RawVoice CEO Todd Cochrane has a hard hitting interview on his perceptions and state of the Podcasting Space as it relates to developments in the space over the past month. [PodcastingNews.com]
The team here at RawVoice lives User Generated Content day in and day out. We understand the absolute power of the podcast medium, and we are in no way scared of the word Podcast.
Very sadly and disappointingly so, one company in the podcast space wants to distance themselves from the word podcast, and those that create user generated content.
Here at RawVoice we embrace podcasters, and the podcasting space. While we understand Audio and Video has been an integral part of the Internet for a long time, only in the past 4 years has it been possible to subscribe to highly focused content that you want to listen to with the added ability to listen or watch that content on your schedule and have that content automatically delivered to your portable media device.
The podcast medium is very strong and rapidly growing. RawVoice and our Podcast Communities and Podcast Networks continue to lead the way in the space by providing podcast creators the tools they say they need to grow their audiences, and measure who and where they are consuming that content.
RawVoice and our associated communities is the absolute best deal in the podcasting space, as we ensure podcast creators have the freedom to do what they do best and provide them opportunities without contracts and exclusivity.
Tenants of our Business
RawVoice is a company that cares about podcasters and values their valuable contributions. RawVoice is here for the long haul and we will never scorn those that have made this space great!
PodcastFAQ.com, a newly launched RawVoice property, includes OpenID support in its forums.
OpenID is a distributed identity system that allows users to sign in to many websites with a single account. With OpenID, your login becomes a unique web address (URL). RawVoice did not want to add to ones list of user names and passwords. Instead, you can use an easy to obtain and remember OpenID that can be used at many other websites.
If you have a Yahoo, AOL/AIM, Wordpress, LiveJournal or myOpenID account, you can sign into the PodcastFAQ.com forums today with as little as 1-click.
Microsoft, Google and other large companies have announced plans to support OpenID in the near future. RawVoice sees this as an opportunity to empower our users with the login method they feel most comfortable with, allowing RawVoice to step back from user account management to focus on its core products and services.
If you have not experienced logging into a web site using OpenID, we would like to invite you to the PodcastFAQ.com forums and give it a try.
A week or so ago one of our podcasters on an advertising buy very publicly bashed us for supposedly under paying him. After having done a double check on his download numbers we publicly replied that we felt we had paid the podcaster fairly.
This public bashing came after I had been in Vegas for a week with little sleep, and no other forewarning. It really caught me by surprise as the podcaster was still in a current ad buy and we were not aware that the show producer was unhappy.
I instructed Angelo to digg into the stats system and make sure we had not made a mistake. He over-viewed the data and backed up my conclusions.
The podcaster was not yet satisfied and frankly neither was I because we have worked hard to make sure our podcasters are treated with absolute fairness, and his demeanor was something that we never expected or had seen before.
With so many people using the stats system we knew the accuracy was very high. After all we built that Stats service to eliminate issues like this.
After getting back from Vegas, getting some sleep and digging into the issue some more we discovered were the issue was. When I went to review the podcasters follow on monthly data it simply was not in the database under the expected keyword. The subject show had no new downloads in the follow on month which was weird because they were still in an ad buy.
Turns out what happened was that both of us were right and both were wrong. Angelo figured out that the podcaster unknown to us started using a new keyword in his stats redirect, thus all downloads were being counted on the new keyword and because each keyword has its own dataset. I had no idea they had made the switch.
Originally I calculated his payment on the old keyword not knowing about them using the new keyword. This is why I had been so adamant that our numbers were right. Well it turns out our numbers where exactly right for the old keyword but the podcaster should have been paid on the new keyword.
Tonight I instructed Barry to cut the podcaster the difference we owe him, and we are putting in some measures in the stats system that will track when someone changes their keyword in the future.
We pride ourselves in taking care of the podcasters first and foremost, and while this is the first time something like this has ever happened it was not something we had ever anticipated. I am the CEO of this company and the buck stops here, and while we should have anticipated something like this happening we did not.
Some tips for Podcasters, if you think their is a issue in your payment, please contact us early and spell out in detail why you think the payment is off. We will go the extra mile to make sure that you are satisfied and get exactly what your show is supposed to get.
Todd Cochrane
PodCamp AZ (Arizona) was a huge success. Michelle and Brent Spore planned, what I would call, the perfect un-conference. The venue was organized well, the sessions were ordered in a way that allowed podcasters at different experience levels to gain knowledge during every part of the day. I obtained a lot of knowledge from the event and I am grateful that I was able to attend.
I almost filled my notebook with ideas, suggestions and thoughts during the PodCamp. It is obvious to me that most of the focus of the sessions were geared to how to get started and how to monetize your podcast. RawVoice has been addressing these issues since the beginning and the entire PodCamp experience has reinforced my view that what we doing at RawVoice is what we should be doing.
The PodCamp provides a venue that is exclusively for podcasters. Even though RawVoice was a sponsor, we weren’t sitting there trying to spoon feed our message. Instead, knowledge was shared and friendships were made. The whole experience makes me think that Todd should move the Podcast Awards to one of the PodCamps scheduled for 2007. This type of atmosphere is definitely where the recognition of the great work everyone does should be recognized.
Below are some photos from PodCamp AZ.
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