https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9294-0961
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Abstract
Contemporary podcasting is used not only to extend the reach of existing radio stations and personalities but also by hundreds of independent content creators who can bypass the strictures of traditional distribution channels to deliver audio programs directly to online audiences. Preserve This Podcast (PTP) was an Andrew W. Mellon-funded outreach and education project designed to raise awareness among indie podcasters of the need to proactively preserve their content and teach basic techniques for podcast preservation. This paper discusses the preservation challenges faced by indie broadcasters and strategies the PTP team used to address these through face-to-face workshops, online outreach, and web-based tools, using the present threat of “podfade” to raise larger issues surrounding the urgency and challenges of preserving born-digital audio content.
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in supporting our work, and in particular Program Officer Patricia Hswe for her initial guidance and encouragement at the outset of grant application process; the staff at the New York Metropolitan Library Council Studio Space for providing workshop space and administrative support throughout the grant; all the indie podcasters who appeared on our podcast, Alice Y. Hom, Dan Weissman, Amanda McLoughlin, Eric Silver, and especially, Kaitlyn Bailey, Producer of The Oldest Profession, whose insight into metadata encouraged us to dig deeper; Jeremy Helton, Allison Behringer, Dalton Harts, Breakmaster Cylinder, Jacob Kramer-Duffield, Austin Eustice; and finally, we want to express deep gratitude to PTP co-Leads Molly Schwartz and Dana Gerber-Margie, for their tireless support for podcast preservation work, now and into the future.
Notes
1 Richard Berry, “Podcasting: Considering the evolution of the medium and its association with the word ‘radio’”.
2 Gabriela Redwine, “Personal Digital Archiving” (DPC Technology Watch Report 15-01 December 2015, Digital Preservation Coalition, Great Britain, 2015), 2, https://doi.org/10.7207/twr15-01 (accessed February 17, 2020).
3 Meridith Mink, “Preserve This Podcast 2018–2020,” (Minkwell Research & Consulting, Madison, WI, 2020), 29, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b43bbda2971143f2370ee64/t/5e46bf8bd8a89a292563aee6/1581694863413/Preserve+This+Podcast+Assessment.pdf (accessed February 17, 2020).
4 “XML RSS,” W3Schools, Refsnes Data, http://www.w3schools.com/XML/xml_rss.asp (accessed January 27, 2020).
5 Shelley Powers, Practical RDF: Solving Problems with the Resource Description Framework (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly & Associates, Inc., 2003).
6 “RSS 2.0 Specification,” W3C Markup Validation Service, UserLand Software, http://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html (accessed January 27, 2020).
7 Jenn, Riley, Understanding Metadata: What Is Metadata, and What Is It For?: A Primer (Baltimore, MD: National Information Standards Organization (NISO), 2017), 12.
8 Ibid., 8.
9 Reuven M. Lerner. “At the Forge - Syndication with RSS.” Linux Journal, October 4, 2004, http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/7670.
10 Lucas Graves, “The Affordances of Blogging: A Case Study in Culture and Technological Effects,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 31, no. 4 (2007): 343. doi: 10.1177/0196859907305446.
11 Andrew J. Bottomley, “Podcasting: A Decade in the Life of a ‘New’ Audio Medium: Introduction,” Journal of Radio & Audio Media 22, no. 2 (2015): 164. doi: 10.1080/19376529.2015.1082880.
12 Daniel Sanchez. “SoundCloud Is Going Bankrupt & There’s Nothing You Can Do About It.” Digital Music News, May 2, 2017, http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2017/05/02/soundcloud-go-3-months/.
13 John L. Sullivan, “The Platforms of Podcasting: Past and Present,” Social Media + Society 5, no. 4 (2019): 8, doi: 10.1177/2056305119880002.
14 Ibid., 5.
15 S. I. Hayakawa, Language in Thought and Action (New York, NY: Harcourt Brace & World, 1964), 153.; Bret Victor Bret, “Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction,” Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction: A Systematic Approach to Interactive Visualization (blog), October 2011, http://worrydream.com/LadderOfAbstraction/ (accessed February 12, 2020); Nic Weber, “Preservation INFX 511” (Lecture slides), 2018.
16 Preserve This Podcast, “Preserve This Podcast Simplecast Analytics,” mnylc/preservethispodcast/assets GitHub repository (dataset; accessed December 10, 2019), https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3673937. This dataset shows streaming and download statistics for PTP’s eleven-month subscription to Simplecast.
17 “Preserve This Podcast on Apple Podcasts,” Apple Podcasts, https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/preserve-this-podcast/id1451896473 (accessed February 12, 2020).
18 Mary Kidd, “Preserve This Podcast Zine”, Preserve this Podcast, http://preservethispodcast.org/#zine (accessed February 17, 2020).
19 Ibid., 7.
20 Jacob Kramer Duffield, “Podcast Preservation Survey Findings,” Data infographic slideshow, Preserve This Podcast, https://preservethispodcast.org/assets/PodcastPreservation_SurveyFindings_Feb2019.pdf (accessed February 5, 2019).
21 Jacob Duffield Kramer, internal memo, “Preserve This Podcast Survey Summary Memo,” January 10, 2019.
22 Ibid.
23 Devin Becker and Collier Nogues, “Saving-Over, Over-Saving, and the Future Mess of Writers’ Digital Archives: A Survey Report on the Personal Digital Archiving Practices of Emerging Writers,” The American Archivist 75, no. 2 (2012): 483, doi: 10.17723/aarc.75.2.t024180533382067.
24 Peter Krogh, The DAM Book: Digital Asset Management for Photographers, 2nd ed. (Chambersburg, PA: O’Reilly Media, 2009), 207.
25 Damon Krukowski, “History Disappeared When Myspace Lost 12 Years of Music, and It Will Happen Again,” Pitchfork, March 20, 2019, https://pitchfork.com/thepitch/history-disappeared-when-myspace-lost-12-years-of-music-and-it-will-happen-again/ (accessed February 17, 2020).
26 Mink, “Preserve This Podcast 2018–2020,” 9.
27 “How Many of the 540,000 Podcasts Have ‘Podfaded?’,” Amplifi Media, https://www.amplifimedia.com/blogstein/2018/8/22/how-many-of-the-550000-podcasts-are-actually-active (accessed January 4, 2020).
28 “The 2005 Podcast Core Sample Collection: Free Audio: Free Download, Borrow and Streaming: Internet Archive,” Internet Archive, https://archive.org/details/2005_podcastcoresample (accessed January 20, 2020).
29 John Koetsier, “Top 100 Apps Of 2019: Netflix, Uber, Spotify, Google Pay, Wish, And More,” Forbes, last modified December 30, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/sites/johnkoetsier/2020/12/30/top-100-apps-of-2019-netflix-uber-spotify-google-pay-wish-and-more/ (accessed February 12, 2020). PTP used Apple Podcasts for this exercise since, historically, it has set the tone for podcast publishing standards and was generally known to be the most popular podcatcher application. Spotify has since replaced Apple as the most popular podcatcher.
30 “Metadata-Archaeology_2005 Podcast Core Sample”, Google Sheets, last modified January 24, 2020, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YxUVwxnExZY6U1HJrmhf5D5I-0xR56EBYxpKuls-r_Q/edit#gid=0. Dataset of podcasts searched for during the Metadata Archaeology exercise. Out of 136 podcast searches, 88.97% of the podcast shows could not be found on Apple Podcasts.
31 William Gallagher, “Apple’s new podcast metadata rules ban episode numbers, threaten removal [u: Episode Numbers Permitted],” AppleInsider, https://appleinsider.com/articles/19/02/28/apples-new-podcast-metadata-rules-ban-episode-numbers-threaten-removal (accessed January 4, 2020).
32 Nicholas Quah, “How Luminary’s Messy Debut Ended Up Roiling the Podcast Industry,” Vulture, April 26, 2019, https://www.vulture.com/2019/04/luminary-debut-podcast-controversy.html (accessed February 17, 2020).
33 Jennifer Douglas, “A Call to Rethink Archival Creation: Exploring Types of Creation in Personal Archives,” Archival Science 18 (2018): 29–49, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10502-018-9285-8.
34 Henry Geneva, “Research Librarians as Guides and Navigators for AI Policies at Universities,” Research Library Issues, no. 299 (2019): 66, https://publications.arl.org/rli299/47.
35 Todd Spangler, “Google Indexing Content of 2 Million Podcasts, Lets Users Stream Directly From Search Pages,” Variety, August 8, 2019, https://variety.com/2019/digital/news/google-stream-podcasts-search-pages-1203297026/ (accessed February 17, 2020).
36 Molly Schwartz and Kaytlin Bailey, “Preserve This Podcast Episode 4 - Metadata Meta-Awareness,” mp3, Preserve This Podcast, 2019, http://preservethispodcast.org/ (accessed February 17, 2020).
37 Steve Pratt, “Google’s New Way to Find Your Next Favorite Podcast,” Medium, May 23, 2018. https://blog.pacific-content.com/googles-new-way-to-find-your-next-favorite-podcast-452c993710bd (accessed February 17, 2020).
38 Sarah Jeong, “Sex Trafficking Bill Is Turning into a Proxy War over Google,” The Verge, September 14, 2017, https://www.theverge.com/2017/9/14/16308066/sex-trafficking-bill-sesta-google-cda-230 (accessed February 17, 2020).
39 Schwartz, “Preserve This Podcast Episode 4 - Metadata Meta-Awareness”.
40 Meridith Mink, “Preserve This Podcast 2018–2020,” (Minkwell Research & Consulting, Madison, WI, 2020), 14, https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b43bbda2971143f2370ee64/t/5e46bf8bd8a89a292563aee6/1581694863413/Preserve+This+Podcast+Assessment.pdf (accessed February 17, 2020).
41 Erik Jones, “What You Get When You Sign up for Luminary (and 8 Other Paid Podcast Platforms to Try),” Medium, June 5, 2019, https://bellocollective.com/what-you-get-when-you-sign-up-for-luminary-and-8-other-paid-platforms-to-try-232af0976f2c (accessed February 17, 2020).
42 “GitHub Pages,” GitHub, https://pages.github.com/ (accessed February 9, 2020).
43 Popular podcatcher platforms include: Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, RadioPublic, Pocket Casts, and Spotify. Wikipedia page: List of podcatchers has a more comprehensive “list of noteworthy podcatchers or software with podcatching capability.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_podcatchers
44 “Iwantmyname,” Iwantmyname, https://iwantmyname.com/ (accessed February 9, 2020).
45 “Podcast Hosting, Distribution & Analytics,” Simplecast, https://simplecast.com (accessed February 9, 2020).
46 “mnylc/Preservethispodcast,” GitHub, last modified February 9, 2020, https://github.com/mnylc/preservethispodcast (accessed February 17, 2020).
49 Stephen Jondrew, “Better Podcasting #065 – Self-Hosting Your Podcast RSS and Media,” GonnaGeek - Geek Podcasts, Tech, Comics, Sci-Fi, Gaming & More (blog), February 7, 2017, https://www.gonnageek.com/2017/02/better-podcasting-065-self-hosting-your-podcast-rss-and-media/ (accessed February 17, 2020); Allan Tépper, Branded RSS: the definitive guide, (TecnoTur LLC, 2019).
50 Molly Schwartz, “Episode 5: RSS Resuscitations”, mp3, Preserve This Podcast, 2019, preservethispodcast.org/#episodes (accessed February 17, 2020).
51 Jennifer Waits, “Podcast #230 - The Library of Congress Launches Podcast Preservation Project,” Radio Survivor (blog), January 29, 2020, https://www.radiosurvivor.com/2020/01/28/podcast-230-the-library-of-congress-launches-podcast-preservation-project/ (accessed February 7, 2020).
Additional information
Funding
Notes on contributors
Mary Kidd
Mary Kidd (@kiddarchivist) is Co-Lead of Preserve This Podcast, and also works for the New York Public Library’s Preservation and Collections Processing Department as the Systems and Operations Coordinator. She was selected for a National Digital Stewardship Residency in 2015, where she worked on a digital audio preservation project at New York Public Radio. She is also an illustrator and uses drawings to teach personal preservation and archiving.
Sarah Nguyen
Sarah Nguyen (@snewyuen) is the Project Coordinator of Preserve This Podcast, a Research Scientist for Investigating and Archiving the Scholarly Git Experience at New York University Libraries, and a pre-doctoral candidate at the University of Washington’s iSchool. Sarah’s research focuses on peoples’ behaviors and community building influenced by open information technologies, especially impacting individuals of marginalized identities. Offline, Sarah practices movement through dance.
Erica Titkemeyer
Erica Titkemeyer (@etitkem) is a Project Director in the Louis Round Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Co-ordinating audiovisual preservation and access activities for recordings within Wilson Library, Erica collaborates across UNC University Library departments to promote and improve on library technologies that support digitized and born-digital audiovisual discoverability, use and sustainability.