Podcast: Jazz, classical and more

In my previous post I've recommended a podcast for metal.

For jazz, I enjoyed Red Raspus Radio, mainly about the Seattle jazz scene. It's a pleasant surprise that they've got some really good musicians up there.

For classical, the king of budget recordings, Naxos, has done a great job in promoting classical music once again. Check out Naxos Classical Music Spotlight

You could find both of the above podcasts at Yahoo! Podcast as well as Apple's iTunes Podcast Directory if that's how you subscribe to podcasts.

While I'm on the topic of podcast, I gotta admit I have a tendency to downplay or underestimate the usefulness of new internet paradigm. I've done it to Webmail (when Hotmail first appeared) and I did it to podcast again :P I blame it on the ineffectiveness of Podcast client/directory in sorting out the good stuff from the massive sea of podcasts. A lot of clichés about podcast still applies: like many people are still over-using sound effects (we don't need that much ECHO-ECho-echo or left-to-right panning) and most still sound like the podcaster was rambling on and on to no one but himself (or herself) Anyway, podcasting is ideal for enthusiasts of non-mainstream interests (in the case of music: jazz, metal and classical) to "spread the gospel" since the narrow audience cannot justify the use of more expensive technologies.

That said, we still need better organization/classification of Podcast, i.e., the equivalent of what Yahoo did to the early days of WWW. Podcast Alley and Yahoo! Podcast are in the right direction but still have long ways to go. For example, when I use the keywords "jazz music," I'm still getting a ton of irrelevant links.

Finally, I should probably answer the 1st question newbies would ask: "How do you listen to Podcast?" The minimal requirement is a computer that connects to the internet, preferably with broadband. Most of the Podcasts I recommend links to their website, which further link to mp3 files. You could simply right-click on your browser, download the files and listen in your favourite MP3 player. Or you could "subscribe" to the podcast so that you'll get the latest episode when it is published through podcast client software of your choice. Personally, I've tried the open source Juice Receiver before (formerly known as iPodder. BTW, the name changed because Apple didn't like the iPod part in it. I wonder why Apple has to alienate people who makes their products more popular. Maybe it has to do with the fact that your trademark will be weaken if you don't actively defend it all the time?) and I use iTunes now, just because I have iTunes installed for sync-ing with iPod already. Not that I prefer proprietary software over open source ones. For iTunes, you either find the podcast in their directory and subscribe or open the .pcast file with it. For other clients, you could specify the URL of the RSS feed of the podcast.

Now you should start enjoying the shows I recommended!