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February 06, 2011

Comments

Spike Page

Out of curiosity, will the podcasts also be made (eventually retrofitted) with the new small adverts during the songs?

joerg

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?

John from Magnatune

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

John from Magnatune

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

joerg

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.

John from Magnatune

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

Zachariah

Are there plans to incorporate the podcasts into the iPhone app?

John from Magnatune

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

roland985

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...

Danceswithcats

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.

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