This Annoying Life
Posted by pete on October 4th, 2006
I’m a huge fan of Chicago Public Radio’s “This American Life.” My local NPR station, WAMU, broadcasts it on Saturdays at 3pm, which is not really a time I find convenient to listen to the radio. My favorite listening times are in the morning and the evening when I’m driving to and from work. My car stereo plays MP3 files, so I figured that I’d grab the MP3 and listen to it in the car.
When I first hit upon this idea, TAL was available in three formats: a CD you can buy directly from them for $13, a RealAudio stream, and you could download it from Audible.com. The CD is not really a feasible option as $13/week gets expensive, it takes time to get the CD in the snail mail, and it seems incredibly wasteful to burn a CD and ship it when it can easily be downloaded. The Audible option is also not acceptable since they use DRM (“Digital Restrictions Management”), which controls where and on what devices I can listen to content on. I refuse to submit to this.
The RealAudio stream was acceptable, but annoying. I had to capture the stream, then convert it to an MP3. I guess CPR got tired of paying for RA licenses or subjecting their listeners to the RA Player, but eventually they switched over to streaming MP3 directly. This was great! I could easily download the MP3. Apparently, they must have thought it too easy because after a few weeks, they switched over to M3U files. These are text files that list MP3s in them. It’s trivial to get the real MP3 from it and only added one extra, very minor step to my process.
Now, they want to make it a bit more difficult. Instead of letting the user chose their favorite player for listening to MP3s and let them listen to them when and where they want, TAL seems to feel that they need to force the PuPuPlayer on them. Not very cool if you ask me (which they didn’t).
This player gets downloaded to the user’s machine, which in turn, downloads the MP3 to play. Hmmm… no problem here. Just sniff the connection to see what the player downloads and grab the MP3 from the same place. The MP3s seem to be living at http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/<mp3 file>. I got a chuckle when I saw the path to the MP3. Off the top of my head, there are a few things they could do to ratchet up the annoying even more (not stop, mind you, just make things more annoying) and yet still say they offer streaming MP3 audio, but let’s hope they don’t.
TAL does have a page where you can donate to the show and help cover some of their bandwidth costs. I highly suggest you toss some money their way. It’s a great show and very much worth some dollars.
The funny thing is, a) forcing people to use this Flash-based player wastes 80k right there (not including overhead), which really isn’t a lot these days, but still, it’s 80k just wasted and b) if they’d let or even encourage the sharing of their shows over P2P networks such as BitTorrent, they could reduce their bandwidth costs right there. How much they could reduce costs, I don’t know, but I’m willing to bet that it’d be more than the donation I made to their show. (And yes, it was a decently-sized donation. 
Anyway, in a nutshell:
- This American Life is a great show.
- I wish they’d stop annoying their loyal listeners. (I haven’t missed a show in a long time.)
- They could save money by encouraging filesharing of their shows instead of wasting money fighting it.
Now, go listen to their show and donate. (Or don’t. I’m not the boss of you.)
Technorati Tags: chicago public radio, filesharing, mp3, puppy, this american life
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October 5th, 2006 at 5:17 am
[...] Pleh » Blog Archive » This Annoying Life “Anyway, in a nutshell: [...]
October 7th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
What’s the hang-up with Audible’s DRM — practical or philosphical? You can burn their files to CD, which is pretty much akin to the CD-by-mail solution. There are always fidelity issues with that route though (although Internet streams aren’t well-regarded on that point either).
I’ve heard about TAL’s “solution” and some of the concern about it. I doubt bandwidth costs are the biggest factor in play here. I think making sure there’s enough money to cover production costs is the more vital element. Any show with original, quality content costs a pretty penny especially with contributors the likes of David Sedaris.
I don’t know for sure. It’s a tough balance — they obviously want to provide a free, a la carte version for online users, but would like users to pay for an easy, albeit DRM’d download solution. At the same time, they probably have to consider concerns about gutting the audiences of stations airing the show in local markets.
Annual program fees for a show like “A Prairie Home Companion” can range from $4,395 to $48,776 depending on a station’s market size (I can’t find fee info regarding TAL). Are Internet users ready to step in and pay up that much money?
Of course, this is all a tough balance especially as pushing audio and video over the Internet becomes easier and more convenient.
October 7th, 2006 at 11:22 pm
It’s not so much the specifics of Audible’s DRM that bothers me, it’s the fact that there is DRM. They have every right to “protect” their content with DRM, just as I have every right to not pay them for it.
NPR freely broadcasts TAL in my area, but the time is inconvenient. They make it freely available for listening on their website, but having to listen to it while at my laptop is not good for me either. By capturing the MP3 stream and playing it on my car stereo, I’m time and location shifting the show. Sure, I have to wait a week to get it, but I consider that reasonable. I’m not skipping anything, even their little ads at the end.
I don’t think they have anything to complain about. I’m using what they offer and not taking anything away from them that they were otherwise giving. If I choose to listen to the stream over the PupuPlayer, then I’m still downloading one MP3 stream, just like I’m doing now. Heck, doing it my way (assuming they don’t change anything for this next show) will even save them a little in their bandwidth as I’m not also downloading the player. (OK, so it’s not much, but it’s something.) Heck, I think I’d be doing them a favor if these shows were put on P2P networks (if they’re not already there), assuming that their drive for funds is only to cover bandwidth costs.
As you said, though, I doubt it is all about bandwidth. I think it’s also about recouping costs and if selling their show through Audible helps some, so be it. I have no problem with supporting them. Heck, I even posted two links to a TAL / CPR site for donations and said that people who like TAL should donate. I have no problem with monetarily supporting a show I like. I just don’t want to support TAL by giving a chunk to Audible and indirectly supporting DRM.
October 8th, 2006 at 3:22 am
Part of the reason for making TAL less available for podcasts or other downloading is the relationship the producers must maintain with your local public radio station. That station pays a fee to carry the program — a hefty fee — and the local station has less reason to get your donation if you’re bypassing them to get the content directly.
As you might imagine, there’s lots of talk in the pubradio community right now about these issues — do we make things available? If so, which things and how often? What quality do we offer? Do we charge for it? Who is allowed to ask for a monetary donation?
In the “old days” (still playing out today), the local pubradio station “owned” the relationship with the listeners and could mine those listeners for dollars. Like TAL? Great — send us money or we’ll cancel it! Okay, it’s not THAT blatant, but the idea is there — without your dollars the local pubradio station will disappear, and so will all your favorite shows.
In an increasingly disintermediated world, what’s the value of the local station? Well, producers at NPR, PRI, APM and other major national producing stations have to consider their existing financial relationships with the local stations. The fact that you gave real money to the producers of TAL would stick in the craw of fundraisers at WAMU, I would suspect. Same as any station.
The future’s gonna be a lot more complicated because of all these new distribution models and how/where the money will flow. That’s why you still can’t get Morning Edition or All Things Considered (from NPR) as a podcast or download.
October 8th, 2006 at 8:46 am
True. These must be “interesting times” for most media. These “direct to the consumer” distribution channels will really affect the producer / local station relationship, if they don’t already.
I have nothing against WAMU per se, but there are some inadequacies in the radio format. For example, as I said in the original post, TAL is on at 3PM on Saturdays. This is not my normal commute time and to put the radio on this is usually not feasible.
I could listen to TAL on XMPR (OK, so it’s on XM, but aside from the broadcast method, they’re essentially the same, technologically) during my daily commutes, but it still falls short in relationship to a netcast. My commute is usually much less than an hour (depending on the whims of I66 and the Beltway). With a netcast, the show picks right up where I left it when I get back. With the broadcast, it’s gone. For shows like TAL, I’d hate missing part of the show.
For the few TAL parts that I really don’t like (honestly, I can’t think of any stories that I’ve ever done this with, but I could), I can just fast-forward through the netcast to the next one. You can’t do this with the broadcast.
It’s just time-shifting, but it’s a big plus. My media consumption is now on my schedule, not some anonymous program director’s.
Still, for me at least, daily shows and local/national/international news don’t translate well to netcast format. Whenever I don’t have a netcast to listen to on my commute, I’m almost always on WAMU for ME and ATC (or whatever else is playing).
So, for the time being at least, it’s money to both TAL and WAMU, but that might change in the future and that’s, in my opinion, the crux of the problem for most NPR stations. (Maybe with commercial radio too, but with their different funding model, I suspect that it’s less susceptible to these changes. Honestly, though, I listen to so little commercial radio, I’ve rarely thought about it.)
October 13th, 2006 at 9:29 pm
While it’s not BitTorrent, it looks like you’ll get your wish for a free podcast solution:
This American Life Podcasts. They start on Monday.
It sounds like a pretty good solution. The broadcasts will be available for a week after airing as a podcast. After that, the listener has three immediate options — free stream, paying $13 for a CD or buying the episode for 95¢ from Audible or the iTunes Store.
I’m sure some may gripe, but it sounds like a pretty decent deal accommodating whatever WBEZ needs to do and what the people who were making the “unofficial” podcasts wanted. It will definitely get me listening again (like you, I prefer time-shifting some of my radio listening).
October 14th, 2006 at 10:20 am
Sweet! Thanks for the update, Ryan. Monday’s my daughter’s birthday, but it looks like I’m getting a little present too. (Well, besides my daughter herself.)
October 16th, 2006 at 12:28 am
[...] The TAL website now offers archived episodes through a Flash player rather than using Real. Looking at the HTML source, I could tell that the player relied on mp3 files streamed to it. I could not figure out the URIs for the mp3 files, though. I could have used a packet sniffer, but a web search is easier. I found this helpful post. The mp3s are available at URIs with the amusing format http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/jomamashouse/ismymamashouse/EPISODENUMBER.mp3. [...]
October 16th, 2006 at 10:01 pm
I hope your daughter had a happy birthday, Pete. How old is she?
October 16th, 2006 at 10:10 pm
Four. Thank you very much.
October 31st, 2006 at 12:25 am
[...] Joe Taylor, Jr., Plneslon and Pleh have recently shared thoughts on how public radio could be paid for in the future. Plnelson: There’s a complete disconnect between payments and services provided in the public radio model! I contribute money to local NPR stations which support programs I DON’T listen to and then I listen for FREE to programs from other stations I’ve never paid a cent for. It’s insane. It’s like buying tickets to Celtics games so you can go to Boston Chamber Music Society concerts for free. [...]