Today I launched a new weekly jazz show. But it’s not on the radio. In fact, all it is is a Spotify playlist linked from a Posterous blog page.
You can find the show here: Dubber’s Sunday Jazz.
It’s a two hour playlist of jazz, chosen by me. No talking – just the tunes. And of course, you can only ‘tune in’ in places you can use Spotify (currently UK, France, Sweden, Norway, Finland and Spain).
I was talking about it on Twitter earlier on, and coined the term ‘Spotcast’ to describe it, as a play on ‘podcasting’ (which is neither broadcasting, nor restricted to iPods). I’m using the term to describe the use of Spotify playlists as if they were specialist radio shows. So actually, Spotcasting is a far more accurate and descriptive name than Podcasting is.
It occurs to me that if you actually gathered together a bunch of different people choosing tunes for their own Spotcasts, you could assemble your own Spotcast station. My show’s for a Sunday afternoon. Someone else’s could be for a Tuesday evening. Someone could do the reggae show or the love song request show. Who knows?
It’s kind of nonsense, of course: anyone can listen to the playlist at any time they wanted, any day of the week and at any time in the future. But I’m making the playlist in the same way I would as if it was for a broadcast programme. It’s two hours long each time, I’ll do a new one each week, and I’m not just considering which songs should be played – but in what order I should play them.
Steve Lawson cleverly suggested recording mp3 voice breaks to play between the songs on Spotify, and hosting them on the blog, then using technical wizadry to insert them in the right places so audiences can listen through to a Spotify-powered hosted show. Nice idea, but that seems extraneous to me, and smacks of effort.
I just like the parameters, possibilities and limitations of a two hour specialist music show. I can contextualise it with a brief blog post, and then let the music speak for itself.
Jon Hickman suggested that the moment I invented the term Spotcast was the moment I stopped being cool. It’s adorable that he thought I was ever cool.
But despite the fact that it’s a corny term, I do like the idea – and I’m definitely going to insist that my Music Radio Programming class do this every week next semester…
Right now:
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3 Comments
You lazy git.. ;)
I hope it does become possible, and then someone comes up with a simple integrated tech so we can chat about music, put songs in and not have to worry about copyright cos every track’s on spotify and gets paid for…
it’s the future! Sx
Yeah. It was my laziness that caused me to quit the Rhubarb Radio jazz show gig last year.
I was putting 3 hours prep into the show, cycling half an hour each way to the studio and back, and spending nearly 3 hours there for a 2 hour show – including the setup and pack down. All up, that’s a whole Sunday gone – and there would have been maybe a dozen people listening to about half an hour each of the two hour programme.
Would have been easier to invite them into my house and play them some records… but I like this way even better.
You could record an introduction as a audio boo with virtually no effort?