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Music Finally Meets Podcasts
The most read post in the five years this blog has been published is this one: Why Can’t Music Be Played In Podcasts? In fact, it comes up so often it is a “Google Zero” post, meaning it is the first item that pops up with that query. Every month hundreds of people search the internets wondering how it is possible that music can’t be played in podcasts. With communications attorney David Oxenford, the post delves into the insanity that is music licensing and royalties, and the missed opportunity of record producers, artists and licensing agencies including BMI, ASCAP and the sort.
Enter Spotify.
Last week they took a giant step connecting the dots between podcasts and music via their Anchor podcast creation platform. It enables podcasters to instantly and seamlessly integrate 65 million licensed songs into their shows. So now basically anyone can do their own radio show and not fret or fear music licensing. Oh, the anarchy.
This works not just for hobbyists, and professionals but also audio journalists who up to this point played a legal game of chicken using clips of songs. Now they can play snippets or full versions of the music they are discussing.
While mostly Spotify’s innovation is all upside, there are a few downsides. First, it lives only inside the confines of Spotify, which means there is no RSS feed, so…