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Podcast improvements
The 45 podcasts that are produced weekly are now featured on the home page. You can play them directly from the pulldown list on the bottom of the home page:
Our podcasts are:
In general, I find listening to podcasts to be the most enjoyable way to discover new music at Magnatune, it seems much more like listening to a friend's mix tape. When guests come over for dinner, I put a podcast on.
FYI download members get to enjoy 2 hour long podcasts, and they have no ads in them.
In addition, I've improved the podcast flash player so that you can jump within the hourlong podcast, and a timer shows you exactly where you are in it, so that if you hear a song you like, you can see from the table-of-contents what it is, and jump right to that album.
I've marked the new timer feature, and the ability to jump with arrows in this graphic:
Posted by John Buckman on February 6, 2011 at 02:52 PM | Permalink
Comments
Out of curiosity, will the podcasts also be made (eventually retrofitted) with the new small adverts during the songs?
Posted by: Spike Page at Feb 6, 2011 9:08:40 PM
Nice. Could you also add a version of the newsletter for members? So that browsing through the new albums directly gives the non-nagging audio?
Posted by: joerg at Feb 7, 2011 4:45:49 AM
Nice. Could you also add a version of the newsletter for members? So that browsing through the new albums directly gives the non-nagging audio?
Absolutely, I'm working on that now and it should be ready either this week or next.
The way it'll work is that if your newsletter email address is the same as your member email address, then the newsletter will automatically be rewritten for you, to be the member version, without commercials, and with direct download links too.
-john
Posted by: John from Magnatune at Feb 7, 2011 7:44:55 AM
Out of curiosity, will the podcasts also be made (eventually retrofitted) with the new small adverts during the songs?
Honest answer: I don't know yet.
Podcasts consume a huge amount of our bandwidth, each day between 30% to 60% of our total bandwidth, depending on time of day.
Magnatune has been around almost 9 years, and while we all love free music, we've found that people who listen every day, without ever paying, are (over time) a greater portion of our audience (99.95% currently) and unfortunately, we can't afford to pay our bills and continue to give so much away for free.
I'd love to be in a position to give music away for free forever, but really at this point we need to be a viable business, or simply shut down forever. That basically means offering less for free.
-john
Posted by: John from Magnatune at Feb 7, 2011 7:51:09 AM
John: I was more thinking in terms of http://magnatune.com/info/news/email/albums-2011-02-05.html etc (the Newsletter link on the main page). The same links are currently missing on download.magnatune.com.
Posted by: joerg at Feb 7, 2011 8:52:11 AM
John: I was more thinking in terms of http://magnatune.com/info/news/email/albums-2011-02-05.html etc (the Newsletter link on the main page). The same links are currently missing on download.magnatune.com.
Ah good point. The newsletters aren't linked off the download member home page at the moment, because the newsletters point to music-with-ads in them. I didn't think that download members would appreciate that.
However, when I fix the emailed newsletter to go to no-commercials audio, I'll also update the download member home page to point to that new (members only) newsletter.
Thanks for pointing that out,
-john
Posted by: John from Magnatune at Feb 7, 2011 9:09:19 AM
Are there plans to incorporate the podcasts into the iPhone app?
Posted by: Zachariah at Feb 12, 2011 9:29:07 AM
Are there plans to incorporate the podcasts into the iPhone app?
The podcasts work with itunes and the iphone app "ipod" for playing podcasts.
The podcasts can all be subscribed to with itunes, which then means they're automatically downloaded by your computer and then synced to your iphone or ipod.
-john
Posted by: John from Magnatune at Feb 12, 2011 9:43:49 AM
Instead of putting those adverts into the podcasts, I would prefer shorter free podcasts.Say only 30, 45 minutes long.
Also, advertising on the site, as in the HTML webpage, not the music, for non-members would bring more money in. The adverts only would have to be small and out of the way, but there. (just a clarification from my last comment). Remember, thats how capitalism works...
Posted by: roland985 at Feb 16, 2011 5:02:45 AM
John, I have a fairly low bandwidth allowance on my mobile phone but enjoy the podcasts. Would it be possible to download the podcasts on my computer so I can listen to them on my phone without using up my allowance? I am a download member.
Posted by: Danceswithcats at Feb 28, 2011 1:16:44 AM
