Narrowpodcasting
I never really got into the production side of podcasting, mostly because i can’t stand hearing recordings of my own voice, but lately i’ve been thinking about starting a podcast of my own. To be more specific a narrowpodcast of music i feel like sharing with friends and people i know.
Of course i realize that it’s probably a really bad idea putting copyrighted music up publicly for free download, not just from a legal or economic point, but also a moral point. I’d probably understand if the music industry sued someone for something like that. Nonetheless i believe in fair use and i see no wrongdoing in sharing music you like with people you like.
On first glimpse the technical side of something like this doesn’t seem too challenging: put some podcasting-capable publishing system up (loudblog looks nice), add http authentication (as most feedreaders seem to cope with this kind of authentication mechanism), hand out login-data to friends and you’re good to go. Except that if all my friends started doing this, i probably wouldn’t bother subscribing because handling it all would still be a bit too cumbersome. And if i wouldn’t bother, i can’t realistically expect other people to bother, right?
Using httpauth for this basically fails with insufficient authentication infrastructure on two ends: on the publishing side it’s cumbersome e-mailing around supers3kr3t urls and login data and you’ll have to worry about these leaking out, even if you’re just publishing for a few select friends and acquaintances. If you’re really paranoid you’ll start monitoring traffic patterns and anything out of the ordinary will trigger a reissuing of passwords. On the consuming side it’s cumbersome keeping track of ever-changing urls and login data. Implementing a proper authentication system certainly isn’t an insurmountable challenge, but it’s an extra mile i’m most definitely not willing to go for this vague idea.
Thinking of it, a hosted narrowpodcasting platform with proper identity management mechanism would be sweet - something like livejournal, but with mp3s instead of words and pictures. Bandwidth costs and ongoing music industry sue-happiness might be prohibitive for something like this, but still, anyone knows if something similar is in the plans at the big social networks? Seems like a natural fit, after all.
Even if not, there are plenty established, well populated and working social software services with refined identity management out there already. Thinking back to the ingenious myspace hack (technical details available here) that made the rounds a few weeks ago i wouldn’t be entirely surprised if you could piggyback on the established social networks with some scripting magic, except that the networks are probably shutting down this extensibility now.
Anyway, anyone knows of some community-centered narrowpodcasting platform out in the wild?