Talk:Podcast

Page focus

Is "Podcast" still to be taken as simply a more modern MusicBrainz_Terminology terminology for "Radio show", "Radio drama", or "Audio drama"? If so, this page's title and focus on podcast-specific issues is perhaps too narrow in focus. BrianFreud

"Who is the artist of a podcast?"

Radio/Audio drama/shows

ID3

This section overly focuses on ID3 tags, which map somewhat badly to non-music. Approaching this subject with an initial question of "who is the artist?" is exactly the problem:

   * people who moderate
   * people who talk
   * people who perform music
   * people who do things that may be artistic 

This ignores the fact that, while cast is important to track, unlike music, who performed the audio is normally far less important than other data, specifically the question "What series is it?", which I would also follow by "What episode is it?" and "What was the episode's title?" long before I would ask "Who performed in the episode?". Look at the ID3v2 example given [here] for just one approach to squeezing all of the information into ID3 tags. The definitive data source for old radio dramas, the [database of the Old Time Radio Researcher's Group], would be a far better starting point. Notice that, while for music we have:

• artist
• release group title
• specific release title
• track order and title
• label

but for audio drama - even perhaps extending to audiobooks - the important fields are:

• what series
• what epsisode #
• what title

followed by:

• what country
• what network (US Armed Forces Radio, for example - a specific type of "worldwide")
• which coast (many USA shows were performed and broadcast twice, once on the east coast, then again on the west coast)
• what performers, and which were stars vs which were guests
• what sponsor for the show

It should also be considered that most radio shows did not have an "official" release. Any such release which has occurred has typically been a tape or CD compilation of a few select shows from various series, most often without rights-holder consent. Most of these are simply fan-taped (wire recordings, reel-to-reel, and even a few on wax cylinder) which have been digitized and shared. The same could be said for Podcasts - they're far closer to what we track as musical NATs, rather than anything we would consider an official "release". Fitting the lower list into the upper list simply by squeezing data into ill-fitting fields will simply lead to a big collection of data that entirely ill-fits those who would likely seek to utilize that data. (Again, reference how the ID3v2 example given above squeezes various data to try and make drama-type data fit musical-data fields). BrianFreud

"but a podcast itself is not an artwork"

This comment assumes something which is not universally true. A podcast like Kevin Smith and Scott Mosier's "[Smodcast]", which is just various people chatting or interviews may not be artistic in intent. However, I doubt anyone would argue the same for something like [The Shadow] or [The War of the Worlds] BrianFreud