To a really good afternoon hosted by the UK Podcasters Association. Very grateful to have been invited by the inestimable Dean Whitbread. These are my rough (and doubtless wrong) notes; they’ll be publishing the session in full on the UKPA website shortly.

Becky Hogg from the Open Rights Group spoke around the Audio Video Multimedia Services Directive.

Essentially, the EU is proposing to regulate on-demand, non-linear space - for video (and not audio). Mostly, this is around protection for minors, against racist/religious hatred, that kind of thing. OFCOM, the CBI and the government weighed in: saying this kind of regulation was inappropriate (regulation’s mainly there for broadcasters because of scarcity of spectrum) and unworkable.

OFCOM wanted to exclude regulation for “user generated content in communities of interest” (or, as Becky would put it, ‘YouTube’). But it’s not clear that vodcasts are included in this legislation. Only the iPlayer and 4oD are planned to be regulated by the AVMS (but then, the content on these services is regulated anyway, when it was originally broadcast).

“What’s video?” Interesting question - according to the letter of the law, apparently even an enhanced podcast is video (even if the image changes once every 60 seconds). Anything with any visual content, according to this law, is video. (Does this mean that OFCOM would have to regulate, for example, visualised radio under TV regulations? Hmm, interesting.)

Interesting issues with level playing fields with advertising. TV sponsorship rules are different to radio sponsorship, for example, so if they use the TV model, rather than the radio model, this legislation could make something like Leo Laporte’s “This Week In Tech” actually illegal if it was produced in the UK, due to the way that his Audible sponsorship is woven into the programme content. (If it had a video component, of course. Or even had some album art. Oh, hang on, it does).

OFCOM aim to consult on this legislation in May/June. This legislation is likely to be done in 2009, and will be therefore in the Queen’s speech in November 2008. It’s important, then, to speak to your MP in the six weeks after the Queen’s speech. (If this scares you. I am only writing notes down.)

For the rest of Europe: Germany, France and Poland appear to have been really pressing this regulation; and may add a rather heavier regulatory burden.

Indcidentally, it would seem that a possible reason for this legislation is protectionism for the established media. Potentially, established media in other countries may have pressed the EU to regulate. “We are heavily regulated, and the internet is coming with no regulation, wah, we’re scared” is the kind of argument. The correct solution is to relax on regulation, to my mind, not try to regulate the internet. But I digress.

MUSIC PODCASTING

Andy H was there from the MCPS/PRS Alliance. They represent songwriters, and mechanical rights.

They “first created a podcast licence in early 2006″, which has expired. He explained a bit about some of this licence, which interestingly said that the first ten seconds, and last ten seconds, had to be obscured by speech. (That would have made “Hey Jude” sound really good, eh?).

There’s a new licence available now, though apparently you won’t find it on the website until July. (wtf?!)

For commercial podcasts (yes, including ads on your web page), the rate is 8% of revenues. The minimum is 0.15p per musical work used, per download, irrespective of length. But this only covers UK use.

They call this a “LOL” licence. LOL! For lower-tier licences (you can buy licences in ‘bundles’), they are not asking for the burden of full music reporting. And yes, you need a licence with the record companies too.

Question: “How would you know whether this music is represented by MCPS/PRS or not?” Answer: “They’ll probably be a member”. Goodness. They do have an online lookup service, which, if you’re a licensee, you have access to. That’s good then.

Simon from AIM

AIM = association of independent record labels. Traditional broadcasters don’t pay AIM directly (they pay PPL).

Outlined that they licenced the original Napster, you know. Napster was (at least for AIM labels) legal. Goodness. (Naturally, the MCPS/PRS bit wasn’t licenced).

Outlined an experimental, non-precedential, £500 one-shot rate for independent label use. It was issued in 2005 as an experiment. Labels within AIM opt-in to the scheme. There are over 50,000 tracks that are available this way. And yes, you still need the PRS/MCPS licence too. Notwithstanding that, this is a brilliant deal. Well done, AIM.

Incredibly low takeup of this licence from podcasters, depressingly, he says. (I wonder if he understands that the PRS/MCPS licence is the issue.)

Ewan Spence, The Podcast Network

Ewan started a music show just over 3 years ago. (It’s roughly 2 or 3 times a week). It contains lots of unsigned bands.

He reckons that he would have spent £500,000 on MCPS/PRS bills. Had he had to. Splendidly, his stuff is not MCPS/PRS licenced, so he doesn’t. Talks about a band that played every two weeks in a local pub. Gave them a play. And the band sold 500 CDs off the back of it (for $10 a pop) - so they bought some new guitars and now play in the pub the other side of the road for the other two weeks. That’s quite a good story. He makes the point that breaking acts need this exposure.

Question: “What happens when the bands get signed later?” Good question, he says; there’s no real precedent for this (and no, he doesn’t want to be the precedent!). He’s never been asked to take a podcast down, or edit a podcast - he gives an example of ‘Urban Snake’, who got signed, and the label gave permission. But he would be happy to edit an archive if he was requested, though points out that he can’t edit all the other archives (like in my iTunes collection).

Dean explains that PPL aren’t here. “They do radio stations” was the explanation of what they do. Most people apparently ignore PPL mainly because they’re the slowest people to come into this debate.

Ewan to Andy: “How are you paying people, if you’re not asking for music reports?” Andy says that the costs for that is a nightmare. A programmer behind me asks why music reporting is not automated. Andy agrees that it would be good, but says that there’s no real database to use - there’s a ton of different databases within the record industry which aren’t really very well put together. Simon and Ewan go spare when I mention that Musicbrainz might be a good start. Simon goes really quite mental, actually - really surprising. What’s interesting is that there’s no solution here, but pretty universal understanding that Musicbrainz and other user-generated tools are “bullshit” for music reporting purposes. I consider asking “So, it’s broke then. Shall we try fixing it?” but Simon scared me a bit, so I didn’t. On writing these notes up - if MCPS/PRS have an online lookup service, that must mean there’s a pan-industry database, surely? Hmm.

I quote my “commercial radio makes 2.7p per listener per hour” figure, and compare it to Andy’s 1.5p per listener per hour (and a rough additional 1.5p per listener per hour from PPL). Andy says that an inability to make money is not his members’ problem. I can see his point of view. (Making it impossible to afford is his member’s problem, I’d think.)

Question: “Can I get approval from a musician to legally play a song on my podcast?” Andy replies “If you’re a songwriter and you join PRS, the act of joining PRS means that you assign the rights to PRS” - so any musician who is a PRS member cannot also assign the rights to anyone else. The way Ewan recommends is that he write a piece of paper that says “Can you assign the non-exclusive rights to us for the use of this podcast”, which if a musician signs, he feels that he is in the clear. Nice. And I would agree.

Question: “Will there ever be a one-stop shop for music rights?” Quick answer: “no”.

Question: “With your podcast licence, is AIM filling a hole? Is it a PPL-shaped hole?” Simon: “Yes. If PPL was doing this work, we wouldn’t need to”. Crikey.

We then went to The Easton, a (until now) highly recommended pub. We got there at 5.20. It apparently opens at 5.30pm, but the man behind the bar, who was doing nothing much, noticed us standing outside in the rain but refused to let us in without buying anything (perfectly legal) until he opened. We were free to buy our beer from elsewhere, so did. (Someone compared that to the music industry.)

As ever, these are my views (or the views of those speaking) and not those of my employer; indeed, after a long and cordial discussion with a few people from the Open Rights Group (who I have a lot of respect for), my personal laptop is now proudly sporting one of their stickers. That should turn some heads on Monday… (grin)

The first post on our Radio Labs blog is a blinder - a very neat version of the BBC’s podcast directory for use on an iPod Touch and an iPhone.

Simon does a great job of explaining what we’re all about. Neat.

In other news, I’m off to SBES tomorrow. Hope to see you there if you’re going. I drink beer, by the way.

I posted, a little while ago, a short and ill-considered piece titled Google Audio Ads are coming to eat you up. On thinking further, and reading further, I’m not entirely sure that’s the case.

In that post, I linked to lots of screenshots of the Google Audio Ads process in action. (There are also some presentations about Google Audio Ads online). A media purchaser gets almost the same experience as they would buying Google AdWords. Interestingly, they also get no way of purchasing stations directly, thereby leaving stations free to continue to sell ads themselves.

Further, thanks to Jonathan Marks, I’ve been sent a job specification for an Account Manager at Google Audio Ads - which makes interesting reading by itself.

The lucky candidate(s) will be charged with “Selling Google Automation products”, not only AdSense for Audio. This appears to confirm a strong rumour in the industry that Google has developed its own playout system - or, at the very least, has used its purchase of dMarc to also leverage dMarc’s own playout system called Maestro. Is it possible that this playout system may be free for use if Google gets a certain %age of airtime? Does this dramatically change the business of running a small commercial radio station? Will it have APIs and other web services to enable better hook-ins to the playout system itself, therefore enabling better additional metadata and visual elements?

The other interesting element to the job ad is a requirement of “Knowledge of emerging media technologies (Podcasting, Online Streaming media, Digital Radio Broadcasting, etc.)”. This is interesting since it suggests that AdSense for Audio may well also be a solution for podcasters, not just terrestrial radio stations. And why are Google interested in ‘Digital Radio Broadcasting’?

It’s clear that Google AdSense for Audio is going to dramatically lower the costs of radio advertising. If you’re a creative producer, this would appear to massively increase your potential business - far from being ‘afraid’, as I said originally, I think you should be hugely excited. More businesses will want to make radio commercials as a direct result. You should be gearing up now to cope with the additional business.

If you’re a radio station, this would also appear to massively increase your client numbers, particularly if you’re working for a local station. There is real benefit in attracting more advertisers to radio, at lower cost. This is great news.

The only worry is if you’re currently a media sales house. I would see Google AdSense for Audio as cutting out the middleman - and that’s you. Why would you go to a media sales house, who deal with a number of radio stations (and thus have little knowledge of those stations), when you can get almost the same experience from Google AdSense - indeed, probably a better experience given the quality of Google’s planning tools?

The more that emerges from the Google Audio Ads stable, the more I’m convinced it may well single-handedly save smaller commercial radio stations.

Let’s think radically. Anyone can sell spots on your radio station. With the latest RAJAR (or Arbitron) figures, anyone can plan these ads, too. However, only your radio station knows how to sell sponsorship, and how to sell out-of-break promotions, because only people who understand the product can sell it. So if Google AdSense for Audio takes off the way I predict it will, I believe that local radio stations could radically change their business. First, remove your spot-sales team completely. This is a large cost to most local radio stations, and with the advent of Google AdSense for Audio, you simply don’t need them. Cut the amount of spots on the station, too - use this as a way to improve the audio experience, not to grow profit. Double the size of your sponsorship/promotions department - this better-sounding and more relevant commercial content will be the way of the future. Watch your audiences grow, because of the smaller amount of instrusive commercials and the local connections you’ll be making by having your DJs talk about your local businesses out of the break, rather than in it. It’s a bright future indeed.

The commercial radio industry in the UK has a track-record of doing the wrong thing, more often than not: GCap and Emap removed all the localness from their output in the late 1990s and are now wondering why listeners flocked away from local commercial radio and towards national services in the 2000s, for example. The next twelve months will show whether those in charge of commercial radio ‘get it’. It may be a crucial time.

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Full disclosure: My current employer is a national commercial radio station, who used Maestro as a playout system for a while. Google AdSense funds my sandpit website.