Update: Tom from Divvycast comments below and (fairly) points out that the bands generally come with a built-in audience, hence making it easier to reach the suggested goals that Divvycast posts. I can’t argue that point at all - though I still feel that it is, in the end, more profitable for everyone involved to go the DIY route.

Divvycast is a new service where bands who publish there music through the service can create podcasts based around their band (using their music, tour info, interviews, etc.) and then publish these podcasts to services such as iTunes, Yahoo! Podcasts, MySpace, and TagWorld (through Flash plugins I assume).

As a part of the Divvycast service they put your podcast out to potential advertisers. When your podcast is picked up, Divvycast will notify you and you can select advertisers to include in the podcast (and hence make more $$$).

Divvycast accents the freedom you maintain as a key element of Divvycast’s appeal. You create the podcast (through their software), you choose the sponsorships, and your rights are preserved through the whole process.

The Divvycast site also lists potential revenue:

• $25 per 1000 downloads
• $250 per 10,000 downloads
• $2500 per 100,000 downloads
• $25,000 per 1,000,000 downloads

Admitedly, attaining 1000 downloads is not easy. We’ve done around four episodes of our tech podcast “PodDev” and are just getting close to reaching that total. I’m afraid that Divvycast, though a good idea, is projecting a false “get rich quick” image to bands.

In addition, the only real advantage of the service is that you can manage your ads through their web based inteface. The downsides are numerous - you have to pay a monthly fee, you have to do the marketing, the advertising becomes your burden to carry - all in all you’re paying a monthly fee for more work.

You could use a service such as PodTrac to manage your podcast advertising and create your podcast in your own program (not Divvycast’s bundled software). It seems to me that Divvycast is (for lack of a better word) preying on those who don’t fully understand podcasting.

There are ways of creating podcasts that are easier, faster, better, and provide a much better cash return. In the coming months, we’ll go over those ways - stay tuned.

Via DownloadSquad

Wikipedia offers a very extensive collection of free classical music. I’ve utilized their music before for my short “The Bet” (in the sidebar - and the music was selections from Anton Vivaldi’s Four Seasons) but I wasn’t aware they had this much!

I love classical music, though I don’t listen to it enough (a little on our local classical station, some BBC Radio 3, but not much else). I’ve currently downloaded the first part of Handel’s Messiah, and I’m on my way to grab more. Just a note - all the music is in the OGG Vorbis format. OGG is playable in VLC, Foobar2000, Winamp, and Audacity.

This is a fantastic resource for anyone - those who need some background music for a podcast, film, or those who simply want to expand their collection. Definite bookmark!

Via Lifehacker

“DVD Jon”, the hacker behind the hacking of CSS (content scrambling system) has reverse engineered Apple’s FairPlay DRM (the stuff used in iTunes) and is now going commercial. Johansen has plans to sell the technology (presumedly through his company, Doubletwist Ventures) to companies interested in DRMing their media but not interested in going through Apple to do it.

My first thought on this was the same as Peter’s at GizBuzz - how will he get through this legally?! As I think about it more, I can’t honestly think they went into this without knowing there would be a court battle. I’m sure they have an argument at hand.

Read more at GizBuzz

According to Dave Winer, the person who is pretty much the authority on this type of thing (he helped develop enclosures for RSS, as well as RSS itself), today is the third birthday of the podcast.

Dave goes into more detail on his blog, but in essence he notes that while three years ago the exact same tech and terms may not have been there, that series fulfills all the “podcast” requirements (such as MP3 audio via feed enclosure).

He continues to go into more on the Apple squabble over the “podcast” trademark that Apple has begun to defend on a larger scale, noting that podcasts don’t just work on Apple hardware, and perhaps it’d be in Apple’s interest to embrace the podcast term and its widespread use rather than trying to put the term’s users down.

A quick editor’s note: I tend to be a video guy but I’ll try to be fair and cover audio as much as possible. We wouldn’t to forget podcasts!

Via Scobleizer