcasts, thanks for listening. You've already noticed the year's silence. This is just the announcement that I've pulled the plug.

ADDED:

1. I still like to listen to podcasts. I subscribe to rushlimbaugh.com so I can listen to the radio show in the evenings and without commercials. I go for a walk or clean the house at the same time. Useful. I'm also very fond of Skeptoid. Don't judge it by the new episode, though. That's unique... but hilarious.

2. This post made me realize how important it is to keep my blog on the free and extremely well-established Blogger. You might think it's no big deal to pay for your server, as I paid Libsyn to host my podcast. But are you thinking long term? If you stop blogging regularly, will you have to keep paying to keep your archive on line? If so, how long will you do that? Have you provided for payments to continue after you die? Or don't you care? I do!

Full post as published by Althouse on August 10, 2008 (boomark / email).