GIF: what podcasts I listen to

Siskita, a follower in LA of my twitter feed (twitter.com/markbaratelli asked me what podcasts I listen to. So, I made this gif to illustrate it. I blacked out the sucky ones I need to delete and grouped the ones I do listen to by category as best as I could. (Some of them overlap into other categories). Thoughts?

Starbucks giving away free music

From NME.com:

Starbucks are set to give away 1.5 million free songs every day starting October 2.

The coffee chain has teamed up with iTunes to give away tracks by Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell and Band Of Horses, amongst others, with the number of songs available set to reach 50 million by November 7.

Customers will get a free 'song of the day' card throughout the promotion which will also feature material from Paul McCartney, John Mayer and Joss Stone.

The chain is also implementing their 'Wi-fi Music Store' service, which will kick off in New York and Seattle, expanding to the rest of Starbucks' shops as the year progresses. The service will enable customers to buy tracks wirelessly from the chain's 'Hear Music' label at the coffee shops.

Tunecore gets you on itunes

For my friends who make music (which total zero), I found out about a website you might be interested in via a New York Times article I read on my phone.

Let me pause and say reading the Times on my phone is so very nice. (A) I don't have to carry around a physical newspaper and (B) I am getting the newspaper's content FOR FREE! The best use of the phone-newspaper is when you're on an elyptical machine. No pages to turn, no paper to wrinkle and crinkle. It's just there right in front of you in your hands, on your little phone.

The website is Tunecore.com. You pay Tunecore.com some pretty small fees and in turn, you can sell your songs and albums on itunes!

Now of course I am not a musician. I podcast. So I am interested in selling my podcasts, both already-produced and forthcoming. I thought I could somehow turn Tunecore.com into my very own podcasting money machine. But I can't due to the length of my shows.

They deal in albums, and every album lasts 74 minutes. And you cannot sell just single songs on itunes through Tunecore.com without having those single songs attached to an album. So if a podcast episode is 30-minutes (which many of mine are), here's the breakdown of what I would pay:

-One-time fees of 99 cents per single song (which, in my case, is a 30-minute episode). Not bad.

-One-time fee of 99 cents per album (which in my case, would contain two 30-minute "songs"). Not bad.

-$20/year for that album. Bad.

I wrote the company asking about a volume discount, which they do offer. However, the concept of single songs only being available for purchase if an album is attached to those songs would remain. I was looking to skip the whole album concept and just have them sell songs (30-minute podcasts) for 99 cents. No go.

The best way to handle this would be for me to create short-form content that's about the length of a song. I could pack several 3-minute-ish episodes onto one album, making the album worth the $9.99 price tag, and if the content is really good, people might buy the 3-minute episode "singles" since (A) it's good content and (B) they already buy 3-minute musical content.