BuzzMachine

I wrote my Guardian column this week about Annik Rubens (aka Larissa Vassilian), the podcaster behind Schlaflos in München and Filme und So, whose voice was a siren call that helped draw me to Munich on my way back home from Europe a week ago. The column is here; an alternate page is here. An excerpt:

I wanted to meet Vassilian to find out whether that voice was indeed authentic - it is - and to learn how she does it. In a Munich cafe, she told me she has loved radio since she was young. Instead of watching German TV, she escaped to her room and listened to the Voice of America because “it seemed wonderfully exotic”. As a result, she learned to speak flawless English and also how to make lively radio - how, in her words, to put laughter in her voice as she speaks into her microphone, imagining that she is simply talking to a friend on the phone. As a teenager, she worked part-time at a Munich radio station. Now, as a 29-year-old journalist, she can be, like any freelancer, chewed up and spat out by various German publications. And so she came to try podcasting.

This is a cautionary tale for media bosses: it’s hard for talent to rise and survive in your institutions. But on the internet, with her podcasts and her thousands of faithful fans, Vassilian has the freedom to be herself. Later, I asked her partner on Filme und So, Timo Hetzel, what he plans to do when he finishes his studies. “Podcast,” he replied, without hesitation. Beware: tomorrow’s stars are no longer necessarily interested in yesterday’s media.

We spent hours in a Schwabing cafe talking about podcasts, journalism, advertising, media, and that night, I got to meet Timo with other bloggers in a restaurant over great wurst (Eamonn Fitzgerald reported).

One tidbit I didn’t put in the Guardian column because it would have been meaningless to a UK audience was that one of the DJs who influenced Vassilian was Shadoe Stevens. See, he was good for something.

She was amused that one of the commenters here wondered, upon learning that I’d meet her, whether she was a “babe.” I’ve never been asked that about meeting bloggers. (Winer’s no babe.) Her smile is every bit as enchanting as her voice and, yes, she is as lovely as she sounds. But she doesn’t look like what you’d expect. And this leads to a funny media story she told me. Vassilian’s mother is Bavarian and her father is Armenian. She has long, curly, and dark hair — which is to say that she doesn’t have the blond hair and blue eyes you’d expect. She said that based on her cohost Timo’s voice, she might have thought in turn that he has blond hair and blue eyes but he, too, doesn’t look like he sounds. Anyway, Larissa said that the German TV magazines (more successful these days than TV Guide) seem to have a rule that they must have a blonde-haired, blue-eyed actress on the cover for every issue and she had to write some of those cover stories. One week, part of her story was how the actress had two different colored eyes and how bizarre that is. But by the time the issue came out, though that anecdote stayed in the cover, the actress’ picture had been Photoshopped so she had two blue eyes. In old media, you have to look the part. On the internet, nobody knows you’re a brunette.

As the kerfluffle over Audible’s podcast offering went on, I was wondering what Audible’s PR people must have been thinking, Cal Bruckner speculates that it was a form of new-age viral marketing. Mitch Ratcliffe says no but doesn’t back away from the stove and throws some more fuel on it. I still wonder what the PR people are thinking. There has to be a middle ground between disingenous flackery and flaming, just as there is a middle ground between messaging and listening. I’d like to see a Steve Rubel case study of this one.

O’Reilly comes out with a pocket guide on how to podcast.

There has been a very good and spirited discussion about Audible’s efforts to measure and serve ads on podcasts with many pioneers — Dave Winer, Doc Searls, Om Malik — giving their reaction and Mitch Ratcliffe, who helped create the Audible product, responding in turn. Audible should be listening to the marketplace to figure out how to make this work, for the marketplace is telling them they’re on the wrong road. Maybe they will. But it certainly doesn’t help when Mitch gets personal about Dave. Dave responds as well he should.

I understand what it feels like to work hard on a product only to find some people issuing Bronx cheers. The design of the first Entertainment Weekly sucked. I couldn’t say that out loud; I did need to defend our product. But we rushed the fastest redesign in magazine history because we listened. Audible: You’re trying to do something for and with the podcasting world and the podcasting world is giving you tons of good advice. Listen first. Turn off the microphone and leave your headset on.

: Doc also here and here and Mitch comes back here. The personal stuff is only noise.

: LATER: Ben Barren does a great analysis of Audible’s 3-cents-per price for measuring each listen of each podcast. I translated that into a $30 CPM and said it was insane. Ben shows how those numbers compute for one ‘cast, Keith and the Girl, to demonstrate just how insane it is:

Chemda (the girl) mentioned last week they had 500,000 listeners. Remember they have no advertising. Yet, Their Own Choice. They’re not even sure what Adam Curry does or what his business model is. Listen to their other LA episodes this week : Here and here. Times that by 3 cents per listen for the charge audible want for tracking stats and .AA conversion I assume : That equals $15,000 for one episode of Keith and Hurl. Times that by 5 shows per week. $75,000 a week. Lots of vig there. Ill give audible benefit of doubt and say 4 weeks per month. That’s $300,000 or $3.6 million per year for K+TG to get stats on listeners. (and remember you can listen to podcasts on your PC and not enter any user details so im not sure how audible really think they will get comprehensive user details) Im sure you can run your discount factors, non-active subscriber numbers, monthly churn rates, % of those that dont listen to the whole podcast - to get to a total KeithandtheGirl monthly usage number, but if you want my opinion, Audible just spent $35K on a Wordcast Sponsorship for the “Portable Media Expo” to build “negative brand equity” as they used to say in my DDB ad agency days.

See, too, Mike Arrington’s proper fit over Audible’s moves.

There are some interesting features that add to the podcasting discussion and normally I’d write about it over at TechCrunch. For instance, Much of what Audible is doing is goes way beyond what Fruitcast (TechCrunch profile) is allowing publishers to do. While Fruitcast allow insertion of ads into podcasts and tracks downloads, Audible is able to pingback listening metadata as well (albeit via a closed file format and crazy prices), something that will be very interesting for publishers.

But wow, did they ever screw up the follow up to the announcement.

Dave Winer, a podcasting papa, adds this to the discussion about Audible’s attempts to make a business out of measuring traffic and serving ads on what it calls podcasts (that is, what it serves in its proprietary format):

By design, podcasting took a poison pill at the very beginning of its life that made it impossible for the corporate types to subvert it without fundamentally changing what it is. That’s why I was sure that Audible wasn’t doing podcasting.

Basically MP3 can’t be rigged up to serve the purpose of advertisers, and that’s why I love MP3. And only MP3 provides the portability and compatibility that users depend on. Any other method will force them to jump through hoops that they will resist. If so, then podcasting isn’t for the advertisers.

And Doc Searls adds:

Meanwhile, back to Dave’s poison pill.
Podcasting is a perfect example of what happens when the market supplies itself. We chose MP3 because it worked on devices like the iPod, even though it was closed in other ways. And because it couldn’t be closed in ways that matter.
It’s amazing to me that we’re still only beginning to understand that free and open markets doesn’t mean “your choice of silo”. But we’ll only understand it by making markets ourselves.
And at that we’re still at about the year 1480.
Key point: the silo-builders can’t lead us out of the dark ages. They can help, but they can’t lead. That’s our job.

I disagree with Dave at my peril because he’s usually right. But he and I do disagree by a few degrees about advertising and blogs and podcasts.

I do agree with him and Doc that the virtue of the MP3 as the vehicle of choice for podcasts — like RSS — is that they are open and cannot be controlled. I also now see his point that a medium without advertising is less likely to be overtaken by the big guys because they can’t exploit, monetize, and commercialize it.

But… I don’t think the big guys can control media anymore. This is the post-scarcity era and they can’t buy all the blogs in the world.

And… I do want to find ways for creators to make money and find support for what they love, for I believe that will yield more creation and more independence from those big guys. Not everyone will want this but for those who do, we need to look at open infrastructures to support it.

That’s my problem with the Audible system. It’s both closed and expensive.

That’s also my problem with restrictive DRM, which only limits the potential distribution and audience. See my favorite example of 150,000 views of Jon Stewart on CNN’s Crossfire vs. at least 5 million views of the same segment on the open web: See what happens when you let the folks formerly known as your audience become your distributors.

Let’s say that MP3s could ping their creators when they are played — at the creator’s option, with full transparency for the listeners. Then the creators could count and control their own stats without having to pay someone to do it via a proprietary system, and report those stats to sponsors. That’s the sort of thing I want to see. Same with RSS; I like Feedburner telling me how many are reading even cached feeds of mine and I’m grateful to them for telling me that — without charging me three cents a read as Audible is; without charging me anything — but I also wish I could get those stats directly so I could do my own analyzing of them.

I’d like to see structures that keep control in the hands of the creators rather than opening doors for new attempts at centralizing control in proprietary silos. Rather than deciding not to have traffic and ad capabilities I’d like to see control for them remain open and at the edges. That will enable the people at the edges to get their fair share if they want it. And that is what I believe will assure that the big guys can’t control media again.

: LATER: Winer says he’s writing his manifesto on the topic of advertising and all this and I eagerly await it.

I’ve long contended that we need to find a way to measure audience for podcasts and vlogs so we can, if we want, attach ads and get support. If we don’t find an open way to do these things, companies such as Audible will come up with closed, expensive ways such as this:

Audible’s technology puts measurement capability in Audible-compatible devices — such as Apple Inc.’s iPod — or in the software for listening to Audible’s content. ….

Audible is making its tracking service available to outside podcasters. The company will charge three cents per downloaded podcast to report whether a downloader listened, and for how long. Audible will also offer tools that will stop the podcast from being emailed to others. It will charge five cents per download to track listening and attach the access restrictions. For half a cent per download, Audible will insert an ad relevant to the podcast.

With the tools, “you can build a bona fide rate card” for advertising, says Foy Sperring, Audible’s senior vice president for strategic alliances. The company says it will provide only aggregated statistics; it won’t disclose what individual podcast downloaders listen to.

What we need is an open system that allows any content creator to get audience data pinged back and allows them to attach measurable ads. Today on the text web, these things are free unless I choose to use a premium service for stats or ad serving. We need similar functionality for the multimedia web using MP3s and not just Audible-formatted media.

Look at the Audible economics: They’re charging 3 cents just for measuring listenership. That, in ad math (if I have enough fingers and toes) is a $30 CPM just for measurement — $35 for inserting ad ad. That’s a high rate for advertising online these days — very high. So there’s no profit. That won’t work.

Mitch Ratcliffe, who helped build this, responds in the comments and on his blog. And I add there:

Mitch: What I’m really calling/hoping for is an open version of what you’ve done. I doubt the pricing is your fault but it’s both greedy and dumb, for it will limit uptake so severely as to make the effort not worth it. So what we need is an open version that allows audio and video producers to support their efforts without losing all their possible income to fees such as these and without backing a standard that cannot gain acceptance because it’s just too expensive. If Audible really wanted to play in this arena and become a new standard, they’d put this out for free and build businesses atop that.

We need the commercial MP3. Once that exists, little guys and big guys alike will rush to produce and distribute content by every means possible. P2P will be their friend.

Via Annik Rubens, I’m having a ball with Soundboards — the clickabout soundbites you can use to make phoney phone calls or whatever fun you’d like. Try George Bush (Vladimir PUtin) and Dr. Phil (are you nuts?).

Howard Stern may have pooped on podcasts, but he said this morning that when he saw the video iPod he realized that is a medium for him. I liked hearing that. I said a few months ago in an open letter to Mel Karmazin that I hope Sirius does not fall into the trap of other media and think of itself as its pipe. Instead, Sirius is creating content I’ll pay for and it should deliver it to me any way I want it.

When you think about it, satellite radio and iTunes are the best positioned in the new world for pay content — for the golden fleece of the added content revenue stream: money from the consumer. Print content is pretty much all free by now. Networks and cable and program producers and all bound up in their mutually destructive deals. But iTunes enables the sale of content and Sirius is producing content worth paying for and neither is trapped by their histories.

This morning, Howard Stern said he’d rather do a podcast than continue on broadcast with all the hassles he gets from the FCC, the religious right, and network weasels.

And I hate podcasts. A jerk-off sitting in his livingroom talking for hours. If I wanted that, I’d get married.

One of my favorite podcasts, Schlaflos in München (Sleepless in Munich), just turned 200 (episodes, that is) and so Annik Rubens turned her show over to her audience. It’s pretty amazing: On a day’s notice, all sorts of German podcast fans recorded MP3s and phone messages and they made up the show: the podcast of the crowd. It’s also amusing to note that all the contributors is male. Annik is the podcast queen.

: A listener of hers also found this podcasting cartoon (don’t worry: it’s in English).

It’s great news that Digg got venture funding: $2.8 million from Omidyar Network, Marc Andreessen, and Greylock partners. The wisdom-of-the-crowd news site is rivaling /. in buzz and traffic-spiking. They’ve redesigned smartly. And I’m a fan of their spin-off podcast, Diggnation (they’re soon to go to Japan to make a show). I told the Online News Association that they should have invited these guys to their confab to learn what the future of news is really about.

: And by the way, Digg cofounder Kevin Rose is a nice guy. I was supposed to meet up with him at Web 2.0 because I wanted to and because my son is a fan; he’s the one who turned me onto Digg (see Jake’s Diggs on his sidebar). My son couldn’t care less about any of the celebs I met during my career. He wanted me to meet Kevin and I blew it. So Kevin just sent Jake an autograph. Thanks, dude.

: While we’re digging, here’s one more relevant tidbit: The Diggnation guys said that as soon as iTunes started promoting vlogs, the video version of Diggnation immediately racked up more downloads than the audio version.

There is a ton of pent-up video demand out there online.

You’ll think this is strange but two of my favorite podcasts are made by the same woman and I’ve become obsessed with listening to her (in a most professional way)… even though it’s all in German. But stick with me here, for I want to make a bigger point about what makes podcasts good.

Annik Rubens — a nom de pod Annik Rubens — started with Schlaflos in München (Sleepless in Munich), a very brief, daily snippet of her life. And now she is costar, with Timo Hetzel, of Filme Und So (Movies and Stuff) a very well-produced but still casual review of movies, books, gadgets, and more. Both are among iTunes top German podcasts.

I happened upon her because I am forever doing penance for not paying attention in German class (which I got into by mistake, really). And I’ve found that listening to German audiobooks — and now, better yet, podcasts — is a great way to try to brush up.

As soon as I found Schlaflos, I was smitten. Rubens, as I’ve said before, does the oxymoronically impossible: She makes German sound sexy. But as I’ve listened to both her ‘casts over time, I’ve also realized that her voice — more broadly, her personality — is what makes her the ideal podcaster.

You see, she’s friendly and appealing and funny and real, unlike radio and TV “professionals,” who’ve been made fake on a scale from stiff to overbearing to obnoxious. Think about it: Would you really want to sit in a chair across from Rush Limbaugh or Randi Rhodes yelling at you, or any given newsreader boring you? Even Howard Stern isn’t Howard Stern off the air, he says. But I’ll just bet that Rubens is Rubens. That’s what makes her that ideal podcaster… and that’s what makes podcasts as unlike radio as weblogs are unlike newspapers. They’re made of people. Yet Rubens is also not clumsy and crude and long-winded like some podcasters, bless their hearts. She is just slick enough; she cares about making a good show and thinks it through and the effort shows. She’s friendly and entertaining but informative and organized (which is to say, unlike some podcasters I won’t name, she knows that just because you can talk for two hours, you don’t have to).

She and Hetzel also created a great blog to go along with their podcast. But note that: The blog isn’t the thing, it’s just the value added. The podcast is the thing.

So as strange as it may sound, I recommend that you go listen to either of her podcasts. In some ways, it’s better that most of you can’t understand, because you’ll hear the tone and it’s the tone I’m talking about. It’s the ability to create a good show without turning yourself into something you’re not.

: I am also a big fan of Diggnation, where Digg.com founder Kevin Rose and friend Alex Albrecht talk about the stories that the public voted up to the front page of Digg… while they try a new beer. It’s that simple. But that’s what makes it so good: They actually care about this stuff. They give their opinions. They give credit to the people who found these stories. And they give us news. They’re two guys talking and you can imagine joining them over a beer and joining in the conversation. And, like Rubens, they produce the show to a clock and keep it moving.

My son is the one who got me into Diggnation. Today, he’s wearing his Diggnation T-shirt. And I hope he’ll forgive me for messing up an effort to meet Rose when I was at Web 2.0/1.0 in San Francisco. But note well that Rose is a celebrity to Jake and the audience. Podcasts are making stars.

Jake also got me to make it a habit to listen to and enjoy TWiT (This Week in Tech) with host Leo Laporte and a bunch of regular guests, including chronic curmudgeon John C. Dvorak. And he got me to watch video versions of both.

So one week, I thought I’d download tech podcasts produced by NPR so we could listen together. But they quickly bored Jake — and me — silly because they’re overproduced. They’re underhuman. That is the voice of “professional” radio and it’s not a compelling voice at all. I’d rather listen to friends — or people I come to think of as friends, or at least would like to meet — than the strangers of big-time broadcasting.

That is the true voice of the internet.

: Some people I have met are making podcasts, too, and so I’ll throw them props: Ken Rutkowski also has chats about technology at KenRadio and Steve Rubel and Joseph Jaffe are talking PR and marketing at Across The Sound.

Oh, and by the way, go listen to Nerd TV’s interview with podcast papa Dave Winer. Nobody has a more authentic voice on the internet than Dave and I enjoyed hearing the history of many of his innovations.